by Stuart Woods
Shelley nodded. “I expected them to, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Holly said. “This wasn’t my idea. Actually, Stone and Dino were my idea, but only after I had my orders.”
“I like your choice of investigators,” Shelley said, pulling Dino’s earlobe.
“So do I,” Stone said, helping himself from a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon.
“Then nobody has any complaints?” Holly asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Stone replied. “First, I want to see the lab report on the brick.”
Shelley got up and went to a telephone, held a brief conversation, then hung up and came back to the table. “The lab report is on my desk,” she said.
“And?” Dino queried.
“The blood on the brick is that of Emily Kendrick, so we have the murder weapon.”
“Okay,” Stone said. “What else?”
“There was no deposit of DNA by another individual,” Shelley said.
“Shit!” Dino muttered.
“However,” Shelley said, making sure she had everybody’s undivided attention before continuing, “there was something else deposited.”
Everybody stared at her in silence, waiting for the news.
“Lipstick,” Shelley said. “Don’t you want to know what kind of lipstick?”
“I’m just dying to know,” Dino replied.
“Pagan Spring,” Shelley said, “from a house brand made for a national drugstore chain.”
“What’s a Pagan Spring?” Dino asked.
“In this case,” Shelley said, “pinkish.”
“Pinkish?”
“Not exactly pink, but pinkish.”
Stone interrupted. “I take it this is a cosmetic used by potential
ly tens of thousands of women in the D.C. area?”
“Indeed,” Shelley said.
“Shit!” Dino said again.
11
HOLLY AND SHELLEY HAD LEFT THE SUITE, AND STONE AND Dino were on their second cups of coffee. The phone rang, and Stone got it. “Yes?”
“I’m calling for Director of Central Intelligence Katharine Rule Lee,” a woman’s voice said. “To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Stone Barrington.”
“Director Lee would be pleased if you and Lieutenant Bacchetti could join her for lunch in her dining room today at twelve-thirty.”
“Please tell her we’d be pleased to join her,” Stone said.
“Thank you, Mr. Barrington. There’ll be visitors’ passes for you at the main gate. Would you like directions?”
“Yes, please.” Stone wrote everything down, thanked her, and hung up. “I hope you and Assistant Director Bach haven’t planned a matinee for today,” he said to Dino.
“Funny you should mention it,” Dino said. “I was just thinking about that.”
“Director Lee has invited us to lunch at the Agency.”
“No kidding? I’ve never been there.”
“Neither have I, but I have directions,” Stone replied, waving a piece of paper.
ENTRY TO THE CENTRAL Intelligence Agency’s grounds was very much like entry to the White House grounds. They gave their names at the gate, were checked off a list, then given visitors’ passes and directed to a parking spot. They were met on the ground floor by a fiftyish woman who introduced herself as Director Lee’s assistant and led them through the security gate and to an elevator, along the way passing a wall where nameless stars represented agents who had lost their lives in the line of duty.
The director’s dining room was pleasant, paneled in a light wood, and featured fo qblf duty.a large window with a view of the woods surrounding the building. Holly was already there, sipping fizzy water.
“Why, Mr. Barrington, Lieutenant Bacchetti, what a surprise to bump into you,” she said gaily.
Before they could respond, the director breezed into the room, followed by her assistant, who was jotting notes on a steno pad. “And tell them to be quick about it,” Kate Lee said, then took a seat at the table, waving the others to chairs. “I’m very much afraid that this is not going to be a very good lunch,” she said, “because I’m on a diet, and you have to suffer along with me.”
A small salad of some sort of leaves, splashed with lemon juice, was served.
“All right,” the director said, after they had begun to eat.
Stone recited what they had learned so far, which he knew would not please her, but she perked up when he came to the brick with the lipstick on it.
“Tell me,” she said, “how do you think lipstick got to be on the brick? Did the murderer kiss it?”
Her question was met with silence.
