BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (50 page)

Hunter smiled. “Whatever could you possibly be referring to?”

Conn shook his head slowly. “Well, well. Things make perfect sense, now.”

“Things always do.”

“Well, you won’t get away with it!” he shouted. “Now that I know, I’ll make it my personal
mission
to bring you down, you son of a bitch. To put you behind bars, where you belong. I’ll hire detectives to follow you—no, better: I’ll put federal agencies onto you. I am going to
bury
you, Hunter.”

“Gee, I certainly wouldn’t want any of that. But two can play at that game. For instance, there are the wiretap recordings I have from your phone calls. In fact, I have an interview scheduled tomorrow morning with Avery Trammel, who is on some of those recorded phone chats with you. It will be interesting to match his story against yours. You know, I think you should call him right away—get together with him tonight to get your stories straight … before I go to press tomorrow morning. Have a nice evening,
Senator
.”

He turned on his heel and headed for the door, leaving Conn standing with his mouth open.

He walked to his van, which he’d parked behind Conn’s Bentley. He rolled out past it, then coasted down the long drive to the gate. Waited while the security man opened it. Then exited, turned down the street … and parked again, about fifty yards away.

Hunter left the car. A pair of binoculars swung from a strap around his neck as he trotted back toward the gate in the darkness. He stopped about a hundred feet from it, hiding in the shadows of some trees. Then raised the binoculars to his eyes.

Conn was visible through the window of his den, a phone to his ear, gesturing wildly. He was on the call for less than a minute before rushing out of the room.

Hunter smiled to himself and lowered the binoculars, letting them hang on their strap.

Then he retrieved two burner phones from his jacket pockets, and held one in each hand.

After a moment, Conn emerged from the front door, struggling into an overcoat. He clambered down the steps and hurried to the Bentley.

Hunter heard the engine rev. Just as the car began to roll forward, he hit a speed-dial button on the cell in his left hand. It was spoofing Trammel’s cell number.

“Yes, Avery?” Conn answered.

“Oh, I forgot to mention, Senator: Boggs is dead. I know, because I killed him. I killed him for leaving a bomb in my cabin, and a much bigger one in Dan Adair’s house. It’s only fitting that I return those bombs to his sponsor, now. In fact, they’re inside and underneath your car.”

He thumbed a speed-dial button on the cell in his right hand as he said:

“Senator—you’re unsustainable.”

He saw the brake lights flare in the dark at the top of the driveway. The Bentley had almost squealed to a halt when a dazzling blue flash lit its interior, blasting out its windows
.
An enormous detonation followed an instant later, this time from beneath the vehicle. It blew the sedan skyward, riding a blinding column of orange-white flame into the black sky, then flipped it in mid-air. As the thundering blast shook the ground and echoed throughout the neighborhood, the Bentley plunged back to earth and landed on its roof, sliding down the ice-slicked grass to rest against the flagpole in Ashton Conn’s perfectly manicured front lawn.

The American flag waved brightly above the blazing vehicle.

Hunter trotted back to the van. He drove slowly back past the gate. Near the top of the hill, the two security men stood transfixed, dark silhouettes against the inferno.

He lowered the window as he rolled by. Opened the small plastic bag in his hand, and dumped Zachariah Boggs’s smartphone next to the mailbox outside the gate.

Then Dylan Hunter headed home.

He entered the reception area just before ten in the morning and approached her desk.

“Hi, Danika.”

She looked up. A radiant smile blossomed.

“Hell-o
, Mr. Hunter!” Then frowned. “My, you look as tired as you sounded when I called you this morning.”

“I’ve been up late working on that CarboNot story. I have to submit a new article later today.”

Danika rocked back in her chair. She wore a smile, plus a snug, cream-colored sheath dress in what looked like satin, cut low at the top and high at the bottom. The smile seemed bigger than the dress. Her dark, sculpted thighs were crossed, and she bounced the top leg rhythmically, from the knee. A beige shoe with a spiked heel dangled only from her toes, swinging hypnotically.

“I read your latest article,” she said. “It made me so mad! I just can’t
believe
the stuff that goes on in this town.”

