Split Second (11 page)

T
HE NEXT DAY
King left Wrightsburg early, fought northern Virginia morning rush hour traffic and arrived in Reston, Virginia, around ten. The ten-story office building was relatively new and now about half-leased. A dot-com company had rented the entire space several years ago and despite having no products or profits, decorated it lavishly and then, astonishingly, ran out of money. The area was very nice with shops and restaurants at the nearby Reston Town Center. Well-dressed consumers slipped in and out of pricey stores. People struggled to get where they needed to go on the congested roads. It all had a high-energy, upscale feel to it. Yet King simply wanted to accomplish what he’d come to do, then retreat to the bucolic environs of the Blue Ridge.

The top floor of the building was now occupied by a firm known simply as the Agency, a name it had actually trademarked for commercial use, probably much to the chagrin of the CIA. The Agency was one of the premier investigative and security firms in the country. King rode up in the private elevator, waving to a surveillance camera that was eyeballing him, and was met in a small waiting room off the main lobby by someone who looked armed and ready to use his weapon. King was searched and had to step through a metal detector before he was allowed to proceed to the lobby. It was tastefully appointed and had no one in it other than a watchful woman at the front desk who took his name and dialed her phone.

He was escorted back by a stylishly dressed young man with
broad shoulders and curly dark hair, wearing a headset and displaying an arrogant manner. He opened the door and motioned King through and then left, closing the door behind him. King looked around the office. It was a four-window corner unit, the glass all heavily tinted and reflecting from the outside, though on the top floor the only things capable of peeping in would be birds, or folks in dangerously low-flying planes. The whole feel of the place was quiet, understated yet undeniably prosperous.

When a side door opened and she walked in, King didn’t know whether to say hello or knock the woman over her desk and strangle her.

“I’m very touched that you’d brave the traffic to come and see me,” said Joan. She was dressed in a dark pantsuit that was flattering to her figure, not that many clothing choices wouldn’t be. Yet the sleek cut of the suit and her three-inch spikes gave her the impression of height she really didn’t have.

“Thanks for seeing me.”

“Only fair considering how much of
me
you’ve seen recently. But I really was very surprised to hear from you.”

“Well, now we’re even. Because I can’t tell you what a shock it was to find out you weren’t with the Service anymore.”

“I didn’t tell you that when I came to your house?”

“No, Joan, that one you somehow forgot to mention.”

She sat down on a small leather sofa set against one wall and motioned for him to join her. On the table in front of her was a coffee service. While King sat, she poured.

“You can hold the eggs, toasted bagel. And lace panties,” he added. He was very surprised when the woman reddened at his remark.

“I’m really trying very hard to block that out of my mind,” she said quietly.

He took a sip of coffee and looked around. “Wow, look at this place. At the Service did we even have desks?”

“No, because we didn’t need them. We were either driving really fast in cars…”

“Or pushing till our feet gave out,” he finished for her.
“Pushing” was Secret Service shorthand for being on duty, usually standing at a post to secure it.

She sat back and looked around her office. “It is nice, but I’m not really here that much. I’m usually on a plane somewhere.”

“At least you get to fly commercial or private. Military transport is hard on the back, butt and stomach. We flew enough of those.”

“You remember going on
Air Force One
?” she asked.

“Anyone who has never forgets.”

“I miss that part.”

“But you make a lot more money.”

“I guess you do too.”

He shifted his weight and balanced his cup in the palm of his hand. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll get down to it. A U.S. deputy marshal named Jefferson Parks came to see me. He’s heading up the investigation on Howard Jennings, the murdered WITSEC. He was the one who came for my gun while you were there.”

Joan looked interested. “Jefferson Parks?”

“You know him?”

“Name sounds very familiar. So they took your gun. And ballistics cleared you?”

“Actually no. It was a match. My gun killed Howard Jennings.”

King had thought over this phrasing very carefully on the drive up, because he wanted to test the woman’s response to it. She almost spilled her coffee. Either she had really boned up on her acting skills or it was a sincere reaction.

“That can’t be right,” she said.

“That’s what
I
said. But fortunately the marshal and I saw eye-to-eye on the method that someone
could
have used to make my gun the murder weapon while I thought I had it on me.”

“How?”

King briefly explained his substitution theory. He’d thought about withholding it from her but decided it didn’t really matter, and he wanted her reaction to this as well, mostly for the follow-up statement he was going to make.

Joan thought about this, longer than King felt was really necessary.

“That would take a lot of planning and skill,” she finally said.

“And access to my house. They would have had to get the gun back in my box before the posse showed up to take it, you know, the morning that
you
were there.”

He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup while she stewed on this. He offered to freshen hers but she declined.

“So you came here to tell me that, what, you think I framed you?” said Joan stiffly.

“I’m just telling you that someone did, and I just told you how I think they did it.”

“You could have told me that over the phone.”

“Yes, I could, but you paid me a visit, and I wanted to return the honor. At least I called first.”

“I didn’t set you up, Sean.”

“Then all my troubles are over. I’ll call Parks and tell him the good news.”

“You know, you can be a real smart-ass.”

