by James Phelan
Somerville said, “Did you ask her about no longer working at the State Department?”
“Not yet.”
“It doesn’t bother you? And skipping out of the hospital in Germany?”
“I’m waiting to see why she’s withholding that from me.”
“Waiting for what—for fun?”
“I’ll pick the time. I’m watching her.”
“Is there anything to suggest that this is related to a Zodiac attack?”
“No,” Walker said, seeing the cable news reporting boatloads of refugees arriving in Italy after being plucked from the ocean by the EU Coast Guard. “Honestly, I think that my father was there to buy a family as some kind of cover, to travel with them. Or maybe to use them as some kind of face-to-face communications package to me or someone else here in the States. Can’t think it’d be anything else.”
“But he told Muertos to find you. Why would he say that?”
“I assume because his plan fell apart. But just to say find me, and nothing else? That’s what’s bugging me. The old guy has always been cryptic and secretive, but this is something else. What’s he telling me?”
Somerville was silent on the other end of the phone for a few seconds, then asked, “How long are you going to give this thing with Muertos?”
“Until tomorrow,” Walker said. “We’ve got someone looking into it, and it should turn up the two Syrians who got into the country yesterday.”
“Who’s that?”
“Long story,” Walker said. “Then, depending on what comes of that, I’ll either quiz Muertos some more, or walk away. Can’t be drifting around the country fixing everyone’s problems now, can I?”
“Probably for the best,” Somerville said. “I mean, who knows when the next Zodiac cell might appear. You need to be up to it. How’s the leg?”
“It’s still there, right next to the other one.”
“Right. Talk tomorrow.”
Walker ended the call. He hung his clothes over a chair and opened the shower stall then stood under the hot water. The soap was tiny and near to useless. He kept replaying the conversation with Hassan, and with Overton. And Muertos. Distilling it, looking for a pattern. Human trafficking. His father wanting to buy a family. Did he really want to do that—or was he there for another reason? Could Muertos be the reason? Find Jed Walker. Was it relevant that she was the one who came to him, or was that just happenstance, that she was the only one from State to get out alive . . . Then his mind drifted to Agent Hayes, and the picture of her, and then the photos of Almasi and his thug, Bahar. He turned the water off. Dried with a thin towel. Wiped the fog off the small mirror over the basin and saw the reflection of a tired version of himself. His earliest memories of his father were of him being the age Jed was now, and the face in the mirror reminded him that the apple had not fallen far from the tree. He’d made so many of the same mistakes his father had made, because his work overrode his personal life. And here he was, in some cheap motel, trying to unravel something because his father had dragged him into it—and away from Eve.
Everyone’s looking for somebody.
Her father helped my mother, a long time ago.
Find Jed Walker.
26
Walker woke at six am. Outside was dark, the sun barely a hint on an unseen horizon. He turned on the television, a small off-brand flat screen. He filled the small coffee pot with water and poured it into the drip reservoir, then put a paper-wrapped serve of coffee into the tray underneath. It started to steam and bubble and drip into the glass flask. As he dressed he flicked through all the news channels, changing and watching and listening for information on the missing Secret Service Agent Clair Hayes. He sat on the edge of his bed with a mug of coffee, flicking the news channels back and forth for another ten minutes. Still nothing. As he started on his second cup of coffee, he used his phone to check online news, and he even Google searched it. Secret Service agent missing. Nothing. Secret Service agent abducted. Nothing. Secret Service Agent Clair Hayes. Nothing.
Which meant that Sally Overton hadn’t put word out.
Why?
He put on his jacket, walked out into the cool morning air and tapped on Muertos’s door. It was six-thirty. His breath fogged in front of him. There was light behind her curtains. He heard the pad of feet on the thin carpet of the room, then her voice from the other side of the door: “Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Walker said. “Can we talk?”
The door opened. She looked sleepy, like she’d not slept right through the night, and had only recently entered and then woken from decent REM sleep a short while before.
He held up a coffee for her. Black, steaming, as strong and hot as the machine in his room would make it.
“Didn’t you say seven?” Muertos said. She was dressed in her clothes from yesterday, but her shoes and jacket lay at the end of her unmade bed. She took the coffee.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Muertos stood back and Walker entered. Her television was on mute. MSNBC. The news ticker had nothing about the missing agent. “What is it?”
“You been watching the news?”
“All night.”
“And have you seen any reference to Overton’s missing agent?”
“No.”
“You should call her.”
“I don’t have a phone, and neither does this room.”
Walker passed her his.
