First Family

by David Baldacci

  “We… we had a disagreement.”

  “About what?”

  “I… I think he suspected something was going on.”

  “With Dawson and you?”

  She looked surprised. “No. It was the opposite of that.”

  Sean looked puzzled. “The opposite?”

  “He thought his wife was having an affair. I told him I thought he was being stupid. I said what were the odds that he and his wife would be screwing around at the same time? I guess that was sort of tactless, but men are such little boys when it comes to adultery. Okay, so you messed around. It’s not that big of a deal. So get over it.”

  “But he didn’t get over it.”

  “No. I actually thought he was going to hit me. He said he loved his wife. And here we’re sitting naked on my bed after screwing each other’s brains out. And I said something dumb like, ‘Well, you have a funny way of showing it.’ Then he yelled at me, grabbed his stuff, and left.”

  “Did he say why he thought his wife was having an affair?”

  “He mentioned something about some phone calls he’d overheard. And he said one time that he followed Pam and she had coffee with some man he didn’t know.”

  Sean sat back against the cushions. That was one angle he’d never considered. “Did he describe what the guy looked like?”

  “No. He never did.”

  “There was about an hour unaccounted for between the time Tuck should’ve been home and when he actually got there. I’m talking around 9:30 to about 11:00 that night. Did he call you during that time?”

  “No, I haven’t heard a word from him since he bolted out of here.”

  Sean looked skeptically at her. “I need the absolute truth, Cassandra.”

  “I swear. Check my phone records. I went to bed and didn’t talk to anybody.”

  Sean switched off the recorder. “If I need to talk to you again, I better be able to find you.”

  “Are you going to let this all come out?”

  “No. At least not yet. But piece of advice. Tell Greggie to back off the contract.”

  “He’s going to be really upset. He’s already paid me a lot of money.”

  “That’s your problem. Why don’t you try the old bend and hold, since Greg just doesn’t seem to be a foot-in-the-crotch kind of guy.”

  Sean was on a flight back to D.C. that night. He’d discovered a lot. The only trouble was he now had more questions than before.

  CHAPTER 30

  WILLA STAYED CLOSE to the rock wall as she flitted along the corridor, her fingers scraping over the uneven surface. She listened for any sound, watching for any glow of light. She had her own lantern turned down so low that she could barely see. It was cold, and mists of her breath trailed the young girl down the dark path. She turned a corner and stopped.

  Was that someone coming? She turned off the light and flattened herself against the rock. Five minutes later she started moving again. This time she kept the light off. Her hand grazed across wood and then hit the metal. She halted, turned the light on to its lowest level. It revealed the metal lock.

  Just like the one on my door.

  She found enough courage to lift her hand and tap lightly on the wood. No answer. She tapped again, a bit harder.

  “Who is it?” a quavering voice said from the other side.

  Willa looked around and then placed her face against the door and whispered, “Are you locked in?”

  She heard footsteps and then the voice said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Willa. I was locked in too but got out. I think I can get you out too. What’s your name?”

  “Diane,” she whispered back.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “Me either. Hold on.”

  Willa pulled out her pen clasp and rolled-up can top and went to work. It was more difficult than the first time because she had to keep the light turned down so low. While she concentrated on feeling for the lock pins to drop to the sheathing line, she was also listening for the sounds of someone coming.

  The pins finally fell into place; Willa turned the tension tool and the door swung open. Diane Wohl looked down at her. “You’re only a child.”

  “I’m nearly a teenager,” Willa said firmly “And I managed to get out of my room. And get you out of yours. Come on.”

  As they headed off Diane looked around. “Where are we?”

  “You really need to keep your voice down,” whispered Willa. “Sound really carries in places like this.”

  “Places like what?” the woman said in a lower voice.

  Willa touched the side of the wall. “I think we’re in a tunnel or old mine.”

  Diane hissed, “Oh my God, if we’re in an old mine it could come down on our heads at any second.”

  “I don’t think so. The support beams look really sturdy. And the men who are keeping us here wouldn’t have brought us to an unsafe place.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they might get hurt too.”

  “Do you know which way is out?”

  “I’m just, you know, trying to feel some air movement.”

