Once he decided to make his move, he had not wasted time; after retrieving the one tape, he hit the safe and removed his money stash and the extra gun, and then he’d gone from the duplex apartment into his own via the door in the closet, which did not appear to have been discovered. But the cops had definitely been there. There were signs of a search in every room. He’d retrieved the second tape and backed right out, going out the kitchen door and into the alley, getting back to the car as quickly as his throbbing leg would allow. As he sat there now, fondling the two cassettes, he smelled a peculiar smell. From his feet; something on the car’s carpet. He looked down. There was a grayish powder on the rubber mat. Those sons a bitches—they’d left some Carpet Fresh on the rugs in his house. Shit, he’d forgotten that old trick. Now there would be footprints in the powder—which would tell them he’d been back.
He realized now that he had smelled it in the house but hadn’t paid any attention. Well, what the hell. So they’d know he was still around. They would want to know what he had been after. Too late, suckers, he thought. If you ran your mouths, I’m gonna be ahead of you, and I only need one day to get done what I need to get done.
He cranked up the car and mashed the defrost button for the windshield.
He waited for a minute for the windshield to clear, then drove out of the alley and took Pennsylvania down into town, wanting to merge into the anonymity of the city’s wide boulevards as quickly as possible.
Below the Capitol, the streetlights along the majestic concourse of government buildings cast a dignified roseate glow on all the ornate facades, barely illuminating the shadowy lumps of the homeless littering the Metro system’s exhaust grates. A District cop car passed him on Pennsylvania, and he dutifully exchanged waves. He worked his way over to Constitution, and from there, he drove across the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge into Virginia. The whiskey and the aspirin were wearing off, and the throbbing in his eye was beginning to overtake the pain in his leg and occasionally make all the streetlights blur together. The right side of his face felt leaden, as if it were starting to sag off the bones like the makeup in some horror movie. The pain in his leg was throbbing in perfect time to the beat of his heart. Careful, he thought as he swerved out of his lane going up Wilson. Can’t get picked up on a stupid DUI at this stage. He turned off the main drag as soon as he was out of Rosslyn, then worked his way back toward Ball ston by using the side streets; the Randolph Towers was tall enough to be seen above the trees and houses along the sleeping residential streets, giving him a landmark.
He did not relax until back in the apartment, where he had to lie down right away to get the pain back under control. The eye in particular was generating waves of pain that became pulses of red light in his brain, and his left eye was not operating very well, either. He turned off all the lights. Gonna be a blind son of a bitch pretty quick, this keeps up, he thought, flopping on the couch, his head thrown back and his right leg elevated.
He looked at his watch. It was almost five o’clock. Daylight pretty soon.
He forced himself to get up off the couch and stagger into the kitchen.
The ice maker in the small refrigerator was nearly empty, exhausted by his earlier demands. He opened another bottle of Harper, took a small shot, and lit a cigarette. The deli would be open in an hour or so; they’d have ice. But he would need a patch over that eye before he went back out in public. Assuming the worst, that one or both of them had made it out of the fire, he also had to assume the cops would be looking for someone with an injured eye. But maybe not by the morning news—he might have a day of grace before his description made it to the television. Doesn’t matter, ‘cause once the composite gets out on TV, people will remember seeing you—the Metro guy, the desk people.
So make a patch. He lay down again on the couch, with the whiskey bottle on the floor. Maybe get an hour of shut-eye. Shut-eye, right. He started to laugh, but it hurt too much. Something he had to do, to listen to.
The tapes. Right. In just a minute.
dan looked at his watch and almost bolted from the bed—it was 7:30 on a Monday morning, the time at which he was normally at his desk and sorting through his weekend message traffic in 614. But then the events of the night flooded back into his mind, and he lay back and turned to find Grace, who was still submerged in the covers. Her hair was inches from his face, and he could hear her breathing slowly. His neck did not hurt quite so much, but he moved very slowly as he explored its limits of motion. After a few minutes, he disentangled himself from Grace, eliciting a small noise from under the covers. He stroked her head until she went back to sleep. Then he got out of the bed—and very nearly fell down. He had to sink to his knees to regain his balance, and he remained in the duckwalk position, one hand grabbing a handful of covers, for almost a minute before the room stopped spinning. He tried again, much slower, and this time succeeded in staggering into the bathroom.
He sat on the throne and fought down a thin wave of nausea and dizziness. His neck bones felt like a series of overlapping plates, each one protesting when he tried to move his head. The nausea must be from that damn painkiller they’d given him. He did not want to consider what the hell his neck would feel like if he had not taken the painkiller.
Gotta call Summerfield, tell him why I’m not there, tell him what’s happened, he thought. Have to get my car back, assuming it survived the fire. When he closed his eyes, he could still hear that jet-engine roar of the fire and see that monster standing over Grace, her defenseless body spread eagled obscenely across the bed with all those shiny— He shook the image out of his mind, trading it for a wave of pain for his efforts. Better put that goddamn brace back on.
