“Really?”
“Really.” She bounced in her seat. “It’s perfect. You remember Noah Peterson?”
“Sure. Your alcoholic mentor who got himself killed during the RAGS investigation.”
While Sasha and Connelly had been making one another’s acquaintance over a dead body in a Washington, DC dumpster, Noah Peterson was killed by a deranged client. “Right. So he and Laura own a beachfront house in the Outer Banks. She kept it after she moved to France. She rents it out all summer, but it’s empty the rest of the year.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. She offered it to Will when he was in charge of a charity auction for that soup kitchen. He told me all about it.”
“The Outer Banks. That’s in North Carolina, right?”
She searched her memory. “Yes. It’s a chain of barrier islands. But it’s pretty far north—I mean, out of the locations a person might visit in the dead of winter. It’s not exactly Florida.”
He nodded. “That could work,” he said. “Do you know exactly where it is?”
“It’s on Kitty Hawk. I remember because Will was going on and on about the Wright Brothers Memorial and how it’s really in Kill Devil Hills, not Kitty Hawk.”
“Sounds like Will.”
“It’s right on the beach. And they named it—you know how rich people name their ski chalets or whatever? There’s a sign and everything. We just have to get to Kitty Hawk, head for the water, and look for the big house called Habeas Porpoise.”
Connelly groaned. She tried to hide her smile.
“That’s terrible.”
“I think it’s funny. You know, habeas corpus is one of the great legal writs. And according to Will, there’s this awesome ship’s watch with a view of dolphins swimming by. Porpoise, get it?”
“I get it. That doesn’t make it funny. Anyway, porpoises and dolphins, while related, aren’t the same. There are more than thirty species of dolphins and only six porpoise species,” Connelly said professorially.
That sent her over the edge and she started to giggle. “But Habeaus Dolphin is a stupid name for a house.”
Connelly looked for a moment like he might argue with her but then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
“Watch the road,” she warned him, struggling to breathe as a fit of laughter overcame her.
“Ah, I needed that laugh,” he said, turning his neck from side to side, as if he were stretching.
“Are you getting stiff? Do you want me to drive for a while?”
“Not yet. I’m just tense.”
There wasn’t much to say in response to that, so she nodded. They drove several miles listening to some crooner promising to be home for Christmas. Then he started to mumble under his breathe.
“Sorry?”
“Trying to decide how to get there. I don’t want to get too close to DC.”
“Security cameras?”
“Bingo. Anyway, I’m thinking we take the Turnpike to Breezewood, then 70 to 81 and then we’ll figure out the rest closer to Richmond.”
Unlike her husband, she didn’t have a map of the Eastern seaboard seared into her brain, so she simply said, “Sounds good to me.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with breaking into Noah’s place?”
“It’s not really breaking in. If I called Laura, I know she’d tell us to make ourselves at home.” She paused. “But I can’t call her, right? Even from a payphone?”
“When’s the last time you saw a payphone? And how many quarters do you think it would take to call Provence from this imaginary payphone.”
She sighed. “Right.” A shudder ran through her.
“Are you cold?”
“No. Just thinking about Laura Yim. I realize most deaths are probably fairly unpleasant, but what a terrible way to go.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know. But still.” The truth, of course, was that Laura Yim would still be alive if Sasha hadn’t pointed out the evidence of an arson/insurance fraud ring to her. Of course, Connelly would try to make her feel like she wasn’t culpable. But she was.
“Let me know when you want to stop and eat.”
She reached forward and hugged her knees. “I feel kind of queasy, to be honest. Stop whenever you want to. I think I’ll just get …”
“A coffee?” he said with a smirk.
“Actually, I was going to say a cup of tea. I don’t think I could stomach coffee right now.”
