The Insider (25 page)

Jay had turned out to be quite an adversary, not the naïve sacrificial lamb he had hoped for. The men who had been following Jay had sworn that they had stayed well back of his car on the trip from Boston to Gloucester, yet Jay had identified and evaded them, evaded men who were skilled trackers—and killers. He’d left them smashed against a tree, then had the galling courtesy to call local authorities to report the accident.

O’Shea’s expression turned steely. There was only one reason for Jay to have traveled to Gloucester, only one reason for him to go poking around Sally Lane’s old neighborhood. O’Shea hoped he hadn’t learned too much.

The assistant U.S. attorney shook his head, finished what was left of his beer, stood, and headed upstairs. If they didn’t find Jay soon, everything could fall apart.

Crouched beneath the deck, Jay held his breath as he peered out from his hiding place. The deck had been built off the back of a modest house and rose only a few feet from the ground. Exhausted, he had crawled beneath it after leading the pack on a fifteen-minute chase through South Boston. He had sensed that his pursuers were closing in, so he had ducked down an alley, hurdled a wooden fence into a small yard, and scrambled beneath the deck. Moments later the pack—at least ten men—had raced past into the next yard.

He began to crawl over the dirt. It had been five minutes since his pursuers had bolted past. They’d soon realize that they had lost their quarry and would begin backtracking. He wanted to be long gone before that happened.

Jay had almost reached the edge of the deck when he stopped short. Through the darkness he noticed a pair of legs only a few feet away, standing near the deck, feet shod in red-and-black Nikes. They were illuminated by the gleam of a floodlight affixed to an eave of the two-story home. He froze as the man knelt down and inspected the space beneath the deck. It was Patrick. The diamond stud in his ear sparkled, and Jay recognized the dim features of his face. Jay held his breath, waiting for the blinding flashlight beam that would give away his hiding place. It had to come, he thought. Patrick would remove a light from his pocket, aim it at him, and then everything would be over.

But the light never came. Patrick finally rose and walked slowly in the direction the pack had gone.

Jay watched the Nikes disappear around the end of the deck, counted to fifty, then dragged himself from beneath the deck and onto the lawn. He should have waited longer, but there wasn’t time. Something told him the pack would be coming back soon.

He scrambled to his feet and started to sprint in the opposite direction of his pursuers. But Patrick was on him instantly, screaming as he leaped over the deck’s railing. They fell to the ground as one and rolled across the grass, coming to a stop with Jay on the bottom. They wrestled wildly until Patrick lifted up and slammed Jay with a hard right to the face. White and green lights exploded in Jay’s vision, but he managed to heave the smaller man away and scramble groggily to his knees.

Patrick whipped a long Gerber hunting knife from its sheath on his belt and sprang at Jay. But before Patrick could reach him, Jay pulled the hammer he had used to break into the office from his coat pocket and hurled it, hitting Patrick flush in the mouth and nose with the forged steel end. Patrick went down screaming, clutching his mouth, spitting blood and teeth onto the grass.

Seconds later Jay was over the fence and gone.

CHAPTER 23

Jay glanced up at the hot Virginia sun, then knelt down, picked a bone fragment off the grass, and examined it. It was slightly larger than a quarter and stained with blood. What appeared to be filthy strands of human hair clung to it. He glanced around. Scattered around were more bone fragments and a great deal of dried blood on the ground. Suddenly he dropped the fragment as pain seared through one finger. He’d managed to extract most of the splinters from his hands and arms with a pair of tweezers a steward on the early-morning flight from Boston to Richmond had provided, but the cuts still hurt. Fortunately, his left elbow, which had cracked the pavement hard during his fall, was working again.

Jay’s expression turned grim. The pack had almost caught him in the alley, and Patrick had almost killed him in the yard. But he’d survived. After eluding Patrick, he’d caught a ride with a taxi heading into the city for a morning shift and directed the cabby to Logan Airport. The guy had given him a couple of strange looks, but he’d taken Jay to the airport with no complaints or questions.

Jay squinted up again at the hot sun, beating down on him through high clouds, then at the hills overlooking what he assumed was a target area, judging by the trees at the edge of the field, which were pocked by hundreds of bullet marks. He gazed at the bone fragments once more. Not a target area. A killing field.

With the map he’d taken from Maggie’s Place, it hadn’t been difficult to find his way from the Richmond airport through the rolling Virginia countryside and thick forest west of the small city to the “Farm.” After locating his objective, he hadn’t steered immediately up the driveway in the rental car—leased from Avis, since he had left the bumperless Alamo car abandoned in South Boston. He was aware that the men who had chased him through the Irish neighborhood must have discovered by now that he had taken the map, and they might be waiting for him here. So he had driven past the entrance to a dirt road a few hundred yards down the small country lane and parked the car in a clearing. He had walked through thick brush and trees until he’d found the driveway, then paralleled it on foot, staying back in the woods, hidden from anyone who might be heading up or down the rutted path through the forest. He hadn’t heard any cars during the twenty-minute trek, and there were no cars parked in the area around the run-down clapboard home at the end of the mile-long driveway. He’d waited and watched the house for an hour from behind a grove of trees, but it had seemed deserted. Finally he’d stolen across the shaggy grass, entered the home— nothing more than a shack with a filthy kitchen, a bathroom, and a few bunk beds—and inspected it. He hadn’t found anything of interest except hundreds of empty boxes of large-caliber ammunition.

