The Tempest (17 page)

 

Chapter Twenty-four

E
ither Scott Randall was upset and trying not to show it or else he was acting, trying to make it look like he was upset. Hunter suspected it was mostly the latter.

She met him on the eighth floor of the William J. Green Center in Center City, Philadelphia, where he walked her to a small conference room, buttoned down in dark suit pants, a blue dress shirt and loosened tie. Randall had worn sunglasses throughout their meeting on the Shore. This was the first time she'd seen his eyes, which were unusual, a dark olive color, and slightly off-­kilter, the left eye leaning to one side, the eyelid drooping slightly. His physique was surprising, too. He was a tall, thin-­framed man, but the shirt he wore today fit a little too snugly, accentuating a pronounced gut that she hadn't even noticed the first time.

“I left several messages for you,” Hunter said. “I thought we were going to touch base again before I talked with Nick Champlain.”

“I got the messages.” He closed a folder, what he'd been working on before she arrived. “Didn't I did tell you I'd be out of touch for a ­couple days? I was down in Virginia visiting with my mother.”

Hunter nodded, although this sounded like an excuse more appropriate for the 1990s before cell phones.

Randall smiled. “You scare me a little sometimes, Hunter, you know that?”

“Why's that?” Randall scared
her
a little, the fact that he was acting now as if she worked for him. She'd have to nudge him away from that.

“Because you're good. You did a nice job. Thank you,” he said, rushing his words, sounding more patronizing than gracious. “I like that you pushed him a little on Sanders.”

“Is that why you recruited me?” His eyebrows rose and his lashes fluttered rapidly. “When you said we could help each other, was that the point? You sent me in there to carry a message to him?”

“Message,” he echoed, pretending not to understand. She could see him consciously changing his expression from confusion to amusement, wanting to smooth her feathers. “For what purpose?”

“I don't know, to worry him a little? So he'd be more apt to make a deal?”

“No.” He seemed to be considering what she'd said, though. “I mean, if it ever came to that? Sure, of course we'd like to make a deal. But no, we don't have any grand plan. Although, as I told you the first time, I do believe that solving one case will solve the other. I feel that even more strongly now.”

“Well, you need to tell me the rest of what's going on, then,” Hunter said. Randall waited. “John Linden, for instance.”

“Okay.” His eyes began to blink.

“Linden was friends with Susan Champlain. He's her former boyfriend. On the day she died, last Wednesday, they met in Tidewater County. The next day, Linden called you.” Randall nodded, his eyes continuing to blink. “Didn't John Linden make an inquiry about the Gardner reward?”

She was guessing, but Randall's face reddened slightly. There was a $5 million reward for the return of all thirteen stolen works in good condition. It would never happen, considering that some of the art had almost certainly been damaged, but Linden probably didn't know that.

“I
talked
with him, yes. Frankly, you're right, he probably
was
fishing around about the reward money.” He sighed, lowering his eyes for a moment. “All right, Hunter. Here's what it is, here's what I
can
tell you: Do you know what Walter Kepler looks like?”

“I've seen his picture.”

“Let me show you some photos of him, then. I've got some images here for you.” He opened his folder again: inside, under some official-­looking memos, were printout images of Walter Kepler. The first two she had already seen. He was a midsized, nice-­looking man with silvery hair who wore a faraway look in three of the photos. It was the fourth one that Randall wanted her to see.

“We've got
our
candid camera shot, too,” he said, handing it to her.

It was a blurred picture of two men walking on a narrow street, shoulders turned toward each other.

“This was in Amsterdam six months ago. You don't recognize the man he's talking to, do you?”

“No.”

“Ayman Al-­Bulawi is his name. He's a terrorist agent, based in Jordan. He represents one of the largest private funders of Middle East terrorism, a man named Garrett Massoud. He's negotiating the purchase of the painting for Massoud, okay? Al-­Bulawi had been under surveillance for several months. Not by us, initially, by another intelligence ser­vice.”

Hunter absorbed that for a moment. “For what purpose? Why would a terrorist financier want this painting?”

