Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (29 page)

Even with notions of murder and
deadly viruses crowding out rational thought, the chain of events made sense to
Anna so far. Claude—Claude Pierre Bonet—was the former Clyde Peter Bonner from
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Jeffrey had known Clyde since high school—Clyde was a
survivalist before being a survivalist was a thing. It wasn’t terribly
surprising that he’d be in the middle of theft, murder, and conspiracy—he was
often mixed up in unsavory business. In fact, the circumstances of his move
abroad were clouded by some legal issues that Jeffrey had never fully explained
to her.

“But, why?”

“Originally, as an insurance
policy of sorts. Knowing that the virus was going to be out there somewhere, in
private hands, it seemed prudent to have the same weapon. Mutually assured
destruction has always been an effective defense.”

She just stared at him, taking in
the fevered gleam in his eyes.

“Once I met Mr. X, I realized he
didn’t plan to release the virus. But, it’s important that the American public
understand the danger they live in. The only way to do that is to bring it into
their homes. When their children get sick, and there’s no medicine, no drinkable
water, no fresh food, and no help, then they’ll grasp their situation.”

The way he said it, so determined
and committed to his own narrative, frightened her. He was making decisions out
of ideological fervor now. Having decided the possibility of a pandemic was a
real and present danger and having rallied his followers, he couldn’t back away
and admit that, at least for now, the government was in control of the
situation.

“People are going to die.”

“Not our people. Most of our
followers have already been vaccinated and will have full immunity by the time
the virus starts spreading. They’ve left their homes, their jobs in
anticipation of the pandemic. It’s too late to stand down.”

“No, it isn’t. The organization
did its job—we got everyone to a safe place. If the threat’s over, we can
return to our regular lives.”

“Don’t you see, Anna? Our safety
is an illusion. We need to send the government a message to prepare itself.”

“What kind of message?” Anna
asked. She was afraid of the answer, afraid of her husband, afraid of the
emptiness she felt looking at him.

“Late tonight—well, actually,
just after midnight—so early tomorrow morning, Bud and I are going to drive to
Pittsburgh. He’ll stay in the vehicle while I take the virus to Steel Plaza and
release it at the crèche display. Then, we’ll return here. We should be back
for morning exercises, but George is standing ready to help you in case we are
delayed. Or apprehended.”

“You’re going to infect people
who come to view the nativity scene?” Anna asked. Her tongue felt thick, and
the words sounded slow and slurred to her own ears.

“It’s a very effective plan.
There will be school choirs singing. And children and the elderly have weakened
immune systems. It should spread rapidly.” He gave her a satisfied look.

Her stomach turned.

“That’s murder.”

“You may think so—” he began.

“I do think so. And the government
will think so, too.”

He waved a hand at the idea.

“Jeffrey, you’re going to kill
innocent children.”

She watched to see if that
reality sunk in, but nothing seemed to penetrate his madness.

“Not me, Anna. Society will be
responsible for their deaths.”

She shifted gears and tried a new
tack. “You’ll go to jail. We both will. What about
our
kids?”

He shot her a disgusted look. “First
of all, you’re not going jail—that’s exactly why I kept you out of this.
Second, I’m not going to jail. An illegitimate government will never be able to
seize me, not alive, at any rate. And third, the kids will be fine. We’re
raised them to be self-sufficient.”

“Clara is three years old!”

“I know how old my daughter is.
The community we’ve built will help. Surely you aren’t ready to abandon all the
people who count on us?” Bricker asked.

“They count on us? I thought we
were teaching them to count on themselves?” Anna countered.

“They still need leaders.
Everyone does. It’s the natural order.”

He was blind to the
inconsistency—his followers needed leaders, but his three-year-old daughter
didn’t need parents? There was no reasoning with him.

But she tried anyway. “I’m not
saying we should abandon anything or anyone. But, I have no interest in
martyring myself or our family. You can’t be serious.”

