by Sandra Brown
“Nix. The Bookkeeper has informers in every police department, sheriff’s office, city hall, and courthouse. Every-freaking-body is on the take.”
“You’re saying you think VanAllen—”
“I’m saying give me forty-eight hours.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“All right, thirty-six.”
“What for?”
Coburn focused more sharply on Honor. “I’m on to something that could blow the top off.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“You pick.”
“Shit.”
Honor could sense Hamilton’s frustration. Through the phone, she heard him blow out another gust of breath.
Finally he said, “This something involves Mrs. Gillette, doesn’t it?”
Coburn said nothing.
“I’m not a rookie either, Coburn,” Hamilton said. “You don’t really expect me to believe that you chose her house, out of all the houses in coastal Louisiana, to hide in, and that while you were there, you just up and decided to ransack the place. You can’t expect me to believe that without some über-strong motivating factor she came with you of her own free will after watching you fatally shoot a family friend in her living room.
“And you certainly can’t expect me to believe that you, of all people, have taken a widow and child under your wing out of the goodness of your heart, when it has come under debate many times whether or not you even possess a heart.”
“Aw now, that really hurts my feelings.”
“I know Mrs. Gillette’s late husband was a police officer. I know that the recently deceased Fred Hawkins was his best friend. Now, call me crazy, but the coincidence of that has got my gut instinct churning, and even on an off day, it’s usually pretty damn reliable.”
Coburn dropped the sarcasm. “You’re not crazy.”
“Okay. What’s she got?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she know who The Bookkeeper is?”
“She says no.”
“Do you believe her?”
Coburn stared hard at her. “Yeah.”
“Then what’s she sitting on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop jerking me around, Coburn.”
“I’m not.”
Hamilton swore under his breath. “Fine, don’t tell me. When you’re back in Washington, we’ll discuss your insubordination in addition to the long list of offenses that you—”
“You’re using scare tactics now? Go ahead, kick me out of your stinking bureau. See if I give a fuck.”
Hamilton added even more heat to his voice. “I’ll supply VanAllen with whatever it takes to find you and bring you in, by force if necessary, for the safety of the woman and child.”
Coburn’s jaw turned to iron. “Hamilton, you do that, and they’ll likely die. Soon.”
“Look, I know VanAllen. I appointed him myself. I grant you, he’s no dynamo, but—”
“Then what is he?”
“A bureaucrat.”
“That’s a given. What’s he like?”
“Mild-mannered. Beleaguered, even. His personal life is shit. He’s got a special needs son, a tragic case who ought to be in a perpetual care home but isn’t.”
“How come?”
“Tom doesn’t discuss it. If I were guessing, I’d say the expense makes it out of the question.”
Again Coburn pulled that thoughtful frown that Honor was beginning to recognize. “Give me forty-eight hours. During that time, you check out VanAllen. If you can convince me that he’s honest, I’ll come in. With luck, I’ll have got the goods on The Bookkeeper by then.”
“In the meantime, what are you going to do with Mrs. Gillette and the child?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me talk to her again.”
Coburn handed the phone to her.
“I’m here, Mr. Hamilton.”
“Mrs. Gillette. Have you been following our conversation?”
“Yes.”
“I apologize for some of the language.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What’s your take?”
“On what?”
“On everything that’s been discussed.”
“Is Lee Coburn his real name?”
He seemed taken aback by the question. It was several seconds before he replied in the affirmative, but she wasn’t entirely convinced of his truthfulness.
“Why did the woman in your office say that he was dead?”
“She was under my orders to. For Coburn’s protection.”
“Explain that, please.”
“He’s been in a very precarious situation down there. I couldn’t risk someone coming to suspect him of being an agent and calling an FBI office and weaseling out verification of it. So I put it through the bureau pipeline that he’d been killed while on assignment. It’s even in his service records in case a hacker gets into our system.”
“You’re the only person who knows he’s alive?”
“Me and my assistant who answered the phone.”
“And now me.”
“That’s right.”
“So if something happened to Coburn, any information that he’d passed along to me regarding Sam Marset and The Bookkeeper, or anything that I’d picked up inadvertently, would be extremely valuable to the FBI and the Justice Department.”
He answered with reluctance. “Yes. And Coburn is willing to place your life in jeopardy in order to safeguard that information. Tell me the truth. What have you got? What’s Coburn after?”
“Even I don’t know, Mr. Hamilton.”
She figured that he was questioning her veracity during the long silence that followed.
Then he asked, “Are you saying any of this under duress?”
“No.”
“Then help me get other agents to you. They’ll come in and pick up you and your daughter. You don’t have to fear any reprisal from Coburn. He won’t hurt you. I’d stake my career on that. But you need to be brought in so I can protect you. Tell me where you are.”
