Last Man Standing

by David Baldacci

  and she had changed it back after her second husband had died. She had had Web’s surname legally changed from Sullivan after she had divorced her first husband. Web had never carried his stepfather’s name. His mother would not allow it. It was just how she was. And to this day he never knew why he had been given such an odd name as Web with only the one b. He had gone up and down his maternal family tree and the answer wasn’t there. His mother had steadfastly refused even to tell Web who had named him.

  When he had been little, his mother had shared with Web much of what she had seen and done on her teenage travels, and he had thought hers the most wonderful stories he had ever heard. And he had wanted to go on trips with her just like that and write in his journal and take photos of his beautiful, adventurous mother against the backdrop of pristine water in Italy or on a snowcapped mountain in Switzerland or at an outdoor café in Paris. The beautiful mother and the dashing son taking the world by storm had dominated his boyhood thoughts. But then she had married Web’s stepfather and those dreams went away.

  Web opened his eyes and rose. He went to the basement first. Thick dust covered every surface, and Web found nothing remotely close to what he was looking for. He went back upstairs and into the rear of the house where the kitchen was. He opened the back door and looked outside at the small garage that housed, among other things, his mother’s ancient Plymouth Duster. Web could hear the cries of children at play nearby. He closed his eyes and rested his face against the mesh as those sounds sank in. In his mind Web could almost see the football being thrown, the coltish legs hustling after it, a very young Web thinking that if he didn’t catch that ball, his life would end. He sniffed the air, the smell of wood smoke mingling with the sweet aroma of freshly cut fall grass. There was nothing better, it seemed, and yet it was only a scent, never lasting for very long. And then you were pretty much right back in the shit of life. The shit, he had discovered, was never temporary.

  In his vision, the young Web ran harder and harder. It was growing dark and he knew his mother would be calling him in soon. Not to eat, but to run over to the neighbors to bum cigarettes for his stepfather. Or to hustle down to the neighborhood Foodway with a couple dollars and a sad tale for Old Man Stein, who ran the place with a bigger heart than he should have. Always hustling down to the Foodway was young Web. Always singing the sad Irish song, his mother coaching him on the lyrics. Where had she learned it, the sad song? Web had asked her. As with the origin of his given name, she had never answered him.

  Web could vividly remember Mr. Stein squatting down with his big glasses, old cardigan and neat white apron and graciously accepting the crumpled dollar bills from “Webbie” London, as he liked to call Web. Then he would help Web pick out food for supper and maybe even breakfast. These groceries, of course, always cost far more than two dollars, and yet Stein had never said a word about the cost. Yet he had not been so reserved about other things.

  “You tell your mother not to drink so much,” he had called after Web as he had run off home carrying two bulging bags of groceries. “And you tell that devil of a husband of hers that God will strike him down for what he has done, if a man’s hand does not do so sooner. And if only God would allow me that honor. I pray for it every night, Webbie. You tell her that. And him too!” Old Man Stein was in love with Web’s mother, as were just about all the men in the neighborhood, married or not. In fact, the only man who didn’t seem to be in love with Charlotte London was the man she was married to.

  He went upstairs and stared at the attic pull-down stairs in the middle of the hallway. This was where he should have started his search, of course, but he did not want to go up there. He finally grabbed the rope pull, hauled down the stairs and climbed up. He clicked on the light, his gaze darting to every darkened corner as soon as he did so. Web took another deep breath and told himself that simpering cowards rarely accomplished anything with their lives, that he was a big, brave HRT assaulter with a loaded nine-millimeter in his holster. He moved into the attic and spent an hour compulsively going through more elements of his history than he really cared to.

  The school yearbooks were here with the awkward pictures of boys and girls trying to look older than they were, when only a few short years would pass before they would desperately be trying to do the opposite. He also spent time deciphering the yearbook scribbles from classmates outlining lavish plans for their futures, which had not come true for any of them that Web knew of, including himself. His old varsity jacket and his football helmet were there in a box. There was a time when he could remember where every scratch on the helmet came from. Now he couldn’t even remember the jersey number he had worn. There were old and useless school-books, journals that had nothing in them but stupid pictures drawn by bored hands. His bored hands.

  In one corner was a clothes rack with garments from the last four decades gathering dust, mold and moth holes. There were also old records warped in the heat and cold. There were boxes of baseball and football trading cards that might now be worth a tidy fortune if Web hadn’t used them as targets for dart games and BB shooting. There were pieces of a bicycle Web vaguely remembered owning, along with a half dozen burned-out flashlights. There was also a clay figurine his mother had sculpted, and quite well; but it had been bashed around so much by his stepfather that the figure was now not only blind but also lacking ears and a nose.

  It was all a sad memorial to a quite ordinary family that actually had been anything but ordinary in certain ways.

  Web was thinking of giving up when he found it.