“Maybe Mrs. Kendrick was wearing it,” Dino said hopefully.
“No,” Holly replied. “She had just come from a tennis date.”
“Well,” the director replied, “I have played tennis with women who were wearing lipstick, but Mimi Kendrick never wore makeup at all. She had this glowing skin that cosmetics had never touched, and she looked great.”
“The lipstick does suggest that the murderer was a woman, though,” Stone said.
“Or a transvestite,” the director murmured.
Holly couldn’t resist laughing. “At the White House? That would be something!”
“Yes,” the director said, “it would be something, but you’re right, Stone, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion but that the murderer was a woman.”
“Or,” Dino said, “a man with a tube of lipstick who left some on the brick, just to drive us crazy.”
“That would indicate premeditation,” Stone said, “but a brick is not a weapon of premeditation, just the first thing the murderer could lay his or her hands on.”
“Stone’s right,” Dino said. “A premeditator would bring a knife or a gun.”
“Not at the White House,” Holly pointed out. “He—or she—would never be able to get a weapon past security.”
Everybody was quiet again.
Stone finally spoke up. “Of the people on the FBI’s list of those in the area, six were women: Charleston Bostwick, one undersecretary of state, one Secret Service agent, and the president’s three secretaries. And they all have unimpeachable alibis.”
They waited while a waiter took away their salad plates and replaced them with dinner plates, each containing a spoonful of a green substance and a single lamb chop.
“Well, there is one helpful thing about this information,” the director said, finally. “I never knew Brix Kendrick to wear lipstick.”
AFTER LUNCH, HOLLY WALKED Stone and Dino down to the lobby, and the three paused at the front door.
“Dinner tonight?“Dinneight?” Stone asked Holly.
“I can’t tonight,” she said, “but I’m glad you two got to visit the building.”
“I’m not glad,” Dino replied.
“What, Dino, you didn’t like being on a diet?”
“It’s not that, it’s the lipstick.”
“What do you mean?” Stone asked.
“Before the lipstick,” Dino replied, “we had an easy out. If we couldn’t find a murderer, all we had to do was endorse Shelley’s report, and we were out of here.”
“Not anymore,” Stone agreed.
“Holly,” Dino said, “could you recommend a diner, or something, on the way back to the city? I’d like to stop for some lunch.”
12
DR. JOSH HARMON REPORTED TO HIS TRAUMA CENTER AT HALF past one for his two-to-twelve shift. He looked over the charts of patients seen but not admitted during the morning shift. He was pleased with the decisions made by his staff, and he posted a handwritten note on the bulletin board congratulating them on no unnecessary admissions and overall good judgment.
Josh got into clean scrubs, secured his locker, and walked into the treatment room to see a gunshot wound in a young Hispanic male. The boy was fortunate that it had passed through the upper arm muscle without striking bone, but he had lost some blood, and Josh put on a sur
gical mask and was gloved, while he called for the administering of one unit of whole blood.
He had just begun to work on repairing the wound when a woman in her late thirties appeared, complaining of abdominal pain. He was immediately struck by how familiar she looked, but for the life of him he could not place her. Something was different from his memory, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He looked up often as he worked, trying to jog his memory, but to no avail. The woman was diagnosed with severe constipation and was sent to a curtained booth for an enema, then he forgot about her.
Josh finished with his suturing and left an intern to dress the wound and issue a sling to the young man, before discharging him, and Josh dealt with two more patients before his break. He was sitting in the coffee room with a hot cup when it hit him: Orchid Beach. He and Holly had had dinner with the woman and a man, and he couldn’t remember either of their names.
When his break was over he went back to the treatment room and found the woman’s chart. Her name was Jessica Smith, with a La Jolla address, but he knew the name wasn’t right. She remained on his mind for the rest of the afternoon, and it was driving him crazy. Then, during his dinner hour, he decided to put an end to it. He went to a pay phone and called Holly’s direct line at the Agency.
