True Blue (34 page)

“He left,” said Alisha. “Didn’t say where he was going and didn’t say when he be back. I’m worried about him.”

“Hey, Razor can take care of himself.” This was a lie, Mace knew. When it came to people like Psycho you’d need an Army battalion to take care of yourself. She walked back to the guesthouse, went up to her bedroom, and pulled something out of her closet. It was the baggie of shell casings the honor guard had given her at her father’s funeral. She sat back on the bed and held the bag on her chest, staring at the ceiling. It was so stupid of her to have opened the coffin. Every time she thought of her father, it began with that horrifying image before she could manage to push it aside.

She rattled the metal in the bag.

Okay, Dad, what do you think I should do? Let Beth run with this or keep chugging on? I want to be a blue again, Dad. I have to be a blue again.

She rattled the casings some more, as though trying to get better reception. There was no answer. There would never be an answer. She wasn’t a little girl anymore who could run to Daddy for help. These were her problems to solve. Only there was no right or wrong answer. There were only choices. Her choices.

She put the precious bag of used ordnance away, slipped over to the window, and looked over the grounds. Her gaze, by habit, sought out all places of potential danger. Entry points, the shadowy spaces under trees, a secluded corner. She thought for a second that she had seen Rick Cassidy flit by, but it happened so fast she couldn’t be sure.

Feeling suddenly lethargic, she scooted down to the kitchen and made some coffee. She brought it back up to the bedroom with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with sliced bananas on toasted wheat that she’d made with her own two hands. It undoubtedly would not have met Herbert’s high culinary standards, but it tasted damn good. Finished, she lay back on the bed with the thought of just resting her eyes. She hadn’t really slept in a long time. It was finally catching up to her. Just a few minutes…

The vibration woke her. She sat up groggily and looked around for a moment, disoriented. A moment later she snatched her phone from her pocket. As she hit the answer button she noted the time.

Damn, I’ve been asleep for hours.

“Hello?” She glanced out the window where a gentle rain was starting to fall.

“It’s Roy.”

“I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you calling from?”

“My health club. Just call me paranoid. If they can tap computer cameras, you know?”

“I know. So what’s up?”

“Got something to write with?”

She grabbed paper and pen off the nightstand. “Shoot.”

“Okay, just so you know, everyone in the firm hates my guts.”

“And how magnanimous you’ll be when you turn out to be right.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll tell them to eat shit and die. Anyway, I checked out some stuff and talked to some people. I’ve got Diane’s ex-husband’s name and number. He lives in Hawaii so you can call him today if you want. It’s morning there now.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Apparently the divorce was not all that amicable. I’m hoping that the ex can give you some more info on that. Maybe the name of the lawyer who represented Diane.”

“And the connection to Meldon?”

“No clue at this point, but at least it’s a start.”

“What about DLT?”

“I’m planning to sneak down to the archives tonight and poke around.”

“Listen, Roy, you staying there after hours alone is not a good thing.”

“I’m not sure if anyone here is involved, so I can’t exactly waltz down to archives and start going through boxes. I’ll find what I can and take the stuff home.”

“Why not come to Abe’s instead? We’ve got real security here.”

“You think he’ll mind?”

“I think the place is so big you could roll in with a tank brigade and he’d have no clue you were even here.”

“Okay, maybe that’s smarter.”

“And that way we can both go over the docs you found. It’ll be faster. Are you going back to see the Captain?”

“As soon as I’m done here. They just notified me that the presentment is tomorrow morning at Superior Court. I need to go over some details with him to the extent he can remember any.”

“The presentment’s pretty perfunctory, right?”

“Nothing’s perfunctory when Mona Danforth is in the picture. They’ll have to get a grand jury to issue an indictment since it’s a first-degree felony.”

“Or they can just return a No Bill.”

“What, did you enroll in law school this afternoon?”

Mace said, “I was a cop. I’ve been in court more than most lawyers.”

“But there’s no way she’s not going to get an indictment returned on these facts. They might as well just dispense with the preliminary hearing. They’ve got more than enough to show cause for the prosecution to go forward. The Captain will be arraigned on murder in the first and a trial date set. Any word from your sister on the semen sample?”

“Uh, hold on a sec.”

Mace quickly checked to see if she had any phone messages on the off chance that she had slept through a call from Beth. “No, nothing yet.”

“Well, let me know the minute you do. I don’t want to be blind-sided by that when I walk into court tomorrow.”

“And when you do your firm will know for sure where you stand.”

“I know. And they’ll fire me. That’s why I’m going through the archives today. I probably won’t get another chance.”

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

Mace clicked off and punched in the number for Joe Cushman, Diane Tolliver’s ex-husband who was now living in the Hawaiian paradise.

Must be nice.

“Yep, and locked away in my safety deposit box. I dropped by the bank as soon as you and your family left.”

“Getting paranoid on me? Good.” Hope rolled down the window and breathed in the moist air. “So who signed?”

“Everybody we need. Including Burns
and
Donnelly.”

“Guess the guy finally took us seriously.” Hope nodded at his partner. “Cookout was nice, Karl. Good idea.”

“Yeah, I’d rather be flipping dogs and burgers right now instead of driving to this place.”

Hope looked at the address that had come with the signed orders. “Warehouse in Arlington?”