“Well, he's a collector. And this painting's a prize, the crème de la crème of missing art.” He frowned at the image of the two men. “There is, also, some intelligence indicating that Massoud would like to use this acquisition for political purposes.”

“How would he do that?”

He displayed his adolescent's smile. “Without going into details: obviously, it would have a certain symbolic value if he could show the world that this masterpiece—­which was stolen from the walls of an American art museum twenty-­five years ago—­is now in his hands and that we won't be able to touch it ever again. Kind of like kidnapping a high-­profile Western target.

“And, frankly,” Randall added, “we're not sure that their goal isn't then ultimately to desecrate and destroy this masterpiece in view of an international audience.”

Hunter felt dizzy for a moment, recalling Crowe's warning about getting involved with Randall. “Kepler wouldn't allow that to happen,” she said.

Randall tilted his head. “Kepler may not know about it. That's the problem. We don't think he does.”

“And where are you getting this information?” she said.

“I told you, we're working with national intelligence on this.” Implying the CIA, as Crowe had said. Or was this an invention, like the earlier straw man scenario in the Miami deal? He took the image back and closed the folder. “But that's the part I can't get into,” he told her. “I shouldn't be telling you
any
of this, really. But there it is.”

Hunter breathed in and out deliberately. She sensed that he was still recruiting her, but in a different way, for another round with Champlain.

“Where's the painting right now?” she asked. “When do you think this is going to happen?”

Randall shrugged. “Honestly? I suspect it's within a hundred and fifty miles of where we're sitting right now. That's what we're being told. I think it's going to happen in two to three weeks. Probably it's going to be flown out of a private airfield to the Middle East. Maybe Jordan. And within a few weeks of the sale, there's going to be some sort of international incident. Obviously, we'd like to prevent that from happening.”

They sat in the quiet dusty sunlight for a while, Randall's strange eyes staying with her.

“Let me change the subject for a minute,” Hunter finally said.

Randall nodded.

“Tell me what you know about Walter Kepler's partner,” she said.

“When do you sleep, exactly?”

He laughed, wanting Hunter to laugh, too. But she didn't.

“Okay,” he said, “yes, there have been reports for years that Kepler has a partner. But, truthfully? We have no proof that the partner exists. I don't think he does. I think it's more likely he has a bodyguard, or someone who handles security. I don't, frankly, think there
is
a partner.”

“His partner's name, I'm told, is Belasco,” Hunter said. Randall suddenly began to blink again. “You know that name.”

“Heard it.” Clearly, this subject made him uncomfortable. She wondered why. “Where is all this coming from, anyway, Dave Crowe? No wait—­don't tell me. Okay, I can imagine where it's coming from.”

“Where?”

Randall shook his head. He wasn't going to say Helen Bradbury's name. Hunter looked down at the city—­working women and men in business attire. She thought about Susan Champlain's fall, the way her body had landed, below the bluff, and reminded herself whom she was working for.

“Anyway.” Randall made a pretense of straightening the papers in his folder. “You want to go down and grab a hot dog?”

“No.”

“Or a cheesesteak? When in Philly . . .”

Hunter shook her head. There was a whooshing sound of the air-­conditioning coming on. Sunlight slanted across the room. She felt the indoors closing around her a little. Hunter
was
out of her element, but she needed to find out who it was she was really pursuing. And she needed to stay on good terms with Randall, even if
he
was the bad guy.

“How about if we touch base again tomorrow, then, see how things shake out,” he said.

“All right.”

“Just see how Champlain is once he's had a chance to digest everything. Were you planning on calling him again?”

“I'm sure we'll talk.”

“Good. Good idea.”

His hand went to her back twice as they walked to the elevator. The second time, she stopped and turned to look and he quickly pulled it away.

“I'll be here in the city a ­couple of days,” Randall said. “If you want, we can meet in one of our satellite offices. Where's your mother? You said you were staying with your mother?”

She told him reluctantly, although it wouldn't have been difficult for him to find her.

“Look, in a way I did recruit you, okay,” he said, a note of contrition in his voice as they rode down to the lobby. “But our cases
are
tied together, as I said before. I told you that from the beginning.”

This time, Hunter let silence change the subject.