Now, as Jay stared up at the hills towering above the target area, he couldn’t help wondering if Carter Bullock had knelt up there and aimed a high-powered weapon down at this spot. The picture in the cigar box proved that Bullock was involved with the people at Maggie’s Place. He had probably been informed by now that someone had broken into the office, since he was the one responsible for diverting the money out of McCarthy & Lloyd to EZ Travel—a firm that was clearly just a front for something very dark. Something related to the Done-gall Volunteers.

Jay glanced at his scarred palms. No one had gotten a good look at him during the chase through the neighborhood. He was confident of that. His back had been turned to them as he’d jumped from the office onto the telephone pole, and it had been much too dark on the streets and alleys for anyone to identify him there. He had no fear that Frankie had recognized him during their brief struggle, because Frankie was too drunk. And it was too much of a stretch to think that Bullock would automatically make the connection and realize that Jay was the one who had broken into the office. Bullock probably knew by now that the trip to TurboTec was a farce, but he wouldn’t have any idea of what the real destination was—unless he was in touch with the men in the blue sedan who had crashed into the tree outside Gloucester. Or Patrick, Jay thought, remembering the young man from Maggie’s.

“Get your hands up!”

Jay thrust his fingers up in the air immediately, strangely aware that he’d never been ordered to do so before.

“Turn around,” the young male voice ordered in a high-pitched southern accent. “No sudden movements, either.”

Jay turned around slowly. Twenty feet away stood a blond boy, no more than eleven, Jay guessed. The boy wore a ratty T-shirt, grungy jeans, and a pair of green rubber hunting boots. He was holding the stock of a double-barreled shotgun tightly to his right cheek and aiming the other end directly at Jay’s chest. “What seems to be the problem?” Jay asked calmly. The shotgun was almost as big as the boy.

The boy decided that the intruder was of no immediate danger and brought the stock down to his hip, keeping the barrel aimed at Jay. “I thought y’all were gone.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The people who rented my grandfather’s property for the last month,” the boy answered.

“I’m not one of those people.” Jay brought his hands slowly down. The boy didn’t object.

“How do I know that?”

“If I was one of them, would I walk around here without my gun drawn?” Jay took a chance on the logic. He assumed the boy had seen the men and also assumed that they were constantly carrying weapons. “And have you ever seen me here before?”

The boy seemed satisfied and allowed the barrel of the gun to drop further. “No.” He shook his head. “I haven’t.”

“What’s your name?” Jay asked.

“Ben.”

“Ben, I’m Jay.”

“If you aren’t one of them, then what are you doing here?” Ben asked suspiciously.

“I’m trying to track them down,” Jay answered. “They’re bad people.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m pretty sure they killed a friend of mine.”

“Really?” Ben’s eyes widened.

“Yes.”

Ben glanced down at the barrel of his shotgun. “They’re planning to kill somebody else, too.”

Jay looked up into Ben’s eyes. “How do you know that?”

“I overheard them. I was out checking my deer stands one night last week, and I snuck over to the tenant house they had rented. I got real close to them, but they never saw me. I heard every word they were saying.” Ben stuck his chin out, as if he had disobeyed orders by going to the house but was proud of it. “They were cooking hamburgers and steaks on the grill, and it smelled good. I heard them talking about kill shots and trajectories and how the body of the man they were going to shoot would explode. I heard them laugh and say how they were going to enjoy watching the blood spill and how it would turn the tide.”

“What man’s body would explode?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

“Did you tell your grandfather what you heard?”

Ben shook his head. “My grandfather told me not to come over here. Besides, he wouldn’t have believed me anyway.” The boy turned and waved toward a ridge barely visible in the hazy afternoon through a break in the trees. “I live with him over there about five miles. He owns all the land around here. Our family has for a long time. Since before the War.”

“But you didn’t tell him,” Jay repeated.

“He would have whipped me,” Ben responded matter-of-factly, allowing the barrel of the shotgun to point straight down. “He said the people paid him cash to use the place and that it was their right to do whatever they wanted here for as long as they had paid for it.”

“Cash?” Jay could see that the boy wanted to talk.

“Yeah, lots of it. I saw the envelope on my grand-father’s desk. It was stuffed with twenties.”

For a moment Jay considered asking Ben to take him to see his grandfather. But he realized that the men had paid cash so they couldn’t be traced. Talking to the boy’s grandfather would be a waste of time. These people wouldn’t have left a trail. He glanced at Ben. Kids were prone to exaggeration—he’d told a few stories in his youth—but Ben’s account seemed plausible because of the details, and because of what Jay had found in Boston. “Did you overhear anything else?” Jay asked.

