“I’m not worried. Emily and I have an agreement. She’s not dating until she’s married.”
58
PARKER MADSEN STEPPED into the Oval Office, a folded newspaper under his arm. “Mr. President, I’m sorry to interrupt.” Though he spoke to Peak, his attention shifted to Sloane, who sensed the situation getting bad, fast.
“I know, Parker. I’m on my way.”
“Sir— ”
“We were just finishing up, Parker. Jon, this is Parker Madsen, my chief of staff.”
Sloane shook Madsen’s hand and felt a sudden surge of energy, as if he’d stuck a fork in a light socket. He fought the urge to pull his hand back. The bulb flashed, followed by the clap of thunder. Sloane struggled against the descent into the darkness, a man digging in his heels as he slid feetfirst down a hill. He focused on Madsen’s eyes—dark, lifeless spheres without pupil or iris.
Peak pulled open the door.
Sloane pulled back his hand. The descent stopped.
He stepped into the hall, forcing himself to look away from Madsen. The woman waited patiently.
“Sheila, please see that Mr. Blair is escorted to a staff car and driven wherever he needs to go.”
Madsen again interrupted. “Mr. President—”
“I’ll be right along, Parker.”
Peak gripped Sloane’s hand. “I only wish we could have met under better circumstances, Jon.”
“Maybe someday.” Sloane felt light-headed and nauseated. As if being pulled by an invisible force, a compulsion, he looked again at Madsen. Again the light flashed, this time bringing only darkness. Sloane shook free, smiled wanly, and followed the woman down the hall, feeling as if he had a rope tied around his waist, certain he’d be yanked and dragged back at any moment. He passed the Roosevelt Room, now nearly full, and followed the woman outside. They crossed the asphalt toward the West Gate. The tension on the rope became tighter with each step, but he maintained a casual pace, keeping stride with the woman’s high-heeled steps. At the gate he thanked her. Then he stepped through it, though not before looking back over his shoulder.
No one was coming.
PEAK STEPPED BACK into the office and closed the door. He walked casually to the tray of sandwiches on the table and picked up half a chicken salad sandwich.
Madsen opened the newspaper and approached. “Mr. President—”
Peak raised his hand and walked around his desk to French doors that led to the Rose Garden. He stood eating the sandwich as if admiring his backyard garden. Swallowing a bite, he spoke.
“Do you want to explain to me,” he asked, his voice even and calm, “how a man gets past the highest security in the world and walks into the Oval Office of the president of the United States, Parker?” Peak turned. “I’m aware that was not Jon Blair. At least I suspect that to be so. He’s a bit too young to be Aileen’s husband, and there is no way that he or Aileen would have had any knowledge of Charles Jenkins. So what I want to know, General, is who is he, and how the hell did he make it in here?”
“I’m not certain, Mr. President.”
“Well, you better get certain. I want to know everything about him. I want to know his name, how he knew Joe, how he is involved in this, and why he is interested in Charles Jenkins. I want to know where he’s staying, who he’s been talking to, and how he became Jon Blair. I want to know his family history, what he eats, when he sleeps, and when he takes a fucking piss. Do I make myself clear, General?”
Madsen nodded. “It will be taken care of.”
“Really? Because I’m beginning to lose confidence in your ability to take care of things. This was supposed to be buttoned down and closed. Those were your words, were they not?”
“The matter is being handled, Mr. President. The investigation is coming to an end. The loose ends are being snipped.”
“Well, let me tell you something, General, a very large loose end just walked out of my office. See that it is snipped.” Peak took a breath, tossed the rest of the sandwich into a garbage can, and pulled open the door.
“And, Parker?”
Madsen had started for the door on the opposite side of the room. He stopped and turned. “Sir?”
“That man said Joe spoke with Charles Jenkins recently. I just told him Charles Jenkins is dead. Are you going to make a liar out of me as well as a fool?”
