The Short Drop (25 page)

Gibson was up on his feet. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Good idea or not, we’re coming up now. Don’t rabbit on us,” she said and hung up.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Who’s here?” Billy stood in the doorway behind Gibson. The gun in his hand shook. “Did you tell them where we are?”

“No. But they found us.”

He stood and took a step toward Billy, and the gun came up to greet him. He stopped short, hands out and up.

“I don’t know how they found us. They just want to talk.”

“Talk . . . yeah, sure.”

They both heard the car coming up the driveway at the same time. Billy’s eyes went feral, and his head snapped around like an animal catching a scent.

“Billy, don’t!”

But Billy wasn’t in a listening frame of mind. He spun and ran back through the house. Gibson took off after him but veered left and sprinted around the house on the front porch, dodging furniture, staying low. Up ahead the Cherokee emerged from the trees and began to loop around the circular driveway.

Billy burst out the front door. He had the gun up and was waving it wildly at the Cherokee, which slammed to a halt. Billy made no effort to take cover, mad with fear and anger—yelling, crying for them to get back, to go away, to leave him alone. Hendricks was barking orders back at Billy to lower the gun, but it was lost in the babel of Billy’s panic.

Gibson came around the corner. He had to get to Billy before someone got hurt. In a moment of slow-motion lucidity, he realized that he believed Billy. Believed the whole preposterous story. More than that, he cared about him. He couldn’t bear the idea of Billy getting hurt.

Jenn and Hendricks closed the gap and were only fifteen feet from the porch. Everyone yelling. Hendricks moving to the left, trying to split Billy’s attention. Billy more and more frantic. Gun pitching back and forth between his two antagonists. Spittle flew from his lips.

Gibson took two steps and drove his shoulder hard into Billy’s ribs. Together they clattered over a wicker armchair. The gun came loose and skidded across the porch. Billy struggled for a moment, but Gibson was far too strong. Billy lay under him, panting.

“Just be cool, Billy. Be cool. It’s going to be all right.”

Billy struggled fitfully, unconvinced.

“Gibson! Throw your gun over the railing.” Jenn’s voice.

“I don’t have a gun, you asshole. And I kind of have my hands full here; could one of you maybe give me a hand?”

Benjamin Lombard jotted notes in the margin of his acceptance speech. The convention was weeks away, and the race remained far from decided, but tinkering with the speech helped distract him from what was going on in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Son-of-a-bitch George Abe waging his own one-man crusade as usual.

Crafty little prick had somehow triggered the dismantling of his business within minutes of getting pulled over. By the time Titus’s people had shown up there wasn’t a screw to screw or pencil to push. Abe Consulting had been wiped clean from the face of the earth. Exactly Abe’s style. As was denying it. He’d put on a convincing little performance about how he was as baffled as anyone. Even after Titus’s boy put a licking on him.

Lombard glanced up at the monitor; George was still slumped over the interrogation table at Cold Harbor. Titus was an evil little pit bull of a man, there was no doubting that, but Lombard was beginning to doubt his ability to make a breakthrough in a timely fashion. If he knew anything about George it was that it would take more than a few broken ribs to get him to betray his people.

Fortunately, Lombard had a guy inside ACG who’d kept them up to speed, so they knew about the operation in Pennsylvania. Still, he wanted to be there to hear what George had to say for himself. Of course, that was impossible. Titus’s whole operation was highly illegal, which meant Lombard remained stuck on the sidelines, watching his life play out on a twenty-seven-inch monitor. Goddamn George Abe. Maybe he should have called in the feds, but he didn’t trust that peckerwood Brant at the Bureau to keep it quiet. Well, what was done was done, and anyway, it was almost time for George to go another round with Titus’s big boy.

A knock came at his study door. Lombard shut off the monitor and called them in. A dyspeptic Leland Reed entered, holding out a phone. Benjamin didn’t like that Reed carried his anxiety so plainly. A man in this line of work needed a better poker face. Lombard asked what he wanted.

“I have a Calista Dauplaise for you.”

Benjamin nodded smoothly, as though expecting the call. He wasn’t. He couldn’t have been any more surprised if Reed had said Abraham Lincoln were on the line.
Calista Dauplaise?
What were the odds of the old witch calling him?

“Wasn’t she one of your old donors from the Virginia days?” Reed asked. “She sounds ready to get back in bed with us in a big way, but says she wants to talk to you directly.” Reed was wired in enough to know who she was but shrewd enough to play dumb. “Want me to put her off?”

Already during the primaries, he’d gotten feelers from unexpected donors, but this was another thing entirely. Calista wouldn’t give him a dime to use the bathroom in hell. And today of all days. Just how involved with Abe Consulting was she?

Lombard snapped his fingers impatiently for Reed to give him the phone, then shooed him out.

“Hello, Calista.”

“Benjamin.”

“So, Leland tells me you found Jesus and want to help America elect the right man.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

They both chuckled over that, but it would be a mistake to think she found this funny. Just as it was a mistake to think a hyena was smiling just because it showed you its teeth.

“What do you want?”