“A front. They’re all fronts. We’ll see a ‘For Sale’ or ‘For Lease’ sign on the wall. A couple cars parked out of sight. A guy with a face you’ll never remember will answer our knock, we’ll flash our IDs, and the meeting will begin.”

“What are we hoping to get out of this tonight?”

“What I want are some recruits to do the trigger pulls while we coordinate from the sidelines. At least that way I can hate myself a little less.”

“But that’s another set of testimonies in court if this goes wrong. Geez, I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff.”

“We need to think about it, Don. But I’m not worried about these guys. I’m guessing Burns made sure they are not from this hemisphere. So we get the executioners in place and then the plan gets knocked together.”

“I know Perry has to go down. What about the punk lawyer?”

“If he hadn’t gotten in the way that night Perry would already have ceased to be a pain in our ass. But I’m not holding grudges. The order says Perry and anybody else deemed necessary. If we deem him not necessary he can go on being a lawyer after mourning the loss of his friend. I’m not looking to add to my bag of kills here. I’ve smoked my share of dirtbags, but none of them looked like me.”

Reiger looked up ahead. “There it is. What did I tell you?”

As they drove into the parking lot the “For Sale” sign was prominently mounted on one wall of the place that was actually three separate buildings on an acre of land in a section of Arlington that had seen far better days.

“Looks to be 1950s construction,” said Hope. “Surprised they haven’t knocked it down and put up condos. Land in Arlington is damn hard to come by.”

“Yeah, but if it’s secretly owned by an intelligence agency that doesn’t give a crap about cash flow, that is not your definition of a motivated seller.”

Reiger drove through a narrow opening between two of the brick buildings and stopped in the middle of the small interior courtyard.

“Like I said, couple of cars parked here. Now all we need is the faceless guy answering the door and I’m a perfect three for three.”

Reiger did not go three for three.

The woman who answered the door was petite with short brown hair angled around an oval face, and dressed in dark slacks, a tan windbreaker, and a pair of black-rimmed glasses. She flicked her badge and ID card at them. They did the same.

“Follow me,” she said.

They fell into line behind her as she led them through the darkened hall.

“Didn’t catch the name on the ID card,” said Reiger.

“Mary Bard.”

“Okay, Agent Bard. Karl Reiger and Don Hope.”

“Call me Mary. And I know who you are. I’ve been tasked to help with this assignment,” she said over her shoulder.

“Well, we can use the help,” said Reiger. “I assume you’ve been read in?”

“Yes. I can see why you two are frustrated. It seems to me they’ve been running you around like bulls in a china shop and expecting the impossible.”

“Exactly. We need to set the hit up our way instead of chasing them.”

She said, “Burns told me we’re to go over the logistics, call in resources as needed, and then lay the trap.”

“Now that sounds like a strategy.”

“Watch your step. I’ll turn the lights on once we get to the interior room. Cops sometimes patrol by here.”

“Understood. So where are you really from?”

“You saw my creds.”

“Right, I’ve got several sets myself and they all say something different.”

“Okay. Justice Department. That do it for you?”

Reiger grinned. “That’s what they all say.”

Bard smiled too. “I know.”

Don Hope was looking down. He lifted up one of his feet. “Plastic on the floors?”

Reiger reached out and touched one of the walls. “And on the walls?”

Mary Bard moved with the grace of a ballerina, but also with the speed of a tiger. The kick caught Reiger in the sternum, driving him back into the wall with such force that it threw his heart out of sinus rhythm. Since there was no light, the shine of the twin six-inch blades was never seen by either man as she whirled them in a blur of synchronized motion. One knife ripped across Reiger’s throat first. He didn’t even have time to scream. He fell to the floor clutching his severed jugular.

Don Hope managed to pull his weapon. Before his finger could close on the trigger, she drove her foot into his knee, ripping it backwards; supporting bones snapped and tendons tore away like sprung rubber bands. He screamed in agony, at least until she gave a backhanded slash with the second knife. The jagged blade ripped his throat apart; arterial blood erupted from the wounds, spraying the narrow hall.

Hope sank next to his dead partner, his last few breaths jerky, gurgling, and then his chest ceased to heave. As if on cue the lights came on and several people moved forward. As Bard stepped out of the way, hands rolled up the plastic with the men inside it. A truck was parked in the rear of the building. Reiger and Hope were placed inside and the truck sped off.

Bard had the blood of each man on her clothes. She stepped out of them and stood there in her bra and panties until she was handed a jumpsuit by one of her colleagues. Her physique was lean, with ropy muscles in her arms, shoulders, and thighs. The heightened definition of her body and absence of fat threw the scars on her torso into sharpened relief. She zipped up the jumpsuit, turned, and entered a bathroom where she scrubbed the evidence of the twin kills off her face, hands, and hair. She took off the eyeglasses and slid them into her pocket. They were actually night optics, allowing her to see her victims in the dark far better than they could see her. A few minutes later she left by another rear door. Her Smart car started up and she drove out of the parking lot, headed west, and entered Interstate 66. She placed the call.

“Done,” she said and then clicked off.

Jarvis Burns put his phone down and allowed himself a rare smile. “Now
that
, Agent Reiger, is chain of command.”

As he turned back to his work, he glanced at his watch. Two minutes later, in the safety deposit box where Reiger had placed his precious orders that would enable him and Hope to walk free after the job was done, the time-released chemicals built into the document’s threads did their work. In ten seconds there was nothing left except vapor.