 

Chapter Twenty-five

S
he almost didn't recognize her mother's face in the late afternoon light, as Joan Hunter looked out the kitchen window at the woods behind their old house. There was a leathery quality to her skin and a new fullness to her cheeks. It was as if someone had taken her mother's place while Amy was away, living down in Tidewater County.

She had prepared breaded fish sticks, the traditional dinner whenever Hunter returned home. It had been Amy's favorite when she was in grade school, although it didn't do much for her now.

Joan Hunter offered her green tea, but Amy poured herself a tall glass of red wine instead. Hunter's mother, although a teetotaler, always kept wine and a twelve pack of discount beer in the hall closet.

“What sort of business brings you all the way up here, anyway?” she asked, once they'd moved to the living room for their traditional predinner chat. “A case, you said?”

“Yes. I wish I could talk about it.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn't expect you to. It's just as well that you don't.”

Hunter's mother always tiptoed around the subject of her work, knowing that Amy's job was bound by confidentiality. She was proud of her independent nature to a point, but didn't really approve of her work, which Hunter understood: she dealt with unseemly ­people and motivations, and there was also an inherent danger in what she did.

Amy still thought of this as her father's house; there were times when they would glance at each other and it seemed both were waiting for Joseph Hunter to return home. There'd been the usual bittersweet feeling of nostalgia driving into the old neighborhood, past the familiar brick houses with chain-­link fences that never changed and the shopping center that did, past the high school where she'd run track for three years, and where she'd also been assaulted on the athletic field in the spring of her junior year.

Amy's mother worked as an administrator for the county school system. As the backyard darkened, they caught up on the latest school issues: bus safety, french fries on the lunch menu, Wi-­Fi in the classroom and various other topics, many of which hadn't existed when Amy was in school. “Otherwise, nothing to report,” Joan Hunter said, and she smiled contentedly at her daughter. It was what Hunter's father always said—­
nothing to report
—­and it still carried a reassuring ring.

Hunter gazed out at the backyard trees as if it were twenty years ago, as if she could go outside and pick up right where she'd left off. Her mother liked to sit in the living room and watch the night come in, keeping the lights off until it was fully dark outside. Hunter couldn't remember if it had something to do with saving energy or if she just liked the sensation of darkness seeping in; she kind of liked it, too, the enclosing feeling.

“I guess I didn't even realize you drank,” Joan said, as Amy poured a second glass of red wine.

“Not a lot.” She stopped pouring, though. The first drink was fine; the second usually drew a comment. In truth, Hunter could have used a shot of bourbon and Coke right about then. There'd been a bottle of Jim Beam in the closet on one of her visits and it was gone now. Hunter suspected her mother had dumped it. “I just like a glass of wine sometimes at the end of the day, a way to relax.”

“My sister was that way, too,” Joan Hunter said as Amy returned to the living-­room sofa. “I don't know that she always handled it so well.”

“Hmm.”

Hunter sipped more slowly, thinking about her cat Winston, who seemed to enjoy her better when she drank.

“Will you see Glenn while you're here?” she asked, meaning Hunter's brother and his family, who lived near Pittsburgh.

“No, I don't have time this visit. We'll do it another time. How
is
his family?”

“Oh, they're well. Although the children are so grown up all of a sudden. I feel I've missed so much of it, living here.” Hunter's brother had two children and ran a thriving software business. Only when she was with her mother did Amy compare her life with his and come out feeling on the short end.

“Dad would've been calling the team right about now, wouldn't he?” Amy said, looking at the tributaries of the oak branches, as familiar as these rooms and this furniture. “The seniors.”

“Oh, I know.” Her father always called the seniors in early August to see what kind of summer they'd had and what sort of shape they were in, then to invite them to his one-­day football camp in mid-­August. “You know I'm going to a baseball game on Saturday,” her mother said. “Did I tell you? A friend has asked me. A gentleman.”

“Good.”

“Does it surprise you?”

It didn't, really. Joan Hunter was still sort of feeling her way through life. She met ­people online now. This man she'd met on Chris­tian Mingle, she said, which she belonged to because she considered it “safe,” even though she was only nominally a Chris­tian herself.

“What does he do?”