“How is George?” she asked.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Benjamin, you have George. And likely Mike Rilling as well.”

“Those are pretty serious accusations you’re throwing around.”

“Shut up and listen to me closely if you ever hope to be president.”

Benjamin Lombard hadn’t been told to shut up since his sophomore year in college. He hadn’t actually shut up when told to since he was fourteen years of age. But as soon as Calista began to speak, his mouth snapped shut and stayed that way until she was done.

Hendricks handcuffed Billy to a toilet, arms wrapped around and behind the bowl like he was sweet on it. He warned him that if he made a sound, he’d jam Billy’s head into it.

“You’ll need a plumber to get it out.”

Otherwise, for the time being, Billy was unharmed. Gibson tried arguing that none of it was necessary, but Hendricks was in no mood for half measures.

“You’re about three good words from joining him.”

Gibson brought a pillow from the living room for Billy to lie against. Billy accepted it silently; he hadn’t spoken a word since Gibson had tackled him. He just stared pensively at the bathroom floor.

Gibson left Billy in the bathroom and joined his former colleagues in the kitchen. They sat around the table, staring at each other. It wasn’t the warmest of reunions. But neither was anyone pointing a gun at him, so Gibson called it a draw. Of the two, Jenn seemed the friendlier. Hendricks, on the other hand, was hard as dried cement.

“Why’d you come back?” she asked Gibson.

“Why’d you send me away?”

“Why?” she asked again, her voice sharpening.

“I had my doubts.”

“About?”

“You. And about Tate. It wasn’t him.”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late for that now.” Hendricks described how they’d returned from chasing down Gibson’s virus at the Musgrove house to find the storage unit. The blood. The body missing. Hendricks glanced down the hall toward Billy. Gibson caught his look. It was clear Hendricks was weighing Billy in his mind. Trying to decide if he was the one who had killed Tate.

“It wasn’t him,” Gibson said.

“No? Okay, well, that leaves you.”

“You think I killed Tate?”

“You gonna deny you were there?”

“No. Do you think I killed him?”

Hendricks stared at him long and hard.

“No. We don’t,” Jenn said. “But that doesn’t leave us with many viable suspects.”

“Other than our friend down the hall,” Hendricks said. “Who admitted luring us away with that virus stunt at the Musgrove house. And while we’re out chasing our tails at the Musgrove house, Kirby Tate gets dead. But you somehow don’t think he had anything to do with it.”

“It wasn’t him. I’d swear on it.” Gibson did his best to defend Billy and told them most of what he’d learned. How Billy had stuck his neck out to help and protect Suzanne ten years ago. They listened silently as he showed them the Hello Kitty backpack and laid out its contents on the kitchen table. Hendricks went over the baseball cap carefully. Gibson wasn’t quite ready to divulge his misgivings about it. He watched Jenn pick up the book and thumb through it.

“What are all these notes?”

Gibson shrugged. “Teenage girl stuff.”

“All right, well what do you actually know about this guy?” Hendricks said. “He’s got the backpack and the cap. He sent ACG the photo. So I’ll buy that Suzanne was here. But does Romeo in there have any proof Suzanne was pregnant?”

Gibson showed them the photo. Hendricks seemed unmoved, but Jenn stared at it while her partner kept up his interrogation.

“And does he have any proof it wasn’t his?”

“No,” Gibson said.

“Or that Musgrove wasn’t a suicide?”

“No.”

Jenn cleared her throat. Hendricks shot her a look that Gibson couldn’t interpret.

“But you believe him anyway,” Hendricks said. “That he helped Suzanne out of the goodness of his heart. Helped a girl pregnant by some other guy. And then
someone
came and took her away and killed his neighbor. You believe that fantasy, but you don’t believe that the guy who hacked ACG, lured us out here, served up Tate for kidnapping his sister—you don’t believe there’s a chance he had something to do with the four quarts of blood I mopped up last night?”

“Come on, Hendricks. Does he strike you like a guy capable of gunning someone down in cold blood?”

“What does someone capable of that look like?”

“It wasn’t him.”

Hendricks’s lip curled. “Well, it’s either you or him. Him I can’t prove, but you I know were there.”

“So were you,” Gibson shot back.

The two men stared flatly at each other, Gibson holding as still as he had ever been. It went on like that for some time. Then, just like that, Hendricks snorted and looked away.

“Does George think I did it?” Gibson asked.

Jenn and Hendricks looked at each other.

“What?”

“Tell him about Meiji?” Hendricks said.

“What the hell is Meiji?”

Jenn sat alone in the kitchen while Hendricks took a power nap in the next room. She was jealous of his ability to compartmentalize. Neither of them had slept more than an hour in the last two days, but she couldn’t keep her eyes closed. There were just too many variables and too few constants. She knew there was only so long she’d be able to keep Hendricks at bay. Despite Gibson’s efforts, Hendricks still liked Billy Casper for Tate’s murder, and she was having trouble coming up with a competing theory that didn’t involve Gibson.

Her phone rang. It was Mike Rilling.

“Mike?”

“Jenn, is that you?”

“Who else am I going to be?”