He put down his coffee cup and drew very close to her. “Let me just lay it out for you. I’ve got a dead man in my office, and my gun killed him. I’ve got no alibi and a pretty damn sharp marshal who, while maybe he buys my theory on a frame, is by no means convinced of my innocence. And this man would shed no tears if I’m locked up for the rest of my life or given some toxic bug juice to transport me to the hereafter. And then you come to visit me out of the blue and somehow forget to tell me that you’re no longer with the Secret Service. You make a big deal of apologizing, acting all nice, with the result that I let you stay overnight. You try your best to seduce me on my kitchen table for a reason I still can’t fathom, but I can’t believe only has to do with you wanting to scratch an eight-year-old itch. You’re alone in my house while I’m out on the lake, and my gun mysteriously turns out to be the murder weapon after it’s picked up on that very same morning. Now, Joan, maybe I am more suspicious than my neighbor, but I’d have to be on life support
and breathing through a frigging tube not to be a little paranoid about that sequence of events.”

She eyed him with maddening calm. “I didn’t take your gun. I know nothing about anyone who might have. I have no proof of that. You just have my word.”

“Again, that’s such a relief.”

“I never told you that I was still with the Service. You just assumed.”

“You never said you weren’t!” he snapped.

“You never asked!” She added, “And that wasn’t my best.”

King looked confused. “What?”

“You said I did my best to seduce you. Just for the record, that wasn’t my best.”

Both sat back now, seemingly out of words or breath or both.

“Okay,” he said, “whatever game you’re playing with me, you just go ahead and play it. I’m not going down for Jennings’s murder, because I didn’t do it.”

“Neither did I, and I’m not trying to frame you. What motive would I have?”

King said, “Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” He rose. “Thanks for the coffee. Next time hold the cyanide, it gives me gas.”

“As I told you before, I came to see you for a very particular purpose.” He stared at her. “But I didn’t get around to it. I guess seeing you after all those years made more of an impact than I thought it would.”

“So what was the purpose?”

“To make you a proposition.” She quickly added, “A
business
proposition.”

“Like what?”

“Like John Bruno,” she replied.

His eyes narrowed. “What do you have to do with a missing presidential candidate?”

“Thanks to me, the firm was hired by Bruno’s party to find out what happened to him. In lieu of our standard rate I negotiated another arrangement. Our out-of-pocket expenses are
covered, but we accepted a much lower daily rate. However, it comes with a potentially lucrative bonus.”

“What, like a finder’s fee, no pun intended.”

“A multimillion-dollar one to be exact. And since I brought in the account, under the firm’s policy of getting to eat what you kill, I personally get sixty percent.”

“How exactly did you manage that?”

“Well, as you know I had a pretty good career at the Service. And in the time I’ve been here I’ve brought several very high-profile cases to a successful conclusion, including the return of a Fortune 500 executive who was kidnapped.”

“Congratulations. Funny I never heard about it.”

“Well, we like to keep a low profile to the public. To those who are in the know, however, we’re a major player.”

“Millions, huh? I didn’t think third-party candidates had that kind of war chest.”

“A large part of it is special liability insurance, and Bruno’s wife has family money. His campaign was also very well funded. And since they have no candidate to expend money on, they want to pay me, and I have no problem with that.”

“But Bruno’s case is an ongoing federal investigation.”

“So what? The FBI doesn’t have a monopoly on solving crimes. And Bruno’s people flatly don’t trust the government. In case you haven’t been reading your newspaper, some of them think their candidate was set up by the Service.”

“They said the same thing about me and Ritter, and it’s as crazy now as it was then,” said King.

“But it presents a wonderful opportunity for us.”

“Us? And what exactly is my part in all this?”

“If you help me find Bruno, I’ll pay you forty percent of what I get; it’ll be seven figures to you.”

“I’m not rich, but I really don’t need the money, Joan.”

“But I do. I left the Service before I did my twenty-five years, so I’m sort of screwed on the pension. I’ve been here a year, making a lot more money, and I’ve socked most of it away, but I’m not enjoying myself. In my years at the Service I worked
the equivalent of a forty-year career. I see in my future white beaches, a catamaran and exotic cocktails, and this score will allow me to do that. And maybe you don’t need the money, but what you do need is something good to happen to you. Where the newspapers tout you as a hero instead of the fall guy.”

“So you’re now my P.R. person?”

“I think you need one, Sean.”

“Why me? You’ve got all the resources of this place.”

“Most of the experienced people are pissed that I landed the deal, and they won’t work on it with me. The ones who are left are young, overeducated and street-stupid. Your fourth year in the Service you broke the largest counterfeit ring in the Northern Hemisphere working solo from the field office in Louisville, Kentucky, of all places. That’s the sort of investigative talent I need. And it also helps matters that you live two hours from where Bruno was snatched.”

He looked around. “I don’t even work at this place.”

“I can use anyone I want in the investigation.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t done this stuff in years.”

“Like riding a bike.” She sat forward and stared at him intently. “Like riding a bike, Sean. And I don’t think I’d be making this proposition to you if I’d set you up to take a murder rap. I need you with me if I want the payoff. And I want the payoff.”

“I have my law practice.”

“Take a sabbatical. If we’re going to find Bruno, it’ll be sooner rather than later. Look at it this way. It’s exciting. It’s different. It might not be like old times. But maybe it’ll be like new times.” Her hand lightly touched his. Somehow it was a far more seductive gesture than the tacky stunt she’d pulled on his kitchen table.

“And maybe you can show me how to sail the catamaran, because I don’t have a clue,” said Joan quietly.