He shot her a worried look but didn’t say anything in response. His surprise was understandable—she couldn’t recall ever not being in the mood for coffee. Yim’s death must have been bothering her even more than she realized. She turned and stared out the passenger window into the dark, starless night sky. It looked cold. As if a huge snowfall was on its way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nino called Peaches from the parking lot at the lawyer’s condo.
“What’s up, kid?”
“I got a lead on the witness. You know, about that thing. The, uh, lightning.”
“Oh yeah? I got one, too, guy in Jersey, Jimmy M., says the company got a call from the FBI today. That chick met with an unfortunate accident. It’s strange that she ended up down by the eagle’s nest. Like someone’s trying to frame me. I think it’s the cops.”
Peaches’s paranoia wasn’t anything new. Nino figured the old guy hadn’t survived as long as he had because of his trusting nature, but he couldn’t quite follow the tortured logic that had led Peaches to this particular theory.
“Huh,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say. He waited a beat. “So, your sources think that’s the end of it?”
“No,” Peaches said in a mournful tone. “I heard the grand jury was in session today. Don’t know who testified, though.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I’ve had an ear to the ground, too. I think it was a lawyer by the name of Sasha McCandless. Can I use the car and tail her?”
“A lawyer? Who in their right mind believes anything that comes out of a lawyer’s mouth? That’s like buying a prostitute’s praise of your manhood. Don’t do that, by the way, kiddo. Hookers lie almost as bad as lawyers.”
Nino chuckled appreciatively. “Thanks for the tip, boss. About the car?”
“Yeah, yeah, take it. Tommy’s gonna come over later and trim my hair for midnight Mass tomorrow. Hey, you coming to the Feast of the Seven Fishes tomorrow? Tatiana’s been cooking all day. It stinks to high heaven in here.”
“If I can, Peaches. I might … I might go visit my grandma in the home. Tell Tatiana thank you for the invitation, though.” Nino had to hand it to himself. He was becoming quite an accomplished liar.
“You’re a good boy, Nino. You go see your grandmother. You hear me? That’s an order. Take the car. Impress her.”
“Thanks, Peaches.”
“Eh, don’t mention it. I’ll give you your Christmas bonus this weekend.”
“Thank you,” he said again.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Nino could almost see Peaches waving off the thanks, embarrassed by gratitude.
“Good bye, boss.”
“Good night, kid.”
Nino ended the call and turned on the car’s interior light. Then he pulled up a web browser and followed the instructions on the card that Jamie had given him. In less than a minute, he’d thumbed in the requisite codes and a small map appeared on the page. A red dot was traveling along Route 376 headed toward the entrance to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Nino snapped the phone into the holder mounted on Peaches’s dashboard and clicked off the overhead light. Then he gunned the engine and pulled out. He drove at a leisurely pace. There was no need to hurry. The little red dot wasn’t going to go anywhere without him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Charlotte pressed her palms on the metal table and leaned forward, jutting her chin and shoving her face close to Agent Brenner’s as if she were the star of a t
elevision police drama. She felt ridiculous, and she suspected Jamie was working hard to hide his amusement at the overdone pose. But the situation they were in was anything but funny, and they both needed to act their parts. They were being watched through the one-way glass that made up one wall of the interrogation room, and they both knew it. A cadre of senior bureaucrats wearing matching navy suits had flown in from Main Justice to oversee the investigation after Laura Yim’s various body parts were fished out of the Allegheny River.
Until Charlotte convinced the powers-that-be that she and her team were clean, the entire Task Force would be treated like suspects. And, fair or not, Jamie Brenner was the most suspect of all because he had been running the show.
“What happened, agent? Are you a traitor—or just a failure?”
His eyes flashed real anger, and she drew back just a few inches. “I take exception to that question,” he answered in an even tone.
Just beneath the surface, he was seething. She could tell by the way he held himself that the adrenaline was rushing through his body and he was resisting the urge to lash out. Presumably, he’d been trained to control that response at the academy. At least she hoped he had.
