PMadriani 12.5 - The Second Man

by Steve Martini

  “There’s nothing false about the ID. It’s mine,” he said. “Here, you want to see the picture on it, I’ll show you.” He started to reach for his wallet.

  “Don’t bother. You know what I mean.”

  “Come on, let’s not sit here and argue.” Akers got out of the car and closed the door. He left Joselyn sitting in the passenger seat, fuming. Finally, she got out and followed him back toward the Hacienda.

  “How long are we going to stay here?” she asked.

  “Long as it takes,” said Akers. “Stick with me and we can probably get you some pictures of that bird out there. Just think, you bring those back to your precious foundation, they’ll probably give you a big gold star.”

  “And get indicted for espionage? No thanks,” she said. “I think I’ve seen all I need to see.”

  “What about the radar? You wanted to find out about that.”

  “If it’s up inside under a dome, I’ll never see it. And even if I did, I’d have no idea how it functions.”

  “So you want to cut and run, is that it?”

  “I need to get back to San Diego,” said Joselyn. The fact was that Akers’s conduct had begun to unnerve her.

  “Why, so you can go running back to Madriani?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “I just don’t think you’re ever gonna be happy there, that’s all.”

  “What would you know about it? You don’t know me, and you don’t know Paul.”

  “If you were happy with him, why did you come with me? And don’t tell me it was to go drone-watching.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Paramount evasion of the insecure,” said Akers “is to answer a question with a question.”

  To Joselyn, these words coming from Akers’s mouth seemed out of character. It sounded more like something he might have picked up in a therapy session. She was starting to get a picture in her mind, and it wasn’t pretty. Screaming in the night. The knife under the pillow. The abrupt fashion in which he pulled her away from the airfield the minute Henley mentioned rumors of a medical problem.

  Inside the Hacienda, Akers handed her the room key and told her to go on ahead up to the room. He would join her in a minute. There was something he needed to take care of.

  Joselyn turned and walked toward the stairs. She stopped a few feet away around a corner where he couldn’t see her and listened as Akers talked to the clerk behind the desk. “I have a friend staying here. His name is Henley, can you tell me which room he’s in?”

  “Mr. Henley is in one of the arcade rooms,” said the clerk. “I’m sorry, but it’s our policy not to give out room numbers. But you can reach him on the house phone in your room. Just give the operator his name.”

  “Thanks.”

  The words house phone hit Joselyn like a thunderbolt. She turned and ran quickly toward the stairs. She scrambled up them two at a time. Why, if he was trying to hide from the man, would he want Henley’s room number? She made a mental note that Henley was staying in the arcade. This must have been the area Akers referred to as the colonnade, a long, covered walkway bordered by guest rooms on one side and open, mission-style arches on the other. From what Joselyn had seen, there were two arcades, one in the back looking out on the gardens and the other facing the parking area out front.

  She was breathless by the time she got to the room. She used the key, opened the door, and quickly closed it behind her. Then she ran to the phone. It was on a table in the living room. There might be extensions in the bedrooms, but she didn’t have time to look. She picked up the receiver and pressed zero. The hotel operator came on the line.

  “How can I help you?”

  “How do I make a long-distance call?”

  “Would you like to bill it to your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can either dial it yourself or . . .”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Never mind.” said Joselyn. “I’ll place it later.” She hung up, then tried to collect herself, paused for a moment to catch her breath, then walked calmly toward the door and opened it.

  Akers came in and closed it behind him.

  “Did you get your business taken care of?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t take long,” she said.

  “I wanted to buy some gum, but they don’t have any,” he told her.

  “I think I have some in my purse. Would you like me to take a look?”

  “Don’t bother,” he told her. “The urge has passed. Maybe later.”

  “So what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I’ll give you three guesses,” he said. “The first two don’t count.”

  “I don’t want to just sit around and waste the whole day,” she said.

  “Sitting wasn’t what I had in mind,” he said. “I thought we’d just stay here and relax.”

  The gleam in his eye told her this was code for “let’s stick around so I can jump your bones.” The thought of having to fight him off here in the tower, where no one could hear her if she yelled out, didn’t seem a good tactical choice to Joselyn.

  “So what you’re saying is we can’t finish what we came here to do until Henley leaves, is that it?”

  “I can.” He winked at her, reached out, and put his hands around her waist. “But I don’t know about you.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve seen everything I came to see.”

  She smiled, looked away as if she were embarrassed. She hoped it sold, that he didn’t feel her trembling. “You did a great job. I got up close, took a good look. I mean, it’s true I didn’t get information on technical specs. But I never thought I would. The fact is, you’ve been a big help. We’ll do it again sometime. I couldn’t have gotten near it without you. You really are sweet. Some lady is very lucky to have you.”

  The second she looked him in the eye, Joselyn knew it was one lie too many. He dropped his hand from her waist and stepped back. The smile faded from his lips.

