“They’re way more effective than sleep aids,” she said, with another small smile.
She was trying to make things between them more comfortable. To meet him on a human level. Rick understood that.
He just didn’t want it.
Or, more accurately, couldn’t afford it.
What he wanted was irrelevant.
His life was about being prepared. Making the wisest choices. Like buying a black vehicle because it was easier to hide in a clump of trees or drive unseen in the night as long as he kept the headlights off. And a truck because it could manage more types of terrain, withstand heavier hits. It put him higher off the road in case of gunfire. Towed bigger boats. And held a lot of fishing tackle.
“Charles mentioned a woman once,” Rick said. “Maybe he corresponded with her. I don’t know. I got the feeling she might be in prison. Or in a convent…” His lies were fluid. Natural. “Maria Valdez.” He named the woman Brady had slept with one night on that yacht. The night Rick could have had her friend. He’d tried to play along. But he hadn’t been interested.
“I’ll check her out,” Erin Morgan said, crossing one long leg over the other as she jotted on her notepad.
And Rick reminded himself once again that a woman like her was out of his league. Out of his world.
When he wanted sex, he settled for women who didn’t mind cheap hotels, first names only and no second visits.
Chandler, Ohio
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
I’d been a mother for two weeks and two days, and so far my kid was still alive. Physically healthy. Attending school. Eating her meals.
Maggie had her period that morning. After helping her with the supplies she needed, I actually stopped, in the middle of my room, and thanked God. We’d just had final confirmation that there was no pregnancy. The lies and deceit perpetrated by the girl’s biological mother wouldn’t have that kind of repercussion, anyway. Others but not that.
Once I was sure Maggie was feeling okay, I sent her off to school. I was going to court later that morning. I’d debated taking Maggie with me—or at least telling her I was going. But in the end, I chose not to.
I’d made a parental decision. Right or wrong.
Erin Morgan called as I was giving Camy her treat so she’d let me leave the house without throwing a huge splash of guilt in my direction. Odd, Erin calling now right now, just as I was struggling with a personal decision of my own.
Her timing was coincidental. I knew that. But I took comfort from it, anyway.
“Hello?” I said, answering in spite of the fact that I was juggling my leather satchel, keys, purse, phone and garage door opener.
“Kelly, is this a bad time?”
“No. Quite the opposite. I have Maggie’s mother’s sentencing in an hour and I’m nervous as heck.”
I was in my Nitro by now, my things on the seat beside me.
“Didn’t you say she pled out?”
“Yeah. Two weeks ago. They made the deal the day after they booked her.”
The Nitro started with a purr before the garage door was even fully open.
“Then sentencing’s more of a formality than anything else. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried about the sentencing. I have her daughter. And I’m in the process of taking Maggie from her legally. Permanently.”
“If the state’s going to sever the woman’s rights, they’d do it whether you were waiting in the wings or not.”
“I know. But I still keep thinking she’ll be able to do something to prevent me from keeping Maggie.”
“If the woman loves Maggie at all, she should be grateful to you for taking her in. Giving her a decent life. Loving her.”
“Yeah.” My head told me the same thing. My heart just wasn’t cooperating. “She told Child Services that she wanted Maggie placed with me, but that was two weeks ago. The night she was arrested.” Things had changed since then. After a couple of weeks in a jail cell, Lori Winston was angry as hell and blaming me for everything.
She was playing the victim. Needed a scapegoat. And I was it.
Which was fine. I’d been worse.
I backed out of the drive.
I could handle the weight of Lori Winston’s blame. What made me nervous was knowing that a woman Maggie loved hated me.
“Is Maggie with you?” Erin’s tone had softened more.
“No.”
“That’s probably good.”
I hoped so. Talking on the phone while operating a car was still legal in Ohio, but I had a hands-free device, because it was safer.
“How are things in Michigan?” I asked, driving toward my office near the courthouse. A half hour in my office, sitting on my old sofa, with a can of soda and a granola bar were just what I needed. I’d walk to court from there.
“Cold,” Erin said.
“Here, too.” If it hadn’t been so darned cold out, I’d have gone skating that morning. I got a lot of clarity—calmness—when I could skate and meditate about the things that were bothering me.
And I figured Erin wasn’t calling to discuss the weather.
“How’s everything with Noah’s family?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I feel like I let Caylee down because I didn’t give her the unequivocal answer she wanted from me. I let Ron down, too, because I didn’t tell Caylee to forget the scholarship. And I’m worried about Patricia.”
“What about you?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Everything that happens to you is about you in some fashion.”
Pulling into my parking space in the little lot behind the downtown building where I rented my office, I waited for Erin to say something. And when she didn’t, I asked, “You didn’t do what they wanted you to, but did you do what you thought was right?”
“I… No, I don’t think I did.”
I took a pen from the console and grabbed a napkin to write on, holding it against my purse. “How so?”
