Night Passenger

by David Stanley

  The Picasso would normally have returned to the gallery by now. Ashcroft’s death had caused that timeline to slip, but after a tasteful period had elapsed the gallery was certain to enquire when the picture would return. Once back in the gallery, he was out of options. Thorne’s original plan to hit the security truck wasn’t bad, but he had no idea when that transport might take place. He’d need a schedule, a route, and the company that the Ashcrofts used. Without that information, it was no plan at all.

  But why wait for it to be in a security truck, in a remote place? It was already there. He’d seen the Ashcrofts home through the trees. No armed guards, no dogs, no neighbors. Sure there was an alarm, but it would be no more than background music buried in the woods like it was. He wouldn’t need to break any locks either, the place was practically made from glass. Blake smiled to himself. All along he'd believed that Thorne increased his chances of success and minimized the threat of being caught, but the reality was the reverse. He had proven to be a serious obstacle. His mind, his tactical skills; not working with him, but against him. If he was going to get the painting on his own, he had to also take Thorne out first.

  It was time to say goodbye.

  Kate Bloom looked up, into his eyes.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Thorne was in a drugstore when Coop called. It was noisy inside so he went out onto the sidewalk. She said that with Ashcroft dead and buried, the network were pulling them out. The story was over. She wanted to see him again before she left, that they had unfinished business. Coop didn’t state what that business was, but he had an idea and agreed to meet. Behind him, he heard the sound of a vehicle accelerating hard and he turned sharply toward it. A large black SUV hurtled toward him, it’s front tire mounting the curb and skidding to a halt alongside him. Four men in suits sprang out and surrounded him. FBI agents.

  One of them gestured at the vehicle.

  “Step inside, Mr Thorne.”

  He glanced into the dark interior.

  “There’s been a mistake, I didn’t order an Uber.”

  “It’s better for everyone if you get in voluntarily.”

  Thorne looked up and saw Blake ten feet back with his arm folded across his chest, his hand up in his armpit. The two exchanged a look, before Thorne stepped into the SUV. The four suits packed themselves in around him and the vehicle pulled away, pushing itself into the stream of traffic. They rode in silence, the men around him pretending he didn’t exist. His mind returned to the pick up point and Blake. He knew exactly what had been about to happen. Another five or ten seconds, and his brains might have been all over the sidewalk. A trip hazard for the unlucky tourist. He took off his sunglasses and looked at the suited figures around him. His would-be saviors. He should have seen this move of Blake’s coming, but he hadn't. If Blake had decided to get rid of him, that meant he no longer needed him. What did that mean for Kate? Was she still alive?

  After several minutes, they came to a halt and got out. He looked around and saw the Sheriff’s Office. Great. His favorite place. The suits surrounded him, like a presidential detail, and walked him up to the building. There were five of them, including the driver of the SUV. None over six feet tall, but lean and serious-looking. Another agent stood inside the doorway, waiting. Their eyes connected.

  “This way, Mr Thorne.”

  The man walked in front of him. He had a natural swagger that twisted his shoulders from side to side as he walked. Cops and admin staff turned to watch as they walked past. Some stood to get a better view. The agent looked over his shoulder.

  “We’ve taken over some offices here and a couple more at the CHP building down in Aptos. Wherever we go, we’re standing on someone else’s toes, getting in their shit.”

  Thorne gave him his cheesy Jake Vasco grin.

  “Are you going to be the good cop?”

  The man laughed and faced forward.

  “We’re the FBI, we’re all good.”

  He was led into a small office at the side of the building. A man stood staring out the window, his hands folded behind his back like they were cuffed. Thorne glanced around the room. A large table sat in the middle of the room, two chairs on one side, one on the other. Between the two chairs, at the rear wall, sat a video camera mounted on a tripod, it’s red LED already burning. That made the single seat his, he supposed. The man at the window now faced him. He was in his mid to late fifties and his face looked like it could hold a pint of water.

  “Take a seat, Mr Thorne.”

  He sat on the single seat, which creaked under his weight.

  There were five men in the room, all staring at him. Thorne sensed they were trying to intimidate him, but they were wasting their time. He was an actor, being stared at was his job. Somewhere in the room he heard a clock ticking. He listened to it, letting the slow beat enter his body. It relaxed him. He imagined his heart slowing, the two beats synchronizing. His breathing slowed, becoming deeper, more spaced out. Opposite him on the table were two folders, one about two inches thick, the other closer to four. The larger one had a cell phone on top of it, holding it shut.

  The old man came over and stood behind him.

  “Sapperstein, Johnson; take a walk fellas.”

  Two of the suits filed out the room. The old man sat down in the chair behind the folders and studied him. His face was grizzled like a cowboy, but he had kind eyes.

  “You look tired, Thorne. You want a coffee? A Coke?”

  “I’m fine.”

  The old man turned to the good cop agent.

  “Get the man a Coke.”

  The suit nodded and left the room. Thorne stared at a casually dressed man at the back of the room. He wore jeans and a blood-red hooded sweatshirt with UCSC printed on the front. The sweatshirt was large, but he had little doubt that it covered a muscular frame. His hair was short and black like the coat of a labrador. Thorne placed him as ex-military.