  The box was under a collection of his mother’s college books, the works of long-dead philosophers and writers and thinkers. Web quickly looked through the box’s contents. It was enough to start with. He would be one poor investigator if he couldn’t follow it up to something. He was surprised he had never noticed it before while growing up in this house. But he had never been looking for it back then.

  He jerked around and stared at the farthest corner from him. It was dark, shadowy and he could almost swear something had moved there. His hand eased to his gun. He hated this attic. Hated it! And yet he didn’t really know why. It was just a damn attic.

  He carried the box to his car and on the way back to his motel Web used his cell phone to call Percy Bates. “Nice job, Perce. What a difference a day makes. But what happened to old Bucky?”

  “Winters backed out at the last minute.”

  “Right. In case I go crashing down. And so he left you to do it for him.”

  “I actually volunteered when he waffled on it.”

  “You’re a good guy, Perce, but you’ll never rise higher in the Bureau if you keep doing the right thing.”

  “Like I give a crap about that.”

  “Any breaks?”

  “We traced the guns. Stolen from a military facility in Virginia. Two years ago. Big help. But we’ll chase it down every path until it dies on us.”

  “Any sign of Kevin Westbrook?”

  “None. And no other witnesses have come forward. Apparently everyone down that way was struck deaf and dumb.”

  “I guess you’ve talked to the people Kevin lived with. Anything come out of that?”

  “Not much. They haven’t seen him. Like I said, he avoided that place anyway.”

  Web chose his next words carefully. “So nobody to love the kid? No old lady or grandmother lying around?”

  “There is an old woman. And we think she’s Kevin’s mother’s stepmother or something like that. She wasn’t real clear on the relation either. You’d think it’d be pretty simple to say one way or another, but talk about your extended families. Dads in prisons, moms gone, brothers dead, sisters hookers, you got babies dropped off everywhere with anybody who looks halfway respectable, and that’s usually the older folks. She seemed genuinely worried about the boy, but she’s scared too. They’re all scared down there.”

  “Perce, did you ever actually see Kevin before he went missing?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to put together a time line between when I last saw him and when he disappeared.”

  “A time line. Damn, wish I’d thought of that,” Bates said sarcastically.

  “Come on, Perce, I’m not trying to step on anybody’s toes, but I saved that boy’s life and I’d kind of like him to keep it.”

  “Web, you know the likelihood of the kid turning up alive is pretty damn slim. Whoever took him wasn’t planning a surprise party at Chuck E. Cheese’s for the boy. We’ve searched every place we can think of. Got APBs out in all the surrounding states, and even on the Canadian and Mexican borders. It’s not like they’d hang around the city with the kid.”

  “But if he was working for his brother, he might be safe. I mean, I understand this Big F is one mean bastard, but popping your little brother? Come on.”

  “I’ve seen worse and so have you.”

  “But did you see Kevin?”

  “No, no, I didn’t personally see the kid. He was gone before I got there. There, you satisfied?”

  “I spoke with the HRT guys who were babysitting him. They said they turned him over to a couple of FBI suits.” Web had decided not to mention Romano’s statement that actually only one man had been definitively involved, because he wanted to hear Bates’s take on it.

  “You’ll be no doubt stunned that I talked to them too and found out the same thing.”

  “They couldn’t tell me the names of the agents. Any luck there?”

  “It’s a little early in the game.”

  Web now gave up any pretense of congeniality. “No, it’s really not, Perce. I spent a lot of years doing what you do. I know how these cases go down. If you can’t tell me by now who the suits were, that means they weren’t FBI. That means a couple of impostors got inside an FBI crime scene, your crime scene, and made off with a key witness. Maybe I can help.”

  “That’s your theory. And I don’t want or need your help.”

  “Are you telling me I’m wrong?”

  “What I’m going to tell you is to keep the hell out of my investigation. And I mean what I say.”

  “It was my damn team!”

  “I understand that, but if I find out you’re doing anything, asking one question, following up one lead on your own, then your ass is mine. I hope I’m making myself clear.”

  “I’ll call you when I crack the case.”

  Web clicked off and quietly berated himself for blowing his last asset at the Bureau. He had been as subtle as a dump truck, but Bates just seemed to bring out the bulldog in folks. And to think he had originally called merely to thank the guy for the press conference!

  20

  Claire stretched her arms and stifled a yawn. She had been up too early and had worked too late the night before; such had become her life’s routine. Married at nineteen to her high-school sweetheart, she had been a mother at twenty and divorced at twenty-two. The sacrifices she had made over the next ten years while she pursued her medical and psychiatric degrees were too numerous for her to recall. Yet she had no regrets about her daughter, now a freshman in college. Maggie Daniels was healthy, bright and well adjusted. Her father had wanted no part in his daughter’s upbringing and he would be given no role in her adulthood either. Actually, that was up to Maggie, Claire knew, but she had never asked much about her dad and had taken single parenting in stride. Claire had never really gotten back into the social circles and she had finally come to the conclusion that her career would be her life.