  “Calm down,” he told her. “You don’t need to be scared. You think I’m gonna hurt you?”

  “No!” Her voice went up three octaves. “That’s not what I was thinking at all.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. It’s just that I have things to take care of back at the office. I only took off two days. I know I should have told you. I thought we’d be going back tonight. If I don’t show up for work in the morning, people at the foundation are going to wonder where I am.” Joselyn figured if he could lie, so could she. But he did it better, and they both knew it. She wanted desperately to get ahold of Paul. Tell him where she was and have him call the base so the MPs would come and get her.

  “Why don’t you call your office? Tell them you’re gonna be another day or two,” said Akers.

  “I thought about it, but my phone’s not working. There’s no signal.”

  “Really?” Akers pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “You know, you’re right. I’m not getting anything either. That’s strange. The last time I was here, I had no problem at all. Maybe they’re working on the towers. Why don’t you just go ahead and use the landline?” He gestured toward the phone on the table.

  “Maybe I will,” she said. “Later.” She sensed that any signal for help would set him off. “I was thinking maybe we could go over to the mission, so I could take my camera and get some pictures. You said earlier . . .”

  “No. That’s not possible,” he said. “Henley might see us driving around.” As he spoke, he was busy in the kitchen, pouring a bottle of sparkling water into two glasses. He turned and handed a glass to her. “Here; the water in this place tastes like crap,” said Akers.

  The astringent soda water tasted good. It quenched her thirst.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “But I don’t really want to sit around here all day with nothing to do. Maybe we could take the car and head off base. If we’re not here, he can’t see us.
”

  “Where do you want go?”

  “I don’t know.” She certainly didn’t want to go with him for a ride in the country. She was looking for anyplace where there were people, where she might lose herself in a crowd or find help. “I know,” she said. “Maybe we could go to San Simeon. See the castle. I’ve never been there. And it can’t be that far.”

  “You know, you’re starting to sound like my wife.”

  “How’s that?” she said.

  “Anything to get away from me.”

  “No, that’s not what I was thinking at all.”

  “You look tired,” he said. “I think maybe you should go lie down. Take a nap.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Do it anyway!” The way he said it, the tone in his voice and the look in his eye, made it clear this wasn’t a suggestion.

  “Maybe you’re right.” Joselyn turned and picked up her overnight bag, which was still on the floor in the outer room. She thought for a moment, and said: “Do you mind if I check out the rooms?”

  “Help yourself.”

  She was trying to maintain civility, to keep it on a human plane, and if necessary, even to keep him interested. Anything to get away. Instinct told her that once things ruptured irredeemably, there was no telling what he might do.

  She headed for one of the bedrooms. She stepped inside, looked around, saw what she wanted, then sat on the bed as if she were testing the mattress.

  Akers glanced at her a couple of times through the open door, a sullen expression on his face.

  She leaned toward the head of the bed and looked behind the door to see if there was a lock on the inside. There wasn’t.

  She crossed the living room and did a tour of the bedroom on the other side. It was the same. Both rooms had the same amenities. Neither one of them had a door that locked. But both of them had extension telephones on the bedside tables. Joselyn leaned through the open door of the second room, smiled broadly at Akers, and said: “I think I’ll take this one if you don’t mind.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Do you have a preference?” she asked.

  “Would it matter?”

  “Of course it would. If you prefer this room I’ll take the other, it’s fine.”

  “You decide,” he said. “You seem to know everything else.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was argue with him. His mood was impossible to gauge. One minute he was euphoric, hopelessly in love, the next he was petulant, irritable, and sulking.

  “Later, I’ll cook dinner if you like.”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  She stepped back inside and closed the bedroom door behind her.

  She walked straight to the ladder-back chair against the wall. It was solid oak and heavy. Joselyn carried it to the door, and, trying not to make a sound, she propped the back of the chair under the brass doorknob.

  She stepped to the side of the bed and started to reach for the phone. Then she stopped and thought for a moment. Given his level of paranoia, Akers might be testing her, listening in on the phone in the other room.

  Slowly, as if she was defusing a bomb, Joselyn carefully lifted the receiver, replacing its weight with her finger on the button in the center of the cradle. She held the button down, raised the receiver to her ear, then slowly lifted her finger as she listened. She strained to hear any sound of Akers breathing on the line. Instead, there was stone-dead silence, nothing, no sound at all.

  She reached down and pressed zero on the phone. The line was dead. She dropped the receiver on the bed and lifted the phone from the table. There, underneath it, lay the severed end of the telephone line. The tiny plastic jack in the back of the phone was missing.

  Akers had cut the line and removed the jack so there was no way to fix it. Then she remembered. When they first arrived in the room he had tested both of the beds. When he finally came out, he was cleaning his nails with one of those small, folding, tactical knives, the kind with razor-sharp blades and a box cutter.

