First Family

by David Baldacci

  “They must’ve worn gloves. They were good.”

  Sean said, “Not that good. They lost control of Pam and had to kill her, at least it looks that way.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Waters said evasively.

  “Did you find the Tundra?”

  “It’s registered to the Duttons. We found it in some woods about a mile from here. They’d driven the damn thing down into a ditch. Probably for concealment.”

  “Any signs of where they went from there?”

  “Still checking the truck out for trace. They must’ve had another vehicle nearby, but we didn’t find any evidence of that. We’re canvassing, see if anybody saw anything. No hits yet.” He eyed Michelle. “You sure it was two guys?”

  “One submachine gunner, one driver. I saw the wheelman through the windshield. Tall. Definitely a guy.”

  Sean checked his watch. “With the time she’s been missing and calculating driving radius in all directions you’re looking at thousands of miles they could have covered, easily.”

  “By private jet, they could be anywhere in the world,” added Michelle.

  “I take it no ransom note has been received?”

  Waters turned to face Sean. From the expression on the man’s features it was clear that the short leash had just come off. “You know, I did some digging on you. Does it still hurt that you were thrown out of the Service on your ass for screwing up and costing a guy his life? That must be some serious shit to have to deal with. Ever think about eating a round because of it? I mean, it’d be understandable and all.”

  “Look, Agent Waters, I know this is an awkward situation. And I know it seems like we’ve been crammed down your throat—”

  “Nothing seemed about it, you have been crammed down my throat,” he declared.

  “Fine. I’ll make a deal with you. If we crack something or get onto a lead, we’ll provide it to you to run with. I could give a shit about nailing any headlines from this. I just want to find Willa, okay?”

  Waters took a few seconds to think about this, but then finally put out his hand for Sean to shake. But when Sean reached for it, Waters pulled it back and said, “I don’t need you to provide me with anything about this case. Now, something else you want to look at while I’m babysitting you and your partner?”

  “Yeah, how about your brain?” snapped Michelle. “Where is it, still stuck up your ass?”

  “This pissing contest isn’t getting us any closer to finding Willa,” Sean pointed out.

  “That’s right,” agreed Waters. “And the longer I have to deal with you two, the less time I have to actually work my case.”

  “Then we won’t waste any more of your time,” said Sean.

  “Thanks for nothing.”

  “Mind if we look around a bit before we leave?” When Waters looked ready to refuse, Sean added, “I want to make sure my report to President Cox is complete. And I’ll be certain to inform him of how helpful you’ve been.”

  If Waters had gone any paler the forensic techs on site would’ve slipped him into a body bag. “Hey, King, wait a minute,” he said nervously.

  Sean was already heading down the stairs.

  When Michelle caught up to him she said, “Guys like that make me so proud to be an American.”

  “Forget him. You remember Tuck’s bag, the one with the airline tag on it?”

  “Garment bag, navy blue, standard lightweight polyester. Slightly ragged. Why?”

  “Carry-on size?”

  “Considering that these days people schlep packing crates the size of my SUV onto a plane? Yeah, definitely carry-on.”

  Sean whipped out his phone and punched some numbers. He let the screen load and then worked through several more layers. “United Flight 567 into Dulles from Jacksonville?”

  “Right.”

  He stared at the tiny screen. “That flight routinely gets in at 9:30 p.m. He deplanes, goes to his car, and drives home. How long do you reckon that would take him?”

  “Depends on which terminal it came into, because that determines if he had to use a people mover to go to the main terminal. Terminal A he could just walk.”

  Sean made a quick phone call. He clicked off. “It gates at Terminal A.”

  “So no people mover two-step. And not much traffic that time of night. I’d say thirty minutes tops to get home.”

  “So say it took him fifteen minutes to get to his car and get out of the airport, plus the drive time, that would be 10:15. Round it to an hour to be safe, 10:30.”

  “If the plane landed on time.”

  “We’ll have to check that. But if it did, there’s thirty minutes that Tuck Dutton is unaccounted for if we believe him that he got home around 11:00.”

  “Do you?”

  “The blood was crusted on his face by the time we found him, so yeah, I do.”

  “Wonder what the man was doing?”

  CHAPTER 16

  SAM QUARRY DROVE to a local UPS drop-off receptacle and mailed the box containing the labeled blood vials. They were being shipped to a lab in Chicago that he’d found using an online service at the local library. There was a prepaid return mailer packet inside.

