Split Second skamm-1

by David Baldacci

  “But they didn’t get one in the Ramsey case?”

  “No. While I believed the case was only marginal, I still had to work with the facts I had, and they weren’t great. And the government was playing real hardball. Wanting to make a statement, not that I totally blame them, I guess. And then I got taken off the case.”

  “Why?”

  “The defendant got other counsel. Some firm out west, I think. I guess that was where Ramsey, if it was him, was from. I assumed his family had found out what happened and were coming to the rescue.”

  “Do you remember the name of the firm?” asked Michelle.

  He thought for a bit. “No. Too many years and cases in the interim.”

  “And this firm somehow got the charges dropped?”

  “Not only that, I heard they got the record of the arrest expunged, all the details. They must have been really good. In my dealings with the government back then, that rarely happened.”

  “Well, you said some of the government prosecutors were pretty unethical. Maybe people got paid off,” suggested King. “Lawyers and cops.”

  “I guess that might have happened,” said Holmgren. “I mean, if you’re going to trump up cases, I suppose you’d be willing to take a bribe to make a case go away. The government lawyer on the case was young, ambitious as hell, and always struck me as being way too slick. But he was good at playing the game, looking to jump to bigger and better things. I never saw him cross the line, though others in the office did. I do know that I felt sorry for his boss, who took a lot of the heat when all the crap in that office hit the fan years later. Billy Martin was a good guy. He didn’t deserve that.”

  King and Michelle looked at the man, utterly stunned. King finally found his voice. “And the name of the government lawyer who prosecuted Arnold Ramsey?”

  “Oh, that one I’ll never forget. It was the fellow who was running for president and then got kidnapped. John Bruno.”

  59

  King and Michelle went straight from Holmgren’s to VCU in Richmond. Kate Ramsey wasn’t at the Center for Public Policy. They were able to talk the receptionist into giving them Kate’s home phone number. They called, but the woman who answered was Kate’s roommate. She didn’t know where Kate was. She hadn’t seen her since that morning. When Michelle asked if they could come to see her, she hesitantly agreed.

  On the way over, Michelle asked, “Do you think Kate knows about Bruno and her father? Please don’t tell me that. She can’t.”

  “I have a sinking feeling you’re wrong.”

  They drove to Kate’s apartment and spoke with the roommate, whose name was Sharon. At first Sharon was reluctant to talk, but when Michelle flashed her badge, she became far more cooperative. With her permission they looked around Kate’s small bedroom but found nothing that was helpful. Kate was a serious reader, and her room was stacked with works that would have taxed most academicians. Then King found the box on the top shelf of the closet. It held a gun-cleaning kit and a box of nine-millimeter shells. He looked ominously at Michelle, who shook her head sadly.

  “Do you know why Kate carries a gun?” King asked Sharon.

  “She was mugged. At least that’s what she told me. She bought it about seven or eight months ago. I hate having the thing around, but she has a license for it and all. And she goes to shooting ranges to practice. She’s a good shot.”

  “That’s comforting. Did she have it with her when she left this morning?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has there been anybody coming to see Kate, other than school-related? A man, for instance?”

  “As far as I know she doesn’t even date. She’s always out at some rally or march or attending council meetings to protest something. She makes me dizzy sometimes with all that goes on inside her head. I can barely make it to class and keep my boyfriend happy much less worry about the shape the world’s in, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I meant an older guy, maybe in his fifties.” He described Thornton Jorst but Sharon shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. Although a couple of times I saw her get out of a car in front of the apartment building. I couldn’t see who was driving, but I think it was a guy. When I asked her about it, she became pretty evasive.”

  “Can you describe the vehicle?”

  “Mercedes, a big one.”

  “So a rich guy. When was the first time you saw that?” Michelle said.

  “Maybe about nine or ten months ago. I remember because Kate had recently started her postgraduate work here. She doesn’t have many friends. If she was meeting anyone, she didn’t do it here. But she’s hardly ever here.”