She held Coburn’s gaze for several long moments while her common sense waged war with something deeper, something elemental that she couldn’t even put a name to. It tugged at her to abandon her innate caution, to stop playing it safe, to forsake what she knew and to go with what she felt. The feeling was powerful enough to make her fear it. She feared it even more than she feared the man looking back at her with fierce blue eyes.
She went with it anyway.
“Didn’t you hear what Coburn told you, Mr. Hamilton? If you send other agents in after us now, you’ll never get The Bookkeeper.” Before Hamilton could respond, she returned the phone to Coburn.
He took it from her and said, “Too bad, Hamilton. No sale.”
“Have you brainwashed her?”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“Waterboarded?”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“Jesus Christ. At least give me a phone number.”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“All right, goddammit! I’ll give you thirty-six. Thirty-six, and that’s—”
Coburn disconnected and dropped the phone onto the bunk, then asked Honor, “Do you think this tub will float?”
Chapter 23
When Tom got home, Janice was deep into a word game on her cell phone. She didn’t even know he was there until he moved up behind her and spoke her name, then she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Tom! Don’t do that!”
“Sorry I startled you. I thought you would have heard me come in.”
He tried but failed to keep his bitterness from showing. She was playing word games with someone she’d never met who lived on the other side of the world. His world was crumbling. It seemed to him an unfair imbalance. After all, everything he did, he did to try and win her approval, to elevate her regard of him, to make their godawful life a little better.
The boy’s eyes were closed. Tom wondered if they simply hadn’t reopened after blinking, or if Lanny was actually sleeping. Did he dream? If so, what did he dream about? It was masochistic to ask himself these questions. He would never have answers to them.
He continued to stare down at the motionless boy and recollected something that had happened shortly after Lanny’s birth, when he and Janice were still trying to come to terms with the extent of his limitations and how they would impact their future. A Catholic priest had called on them. He came to comfort and console, but his platitudes about God’s will had upset and angered them. Within five minutes of his arrival, Tom had showed him to the door.
But the cleric had said one thing that had stuck with Tom. He’d said that some believed impaired individuals like Lanny had a direct line to God’s mind and heart, that although they couldn’t communicate with us here on earth, they communed constantly with the Almighty and his angels. Surely it was another banality that the priest had taken from a how-to-minister-to-the-flock manual. But sometimes Tom wanted desperately to believe it.
Now he bent down and kissed Lanny’s forehead. “Put in a good word for me.”
When he entered the kitchen, Janice, who had prepared a meal for him, served the plate at the single place setting on the table, saying apologetically, “I didn’t know when you’d be home, or if you would be, so I didn’t cook.”
“This is fine.” He sat down at the table and spread the napkin over his lap. Although the shrimp salad, buttered French bread, and sliced melon had been artfully arranged on the plate, he had no appetite.
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got to go back to the office for a while. I should be there if something breaks.”
Janice sat down in the chair across from him. “You look done in.”
“I feel done in.”
“Nothing new on the kidnapping?”
“Nothing, and everyone including the dogcatcher is out looking for them. Or their bodies.”
Janice crossed her arms over her middle and hugged herself. “Don’t even say it.”
He placed his elbow on the table and leaned his head into his hand, rubbing his eye sockets with his fingers. Janice reached across the table and covered the hand resting beside his water glass.
“I don’t think he’ll kill them, Tom.”
“Then why did he take them?”
“Ransom?”
“No call. We’re monitoring the father-in-law’s home phone. He’s had a lot of concern calls from acquaintances, but nothing else. Same on his cell phone.” He picked up his fork and thoughtfully tapped it against the rim of his plate, but he didn’t take a bite of food. “I don’t think this is about ransom.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Coburn doesn’t fit the profile of a guy who shoots up his place of employment, or an office, or a school.”
“How so?”
Realizing he wouldn’t be eating, he set down his fork and tried to organize the thoughts that had been bouncing around inside his head. “Typically those guys are making a final and defiant stand against the dirty, rotten world and everybody in it who’s wronged them. By golly, they’re going to make a statement that will have a memorable impact, then go out in a blaze of glory.
“When they don’t commit suicide at the scene, they usually go home, kill their wife and kids, their parents, their in-laws, whoever, then kill themselves.” He lowered his hands and looked at Janice. “They may hold some hostages for a while before either killing them or releasing them. But they typically don’t disappear with them.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but…” She gave a small shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Tom. I don’t know how to respond because I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“What I’m getting at is that Lee Coburn isn’t your textbook mass murderer.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Of course there are exceptions, but he doesn’t fit the accepted profile.” He hesitated, then added, “Even Hamilton picked up on it.”
“Clint Hamilton? I thought he was in Washington now.”
“He is. But he called me today, wanted to know what the hell is going on down here and what I’m doing about it.”
Janice made a small sound of dismay. “He was checking up on you?”
“Essentially.”