After using the bathroom and checking on Grace again, he put on some shorts and a rugby T-shirt and mounted the brace around his neck.
Leaving his bathrobe on the foot of the bed for Grace, he went downstairs and then began looking out each of the windows on the ground floor, bending awkwardly because of the brace. But everything outside appeared to be normal.
He went to the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee, preceding that with a glass of milk and a piece of bread to overcome the metallic medicinal taste in his throat.
Once he had a mug of coffee safely in hand, he sat down and called the office, reaching Yeoman Jackson.
“Jackson, let me talk to the captain,” he said.
“Hey, Commander. They been talkin’ ‘bout you,” Jackson said. “Colonel Snapper, he sayin’ you takin’ this hot romance—”
“The captain, please, Jackson.”
Jackson sniffed and put him on hold for a minute, and then Summerfield picked up.
“Well, Daniel, are you two all right?”
“You’ve heard about it?”
“It was on the six a.m. news—house fire in Georgetown, house belonging to a Miss. Grace Ellen Snow.
Miss. Snow and a friend surprised an intruder in the house; the intruder threw gasoline, burned the place down. They said you both got out but that the intruder got away.”
Dan paused for a few seconds. “Where in the hell did they get all that?”
he asked.
“Officials reported. Snapper says you’re taking the concept of a hot date to extremes, even for a sailor.”
Dan smiled. “Tell Snapper that at least I date girls.
His sheep are still safe.”
“You tell him; Snapper takes his barnyard seriously. I assume you need a couple of days’ leave to help Miss. Snow get her life put back together?”
“Well,” Dan said, pausing, trying to think fast. How much could he tell Summerfield? He understood now that anything he told Summerfield would get to the EAs. He had to talk to Vann before he said anything more. “Yes, sir, I’d appreciate that. My Suburban’s over there, and Grace is over here. I’m assuming we won’t be able to salvage much out of the house.”
“House? There is no house. There’s nothing there but a hole. She drive a sedan?”
“Yes, sir.”
<
br /> “Well, that’s gone, too. I didn’t see your Suburban, but there were still fire engines there this morning.”
“Damn. I’m going to have to get her some clothes, and she’s going to have to get to her bank and her insurance company. A couple of days would be very useful.
And I’ve injured my neck—getting out of the house.
They’ve got me in a brace, and I’ve gotta tell you, I’m definitely operating on one shaft right now.”
Summerfield’s voice lost its bantering tone. “Okay.
From the looks of that house, you’ve been through a bad night. I’ll open a leave chit for you for the rest of the week; you can come in whenever you’re up to it.
Take care of your lady friend and be religious about that damned brace.
If you need wheels today, I can have Jackson meet you in the parking lot with my keys and you can borrow my car. Anything else we can do for you here, make sure you call me. And Dan—does this fire have anything to do with the Hardin case?”
Got me, the old fox, Dan thought. He couldn’t lie to Summerfield. But he did not have to tell him everything he suspected.
“Yes, sir, I think it does.”
There was a pregnant pause, as if Summerfield was waiting for more.
“Okay, Dan, I think I understand,” Summerfield said finally. “But promise you’ll tell me what’s going on when you get Miss. Snow sorted out.”
“Yes, sir. It’s just that right now, there are some things you may not want to know.”
Summerfield laughed softly. “Call us if you need help,” he said before hanging up.
Dan thanked him and hung up. When he turned around, Grace was standing in the kitchen doorway.
She was wearing his bathrobe, and one side of her pale face was still somewhat red and puffy where the guy had slapped her. Her hair was mussed and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, but she was still beautiful. Dan felt a sudden wave of affection sweep through him, and he went over to her and took her in his arms. She bumped her face on the neck brace and they both laughed. But she did not let go.
“Sorry about last night,” she said in a soft voice.
“A date with you is nothing if not interesting, Miss. Snow,” he said.
“I meant—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’d think I’d learn. I ply my wenches with demon rum, and do they get all hot and ready for romance? They do not. They get sick in my car, is what they do. Happens time after time. Like I said, you’d think I’d learn.”
She hugged him tighter, and they stood that way in the middle of the kitchen for a few minutes while he rubbed her back and felt her trying to control her breathing. Finally, he moved her over to a chair and poured her a cup of coffee. He partially refilled his own mug and sat down across the kitchen table from her.
“This is going to be an all-day, never-ending, no-shit, original-bitch Monday,” he said, and she smiled finally, stirring some sugar into her coffee.
“Has it been on the news?”
“Yes. Summerfield saw it this morning. Grace, the house is totaled, and I’m afraid the Beamer is gone, too.”
She slumped a little in her chair. He took her hand across the table before continuing.
“And while I’m making your day, we have some other problems. I called Summerfield to get some leave so I can help you with this disaster. I suspect we’ll spend the whole week getting you off the reef and back into the channel again.”
“I can hardly wait. But—”
“The problem is that Summerfield asked if this was connected to the Hardin case. And I told him yes, but I didn’t tell him any more than that, because I think everything I’ve been telling him has been piped straight into the headquarters EA system.”
