by Joseph Flynn
About the Tabulation Team ripping off the DOD of God only knew how much money.
“I decided to come by mostly to see how you’re holding up but on the way over here I had an idea. First, though, I have to ask: Were you and Jordan very close? It seems that way from what you’ve told me.”
Tears welled up in Zara’s eyes. She nodded. “Yes, we were.”
She dabbed her eyes with a napkin.
“That being the case,” McGill said, “do you think it’s possible Jordan might have looked ahead and left a message for you? In case he couldn’t speak to you himself.”
Just the idea galvanized Zara. She sat up straighter and nodded.
“Of course, he would have. Why didn’t I think of that?”
They both knew grief was the reason why, but McGill didn’t want to get bogged down.
“All right. Where do you think he might have left his message? My thinking is it would have to be —”
Zara got off her breakfast stool and opened a deep cabinet drawer in the island.
“Bread box,” she said, “but we’re out of bread and today I’m using it for this.”
She pulled out a photo album and put it on the counter.
She placed a hand on the album and looked at McGill. “We have twenty or so photo collections like this. We both love photography and anytime we went somewhere special we both took our cameras. This is our best-of collection, the absolute favorites. Jordan would have been sure I’d look at it.”
“And you have been?” McGill asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anything different?”
“No … but I might have missed something trying to see through my tears.”
McGill understood. “Are you up to giving it another try with me looking, too?”
Zara Gilford firmed her jaw. She pulled out a stool for McGill. “Yes.”
By McGill’s count they closely examined thirty pages of photographs, each neatly arranged under a transparent plastic overleaf. They were pictures the Gilfords had taken over the years, starting when they were decades younger: portraits, candids, landscapes, city scenes, all of them well composed and sharply focused.
With Zara’s permission, McGill removed each print, looked at the back of it and the area on the page it had covered. He found no messages anywhere and put each one back in place. By the time they reached the final page, McGill was thinking his idea had been wrong.
Then Zara frowned as she looked at the final three prints.
McGill saw nothing unusual about them.
But Zara said, “These shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“Well, they’re not on their proper pages; they’re out of sequence. I mustn’t have noticed before. I wasn’t looking for any special meaning. But each of these photos should be on other pages. See, look at this top one of me. I was much younger when it was taken.” She took the photo off the back page. “It should be way up here.”
She flipped back to the third page of the album. She was right. The photo from the back of the book fit in much better as the third print in the vertical column on the page. Removing the shot that was currently there, she replaced it with the one from the back of the album.
McGill took out his notepad and wrote down the placement of the repositioned photo: 3-3.
Working in the same fashion, Zara moved the next print from the back of the album to the very front page at the top of the column. McGill wrote: 1-1. The final misplaced print was moved to page nine and the second slot. It fit with a series of three exposures each of which showed Zara comically mugging an expression of being startled. McGill wrote: 9-2.
“I don’t get the sequence,” he said. “It’s six digits long. One too many for a zip code; one too few for a phone number. Could be a date, if 3-3-1192 means anything.”
He looked over at Zara and saw her face change as she came up with the answer.
Or maybe just a possible answer, McGill thought.
“It is a date,” she said, “but not the one you said. Three times three.”
“Nine followed by … one, one. Nine-eleven. But what do the nine and —”
“Nine times two: eighteen. As in 18 State Street, Boston. You remember where you were on 9/11, don’t you, Mr. McGill?”
“Of course. I was at work in my office at the Chicago Police Department.”
“Jordan and I were living in Boston. We were in a bank there to rent a safe-deposit box. The bank clerk helping us asked if we’d have any objection to box 1313. The bank was having a hard time renting it, he said. Jordan wasn’t bothered, but the number made me feel uneasy. Before I could say anything, a man called out the news that the first tower in New York had been hit. We never finished our banking that day.”
And maybe that same box had still been available years later, assuming Jordan Gilford went back to it.
Having the FBI get a warrant to look into it seemed like a good idea to McGill.
He asked Zara, “Your expressions in the photos on the ‘18’ page, do you think they have any special meaning?”
She said, “I was playing at being surprised, just a game as I recall. Maybe Jordan intended them as three exclamation points.”
McGill could see that. It made him feel more hopeful they were on to something.
But now Zara was emotionally drained. She said she needed to lie down.
McGill saw her to her bedroom door and said goodbye.
He checked in with Celsus on his way out.
McGill felt he might have hit a jackpot, but you never knew.
He might just be chasing moonbeams.
Chapter 24
McGill’s Hideaway — The White House
The fireplace was alight and McGill and Patti were sipping at the cups of hot cocoa that Blessing had just brought to them. They contented themselves with each other’s silent company and the crackling of the flames. When they emptied their cups they put them aside and took each other’s hand. For most of the people in Washington — even the government staffers who normally toiled well after dark — the workday was over.