“Oh, he's retired now. He worked for years for the postal ser­vice. In a management position. A very nice-­sounding man.”

“Meaning you haven't
met
him yet?”

“No, well, we talk on the phone. It's an afternoon game, anyway,” her mom added, as if this made it more legitimate.

Hunter took a baby sip, thinking about a third glass of wine. Most of the trees out back had blended into the darkness.

“Well, I guess we ought to have our supper now.”

Amy's mother got up and turned on the kitchen light. She served up the breaded fish sticks with broiled potatoes and asparagus. They drank ice water with the meal, poured from a glass pitcher that sat on a porcelain potholder on the table, condensation sliding down its sides, just like when she was a girl.

They chatted some more about Joan's job and Hunter's life in Tidewater County, and then her mother asked the inevitable question, her eyes zeroing in on her daughter's. “Have you met anyone new there?”

“No one new, no,” she said, forking a potato. “It's just been very busy.”

“Mmm.” Joan gave her a worried smile. Being here always reminded Hunter of things she didn't want to be reminded of, like the wide gulf that had existed between her parents during her high school years. Hunter had been close to her father; she'd enjoyed letting him rev her up with his pep talks and inspirational sayings. She'd carried a quiet confidence in those days, keeping to herself, doing well in school and in sports; her mother had struck her as a bit weird and still did, interested in the strangest minutiae, managing to spend hours every day cleaning the house. The pauses in their conversation now felt like a musical combo missing the main instrument.

“Remember when you and Glenn used to catch fireflies out there?” her mother said, nodding past the window.

“Yeah, I do. Although Glenn did all the catching. I'd usually just watch.”

“Well, they're still there,” she said, meaning the fireflies. “Although Glenn was telling me that he read somewhere there aren't as many now as there used to be.”

“Really? There aren't as
many
?
I wonder why that would be.”

“Oh, I can't remember, something to do with the climate change? Global warming, I think. Although, I guess that's pretty much been discredited now, hasn't it?”

“Global warming? No, Mom.”

“I thought it had.”

Hunter's phone rang; her mother's head jerked up as if a firecracker had gone off under the table. “Oh, my goodness, what is that?”

“Sorry,” Hunter said. “My phone.”

“
Goodness
, that startled me,” she said.

Henry Moore's number. “I better take this,” she said, pushing from the table. “Thanks, Mom, the dinner was fantastic.”

Her mother's smile was quick.
Fantastic
was a word Amy had stopped using around 2000, although it reentered her vocabulary whenever she came home and got to talking with her mom.

She opened the screen door and walked into the side yard. The air was still warm. Through the woods she saw the kitchen light of a neighbor's house.

“Just checking in, how did it go?” Moore asked.

Hunter gave him a summary of her meetings with Helen Bradbury, Nicholas Champlain and Scott Randall. She could tell from the beats of his silence that Moore was really calling to give
her
news.

“I wasn't going to bother you but I thought you'd want to know. Two things,” he said. “I've had a closer look at the prelim and talked with the M.E.'s office. The injuries to Susan Champlain's arm are from an altercation, and there
are
skin cells under her nails. We'll see how that turns out.”

“Okay.”

“Second.” There was a greater-­than-­usual gravitas to his intake of breath. “Joseph Sanders was discovered this morning in a rural wooded area about fifteen miles from the Virginia line. Local PD's treating it as suicide.”

Hunter felt her heart speed up. She had anticipated the possibility that Sanders was dead; but not like this.

“What happened?”

“They found him in his truck, parked there in the woods. The ignition switched on, a hose attached to the exhaust pipe and in through the front window. The truck had run out of gas.”

“How long ago?”

­“Couple of days, probably.”

Hunter was stunned. She took a deep breath, surprised to see the air twinkling with fireflies; if anything, there were more of them than ever. “What does the state's attorney think?”

“Wendell Stamps is still not concerned. Different jurisdiction. Of course, if this is what you think it is, if it has anything to do with organized crime, that'll kick it into a whole different level. Federal investigation.”

“Okay. And what do you think?” Hunter said, feeling the case sliding away from her.