  “But if we keep going, we’ll get lost. Maybe forever.”

  “No we won’t.” She shone the light on the dirt floor. “I cut up the paper labels off the canned food. I’ve been dropping pieces every ten feet or so. That way we’ll know where we came from in case we have to turn back.”

  They kept going forward, around one turn and then another.

  Willa checked her watch by lantern light. “We have about twenty minutes left before they come by again. But the other man might show up. He’s unpredictable.”

  “The tall man with the white hair?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t seem as bad as the others, but I’m still afraid of him.”

  “I’m terrified of them all.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Georgia.”

  “I’m from Virginia. I hope my family’s okay. The man said he contacted them and told them I was okay. Do you have a family?”

  “No, I don’t,” Diane said quickly. “I mean, not of my own. But I asked him to contact my mother and tell her I was okay. But I don’t know if I’m going to stay okay.”

  “Another good reason for us to get ourselves out of here,” answered Willa.

  “What was that?” Diane said sharply.

  There had been a shout somewhere behind them.

  “I think they found out we’re not there,” said Willa. At that instant she felt a bit of air current on her cheek. She grabbed Diane’s hand. “This way.”

  They hurried down the passage.

  “Look!” Willa said.

  The corridor ended in a thick door.

  Diane tried to turn the old door handle but it wouldn’t budge.

  Willa already had out her tools. While Diane held the light she inserted the instruments and worked quickly but methodically.

  “How’d you learn to do this?”

  “It comes in handy if your little sister keeps locking herself in the bathroom,” said Willa as she pushed and prodded with her pick, praying for the pins to fall into their correct slots.

  Diane looked down the passage. “They’re coming. Oh my God, I think they’re coming. Hurry. Hurry!”

  “If I rush, it won’t work, okay?” Willa said calmly.

  “If you don’t they’ll catch us.”

  The last pin dropped, and Willa turned the tension tool and with Diane’s help they pushed the stout wooden door open. The light bursting through caused them both to shield their eyes. They rushed out and looked around, squinting.

  Then the pounding of footsteps hit them harder than the sunlight had.

  “Come on,” Diane yelled.

  She grabbed Willa’s hand and they ran toward the flat land straight ahead even as the little plane touched down.

  Diane said, “Who do you think that is?”

  Willa looked around, noting that the
only way in or out looked to be by plane. “Not anyone we want to run into. This way, quick.”

  They changed direction and ducked behind a chunk of rock just as Daryl and Carlos erupted from the mineshaft and sprinted off in different directions. Willa and Diane crawled and clawed their way up the narrow, steep ridge, keeping as low as possible.

  “Maybe we can get to the top and then go down the other side,” gasped Willa.

  Diane was breathing so hard she couldn’t answer back. She grabbed hold of Willa. “I just need to catch my breath. I’ve never been much into exercise.”

  A minute later they started their ascent again. They got to the top of the ridge, crossed it, and then looked over the edge on the other side.

  “God help us,” said Diane. It was steep and nearly sheer. “I can’t make it down there.”

  “Well, I’m going to try,” said Willa. “Do you think you can find a place to hide? If I get away I’ll bring help.”

  Diane looked around. “I think I can.” She looked over the edge again. “Willa, you’ll get killed. You can’t go.”

  “I have to try.”

  She gripped the edge of a boulder, aimed her foot at a narrow ledge, and took a step down. The ledge held though a few pebbles and dirt, disrupted by her maneuver, slid off the mountain and cascaded downward where they were caught by the swirling wind.

  “Please be careful,” said Diane.

  “I’m trying,” said Willa breathlessly. “It’s really hard.”

  She lowered herself to another ledge and was just about to attempt another movement when the rock she was standing on gave way.

  “Willa!” screamed Diane.

  Willa grabbed at anything she could find to halt her fall, but nothing she touched held as dirt and rock pelted her.

  “Help me!”

  Diane was knocked to the side as the man raced past her, his long arm reaching out and snagging Willa by the wrist a second before she would have been lost.

  Willa found herself being hauled up like a fish from the sea and then plopped down on a flat rock. She glanced up.

  Sam Quarry did not look happy at all.

