Split Second

by David Baldacci

  told us.”

  “Well, if he didn’t tell you about coming to see me at the school that day, maybe he didn’t tell you about him and my mother.”

  King stared at her. “What about them?”

  “Before she died she and Thornton were seeing each other.”

  “Seeing each other?” asked King. “But you said your mother loved your father.”

  “By then Arnold had been dead almost seven years. Thornton and my mother’s friendship had endured and had turned into something else.”

  “Something else? Like what?” he asked.

  “Like they were getting married.”

  CHAPTER

  52

  MICHELLE HAD GOTTEN only halfway through the Bob Scott file when she received the call from Kate. Since Michelle obviously wouldn’t be getting back to it for a while, Joan had taken the box with her to the inn where she was staying and continued to go through it. After her last conversation with King, she needed something to take her mind off that very painful encounter.

  When she opened the box and started sifting through its contents, she realized that Parks hadn’t been joking: it was a mess. However, she dutifully turned every page, reading each document until it became clear it was not the right Bob Scott. After a couple of hours she called room service for a snack and a pot of coffee. She was going to be here a while, and she had no idea when King and Maxwell would be returning. She started to phone King but then decided against it.

  She was nearing the bottom of the box when her scrutiny intensified. She pulled out the sheaf of papers and spread them out on her bed. They appeared to be a warrant for the arrest of one Robert C. Scott. The address where the warrant was to be served was in Tennessee somewhere, although Joan didn’t recognize the town’s name. From what she could tell, it had to do with a weapons charge. This Bob Scott had some guns he shouldn’t have. Whether it was the Bob Scott she was looking for or not, she couldn’t tell yet. However, the Bob Scott she knew had loved his guns.

  As she read further, it became even more intriguing. The Marshals Service had been engaged, as they often were, to serve the warrant on behalf of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or ATF. That was probably why Parks had been able to get his hands on this document. Bob Scott might have ties to this current case, but it would have to be from the Ritter angle. And yet they had all speculated that Bruno and Ritter might be connected somehow. They had the murders of Loretta Baldwin and Mildred Martin to show that connection. And yet how could such two very different cases involve all the same parties? What was the common denominator? What! It was driving her mad that the answer might be staring them all in the face and they still couldn’t see it.

  Her cell phone rang. It was Parks.

  “Where are you now?” he asked.

  “I’m at the Cedars. I’ve been going over that box you left. And I think I might have hit on something.” She told him about the warrant.

  “Damn, was it served on Scott?”

  “I don’t know. Presumably not, since if he’d been arrested, it would have shown up somewhere and we’d know about it.”

  “If the guy’s got warrants issued against him for gun violations, maybe he’s the wacko behind all this.”

  “But how do we tie him to everything? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Agreed,” he said wearily. “Where are King and Maxwell?”

  “They went to talk to Kate Ramsey. She called and said she had some more information for them. They were meeting in Charlottesville.”

  “Well, if her father wasn’t working alone, the guy she overheard might have been Bob Scott. He would have been in the perfect inside place to set up the hit. A Trojan horse if ever there was one.”

  “How do you want to proceed on what I discovered?”

  “I say we take a bunch of guys and go check it out. Nice find, Joan. Maybe you’re as good as everybody says you are.”

  “Actually, Marshal, I’m better.”

  As soon as Joan hung up, she jumped as though she’d been electrocuted. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed, staring at her phone. “It can’t be.” She said the next two words very slowly. “Trojan horse.”

  There was a knock at the door. She opened it, and the attendant carried the tray.

  “Over here okay, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” said Joan absently. Her mind was truly whirling over this new development. “That’s fine.”

  “Would you like me to pour out the coffee?”

  “No, that’s fine.” She signed the check and turned away. “Thank you.”

  Joan was about to make a phone call when she felt the presence behind her. She turned, but didn’t even have time to cry out before everything went dark. The young woman stood over Joan, who now lay on the floor. Tasha bent down and went to work.

  CHAPTER

  53

  IT WAS LATE at night when King and Michelle arrived at Atticus College. The building housing Thornton Jorst’s office was locked. At the administration building Michelle persuaded a young intern on duty there to give her Jorst’s home address. It was about a mile off campus on a tree-shaded avenue of brick homes, where a number of other professors lived. There was no car in Jorst’s driveway as King pulled his Lexus to the curb, and no lights were on. They went up the drive to the front door and knocked, but no one answered. They looked around at the small backyard, but that was empty too.

  “I can’t believe it, but Jorst must have been at the Fairmount Hotel when Ritter was killed,” said Michelle. “There’s no other explanation unless somebody called him from the hotel and told him what had happened.”

