Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Jules laughed at that. “No,” he said. He shook his head as he opened the soda and took a long drink. Sugar and caffeine—the two essential food groups. “Thanks.”

  Adam shrugged as he sat down next to him.

  “No, this was . . . a big day,” Jules said. “A long day.” He looked at Adam, who was still wearing his costume. Dirt—makeup along with the real thing—streaked his face. “Robin probably would’ve bled to death if you hadn’t helped him.”

  “I didn’t help him.” Adam shrugged it off. “It was all Wayne.”

  “Well, you found Wayne, and you went back out there. You did good. I’m . . . proud of you.” Jules held out his hand to Adam.

  “So . . . what?” Adam said. “I save Robin’s life and all I get is a handshake?”

  Jules laughed.

  Adam did, too, and moved to embrace him.

  But Jules put his hand up. “Yes, all you get is a handshake,” he said. “And my eternal thanks.”

  Adam wasn’t laughing anymore. He took Jules’ hand. Looked searchingly into Jules’ eyes. “We’re really done this time, aren’t we?”

  “We’re done,” Jules agreed, and for the first time, it felt true. It didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel devastating, either. It just . . . was. He gently pulled his hand free.

  Adam got to his feet. Took a few steps away. Turned back. “You sure?”

  “Very,” Jules said.

  “If you think Robin’s going to—”

  “I don’t,” Jules said. “Good-bye, Adam.” He’d never said those words before. He’d always used a variation on “See you soon.” Au revoir. Ta. Later, dude. “Good luck with the movie.”

  He wouldn’t go to see it, but Adam probably already knew that.

  Adam turned to Jack, who was sitting nearby, obviously trying hard not to listen in. “Do you need a ride?” he asked the old man.

  Jack shook his head. “Thank you, but no. Scotty’s on his way.”

  Adam nodded and forced a smile. “See you on set, Jack.” He didn’t even glance at Jules again as he walked away.

  Which was a pretty typical Adam thing to do. As Jules watched, Adam put on his sunglasses as he approached the automatic doors and went out into the morning sunshine without looking back.

  From the row of chairs on the other side of the soda machine, Jack spoke. “It’s very odd,” the old man said, “to see one’s life re-created for a film.”

  Jules looked around, uncertain at first whether Jack was talking to him. But he was the only one in the immediate area, so he smiled politely. “It must be.”

  “Hearing words that I spoke over sixty years ago, seeing mistakes that I made repeated by actors . . . But I have to be honest, young man. Watching you with Robin Chadwick . . .” Jack shook his head. “More than anything else, it’s the way you look at him that makes me remember, most vividly, how painful it all was.”

  Jules ran one hand down his face as he laughed. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

  “Only to me.”

  “I don’t know what it is about him.”

  “He’s got that magic,” Jack agreed. “But he drinks too much.” He made a tsking sound. “The question one needs to ask oneself is whether or not the fabulous cheekbones are worth the price of the heartache and pain.”

  “Do you think if he went into rehab—” Jules stopped himself with a laugh. “Listen to me. What am I saying? I’m so not doing that to myself. Not again. There’s got to be someone out there who won’t make me bleed.”

  “I’m certain there is,” Jack said.

  “Said the man whose life is being made into a movie—that ends unhappily.”

  “It only ended unhappily for Hal,” Jack pointed out.

  Jules scoffed. “You weren’t devastated? Come on, I’ve read the script. I read that letter Hal wrote to you. God . . .”

  “Please do not write. I will not answer you,” Jack quoted. “Do not come to see me. I will not know you.” He shook his head. “It took a while—years—but I came to realize that he wasn’t being needlessly cruel. He was, in fact, sparing me. Hal knew he couldn’t give me what I truly wanted—a love that could live and bloom in the sunlight. Oh, we could be together, sure—in secret, in the darkness, hiding and sneaking around, sharing a few short days every few months or so. If he hadn’t written that letter, Hal could have had it all. His family, his career, his wife, his life. And me, as well. Instead, he set me free.”

  “Jack!” A distinguished-looking white-haired man in a Mister Rogers sweater was coming through the hospital doors. “Thank God you’re all right!” He stopped short in front of Jack, taking in the dusty remains of what had once been a very nice pair of pants and an Armani shirt. His voice wavered. “Are you all right?”

  And then it was Jules’ turn to pretend not to listen. “I’m fine,” Jack said reassuringly as the two men embraced. “Jane insisted the doctors check me out.”

  “And?”

  “A few bruises,” Jack said. “My hip’s a little sore. Nothing a good soak in the Jacuzzi won’t cure.”

  “They said on the news that you helped save hundreds of lives.”

  “The key word there is helped,” Jack said modestly.

  “Cosmo Richter told me you’re the one who saw the extra in the Nazi uniform climbing that hill with a rifle,” Jules couldn’t help but chime in, and both Jack and his partner turned to look at him. “Without that information, Cos probably would’ve killed the wrong man.”

  “Jules Cassidy, Scott Cardaro.” Jack introduced them. “Jules is an FBI agent. Scotty’s my current twinkie.”

