Divine Justice (2 page)

“You see anybody pass this way this morning?”

“Not one car till you folks come tearing up. And we both been up before full light.”

Stone limped over to the truck and started throwing wood in the cargo bed.

The agents looked at each other. One of them mumbled, “Let’s roll.”

A few seconds later they were gone.

Leroy walked over to the truck and started tossing wood in. “Wonder what man be dead?” he said, really to himself. “Important man, they say. Lot of important men in this world. But they die just like the rest of us. God’s way of making life fair.”

Stone let out a long, loud grunt.

Leroy looked over at him and grinned. “Hey man, now that’s the smartest thing I heard all damn morning.”

When the day’s work was over, Stone pantomimed to Leroy that he was heading on. Leroy seemed to take it well. “Surprised you lasted long as you did. Good luck.” He peeled off a few faded twenties and handed them over. Stone took the money, patted the man’s back and limped off.

After packing his duffel, Stone set out on foot and hitchhiked to D.C. in the back of a truck, the driver unwilling to let the scruffy Stone ride with him in the warmth of the truck’s cab. Stone didn’t mind. It would give him time to think. And he had a lot to think about. He had just killed two of the most prominent men in the country on the same day, literally hours apart, using the rifle he’d earlier chucked into the ocean before taking the dive off the cliffs.

The truck dropped him off near the Foggy Bottom area of the capital and Stone set out for his old home at Mt. Zion Cemetery.

He had a letter to deliver.

And something to pick up.

And then it would be time to hit the road.

His alter ego John Carr was finally dead.

And the odds were awfully good that Oliver Stone might be right behind him.

CHAPTER 2

T
HE COTTAGE WAS DARK,
the cemetery darker still. The only thing visible was the mist of Stone’s exhaled breath as it mingled with cool air. His gaze penetrated to every square inch of the cemetery because he could not afford any screwups now. It was stupid coming here, but loyalty was not a choice he felt, it was a duty. And it was who he was. At least they couldn’t take that away from him.

He’d waited nearby for about a half hour to see if anything looked strange. His place had been watched for a couple months after he’d abandoned it. He knew this because he’d been watching the watchers. However, after four months of him not being around, they’d given up their sentinel and moved on. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back. And after the events of this morning, they probably would. All cops would you tell you that every violently ended life was worth the same level of investigation. Yet the reality was, the more important the victim the more diligent the hunt. And based on that maxim they would be bringing an army on this one.

Finally satisfied, he crawled underneath the fence at the back of the cemetery and crept to a large headstone. He yanked it over, revealing underneath the small compartment scooped out of the dirt. He took the box hidden there and put it in his duffel bag, then set the stone back in place. He patted the grave marker affectionately. The name of the deceased who lay here had long since been worn away by time. But Stone had researched the people who’d been buried at Mt. Zion and knew that this was the final resting place of one Samuel Washington, a freed slave who’d given his life to help others like him to freedom. He felt a certain kinship with the fellow because in a way Stone knew just what it was like to not be free.

He eyed the cottage in a dusk rushing headfirst to nightfall. He knew Annabelle Conroy had been staying there. Her rental was parked at the front gate. And he’d been inside the cottage when she’d been absent from it a couple months ago. The place looked far better than when he’d lived there. Yet he knew he could never reside at Mt. Zion again unless it was in a supine position approximately six feet underground. With the two early morning pulls of the trigger he’d become the most wanted man in America.

He wondered where she was tonight. Hopefully, out enjoying life, although since the news of the two murders was everywhere, he knew that his friends would easily deduce what had happened. He hoped they didn’t think less of him. That actually was the real reason he was here tonight.

He didn’t want to leave his friends hanging out there for him. The feds weren’t incompetent. They would be coming this way eventually. Stone wished with all his heart he could do more for the Camel Club, after all they had done for him. He had thought of simply turning himself in. But there was such a core of survivor mentality built into his psyche that his essentially walking to his own execution was not an option. He could not let them win that way. They would have to work a little harder.