  As they were talking, Michelle held the cleaning kit up to her ear and shook it. There was a small sound. She dug her fingers under the lining and pulled it out. Her fingers locked around a small key. She showed it to Sharon. “Any idea what this is to? Looks like maybe a storage locker.”

  “There are some of those in the basement,” Sharon answered. “I didn’t know Kate had one.”

  Michelle and King descended to the basement, found the storage closet, matched the number with the one on the key and opened it. King turned on a light, and they looked around at the stacks of boxes.

  King drew a deep breath and said, “Okay, this will either be a bust or a gold mine.”

  Four boxes later they had their answer: neatly organized scrapbooks detailing two separate things. One was the Ritter assassination. King and Michelle looked at dozens of articles and photos of the event, including several of King, two of a much younger Kate Ramsey looking sad and alone and even one of Regina Ramsey. The text on the pages was heavily underscored with pen. “Not so strange for her to have collected these,” said Michelle. “It was her father, after all.”

  However, the other subject cataloged here was far more chilling. It was all about John Bruno, from his early days as a prosecutor to his presidential candidacy. King spotted two yellowed newspaper articles describing investigations into corruption in the D.C. United States Attorney’s Office. Bill Martin’s name was prominently mentioned, but Bruno’s wasn’t. However, Kate had written at the top of each page: “John Bruno.”

  “Oh, shit,” said King. “Our little political activist is involved in some serious stuff here. And regardless of whether Bruno deserved it or not, she’s tagged him as a crooked prosecutor who ruined her father’s life.”

  “What I don’t get,” said Michelle, “is that these stories were printed before Kate was even born. Where did she get them?”

  “The man in the Mercedes. The guy making her hate Bruno for what he did to her father. Or didn’t do.” King added, “And maybe she blames Bruno for her father’s death, reasoning if he’d been at Harvard or Stanford, he would’ve been happy and his wife wouldn’t have left him and he never would have gone gunning for somebody like Ritter.”

  “But all that for what purpose?”

  “Revenge? For Kate, for somebody else.”

  “How does that tie into Ritter and Loretta Baldwin and all the rest?”

  King threw up his hands in frustration. “Damn it, I wish I knew. But I do know this: Kate is only the tip of the iceberg. And now something else makes sense.” She looked at him. “Kate wanted to meet so she could tell us about this suddenly new revelation about Thornton Jorst.”

  “You think she was prompted to do that? To throw us off track?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she did it on her own, for another reason.”

  “Or maybe she’s telling the truth,” offered Michelle.

  “Are you kidding? Nobody has so far. Why should the rules change now?”

  “Well, I have to say, Kate Ramsey is a world-class actress. I never pegged her being involved.”

  “Well, her mother was supposed to be a superstar in that regard. Maybe she inherited those genes.” King looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “Get Parks on the horn and see what he’s come up with on Bob Scott. I’m suddenly very interested in my ex-
detail leader.”

  As it turned out, Parks had been very busy in the last several hours. He’d confirmed the address in Tennessee for Bob Scott and told Michelle that it had several intriguing attributes. It was a thirty-acre parcel in the mountainous rural eastern part of the state. The property had also been part of an army encampment during World War II and for twenty years thereafter, before it was sold to private owners. Since then it had changed hands several times.

  Parks told Michelle, “When I found out it was once owned by the United States Army, I started wondering why Scott might want to own a spread like that. He’d been living in Montana for a while, real militia person, I guess, so why the move? Well, I’ve been poring over maps, blueprints and diagrams, and I found out the damn property has an underground bunker built into a hillside. The government and military had thousands of them constructed during the Cold War, from small and simple to the gargantuan one at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia to house the United States Congress in the event of nuclear war. The one Scott owns is pretty elaborate, with bunk rooms, a galley, bathrooms, shooting range, water and air filtration facilities. Hell, the army probably forgot it was even there when the property was sold. One other interesting thing: it has cells for housing prisoners of war, in case of invasion, I guess.”