Anna searched her husband’s face
for almost a full minute and saw no trace of the man she knew—the man she’d
built a life with. Her chest tightened with sorrow.

She walked out of the office,
blinking away hot tears.

Colton waved to
the federal agent slouching against the lamppost across the street from his
penthouse and turned away from the window. The man ducked his head and
pretended to check his watch.

Idiots.
As if by following
him around they were going to stumble onto a hidden cache of the virus or find
a cancelled check made out to Michel Joubert.

Did they suppose he’d gotten as
far as he had in business and life by being incompetent and careless? He nearly
laughed, but then his eyes fell on the Trader Joe’s tote bag sitting under his
desk.

He had to get rid of the silver.
It wasn’t contraband, of course, but when—not if—law enforcement officers came
knocking on his door, he would prefer not to have to explain away a bag full of
silver ingots.

He supposed he could store it in
his personal safe or in his safety deposit box, but both of those plans had
flaws. A search warrant, presumably, would be worded in such a way as to
include the contents of his safe; and a safety deposit box wouldn’t be
immediately accessible if he did, in fact, ever need to flee to avoid
prosecution—although given the clumsy surveillance techniques on display down
on Connecticut Avenue, he assumed he’d have ample warning if the feds were
closing a net around him.

All the same, he decided, the
silver was best stored off the premises but where he could get his hands on it
as needed. He’d put it with the remaining vial.

He reached into the middle drawer
on the right side of his desk and removed a thin stack of mail. He took the top
envelope and slid the rest back into the drawer. Clutching the pastel pink
envelope, with its glittery sticker over the envelope flap and the looping,
childish script that addressed it to “Aunt Marla,” he left the apartment and
crossed the hall to the Brandts’ door.

He raised the knocker and let it
fall against the door then straightened the knot in his tie with his free hand
as he rehearsed the conversation about misdirected mail that he’d have to suffer
through if one of the Brandts happened to be home.

No footsteps sounded on the other
side of the door. He knocked again, louder this time, and waited another
minute. No one came to the door, so he returned to his apartment.

After returning the envelope to
its drawer in the desk, he crouched on his heels and lifted the heavy cloth bag
filled with silver. Then he stood and carried it into his master closet.

When Colton had remodeled the
walk-in closet shortly after he’d moved in, his carpenter had called him in a
mild panic. As he’d been installing the cedar, the man had accidentally broken
through the wall.

That was how Colton had
discovered that, in their efforts to carve out two separate three thousand
square foot penthouse suites, the building management had backed his closet up
to the Brandts’ identical closet, which met his in a U-shaped space blocked off
from the main concourse. Colton had resisted his initial impulse to complain to
the condo board and assured his carpenter he’d take care of the damage with the
neighbors across the hall.

Instead, he’d spent a weekend
chatting with the helpful employees of a suburban hardware store and creating
two false panels.

He dropped the bag to the cherry
hardwood floor with a
thud
then crouched and ran his hands along the
cedar wall near the baseboard. When his fingers touched the small notch in the
wall, he pried the panel off and set it aside.

He quickly located the identical notch
in the panel he’d affixed to the Brandts’ side of the closet. He eased off the
length of wood and placed it on the floor of his closet alongside its mate.

Then he poked his head through the
opening to survey the inside of the Brandts’ closet. The light that filtered
through the gap from his own closet was sufficient to confirm that the small
box holding his virus ampule sat undisturbed behind Marla Brandt’s boot
collection. He turtled back into the hole and grabbed the heavy bag. He heaved
it two-handed through the opening and lowered it as quietly as he could to the
floor beside the virus. Several pashmina shawls hanging from a bar swung gently
as he brushed them with his forearm.

The space between the closets was
narrow and best suited for hiding papers and drugs—perhaps a firearm, if Colton
had been a gun enthusiast. The bag fit in the cache, but just barely. He folded
the bag’s excess cloth down tightly over the bricks of silver and gently slid
the panel over the items to hide them from view on the Brandt’s side of the
closet. He crawled backward through the gap to his own side and replaced his
panel.