The letter he held was carefully worded. It was not a confession because that would put his friends in an even greater dilemma. Granted, Stone was caught in a classic catch-22, but he owed them something. He should have known that with the life he’d led there was only one possible conclusion.

This.

He slipped the letter from his pocket and rolled it around the hilt of a knife he pulled from another pocket, securing it with string. He took aim from the darkness of the side yard and let fly. The knife stuck into the porch column.

“Good-bye.”

He had one more place to visit.

A few moments later he was crawling back under the fence. He walked to the Foggy Bottom Metro station and climbed on the train. Later, a thirty-minute walk brought him to yet another cemetery.

Why was it he was more comfortable with the dead than the living? The answer was relatively simple. The dead conveniently never asked questions.

Even in the darkness he quickly found the grave he was looking for. He knelt down, brushed some leaves away and gazed at the tombstone.

Here lay Milton Farb, the other member of the Camel Club, and the only deceased one. Yet even dead, Milton would forever be part of that informal band of conspiracy theorists who’d insisted on only one thing: the truth.

Too bad their leader hadn’t honored that principle.

The only reason his beloved friend was dead was because of Stone.

My fault.

Because of him, the brilliant if quirky Milton was resting here for all time now, a large-caliber round having ended his life underneath the United States Capitol. It nearly equaled the grief Stone felt for the death of his poor wife decades ago.

Stone’s eyes moistened as he remembered that final, awful night at the Capitol Visitor Center. How Milton had looked at him after the bullet struck; those wide, pleading, innocent eyes. The memory of his friend’s last seconds of life would remain with Stone until
his
dying day. And there had been nothing Stone could do, except avenge his friend. And he had. He’d killed many heavily armed, expertly trained men in close confines that night, and he hardly remembered doing any of it, so overshadowed was it all by that one stunningly improbable death. Yet it hadn’t come close to making up for the loss. That was what the killings this morning had been about, at least partly. And neither of them had made up for losing Milton either. Or his wife. Or his daughter.

He very carefully cut out a chunk of grass and dirt on top of his friend’s grave, laid the box in it, and put the grass back on top, pushing it down firmly with a shove from his foot. He removed all evidence that the ground had been disturbed and then stood very erect and saluted his dead friend.

A few moments later Stone slowly walked back to the Metro and rode it to Union Station, where he bought a train ticket south with most of his remaining cash. There were a few police and plainclothes officers around and Stone duly noted the location of each one. No doubt the heavy artillery was at the three local airports doing their best to nab the killer of a well-known U.S. senator and the nation’s intelligence chief. The lowly American train system obviously didn’t warrant such a level of scrutiny, as though assassins wouldn’t deign to ride the decrepit rails.

Thirty minutes later he climbed on the Amtrak Crescent, destination New Orleans; it was a spur-of-the-moment decision as he had looked up at the marquee. The train was a few hours late leaving, otherwise he would’ve not been able to take it. Not a naturally superstitious man, he had considered that an omen. He jammed himself into a small bathroom, trimmed off the beard and removed his glasses before going to his seat.

He’d heard construction jobs were still plentiful in New Orleans after Katrina. And people, desperate for workers, didn’t ask for tricky things like Social Security numbers and permanent addresses. At this point in his life Stone did not like questions or numbers that would lead anyone to know who he really was. His plan was to lose himself in a mass of humanity trying to rebuild from a nightmare not of its own making. He could relate to that very well, because he was basically trying to do the very same thing. Except for those two final shots. Those he’d intended with every pulsating nerve of anger and sense of justice denied he possessed.

As the train bumped along in the darkness Stone sat in his chair and stared out the window. In the reflection he studied the young woman who sat next to him holding a baby, her feet perched on a battered duffel bag and a pillowcase crammed with what looked to be bottles, diapers and changes of clothes for the infant. They were both asleep; the child’s chest nestled against its mother’s swollen bosom. Stone turned to look at the child with its triple chins and doughy fists. The baby suddenly opened its eyes and stared at him. Surprisingly it didn’t cry; it didn’t make one sound, in fact.