59
SLOANE STEPPED FROM the black Lincoln Town Car and started across the Charles Town Police Station parking lot. The heat of the afternoon rose from the pavement in ghostly wisps, like something from the African savanna—so hot it was painful to pull a deep breath into his lungs. He draped his coat over his shoulder, the list of phone numbers in the pocket. The migraine had never come, though he felt as if it had. His limbs felt weak, and he was nauseated. The encounter with Parker Madsen had unnerved him unlike any he had ever experienced. His right arm continued to tingle, and he couldn’t shake the image of the dark, lifeless eyes. They lingered like something evil and unholy.
Sloane considered going inside the building and playing his cards with Detective Tom Molia. Neither of them was who he said he was, and Sloane had a good feeling about the detective. Tom Molia had been told to close his file and walk away. Most people would have jumped at the invitation, and hell, why not? The detective didn’t know Joe Branick from a hole in the wall, and investigating a crime that others didn’t want you snooping around was probably a whole lot more trouble than it was worth. Yet the detective had clearly not given up on the file. In fact, he was doing things he wasn’t supposed to be doing, which was the only explanation for giving a fake name to Rivers Jones. Sloane would know.
And if Sloane was wrong about all that . . . what did he have to lose?
Robert Peak was either lying or did not know that Charles Jenkins was alive. Either that or a very large apparition had walked into Dr. Brenda Knight’s office and stolen Sloane’s file. Sloane had no idea whose side Charles Jenkins was on. For all he knew, he was the person who had killed Joe Branick and was now intent on killing Sloane, though Sloane didn’t think so. The fact was, Sloane didn’t have a choice. He needed to find him, or be found by him, and he liked his chances of doing that a whole lot better with the kind of resources a police detective could provide.
He looked around the parking lot but saw no sign of the green Chevy. He’d check into a new hotel and call the detective from there. Reaching the rental car, he unlocked the door, pulled it open, and bent to lean inside. Startled, he jumped back suddenly, stumbling off balance and nearly falling.
“I warned you, Jon. You got to let it air out a bit this time of day. Otherwise you’ll burn your ass.”
Tom Molia sat in the passenger seat, the Colt .45 in his lap. Gray sweat stains ringed the collar and cuffs of his shirt, which he’d rolled up his forearms. He looked as if he’d been in a sauna with his clothes on.
“What the hell are you doing in there?”
“Waiting to talk to you.” Molia looked chagrined. “Cooked this scheme up myself to keep you from driving off without us getting that cup of coffee together. Think I lost five pounds in the last twenty minutes. I really got to think these things through better. You always carry a gun and extra ammo when you travel, Jon?” Molia gave him a look that said they could both knock off the bullshit. “It’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, and I have my doubts you’re going to show me one. I believe it’s also illegal to practice law without a license in the State of Massachusetts, which shouldn’t be too big a problem, since you live in California.” He held up a photograph of Jon Blair’s driver’s license. “Not bad. Damn close, in fact, but this isn’t horseshoes. No points for being close.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to get the hell out of this oven before the buzzer goes off, is what I want. Come on. I’m starting to melt.”
60
Lanham,
Maryland
THE CABDRIVER dropped him in front of an ornate cast-iron gate. Charles Jenk
ins pulled the piece of paper from his pocket, punched the numbers on the coded keypad, and heard the motor whine as the gates clattered, separating in unison, and disappeared behind a stone wall. He walked down the driveway past a lush green lawn and a small orchard of apple trees that he remembered being shorter. Overripe Braeburns littered the lawn leading to the Spanish Mediterranean house with orange roof tiles. The walls were covered with deep blue and lavender bougainvillea that he also did not recall. The wands of a weeping willow blew like the braids of a girl walking headlong into the wind. The wind was picking up, and Jenkins smelled an afternoon storm coming, though it would not be like on Camano, where the sky turned a funereal gray and the rain came in a steady mist. East Coast thunderstorms blew through differently, quick and powerful. The sky overhead remained clear, but darkness loomed on the horizon and looked to be coming this way fast.
The cell phone in his pocket rang.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Still stuck in traffic,” Alex said. “Maybe twenty-five minutes. The thunderstorm will make it worse. Heading your way.”
