Irene nodded, but said nothing. It was her tell for unease.
“A complete list,” Jonathan pressed. “Anything less than complete, and we’re all wasting a lot of time.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Warning bells pounded like a great gong in his head. “Why are you gaming me like this, Irene? That’s not like you.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Life’s complicated.” Jonathan leaned in closer. “Understand me, Madam Director. I am a micrometer away from pulling the plug on this whole thing. The stakes here are huge, and whenever that happens, the danger to me and my team gets huge, too. As this is fundamentally not my problem, I will not go forward without the trust that I have earned from you and the rest of Uncle Sam’s legions.”
Irene nodded some more. Jonathan could read in her eyes that he’d nearly convinced her, so he let the silence prevail. She signaled that the decision was made when she inhaled deeply through her nose and blew the breath out as a silent whistle. “I’ll give you everything we have,” she said. “I’ll have a courier bring it to your office first thing in the morning. And I won’t insult you by telling you how sensitive it is.”
Jonathan turned more in his seat, and settled in for the next chapter of this conversation. “Did you know that while there were street surveillance cameras in place at the Wild Times Bar on the night Mrs. Darmond was kidnapped, none of them were in fact working?”
“Yes,” Irene said. “I own those cameras, at least in a manner of speaking.”
“That doesn’t seem odd to you?” Boxers prodded.
“Oh, it seems
very
odd to me. Just as it seems odd to me that the attackers knew that the First Lady was on an OTR to begin with. It’s odder still that by all accounts, the car that pulled up with the shooters was a big SUV. There’s some disagreement whether it was a Suburban, an Escalade, or a Yukon, but everyone agrees that it was a big, dark-colored sports utility vehicle.”
“Like the ones your guys drive?” Jonathan asked.
“Like the ones that all of official Washington drives. I’ve got a few agents working that angle, trying to track the whereabouts of all of them, but I don’t expect much. Heck, if I were a bad guy pulling off something like this, maybe I’d just rent a look-alike vehicle to throw everyone off the scent.”
Bingo! In a flash, one giant piece of the puzzle fell into place for Jonathan. As the realization dawned, a smile bloomed. He wagged a forefinger at Irene as the reality clarified. “You guys didn’t hire us to protect the world from financial calamity. Well, maybe that was part of it, but you hired us because you don’t know if you can trust your own people.”
“I already stipulated to that,” Irene said, but she looked away as she did.
“No, you didn’t,” Jonathan pressed. “You said you couldn’t trust your people to keep it quiet—the financial Armageddon argument. In reality, you think that maybe your people are running this thing.”
A longer silence this time as the director measured her words. “It’s not just my people,” she confessed at last. “Ramsey Miller can’t write off the possibility that his people might have a hand in it, too.”
“But why?”
Irene shook her head. “I have no idea. That’s the part that makes no sense to me. And because it makes no sense, I don’t give that possibility any more weight than, say, a thirty percent possibility.”
“Thirty percent is a lot,” Boxers said.
Jonathan finished the thought: “Certainly too high to take a chance.”
Irene held up her hands as if to stop someone approaching her. “Tell you what, guys. Let me pursue that possibility on my own, okay? There are plenty enough people in the universe with motivation to do harm to Yelena Poltanov—excuse me, Anna Darmond. Why don’t you focus on those? If nothing else, those are the kinds of leads that my shop can’t follow without asking a lot of questions.”
“And you’ll start sharing for real?” Jonathan pressed.
Another hesitation. “Let’s do this,” Irene said. “I’ll tell you if this turns out to be a problem within the federal law enforcement community, and I promise I’ll tell you early. However, I will not gratuitously share dirty laundry with you.”
Jonathan weighed the deal. Irene had dedicated well over half her life to the Bureau, and if it turned out that her tree was full of bad apples, she had every right to manage the problem from within.
Finally, Jonathan offered a handshake. “Deal,” he said.