  After that he’d driven one hundred miles east, actually crossing over into Georgia. He pulled off the highway and into a truck stop. He had six packages with him but only one that mattered. He parked and walked across the truck stop to the U.S. mailbox. After making certain there were no surveillance cameras to record him doing so, he dropped all the boxes in the mailbox. The only package that mattered was being sent to an address in Maryland. In it were the bowl and spoon Willa had used, and the letter he’d typed earlier. He had no idea if the authorities could track exactly from where a parcel had been dropped off, but he had to assume they could. Thus the other boxes were just red herrings in case anyone was watching who could later talk to the police about someone dropping off one box here. Well, that wouldn’t be him. He’d simply look like a long-haul trucker sending multiple packages home.

  He drove back to Alabama, stopping once to get a bite to eat before heading on. When he got to Atlee the only light on was in Gabriel’s room.

  Quarry tapped on the door. “Gabriel?”

  The little boy opened the door. “Yes, Mr. Sam?”

  “What you doing up this late?”

  “Reading.”

  “Reading what?”

  “Reading this.” Gabriel held up a book. Quarry took it and looked at the title. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian?”

  “It’s real good. Makes you want to laugh. And cry sometimes too. And it’s got some grown-up language in it, if you know what I mean. But I love it.”

  “But you’re not an Indian.”

  “That’s not all it’s about, Mr. Sam. It’s got stuff for everybody. Lady at the library told me about it. I wanta write a book one day.”

  “Well, Lord knows you got enough words in your head, because they come out faster than I can listen to them sometimes.” Quarry handed the book back. “Your ma turned in?”

  “About an hour ago. We wondered where you got to.”

  “Had some business needed taking care of.” Quarry leaned against the doorjamb, struck a match against the wood, and lighted up a cigarette. “You seen Kurt’round lately?”

  “No sir.”

  He eyed Gabriel from under his thicket of eyebrows. “Think he might’ve moved on.”

  Gabriel looked surprised. “Now why would he do that? Where’s he got to go to?”

  Quarry tapped his cigarette against the door and ash drifted to the floor. “Everybody’s got somewhere to go. Just takes some folks longer to figure out where to.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Anybody asks, I guess that’s what we tell’em. Damndest thing, though. He was like family. Now don’t you go off like that without talking to me first, okay?”

  Gabriel looked stunned by the very suggestion. “If I ever leave, Mr. Sam, you’ll be the first to know, right af
ter my ma.”

  “Good boy. Keep on reading, Gabriel. Got to be prepared. The world will give you a chance, but that’s all. The rest comes from you. You blow it you blow it.”

  “You been telling me that long as I can remember.”

  “Good advice worth repeating.”

  Quarry trudged off to his room. It was set on the top floor and had once belonged to his mother and father. Tidiness had never been one of Quarry’s strong points, though Ruth Ann and Gabriel did their best to keep the growing mounds of stuff at least orderly.

  Quarry’s wife, Cameron, had been dead for over three years. The greatest loss of his life, and he had suffered through several of them. After she’d passed, Quarry had not slept in their bed. He used a long, ragged, hundred-year-old couch set against one wall of his bedroom. He’d kept many of his wife’s things in the bathroom, and Ruth Ann would dutifully dust them even though they would never be used again.

  He could’ve and perhaps should have sold Atlee a long time ago. But that was not an option. Cameron had loved the place and parting with it would mean, for Quarry, finally parting with her. He could not do that, no more than he could kill his own son. Though it frightened him how close he’d come to doing just that. It was the Quarry insanity streak. Day by day, year by year, it kept growing stronger, like the tentacles of a tumor creeping murderously through his brain.

  He settled down on the couch and reached for his bottle of gin. Yet before he took a drink, he changed his mind, rose, slipped on his boots, and grabbed the truck keys off a wobbly-legged table.

  Two minutes later he was back on the road, staring up at a sky punctured with so many stars that night almost seemed turned into day. He rolled down the window, cranked up some tunes, and drank his gin. The heat of a southern night hit him in the face. He hated air conditioning. Atlee had never had it, nor any vehicle he’d ever owned. A man should sweat. Running away from sweat was akin to running from what made you human.

  His old truck ate up twenty miles, veering from dirt to gravel to macadam, and then bouncing onto asphalt heated slick from the hot day.

  And then he was there. Been here a thousand times before. Each visit was the same and also different.

  He knew everyone by first name. Visiting hours were long since over but they didn’t care. This was Sam Quarry. Everybody knew Sam Quarry because everybody knew Tippi Quarry. They’d named her after the actress. Cameron Quarry had loved the movie with all those crazy birds. Their youngest daughter, Suzie, the one who’d married and divorced the black fellow, now lived in California doing something, only her father didn’t quite know what. He was pretty sure if he did know he’d disapprove. Daryl had been the baby.