“I can see it coming.”
“You got past the gate okay?”
“Approaching the front door as we speak. Still looks like a Spanish garrison,” he said, following a bricked path to a front door cut into an unfinished piece of wood adorned with brass rings and large square bolt heads. He punched in a second set of numbers on the keypad lock. “A lot of security for a university professor.”
“You know my father. He was never unprepared or undercompensated.”
“You going to live here?” he asked. Thunder rumbled low in the distance.
“On a government salary? I couldn’t afford the property taxes.”
“Glad to hear the government hasn’t changed the way it pays its employees.”
“Besides, it’s too big for me. I’d get lost in there.”
“What are you going to do, sell it?”
“You interested?”
He pushed open the door and stepped into a foyer with vaulted ceilings and thick wood-beam construction spanning a Spanish tiled entryway. A staircase swept down from the upper floor. The only thing different was the musty smell. He’d always remembered the wonderful smell of spices simmering. “Circumstances being what they are, I am in the market. Cut me a deal?”
“A million dollars, cash.”
“A million is cheap for this place.”
“Not in its current condition. It could get a little rustic tonight. I had the utilities turned off after Dad died. There’s no heat or electricity at the moment.”
“Now it’s beginning to feel like home.”
Jenkins stepped down into a carpeted sunken living room. He left his briefcase, which held his file, at the foot of the stairs. River rock formed a fireplace along the north wall from floor to ceiling. “Any word on our friend?”
“No, but I do have some news on the tattoo that will make the hair on your neck stand up.”
Jenkins heard a dog bark somewhere down the block. It made him melancholy.
“The stiff that Detective Gordon is holding in the morgue in San Francisco is Andrew Fick. Service records identify him as a former Army Ranger dishonorably discharged for taking trophies from dead Vietcong, but you won’t find that in his official record.”
Jenkins moved to the sliding glass doors, undid the lock, and stepped out onto a deck with a wrought-iron rail. It overlooked a substantial fall into a canyon of brush. There were similar decks above and below him. “Let me guess. His official record says he was a choirboy, just a GI Joe humping it in the jungle.”
“You got it.”
“So what was he really doing?”
“Mostly covert stuff, crossing over into Cambodia and Laos.”
“Special Forces?”
“Not likely.”
“No honorable discharge,” Jenkins said.
“I’d bet no, but I wouldn’t know. His file just ends. I ran it by a friend of mine at the Pentagon with some pull—top-level clearance. He called me back from a pay phone, wanting to know what kind of shit I’d got myself into, and unhappy I’d involved him.”
“Sounds promising. Did he actually know anything?”
“He says the tattoo fits the description of a group that was known in Vietnam as Talon Force, though he said I’d find nothing official to confirm it, and that included him.”
Jenkins didn’t need anyone to confirm that such forces existed. He’d seen it for himself. These were forces so deep and dark they carried no identification, not even dog tags. Their uniforms were stripped of names, stripes, even manufacturing labels. They carried no cigarettes, no chewing gum, ate only the food of the country in which they were operating, even disguised their smell—nothing to identify them as American soldiers. They moved in anonymity and died that way. If they got hit across the border and their comrades couldn’t carry the body back, the military would not claim it. Jenkins had walked into a village one morning and found it burned to the ground, most of the peasants with it. The men were shot in the head, execution style, or given a running start like startled deer trying to flee. Their bodies were scattered varying distances from the village, an indication that whoever shot them thought it sporting to give them more and more time before tagging them. They found the women and young girls dragged off into the bushes and raped, their throats slit. They’d even shot the dogs and pigs.
These weren’t men. Some might call them animals, but Jenkins wouldn’t denigrate an animal with the comparison. Animals did not kill for sport. That was a wholly human failing. These men had no conscience, no morals—no governor that told them right from wrong. And scariest of all, they were exceptionally well trained.
“They don’t exist,” Alex said. “Apparently never have and never will.”