  “Thank you for coming here today.”

  “It didn’t seem like I had a choice. You sent five armed men.”

  “I thought if I sent five I’d get at least two of them back.”

  Thorne smiled.

  “This going to take long? I got things to do.”

  The agent stared at him with a level gaze.

  “I’ve been doing a little light reading.” He said, putting his hand on the thicker folder. “This is your service record, I had it printed out. I’m kind of analogue. Things mean more to me when they’re on something I can touch with my hands. I’ll be honest, I’ve never read a record like this in my life. You’re a hero.”

  Thorne said nothing. He knew roughly what the file would contain. His eyes moved over the jumbled edges, trying to imagine what they were. After action reports, commendations, a breakdown of his tactical skills and training, medals. Then there’d be the history of disobedience, the official reprimands, and time spent in the brig. He'd amassed a serious paper trail during his time with the Marines. He wondered if the file also included his deposition for Blake’s court-martial, and if that explained why he was here now. It wouldn’t take the FBI long to notice the similarities between archive pictures of Aidan Blake and the wanted picture Cabot had all over town.

  The door opened and the agent returned with the Coke, which he set on the table in front of him. The metal was beaded with condensation. It looked good. Ice-cold, the way he liked it. The agent sat in the other chair, his body half turned so he could see him and the old man with the smallest turn of his head. The old man cleared his throat.

  “I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I’m Supervisory Special Agent Mancuso, the SAC of the Bureau’s San Francisco Field Office, Special Agent Corrigan here you've already met, and lastly, this gentleman behind us is Mr Teece from another agency.”

  “Detailed and vague, I like it.”

  “As you may know, we’ve taken over the investigation of the shoot-out at the mall, the fatal shooting of Senator Ashcroft at the roadhouse and, additionally, I have some people l
ooking into Lieutenant Cabot on criminal assault charges against yourself.”

  “I already said I'm not pressing charges. Cabot found me covered in blood next to his friend’s body, any one of us might have reacted the same way. I don’t hold it against him.”

  “Well, that’s not how it works, and I’ll tell you why. Suppose every reported abuse by a law enforcement officer could simply be withdrawn, then you’d have a situation where the victim could be threatened until they withdraw their complaint. The abuse would continue and other people would be effected. There always has to be an investigation.”

  There’d be no taking back the assault claim, not without exposing himself to some new charge. He nodded that he understood. Cabot had been a pain in his ass from day one, but he was only doing his job and he appeared to be the only cop close to the truth.

  “Look, I already gave the deputies my statement, it’s all there.”

  Mancuso smiled.

  “No offense to the locals, but we operate to a different code.”

  Thorne had no doubt about that. A code that, he was sure, knew it's ass from its elbow. He looked at the three men, from one face to another. The two agents he understood, but the presence of the shadowy third figure stuck out. Teece. What the hell kind of name was that? Was it real, or fake? Another agency. CIA? No matter how much he turned it over in his head, he just couldn't make the pieces fit together.

  “Do I need my lawyer?”

  “An interesting question. From our point of view, we’re taking a statement, following procedure. We noticed you only invoked your right to legal representation after you were assaulted and assumed you’d be happy to work with us as a neutral third party. Do you feel that you might incriminate yourself in some way?”

  Thorne sighed. No matter how much they pretended to be different, they were all the same. The presence of a lawyer always changed the mood music. He'd burned his bridges with Barnes because of the lawyer, he should try and keep the FBI sweet.

  “Fine. Ask your questions. I got nothing to hide.”

  Mancuso nodded and opened the smaller folder. He took from it a handful of eight by ten color photographs and lay four of them across the table in front of him. They were morgue pictures of Sam Porter, Taylor Lynch, Lucas Foster, and Ricky Martinez. He’d never met Martinez, and only knew his name thanks to media coverage of the shoot-out.

  “You recognize these men?”

  “I guess they’re the men I killed.”

  “You guess?”

  “They didn’t look like this last time I saw them.”

  Mancuso nodded again.

  “And do you recognize them?”

  “Is this an Abbott and Costello sketch?”

  The agent didn’t respond. Instead, he laid out another four photographs, on top of the previous set. Pictures of the men alive. This time around, Porter and Lynch were wearing desert pattern camouflage; Foster a motor pool jumpsuit. Martinez wore only baggy shorts down to his knees, while the rest of his body was covered in tattoos.

  “How about now?”

  “Right. Three Marines. Cabot said something about that to me before. Still, I don’t recognize them. Doesn’t mean I never met them, I just don’t remember. There are a lot of Marines and ex-Marines out there, we don’t all know each other.” He leaned forward and pointed at Foster. “This guy here? That’s not a face you’d forget, am I right?”

  Mancuso was watching him closely. They were testing him. He had never met Lynch and Foster before he’d walked into that bungalow in Culver City, but he’d known Porter since before he could shave. Could they prove that somehow?

  “Take a good look,” Corrigan said.