  “Well, we’ll ask him that. But if he was there, he must have hightailed it out before the area was sealed off. That’s the only way he could have gotten to Regina and Kate with the news that fast.”

  “Think he’ll admit being at the hotel?”

  “I guess we’ll find out, because I intend on asking him. And I’d also like to ask about Regina Ramsey.”

  “You’d think he would have mentioned they were talking marriage when we first spoke to him.”

  “Not if he didn’t want us to know. Which makes me even more suspicious.” King looked at Michelle. “Are you armed?”

  “Guns and creds, the whole power pack, why?”

  “Just checking. I wonder if people lock their doors around here?”

  “You’re not thinking of going in? That’s breaking and entering in the nighttime.”

  “Not if you don’t break when you enter,” he said.

  “Oh, really? Where’d you get your law degree? The University of Stupid?”

  “All I’m saying is, it would be nice to have a peek with Jorst not around.”

  “But he might be. He might be in there sleeping. Or he might come back while we’re inside.”

  “Not we, just me. You’re a sworn law enforcement officer.”

  “You’re a member of the bar. Technically that makes you an officer of the court.”

  “Yeah, but us lawyers can always get around technicalities. It’s our specialty, or don’t you watch TV?” He went back to his car and got a flashlight. When he rejoined Michelle, she grabbed his arm. “Sean, this is crazy. What if a neighbor sees you and calls the cops?”

  “Then we tell them we thought we heard someone calling out for help.”

  “That is so unbelievably lame.”

  King had already eased over to the back door and tried the knob. “Damn.”

  Michelle breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s locked? Thank God!”

  King swung the door open with a mischievous look. “Just kidding. I’ll only be a minute. Keep a sharp lookout.”

  “Sean, don’t—”

  He slipped inside before she could finish. Michelle started wandering around, hands in her pockets, trying to look like she hadn’t a care in the world while the acid ate away the lining of her stomach. She even attempted to whistle, but found she couldn’t because her lips were too dry from her sudden anxiety attack.
/>
  “Damn you, Sean King,” she muttered.

  Inside, King found himself in the kitchen. As he swung his light around, the room was revealed as small and looked unused. Jorst seemed more of an eat-out kind of guy. He moved through to a living room that was very plainly furnished and neat. Bookcases lined the room and were, not surprisingly, full of tomes by Goethe, Francis Bacon, John Locke and the perennially popular Machiavelli.

  Jorst’s home office was off the living room, and this space was more reflective of the man. The desk was piled high with books and papers, the floor cluttered, the small leather sofa similarly stacked with objects. The place smelled strongly of both cigarette and cigar smoke, and King noted an ashtray on the floor that was filled with butts. The walls were covered with cheap bookshelves, and they sagged under the weight of the books resting there. King poked around the desk, opened drawers and looked for secret hiding places yet found nothing of the sort. He doubted that if he pulled out one of the books a hidden passageway would be revealed, but he dutifully slipped out a couple of volumes just in case. Nothing happened.

  Jorst was working on a book, he’d said, and the condition of his study seemed to confirm this, since notes, drafts and outlines were piled everywhere. Organization was evidently not the man’s strong suit, and King looked around in disgust at the mess. He couldn’t live ten minutes like this, although in his youth his apartment had looked even worse. At least he’d grown out of his pigsty; Jorst apparently never had. King fleetingly contemplated inviting Michelle in so she could get a quick hit of clutter. It would probably make her feel better.

  Digging under the piles on the desk, he found an appointment book, but it was singularly uninformative. He next moved upstairs. There were two bedrooms there, and only one was ostensibly in use. Here Jorst was neater. His clothes were arranged nicely in his small closet, his shoes stacked on a cedar rack. King looked under the bed and was greeted only by dust balls. The adjoining bathroom revealed only a damp towel on the floor and some toiletries stacked on the sink. He went across to the other bedroom, obviously a guest room. There was a small adjoining bath here too, but there were no towels or toiletries. There was a shelf against one wall that held no books, but did have some photos on it. He shined the light on them one by one. They were of Jorst with various people, none of whom King recognized until he looked at the last face.

  The voice calling from below startled him. “Sean, get your butt down here. Jorst is back.”

  He looked out the window in time to see Jorst pulling his massive old car into the driveway. He turned off the light, put the photo in his pocket and carefully but quickly made his way down the steps and back toward the kitchen where Michelle was waiting. They exited via the back door, came around the side of the house, waited for Jorst to go inside and then knocked on the front door.

  The professor came to the door, flinched when he saw them and cast a suspicious glance over their shoulders. “Is that your Lexus at the curb?” King nodded. “I didn’t see anyone in it when I passed by. And I didn’t see either of you on the sidewalk.”

