Split Second skamm-1

by David Baldacci

  “I miss that part.”

  “But you make a lot more money.”

  “I guess you do too.”

  He shifted his weight and balanced his cup in the palm of his hand. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll get down to it. A U.S. deputy marshal named Jefferson Parks came to see me. He’s heading up the investigation on Howard Jennings, the murdered WITSEC. He was the one who came for my gun while you were there.”

  Joan looked interested. “Jefferson Parks?”

  “You know him?”

  “Name sounds very familiar. So they took your gun. And ballistics cleared you?”

  “Actually no. It was a match. My gun killed Howard Jennings.”

  King had thought over this phrasing very carefully on the drive up, because he wanted to test the woman’s response to it. She almost spilled her coffee. Either she had really boned up on her acting skills or it was a sincere reaction.

  “That can’t be right,” she said.

  “That’s what I said. But fortunately the marshal and I saw eye-to-eye on the method that someone could have used to make my gun the murder weapon while I thought I had it on me.”

  “How?”

  King briefly explained his substitution theory. He’d thought about withholding it from her but decided it didn’t really matter, and he wanted her reaction to this as well, mostly for the follow-up statement he was going to make.

  Joan thought about this, longer than King felt was really necessary.

  “That would take a lot of planning and skill,” she finally said.

  “And access to my house. They would have had to get the gun back in my box before the posse showed up to take it, you know, the morning that you were there.”

  He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup while she stewed on this. He offered to freshen hers but she declined.

  “So you came here to tell me that, what, you think I framed you?” said Joan stiffly.

  “I’m just telling you that someone did, and I just told you how I think they did it.”

  “You could have told me that over the phone.”

  “Yes, I could, but you paid me a visit, and I wanted to return the honor. At least I called first.”

  “I didn’t set you up, Sean.”

  “Then all my troubles are over. I’ll call Parks and tell him the good news.”

  “You know, you can be a real smart-ass.”

  He put down his coffee cup and drew very close to her. “Let me just lay it out for you. I’ve got a dead man in my office, and my gun killed him. I’ve got no alibi and a pretty damn sharp marshal who, while maybe he buys my theory on a frame, is by no means convinced of my innocence. And this man would shed no tears if I’m locked up for the rest of my life or given some toxic bug juice to transport me to the hereafter. And then you come to visit me out of the blue and somehow forget to tell me that you’re no longer with the Secret Service. You make a big deal of apologizing, acting all nice, with the result that I let you stay overnight. You try your best to seduce me on my kitchen table for a reason I still can’t fathom, but I can’t believe only has to do with you wanting to scratch an eight-year-old itch. You’re alone in my house while I’m out on the lake, and my gun mysteriously turns out to be the murder weapon after it’s picked up on that very same morning. Now, Joan, maybe I am more suspicious than my neighbor, but I’d have to be on life support and breathing through a frigging tube not to be a little paranoid about that sequence of events.”

  She eyed him with maddening calm. “I didn’t take your gun. I know nothing about anyone who might have. I have no proof of that. You just have my word.”

  “Again, that’s such a relief.”

  “I never told you that I was still with the Service. You just assumed.”

  “You never said you weren’t!” he snapped.

  “You never asked!” She added, “And that wasn’t my best.”

  King looked confused. “What?”

  “You said I did my best to seduce you. Just for the record, that wasn’t my best.”

  Both sat back now, seemingly out of words or breath or both.

  “Okay,” he said, “whatever game you’re playing with me, you just go ahead and play it. I’m not going down for Jennings’s murder, because I didn’t do it.”

  “Neither did I, and I’m not trying to frame you. What motive would I have?”

  King said, “Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” He rose. “Thanks for the coffee. Next time hold the cyanide, it gives me gas.”

  “As I told you before, I came to see you for a very particular purpose.” He stared at her. “But I didn’t get around to it. I guess seeing you after all those years made more of an impact than I thought it would.”

  “So what was the purpose?”

  “To make you a proposition.” She quickly added, “A business proposition.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like John Bruno,” she replied.

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you have to do with a missing presidential candidate?”

  “Thanks to me, the firm was hired by Bruno’s party to find out what happened to him. In lieu of our standard rate I negotiated another arrangement. Our out-of-pocket expenses are covered, but we accepted a much lower daily rate. However, it comes with a potentially lucrative bonus.”

  “What, like a finder’s fee, no pun intended.”

  “A multimillion-dollar one to be exact. And since I brought in the account, under the firm’s policy of getting to eat what you kill, I personally get sixty percent.”

  “How exactly did you manage that?”

  “Well, as you know I had a pretty good career at the Service. And in the time I’ve been here I’ve brought several very high-profile cases to a successful conclusion, including the return of a Fortune 500 executive who was kidnapped.”

  “Congratulations. Funny I never heard about it.”

  “Well, we like to keep a low profile to the public. To those who are in the know, however, we’re a major player.”

  “Millions, huh? I didn’t think third-party candidates had that kind of war chest.”

  “A large part of it is special liability insurance, and Bruno’s wife has family money. His campaign was also very well funded. And since they have no candidate to expend money on, they want to pay me, and I have no problem with that.”

