The Third Coincidence (8 page)

the third coincidence 55

clothes next to the back of the van and put his delivery outfit, in- cluding his shoes, into a black metal drum along with the lovebirds’ identification and the flowers, squeezed a full can of lighter fluid into the jumbled mess and dropped a lit match. The gun, he’d left at the scene. The knife, well, the knife, he had left in the scene.

Newlyweds dream their honeymoon will last forever. For the Breens he had made that a reality.

And then there were twelve.

chapter 13

The Middle East remains conspicuously quiet on the American assassinations.

—FOX News, June 8

At nine that night, Jack turned his straight-back chair around, strad- dled it and plopped his arms across the backrest. “Fill us in on San- tee, Nora.”

“The local police in the Poconos concluded Santee accidentally drove off the cliff,” she began. “Their local M.E. confirmed the time of death matched Mrs. Santee’s statement. She said her husband played a game in which he raced his Jaguar down the mountain road.” After a smirk of sorts, Nora added, “One thing we can be sure of, men never grow up.”

Rachel and Nora smiled at each other while the men protested. Fostering camaraderie was a part of Jack’s reasoning for tonight’s meeting, along with getting everyone up to speed. He knew they needed to bond to have a good chance to complete their mission, particularly in this town where the common denominator was: every-

thing becomes a political football.

So far he had heard no media leaks since the one he discussed with the president, and that one had come from the president’s inner circle. Rachel had a history of working FBI cases without leaking to the press, and he had shared lots of classified stuff with Colin and some with Millet. He trusted them. If there was anyone to worry about it would be Frank Wade or Nora Burke, but they hadn’t leaked

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anything after he pushed them to the sidelines at the Montgomery murder scene, so he doubted they would now that they were back on the inside.

“You should all be aware that CIA Director Miller is a close, life- long friend of June Santee,” Jack told the others. “She’s also the god- mother of one of Santee’s children. We need to be sensitive to that whenever she’s around. Director Miller told me Mrs. Santee had spoken with her on more than one occasion about her husband speeding down that mountain road.”

“Whoever is behind these killings has done their homework,” Rachel said. “The killer knew about Monroe’s ginseng, Mont- gomery’s penchant for morning walks through the National Mall, and Santee’s regression behind the wheel of his Jaguar. This guy has a spot picked out for each target.”

“Frank, you and Nora, tomorrow morning, go to the Federal Reserve here in D.C.,” Jack said. “Talk to the head of security. After that, stop to see Chief Oscar Wiggins at the Supreme Court Police. I talked with him after I left you guys at the Montgomery scene. He’ll give you a CD detailing the security breaches, crank stuff, and threats over the past few years. Other than that, carry on the same as you would have if you had never heard from me.”

Rachel slipped her shoes back on before asking Jack, “What’s your take on all this?”

“As you just laid out, each victim died doing something that was part of his normal routine. Whoever is behind these killings has done reconnaissance and carefully planned when, where, and how. With that in mind, tomorrow, take Colin and make contact with the rest of the Fed governors and the justices. Encourage them to change their habitual routines as much as possible.”

“When do you want us back here?” Frank asked.

“I expect to have this place outfitted tomorrow, by three. Millet, this is the last late meeting we’ll pull without some food.”

Millet winked at Nora. The corner of his mouth moved more than his eye, morphing the effort into a startling expression.

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After the others had drifted out, Rachel walked over to Jack, her blue eyes intense.

“You’ve assembled quite a team,” she said, hands on her hips, “two local cops, a strange computer geek, and the mysterious Colin Stewart. And that’s without mentioning you and me. I figure Colin for a military sniper, right?”

“Colin is one of the best long-range shooters in the wor—” “Like I said, a sniper. That’s okay. The FBI has snipers in their

SWAT teams.”

“That’s true,” Jack said. “But FBI snipers usually arrive in a com- fortable truck, accept the risk and take the shot, then go back to the truck and back to their homes and families. A military sniper crawls through the muck, and often waits in the same position for hours, even days, then takes the shot and crawls out hoping to escape with his life. Colin’s been with me on four or five covert operations. He has a sixth sense that’s uncanny. Trust it. I do. As for Millet, he’s dif- ferent. I grant you that, but I’ve used him many times. He fights me. He’s even antisocial. But he’s never failed to find what I need and without being slowed down by rules or authorizations.”

“He’s a hacker,” Rachel said with a cutting edge to her voice, “like the hackers arrested by the bureau’s White Collar Crime Di- vision.”

Jack shook his head. “I grant you Millet wouldn’t fit in over at

J. Edgar University. In the end, no one on this team will be more important than Millet. Not me. Not you.”

He had to get Rachel out of her FBI button-down mind-set. He didn’t want to lose her, and he was coming to realize he meant that on more than one level.

Like the unfolding wings of a bat waking from a long day of sleep, the assassin could feel his expanding thirst for blood as he continued to reassure himself that his eliminations were justified by both his love of country and loyalty to his father.

After driving south late into the night, he pulled off the inter-

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state at Redding, California, to get something to eat, use a prepaid phone card for a long-distance call, and send a FedEx package.

The time had come to abandon the pretense of coincidence and turn the law dogs loose to chase his phantom militia.

