The Directive by Matthew Quirk

could find.
    I emerged a minute later, my head wet but no longer smeared with blood, wearing a too-small sweatshirt that read “You Don’t Know Me” across the front. Underneath, my dress shirt was damp, lukewarm with Sacks’s blood. The entrance to the Sculpture Garden was fifteen feet away. Soon I was just another tourist puzzling over Louise Bourgeois’s spider.
    My car was parked back near the courthouse, but returning there wasn’t an option. Soon enough the police would realize I hadn’t taken the Metro, and the dragnet would spread.
    I peered through the gates and saw a patrol car parked on the opposite corner. I circled the Garden to the other side, waited for some Park Police on bikes to pass, then exited onto Madison. More cops were coming, motorcycles from one direction, cars from the other, men on foot fanning out between the museums. I was trapped.
    A hand closed on my arm.
    I turned. It was my brother.
    The black Chrysler idled a few feet away. Jack moved toward it. Lynch sat in the driver’s seat. “I can get you out of here,” he said.
    The police closed in. I could feel Sacks’s blood dry, tighten like scales on my skin. To all the world, I was the gunman. I knew I should raise my hands and surrender, trust my life to the laws I had sworn to uphold, the laws that had torn my family apart.
    Or I could give myself to the killers who had just framed me. The black car waited, my only escape. The rear door swung open. I was innocent, but I’d seen enough to know that the truth no longer mattered.
    Cops circled the block.
    Jack jumped in and stretched out his hand to me.
    The only way out was to go in deeper.
    I stepped into the car.

Chapter 14
    LYNCH PULLED AWAY , and I ducked low behind the tinted windows.
    “You fucking shot him?” I said to Lynch.
    “It’s more complicated than it seems,” Lynch said.
    I turned on Jack. “And what are you doing with them?”
    “I was right there, Mike. They picked me up. They can get us out of here.” He looked over to Lynch. I could see the black-and-purple bruise under the bandage on Jack’s temple, see the fear in him. “They’re here to help.”
    “We’ll get you someplace safe,” Lynch said.
    “Dupont.”
    “What?”
    “Take me to Dupont Circle,” I said, looking over the missed calls and texts from Annie. “Or else my fiancée will kill me herself and deprive you of the pleasure.”
    I had to talk to her before the news hit, to explain things before every network painted me as a murderer. But there was more to it than that. If I was going to run, I wasn’t going to do it without her.
    “There’s a lot of heat,” Jack said.
    “Dupont,” I said, and tried to think of a place where I could shower in the middle of the day.
    Lynch looked at me as if he was humoring a seven-year-old, then said, “Fine.”
    At the cross street with Florida, I stepped out at the red light. Jack started to open his door after me, but Lynch stopped him and let me go.
    “We’ll get you through this, Mike,” Lynch said to me as I walked away. “Don’t worry. Just remember: Don’t do anything rash. It never ends well.”

    I made it to the Hilton. I’d bought some clothes at the first store I saw, some trendy urban-style skate-shop boutique, then showered and changed at the community pool behind Marie Reed Elementary.
    As I crossed the lobby, I realized that my outfit of khakis and a plaid shirt looked less casual Friday and more rapper going mainstream. In the main ballroom, busboys cleared dessert plates and knots of judges and lawyers stood around talking.
    I waved to Annie on the other side of the room. She was carrying a heavy piece of engraved crystal and holding court in a small circle of prosecutors and judges. As the other people she was talking to saw me approach, I could see the concern grow in their faces, as if they were witnessing a car crash. I gathered they understood the significance of my bailing on what looked like Annie’s big