  She opened her file and studied the notes she had made there. Web London was a fascinating subject for any student of human psychology. From the little Claire had gathered before his very abrupt departure from her office, the man was a walking billboard of personal problems. From the obvious issues in his childhood to his disfigurement as an adult to the sort of dangerous work that he did and seemed to derive so much from, a person could devote her professional life to such a patient. The knock on her door interrupted her thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  The door opened and one of Claire’s colleagues stood there. “You might want to come and see this.”

  “What is it, Wayne? I’m kind of busy.”

  “FBI press conference. Web London. I saw him leaving here the other day. You counseled him, right?”

  She frowned at his question and didn’t answer it. But she got up and followed him out to the reception area, where there was a little TV set up. Several other of the psychiatrists and psychologists who had offices here, including Ed O’Bannon, were already assembled and watching the screen. It was lunchtime and none of them appeared to have patients. Several of them held parts of their meals in their hands.

  For the next ten minutes or so, Claire Daniels got a much more in-depth look at the life and career of Web London. She found herself putting her hand up to her mouth when she saw Web in the hospital, most of his face and torso bandaged. The man had been through a lot, more than someone should have to go through. And Claire was feeling an incredibly strong urge to help him, despite how dramatically he had ended their session. When the press conference was over and people started to filter back to their offices, Claire stopped O’Bannon.

  “Ed, you remember I told you about seeing Web London when you weren’t available?”

  “Sure, Claire. I appreciate you doing that, actually.” He lowered his voice. “Unlike some of the others around here, I know I can trust you not to pilfer my patients.”

  “Well, I appreciate that, Ed. But the truth is I’ve taken a particular interest in Web. And he and I really hit it off at our session.” She added very firmly: “And I want to take over his counseling.”

  O’Bannon looked stunned and shook his head. “No, Claire. I’ve seen London before, and he’s a bit of a tough nut. He and I never really finished exploring it, but he seems to have serious mother-son issues.”

  “I understand all that, but I really want to work on his case.”

  “And I appreciate that, but he’s my patient and there is something to be said for continuity of treatment, starting with keeping the same doctor.”

  Claire took a deep breath and said, “Can we let Web decide?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Can you call him and let Web decide on which of us he’d prefer?”

  O’Bannon looked very annoyed. “I hardly think that’s necessary.”

  “We really seemed to click, Ed, and I think that perhaps another pair of eyes on his case might be beneficial.”

  “I’m not liking what you’re insinuating, Claire. My credentials are impeccable. In case you didn’t know, I served in Vietnam, where I dealt with combat syndrome cases, shell shock, prisoners of war who’d been brainwashed, and I was very successful.”

  “Web is not in the military.”

  “HRT is about as military as you can get for a civilian agency. I know the breed and I speak their language. I think my experience is uniquely suited to his case.”

  “I’m not implying anything to the contrary. But Web did tell me that he wasn’t completely comfortable with you. And I know you would agree that the best interests of the patient are paramount.”

  “I don’t need you to lecture me on professional ethics.” He paused for a moment. “But he said that—that he wasn’t completely comfortable with me?”

  “Yes, but I think that’s more a reflection on the fact that you’re right, he is a tough nut. For all I know, he may not like me once we get going in treatment.” She touched O’Bannon on the shoulder. “So you’ll call him? Today?”

  O’Bannon grudgingly said, “I’ll call him.”

  Web was driving when his phone rang. He checked the readout on the screen. It was a number in Virginia he didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?” he answered cautiously.

  “Web?”

  The voice seemed very familiar, but nothing clicked.

  “It’s Dr. O’Bannon.”

  Web blinked. “How did you get this number?”

  “You gave it to me. During our most recent session.”

  “Look, I’ve been thinking that—”

  “Web, I talked to Claire Daniels.”

  Web felt his face growing warm. “Did she tell you we talked?” “She did. But she didn’t tell me what you had talked about, of course. I understand that you were in a bit of crisis and Claire tried to get hold of me before talking to you. That’s really why I’m calling.”

  “I’m not exactly following this.”

  “Well, Claire said that you two really seemed to hit it off. She seemed to think that maybe you would be more comfortable with her. Since you’re my patient, you and I need to consent to such an arrangement.”

  “Look, Dr. O’Bannon—”

  “Web, I want you to know that we were successful in the past in dealing with your issues and I think we can be again. Claire probably was just embellishing somewhat on your uncertainty about me. But just so you know, Claire does not have the experience I do. I’ve been seeing FBI agents for longer than she has. I don’t like to say this, but between you and me, Claire would be out of her league with you.” He paused, apparently awaiting Web’s answer. “So, we’re good, you’ll continue to see me?”

  “I’ll go with Claire.”

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