House of Secrets - v4

by Richard Hawke

The hallway at the top of the stairs was unlit and cold. She counted the doors. Seven. All closed. It was lady’s choice.

  Megan pushed open the door nearest her. “Bathroom. East side.” She gave the room a quick look. “Empty.”

  She moved on.

  “Looks like the master bedroom. No one. Closet empty. Nothing under the bed.”

  She continued.

  “Unused bedroom. Trashed. Junk. Old furniture. Clear.”

  “Closed door… hallway closet. Clear.”

  “Small bedroom. One bed. Empty. Closet clear.”

  “Another hallway closet. Nothing. Got one more door at the end of the hall.”

  Doris Smallwood was in the bedroom at the far end of the hallway. She was lying on the twin bed farthest from the door. She was lying on her side, the large expanse of her back facing Megan. The hinges on the door had certainly announced Megan’s entrance, but there was no movement from the woman on the bed. Megan whispered hoarsely into her collar.

  “I’ve got her. The grandmother. Back bedroom. North end. She appears immobile.”

  Her earpiece crackled. “Immobile? Is she alive?”

  “I’m checking now.”

  Megan crossed swiftly to the bed. “Mrs. Smallwood?”

  Megan reached out and placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. When there was no movement, she tugged, and the woman shifted like a large sack of oatmeal. She rolled heavily onto her back.

  “Mrs. Smallwood? Are you—”

  The eyes popped open, and Megan’s head jerked back. More startling than the sudden movement was the thin grin that spread wickedly across the woman’s face. Megan had less than a second to realize that the smile was not aimed at her. She noted a shift of the light on the peeled wall paper next to the bed.

  Megan spun. But it was a spin into blackness. Her gasp was choked by the coarse blanket that instantly enveloped her. Before she could respond, her arms were pinned to her sides by something strong wrapping swiftly around her small body and yanking her tight. She jerked her shoulders impotently as her assailant grunted hotly, right next to her ear. Her feet were leaving the floor; her ribs were being crushed against an unyielding surface. Megan’s next attempt at breath brought a mouthful of rough wool, simultaneous with a violent blast against the side of her head. Then another. Sparks exploded in the dark, and Megan’s head dropped limply to the side.

  Megan Lamb had no notion of direction as she slipped back to partial consciousness. Her immediate sense was that her head was in misalignment with her legs and with the rest of her body. She was being jostled. She was being carried. A fire seemed to be blazing at the base of her neck. She sucked desperate breaths of hot air.

  She was still wrapped in the blanket that had been brought around her like a net, and she was doubled over across her assailant’s shoulder. His grunting kept rhythm with the bouncing.

  Then she dropped.

  She landed on a hard surface. A floor. The fire at the base of her neck raced into her entire skull, and Megan panicked she might be sick. She’d choke. She needed air.

  “Robbie?”

  It was Doris Smallwood. The voice was distant. The answering voice — a man’s — came from right next to her ear.

  “Not now!”

  “But—”

  Megan heard a familiar metallic twanging sound. The spring mechanism on a classic attic trapdoor. She sensed the faint sealing off of an attic door swinging closed. She pressed her chin toward her throat as hard as she could and prayed that the fiber microphone was still in place. She whispered so softly she could barely hear her own words.

  “The attic. The attic.”

  Megan braced for a swift reaction from her assailant. It didn’t come. She dared again.

  “Attic!”

  An instant later the blanket came off her face. A rush of air raced into her lungs. She felt as if her head was about to break into pieces.

  She was lying on the floor of the attic, her body still encased in the blanket. Above her, the raftered ceiling slanted off to the sides. Robert Smallwood stood between Megan and the ceiling, his feet planted on either side of her head. He was winded from carrying the detective up the steep ladder.

  A hissing sounded in Megan’s ear. It was Armstrong. “Weapons? Is he armed? Is the girl there?”

  Megan tensed, but Robert Smallwood could not hear the FBI agent’s tinny voice. Megan cleared her throat. Under the circumstances, she came out with a decently commanding tone.