“Believe it,” he said. “Are my two police guests here, yet?”

“In room 8. But just one,” she said, her smile taking on a dreamy quality. “Detective Cronin.”

He chuckled. “Danika … remember Melvin?”

She pouted. “Oh. Yeah.”

Cronin surprised him. He was seated behind the office desk, leaning back in the swivel chair, his fingers steepled.

“Gee, I hope I’m not late for my job interview, sir,” Hunter said, slipping into the guest chair in front of the desk.

“You’re really not that funny.”

“Your partner made that clear last time. By the way, where
is
Detective Erskine? Did you send him out for doughnuts?”

“You’ve heard the news, I assume.”

“I’d better, given my job. But which news item are you referring to?”

“Senator Conn.”

“
That
news. I haven’t brushed up on my Constitution for a while; but does this mean he doesn’t get to become President?”

Cronin sighed and rocked forward. He looked tired, too.

“The feebs found some interesting stuff at the crime scene.”

“Please don’t tell me they found another one of my clippings.”

“Not this time. Are we off the record?”

“Sure.”

“A smartphone, apparently dropped by accident right outside the property. They dusted it, and guess whose prints came back?”

“Damn. I
wondered
where I lost that thing.”

“Hunter, can you be serious for just one minute? They belong to Boggs. His prints were on record from back when they investigated him as a Technobomber suspect. My feeb source says they still have lots of tests to run, but at first glance the pipe-bomb fragments look a lot like what they found in the CarboNot office.”

“So they think Boggs is good for both of those, then.”

“Looks that way. The forensics guys also found something else, though. A message, stuck on a bush out in the yard. It looked like it was planted there.”

“A message. But not one of my columns.”

“Not one of your columns. Just a typewritten note. It says: ‘Returned to Sender.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cronin shrugged. “Not my case. That’s for the dicks at the FBI to figure out.”

“I’m curious. Why are you telling me all this?”

Cronin leaned forward, folded his hands on the desk. He looked like an executive.

“I picked this up from a D.C. cop on our task force. He says their people are investigating something connected to that CarboNot company you’ve been writing about. It looks like somebody was tapping phones and intercepting email of the biggest CarboNot investors. People you mentioned. Then they interfered with their stock transactions. It’s complicated, but the bottom line is, their calls were routed here. To your office girl out there—Danika.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that
Danika
is involved in some kind of scam?”

“No, no. Not at all. She doesn’t even know about this, yet. Her boss got calls from the irate CarboNot investors, wondering what the hell was going on. So he pulled his records and shared them with the D.C. police. Seems that some scam operation established a bunch of accounts here to have Danika answer their phone calls. They represented themselves as brokers, insurance agents, and financial advisers. Then the scammers contacted the various CarboNot investors, pretending to be their brokers and insurers. They gave the investors what they claimed were new contact phone numbers. But those numbers would actually ring here, at Danika’s desk. So, when the investors phoned what they thought was their brokers to buy or sell CarboNot stock, their calls were routed to Danika. She would forward the messages to other numbers, just as she was told. The bottom line is, the CarboNot investors’ transactions never went through. These guys wound up losing millions.”

Hunter whistled. “Slick.” He frowned. “But how did the scammers make their money?”

Cronin was looking at him, hard. “Apparently they didn’t. It looks like their whole setup was just meant to make these CarboNot stockholders
lose
a ton of money.”

“You mean, it was just malicious? Somebody went to an awful lot of trouble just to hurt these stockholders.”

“Exactly. And so I asked myself: Ed, who has it in for these guys?”

“Cronin, I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

“And I asked myself: Ed, isn’t it a coincidence that the phone numbers for this scam were routed right through the same office used by Dylan Hunter?”

Hunter rolled his eyes. “Ed, have you seen the musical
Les Misérables?
They should cast you as Javert.”

“I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about an obsessed cop who wastes a lot of time chasing innocent people.”

“Innocent?”

“Give it a rest. You know I had nothing to do with the bomb that killed Sloan. That’s on Boggs. And you admit he looks good for the senator’s murder, too. It’s obvious that he and his gang hated CarboNot. So it makes perfect sense that
they
would be the ones going after those investors.”