“Holly Barker,” she said.
The sound of her voice got to him; he hadn’t been expecting that. “Hi, it’s Josh,” he said, finally.
“Well, hello there,” she said. “How are things in San Diego?”
“Going better than I could have expected at this stage,” he replied. “How about you?”
“Oh, you know how the work goes—win some, lose some. Lose more than I would like.”
“Has Lance got the director’s job yet?”
“Not yet,” she said, but said no more.
“Okay, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that on an Agency line.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“Reason I called is, I saw a woman in my trauma unit today who came in complaining of abdominal pain. Turned out all she needed was an enema.”
“Hey, you get all the exciting cases, don’t you?”
He laughed. “She wasn’t my patient, but I thought I recognized her. It drove me crazy all day, and finally I placed her.”
“Josh, you didn’t call to tell me about an old flame, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. In fact, if anything, she’s your old flame, in a way. You remember that couple we had dinner with at a little beach house? The guy was a great cook, and for some reason I can’t even remember his face, but I remembered hers, so I checked her chart for her name, and it wasn’t the right one.”
“Wasn’t the right one?”
“No, it wasn’t her real name, but I can’t remember it. Surely you remember her—the two left town suddenly.”
Holly took in a sharp breath. “Lauren Cade!”
“Yes, that’s it! And what was his name?”
“I don’t remember,” Holly said, “but it was a false name anyway.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And I can’t explain it to you, Josh, you know the drill. What name was Lauren Cade using?”
“Jessica Smith. You want her address?”
“Yes, please.”
Josh dictated it to her from memory. “It’s near the beach in La Jolla. I know the area.”
“Thank you very much, Josh. Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I’m late for a meeting.”
“Nice talking with you,” he said.
“Same here.”
Josh hung up and went back to work, relieved of the necessity of remembering the woman’s name, but now he had Holly’s voice in his head.
HOLLY LOOKED IN HER computer for Todd Bacon’s satphone number and rang it. The ringing was interrupted by a loud beep.
“It’s the office,” Holly said. “Stand by to write. We have a Lauren Cade sighting in San Diego. Here’s an address in La Jolla.” She recited what Josh had given her, then hung up.
Ten minutes later her phone rang. “Holly Barker.”
“It’s Bacon. How recent is this information?”
“Early this afternoon, local time. She turned up at a trauma center complaining of abdominal pain and was given an enema and discharged.”
“Thanks for that image,” Todd said.
“You’re welcome.”
“You have no way of knowing
if the address is good?” he asked.
“That’s why you’re out there, bub,” she said. “Get back to me when you know the answer to that question, and when you do, have a plan.” She hung up.
vDinne, have 13
TEDDY FAY WOKE SUDDENLY. SOMETHING—A NOISE, MAYBE—had startled him. He tried replaying whatever he had been dreaming and realized it was a gunshot that had wakened him, one that he had fired at some shadowy figure in his dream.
Teddy lay back in bed and slowed his breathing. Something was still wrong. His girlfriend, Lauren Cade, stirred beside him. “You awake?”
“Yes,” he said, “something woke me.”
“What—noise? Doorbell?”
“Something else. It’s happened before. I’ve learned not to ignore it.” Teddy had been a fugitive for years now, and he had remained free because he listened to this sixth sense. It was as if someone had unexpectedly tapped him on the shoulder and said clearly, “It’s time to go.”
Teddy got out of bed, took the Colt Government .380, which was a miniature of the .45 Model 1911, and slowly began to walk the perimeter of the little beach house in La Jolla, a San Diego suburb. He and Lauren had left Santa Fe after a CIA officer had tracked them down there. They had been safe and happy in La Jolla for more than a year, but they had to run.
He went, barefoot and silent, from room to room without turning on any lights. There was half a moon that night, and as he looked out every window in its turn, he could spot no one. He went back to the bedroom, where Lauren was sitting up in bed. “It’s time to go,” he said.