  “Where’s Michelle?”

  Armstrong whispered again. “Is she there?” She heard the agent addressing the SWAT teams. “Stand by. Mark for ready.”

  Megan spoke up again. “Robert, where is Michelle? Tell me she’s safe. Where is she?”

  The earpiece hissed. “Does he have a weapon on you? ‘Please’ means no. ‘Don’t hurt me’ means yes.”

  Megan glanced to her side. The attic — what she could see of it — was filled with boxes and furniture. Her mind raced. What the hell means maybe?

  “Please,” she said, enunciating as clearly as she dared. “Robert. We just want the girl back home with her family. Please.”

  The voice sizzled in her ear. “Good… good.”

  Megan continued. “She’s just a little girl. Nobody wants to see her hurt. She’s only—”

  Smallwood exploded. “Who says I hurt her?” He brought a hand to his face and wiped it across his mouth. “I didn’t hurt anybody. Who the fuck said I hurt her?”

  “No one. Nobody said that, Robert. I just—”

  “I saved her!” He swooped down and grabbed hold of Megan’s shoulders through the blanket. With a sharp jerk of his hands he rattled her head against the floor. “She lives with pigs! She lives in a pig family!”

  He shook her again, snapping her head even harder against the floor. Spittle was flying from his mouth. His thumbs tightened on Megan’s shoulders and he dragged her up almost to a sitting position. His large round face looked poised to devour her.

  The earpiece crackled. “Positions! Positions! We’re close to go!”

  She saw her.

  The girl was seated in a cane chair in a corner in the far end of the attic. Megan spotted her over Smallwood’s shoulder. She was secured to the chair. A strip of duct tape covered her mouth, and another one was over her eyes. Megan called out.

  “Michelle! I see you! You’re safe!”

  Armstrong yelled. “Positions! The girl is a yes! Megan, where is she? Give me a position!”

  Smallwood was shaking her again. Megan shouted. “Stay in the corner, Michelle! You’re fine! Stay back there! In the corner! Just—”

  Smallwood rose, hoisting Megan with him. “Shut up!”

  “Go, go, go, go!”

  Robert Smallwood lurched forward, propelling Megan backward. One of his hands closed over the detective’s face, and she felt the transparent listening device fall free of her ear. She heard a loud pop. An explosion. Megan’s feet left the ground as the force of Smallwood’s huge body drove her backward. As a second explosion sounded, the two crashed against the side of a wooden trunk and landed on the floor, the wind knocked from both of them. Smallwood buried his head in the detective’s chest, and instinctively, Megan clutched at it. A cloud of pumpkin-colored smoke blossomed out of thin air and enveloped the two of them.

  The entire operation was captured by the news helicopter that hovered high above the farmhouse.

  From seemingly nowhere, dozens of olive green-clad figures emerged and moved in on the farmhouse, racing in all directions. Simultaneously, four black vans sped up the unpaved driveway, two of them cutting off and veering to either side of the house while a third bounded across the grass toward the rear, stopping just short of the barn. Additional figures poured from the vehicles. Together the rescuers looked like a swarm of ants descending eagerly on the farmhouse. Half the figures melted away into the house itself while the remaining ones took up positions on all sides. As swiftly as the activity had ignited, stillness abruptly s
et in.

  This lasted all of a minute.

  Poof!

  A yellowish cloud appeared from within the house. And then another, followed by yet another. The smoke burst from the attic. The frozen figures outside the farmhouse surged forward and disappeared inside just as a fourth smoke cloud exploded from the small windows. In less than a minute the combined smoke had effectively blocked most of the farmhouse from sight.

  Two other vehicles arrived, one of them an ambulance. It was the sight of the ambulance that brought a cry from Christine Foster, who was watching all this unfold on the big-screen television in Whitney and Jenny Hoyt’s den.

  “Michelle!”