Across the aisle a rail-thin man was eating a cheeseburger he’d bought in the station, a bottle of Heineken cradled between bony knees covered by patched denim. Next to him was a young, tall, good-looking man with brown, tousled hair and a few days’ worth of stubble on his unmarked face. He had the lean, lanky build and confident moves of a former high school quarterback not yet run to fat. This was not exactly a guess on Stone’s part, because the kid was wearing his high school varsity jacket dripping with medals, letters and ribbons. The year stitched on the jacket told Stone that the kid had been out of high school for a few years. Long time to be holding on to the glory days, Stone thought, but maybe that was all the kid had.

To Stone’s eye the young man also had the look of someone who was certain that the world owed him everything and had never bothered paying its bill. As Stone watched, he rose, climbed over the cheeseburger man and headed to the rear of the car and through the door into the next train car.

Stone reached over and gently touched the baby’s fist, receiving a barely audible coo in return. While the infant’s life was all in front of him, Stone’s was drawing closer to the end.

Well, they would have to find him first. He owed that to an authority that was often callous to the people who served it with the greatest loyalty, with the most quietly suffered sacrifice.

He leaned back in his seat and watched Washington disappear as the train rattled on.

CHAPTER 3

J
OE
K
NOX HAD BEEN READING
in the small library of his town house in northern Virginia when the phone rang. The speaker was economical with his words and Knox, from long experience, did not interrupt. He hung up the phone, laid aside his novel, pulled on his raincoat and boots, grabbed the keys to his scuffed up ten-year-old Range Rover and headed out into the foul weather for an equally foul task.

An inch over six feet with the thick, muscular build of the undersized linebacker he had once been in college, Knox was in his fifties with thinning hair that he still had barber-shop cut and then slicked back. He also possessed a pair of pale green eyes that were the human equivalent of an MRI: they missed nothing. He gripped the wheel of the Rover with long fingers that had pulled just about every trigger there was while in service to his country. From his secluded, forested neighborhood he turned on to Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia. The traffic would still be heavy on the Beltway this time of morning. Actually, there was really no longer a time when the asphalt noose around the capital city’s neck
wasn’t
strangled with cars. He pointed his SUV toward the District and backtracked his way to eastern Maryland from there. Eventually he smelled the sea, and with it he envisioned the murder scene. All in a day’s work.

Three hours later he was walking around the truck as fat raindrops pelted down. Carter Gray still sat in his seat-belt harness, his head destroyed and his life ended by what appeared to be a long-range rifle round, although the postmortem would confirm that. While police, FBI and forensic teams buzzed everywhere like bluebottle flies, looking for some place to land and do their business, Joe Knox squatted in front of the white grave marker and small American flag planted in front of it by the side of the road. It was on a curve. The motorcade would have slowed here. A curious Gray had obviously seen these two items and rolled down his window—a fatal mistake.

Grave marker and American flag. Just like at Arlington National. An interesting and perhaps telling choice.

The fact that the windows rolled down showed Knox that the vehicle wasn’t armored. Such vehicles’ windows were phone-book thick and did not move. Gray had made his second mistake there.

Should’ve asked for the armor, Carter. You were important enough
.

This wasn’t baseball, Knox knew. In his business, it never took more than
two
strikes to finish you.

Knox looked off into the distance, tracing in his mind the trajectory of the lethal round. None of the protection detail had seen any sign of a shooter, so he had to cast the potential flight path out farther where the optic and muzzle signatures would be nearly invisible to the naked eye.

Thousand yards? Fifteen hundred? To a target inside a vehicle revealed only through a barely two-by-two-foot opening in the dark and drizzle. And planted the bullet right in the brain.