Ultimate Betrayal (7 page)

“Plastique was used to blow up your house and kill your family, Mr. Hood. You know anything about plastique?”

David knew plenty about explosives. He’d been trained on all sorts of explosives at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and he’d placed explosives in Taliban tunnels in Afghanistan. He also knew enough to keep his mouth shut. Cromwell’s accusatory tone told him he had nothing to gain from talking to the guy. But he’d learned something. Someone had planted explosives in his home. Which made absolutely no sense.

Cromwell sighed. He rubbed his face with both hands and then ran his hands through his short, gray hair. “As soon as you’re out of here, we’ll want to talk with you some more.”

David stared at the detective as he felt his face grow hot.

“I got three murders here,” Cromwell said, his voice now louder. “I know you want to . . . help us solve this crime.”

David averted his eyes for a moment and looked at the female detective. Her jaw was set, lips pressed together. There was something in her eyes that told him she was uncomfortable. Then he looked back at Cromwell. He saw the cop’s mouth move, but his words washed over him, unheard. He caught the sounds, but couldn’t distinguish one word from another. Then his world went gray, as though a filter had dropped over his eyes, and his chest felt heavy with despair. How could he go on with life without Carmela, Heather, and Kyle? What was the point?

“Mr. Hood, did you hear me?”

The cop’s words seeped through David’s fog, but he still didn’t respond. He felt heat burn inside him, as though he’d stepped from a freezer into a blast furnace.

CHAPTER 7

Anger and the need for revenge had found a home in David’s heart. But depression had become a stronger force. He needed to grieve—alone. And he needed to get away from the hospital because he guessed whoever blew up his house and killed his family must have targeted him, not them. Why would anyone want to kill Carmela, Heather, and Kyle? He was a sitting duck here in the hospital.

He’d thought a lot about who might want him dead. He considered his clients, but couldn’t come up with a suspect. His company had identified hackers who had attacked some of his clients’ computer systems, and had provided evidence that sent those hackers to prison. Perhaps there was a killer among that group of criminals.

He disconnected the intravenous tube from the IV stent in his arm. Dressed only in a hospital gown, he moved to the door and pulled up on the handle. The door wouldn’t budge. He tried the handle again with the same result. Except this time, a uniformed cop opened the door and moved one step into the room. He held the door open with one hand and stared hard at David.

“You need something?” the cop asked.

Sonofabitch! David thought. That homicide cop, Cromwell, has me locked in. “Why’s my door locked?”

“For your protection, Mr. Hood.”

“Sure.” David now knew he really had to get away from the hospital. Cromwell had only one suspect in mind: David Hood. “How about finding a nurse for me? The call button’s not working.”

“Okay.” The cop dropped his hand from the door, turned, and walked back into the hall.

David yanked the IV stent from his arm and stuck it between the door lock and the jamb. The door closed. He hoped the lock hadn’t engaged. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he tried the door handle. This time the door opened. The IV stent fell to the floor. He stuck his head out into the hall and looked for the cop. He spotted him twenty yards down on the right. He was bent slightly over the nurses’ station counter, his back to David.

David slipped out of his room, quick-stepped down the hall to the left, and took the emergency stairs to the floor below. He searched for a room where he might find a change of clothes. He opened a door marked DOCTORS LOUNGE. There was no one in the lounge, so he moved to an inside door on the far side of the room with a sign that read LOCKERS. As soon as he walked into the locker room he heard the sound of running water. At the end of two rows of lockers on his right was a clothes bar, on which hung a sports jacket, shirt, and slacks. A pair of shoes and socks sat on top of a locker. David turned the corner at the end of the lockers and saw the closed curtain in one of the showers.

He turned back to the locker room and reached for the clothes on the rack—just as the door to the locker room opened and a man entered. He had a name badge pinned to his sports jacket: Frank Siler, MD. Had David worn anything but a hospital gown and had there not been large bandages on the back of his head and on his left hand, Doctor Siler might have ignored him.

“What are you doing?” the man demanded.

David took the hangers off the rack, draped the clothes over his left arm, grabbed for the shoes and socks on top of the lockers, and moved to leave the room. The doctor blocked his way. David lowered a shoulder, hit the man in the chest, and drove him sideways. The man tripped over a bench and fell to the floor. The guy appeared more stunned than hurt, as he looked at David with saucer-eyes.