At midnight, Jack stood on the second floor deck on the front of his house with his nightly three fingers of Marker’s Mark. Between drinks he rolled his shoulders up and back, then stretched his head from side to side until each ear touched each shoulder. He then swirled his glass and sent the last swallow to exercise his insides.

This case alone would define his career. Twenty years of suc- cessful overt and covert operations wouldn’t count. This time the battleground was America. Success would allow him to leave the government with the best wishes of his president and a grateful nation. Failure would be, well, failure.

He went inside, back down to the kitchen and poured two more fingers, not quite covering the cubes in his glass. He was back in the death business. Seeing it. Trying to prevent it. Perhaps dispensing it. At the kitchen table his mind replayed that night in the sand in Iraq, his last night with his younger brother.

“Oh, Jack. It hurts. Jack.”

“Hang in there, bro. The chopper’s had it. We’ll have to get out on foot.”

“I can’t, Jack. Oh, God it hurts. You go. Get out of here.” “Stuff that talk, soldier. We’ll make it. Together. Like we always

have.”

“No, Jack. No. You go. I love you, bro. Live for us both.”

Jack had sat in the sand with Nick’s torn head on his lap. Nick’s eyes on Jack’s face, scared eyes trying to be brave. But neither of them had said another word.

Jack had gotten out. And Jack had taken revenge. But Nick was still gone.

Why had he taken Nick on his mission? To impress him? To train him? To show off for him? Always the same questions. Always

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no answers. The memory always ending with the same words, “No, Jack. No. You go. I love you, bro. Live for us both.”

He walked into the living room and put the glass on the piano without bothering with a coaster. Then sat down to play, determined to shake off his funk. He started to play Fats Waller’s “Rumpsteak Serenade,” a song that made him think of his sexy neighbor, Janet Parker. Before he reached the end, the phone rang. He hit the talk button. “Jack McCall.”

“Why haven’t you fucked Rachel Johnstone?” the voice said. “You must know she wants you to.”

Jack clenched his teeth. “Who the hell is this?”

The caller sucked in a breath. “Your new friend. And you have no idea just how friendly we’re going to be.”

chapter 14

The president’s opponents scream: “Schroeder’s using McCall’s squad as a forerunner to forming a Presidential Secret Police.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 8

He left the van in an empty lot in a high-crime area of Oakland, California, tossed the keys next to the plastic explosive, and set the timer for ten minutes.

Four blocks away with his hand on the door of a taxi, the blast brought him up short. Fighting the desire to laugh, he parroted the cab driver’s expressions of concern.

During his flight back to Baltimore, he went over what he had compiled about the next aristocrat who would die for his country: Charles (Chip) Taylor, the Federal Reserve Bank governor from the Cleveland District.

Taylor lived in Pepper Pike, an affluent Cleveland residential neighborhood about twenty-five miles from the airport. The kind of neighborhood that had strategically placed garden club bag stations so the residents who walked their dogs on cold mornings could bag their steamers.

He had periodically surveilled Chip Taylor for more than a year, and, for the past few weeks, bugged his home telephone. Taylor lived with his wife, Susan, a woman obsessed with trying to stay young, and his invalid mother who, suffering with advanced Alzheimer’s, spent afternoons twice a week in therapy. Killing all three, after the

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eliminations of Justice Breen and his bride would shock the nation’s financial markets and legal system.

After deplaning in Baltimore, he took a taxi downtown where he purchased a pair of running shoes, an expensive jogging suit, a new red baseball cap, and a backpack.

A different cab brought him back to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport where, as Robert Campbell, he purchased a ticket for the next flight to Cleveland.

Outside Hopkins International Airport he hailed a cab into down- town Cleveland. After walking three blocks, he entered a public parking garage where he recovered a detonator he had hidden there on an earlier trip, after having picked the lock on Taylor’s kitchen door and rigged a bomb in their basement.

From there he went to the corner of Green and Mayfield Roads and entered a bicycle shop where he paid cash for an assembled red Jamis Ventura road bike and two cans of black aerosol bicycle paint. He pedaled five miles on Green Road and then Lander Road before turning into the heart of the Pepper Pike neighborhood. Street after street of pristine homes lived in by upper-class Americans who had stood aside while their elected leaders sold out their generation’s stewardship of the country. Two turns later, he stopped across from a dark brick home, reached down for the water bottle suspended on the bike’s frame and, while taking a drink, casually glancing at the light edging around the drape in Taylor’s second-floor rear-bedroom window.

Constance Harding spent her days watching soap operas and her nights watching old movies, particularly musicals. Last summer she had tried to become friends with the older woman in the house be- hind her, the widow Lucille Taylor, who lived with her son and his wife, but it hadn’t worked. Lucille, addled to the point where she had trouble recalling her own daughter-in-law’s name, never re- membered Constance from one visit to the next.

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Constance’s son, who lived in Pittsburgh, drove over with his family on the first Sunday of every other month to take her out to dinner. Other than those visits she had been alone since her hus- band died eighteen years ago. Except for the news hours between ten and eleven at night, the television was her best friend. She could not stand the steady recitation of gloom and doom that filled the news, never speaking to the good in people, the God quality that Constance believed could be found in every person. For a while she had watched
I Love Lucy
reruns during the late news hour, but even- tually she started to simply turn off her television in silent protest.