“Caylee asked what I’d do if it were me. I wanted to tell her. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t really know.”
I could tell her what I thought about it. But, unlike Caylee, she didn’t ask. And I didn’t want to tell her. I wanted her to get there on her own. She seemed to want that, too. I drew a three-dimensional question mark on the napkin.
“I’d like to ask your opinion on something.”
“What’s that?” A smiley face joined the question mark.
“This new case. My client, Rick Thomas, doesn’t have fingerprints.” Erin explained about the protein deficiency.
“I’m familiar with another case where a lack of fingerprints was an issue.”
“I had a call from the prosecutor on the case, Christa Hart, this morning. She was writing a motion to subpoena Mr. Thomas’s DNA. I fought that because there’s no DNA evidence from the crime scene. They didn’t get anything off the knife used to kill Charles Cook. And that knife was the only evidence at the scene.”
“Did you win?”
“Yeah.”
Sitting in my Nitro, talking to my friend, was better than sitting alone on my couch, no matter how much I liked my office.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I want to run his DNA.” Erin said the words quickly. Almost as though she was ashamed of them.
“You think you’ll find something in the system on him? He’d have to be a convicted criminal for anything to show up.”
“I know.”
Uh-oh.
“So why do you want to check?”
“Christa’s going to do everything she can to learn whatever she can about him. If I’m going to defend him, I have to know what she might find.”
“Sounds reasonable.” And it did. But I figured there was more. “What does he say about it?”
“I haven’t asked him. If I ask and he says no, I can’t do it. And I’m about ninety-five percent certain he’d say no.”
“I could offer him a cup of coffee. And have a friend of mine look for a match—unofficially.”
“You want to tell me the real reason you believe you should do this?”
“Because I think he’s hiding something from me.”
“Something that could affect the case?”
“Yes.”
I thought about what she was saying. Not from a legal standpoint—that was her specialty. And, I hoped, not from the position of a therapist, either, but as a friend.
Look out for the other. Look out for self, I jotted.
And then Erin started to talk again. Softly. Hesitantly. “I’m afraid that he’s leading me into something. I don’t know what. I need to be aware if I’m walking into danger. And beyond that, I’m afraid if I don’t find out what he’s hiding, I won’t have any hope of helping him. I won’t be able to win the case.”
I remembered our first conversation the week before.
“And winning the case is important.”
“Helping him is important,” she said. I believed her.
“And beyond helping him? Do you want to know about him for personal reasons?”
“How can I tell? Defending him, winning, wanting to help him, they’re all connected and they’re all part of me. So that makes it personal, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But are you curious about what you’d find because of the case, or because, case aside, you want to know?” I wasn’t sure it mattered, in the end, to the question Erin had asked. But it seemed to me that she should be clear on her reasons.
“Is it him you’re trying to protect? Or yourself?”
“I like him,” the attorney told me, as though confessing some great sin, and I felt her struggle acutely. One woman to another.
“The attraction…it’s not lessening,” I suggested.
“No.”
“Is it growing?”
“Probably. I’m trying to ignore it.”
“Trying to protect your heart isn’t a crime,” I told her. “Particularly in a situation like yours where you’ve already been so badly hurt.”
“I really do want to run his DNA for the case.”
“I believe you.”
“So?”
“What?”
“Your opinion…”
“I’d run it,” I told her. “He’s made the choice, for whatever reason, to be secretive. You’re treating him accordingly.”
Erin was quiet again.
“You need the information to do your job to the best of your ability.”
“I think I do. I’m just afraid I’m talking myself into it because his secrets are driving me crazy. Am I justifying an action I want to take?”
“That’s something we all do every single day, Erin. It’s called living. We want to do things. We justify them. Or not. And we do them. Or not. From having that extra cup of coffee to going to bed early. It’s like I told you last week. Pay attention to your doubts. And listen to yourself for the answers.”
“I think I did. I called you.”
She’d just made my day.
16
The pieces of the bass fish jigsaw puzzle were coded on the backs, a chronology of every job he’d ever done. That was the beginning of Rick’s list. Or rather, lists. Sarge called, adding another ninety-seven potential enemies. Rick spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning working on his lists. Starting with parts of the world. Using the wireless internet function on his phone, he looked up current political conditions for every place he’d ever been.
And then he listed jobs by people.
By date.
By number of deaths that occurred.
He made a list of people who were the target of more than one job.
And a list of jobs that had more than one target.
Jobs during which he’d made friends—and possibly still had an undercover contact.
Jobs where he’d worked completely alone, like the Arizona hit. That job had been wrong from the beginning. In the first place, it had been a drug job—Brady’s specialty, but Brady had already been working an undercover project. One he’d been at for weeks. Calling him in would have jeopardized that mission. And the Arizona problem had only needed a quick, one-hour fix. Or so he was told. It had required someone to get in and out of a government building, a government office, in the middle of the day without being seen.