Ben thought for a moment, started to shake his head, then nodded. “I heard one more thing,” he said, smiling, proud of himself for remembering.

“What?”

“They said they were looking forward to seeing the war start up again.”

O’Shea ended the secure call. That morning Jay West had boarded a 6:50 Continental flight en route from Logan Airport to Richmond, Virginia, where he’d rented a Grand Am at the Avis counter. And he had booked himself on a 5:45 flight that evening back out of Richmond bound for La Guardia Airport and New York City. The good news in all of this was that Jay was using his credit cards again, making him easier to track. The bad news was that by the time they had been notified of the credit card use, Jay had landed in Richmond and disappeared into Virginia without a trace.

O’Shea reached for the phone and began to punch a number into it, then stopped and slammed the receiver back down. It was still too early to call and see if any progress had been made.

Jay directed the cab driver who had brought him into the city from Newark Airport to the left side of Amsterdam Avenue, a block north of the service entrance to his Manhattan apartment building. The plane had lifted off from National Airport in Washington, D.C., an hour late, and now it was almost ten o’clock. He’d slept for a few minutes during the short flight, but he was still exhausted and all he could think about was climbing into bed and getting some sleep.

When the taxi had come to a stop, Jay dragged himself out of the back, handed the driver two twenties through the open window, and headed toward the back door of the building, keeping his eyes peeled for anyone suspicious, even though he could barely keep them open. He only wished he could have seen the faces of those who were trying to follow him when the Richmond flight for La Guardia took off without him on board. He had booked that reservation to throw his pursuers off the track one more time and—he hoped—enjoy an uninterrupted night of sleep.

Jay slipped in through the service entrance with a key one of the janitors had given him in return for a nice Christmas bonus the year before, and headed to the elevators. When the doors opened on his floor, he walked slowly down the hall, stopped in front of his door, pulled out his key, and began to insert it in the lock.

“Jay.”

“Jesus Christ!” He stepped back from the door as if the lock had hit him with an electrical charge, then whipped to his right and saw Barbara Mason emerge from behind the stairwell door. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his heart still pounding.

“I have something I have to give you,” she answered calmly.

“What?” He took a deep breath. After the last few days he had tried to condition himself not to be surprised by anything, but Barbara’s voice, coming from the shadows, had shocked the hell out of him.

Barbara dug into her alligator-skin purse and pulled out an envelope. “Take this.” She hesitated for a moment, then handed it to him. “I think it’s important.” She tried to move past him, but he caught her by the wrist.

“What’s inside?” he asked.

“Let go of me.”

She attempted to break free, but Jay held on tight. “No, you aren’t going to hand me something like that and just leave. You’re going to give me an explanation.”

Barbara gazed into Jay’s eyes for a moment, then looked down.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

A tear spilled down her face as the pain of the last few years overcame her. “Oliver has lost his way,” she whispered, trying her best to maintain control of her emotions. “I think he’s done some very bad things.” She tapped the envelope with a fingernail. “I think he’s been trading stocks using inside information. In that envelope are the names of people I believe are Oliver’s accomplices, and stocks I think he’s purchased at McCarthy and Lloyd using information from those accomplices.” She sobbed.

Jay touched Barbara’s arm gently. “Barbara, I—”

“It’s all right,” she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes and coughing. “I’m all right.” She shut her eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them and stared back at him. “Oliver thinks I don’t know anything. He thinks I’m just a naïve woman who doesn’t understand business and couldn’t turn on a computer to save her life.” Her posture stiffened. “But I’m not naïve, and I know how to use computers.” She paused. “A couple of months ago I found a computer disk in his shirt pocket along with…” She swallowed several times, then steadied herself against the wall.

Once more Jay touched her arm. “Would you like to come inside and get a drink of water?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I found the disk in his shirt pocket along with a love note,” she continued in a raspy voice, “from Abby Cooper.” Jay froze. So Barbara had known about Oliver and Abby all along. He could see the bitterness oozing from her. Perhaps Abby’s murderer was standing before him. Perhaps the Donegall Volunteers weren’t responsible after all, as he had assumed.

“Abby thought she could take Oliver away from me,” Barbara continued, a forlorn smile coming to her face. “But she didn’t understand that there was something in the mix she couldn’t compete with, something no one can compete with when it comes to Oliver Mason: money. Oliver would never trade money for love. It isn’t in him.” Her smile disintegrated and her chin dropped. “I had no idea what was on the disk. I thought maybe there were more love letters or something, I don’t know. And I don’t know why I would have wanted to look at more of her adolescent drivel. It would have made me sick to my stomach. But I brought up the files on our home computer and printed out what was on them. In there is everything.” She pointed at the envelope in Jay’s hand.

“Why would Oliver have put anything on a disk if he was trading stocks using insider information?” Jay was leery of what Barbara claimed to be giving him. Abby was dead, but perhaps Barbara still wanted revenge and Oliver was the only one left to exact it from. That would make perfect sense, and the charges would have more credibility coming from someone Oliver worked with as opposed to a jilted wife. “It seems to me he would have done his best
not
to make records.”