“He’s got his nerve.” She pushed back her chair and indicated his untouched plate. “Are you going to eat that?”
“Sorry, no. It looks good, but…” He ended on a helpless shrug.
She carried his plate to the counter, cursing his predecessor under her breath. “If he didn’t think you were up to handling the job, why did he appoint you to the position?”
What Tom believed to be the answer to that was too humiliating to speak aloud, especially to Janice. She abhorred defeatism. She particularly abhorred it in her husband.
He said, “I don’t know where Hamilton got his information, probably from other agents in the office, but he must have noticed the same discrepancies in Coburn’s M.O. that I did. He even asked me if Coburn was an agent from my office working undercover at the trucking company.”
She sputtered a laugh, then sobered so quickly it was comical. “Was he?”
Tom gave her a crooked smile. “No. At least I didn’t place him there.” His smile slipped. “Someone in New Orleans who outranked me could have, I suppose. Or someone from another agency.”
“Without informing you?”
He merely shrugged, again not wanting to admit that he was inconsequential. Or at least was regarded so by coworkers.
She rejoined him at the table. “Hamilton has no right to interfere. Of course the man has an outrageous ego.”
“You’ve never even met him.”
“Based on everything you’ve told me about him, I doubt he could get his head through that door. It makes me mad as hell that he’s monitoring you.”
He decided against telling her that he wasn’t the only one in his office who had heard from Hamilton today. Many agents had disapproved of his appointment and had made no secret of it. But there were some who, either by word or general attitude, had demonstrated their support.
One of those agents, a data analyst, had confided in him today that others in the office had received calls from Hamilton. “For some reason,” she’d told Tom behind closed doors, “this case has showed up on Hamilton’s radar. He’s following it closely and asking questions about you.”
“What kind of questions?”
She had held up her hands, palms out. “I won’t get involved in office politics, Tom. I need this job. But I thought you should know that you’re being scrutinized.”
Tom had thanked her. For the rest of the day, he sensed whispering behind his back. Which may only have been his paranoia, but he didn’t think so. He resented Hamilton’s intrusion. Whatever the reason for it, it was insulting and worrisome.
He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’d better get back.”
He left the kitchen before the troubling conversation could continue. He washed up in the powder room and retrieved his briefcase from the den. Janice met him at the back door with a sack lunch. “Emergency relief in case you need it. Peanut butter crackers and an apple.”
“Thanks.”
She didn’t kiss him this time, and he didn’t kiss her. But before he could turn away, she placed her hand on his arm. “You’re doing a good job, Tom. Don’t let Hamilton or anyone else browbeat you into thinking otherwise.”
He gave her a weak smile. “I won’t. The hell of it is, Hamilton’s right.”
“In what way?”
“Any fool fo
llowing this case would realize that it’s no ordinary kidnapping. In all likelihood, Mrs. Gillette witnessed Coburn shooting Fred Hawkins. Murderers don’t leave eyewitnesses. Coburn has a reason for keeping her alive.”
Chapter 24
Doral paid a dutiful visit to his mama.
As expected, she was prostrate with grief. Female relatives hovered around her, pressing her hands and applying damp cloths to her forehead. Rosary beads clacked as they prayed for Fred’s soul and petitioned for comfort for the loved ones he’d left behind.
There was no more room in the kitchen for all the food that had been brought by friends, family, and neighbors. The air-conditioning fought a losing battle against an approaching storm, which had lowered the barometric pressure and raised the humidity.
The male faction, to escape the drama inside the house, carried their overloaded plates out into the yard. They sat in lawn chairs, stroking the rifles and shotguns that lay across their laps, which was as second nature to them as scratching the ears of their hunting dogs. They passed around bottles of cheap whiskey and, in low voices, plotted revenge against Fred’s killer.
“He’d better hope the law catches up to him before I do,” said one uncle, a mean son of a bitch who’d lost an eye in Vietnam but could still outshoot most anybody, except possibly Doral.
“By this time tomorrow, I’ll have this Coburn’s balls in a Mason jar. See if I don’t,” vowed one cousin who was below the legal drinking age but was so drunk he was nearly falling off the tree stump on which he sat.
One of Doral’s younger brothers yelled at his rowdy kids, who were chasing each other in the yard. “Show some fucking respect!” he shouted, then pledged not to rest until Coburn was dead. “I don’t take kindly to people messin’ with our fam’ly.”
As soon as they’d eaten their fill and drunk the bottles dry, they piled into pickup trucks and set out to assigned territories to resume the search for their kinsman’s killer.
Doral said goodbye to his weeping mother, pulled himself free of her clammy, clutching hands, and left along with the rest, except that he went alone. Despite being half drunk, he easily navigated the winding back roads at a high rate of speed. He’d traveled these roads all his life and knew them intimately. He’d driven them a lot drunker than he was tonight. He and Fred. He and Eddie.