  “A prison,” said Michelle. “Pretty handy for holding kidnapped presidential candidates.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. And on top of that, this place in Tennessee is barely two hours by car from where both Ritter was killed and Bruno was kidnapped. Those three places roughly form a triangular shape.”

  “And you’re sure it’s the same Bob Scott?” asked Michelle.

  “Pretty damn sure. But for this old warrant, it would have been tough to track him down; he’s gone pretty far underground.”

  “Are you still planning to go down there?” asked Michelle.

  “We found a friendly Tennessee judge who issued us a search warrant. We’re going to pay that place a visit, but under a pretense because I don’t want anyone getting shot. And once inside, we see what we see. It’s a little dicey from a legal point of view, but I figure if we can get Bruno out before something happens to him, and bag Scott, then it’s worth it. We’ll let the lawyers figure it all out later.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “It’ll take us a while to get everything set, and we’ll want to do it in broad daylight. I don’t want this Scott wacko to open fire on what he thinks are trespassers. It’s about a four- or five-hour drive, so really early tomorrow morning. You still want to go?”

  “We do,” said Michelle with a glance at King. “And we may find somebody else there.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Parks.

  “A graduate student holding a long grudge.” She clicked off and filled in King on the events. Then she pulled out a sheet of paper and started scribbling out some bullet points.

  “Okay, here’s my brilliant theory number two, which assumes that Jorst is not involved. Let’s take it point by point,” she began. “Scott sets up the Ritter killing with Ramsey; he’s the inside guy. For what motivation I don’t know, maybe money, maybe he had some secret vendetta against Ritter.” She snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute. I know it sounds crazy, but maybe Scott’s parents gave all their money to Ritter when he was a preacher? You remember what Jorst said about that? And when I was doing background on Ritter, I confirmed he was a very rich man, basically because of these ‘donations’ to his church, a church he was somehow sole beneficiary of.”

  “I thought about that too. But unfortunately that theory doesn’t fit the facts. I worked with Scott for years and know his history. His parents died when he was a kid. And they didn’t have any money to leave him anyway.”

  She sat back with a frustrated look. “Too bad. That would have been a good incentive. Hey, what about Sidney Morse? His parents were wealthy. Maybe they gave their money to Ritter. Then maybe Morse was involved in Ritter’s death.”

  “No. She gave her money to Morse when she died. I remember hearing about it when Morse came onto the campaign, because she passed away during that time. And in any event, we know the Ritter and Bruno cases are somehow connected. Even if Sidney had something to do with Ritter’s death, he couldn’t have been involved with Bruno’s kidnapping. Not unless he knocked him out with a tennis ball.”

  “Okay, that’s true. All right, let’s still assume Bob Scott was behind it. That’s the first part. Let’s just say he was paid off to help orchestrate the assassination. It costs him his career, but so be it. He goes off and lives in the wilds of Montana.”

  “But what about Bruno? What connection could Scott have to the man?”

  “Well, what if when he set up Ritter he did it because he and Ramsey were friends somehow, way back when? I know it seems crazy. Scott fought in Vietnam and Ramsey protested against it, but stranger things have happened. Maybe they met at some protest. You know, Scott was sick of the war and jumped to Ramsey’s way of thinking. So maybe if he helped set up the assassination of Ritter with Arnold Ramsey, he also knows Kate Ramsey. And then he’s also aware that Bruno ruined her father’s career with trumped-up charges, and he told Kate that. Now Kate grows up hating Bruno, and Scott comes back in the picture somehow, and they team up to kidnap him and make him pay for what he did. That would pretty much explain it all.”

  “And the man who visited Arnold Ramsey, the one Kate overheard saying Thornton Jorst’s name—you’re saying that was Scott?”

  “Well, if Kate is really involved, she could have just lied about that to throw us off the truth, like we talked about. So what do you think?”

  “Those are pretty good deductions.”

  “Well, I think we make a pretty good team.”

  King drew a deep breath. “Now I guess we wait and see what tomorrow brings.”

