Book of Souls wp-2

by Glenn Cooper

  In an empty visitors’ lounge, Sanchez asked Will how he was and offered condolences. Mueller waited for the brief, human exchange to conclude, then jumped in hard with an unpleasant edge.

  “The police report says you were away from the house for an hour and a half.”

  “You read the report perfectly, John.”

  “Drinking at a bar.”

  “In my experience, bars are pretty good places to find a drink.”

  “You couldn’t find a drink at the house?”

  “My father-in-law was a great guy, but he only drank wine. I felt like a scotch.”

  “Pretty convenient time to be out and about, wouldn’t you say?”

  Will walked two paces, grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket, and pushed the smaller man against the wall with a thud. He was tempted to hold him with one hand and smash his face with a closed fist. When Mueller started to thrust his arms upward to break the hold, Sanchez shouted at both of them to stand down.

  Will let go and backed off, his chest heaving, his pupils pinpointed in anger. Mueller smoothed his jacket and smugly shot Will a grin that seemed to say, this is so not over between us.

  “Will, what do you think happened last night?” Sanchez asked evenly.

  “Someone made a forced entry when we were at dinner. They rigged the furnace. If I hadn’t gone out, three people would be in a coma right now.”

  “In a coma?” Mueller asked. “Why not dead?”

  Will ignored him as if he weren’t there.

  “Who do you think was targeted? You? Nancy? Her parents?”

  “Her parents were innocent bystanders.”

  “Okay,” Sanchez said patiently, “you or Nancy?”

  “Me.”

  “Who’s responsible? What’s the motive?”

  Will was talking to Sanchez. “You’re not going to want to hear this Sue, but this is still the Doomsday case.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Will?”

  “The case never ended.”

  “Are you telling me this is the Doomsday killer back at it?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m saying the case never ended.”

  “This is nonsense, it’s bull!” Mueller protested. “What’s your basis?”

  “Sue,” Will said, “you know the case wound up screwy. You know I was deep-sixed. You know I was retired out of the Bureau. You know you weren’t supposed to ask any questions. Right?”

  “Right,” she agreed softly.

  “There’s stuff going on so many pay grades above your head it would make you spin like a top. The things I know are covered by a federal confidentiality agreement that would take a presidential order to waive. Let me just tell you that there are people out there who want certain things from me and are prepared to kill to get them. Your hands are tied. There’s nothing you can do to help me.”

  “We’re the FBI, Will!” she exclaimed.

  “The people after me play on the same side of the field as the FBI. That’s all I can say.”

  Mueller snorted. “This is the most conveniently self-serving crap I’ve ever heard. You’re telling us we can’t investigate you or this case because of some high-level clandestine bullshit. Come on!”

  Will answered, “I’m going to see my son. You guys do whatever the hell you want. Good luck to you.”

  The nurses left Will alone by Phillip’s intensive-care crib. The breathing tube was out, and Philly’s color was returning to normal. He was sleeping, his little hand grasping for something in a dream.

  Will was steaming like a pressure cooker. He forced himself to focus. There was no time for fatigue. There was no room for sorrow. And there was no chance he’d be hobbled by fear. He concentrated all his energy on the one emotion that he knew would be a reliable ally: anger.

  He understood that Malcolm Frazier and his minions were out there, probably close by. The watchers had an edge-they had dates of death, but that was as far as their prescience extended. They knew they’d be able to kill his in-laws. They hoped they’d be able to send him and his family into comas. But they failed. He had the upper hand now. He didn’t need the police or the FBI. He needed his own strength. He felt the Glock in his waistband, its barrel painfully digging into his thigh. He channeled the pain against a mental image of Frazier.

  I’m coming for you, he thought. I’m coming.

  At JFK, DeCorso opened the back door of Frazier’s car and slid in beside his boss. Neither of them spoke. Frazier’s truculent chin said it all-he was not pleased. His phone was hot from constant usage.