  Thorne sighed.

  “You already know who they are, it was in the news.”

  Mancuso spread his hands apart, a gesture of honesty.

  “We’re looking for the leader. Cabot thought it likely he was also a Marine and that’s how all these people were connected. We don’t disagree with this assessment. It was a long shot, but we hoped that if you recognized them you might be able to point us toward likely candidates for the leader or even remember who he is.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a huge coincidence?”

  “Ah, coincidence,” Corrigan said, wistfully. “You mean like a team of ex-Marines being stopped by another ex-Marine? These men served in the same locations as you, Thorne, in the same unit. I’m not sure coincidence quite covers this.”

  Thorne forced himself to stay silent for a moment to let his anger fade.

  “Look, I don’t recognize them. Nor did I recognize the two that got away. My memory isn’t the best, but I am good with faces. I never hung out with anyone from the motor pool, and this guy here looks like a goddamn pedophile. None of them were EOD, I know that much. There’s not a lot of mixing in the Corps, you stay with your own people. Ask Teece, I’m sure he served. The man’s got Ranger written all over his face.”

  At the back of the room he saw Teece smile.

  Mancuso turned to Corrigan and exchanged a look.

  “All right, Thorne, let’s go back to that day in the mall.”

  It was now over a month since the shoot-out and many of the details had become fuzzy. When Cabot had interviewed him, it was still fresh in his mind and he’d already gone through it once already with Barnes. He had also known Cabot was coming and had time to prepare.

  As he gave his account of the shoot-out, it came to him that he’d done nothing about his rental car. He’d forgotten all about it. The thought made him pause, and to hide it, he drank from the can of Coke. The Chinese-American deputy had fetched his backpack out the car’s trunk for him while he'd lain in hospital, but she'd returned the key, he was certain of it. He put the can back down on the table in front of him. Everything from the hospital had been brought back to the mansion and stuffed into the dresser drawers and the nightstand.

  But there’d been no key there after Cabot had made his visit.

  It gave him a sick feeling in his stomach.

  This was what Cabot had on him.

  He finished up his story in a mechanical manner. It was no longer something he’d experienced, as much as a scene from a movie he’d watched. He felt no emotion. He’d lived it once and it had lasted only a couple of minutes. But he’d seen the video many times and his own point of view was fading from his memory to be replaced by the security footage.

  Mancuso and Corrigan went over his account for a quarter of an hour before moving on to the death of the senator. He supposed they'd already seen a copy of Cabot's interview, not to mention the shoot-out video from the internet. On top of that, much of what he was telling them was already in the public domain, covered by rolling news updates. When you arrived this late to the party, there was no new juicy detail to get your teeth into, just cold coffee at the bottom of someone else’s mug.

  They spent close to an hour on the death of Ashcroft and his arrest and assault by Cabot. The questions were simple enough, designed to make him remember more detail, rather than establish his guilt or innocence. As during the shoot-out section, neither agent took any notes. He had the feeling that they were taking part in some kind of charade. They’d brought him in to make a statement and had asked no difficult questions at all. Perhaps, they didn’t suspect him of anything and were just, as Mancuso had said, following procedure. Finally, the two agents glanced at each other and nodded.

  “Mr Teece, cut the feed.”

  Teece reached out and turned off the camera. Thorne frowned. The word feed caught his attention. This wasn’t just a recording, they were transmitting it somewhere. Someone was watching. In the next room, or farther away? Mancuso leaned forward.

  “How would you characterize your relationship with Lauren Ashcroft?”

  “We’re friends. I guess quite close.”

  “Intimate?”

  “No.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “We went through something bad together, a bond forms. That’s it.”
>
  “At the funeral, you appeared to be much more than friends. She was holding your hand and hugging you almost the entire time. You looked like you’d done it before.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Funerals are the new Tinder.”

  Teece laughed.

  “I don’t know what that means, Mr Thorne.”

  “I know how it looked, okay? But she was falling apart. She loved her husband and she’s pretty isolated up here. I don’t think she has any friends of her own anymore, she left them all behind to be a senator’s wife. I was all she had.”

  “Still, with her husband out the way the two of you can do what you want.”

  Anger boiled over inside him and he didn’t bother to hide it.

  “You know what I am to her? I’m a reminder of the worst days in her life. If you think that’s an attractive proposition to a woman, then you don’t know much. I certainly did not kill James Ashcroft to be with her, he and I had become friends. The man gave me a Maserati.”

  Mancuso’s eyebrows shot up.

  “That’s quite a gift.” Mancuso began to tidy the desk in front of him, putting everything back in their folders. “In fact, we do not think you are responsible for the death of the senator. Lieutenant Cabot’s own dash cam footage clearly shows you in some kind of argument with another man, obviously this man you mention in your statement. Sadly the resolution and lighting is not good enough for a positive ID. I would also assume that a man of your skills would find an easier way of killing the senator than by shooting him through his windshield as he drove toward you.”

  Despite knowing he’d done nothing to the senator, it was nonetheless a relief to hear that the FBI didn’t consider him a suspect.