  “But Bruno’s case is an ongoing federal investigation.”

  “So what? The FBI doesn’t have a monopoly on solving crimes. And Bruno’s people flatly don’t trust the government. In case you haven’t been reading your newspaper, some of them think their candidate was set up by the Service.”

  “They said the same thing about me and Ritter, and it’s as crazy now as it was then,” said King.

  “But it presents a wonderful opportunity for us.”

  “Us? And what exactly is my part in all this?”

  “If you help me find Bruno, I’ll pay you forty percent of what I get; it’ll be seven figures to you.”

  “I’m not rich, but I really don’t need the money, Joan.”

  “But I do. I left the Service before I did my twenty-five years, so I’m sort of screwed on the pension. I’ve been here a year, making a lot more money, and I’ve socked most of it away, but I’m not enjoying myself. In my years at the Service I worked the equivalent of a forty-year career. I see in my future white beaches, a catamaran and exotic cocktails, and this score will allow me to do that. And maybe you don’t need the money, but what you do need is something good to happen to you. Where the newspapers tout you as a hero instead of the fall guy.”

  “So you’re now my P.R. person?”

  “I think you need one, Sean.”

  “Why me? You’ve got all the resources of this place.”

  “Most of the experienced people are pissed that I landed the deal, and they won’t work on it with me. The ones who are left are young, overeducated and street-stupid. Your fourth year in the Service you broke the largest count
erfeit ring in the Northern Hemisphere working solo from the field office in Louisville, Kentucky, of all places. That’s the sort of investigative talent I need. And it also helps matters that you live two hours from where Bruno was snatched.”

  He looked around. “I don’t even work at this place.”

  “I can use anyone I want in the investigation.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t done this stuff in years.”

  “Like riding a bike.” She sat forward and stared at him intently. “Like riding a bike, Sean. And I don’t think I’d be making this proposition to you if I’d set you up to take a murder rap. I need you with me if I want the payoff. And I want the payoff.”

  “I have my law practice.”

  “Take a sabbatical. If we’re going to find Bruno, it’ll be sooner rather than later. Look at it this way. It’s exciting. It’s different. It might not be like old times. But maybe it’ll be like new times.” Her hand lightly touched his. Somehow it was a far more seductive gesture than the tacky stunt she’d pulled on his kitchen table.

  “And maybe you can show me how to sail the catamaran, because I don’t have a clue,” said Joan quietly.

  21

  Loretta Baldwin lay in the bath and let the hot water take the chill off her bones. The bathroom was dark; she liked it that way, like a mother’s womb, comforting. She chuckled; she had to, every time she thought of it. About that girl that had come by asking all those questions pretending to be making a film about Clyde Ritter, as if anyone would bother. The girl was probably some sort of police officer or private investigator, though why anyone would be digging up the Clyde Ritter mess was beyond her. Yet Loretta would take the money, every cent of it. Just like she had all these years. She’d told the truth, at least to the questions the girl had asked; she just hadn’t asked the right ones. Like what Loretta had seen when she was hiding in the supply closet. What a nervous wreck she’d been getting it out of the hotel, yet no one really noticed her in the chaos. She was just one of the maids, invisible really. And she knew ways out of the hotel that not even the Secret Service had been aware of.

  At first she thought to go to the police with what she’d found and seen, but then decided not to. Why get messed up in something like that? And she’d tired of spending her life cleaning up other people’s messes. And what did she care about Clyde Ritter? A man like that was far better off in the grave, where he couldn’t spread his poison.

  So she had done it. Sent the note and photo to the person telling what she’d seen and what she now possessed, and arranging for money to come to her. And it had come and she hadn’t broken her silence and the person she was blackmailing never knew her identity, right up to the end. She’d been real tricky, using a series of P.O. boxes, fake names and one close friend, now dead, to help her cover her tracks. She hadn’t been greedy. It wasn’t a whole lot of money, but with no steady work all these years the cash had come in real handy, let her keep her home, pay her bills, buy some nice things, help her family. Yes, it was all right.

  And that girl had never thought to ask; yet how could she have known? And even if she had, Loretta would have lied, just like the girl had lied to her, because if she was a documentary filmmaker, Loretta was Lena Horne. That thought made her laugh so hard she started to choke.

  After she settled back down, her thoughts grew more somber. The money was no longer coming, but there was nothing she could do about that now. All things had to end. But she hadn’t been a spendthrift. She’d put some of the money away, knowing that her golden goose would not last forever. She could get by a while longer, and maybe by then another goose would present itself. That girl had given her money. That was a start. Loretta Baldwin was nothing if not optimistic.

  The phone rang, startling her. Her bones thoroughly warmed, she opened her eyes and started to climb out of the bathtub. Maybe this was another golden goose calling right now.

  She never made it to the phone.

  “Remember me, Loretta?”

  The man stood over her, a metal pole with a flattened end in his hands.