  The diplomatic immunity card that DeCorso played had wreaked transatlantic havoc. The State Department didn’t have a clue who DeCorso was or why the Department of Defense was insisting they honor his claim. SIS brass furiously tried to shake information about DeCorso out of their CIA counterparts. The political football kept getting punted higher up the chains of command until the US Secretary of State was reluctantly corralled into personally interceding with the UK Foreign Secretary.

  DeCorso got his get-out-of-jail-free card. The British government reluctantly acquiesced and turned DeCorso over to a detail from the US embassy. He was sped to Stansted Airport to board a private Gulfstream V belonging to the Secretary of the US Navy, and the arson and murder investigation was functionally closed.

  Finally, DeCorso broke down and offered an apology.

  “How’d you get made?” Frazier growled.

  “Somebody called in my rental’s license plate.”

  “Should’ve swapped it out.”

  “You’ve got my resignation.”

  “No one resigns on me. When I decide to fire you, I’ll let you know.”

  “Did you get Piper?”

  “We tried last night. Carbon monoxide at the Lipinski house. We rigged it while they were at a restaurant.”

  “Yesterday was their DODs, right?”

  “Yeah. We were causative. Piper left the house, came back, and raised the alarm. His wife and son are going to recover. We never had a chance to retrieve whatever he found in the UK. For all we know, he could’ve passed the material to Spence by now.”

  “Where’s Spence?”

  “Don’t know. Probably on the way back to Vegas. We’re looking for him.”

  DeCorso sucked in air through his teeth. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Piper’s at the White Plains Hospital. The place is crawling with FBI. We’re watching it, and when he leaves, we’ll pick him up.”

  “You sure you don’t want to shitcan me?”

  Frazier knew something his man didn’t. DeCorso would be dead day after tomorrow. There was no sense in taking on a mountain of termination paperwork. “There’s no need for that.”

  DeCorso thanked him and was quiet the rest of the ride to White Plains.

  It was late afternoon when Nancy awoke again. She was out of ICU, in a private room. Will wasn’t at her bedside, and she got panicky. She rang her call button, and the nurse told her he was probably at the PICU with the baby. In a few minutes, he was back, swinging the door open.

  Nancy was holding Kleenex, dabbing at her eyes.

  “Where are they? Mom and Pop.”

  “They’re at Ballard-Durand.”

  She nodded. Their prechosen funeral home. Joseph was a planner.

  “It’s all set for tomorrow, if you can go through with it. We can also push it a day.”

  “No, I’ll be ready. I need a dress.”

  She looked so sad. Those wet, oval eyes. “Laura’s got it covered. She and Greg went shopping.”

  “How’s Philly?”

  “They’re moving him out to the ward. He’s great. He’s eating up a storm.”

  “When can I see him?”

  “Sometime tonight, I’m sure.”

  The next question surprised him. “How are you doing?” Did she really care?

  “I’m holding it together,” he said grimly.

 
“I’ve been thinking about us,” she said.

  He waited for it, held his breath. She wanted him out of her life. He never should have blackened her door in the first place. She and Phillip would be better off without him. He was in a bar drinking while his family was getting gassed. He had already cheated on her once. Who could say he wasn’t capable of doing it again?

  “Mom and Pop loved each other.” She choked on the words, her lower lip quivering involuntarily. “They went to sleep together like they’d done every night for forty-three years. They died peacefully in their bed. They never got frail. They never got sick. It was their time. It was always going to be their time. I want that to happen to me when it’s my time. I want to go to sleep one night in your arms and never wake up.”

  He lowered himself over the bed rail and held her so tightly she gasped. He loosened his python grip and kissed her forehead gratefully.

  “We have to do something, Will,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “We need to get those bastards. I want to bring them to their knees.”

  Will couldn’t use his cell phone without getting chewed out by the nurses, so he went down to the lobby. The address book of the prepaid phone had one number in its memory. He called it.