Rick was the best on the team at getting in and out of anywhere. With just about anything.
He looked at his lists. He’d separated the jobs that were stateside from those that had gone down on foreign soil.
Jobs involving large sums of money were in a category by themselves.
Those involving drugs.
Weapons.
He showered, shaving without a mirror while under the spray. He shook the water out of his hair, put on clean jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt, strapped on the holster that crossed his chest and slid his arms into an unbuttoned, long-sleeved denim shirt he’d picked up locally for less than twenty bucks.
And he thought about the woman on the boat. About Brady’s matchbook.
He went back to his lists, looking for anything there that would tie in to those few days filled with too much alcohol and not enough hours to spend with the only real friend he’d ever had.
At noon, Rick stopped for a bowl of sugared flakes, adding the emptied bowl to the other three that were piled in the sink, and made a mental note to get some protein into his system. He had to be ready for full performance with no sustenance for an extended length of time.
Just in case.
When he’d made every list he could think of, then cross-referenced, studied and honed, he ended up with nine equally weighted people as the most probable suspects.
And he had to find them without leaving the area or he’d risk losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of Steve’s future support. Risk sitting in a jail cell instead of finding his killer. Which left only his wits, his attorney and a phone to save his life.
After burning the lists, Rick took the puzzle apart, carefully gathering the pieces into their plastic bag, putting it back in the box and sealing the box with tape. Before he’d quit his job, he’d bought the puzzle, put it together, turned it over and coded each job on a separate piece, starting with the first job on the top left puzzle piece and working his way around. Then he’d handed over his records—and destroyed what he didn’t give back.
He’d visit Lakeside, put the puzzle back and spend the evening, and quite possibly the night, with Steve. On his way—out of his way, really—Rick pulled into a small gravel lot in front of a rundown little building with a barely discernible sign advertising boat rentals. Slapping down a twenty-dollar bill for a rowboat that looked like it might last half an hour without sinking, he rented a rod, then rowed out on the decent-size fishing lake. He put a line in the water, pulled out the phone with the scrambled line and called Sarge.
They discussed the names Rick had come up with. Sarge added half a dozen of his own to the list. And they divvied up search assignments. Rick, by necessity, had most of the online searches. Record searches.
Sarge’s included travel.
“First place to look is anyone who’s got current contacts in Michigan.” Rick spoke softly into the scrambled phone. His home might be bugged. His truck certainly could be. He’d briefly lost access to both while he was in custody. But there was no way that old boat could have any listening devices. Still, habits died hard. “Anyone who’s traveled to Michigan,” he said. “I’m here. If they want me, they’re going to have to show up here, too.”
“Eventually,” Sarge said. “Right now, we have to find the bigger deal. What’s going down, where, that involves either one of us. Or all four of us. In order to find out who wants us, we have to find out why.”
“About that Cook guy,” Rick said. “I can’t come up with any connection bet
ween what I know about him and any of the names on our lists. But he just acquired a nine millimeter.”
“He was on to something.”
“Those missing emails?”
“We’ve got seven jobs that involved weapons and known terrorist connections. Those were the most obvious threats to Homeland Security, the most obvious explanation for missing emails. Maybe a new cell in one of the organizations we brought down is behind this,” Sarge said.
“Let’s start with those. But what Charles Cook did or didn’t know and who wants us dead could be unrelated.”
“The coincidence bears checking out. I’m monitoring HS as well as I can, but my access isn’t what it used to be.”
That weekend with Brady kept coming back to Rick. Because of a matchbook from a guy who’d killed a kid and hadn’t even told him. He needed to tell Sarge about the matchbook but he couldn’t. Brady had left it specifically for Rick for a reason. Perhaps because whatever it meant would risk Sarge’s life if he knew. So whatever it meant could get Rick killed, too.
His life was more expendable than Sarge’s. Brady understood that. So did Rick. They’d all known that. Sarge was the one protected by the government. He was the one who knew all the jobs. The overseer.
Until Rick discovered why Brady had left him the matchbook, he had to keep its existence to himself.
But he couldn’t keep his leader totally in the dark.
“I’m going to see if I can learn who owned the yacht Brady and I were on,” he said. “That was the last time I saw Brady. Maybe there’s something there.”
“Good idea. I was never told the name of it. Just to send you to slip eighteen.”
“I remember the name.” The One That Got Away.
Water was coming in at the bow. He probably had another ten minutes or so to get back.
“Why didn’t they just off me last week instead of framing me for murder?” he asked out loud. Only with Sarge would he ask. Rick had never discussed an ongoing job with Brady—not unless they were working together. He didn’t talk to anyone but Sarge.
“Obviously they want you alive. For now. We have to find out why. And make damn sure they don’t get what they want and decide you’re no longer worth the air you breathe before we figure it out.”
The Third Secret Page 12