  Scott laughed as he held out his hand for Jules to shake. His eyes sparkled in a face that was handsome and youthful despite the wrinkles. “Will you listen to him? I’ll be seventy-one next week. I haven’t qualified as a twinkie in decades. And when he uses the word current, people tend to think I moved in last week.” The look he gave Jack was exasperated but affectionate. “We’ll have been together forty-nine years this December.”

  Jules sat back in his seat. “Forty-nine . . . ? Wow.” Forty-nine years was pretty damn close to forever. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said. He turned to Scott. “We were just discussing the movie. Jules here is under the impression it ends unhappily.”

  “Only for Hal.” Scott echoed Jack’s earlier words. “I, for one, intend to cheer and applaud wildly when Hal rides off into the sunset.” He grinned. “Not a day goes by that I don’t send up a little thank-you message to Harold Lord. You know that old saying? When God closes a door, he opens a window.” He winked at Jules. “Someday we’ll invite you over for dinner and tell you the story of how I climbed in Jack’s window. But right now, the Jacuzzi calls.”

  Jack winked at Jules, too. “Sometimes you get lucky and the cheekbones come for free.”

  As Jules watched, bemused, Scott carefully helped Jack out of his seat. He tucked the older man’s hand into the crook of his arm and together they headed for their home. The home that they’d shared for forty-nine years. In the sunlight.

  Cosmo had vanished.

  Jules Cassidy, however, was sitting in the hospital lobby, waiting for her.

  Jane could see him as she shook the reporter’s hand, finishing up the TV interview.

  No one had died today—for that she’d be forever grateful.

  Well, no one except for the man who’d killed Angelina, and try as she might, she couldn’t feel sorry that he was gone.

  Cosmo had shot him. And of course the speculation that was already going around was that he’d done it in cold blood. That the man had been injured and at his mercy and—

  “Mr. Insane-o’s real name was John Bordette,” Jules told her as he rose to his feet to greet her. “You knew him as Carl Linderman, but he also went by Barry Parks and John Weaver. He may have had other aliases, too, but we haven’t found them yet. He actually paid taxes for all four of these identities. That’s how he screwed up—how we found him. Because he paid t
axes.” He shook his head. “The real Carl Linderman—I’m sure he’s buried in his basement. But he was in his late seventies, on complete disability. He’d stopped filing tax returns about four years ago. Then, just last year, he’s suddenly filing again, reporting income from stock dividends. Not huge amounts—sixteen, seventeen thousand dollars a year. But it was just kind of weird that out of the blue he’s dotting all his I’s and crossing all his T’s. So he was put on the IRS’s ‘that’s kind of weird’ list. When we cross-referenced your list of extras and stage crew, his name got flagged. Cosmo went to check him out and—”

  “Have you seen Cosmo?” Jane asked.

  “I’m right here.”

  Jules jumped, too, as Cosmo came out from where he’d been lurking alongside a candy machine. His pants were filthy, and the shirt he had on was a hideous plaid. Had he been wearing that early this morning, when he’d left the house? As he approached, Jane’s heart was in her throat.

  Promise me no foolish risks.

  The way he’d looked at her on the beach was beyond angry, beyond upset, beyond any emotion she’d ever seen before on his face, even when he’d told her about Murphy.

  “Sorry it took me so long to catch up to you,” Cosmo told her. “When you went to the hospital with Robin, I was giving my statement to the local police and the FBI and the state troopers and . . .” He looked at Jules. “I think at one point, the coast guard was even there.”

  Jules laughed. “I think you’re right. And then someone from JAG showed up.”

  “It took a while,” Cosmo told Jane. “By the time I got a ride out here, you were giving a TV interview.” He turned back to Jules. “Any luck connecting our guy—what was his real name?”

  “John Bordette,” Jules said.

  “He tied to the Freedom Network?”

  “Only his Barry Parks persona is on their membership roster. But that’s not enough of a connection. He’s also a member of the Springfield Friends of the Public Library. That doesn’t make them responsible for his actions, either.” Jules shook his head. “We think it’s more likely that Bordette was planning to put Mercedes’ murder on his résumé in an attempt to gain entry to the Freedom Network’s inner sanctum. We did place Bordette in Idaho Falls just prior to the Ben Chertok murder. We also think we may have cleared up the mystery surrounding what was thought to be an unrelated suicide from about that same time. This kid shot himself, and his family insisted it couldn’t be self-inflicted. Turns out the kid worked in the same grocery store as Bordette. He was the same kind of troublemaker and loner as Mark Avery—their similarities are kind of eerie, actually.”

  “Mark Avery was the man Patty allegedly killed?” Cosmo was trying to get it straight.