“You think those losers, hiding in the woods, could pull off scams like these?”

“Why not? Isn’t Boggs supposed to be some kind of genius?”

“Well,
whoever
did these schemes didn’t know much about the insurance business.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean whoever knocked down that Capital Resources building and the EPA director’s house. And blew up those other properties—the jet and the yacht. The persons”—he paused, eyes steady on Hunter’s—“or
person
who did that stuff probably didn’t know that in cases of provable fraud, insurance companies will honor the policies retroactively, and pay the claims, anyway. So, it doesn’t look like the people who owned those properties will have to eat those losses after all.”

Hunter kept his face impassive and nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, then, let me see where that leaves things—just so I have it all clear for my next article. Capital Resources’s investors will be reimbursed for their building losses. But that won’t make much difference for them, anyway, since it looks as if the company is likely to shut down, regardless.”

Cronin shrugged. “That’s what I read in your paper.”

“If what you say is true, the EPA director, Weaver, will be compensated for the loss of his house. But I saw him on the news last night. He said that he had a lot of personal items in there that can’t be replaced. The same with the owner of that yacht, Lockwood; I gather that he was really fond of it. So, both of them lost things that money can’t buy.”

“So it would seem.”

“But as for that billionaire, Trammel—I doubt he had much sentimental attachment to his plane.”

“Him? I doubt he has much of a sentimental attachment to anything.”

“Still, by my estimate, he did lose the $13 million or so that he had sunk into CarboNot stock.”

“Just a drop in the bucket for somebody like him.” Cronin folded his arms, looking amused. “You disappointed about that one, Hunter? The fish that got away?”

Hunter smiled back. “You just won’t let it alone, will you? Why should I care about that character? Besides, from what I’ve read about him, this past week represents a significant setback for his interests, which are mainly political and ideological, not financial. So I’d say that Trammel got hit where it hurts, too.”

“You happy about that?”

“It certainly couldn’t happen to anyone more deserving.”

Hunter heard his phone chirp. He fished it out. Saw who it was.

“Cronin, why is it that every time I see you, my editor calls? Give me a minute, okay?”

He answered the call. Listened for a minute.

“You’re kidding!” He looked steadily at Cronin. “Bill, that’s incredible. It puts everything in a whole new light. Can you email the MP3 file to me? I’ll want to listen and write about it, ASAP … Great. Thanks.”

He clicked off. Sat back, folded his arms, and smiled serenely at Cronin.

“What?”

“Bronowski, my editor, just received a thumb drive in the mail. Anonymous, no return address. It contains a recorded confession by Zachariah Boggs, admitting everything. That
he
was really the Technobomber. Also, that he bombed CarboNot, and killed that scientist, Adam Silva. But that’s not the big news. He also said—are you ready?—that he had been working for years with Ashton Conn.”

Cronin blinked. “The
senator?”

Hunter nodded. “Which confirms what his girlfriend, Dawn Ferine, has been saying, doesn’t it.”

It was Cronin’s turn to whistle. “I’ll be damned.”

“Yes, well, if we’re through here, I’ve got work to do,” Hunter said, rising.

“Yeah.” Cronin stood, too. “So do I.”

They walked to the reception area. Hunter turned to the detective.

“So. Are we good?”

Cronin said, “We’re good. For now.” A hint of amusement touched his cool blue eyes. “I’m sure our paths will cross again.”

Hunter shook his head and sighed.

Hunter strolled along the Tidal Basin pathway in the waning sunshine of late afternoon. The sky was clear and the temperature unusually warm for early March, a reprieve from the cold of recent weeks. Though the cherry trees along the water were still bare of blossoms, just the sight of them held the promise of spring.

He reached the Jefferson Memorial and spotted the still gray figure amid the flow of tourists. He stood at the edge of the water, hands buried in the pockets of his long coat, staring into the distance. Hunter followed his gaze to the Washington Monument rising like a bright lance into the sky. Its sunlit stone sent a shimmering golden reflection onto the slate surface of the water.