  Suddenly, she was exhausted. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. The stress, the tension was catching up with her. Maybe if she relaxed, lay down for just a few minutes, she could think more clearly. She settled onto the bed and put her head down on the pillow. The next thing she knew she was out.

  AKERS FOLDED THE knife and put it back in his pocket. He didn’t bother to hide the severed wire from the phone in the living room. Instead, he just let it fall to the floor. He knew that by now she would have discovered the one in the bedroom.

  He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a small, black plastic box. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It was a pocket-sized portable electronic jammer. Used to jam radio signals across a broadband, it would block cell phone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth signals for anything within a hundred meters. The military used them on missions where it was critical to shut down local cell communication in case the air cover failed to take out fixed infrastructure.

  He checked to make sure the jammer was on and the batteries fresh. Then he dropped it into the center drawer of a table in the living room and closed the drawer. From there, it would block any cell signal in the suite, just in case she tried to use her phone again.

  Chapter 17

  HARRY WONDERED IF they had cleared the mountains and, if so, whether he could reach Herman on his cell phone. But as he thought about it, he figured, why bother? There was nothing they could do from way up there.

  The call for Paul from the woman named Boggs was probably nothing. At least Harry hoped that was the case.

  Boggs sounded like a busybody pain in the ass. When she told him about the dog, Harry told her to call the pound. She yelled at him over the phone and accused him of being insensitive. To Harry, insensitivity was part of his DNA. It was like calling Aristotle a Greek.

  She told him about the pooch and the dirty laundry, the fact that Akers had a dangerous job, that his life had been threatened, and that the family, the wife and two kids, hadn’t been seen in three days now. She told him that she knew Allyson Akers as well as she knew her own daughter, and that to go off like that without so much as a phone call was not like her. Intuition told her that something was wrong.

  No single item on her list of worries and clues made a dent on Harry. He was about to tell her to take two aspirin for her intuition and call him in the morning. He might have hung up on her except for one thing—what Boggs told him about the dog.

  She explained that she had fed and watered the animal. The poor creature looked as if it hadn’t eaten in days. What she told him next was what caught Harry’s attention. After Gypsy finished eating, it wandered around the kitchen aimlessly for some time. Periodically, it scratched at the back door. Every once in a while, it would go to the front door and do the same thing there.

  Boggs told Harry that she had taken care of the dog on several occasions before when Allyson and the kids were away, and that Gypsy had never acted like this.

  Given the food the dog had consumed, Boggs figured the animal needed to relieve itself. So she opened the back door, following it out into her yard to keep an eye on it. She told Harry that’s when it happened.

  The dog darted through a small hole at the corner of her fence, and from there across Allyson Akers’s backyard. In the flash of an eye, it dove through the doggie door at the back of Akers’s house and disappeared inside.

  Boggs hadn’t seen the animal since. No matter what she did, she was unable to entice the dog back to the door. Gypsy was inside the house somewhere, but Boggs couldn’t see her.

  Harry might have dismissed it and told her that when the dog gets hungry, it’ll come back. But he didn’t because he had seen this before.

  BY THE TIME Harry pulled up in front of the house, Joanna Boggs was already standing on her front lawn, wringing her hands and waiting for him.

  “I thought you’d never get here.”

  “Came as fast as I could,” said Harry. “Any sign of the dog?”

  S
he shook her head.

  “Is it making any noise? Barking?”

  “No. Not that I can hear.”

  “Let’s take a look,” said Harry.

  Boggs led the way. They went up the driveway along the side of the garage, through the gate and into the yard. She showed him the doggie door.

  “Do you want me to call her again?” she asked. “I mean I don’t mind calling her.”

  “Even if she comes, I doubt she’s gonna be able to tell us much,” said Harry. “It’s not the dog I’m worried about.”

  “Oh God!” Boggs backed up a couple of steps and put the fingers of both hands to her mouth. “Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have called you.”

  “Too late now,” said Harry.

  “What can I do?”

  “Can you get me a kitchen knife?”

  “Do you want something really sharp?”

  “Normal tableware will do,” he told her.

  A couple of minutes later, she was back with a single stainless-steel knife. The edge on the blade was as dull as a spoon.

  “Anything else?”

  “No. Just stay here. Keep an eye in case they happen to come back, or somebody else comes to the house. Tell them who I am. And please not to shoot me.” Harry took off his jacket and tie and handed them to her. “Here, you can hang on to these.”

  “Sure.”

  He undid the top button on his shirt, climbed the couple of steps to the back door, and looked through the glass panel on the top. It would have been easy to break it, reach inside, and open the door, but Harry figured it might be better if he only committed half of the crime of “breaking and entering.”

  He pressed his face to the glass, looking to see if there was a safety chain. There wasn’t. Thank God for little favors, he told himself.

  He got down on one knee. He pushed the flap of the dog door through to the inside, then looked through the opening. He could see past the service porch and into the kitchen. He saw nothing unusual.

  He wished the dog had been bigger, in which case the opening would have been larger. But it wasn’t.