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
I
t was nearly one in the morning when Becky pulled her Volkswagen Jetta back into her parking space at Eastern Towers. They’d hit four ATMs in Annapolis for a total of $1,200. If people were indeed tracking him, there could be no clearer beacon than a cash withdrawal, and this one would lead his enemies in exactly the wrong direction. He worried, of course, that his pursuers might read the ruse for what it was and therefore concentrate their search for him in Virginia, but he recognized that that kind of double-reverse logic could drive a person insane.
There’d been no tolls to pay along the way, and Becky had made a point to call her mother while she drove, staging a casual conversation that would give her plausible deniability if she needed it one day. They’d no doubt passed through some traffic cameras, but David figured that if the police didn’t know who they were looking for, the hazards posed by cameras were minimal.
“What are you going to do now?” Becky asked as she pulled the parking brake.
He looked at her, and for the first time, he began to realize just how hopeless a situation he’d created for himself. “I haven’t a clue,” he said. “I don’t even know for sure that I’m not being ridiculously paranoid. I’m afraid to do anything, but I feel stupid doing nothing.”
Becky slid the key from the ignition, triggering the interior light. She gave him a hard look. “You look like you’re a mess,” she said. “Well, you
are
a mess on the outside, but you look like you’re a mess inside, too. You’re welcome to stay with me, if you’d like.”
He wasn’t sure why, but the offer stunned him. “Really?”
“Sure. I just went to the store, so there’s plenty of food in the apartment. I don’t have much in the way of guest accessories, but what I’ve got is yours. For the time being, anyway. For tonight.”
Without all the makeup, she really did look three years younger and ten degrees hotter. Her offer tugged at him, causing him to feel guilty about all the months of shittiness he’d thrown her way.
“Sure,” he said. “Thank you. The minute there’s any danger, I swear—”
“Okay, I’ll be really honest with you,” she interrupted. “I really do think that you’re making a lot out of nothing. Or maybe I just hope you are. But I don’t worry too much about the danger.”
The dome light turned itself out, and it was time to climb out of the car. As they walked to the exterior door of the complex, David unconsciously kept his hand over the pocket where he’d stuffed the cash. He thought he saw Becky notice, and he thought she rolled her eyes, but in the darkness, he couldn’t tell for sure.
As they rode up together in the elevator, David wondered what it would be like to have to live in this kind of squalor. David knew that he hadn’t earned his wealth—unless you could compensate someone for the trauma of living with the poster child of a right-wing-nut-job father—but he was confident that one day he would make good on the debt, if only by virtue of his intellect.
For the people who lived here, though—for the people who actually depended on the next paycheck for their very existence—this might be the pinnacle for them, the moment for which they’d waited all their lives. He didn’t understand how you could wake up every morning if every morning guaranteed a shit-smelling elevator ride.
The elevator dinged on the eleventh floor, and Becky led the way into the institutionalized dreariness. The hallway was a cavern of doors, and although more lights were functional than non-, the overall effect was a yellow pall that portended bad things.
“Are you all right?” Becky asked. “You look . . . funny.”
He forced a smile. “It’s been a long night.”
Becky’s apartment was the third from the end of the hallway, on the right. He noted that she had her key out well in advance of her arrival at the door, and David concluded from that that she was perpetually ready to fend off a hallway attacker with a Schlage in the eye.
She slipped the key into the lock, and a few seconds later, they were swallowed by the land of yellow. When the door was closed, she turned two dead bolts, and then used her key to turn a third. She left the key ring dangling from the slot.
“Want that iced tea?” Becky asked.
“Sure.”
“Take off your coat and have a seat,” Becky instructed, pointing toward the living room that was separated by an imaginary line from the dining room, which in turn was separated from the kitchen by a half wall.
David stripped off his coat, then realized he didn’t know what to do with it.
“That’s the closet there,” Becky said, pointing with her forehead.