  Andy was seated right next to Christine, squeezing her hand so tightly her fingers were nearly white. “She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” His expression belied the certainty of his mantralike muttering. Standing directly behind Christine, rubbing her daughter’s back, Lillian was finding it difficult to take a single decent breath.

  Whitney Hoyt stood next to the room’s large bookcase. The phone was at his ear, as it had been since even before the images began coming in on the television, but he was not currently saying anything into it. Hailey Jordan was present. She sat in a straight-backed chair, her ivory-skinned hands folded one atop the other in her lap. Jenny was near the diminutive Brit, perched on the edge of a maroon ottoman, chewing on her lower lip.

  And the resigning vice president of the United States sat in the room’s bentwood rocker, pivoting his attention between Whitney Hoyt, the scene unfolding on television, and Paul Jordan, who stood near the window furiously jabbing at the keys of his BlackBerry. Had a mother ship suddenly appeared outside the window and drawn the urgently transmitting man into its bowels via an ether beam, Chris Wyeth would not have been all that surprised.

  Whitney suddenly called out. “They’ve got her!”

  He jammed the phone even tighter against his ear and bent partway forward to hear better. All the others in the room had swung their attention over to him. Christine and her husband rose from their seats in perfect tandem. It was Lillian who spoke into the charged silence.

  “Whitney?”

  Hoyt looked up at the others. He looked old. Old and tired. Lillian spoke again, softly, almost as if she was addressing a baby.

  “Whitney? Tell us.”

  “She’s alive,” Hoyt said. “That’s all they know.”

  All eyes shifted back to the television, where little remained to be seen but the merged clouds of rusty-colored smoke and the occasional dark figure scuttling in or out of the cloud.

  Then one of the figures moved swiftly out from under the cloud, making a beeline for the ambulance. It was possible to make out two tiny sticklike legs dangling from the figure’s arms. Christine’s hands covered her mouth.

  “Michelle! My baby!”

  The rear door of the ambulance was already open, and the figure vanished inside. The door closed. The top lights began to spin. And the ambulance began to make its way down the driveway.

  Christine turned to embrace her husband. But he was no longer standing next to her. She watched — amazed, confused, and oddly exhilarated — as Andy crossed to where Paul Jordan was still hammering away on his BlackBerry, seemingly oblivious to what had just taken place on the flat screen. Andy strode over to the window and, with a move as fluid and seemingly effortless as capturing a handful of air, sent his fist solidly into the face of the unsuspecting man.

  On the direct orders of President John Hyland, FBI director William Pierce instructed the New York office to conduct raids on the home and business offices of one Aleksey Titov.

  Mrs. Titov was at home when the agents arrived at the house brandishing their warrants. She gave the agents an earful. When this seemed to have no effect, she got her husband on the phone and gave him an earful. He hung up on her.

  Boxes of files and papers were removed from both locations. Agents flipped through every book and magazine and checked every CD and DVD. They searched through drawers, kitchen cabinets, all the furniture and cushions and pillows, and patted down the Titovs’ clothes hanging in the closet.

  All computers were removed, including the one used by Titov’s petulant wife. She nearly caused bodily harm to the female agent who slipped the flat monitor under her arm, but settled instead for a string of invective so creative she nearly had the agents diving for their notebooks.

  At the conclusion of the search, FBI technicians in both locations swept the rooms with a powerful electromagnetic device. Aleksey Titov — at his office — cried foul.

  “What the hell is this doing?” he demanded.

  “It’s a wipe,” the technician explained calmly. “If you’ve got any computer files or digital camera files or anything else like that lying around somewhere, they’re blank now.”

  Titov was furious. “I will have your ass in boiling oil, you son of a bitch!”

  The technician laughed at the short man. He directed his device toward the mobster’s crotch and moved it in small circles.

  “Oops. Sorry.”