  A breathy voice answered. “Hello?”

  “It’s Will Piper.”

  “I’m glad you called. How are you, Will?”

  “The watchers tried to kill us last night. They got my wife’s parents.”

  After a moment of silence, “I’m very sorry. Were you harmed?”

  “My wife and son were, but they’re going to be fine.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “Possibly. And I’ve made a decision. I’m going to get you the database.”

  That night, Will slept in a chair in his son’s hospital room. All the arrangements for the following day had been made, and there was nothing to do but allow himself to get some restorative sleep. Not even the nurses coming and going every few hours for vital signs disturbed him.

  When the morning came, he awoke to the sounds of Phillip in his crib, happily cooing and playing with his stuffed toy, and he used that optimistic beginning to psyche himself for the travails of the coming day.

  He tensed at the sound of another nurse coming into the room, but instead it was Laura and Greg. They had driven up from Washington and had been a magnificent help in working through all the logistics. The Lipinskis were popular, and their funeral service would be crowded with mourners. Given the leaked reports of furnace tampering, there was media interest too, and a good contingent from the New York City press corps was expected. There were details to work out between their priest, the funeral home, and the cemetery regarding the final arrangements. Laura was slowed down by her pregnancy, but Greg took it upon himself to be the family point man with the outside world, and for that, Will was grateful.

  “Did you get any sleep?” his daughter asked.

  “Some. Look how good he looks.”

  Greg looked down on Phillip like he was trying out the role of father. “Hey there, bud.”

  Will got up, stood beside his son-in-law and put his hand on his shoulder, the first time he’d ever made physical contact with the young man beyond a handshake. “You’ve been a real help. Thank you.”

  “No problem,” Greg said, mildly embarrassed.

  “I’m going to find a way to repay you.”

  Will took on the role security chief, and over breakfast in the cafeteria, he meticulously planned the choreography. They needed to keep themselves in public view, in the middle of crowds. Frazier could watch all he wanted, but he wouldn’t be able to do a snatch with people around. The details were important. Everything had to go perfectly, or they’d wind up at the bottom of a very deep hole.

  When he went to Nancy’s room, she was already wearing her new black dress and standing in front of the mirror in the lavatory. She seemed determined to keep her face dry while she applied makeup. An old friend from the Bureau had stopped off at their apartment and picked up one of Will’s dark suits. The two of them hadn’t looked so smart since their wedding day. He put his hand on the small of her back.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “You too.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, her voice quavering.

  “I’ll be by your side every step,” he said.

  A Ballard-Durand limo picked them up at the hospital entrance. By discharge protocol, Nancy was rolled on a wheel-chair right up to the curb. She held Phillip close and stepped inside the Cadillac. Will was surveying the drive and the street as if he were on the job, protecting a witness. A small cadre of agents from the New York office flanked the limo like a Secret Service detail assigned to dignitaries.

  When the limo drove off, Frazier put down his binoculars and grumbled to DeCorso that Piper was in a cocoon. They followed at a distance and in a short while they were parking their car on Maple Avenue, the white-pillared funeral home in view.

  The Lipinskis had been informal easygoing people, and their friends from the community made sure the service matched the couple’s sensibilities. After a heartfelt eulogy from their priest from Our Lady of Sorrows, an endless stream of coworkers, bridge partners, parishioners, even the mayor, stood and delivered touching and funny anecdotes about two caring, loving lives, cut short. From the front pew, Nancy wept a steady stream and when Phillip got too loud, Laura would walk him up the aisle to the lobby until he settled down. Will stayed tense and ready, craning his neck, searching the crowded hall. He doubted they’d be inside, among them, but you never knew.