  60

  The next morning they left at the crack of dawn in three vehicles. Parks drove with King and Michelle, and two Suburbans carrying grim-looking, armor-wearing federal agents followed them.

  King and Michelle had filled in Parks on the developments with Kate Ramsey and Michelle’s theory on how all the dots connected, however precariously.

  Parks did not look convinced. “With the way things have been going in this case, I’m just waiting for another damn curveball.”

  On the way down over coffee and Krispy Kremes, Parks went over the attack plan: “We’re going to send one of the trucks down to the house after we disguise it as a county survey vehicle. One of our guys goes up to the door with his clipboard while another pulls out the survey equipment. Some of our men will be inside the truck. The others will have surrounded the place and set up a perimeter. Our guy knocks on the door, and when someone opens it, everyone pops out loaded for bear and we go in hard and heavy. If nobody’s home, we go in clean and execute on our search warrant. With any luck no shots are fired, and we all go home happy and alive.”

  King was riding in the backseat. He reached over and touched Parks on the shoulder. “You know Bob Scott is a weapons freak, but he’s also an expert in hand-to-hand. That’s how he escaped from the Viet Cong. Story goes he spent six months filing a metal buckledown to a razor’s edge and then cut the throats of his two captors with it. Not a guy you want to slip up with.”

  “I hear you. We go in with surprise and overwhelming force. Textbook. That’s the best way I know how to do it.” Parks then said, “You really think we’ll find Bruno and maybe Joan there?”

  “Maybe,” said King, “but I don’t know if they’ll be breathing.”

  Buick Man and Simmons were completing their preparations. The generators were in place and fully operational. The wires had been laid, the explosives set, the detonators readied. The items that Buick Man had so diligently created were also in place and ready for the big moment. All equipment had been tested and checked a dozen times. All it had to do was work perfectly the thirteenth go-round, and victory was theirs.

  As Buick Man survey
ed his handiwork representing so much planning and work, he didn’t even allow himself a look of satisfaction. Simmons noted this and put aside the box he was rechecking.

  “Well, it’s almost show time. Looks like we’re actually going to pull it off. You ought to feel good about that.”

  “Go check on them,” Buick Man ordered crisply, and then sat in a chair and went over every detail again in his head.

  Simmons made his way to the prisoners and eyed them through the separate doors of the rooms they were being held in. Unconscious for now—their food had been drugged—they’d be awake soon enough. And if all went according to plan, he’d be on his way out of the country with enough money to last him several lifetimes. He returned to where Buick Man still sat, eyes closed, head lowered.

  “How long before you think they come calling here?” Simmons asked, breaking the silence hesitantly, for he knew how the man craved quiet.

  Buick Man answered, “Soon. They should be hitting the Tennessee bunker any time now.”

  “They’ll be surprised.”

  Buick Man looked at him disdainfully. “That’s the general idea. Do you have any comprehension of the thought and planning that’s gone into this? Do you think this is all simply for your amusement?”

  Simmons looked down nervously. “So when will she be getting back?”

  “She’ll be here in time. She wouldn’t want to miss the next part. I’m actually looking forward to it myself.” Now he looked at his companion. “Are you ready?”

  Simmons squared his shoulders and assumed a confident look. “I was born ready for this stuff.”

  Buick Man stared at him intently for a moment or so and then lowered his head and closed his eyes once more.

  61

  Using binoculars, Michelle and King watched safely from the truck as a Suburban with a half dozen of Parks’s men inside rolled down the dirt road toward the house, or more aptly, the cabin. Looking around, King thought that the area could not be any more remote. They were on the spine of a ridge of the Great Smoky Mountains, and the tricky topography had pushed the truck’s four-wheel-drive power to its limits. Pine, ash and oak rose on all sides around them, forming a wall that would bring darkness here about two hours earlier than normal. Even now, at eleven o’clock in the morning, dusk seemed to be gathering, and there was a damp cold in the air that seemed to eat right through them, even inside the truck.