Irreparable Harm (11 page)

“No.” He stood up. “Gun, please.” He held out his left hand, palm up. Sasha placed the gun in it, glad to be rid of it.

“He engaged the safety and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The alley.” He inclined his head toward the French doors.

Warner’s balcony overlooked a long alley. It was dark except for a single light, which was positioned over a dumpster.

“Wipe your prints off the freezer and the lamp,” Connelly said.

She rubbed the surfaces with the sleeve of her jacket.

He balled up both dish towels. “Put these in your backpack. We were never here.”

She took the towels and stuffed them in the bag, and they walked out of Apartment 840, leaving the door ajar.

* * * * * * * * * *

They stood in the narrow alley. The back of Warner’s building ran the entire length of the right side. The left was a row of backyards for a block of townhouses. Each townhouse boasted a tiny, maybe ten foot by twenty foot, yard.

Most of the owners seemed to have given up the dream of green space. In the shadows, Sasha could make out multilevel decks, a gravel dog run, some concrete patios, and one sad-looking sandbox and slide sitting on a patch of cracked cement. A row of chain link fences, some more crooked than others, framed the yards, abutting crumbling retaining walls. The alley was a good six feet lower than the row of retaining walls. And, except for the lone light shining down on the dumpster, it was perfectly dark. A plump rat darted out from under the dumpster and headed into the weeds.

“Give me those towels, would you?” Connelly said over his shoulder, as he walked over to the dumpster. She handed him the dish towels, and he wrapped them around his hands as makeshift gloves before prying open the lid.

“Can you hold this open?” he called from within the bin.

Sasha held the lid, her head turned away from the smell, as Connelly dug through the bin, tossing bags of trash out and on to the ground. It didn’t take long to find a plaid blanket, rolled up lengthwise, like a rug.

Connelly unwrapped it to reveal a blood-stained tan sheet. He carefully pulled the sheet aside. The body was that of a young man, probably in his early twenties. Sandy brown hair, matted with blood. His face had been bashed in. The entire left side was collapsed and misshapen.

“Well, that’s Warner,” Connelly said. “I ran his name through the database earlier. What’s left of him matches his driver’s license photo.”

Sasha looked down into the dumpster at Warner’s ruined face. The bile rose in her throat, acidic and sharp. Someone had killed this man—kid, really—because of her.

Chapter 15

After a heated discussion about whether they could really just leave Warner’s body in a dumpster, Sasha and Connelly ducked out of the alley and walked a block south on Sixteenth Street to catch a cab.

Connelly had been adamant that they couldn’t wait for the authorities, which struck Sasha as bizarre—wasn’t
he
the authorities? And Sasha had been equally insistent that they couldn’t fail to report a murder.

So, they’d compromised. Connelly had called a friend in the District of Columbia’s U.S. Marshal’s Office and told him to forward the location of the body to the District of Columbia police as an anonymous tip picked up in the course of the NTSB’s crash investigation. Sasha figured that was more or less true and that she probably wouldn’t get disbarred if the unvarnished truth ever came to light. Probably.

Sasha scanned the street for a cab, trying to keep her mind blank to crowd out Warner’s sightless eyes and bloodied face.

“Do you have a hotel room?” Connelly asked.

“Sure, at the Madison. “

“Cancel it. You’re staying at the Hotel Monaco. I’ll have my office get another room.”

“No thanks. I’ll be fine at the Madison.”

“I’m not asking.”

“Excuse me?”

“Here’s what I know about you, Ms. McCandless. You’re interested in the fatal crash of a commercial airliner, you showed up at the apartment of a dead man, who you claim is a stranger, and you committed assault and battery against a federal agent. Your choices are the Hotel Monaco or a cell.”

Sasha stared at him.

A white and green taxi cab came to a stop beside them. Connelly slid into the back seat and waited for her to make a decision. She climbed in after him and slammed the door. They rode in awkward silence for several blocks.

Sasha spoke first. “So, Connelly? Irish?”

It seemed disrespectful to Warner to make small talk, but they could hardly discuss a murder in the backseat of a cab.

“Vietnamese-American. But, yeah, my mother’s ancestors came from Ireland. My mom was a military nurse in Vietnam. My father was a Vietnamese farm boy. Just like the GIs who fathered and left behind kids during the war. Only, I obviously came to America. When she started showing, she was discharged. She didn’t know my father’s last name and never told him she was pregnant.” Connelly recited his background in a deliberate, bored tone that did not invite questions.

“Oh. My dad’s Irish and my mom’s Russian. All my brothers got good Irish names—Sean, Ryan, Patrick—but mom had visions of a little Russian ballerina and overruled Mary Patricia.”

“You’re no ballerina,” Connelly said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

From the bruising and swelling, it looked like he’d been right. She probably had broken it. Sasha couldn’t feel too sorry about it, though. He had been pointing a gun at her.

The driver cruised into a spot at the entrance to the hotel. The building itself was a grand, white-columned presence. It fit right in with the federal buildings in the surrounding blocks.