“That may be true, but it doesn't change what happened here last Wednesday,” he said. “Susan Champlain was killed in Tidewater, it's a Tidewater case.”

“Good,” Hunter said. She'd misunderstood.

“I spoke to the state's attorney about an hour ago. He asked me where you were, by the way. Said he heard you'd interviewed Nick Champlain this afternoon in Philly.”

“Oh.” He let Hunter absorb that for a moment.
Where would he have heard it?
Champlain? Champlain's business manager?

“Don't worry about it,” Moore said. “I just wanted you to know. Fischer's just sent you the report on Sanders. No rush on anything. How about we meet first thing Wednesday?”

“All right.” So much for taking off a day or two.

“I want to bring Fisch and Tanner in after you come back,” he said. “I want us all in the game.”

“Good,” Hunter said. Meaning Susan's death would become a homicide investigation. “Will do. Thanks.”

Hunter tucked away her phone and walked into the woods, feeling better about the case. A breeze moved slowly, high in the trees, and then a cooler air trickled down through the leaves reminding her of currents in river water. She imagined a possible scenario: Sanders had been harassing Susan Champlain, making advances on her while her husband was away; her death had been a crime of passion; afterward, Sanders had felt remorse, or felt that Nick Champlain was going to come after him, so he'd taken his own life.

Hunter didn't quite believe that. But she didn't have a better story yet. She thought about her minimalist conversation with Joey Sanders on Thursday: Sanders standing shirtless beside his truck, the hood propped up, parked by the house where Susan Champlain had spent her summer. Not wanting to talk with Hunter, his eyes squinting into the distance, his thoughts already somewhere down the road.

She turned to the house and saw her mother for a moment, in the rectangle of kitchen light. The song “Silhouettes” began playing in her head as she walked back across the lawn. Where did that come from? Hunter needed to return to Tidewater County, she knew. She probably shouldn't have come here at all.

The air-­conditioning felt good as she slid the glass door closed to the living room, the artificial kitchen light startling her eyes.

“Sorry, Mom. Work.”

“Everything all right?”

“Fine.” She smiled. Her mother had already set out dessert, ice cream and wafer cookies, the ice cream beginning to melt. Cherry vanilla, scooped from a quart carton, another tradition. They ate mostly in silence, Hunter's thoughts far away until she realized the silence had become awkward for her mother. Afterward, she helped clear the table and excused herself. She wanted to check the report on Sanders's death.

Amy's bedroom had been preserved more or less as she'd left it fourteen years earlier—­unlike her brother's, which had been emptied out and redesigned as a den and guest room. Hunter's track trophies were still on the chest of drawers, the brainteaser books her dad had bought her still lined up on the shelf with old math and geography schoolbooks. Some magic Wi-­Fi was at work, too, she sometimes thought, able to pick up 1999 every time Hunter visited. She only had to be there a few minutes and
“Livin' La Vida Loca” or “Genie in a Bottle” would begin playing in her head. Or she'd have some vivid recollection from
Friends
that she hadn't thought of in years.

She logged on to her laptop and quickly found the file that Sonny Fischer had sent. Not much yet. Routine unattended death report. Hunter ran some searches on Sanders, feeling sort of silly working at this old desk where she'd done her seventh-­grade geometry homework. At one point, she heard a creaking of floorboards and froze. A shadow moved under the door. She heard a tapping: her mother knocking on the door.

“Are you okay, dear?”

“Fine. Just doing some work, Mom.”

Hunter stayed up until after one o'clock sifting through data about Sanders and the Champlains. Then she lay in bed sorting the case in her head until she finally fell asleep. It was eerie, the sounds this old house made; all kinds of thoughts lived in these walls. Later, Hunter dreamed she was walking in a long, creaking hallway that curved through darkness like a funhouse maze, past miniature rooms lit by slants of moonlight. And then somehow she was seated in the rear of a small boat in rough seas, watching as a tall man in a black raincoat tried to steady Susan Champlain; but Hunter could see what was really happening—­that the man was actually positioning her so he could push her off into the waves: when he turned to glance at Hunter, she saw who it was—­Randall. Hunter woke in darkness and heard crickets chirping in the yard.