Not so for McGill and Patti. At the president’s direction, Byron DeWitt had been detailed to make a quick trip to Boston to check safe-deposit box 1313 in the bank at 18 State Street. The search warrant DeWitt carried allowed him to enter the premises in the wee hours, and the cooperation of the bank president, including a vow of secrecy, had been secured by the attorney general, an old classmate from their undergraduate days at Harvard.
“You figured out your approach to Zara Gilford based on the flowers you swiped from Aggie Wu for me?” Patti asked McGill.
He wasn’t surprised Patti had discovered his ruse. Galia had probably snitched him out. Making it look like a slip of the tongue, of course.
He said, “I didn’t swipe them. I paid for them. Handsomely.”
“Of course. But your sweet gesture still paid off.”
“We don’t know that yet. But I have a good feeling, up to a point.”
“And beyond that point?”
“We might not like what DeWitt finds. Might be embarrassing, politically contentious or both. More headaches, in any case.”
“I don’t think I have any room for more.”
“If it’s anything you can tell me, I’ll listen,” McGill said. “I can always go to the gym and hit something for release.”
Patti looked at him and asked, “Do you know how to hit that bag the way boxers do, rat-a-tat-tat?”
“The speed bag? Sure. You want me to teach you? You have the coordination and reflexes to do it. Shouldn’t take long at all before you’re working it like a champ.”
“I love it when you sweet-talk me.”
McGill leaned over and kissed his wife.
“The two men who searched Zara Gilford’s condo?” Patti said.
“Yeah?”
“Hume Drummond didn’t recognize them, but running their images through a DOD database found matches. Their names are Mark Henr
y Colton and Warren Newland. They work for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Neither of them went to work today, and the FBI didn’t find them at home either.”
“People are looking for them, I trust,” McGill said.
“Here and abroad.”
“Abroad would be my guess. There’s more of it.”
“Celsus did well to upload the video of Colton and Newland to the Secret Service server.”
“He’s adjusting to private life better than I’d ever have guessed,” McGill said. “If I’m not careful, I might wind up liking the guy.”
Patti grinned and said, “Moving on, Secretary of State Kalman has been in touch with the government of Uganda. The bank there, the one we suspect of being the clearing house for funds stolen from the DOD, has experienced a power failure. No one’s quite certain how long it will last, but no business will be transacted for some time.”
McGill said, “Now that is going to scare the bad guys.”
“We hope it will crimp their cash flow and mobility, too, as well as provide the kind of evidence that will be damning in court.”
“Speaking of being damned, how much of this mess is going to blow back on you?”
Patti said, “I don’t know. It started under the previous administration, but it’s my baby now. The only thing I can see to do is try to wrap it up as fast as I can, catch as many of the perpetrators as possible, try them and lock them away for the rest of their miserable lives. See if I can’t come out of this looking like a tough law-and-order president.”
“You know there’s almost certainly a political dimension to all this, people in the House and/or Senate grabbing cash with both hands.”
“Yes, I know. That’s going to be the ugliest part. That and the battle of how to bring substantive reform to the Department of Defense so this kind of thing never happens again.”
“How about we stop being the world’s cop?” McGill asked.
“That would simplify things, but there is this military-industrial complex, you see. Its lobbyists like things the way they are and want the money involved to become even bigger.”
“And then there’s the battle with the domestic gun lobby.”
Patti sighed. “Yes, there is.”
The phone rang and though it was McGill’s Hideaway, Patti answered.
She listened for the better part of a minute and said, “Thank you. Yes, first thing. Eight o’clock this morning.” Clicking off, she told McGill, “We’d better get to bed.”
McGill stood and extended a hand to Patti. “They found something in box 1313.”
Getting to her feet, she replied, “Yes, and it is going to be very ugly.”
Patti didn’t give any details and McGill didn’t ask for them.
Consolidated Forensic Laboratory — Washington, DC
According to its mission statement, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Washington, DC is obligated to investigate all deaths that occur as the result of violence. Abel Mays, inconveniently, had expired during a brief interregnum, the old CME having departed shortly before her replacement’s arrival. As a result, Mays’ corpse chilled a bit longer that it might have otherwise.
It was also discovered that Mays had not died as the result of the two gunshots fired into his head from close range.
Hearing that tidbit, the new CME, Dr. Marlon Donaldson, took a step back as if he’d been shoved and said, “I beg your pardon.”
Donaldson had been called out of his suite at the the Willard and arrived at the lab shortly before midnight. He was not in the mood for a prank. Especially since his tenure didn’t officially begin for another thirteen minutes.
Dr. Lenore Nuñez, the board certified pathologist who had performed the autopsy on Mays, told him, “No joke. A guy gets plugged twice in the head, he’s dead, you think you’ve got a clear cause of death, but guess again.”
“I don’t want to guess,” Donaldson replied, growing more peeved.
“And you really shouldn’t have to, a man of your eminent position.”
Nuñez’s tone suggested the-powers-that-be might have done better to promote from within.
And she might be considering a gender discrimination suit against the OCME, too.
Donaldson, a veteran of medical bureaucracies, caught both points. “You’re saying the man was dead before he got shot.”