“Sorry,” David said to the now-cursing doctor as he exited the locker room.

He rushed through the lounge, out into the corridor, and then left to the emergency exit staircase. He ran down to the basement and turned into an equipment room. His head hurt and he felt dizzy. After he took a moment for his head to clear, he changed into the stolen clothes. In a pants pocket he found a wallet with four twenty-dollar bills and a few ones. He placed the wallet with all of the doctor’s credit cards, family photos, and IDs on a desk, and left the hospital by a back door, climbed over a three-foot wall, walked two blocks, and hailed a taxi.

“I need a cheap but clean motel,” he told the cabbie. Then he slouched in the seat and closed his eyes.

“Hey, Mack,” the driver said ten minutes later, “do you think she’ll like this one?”

David opened his eyes and saw across the street, in the middle of the block, a one-story, dumpy strip motel. “Who?” he asked the driver.

“Your hot date.”

David ignored the driver’s comment and stared across at the motel. A cluster of kids who wore backward baseball caps and Oakland Raider jackets stood on the corner down from the motel. Cars did “touch and goes” at the corner. Drivers handed money to the kids in return for little plastic bags. This was a neighborhood that had seen better days. Good, David thought. The cops probably won’t look for me in a place like this. If the police don’t care about drug deals in the neighborhood in broad daylight, they probably didn’t even cruise the area. “Yeah,” he told the cabbie. “This will do.”

The cabbie drove across the oncoming lane and pulled up at the motel office. David paid the fare, stepped out of the cab, and went into the motel office.

The clerk was tall and thin, with a prominent Adam’s apple, large Roman nose, and thin lips. His sandy hair looked like a rat’s nest. He eyed David the moment he entered. The clothes he wore were good quality and fit him reasonably well. But he hadn’t shaved since yesterday morning and he wore bandages.

The clerk gave David a bored look and asked, “You need a room for a couple hours?” The guy sounded like he asked that same question a hundred times a day.

“No, a few days.”

“Cash or credit card?” the clerk asked, still looking bored, but a bit surprised. “Forty bucks a night.”

“Cash. One night in advance.” He passed two-twenties to the man. The clerk handed him the key to Room 113.

“I need to use your phone to make a local call.”

The guy eyed him suspiciously, but lifted a telephone console from under the counter and removed a cordless phone from the cradle. “One dollar,” the guy said. When David gave him a dollar, the clerk handed him the phone.

David stared at the clerk until the man averted his gaze, then moved to the far side of the lobby and dialed the number for Warren Masters, the Chief Financial Officer at their company, Security Systems, Ltd.

“Warren,” David said, as soon as the man answered, “I need you to bring me a few things.”

“Dave, where are you? We’re all worried sick. I’m so sorry about what happened to—”

“I know, Warren, and I appreciate it. But I can’t talk right now.”

“The police called here a minute ago. Some guy named Cromwell. Claimed you’re wanted for questioning about the explosion at your home. Said you ran away from the hospital.”

David paused a beat. “The guy’s an idiot. I’ll call him when I get settled.”

“Okay, Dave. What do you need?”

“I want you to come by the Corona Motel on Sixty-Third Street. Room 113. I need a couple changes of clothes, a throw-away cellphone, some cash, and a fully-equipped car.”

“Fully-equipped? You mean one of the armored vehicles? What’s going on, Dave?”

“Trust me, Warren.”

“How much cash?” Warren asked.

“Say a number,” David answered.

“Five thousand.”

“Double it,” David said.

After Warren Masters dropped off the things he’d asked for, David hung a plastic DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handle. He slept some and cried a lot and whatever he ate came from a vending machine twenty yards from his room, or from a pizza delivery service. Most of the time he thought about where he came from and how life led him to Carmela and gave him his children—and how someone stole them from him.

Time passed in the unlighted, drape-shuttered room.

David saw visions of his children. He remembered how they played together, the way his heart filled at the sounds of their innocent laughter, their hugs, how he inhaled the fresh scent of their skin and hair. He’d loved to read stories to them while they nestled in his arms. And he recalled how they fell asleep, confident of their safety. And he cried inconsolably at the thought he had failed them and that he would never see them again.

Then, there were the memories of Carmela, the life they had made together, how much she had meant to him. How was he to move forward without his beloved wife and children?