  “Here’s what we think happened,” Jules said. “John Bordette, a borderline psychopath, has aspirations of being one of Tim Ebersole’s lieutenants in the Freedom Network. He has this dream—it’s kind of like a twisted buddy movie. John and his new best friend, Timmy, attempt to ‘make America safe for real Americans,’ and zany high jinks ensue. Anyway, Tim won’t take John’s calls—gee, I wonder why not—so John figures he’ll show the Freedom Network what he’s made of. He decides to get rid of their ‘arch enemy,’ ADA Ben Chertok, and does so, fatally shooting him. The kid from the grocery store either knows too much or was part of a backup plan that John didn’t need. Whatever the case, John wastes the kid on his way out of town, making it look like a suicide.

  “He hides for a while, makes sure he’s not a murder suspect, then calls up Timbo. Except, whoopsie, Tim still won’t take his calls. Nobody in the Freedom Network gives a flying fig about Ben Chertok’s execution. Johnny’s back to square one. He sits and stews, and probably wastes Carl Linderman to cheer himself up and add a new identity to his list. But then, hey, what should appear on the Freedom Network website?” Jules looked at Jane. “Your face in the center of a bull’s-eye. But this time John’s not just going to kill you quickly and easily. He’s going to make sure that people know he’s going to kill you. And he’s going to kill you despite your 24/7 protection from a team of professional bodyguards.

  “He meets Mark Avery, sets him up from the start—because the way John’s going to kill you is to make all this noise and create all this danger, but then make you think that the threat is gone. It starts with that rifle shot at the house, while Mark’s car is driving past.

  “He probably told Mark to do some kind of surveillance run on his own, and then got in place somewhere back behind the house, waited for Mark to show up, and fired the shot.

  “John waited for the uproar to die down, then drove home in his truck. He smeared mud on his license plate just in case, but he probably didn’t figure Cosmo would be out there, hiding in the dark, watching the street, all those hours later.” Jules paused. “Any questions, class?”

  “You don’t know all of this for sure, right?” Jane asked. “This is just your theory?”

  “Some of it’s fact,” Jules told her. “And we tend to be pretty accurate when it comes to theories like this.”

  “Kind of like your profilers, who kept insisting Mr. Insane-o worked alone?” Jane asked.

  “There’s a big difference between working with a partner or in a team, and forming a temporary alliance with someone you see as disposable,” Cosmo told her. “The profilers were saying our guy was not a team player—which was true.”

  “So, okay,” Jules said. “Johnny scrounges up some uniforms from World War Two—probably with Mark’s help—and, in his Carl Linderman persona, gets cast as an extra. He has access to the set, where he sends that e-mail, creating the lockdown. The accident with the light happens—and we’re virtually certain it was just an accident—and lucky for John it brings the stalker story even closer to the top of the news. He likes that, but there are still people who aren’t taking him seriously—possibly even Tim Ebersole.

  “So John shoots Angelina to make sure he’s caught everyone’s attention. Then he grabs Patty and sets it up to look as if she killed him. Only it’s his disposable friend, Mark Avery, who’s dead. John’s still out there and you’re still very much in danger. But you’re supposed to emerge from hiding and we’re all supposed to be high-fiving each other for a job well done, and John, he still can’t settle for gunning you down in your driveway—thank God. He’s got to prove that he’s so much smarter than we are, and he’s got to have the high drama, to catch Tim’s eye.

  “So he plans to take you out while you’re shooting the battlefield sequence—that’ll surely make the news in a major way. After you show up on location—and you make it so easy for him by coming onto the set on the very first day of a four-day shoot—he sticks some hapless extra with the same kind of horse trank that he used to drug Patty—and that’s something we know for sure.”

  “But how’d he get that rifle onto the beach?” Jane asked.

  “The rifle and a sidearm,” Cosmo interjected. “All he needed was a little advance notice, and since he had a Nazi uniform, he was probably one of the first people called.”

  “That’s probably right,” Jane agreed. “HeartBeat took care of the extras casting, but they worked off of our lists.”

  “They called him, gave him the dates and times and location,” Cosmo speculated. “He probably asked if there would be additional security. You know, ‘Wasn’t someone connected to the movie just killed?’ They probably told him about the metal detectors and the fence, reassuring him he’d be safe. I bet he came out here that same night—before the fence went up. Buried both of those weapons in the sand.”

  Jules nodded. “A number of extras and crew reported seeing someone digging right over by the hill. They didn’t think much of it at the time, but . . . So there you have it.” He sighed. “Look, if you don’t need anything else, I’m going to head out. If anything new comes in . . . Well, I’ll certainly keep you posted.”

  “How much longer will you be in town?” Jane asked.

  “Probably only a few more days,” J
ules told her.

  “Will you stop in and see Robin before you go?” she asked. “I mean, he’s sleeping now, but . . . Maybe tomorrow?” Her brother had been asking for Jules in the ambulance.

  “I’m not sure I’ll have time,” Jules told her, and her heart sank. It was clearly his polite way of saying no.

  “Please give him a second chance,” Jane said. “Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you think? God, you’d be so good for him.”

  She couldn’t believe she was saying this, couldn’t believe how badly she wanted her brother to be in a relationship with another man.

  A man he so obviously adored, and who so clearly cared for him, too.