“Just like the MLF,” he said.
61
MERLE’S DINER LOOKED every bit the traditional small-town coffee shop, with the name and address stenciled in white on a maroon awning and across two picture windows facing the street. Inside, a half-dozen customers sat on stools at a counter that formed a horseshoe around a hooded grill. Two middle-aged women in uniforms the color of the awning attended to them like family in their own kitchen. Another half-dozen people sat in booths along the windows, drinking coffee and chatting without a care in the world. That is, until Tom Molia walked in. They all stood to greet him, acknowledging him as if he were the mayor.
“Come here often?” Sloane asked, sliding into a booth at the back.
Molia smiled. “Did I tell you it would be nice and cool?” He fanned his shirt as he slid into the booth. “Isn’t this better?”
One of the women from behind the grill, middle-aged, with a head of thick, dark curls held back from her face by two clips that looked ready to spring open at any moment, walked up behind Molia and squeezed his shoulder. “What can I get you, darling?”
“Just tea, my love.” He introduced her to Sloane. “This is Merle.”
“Hi, gorgeous. Where on earth did the Mole dig you up? You’re a hell of a lot better-looking than Banto.”
“Hey, I’m a hell of a lot better-looking than Banto,” Molia protested.
Merle leaned on Molia’s shoulder but kept her smile on Sloane. “Yeah, but you’re taken. He’s not wearing a wedding ring.”
“You’re good,” Molia said. “I didn’t even notice.”
Merle pushed his shoulder playfully and directed her question to Sloane. “All right, sugar, what can I get you?”
“Tea will be fine,” Sloane said.
Merle put two porcelain mugs on the table, returned from the counter with a pot of hot water to fill them, and left two bags of Earl Grey.
Molia dunked the tea bag, then left it dangling until the mug of hot water was nearly black. “I think she likes you. That’s the problem I’m having, David. I like you, too. I just don’t know who you are, and that always makes me nervous.”
“I’m Jim Plunkett.”
> Molia smiled. “Thanks for the help back there.”
“Isn’t he a bit dated?”
“Hell, I’m a bit dated. Spent many a Sunday sneaking into the Coliseum to watch Jim Plunkett play. He brought the pride back to ‘Pride and Poise.’” Molia shrugged. “I always pick an athlete. First thing that comes to mind. Didn’t expect you were a Californian. If I had, I might have picked someone else.”
Sloane smiled. He thought of Joe Branick and his cutout of Larry Bird. Though he had never met the man, Sloane had a sense that Joe Branick would also have liked Detective Tom Molia. “You like sports, Detective?”
“My wife says if there’s a ball involved I’ll watch it or play it, basketball more than football, but baseball—now, that’s my passion. Plunkett was just the first person I thought of without hesitation, and when someone asks your name, you can’t hesitate.”
“Did you like Larry Bird?”
The detective sipped his tea. “Bird? He was okay. Slow white guy. I’m a slow white guy. Give me Tracy McGrady on a dunk. I like to dream.” He sat back. “So tell me why an attorney from San Francisco is interested in a suicide in West Virginia, David. You a friend of the family?”
“You can say that.”
“PI?”
“No. Tell me why a Charles Town detective is so interested in a case he was told to close. You guys don’t have any other crime out here in West Virginia?”
“You sound like my boss.” Molia put the mug on the table. “Another thing I’ll never understand: drinking a hot drink to cool off.” He shrugged. “Okay, David, here’s my story. Consider it a show of good faith. I was ready to accept that Joe Branick put a slug in his head, even though my gut told me otherwise from the start, and let me tell you, I got a cast-iron stomach. If something’s bothering me, it means something’s wrong. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“So it would have made my life a hell of a lot easier if I had just closed my file and let it go. I’d be home right now relaxing with my wife and kids, enjoying the summer. Except when I get out to the scene I find the park police claiming jurisdiction and can’t find hide nor hair of the young police officer whose last radio contact says he’s rolling on a dead body in a national park.” Molia paused to make a point.
The Jury Master Page 27