But the worst of his memories and nightmares came on him in an insidious way. He never saw them coming. They were there when his mind turned an unexpected corner. He could have allowed Heather and Kyle to go to the shelter with him, as they’d wanted. They died because he had told them to stay in the kitchen with their mother.

APRIL 14

CHAPTER 8

At 10 a.m., the day after he checked into the motel, David telephoned Bethesda Police Headquarters and asked for Detective Roger Cromwell, who picked up a minute later.

“Cromwell.”

“It’s David Hood. What have you done to find the people who murdered my wife and children?”

“Where the hell are you?” Cromwell shouted.

David could tell from the bowling alley-like echo from the telephone line that Cromwell had him on a speakerphone. He said, “I’m sick of the insinuation I hear in your voice. If you have any reason to suspect me, besides some BS-cop intuition, then charge me. If not, get off your ass and do something constructive.”

“Listen to me, you sonofa—”

“Why’d you leave the hospital?” a female voice said. “That wasn’t smart, Mr. Hood.” She sounded as though she wanted to defuse the tension between the two men.

“How much life insurance did you have on your wife?” Cromwell interjected.

“You have a piece of paper and a pencil handy, Detective?” David said. He forced calm into his voice.

“Yeah, why?” Cromwell said.

“Write this down!” David gave an address and phone number to the detective. “My lawyer’s name is Glen Truax, Gilchrist & Truax. Any other stupid questions you have for me can be directed through him.”

“Sonofabitch!” Cromwell exploded. “The guilty always hide behind their lawyers.”

David slammed down the receiver. He checked out of the motel and drove his company’s armored Lincoln Towncar out of Bethesda. On a Maryland country lane, he pulled onto the shoulder and stared out through the windshield at the arrow-straight road. The ribbon of pavement seemed to stretch forever, to the horizon, and beyond. The road was like his quest, seemingly endless, with who knows what at the end.

“Carmela. Heather. Kyle. I’ll find them and I’ll make them pay.”

CHAPTER 9

Montrose Toney leaned against the closed Washington, D.C. motel room door and shivered under Rolf Bishop’s undisguised look of disgust. He knew the meeting here in this fleabag motel room was not what Bishop was used to. With its sway-backed mattress, stained bed spread, and soiled carpet, the room was more commonly used by whores and their johns, not by CIA bigwigs or world-class wealthy megalomaniacs. He also knew Bishop’s coming here, risking recognition, meant Bishop was beyond pissed off. And that the stakes, whatever they were, had to be very high. Toney decided to keep his mouth shut and wait for Bishop to speak.

Bishop suddenly leaped from his chair, pointed his hand—gun-like—at Toney and shouted, “You fucked up!”

Toney watched Bishop’s neck stiffen and face redden. He felt fear bubble in his gut. Taller than six feet, white-haired, erect, trim, and well dressed, sixty-year-old Bishop was still intimidating. Toney knew the man could not abide failure. And he had definitely failed. He wished Bishop would move his devil-eyes off him.

Toney stood six feet, three inches tall and weighed 250 pounds. He’d spent his thirty-four years of life split between Washington D.C.’s meanest ghettos and various penal institutions. He was not easily intimidated. But Bishop had the disposition of a wounded tiger and he’d been a great meal ticket for the last few years. Toney didn’t want to lose that meal ticket.

“What do you think I pay you for?” Bishop hissed. “All you accomplished was to murder a woman and two kids.” He walked to the window, pulled back the curtain a couple inches, and stared outside. He whipped around and shot eye-daggers at Toney.

“Who’s that by your car?” Bishop said.

“My . . . partner, Jim Francis.”

Bishop looked disgusted. “He looks like a derelict waiting for a methadone fix.”

“He’s a former Marine demolitions expert. He knows—”

“He doesn’t know shit,” Bishop screamed. “
You
don’t know shit! Let me recount the harm you’ve done. Everyone’s investigating the explosion in Bethesda: the FBI, the ATF&E, and the local cops. Even insurance people are involved because of claims filed by neighbors for broken glass, surface, and foundation cracks in buildings, destroyed cars, and damaged personal property. And you failed to eliminate the target, a man you could have dispensed with in a simple car accident or a mugging. Instead, you blew up a whole fucking neighborhood!”