“I didn’t ask how you feel about it, agent. You were supposed to take Laura Yim to the airport on Sunday morning, were you not?” she pressed.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And what happened when you arrived at the hotel?” she asked, forcing herself not to glance at the mirror.
“I arrived at the hotel shortly before oh five hundred hours. I checked in with Agent Buckler, who was assigned the overnight shift. He indicated that all had been quiet. I then—“
“Where was Agent Buckler stationed?” she interrupted.
He scratched his chin and coughed. Buying time while he decided how to put Buckler’s incompetence in the best possible light, she knew. She let him stall because Buckler’s performance reflected on her as much as it did on Jamie.
Finally he said, “The agents assigned to protect the witness were given some latitude to decide where they were most comfortable setting up. Some agents prefer a visible position in the hallway just outside the witness’s hotel room door. Other agents, like myself and Agent Buckler, find it more advantageous to watch the exterior of the hotel from a concealed position. This position permits the agent to recognize a problem at an earlier stage and to neutralize the threat before the witness is even approached. The tradeoff, of course, is that an agent stationed outside the hotel will need to make periodic patrols around the perimeter to ensure that no means of ingress has been breached. It is also my practice to walk the halls inside the building once an hour.”
“And Agent Buckler? What’s his practice?” She knew he didn’t want to throw Chad Buckler under the bus, but a woman was dead.
He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “Agent Buckler wasn’t sure he did perimeter patrols as often as he should have but he was adamant that Ms. Yim could not have been removed from the premises during his shift, with the exception of one brief period of time when he did leave his post to urinate.”
“To urinate.”
“Yes. He’d drunk quite a bit of Mountain Dew in an effort to maintain alertness and he had an apparent great need to relieve himself at approximately oh four hundred hours.” Jamie’s disappointment in his man was etched across his face.
“How long was he gone?”
“He estimates the total elapsed time as being less than ten minutes.”
“Do I hear a ‘but’ in your voice, agent?”
“It was a cold night, Ms. Cashion. I suspect he may have lingered inside the restroom longer than was strictly necessary. I have no solid information to support that suspicion, though. But I do know that after going inside he was inspired to do a floor by floor check—the one and only such check he performed during his shift.”
“Because it was warm inside and he didn’t want to go back outside?”
“Yes.”
“And could you do a floor by floor check in less than ten minutes with a potty break?”
“No. It generally took me between twelve and fourteen minutes to do a thorough sweep of the hotel.”
“I see.” She couldn’t help it. She twisted her neck and eyed the mirror before asking her next question. “So how do you think it went down, theoretically?”
“I think the doer set up, possibly on the roof of the garage, and watched Agent Buckler for a period of time to gain a sense of his movements. I think he also had a car stashed nearby. When Buckler went into the hotel to drain the snake, our guy sprang into action. He probably drove the car up to the front door and left it idling. Then he hurried through the lobby and made his way up to Ms. Yim’s room without encountering Agent Buckler.”
“How’d he persuade her to open the door?”
“No idea.”
“How’d he know where she was?”
Later, when she had time to think about the exchange, Charlotte would never be sure what she expected Jamie Brenner to say in response to her question. But she did know she didn’t expect to hear what he did say.
He looked at her with something like pity in his eyes and said, “It’s an open secret that you stash your high-risk, high-value assets at the Spire, Ms. Cashion. Everyone knows you favor that hotel.”
She opened her mouth to sputter a protest. “That’s … that’s not true.”
“Sure it is.” He looked past her to stare straight into the glass as if he could see through it to the men who held his future in their hands. “In fact, Nino Carlucci stopped by to visit me during my first shift on Friday night. He knew exactly where to find me after you told him I was sitting on your witness.” He turned back to face her and she nearly gasped aloud at the disgust blazing in his eyes. “You wanted me to offer up Buckler as your sacrificial lamb, huh? How’s it feel to be hoisted onto the altar?” he asked in a low growl.