  A senior official of the Justice Department met with President Hyland in the Oval Office. The official’s most recent — and final — report was already on the president’s desk. For several months the official had been detailing collusion between two key members of Justice and several named personnel at the FBI with regard to the stalled investigation of several businesses located in the Brighton Beach — Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn, New York. The Justice Department official had agreed to serve as a mole and had positioned himself to participate in a secret operation designed to obstruct, stall, and ultimately eradicate the racketeering investigation. For reasons that the mole had been unable to uncover, some person or persons at the FBI were specifically identifying Aleksey Titov as a person to un-target.

  President Hyland thanked the man for his good work and his loyalty.

  “It appears that Mr. Titov was being promised a free pass so long as he provided certain services for certain individuals,” Hyland explained vaguely. “This racketeering investigation was used as leverage.”

  His visitor asked, “Do we know where these promises were coming from, sir?”

  “We do,” Hyland said. “And that information is classified. We’re going to do the country the favor of not making a big noise about it. Nobody wants headlines out of this. I certainly don’t. I’ve had enough headlines the past two weeks as it is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hyland added, “Not to worry. Free passes for the offenders are not being provided. We just prefer to handle this in-house.”

  The president thanked the official again and bade him a good afternoon.

  It was a little after three o’clock when William Pierce’s letter of resignation was delivered to the White House. Hyland’s secretary brought it in to her boss.

  “What do you know,” Hyland said, looking up from the document. “Apparently, after an illustrious career our friend Mr. Pierce wants to spend more time with his family.”

  Hyland’s secretary beamed. “That’s very sweet, sir. I’m so happy for Mrs. Pierce.”

  “What are the rules, Liz? Can we buy the director a set of matching luggage or something nice like that in thanks for his years of service?”

  “I’m not really sure, sir. It would be a beautiful gesture, though.”

  “Hell, I’m the beautiful-gesture president, Liz. Haven’t you picked that up yet?”

  “I hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Why don’t you go buy yourself a big box of chocolates,” the president said. “Compliments of the United States of America. We have power, I say let’s use it.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Chris Wyeth met privately with Whitney Hoyt.

  Former mentor, former protégé. Former friends.

  The meeting lasted less than forty minutes. Having spoken extensively with Andy Foster the day after Michelle Foster’s rescue, Wyeth entered the meeting
with the full knowledge that the former governor had been setting the stage for John Hyland being removed from the office of the presidency before the end of the year and Vice President Andy Foster subsequently performing his constitutional duty by stepping into the post. When Wyeth broached the topic, Hoyt refused to give it any credence. He scoffed at the idea. Wyeth had never expected Hoyt to come clean with him. That would have been expecting a minor miracle.

  On the other hand, Wyeth did come clean with Whitney Hoyt. Ten minutes after his arrival, Wyeth pulled some file folders from his briefcase and set them on his rival’s desk. One of the folders included black-and-white photographs of the accident scene near Port Jervis when Jenny Hoyt’s first husband had driven his car off the narrow road that zigzags high above the Delaware River. Another folder contained a copy of the official police report on the accident, including interviews with witnesses, as well as the analysis of the blood alcohol level found in Roger Mead at the site of the crash. The level had been extremely high, no particular surprise to anyone who had known Roger Mead. The report’s conclusion had been that Mead was too inebriated to maneuver his vehicle along the multiple serpentine curves of Route 97 and that he had crashed through a low stone wall and remained trapped in his vehicle as it tumbled down five hundred feet of shale and brush, coming to rest roughly fifty feet from the river below.

  Hoyt looked up irritably from the report. “And why am I looking at this?”

  Wyeth continued to lay papers out on the desk, making a deliberate point of moving the framed photograph taken of Whitney and Jenny Hoyt on their wedding day out of the way. One of the folders contained the medical examiner’s report on Roger Mead’s cause of death. The ME’s report essentially ascribed Mead’s death to any of a number of fatal causes. Broken neck, collapsed lungs, severe head trauma, loss of blood — take your pick.

  Wyeth picked loss of blood.

  He directed Hoyt’s attention to a series of written reports compiled by two independent investigators that Wyeth himself had hired within twenty-four hours of hearing the news of Roger Mead’s car crash.