David opened it to reveal a level of order and neatness that was foreign to him. The closet couldn’t have been more than thirty inches wide, yet it held four coats to cover the needs of each season, plus a vacuum cleaner, and somehow it didn’t look crammed. She even had spare hangers.
With his coat hung, he walked to the same loveseat he’d occupied before.
Becky joined him in the living room with two glasses of tea. She handed him one and helped herself to her chair.
“So,” Becky said, the word constituting a complete sentence. “What’s your next move?”
“I don’t know,” David confessed. “For now, I’m trying to stay focused on staving off the panic. And please don’t tell me again that you think I’m making this up.”
“I didn’t mean that as an insult. I just like to lean on the positive side of things until there’s no other choice.”
“So I should look at this mess as if my glass is one-eighth full, not seven-eighths empty?” He sold the comment with a smile and took a sip of tea. It was better than he’d expected.
“Are you hungry?”
He shook his head. “I should be, but I’m not. You feel free to eat if you want.”
“I already did.” Her posture changed in her seat. She sat back, crossed her legs, and smirked at him.
“What?”
“I don’t get you,” she said. “You’ve grown up here your whole life, your family has more money than God, yet you still don’t have anyone to run to when you need help. How can that be?”
David chuckled as he shook his head. “Now those are some seriously barricaded mind-doors,” he said. “Suffice to say that money truly does not buy happiness. Except maybe for the house staff.”
“You had house staff?”
Her shocked tone made him laugh. “Well, we’re not talking footmen and dressers, but yeah. Two full-time housekeepers and a driver.”
Becky joined him in the laugh. “A chauffeur? In a uniform and everything?”
“Mostly he just wore a dark suit. His name was Tommy. Still is, actually. If it was some official Washington thing, or a movie premiere or something like that, he’d wear the hat.”
“Boots?”
“No, no boots. We had a car, not a team of horses.”
“A car or a limousine?”
David laughed again. “Can we compromise on a big car?”
“That is just so cool! I never knew anybody who had his own limousine.”
David considered pointing out that the limo wasn’t his, but rather his father’s, but he was enjoying the lightness of the conversation, so he let it go.
“You know, it’s not that much different than growing up in suburbia,” he said. “You’ve got all the same problems. You get zits like everybody else, and you get bullied like everybody else.”
The phone rang. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” Becky said as she rose to answer it. “But you’ve got top dermatologists for the zits and lawyer daddies to handle the bullies.”
“Don’t forget the hit men,” David added.
“Oh, of course.” Becky picked up the cordless handset from its cradle on the wall where the dining room met the kitchen. “Hello?” Her face darkened instantly. “Oh, hi, Charlie.” She covered the phone with her other hand and mouthed,
Baroli.
“Um, no, I haven’t seen him,” she said. Her face flushed as she pointed at David. “Oh my God, are you sure? That doesn’t sound like him at all.”
David’s gut twisted. There were many things that didn’t sound like him—many of them nice, unfortunately—but he didn’t imagine that many of those would prompt a call from the city desk editor at this hour.
“There must be some mistake, Charlie. DeShawn Lincoln was his friend. A really
good
friend, I think. Why would he kill him?”
Bang! At that sentence, David felt his window of hope slam shut. This was as bad as it could get. He’d been set up for the murder of a cop. Holy shit.
“Okay, Charlie. Yeah, I’ll keep an eye out for him, but I can’t imagine him coming here.” She listened, and then chuckled dismissively. “Oh, I hardly think so. All right, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She pushed the disconnect, and for a long stretch, they just stared at each other. Finally, Becky cleared her throat. “So, uh, I guess you caught the gist of that. Your friend is dead, and the police are looking for you as the prime suspect.”
The room suddenly seemed short of oxygen. It was one thing to suspect that you were neck deep in a pile of shit, but something else entirely to learn beyond doubt that it was true. “I don’t understand this,” David said.