  “Well, I was stretched out in the backseat waiting for you to come home,” said King. “And Michelle had gone to one of your neighbors’ homes to see if they knew when you’d be back.”

  Jorst didn’t look like he believed the story, but he ushered them in, and they settled in the living room.

  “So you talked to Kate?” he asked.

  “Yeah, she said you gave her the heads-up about us.”

  “Did you expect that I wouldn’t?”

  “I’m sure you two are very close.”

  Jorst stared intently at King. “She was a colleague’s daughter, and then she was a student of mine. Implying anything else would be a mistake.”

  “Well, considering that you and her mother were talking about getting married, you’d at least be her stepfather,” said King. “And here we didn’t even know you were dating.”

  Jorst looked very uncomfortable. “And why should you, since it’s none of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m rather busy.”

  “Right, the book you’re writing. What’s it about, by the way?”

  “You’re interested in political science, Mr. King?”

  “I’m interested in lots of things.”

  “I see. Well, if you have to know, it’s a study of voting patterns in the South, post–World War II to the present, and their impact on national elections. My theory is that the South today is no longer the ‘Old South.’ That, in fact, it’s one of the most heterogeneous, teeming pools of immigrants this country has seen since the turn of the last century. I won’t say that it’s quite yet a bastion of liberalism or even radical thought, but it’s not the South depicted in Gone with the Wind, or even in To Kill a Mockingbird. In fact, the fastest-growing population element in Georgia right now is Middle Eastern.”

  “I can see how the Hindus and Muslims coexisting with the bubbas and the Baptists must be fascinating,” opined King.

  “That’s good,” said Jorst. “Bubbas and Baptists. Mind if I use that line for one of my chapter headings?”

  “Feel free. You didn’t know the Ramseys before Atticus, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. Arnold Ramsey was at Atticus about two years before I arrived. I’d been a professor at a college in Kentucky before coming here.”

  “When I said the Ramseys, I meant both Arnold and Regina.”

  “My answer is the same. I didn’t know either until I came here. Why, did Kate say otherwise?”

  “No,” Michelle said quickly. “She did tell us that her mother was good friends with you.”

  “They both were friends of mine. I think Regina saw me as a hopeless bachelor and took it upon herself to make me feel welcome and comfortable. She was a truly remarkable woman. She worked with the drama class at the college and even performed in some of the productions. She was an astonishing actress, she really was. I’d heard Arnold talk about her talents, especially when she was younger, and assumed he was merely exaggerating. But when you saw her up there onstage, she was mesmerizing. And she was as kind and as good as she was talented. She was loved by many people.”

  “I’m sure she was,” said King. “And after Arnold died, the two of you—”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Jorst interrupted. “Arnold had been dead a very long time before we started seeing each other as anything more than friends.”

  “And it got to the point where you were talking marriage.”

  “I’d proposed and she’d accepted,” he said coldly.

  “And then she died?”

  Jorst’s features became pained. “Yes.”

  “In fact, she committed suicide?”

  “So they say.”

  Michelle said quickly, “You don’t think so?”

  “She was happy. She’d accepted my proposal of marriage. Now, I don’t think I’m vain in saying that it seems pretty far-fetched that the thought of being married to me would have driven her to suicide.”

  “So you’re thinking she was murdered?”

  “You tell me!” he snapped. “You’re the ones running around investigating. You figure it out. That’s not my area of expertise.”

  “How did Kate take the news of your upcoming nuptials?”

  “All right. She loved her father. She liked me. She knew I wasn’t looking to replace him. I truly believe she wanted her mother to be happy.”

  “Were you a Vietnam War protester?”

  Jorst seemed to take this abrupt change in direction smoothly. “Yes, along with millions of other people.”

  “In California ever?”

  “Where exactly is this all going?”

  King said, “What would you say if we told you a man came to visit Arnold Ramsey for the purpose of enlisting his aid in killing Clyde Ritter and that this person mentioned your name?”

  Jorst looked at him coolly. “I’d say whoever told you that was seriously mistaken. But then again, if it’s true, I can’t control ot
her people using my name in conversation, can I?”

  “Fair enough. Do you believe that Arnold Ramsey acted alone?”

  “Until I’m presented with credible evidence to the contrary.”

  “By all accounts he wasn’t a violent man, yet he performed the most violent act of all, murder.”

  Jorst shrugged. “Who knows what beats deeply within the hearts of people?”

  “That’s true. And Arnold Ramsey was involved in some serious protests in his youth. Perhaps one of which led to someone’s violent death.”

  Jorst looked at him sharply. “What are you talking about?”