“Dan, they can hardly blame you for what happened last night.”
He got up to dump and wash out his coffee mug. The coffee was not sitting well. “Yeah, well, maybe they can and maybe they can’t, but that’s not my real concern.
What I’m worried about is that Vann obviously believes that the bad dream we ran into last night was a hired hand. He wasn’t some itinerant burglar—that badass was sent. Grace, I don’t think either one of us was supposed to survive his little interrogation last night. Someone sent that guy in to kill us.”
She put her coffee down as the color drained out of her face and he came around the table quickly to take her hands. She leaned her head into his stomach as he stood next to her.
“I might be wrong, but obviously that guy was waiting for us. And you said he said he’d been in the house before. He obviously believed that you and I were involved in the Hardin investigation. I think he was sent to find out what we knew and then to eliminate us, in a house fire. He brought gasoline, remember?”
She moved her head against his stomach in a nodded yes.
“And based on what he said last night, this might be the guy who did the Hardin killing—but not on his own.
There’s somebody paying this guy, and I’ve got this terrible feeling that the somebody is a Navy flag officer.”
She pulled her head back and looked up at him. “Except …” she said.
“Except what?” he had trouble looking down at her because of the brace.
“He kept asking me if ‘the captain’ had sent me. He was acting as if was somebody hired to get him. If he had been hired to get us, why would he care?”p>
Dan stared out the kitchen window. Why indeed.
Why the interrogation scene with Grace, not with him, but with Grace? If he had been hired to kill them, he could have knocked them both over the head, put them in a bedroom upstairs, and torched the house. Grace had a valid point, but he was still convinced that the guy had meant to kill them—but only after he found something out.
“Dan,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth, “I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“He was about to say a name last night … when you came through the door. He wanted to know about Captain Vann. He wanted to know if Captain Vann was working for Captain somebody. He didn’t say the name, just called him the ‘vice-chiefs flunky.’ “
Dan stared down at her in horror. “The vice-chiefs ‘flunky’? He said that?”
“Yes. Something like that. And I think that’s what he was really after.
He assumed that I was working for Captain Vann and that Captain Vann was working for this other captain.”
Dan pulled a chair under him and sank into it.
“Jesus H. Christ. The vice-chiefs flunky. Captain Randall. Now it all makes sense. That’s why Randall has been so all fired up about the Hardin case. Hell, this explains why Opnav took the investigation away from NIS in the first place. At the vice chiefs orders, remember? Son of a bitch! Don’t you see it? Elizabeth Hardin was having an affair with the Vice Chief of Naval Operations! No goddamn wonder he needed to cover it up. Son of a bitch!”
Grace was staring at him. “And you’ve been briefing Summerfield,” she said.
“Yes. And he’s been feeding it all back to his dear friend and classmate, the vice chief.”
“Do you suppose Summerfield knows?”
Dan shook his head. “I can’t believe he does. He was just keeping the vice chief informed to keep the Navy from getting blindsided.
Summerfield, the ex-EA. No, Summerfield wouldn’t be a party to murder.
But he might as well have been. Grace, this is awful. After all the scandals in the Navy these past few years, this is going to kill us.”
She got up, and this time she came to hold his head against her body.
“Poor Dan,” she said softly. “Some bastard tries to kill us both, he’s probably killed one if not two other people already, you think the second most-senior admiral in the Navy hired him to do it, and you’re worried about what this will do to the Navy?” Her voice was rising hysterically at the end.
“The Navy is my life,” he said, his voice muffled. He tried to look up at her, but the brace was in the way.
“Especially after I lost Claire. And before I found you.
The Navy is special to us, Grace. The ships, the crews, going to sea, all the history and tradition. You understand after a while that you are allowed to be a part of it, a part of something bigger and more important than any individual. And you’re supposed to do an honorable job of it.”
He stood up. “And this son of a bitch has dishonored his uniform, not to mention instigating a murder and almost getting away with two more. No wonder Mrs. Hardin didn’t want to talk. Especially if she knew whom her daughter was seeing. She’d think it’s hopeless.”
“You don’t suppose Wesley Hardin went to see him, do you? A lieutenant confronting a four-star admiral?”
“You heard Vann. He said Wesley would jump on it, whether or not it was the smart thing to do. We’ve gotta talk to Vann. Right now.”
“Can we get me some clothes first?” she asked in a small voice.
He smiled at her, but then the smile disappeared.
“Yes, but then we’ve gotta move. As soon as the hired gun watches the news and finds out we got away, we’re targets again—high-priority targets. Right now, Vann is our only protection, but only if he knows what we know.”
Dan went back upstairs to retrieve his wallet. He felt like a freak in the brace, but to his dismay, the brace helped a lot. His neck still hurt, but the brace kept him from adding to the problem with sudden moves of his head. He found his wallet, retrieved Vann’s card, and went back downstairs. Grace was stirring some sugar into a second mug of coffee and staring out the back window. Almost automatically, he went to her.
“You’ll stay here, won’t you?” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders.
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