“Teddy, are you sure? Do you know something I don’t?”
“No, I’m not sure. The only way to be sure is if someone sticks a pistol in my ear and cuffs me. And I don’t know anything you don’t, except that I do. I just do.”
“All right,” she said.
“Are you with me, sweetie?” he asked. “You can always bail out, if you’re tired of this.”
“I’m with you,” she said. “I’m not tired of you.”
“All right,” Teddy said, looking at the luminous hands on his watch. “We have to be out of here in one hour—say, three o‘clock. That’s an hour and five minutes. Start with what you absolutely cannot bear to leave behind, then widen your circle to include the less essential but important. We’re not going to turn on any lights. We’re going to load the car with the garage door closed and head out.”
Lauren started dressing.
Teddy started with his computer equipment—a MacBook Air—and his printer, and two magic boxes he had built himself and was thinking about marketing. He could forge any document, break into any database, with those. He always kept the original packaging for important things, and he located the boxes and manuals in the dark. Next came his tool kits and weapons—a silenced sniper rifle in a briefcase that he had designed and made for the CIA during the twenty-odd years he had served in the Agency’s Technical Services department. They didn’t know that he had made a duplicate rifle for himself.
He went to the sixty-inch safe, opened it, and took out the handguns and the cash. He already had cases ready for everything. He loaded all these things and put them into the SUV, then he climbed on top of the vehicle and unscrewed the bulb that normally came on when the garage door opened.
He went back to the bedroom and began throwing clothes into a suitcase. “How are you coming?” he asked.
“Pretty well,” she replied, packing a bag. “I’ll be ready by three.”
“Sooner, if you can,” he said, handing her a pair of latex gloves and pulli
ng some on himself. “I’m going to start wiping down the house.”
He started with the bedroom, then went to the bath and kitchen, then to the rest of the house, spraying things with alcohol-and-water window cleaner and wiping with a clean dishcloth. When he finished, Lauren’s things were in the SUV, and she was ready. They got into the car.
“Ready?” he asked, handing her a SIG Sauer P239. “There’s one in the chamber.”
“Ready,” she said.
He switched off the auto-on interior lights. He touched the remote control, and the garage door rose silently. He had aligned and greased it carefully for such a moment. “Let’s give it a push,” he said.
They both opened their doors and got the vehicle rolling, then got back in. As the car rolled down the driveway, he touched the remote again to close the garage door. He had chosen the house, in part, because of the hill, and now the car rolled noiselessly down the street. He was two blocks away before he started the engine, then he used as little power as possible for another three blocks, checking the mirrors constantly for another moving vehicle. Nothing. He finally switched on the headlights.
They drove out to Montgomery Field, eight miles north of San Diego, to a never-used back gate that Teddy had cut the lock and chain off and substituted his own combination padlock. Lauren unlocked the gate and opened it, then closed and relocked it when Teddy had driven through.
The field was dark, except for the runway and taxiway lighting. Teddy drove to their hangar, parked, and unlocked the hangar and opened the door. The two of them pushed the Cessna 182 RG out onto the ramp and quickly loaded their things into it, then Teddy put the car into the hangar, wiped it down, and closed and locked the door. Nobody would bother to look in it for at least another month, when the rent hadn’t been paid. If he had had more time he could have sold it, but what the hell? He could eat the loss.
Teddy had a good look around the field and saw nothing moving. The tower was closed, as takeoffs were discouraged between eleven-thirty P.M. and six A.M. He ran through the checklist quickly, then started the engine, waiting only a moment before moving to be sure it was running smoothly. He taxied across the ramp and straight onto the short runway, 28 Left, at a point that left him 2,000 of its 3,400 feet, more than the airplane needed to get off the ground. Leaving the airplane’s lights and transponder off, he pushed the throttle to the firewall, waited for seventy knots, then rotated. He leveled off at 200 feet, then turned inland.