  Mt. Calvary Cemetery was in north White Plains, a few miles away from the Lipinski home, adjacent to the grounds of the Westchester Community College. Joseph always liked the peaceful area and in his methodical way he had purchased a family plot thirty years earlier. It was waiting for him now, the dark brown earth freshly backhoed into side-by-side graves. It was the kind of crisp, autumn morning where the sun was thin and flat, and leaves crackled under the feet of the mourners tramping across the lawn.

  Frazier was watching the graveside communion through binoculars from a service road a quarter of a mile away. He had his plan. They’d follow the funeral procession back to the Lipinski house. They knew the wake would be held there because they had the Ops Center in Groom Lake hack the funeral home’s server to grab the Lipinski funeral itinerary and the limo drop-off address. They would wait until the evening, when Will and Nancy were alone with their son, then enter and extract Will, using as much or as little force as was required. They’d do a sweep of the house, looking for anything he might have found at Cantwell Hall. Once they had Will tucked away at forty thousand feet they’d seek further instructions from the Pentagon. His men agreed that two hits on the same house on two successive nights carried the best element of surprise.

  While the priest said a graveside mass, Frazier and his crew munched sandwiches. While Nancy threw a handful of dirt on her parents’ coffins, the watchers were caffeinating themselves with cans of Mountain Dew.

  When the service broke up, Frazier was still closely observing. There was a crush of mourners surrounding Will and Nancy, and Frazier lost them for a while in a sea of dark blue and black overcoats. He shifted his attention to their limo, which was parked at the front of the procession, and when he spied a man and woman with a baby in her arms climbing in, he had his driver move out.

  The funeral procession snaked its way back to the Lipinski house. Anthony Road was a short, heavily wooded dead-end street. It was impossible for Frazier to park there without being made, so they took up position on North Street, the main artery, and waited patiently in the fading afternoon light for the visitors to depart.

  The Ballard-Durand hearse, a black Landau coach, glided up to the private aviation terminal at the Westchester County Airport. The black-suited driver hopped out and had a look around before opening the passenger door. “We’re g
ood,” he said.

  Will got out first, helped Nancy with Philly, then hustled them into the terminal. He came back outside to lay some cash on the driver and extract their bags. “You weren’t here, you understand?”

  The driver tipped his cap and drove off.

  Inside the terminal, Will immediately spotted a medium-built, hard-bodied man with cropped gray hair, jeans, and a leather bomber jacket. The man unfolded his arms and reached inside a pocket flap. Will cautiously watched his hand as it emerged pinching a business card. He came forward and presented it. DANE P. BENTLEY, 2027 CLUB.

  “You must be Will. And you must be Nancy. And who’s this little man?”

  Nancy took to Dane’s kind, gray-stubbled face. “His name is Phillip.”

  “My condolences, folks. Your plane’s all gassed up and ready to go.”

  Frazier waited all afternoon until the cars pretty much stopped coming and going from the Lipinskis’ block. In the late afternoon, he spotted Laura Piper and her husband leaving in a taxi. At dusk, he pulled down Anthony Road for a quick drive-by. The only car in the driveway was Joseph’s. There were lights blazing on both levels. He decided to give it another hour, to make sure there were no late arrivals.

  At the appointed time, he and his men pulled into the driveway and split into two, two-man teams. He sent DeCorso through the bulkhead and personally shouldered his way through the patio door. His safety was off, and the silencer tube made his pistol look long and menacing. It felt good to be off his butt, on task. He was prepared, even anxious to engage in some level of violence. He was anticipating the pleasure he’d get pistol-whipping Piper across his temple, knocking the bastard onto the floor.

  What he was unprepared for and what made him swear out loud was a completely empty house with a Phillip-sized doll lying on the living room sofa where Laura Piper had left it.

  Chapter 30

  Dane Bentley piloted a twenty-year-old Beechcraft Baron 58, a sporty twin-engine with a top speed of two hundred knots and a range of almost fifteen hundred miles. There was hardly anywhere in the continental US where he hadn’t touched down, and there was nothing he liked better than having an excuse to do some serious flying.