  Only my damn baby just killed a mother of three children.

  Yet neither of them had ended up like Tippi. She had just turned thirty-six last month. She’d been here for thirteen years, eight months, and seventeen days. He knew that because he marked the time off on a mental calendar like he was scratching off his remaining days on earth. And, in a way, he was doing that too. She had never once set foot outside the cinderblock walls of this place. And she never would.

  Quarry’s long legs directed him automatically to his oldest child’s room. He opened the door just as he had so many times before. The room was dark. He scooted over to the chair that his butt had graced so often he’d worn off the paint. The trach was in her neck, the way they did it for long-term usage, because, for among other reasons, it was easier to keep clean than when it was down the throat. The attached ventilator was pumping away, keeping her lungs inflated. The vitals sign monitor beeped away. One end of an oxygen tube ran to the central line in the wall, and the other end was inserted in his daughter’s nostrils. An IV drip with a computerized distribution device was hooked up to her and kept a flow of drugs and nutrients running to a central entry point cut into her skin near the woman’s collarbone.

  Quarry had a little ritual. He’d stroke her hair that wound around her neck and lay against her shoulder. How many times had he wrapped that hair around his finger when Tippi had been a little girl? Then he’d touch her forehead, a forehead that had crinkled up when he’d given his infant daughter a bath. Then he kissed her on the cheek. As a child the skin and lump of bone underneath had been smooth and pleasant to the touch. Now it was withered and hard long before it should have been.

  His ritual complete, he took her hand in his, sat back down, and started talking to her. As he did, his mind wandered through the phrases the doctors had given him and Cameron when it had happened.

  Massive blood loss.

  Oxygen deprivation in the brain.

  Coma.

  And finally: Irreversible.

  Words no parent would ever want to hear about their child. She was not dead, but she was as close to dead as one technically could be while still breathing with the aid of a machine and expensive drugs. He slipped the book from his jacket pocket and started reading to her by the small light on the nightstand he clicked on.

  The book was Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen’s most famous novel had been his daughter’s favorite, ever since she had plucked it off the library shelves at Atlee as a high-spirited teenager. Her profound enthusiasm for the story had led Quarry to read it as well, in fact several times. Before Tippi had ended up here, Quarry had always seen his daughter as a real-life version of Elizabeth Bennet from Austen’s tale. Elizabeth was the intelligent, lively, and quick-to-judge main protagonist. However, after Tippi had come to this place Quarry had reevaluated his daughter’s alter ego in the story and decided she was actually more like the oldest daughter, Jane Bennet. Sweet but timid, sensible but not as clever as Elizabeth. However, her most distinctive trait was to see only good in others. It had led to happiness for Jane in the story, but it had been devastating for Tippi Quarry in real life.

  An hour later he rose and said what he always said. “You rest easy, honey, Daddy’ll be back soon. I love you, baby.”

  He drove back to Atlee. As he lay on the couch with his gin, his last fleeting image before he fell asleep was Tippi young and smiling at her daddy.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT Tuck Dutton had been on had not arrived late. In fact, it had arrived twenty minutes early due to a straight-in approach at Dulles and an early pushback from the gate in Jacksonville.

  Michelle said, “So he had at least fifty minutes free instead of thirty. Maybe over an hour.”

  They were sitting over a cup of coffee the next morning at a café in Reston near their office. To get the press off their backs, Sean had given a statement that hadn’t said much, but was enough to give them some breathing room. But they had not gone back to the office, and were staying at a hotel just in case the reporters got the primal itch to attack again.

  “That’s right.”

  “You think he was in on it?”

  “If he was, why not just stay out of it? Why come back and get your head busted in?”

  “To throw off suspicion.”

  “Motivation?”

  “Husbands kill their wives with astonishing regularity,” said Michelle. “Which is all the motivation I need never to walk down the aisle.”

  “And Willa?”

  Michelle shrugged. “Maybe that’s all part of the plot. Kidnap Willa but we’ll find her somewhere safe and sound.”

  “Presumably this would all cost money. There must be a record of that.”

  She said, “It would be good if we could get a look at Tuck’s financials.”

  “I know where his office is.”

  “We going there now?”

  “After we see the ME. I talked to her. She just finished with Pam Dutton’s post.”

  “So you do know the lady?”

  “I’m just a friendly guy.”

  “That’s what scares me.”

  Lori Magoulas was about forty-five years old, short and stocky with bottle-blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

  After Sean introduced Michelle, Magoulas sai
d, “Surprised to hear from you, Sean. Thought you’d gone to lose yourself at that lake of yours.”

  “D.C. just has that pull, Lori.”