“Did your friend—did DeShawn—tell you anything about what specifically was going on?”
David closed his eyes tightly—winced, really—as he scoured his memory for anything that might be useful. “He was scared. He thought that it had something to do with the Secret Service, and it was too big to speak of over the phone. That means he suspected he was being watched.” He opened his eyes. “And apparently, he
was
being watched.”
“But why you? Why are you dragged into this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. The best I can figure out is that they knew Deeshy was talking to me. I mean, they had his cell phone and I called a couple of times right before he was killed. Maybe I was just convenient.”
A minute or two passed in silence. “Maybe you should just go to the police and turn yourself in.”
“That’s crazy. I didn’t do anything.”
Becky cocked her head to the side. “Well, David, no offense, but that’s what every guilty person says. I mean, I believe you—if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be here—but once this story hits the news tomorrow morning, the act of remaining a fugitive just drives home the fact of your guilt to the police.”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” David said.
“Oh, come on, David. You’re not that naïve. You’re the rich son of a fabulously rich father, and you’re a reporter wanted for murder. This has
Today
show written all over it. If it’s not the featured story on the morning broadcasts tomorrow, then it certainly will be the next day. By the time they finish milking the angle that you didn’t step forward to let justice take its course, you’ll be ruined. Even if a court finds you not guilty, you’ll be famous as the rich kid whose money let him skip a murder charge.”
He felt light-headed. “Jesus, Becky. And you’re the optimist?”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re just saying. And I also know that you’re right. But you forgot the part about what a crackpot I’ll sound like when I start talking about some giant conspiracy.”
“I don’t suppose you recorded any of DeShawn’s panicky phone calls.”
“Of course not. But if this whole thing is being run by the Secret Service or even the DC Police, the last thing I’m going to do is just walk into a police station and let them determine my future.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Not doing that. That’s the first step. Steps two through three thousand are a little fuzzy. But I’m not going to do the one thing that will guarantee spending the rest of my life in prison. Even if everything you predict comes true, the result will be the same, so what’s the sense in stepping forward now?”
Becky took some time to think about that. “Well, you’ve got a much better chance of survival if you walk in to be arrested than you do if you wait till some SWAT team crashes the doors to take you the hard way.”
David faked a smile. “Yeah, but the SWAT scenario is way more interesting.”
“That’s not funny.”
He let it go and guzzled the rest of his tea. He stood. He had to stand. If he didn’t move, he’d go crazy.
There had to be a thread to pull. He refused to accept that there were no alternatives to a ruined life. He hadn’t been the nicest guy over the years, but he deserved better than this.
He pressed his hands against the sides of his head to keep it from exploding.
“Here’s the problem,” he said. “I don’t know how to untangle this without either being visible to the world or leaving an electronic trail a mile wide. Not that I know where to find answers, but even if I did, I couldn’t go there to look.”
“Don’t you have a lot of police sources?”
“I do, but I can’t call them. Not when the crime under investigation is a murder of one of their own.”
“I’d think they’d want justice.”
“Right now, they apparently think that hauling my ass in is the definition of justice. I can’t risk it.” His eyes narrowed as he focused in on Becky. “What about you? Are you willing to do some detective work?”
She blanched. “I do society pieces. I don’t know anyone among the police. And if I called your sources, all your concerns would inure to me. That’s not a solution. Can you think of anyone else?”
Hearing the question asked that directly made the answer seem ridiculously obvious. When he told her, she laughed.
“You’re kidding, right?” she said.
David smiled and shrugged. “Can you think of a better solution?”
She stewed on it. “Not at the moment,” she said at last. “I guess I’ll call him in the morning.”
David checked his watch. Technically speaking, it was morning already, but by any standard too early to call. He steadied himself with a deep breath. “All right, then. We have a plan. It’s a sucky one, but it’s a plan. So now we just have to wait for daylight.” He eyed the sofa. “So, can I sleep there?”