Inside, the lobby had been remodeled and updated to show travelers just how hip and whimsical they were to be staying here. A fireplace, a water feature, and a beaded room divider competed for attention.

Connelly drew several sidelong glances from the two women behind the front desk but neither mentioned his blackening eyes or blood-stained shirt. The older of the two was telling him about the complimentary happy hour held in the library each evening.

“Would you like a pet goldfish during your stay?” The younger woman smiled at Sasha.

“No, thanks. I would like an in-room coffee maker, though.”

She’d stayed at enough chic hotels to realize that amenities like goldfish and happy hours didn’t always go hand-in-hand with necessities like a coffee pot or horizontal work space in the room.

“Certainly, we can arrange that for you.”

Sasha took her key and waited by the elevators for Connelly, who joined her carrying a fish bowl. A small orange goldfish swam around in rapid circles.

“Seriously?”

He ignored her. “Trinka at the front desk says the bar next door will be pretty quiet on a Tuesday night, if there’s nothing going on at the MCI Center. Why don’t we change and get a drink? We need to talk about some things.”

“Are my options a drink with you or a cell?”

“Pretty much.”

* * * * * * * * * *

After changing into casual—and in Connelly’s case, blood-free, clothes—they walked through a courtyard to the Poste Brasserie, the restaurant on the ground floor of the building adjacent to the hotel. The bar was a little too light and airy for Sasha’s liking. Lots of blonde wood and modern light fixtures, with sufficient wattage to let the equally blonde crowd see and be seen. The music was loud and frenetic, and the conversations ran together in a buzz.

She led Connelly to a booth on the far end of the bar, near the windows and away from the mingling crowd. A boyish waiter in a white shirt and black vest hustled over and took their drink orders. A Yuengling for Sasha and a mineral water for Connelly. They waved off the small plates menu.

“You don’t drink?”

“I drink. But, first I need to satisfy myself that you’re not a problem.”

“A problem?”

“Problem, suspect, choose your word.” Connelly planted his forearms on the highly polished table and leaned in toward her. “Sasha, tell me what’s going on.” He watched her face.

“It’s not that easy, Agent Connelly. I have a duty to my client …”

“Hemisphere Air? Who you represent in connection with the crash?”

“Right.”

“So Warner’s death is related to the crash.”

“I didn’t say that,” Sasha protested.

She couldn’t tell Connelly about the RAGS link. If she could confirm he already knew about it, she could discuss it with him.

Metz had said the feds didn’t know the system had been installed on the downed plane. But why else would Connelly be interested in Patriotech?

“Look,” she continued, “I don’t mean to be unhelpful. I really don’t. But I am boxed in by my ethical obligations. Why don’t you help me out here?”

“Help you out how?”

“If you could answer some questions for me, I would have a better sense of what I can and cannot share with you.”

Connelly’s lips tightened into a slash, but he kept his tone neutral. “This isn’t a game.”

“I know it’s not a game. I just helped you unearth a corpse from a dumpster. I want to cooperate with you and your agency. But I’m constrained by the rules of professional responsibility. I can’t divulge any confidences that my client shared and I can’t tell you anything that would be detrimental to my client. It’s not that I won’t or don’t want to, I
can’t.
”

Sasha stopped talking as the waiter came back with their drinks and two glasses. He poured Connelly’s water into one and looked at Sasha. “Would the lady care for a glass for her beer?”

“No thanks, the lady’s not that classy.”

She took a long pull on the beer. It was perfect. Cold and bitter.

She waited until the server had moved on with the unused glass to continue. “I do want to help you, and I might be able to, if we can figure out the parameters together.”

Connelly made a show of placing his big hands on the table, palms up, like he was saying here are all my cards. “Ask your questions.”

“What were you doing at Warner’s place?”

Connelly shook his head. “That’s classified.”

“Why are you interested in Patriotech?”

“Classified.”

Sasha stared at him. Connelly shrugged.

She switched tacks. “It was awfully easy to disarm you. Don’t you guys get any kind of training? I mean, they let you carry a weapon on a plane even though a girl my size can take it away? Doesn’t make me feel very confident as a member of the flying masses.” She raised her bottle to hide her smile.

His face showed no reaction, not even a flicker. But his hands involuntarily, slightly, began to curl into fists. Then he caught himself and stopped them, wincing because he’d tried to bend his busted finger.

“One,” he told her, “I am not a field agent anymore. I am a special investigator with the OIA, temporarily assigned to the Pittsburgh office. So, no need to worry about my abilities to protect you in the air. Two, you seem quite capable of protecting yourself. What was that, Krav Maga?”

Sasha nodded.

He continued, “Thought so. I admit when I saw you, I made a series of assumptions based on your gender, size, and status as a law-abiding citizen and officer of the court. I obviously miscalculated the danger you posed. But, three, as a federal air marshal, I have qualified with the highest degree of marksmanship and am also proficient in hand-to-hand combat. You got very lucky today.”