  CHAPTER 31

  MICHELLE STAREDat her mother’s body. The autopsy was complete and while there were some toxicology and other test results still pending, the conclusion was that Sally Maxwell had not died from natural causes. She had died from a blow to the head.

  Michelle had spoken directly to the county medical examiner. Her brother being a sergeant on the police force had allowed access where otherwise there would have been none. The family of a homicide victim traditionally was only given words of official comfort and time alone with their dead, not facts. The reason for this was simple if disquieting: Family members often murdered each other.

  The ME had been terse but unmistakable. “Your mother didn’t fall down and hit her head. The wound was too deep. The smooth cement floor couldn’t have done it, and there was no trace on the car handle or the stair railing. And those edges didn’t match up with the wound shape in any case.”

  “What exactly was the wound shape?”

  “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this, you know,” he said crossly.

  “Please, it was my mom. Any help you can give me that doesn’t break any rules you can’t live without would be appreciated.” This simple plea seemed to strike a chord with the man.

  “It was an unusual shape. About ten centimeters long and a little over one centimeter wide. If I had to guess, it was metal. But it had an unusual line to it. Very odd footprint.”

  “So someone definitely killed her?”

  The ME had looked down his progressive lenses at Michelle. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I have yet to see someone kill themselves with a blunt instrument strike to the head and then, after death, hide the weapon so well the police couldn’t find it.”

  Her mother’s body had been released by the ME’s office and sent to the local funeral home. Michelle had come here to see her mother before the woman’s remains were prepared for viewing. There was a sheet draped over her up to her neck, thankfully covering up the Y-incision the medical examiner had sawn into her.

  None of Michelle’s brothers had wanted to accompany her here. As police officers they all knew what a dead body looked like after an autopsy and particularly forty-eight hours after death. The phrase about “beauty being only skin deep” had never seemed more apt. No, her “tough” brothers would wait until after the preservation agent had been pumped into their mother’s body, her hair done, her face caked with makeup, her clothes nicely arranged to obscure the assault of the postmortem, and her body placed in the three-thousand-dollar casket for all to see.

  Michelle did not want to remember her mother this way, but she had to come here. She had to see the brutal effects that the work of someone had done on the woman who over three decades ago had given birth to her. She was tempted to angle her mother’s head around, to look at the wound site for herself, but she resisted this impulse. It would be disrespectful, and if the ME couldn’t figure out the weapon used there was little hope that Michelle could.

  She imagined her mother’s last moments. Had she seen her killer? Had she known him or her? Did she know the reason she’d been struck down? Had she felt any pain?

  And the last and most crushing thought of all.

  Had her father killed her mother?

  She took her mom’s hand and stroked it. She said things to the dead woman that she had never managed to say while Sally had been alive. It left Michelle feeling emptier than before. And lately her depressions had often run cavern-deep.

  Five minutes later she was out in the fresh air, sucking in as much oxygen as she could. The drive home was lost in memories of her mother. When she pulled into the driveway of their house, Michelle just sat there for a bit trying to compose herself.

  Her father had made dinner. Michelle sat down to eat with him. Her brothers had gone out together to do some bonding, she supposed, while also giving their kid sister time alone with the old man.

  “Good soup,” she said.

  Frank spooned a bit of chicken and broth into his mouth. “Made it from scratch. I’ve been doing more and more of the cooking over the years.” He added with a bit of resentment, “You wouldn’t know that, of course.”

  She leaned back, broke off a bit of a roll, and chewed it slowly, thinking of how to respond to this. On one level there was no response. She hadn’t been around. She wouldn’t have known about that. On another level she wondered why he would be throwing a guilt trip on her right now.

  “Mom kept busy too?”

  “She had her friends. Your mother was always more social than me. I guess it was the job. Had to keep a certain distance. She never had that impediment.”

  And bitterness?

  “Never knew when one of your buddies might break the law?” Even as she was saying the words, Michelle wished she had hauled them back into her mouth before they’d gained traction outside her head.

  He took a long moment before answering. “Something like that.”

  “Anybody in particular? Friends, I mean?”

  “Girlfriends,” he said. “Rhonda, Nancy, Emily, Donna.”

  “So what’d they do?”