She didn’t have time to react.
The metal door to the room flew open with such force that it banged into the wall, leaving a dent and taking out a chunk of plaster. Hank Richardson stormed into the room and beelined toward Agent Brenner. He pushed past Charlotte, grabbed two massive fistfuls of fabric from the front of Jamie’s shirt and yanked him to his feet.
“What did you just say?” Hank yelled.
Jamie blinked up at the enraged giant. “About what?”
The DC suits rushed through the door, pale-faced and spluttering. “Director Richardson,” the one named Cooney began. Jamie waved him off.
“It’s okay. Right, Mr. Richardson?”
Hank glared at him for several seconds before releasing him and smoothing the swirled wrinkles out of the front of the agent’s shirt.
Charlotte didn’t know what to think. A flurry of distressing thoughts raced through her mind. Hank Richardson held a director level position? Which agency? And why was Jamie reacting so calmly to being manhandled? And perhaps most disturbing, why on earth had Nino Carlucci breached protocol and risked his life to see his old partner and why hadn’t Jamie bothered to tell her?
Hank continued to ignore everyone else in the room. “Agent Carlucci came to see you at the hotel?” he said to Jamie, staring hard at him.
“Correct. On Friday evening, he showed up. Scared the crap out of me, as a matter of fact.”
“How did he know where to find you, agent?” Cooney asked, taking a step forward. Apparently he spoke for the Washingtonians.
Jamie’s eyes shifted from Hank’s face to Cooney’s. “Everyone knows where the U.S. Attorney’s Office puts its witnesses. Nino covered dozens of shifts at the Spire before he went undercover.”
Everyone turned to Charlotte. The weight of their judgment was oppressive. She couldn’t believe that four hours earlier, she’d been enjoying a celebratory bourbon to commemorate her indictment. And now she was probably in serious jeopardy of losing her job.
“I’m not interested in having my decisions second guessed,” she snapped. “I am interested in hea
ring why two of the agents assigned to my task force had an unauthorized, ill-advised meeting. Agent Brenner, just how many times have you and your old partner gotten together to shoot the breeze since he’s gone undercover?”
“It’s not like that. I think he got spooked when he heard that you were going to indict Riggo and Manetto. He’s living under constant stress. He just needed to touch base with someone who understood him.”
Charlotte got the feeling that he wasn’t really talking to her even though she was the one he was addressing. The men in the room, all of whom had probably been partnered with someone at some point in their careers, were nodding, even Hank. She was an outsider to this conversation and couldn’t understand the dynamic. But that was okay because his explanation resonated with the others, and the atmosphere shifted. The tension eased.
“Is that the only time he’s contacted you since going undercover—on Friday?” Hank asked.
“Yes. Well, no. He called me today.”
“After the indictment was handed down?”
“Yeah, but that’s not why he called. He heard about Yim.”
“How?” Cooney wanted to know.
“I didn’t ask,” Jamie replied. “There was a lot going on with the investigation. He asked me to meet him at an address in Shadyside and to bring a tracking device.”
“Did you?” Charlotte asked, dreading the answer.
“Yes.”
She wanted to scream or shake him. Instead she spoke as calmly as she was able. “You left the investigation to run an errand with Agent Carlucci?”
“He was my partner. He sounded desperate. I wanted to help him,” Jamie said simply. He spoke slowly as if trying to explain a difficult concept to a child.
Hank leaned forward. “Where in Shadyside?”
“Outside the lawyer’s condo—the one who testified, McCandless?”
The veins on the sides of Hank’s neck bulged, threatening to pop open the collar of his ecru dress shirt. A sick feeling settled in Charlotte’s stomach.
“Why?” Hank asked.
Jamie cleared his throat. “He said he was worried about her getting whacked. He seemed concerned that I was going to take the fall for what happened to Ms. Yim. He wanted to help me out and protect himself by keeping an eye on the other witness.”
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