“Very good.” Nuñez had to restrain herself from giving her new boss a treat.
Donaldson elaborated, “An underlying medical condition manifested shortly before the shooting. Given the damage that must have been done to the man’s brain by the shooting, it would be far easier to see … he had a myocardial infarction?”
Nuñez nodded. “Guy’s heart had all the structural integrity of a rotten tomato. One that had been hit with a hammer. Shame was he didn’t die of his bad ticker a day earlier. Spare all those people he killed.”
Donaldson agreed. “Damn bad timing.” Then his thoughts turned back to himself. “But why did you call me in? You’re authorized to sign off on this.”
“Authorized, yeah,” Nuñez said. “But how would it look? An underling having the final say on such an important death. You’re the man with the big job and the big bucks.” She handed Donaldson her report. “You sign off on it and carry the political weight that’s going to come with this finding.”
What political weight, Donaldson wondered.
Nuñez turned her back on him and started to walk away.
“Wait a minute,” Donaldson said, “you can’t do this.”
“You don’t like it, fire me.”
She didn’t even look back.
Donaldson was tempted to oblige, but if Nuñez was planning to sue, firing her would only make things look worse. Now, he’d have to do his own examination of the body to make sure he wasn’t being sandbagged into signing something that wasn’t true. Goddamnit.
Before Dr. Nuñez was lost to sight, she called out, “Welcome to Washington.”
Midtown Manhattan — New York City
Hugh Collier, chief executive officer and largest shareholder of WWN, walked up Sixth Avenue and passed Rockefeller Center at 11:59 p.m. He was headed home to his townhouse on Central Park West. The night was cold and raw. A relentless wind from the north pressed against his every step and turned the walk into something of an ordeal.
He might have called for his car if the heat of his anger hadn’t moderated the wind chill.
That goddamn Ellie Booker was driving him mad. If anyone else who worked for him had spoken to him the way she had … Well, if a man had said it, he’d have been both sacked and beaten bloody. Any other woman would have been dismissed and had her reputation shredded.
Ellie had asked, “What’s wrong, Hugh? You leave your balls in the last pansy you buggered?”
Had she been in his office, not in Washington, he might well have taken a hand to her.
Woman or not.
Of course, Ellie had once waved a knife under his nose not far from where he was at the moment. That and told him to go drown himself in the East River. So getting physical with Ms. Booker would have been no small task.
Even making the decision to terminate their professional agreement, something either of them could do at will, had been beyond him for the moment. Ellie Booker had a nose for big stories unlike anyone he’d ever known. And now she had seemed to cultivate a special relationship with James J. McGill. Once that fact became apparent to WWN’s competitors, they’d start throwing bags of cash at the woman.
For just a second, Hugh wondered if Ellie was having it off with McGill. A gay man, he didn’t have the best fix on what kind of woman a straight bloke was more likely to fancy. Patricia Grant was certainly more beautiful. But Ellie was younger, and he could imagine the ferocious energy she might bring to the bedroom. Which quality might McGill prefer?
Or was he the kind of man who might think he could have both women?
Not from what Hugh knew of him. He was too smart for that. The fact that McGill so
famously got along with his ex-wife, Carolyn Enquist, said he wasn’t the sort to publicly embarrass a woman who was important to him. Stepping out on the president of the United States … well, McGill was the first man ever to have that opportunity.
But Hugh just didn’t see it.
So sex wasn’t the reason McGill was passing scoops along to Ellie.
Good God, could he actually like her? If that was the case, she’d have the inside track on every big story to come out of the White House for the next three years. He couldn’t afford to let any other media company have that kind of asset.
And yet he’d all but dismissed Ellie that very day.
She’d come to him with the story of the Winstead School putting up one of those new gun death counters on their playing field. Ellie had wanted him to run it on WWN’s evening national news broadcast. He said he’d let the local station in Washington carry it, as a favor to her.
She said, “Bullshit. You’ve had your first chance. I’m taking it elsewhere.”
“Nobody will buy it,” he’d told her, hoping he was right.
The whole idea just seemed so depressing to him.
“Somebody will, and if they won’t, I’ll give it to PBS. They’ll run it.”
“Well, if you’re happy with that boutique audience.”
“You’re ridiculing PBS’s viewership?”
Then she’d asked him where he’d left his balls.
And reeled him in a second later by saying, “It’s too bad, your going all chickenshit on this piece, what with it featuring Hal Walker giving a tearjerker speech.”
Hugh Collier had been a top-flight Australian rules football player back home.
The game was all but invisible in the U.S., but going with the cultural flow in America, he cultivated an interest in gridiron football. He even came to enjoy it. He knew who Hal Walker was, not just a future pro footballer but someone who would become a celebrity off the field as well. Someone who might even be brought into the WWN sports broadcasting family.
Crikey, he was starting to think like Uncle Edbert.
The late Sir Edbert Bickford, founder of WWN.
Whom Hugh had drowned, assuring his rise to the top of the company.