  She would have screamed, but he pushed her under the water with the pole and held her there. For an elderly woman Loretta was fairly strong, but not nearly strong enough. Her eyes kept widening, her body jerking. She grabbed the pole, and water splashed allover the floor. Finally she had to take a breath and her lungs filled with water and it was over quickly after that.

  He lifted the pole off and studied her features. Her shriveled body stayed at the bottom of the tub, her dead eyes staring at him. The phone had stopped ringing; the house was silent. He left the room for a minute, located Loretta’s pocketbook and returned to the bathroom. He pulled out the money Michelle had given the woman, five twenties neatly tucked away in an inside compartment.

  He hooked Loretta’s body with the pole and lifted her out of the water. He opened her mouth with his gloved hand and then crammed the money inside. He clamped her jaw shut and let go. She settled back to the bottom, the ends of the twenty-dollar bills sticking out of her mouth. It wasn’t a very attractive look, but it was so very fitting an end for a blackmailer, he thought.

  He spent time going through her possessions, searching for the item of his she’d taken all those years ago, but it wasn’t here. To still be denied after all this time? Perhaps Loretta had had the last laugh. And yet she was lying quite dead in the bottom of a tub of water with money stuffed in her mouth. So who was really laughing?

  He took his pole and left the way he’d come.

  The Buick started up and rattled off. That chapter of his life, that loose end, was finally over. He’d have to drop Michelle Maxwell a thank-you note, perhaps among other things. He would never have known the woman’s identity if the Secret Service agent hadn’t come around asking questions. Loretta Baldwin had not been part of the original plan, only an opportunity that had fallen into his hands and was far too good to pass up.

  He was finished with the little province of Bowlington for now. He wished Loretta Baldwin a nice eternity in hell for her crimes. He’d doubtlessly be joining her at some point, and who knew, maybe he’d kill her all over again.

  Now, there was a thought!

  22

  King listlessly cast his line into the water and slowly reeled it back in. He was standing on his dock, the sun up barely an hour. The fish weren’t biting, yet he didn’t care. The spread of mountains seemed to be watching his uninspired efforts with a brooding focus.

  Joan undoubtedly had several complex motives in making her offer. Which ones favored him to any degree other than the financial compensation? Probably none. Joan’s schemes tended to only advance her interests. At least he knew where he stood with the woman.

  With Jefferson Parks, King was less certain. The marshal seemed sincere, but that could simply be a facade; it often was with lawmen, King knew. He’d played that game in his investigative career at the Service. King didn’t doubt that whoever had killed Howard Jennings would feel the full wrath of the big man. King just wanted to make certain that he didn’t become that target.

  The ripple of water gently touched one of the pilings on his dock, and he looked up to see its source. The scull slid across the lake’s surface, the woman pulling hard on her paddles. She was close enough that King could see the muscled definition of her shoulders and arms revealed by her tank top shirt. As she slowed and coasted toward him, something about her looked very familiar.

  She glanced around in surprise, as though unaware she was close to shore.

  “Hello,” she said, and waved.

  He didn’t wave back, only nodded. He cast his line again, purposely close to her.

  “I hope I’m not interfering with your fishing,” she said.

  “That depends on how long you’re going to stay.”

  She drew her knees up. She was wearing black Lycra shorts, and the thigh muscles were long and looked like cable under skin. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and wiped her face with a towel.

&n
bsp; She looked around. “Boy, it’s beautiful here.”

  “That’s why people come,” he said warily. “And where exactly did you come from?” He was trying hard to place her.

  She pointed south. “I drove over to the state park and put in there.”

  “That’s seven miles by water!” he exclaimed. The woman wasn’t even winded.

  “I do this a lot.”

  Her scull drifted closer. And King finally recognized her. He could barely contain his astonishment.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Agent Maxwell?”

  She looked surprised for a moment and then seemed to sense that such a pretense was both unnecessary and even silly under the circumstances.

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “One fallen agent to another, no trouble at all.”

  He helped her dock the scull. She eyed the covered boat slips and the storage sheds attached to each. King’s jet boat, kayak, Sea-Doo and other vessels were sparkling clean. Tools, ropes, gear and other items were neatly stacked, hung or otherwise arranged.

  “A place for everything and everything in its place?” she said.

  “I like it that way,” replied King.

  “I’m sort of a slob in my personal life.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  They walked up to the house.

  Inside he poured the coffee, and they sat at the kitchen table. Michelle had put on a Harvard sweatshirt over her tank top and slipped on a pair of matching sweatpants.

  “I thought you went to Georgetown?” said King.

  “I got this sweat suit when we did some rowing on the Charles River in Boston while we were training for the Olympics.”

  “That’s right. The Olympics. Busy woman.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “Not so busy now, though. I mean you have time for early morning water sports and paying visits to ex-Secret Service agents.”

  She smiled. “So you won’t accept my being here as just a coincidence?”

  “The real tip-off was the sweat suit. Sort of tells me you hoped to get out of your boat at some point before you got back to your car. On top of that, I doubt you would have rowed seven miles, Olympian or not, unless you knew I was home. I had several phone hang-ups this morning about thirty minutes apart. Let me guess, you have a cell phone in your scull.”