Then he stood and brushed his
hands on his slacks, satisfied and unaware that just days earlier the Brandts
had mounted a discreet security camera high on the opposite wall of their
closet. The small camera was aimed directly at the large jewelry armoire that
sat beside the boot racks. Its electronic eye blinked red and recorded Colton’s
every movement.

Leo spotted Sasha
waiting at the security gate when he arrived in the middle of a wave of
chattering travelers. She stretched up on her toes, smiled her megawatt smile,
and waved at him over the crowd.

He nodded to the vaguely familiar
TSA agent who sat perched on a stool near the entrance to the security lines
and hurried toward her. His bag bumped out a rhythm against his thigh with each
stride.

“Long time, no see,” she said, as
he swung her into his arms and inhaled the familiar, faint, spicy scent of her
body lotion.

They walked hand-in-hand through
the short-term parking garage to her car.

“Have you heard from Gavin?” he
asked. He’d forgotten about Gavin’s efforts to locate the missing Serumceutical
worker in all the chaos surrounding his arrest.

 She shook her head. “No, not
since he left that message Sunday night. I’m getting worried, Connelly.”

So was he.

“I’ll talk to Hank. Maybe he can
reach out to local law enforcement and have them send a car out to the preppers’
campsite, just to check it out.”

She popped the trunk of her
Passat so he could toss his bag inside.

“I don’t know if you should be
asking Hank for any favors,” she said uncertainly, “but, we have to do
something. It’s not like Gavin to go dark.”

Her green eyes met his, and he
could tell that grim scenes were unfolding in her imagination.

 “Hey, we’ll track him down.”

As she pulled out of the compact
parking spot and circled past the airport, he reached across the console and
turned on the car radio.

“Do you mind if we listen to the
news? ‘All Things Considered’ should be starting,” he said.

She pressed the pre-set button
for the NPR station and they listened in silence to a report about the impact
the storm was having on the Eastern seaboard.

Leo looked out his window as she
merged onto the highway. Judging by the piles of snow stacked along the
roadside, Pittsburgh had gotten at least half a foot. But the roads had been
cleared and salted. It was a stark contrast to the slushy mess his cab driver
had navigated through D.C. on the way to Reagan National.

Sasha kept her eyes on the van in
front of them, which was weaving in and out of its lane. “My dad called. The
kids are all sledding at the park near my folks’ house, so my mom’s got a few
pans of lasagna in the oven, if you’re up for dinner with the clan tonight,”
she said without looking away from the road.

Leo was the only child of a
single mother whose job required them to move around. Sasha seemed to think
that his background meant that he found her noisy, extended family overwhelming
when, in reality, he loved the laughter, the squabbling, the frenetic energy of
the kids, and the meals shared crowded around her parents’ too-small dining
room table.

“Sounds like fun,” he said.

She glanced over and smiled at
him. “Good. But, you’ll call Hank first, right?”

He nodded.

Sasha dutifully slowed the car,
as the van in front of them braked and decelerated. They were nearing the mouth
of the tunnel that led to downtown. For reasons Leo had not yet grasped, all
Pittsburgh drivers seemed to slow to a crawl before entering tunnels, as if a
road with a roof posed some threat to their safety.

After inching their way through
the tunnel, they emerged and crossed the bridge to town. Leo turned his
attention to the pop-up book skyline. He loved this approach to the city. As he
gazed out the window at the gray, frozen river, he realized with a jolt that he
felt like he was home.

He’d moved around so much as a
boy, going from place to place for his mother’s job as a traveling nurse, that
he’d never considered
anywhere
home. It was a routine that he’d
continued after college, moving from one government assignment to the next,
always willing to relocate.

How had Pittsburgh crept into his
blood and made itself his home?

The answer to that question
shifted in her seat beside him. “Listen,” she said, turning up the volume on
the radio.