“Maybe she’s busy,” Muertos said, looking at the object, then sipping her coffee. “Organizing the search, being debriefed.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it,” Walker said. “I think there’s two things that could have happened here.”
“And they are?” Muertos asked, starting to punch in the numbers of Overton’s cell.
“After out meet, Overton told her boss about what’s happened,” Walker said. “He or she is now working with the FBI on this, debriefing and briefing, like you said. And it’s being all hushed up, perhaps for security reasons. Maybe they’ve already got a location and Hayes is captive and the captors are in their sights as we speak.”
“Almasi and his guy, Bahar.”
“Presumably it’s them,” Walker said. “So, that’s one possibility.”
“And what’s the other scenario?” Muertos watched him, waiting to press call.
Walker looked absently at the television screen. “Overton didn’t make her report. No one up the chain knows that Hayes is missing. No one’s looking for her.”
Muertos didn’t respond to that, instead she pressed call and put the phone on speaker.
The call went straight to Overton’s voicemail.
“She might be on her phone,” Muertos said, ending the call.
“Maybe,” Walker replied. “You get ready, and try calling her again. Let’s be out of here in ten, okay?”
Muertos nodded.
Walker left Muertos to get ready. In his room he sat on the end of the bed, flicked through the news and waited. He wanted to make a stop to get a new shirt and undergarments and maybe a sweater—the life of a nomad wearing the same clothes day in and day out wasn’t for him. Next thing he’d be packing a folding toothbrush and letting his passport expire and living out of cheap motels across the country all his life, solving everybody’s problems. He knew where he wanted to be—with Eve. Relaxing. Away from this kind of thing. The chaos of twenty years at the coalface to protect his country was more than enough. The last year of chasing the ghost of his father, who may or may not be driving the Zodiac terror groups but undeniably had a hand in creating them, was wearing him out. Where would it end? How long would he give it—another twenty years?
Not a chance.
He looked the room over, leaving the key on the worn timber table, and stood outside. He checked his watch: 6:42 am. The sun was a sliver on the horizon. The sky was clear and steel blue. The sound of traffic already filled the nearby interstate and the big cloverleaf that fed the Beltway. He opened the door to the Beetle, eased the
park brake off and pushed it out to face the road, then push-started it across the car park and did his maneuver of folding himself inside and behind the wheel. The throaty garble of the tiny vintage engine cut through the morning air like a chainsaw. He flicked on the lights and the familiar yellow glow of the old lamps flared in the cool morning air.
Muertos emerged from her motel room and got in the car, the smell of soap and shampoo and coffee following her in. Her hair was wet and tied back in a ponytail. Walker put the heater on a low setting. The air took a while to blow warm.
“She’s still not answering,” Muertos said, passing Walker his phone. “So, she’s either been on her phone all this time, or it’s turned off—but I’ve never known her to turn her phone off.”
Walker could see that Muertos was concerned. That maybe a fate worse than the one Overton feared, the fate worse than losing her career, may have become a reality.
Walker said, “Do you know where she lives?”
Muertos nodded.
“Okay,” Walker said, taking off onto the road. “You navigate.”
27
Sally Overton lived in Lincoln Park, which was about as central a spot inside the Beltway as you could get, short of living in the White House. It took them an hour to get there. They crossed the Potomac, then the Anacostia, past the Navy yards, taking Independence Avenue SE to get into the neighborhood. The Monday morning commute was on, the roads filling with kids on buses and in cars to get to school and mums and dads with steaming to-go cups and government workers getting their gridlock on. Walker eased the little Beetle to the curb, in a spot down half a block from Overton’s four-story “row house” home, a typical design of many old Washington DC neighborhoods, here attached to adjoining buildings of similar look, all set back behind wrought-iron fences and gardens.
“Overton have a family?” Walker asked as he shut the Beetle’s door and made for the footpath.
“Her boyfriend is posted to Boston,” Muertos said, falling into step next to him.
“That’d be her car,” Walker said, pointing to a shiny black Chevy Caprice parked out the front of Overton’s house, with government plates and discreet lights on the back and front dash. He felt the hood as he passed and it was dead cold, the windows slightly frosted.
Walker went to the front door and found the buzzer button marked Overton. It chimed a two-step chord, three notes at once, repeating twice. Four sounds, ding-dong, ding-dong. He listened for a minute, then repeated the procedure, this time with a knock of knuckles on the door. He looked around. A couple of people were walking dogs. A kid rode by on a bike. Cars passed by every thirty seconds.
“Which apartment is hers?” Walker asked.
“Second floor, that window over there is her lounge room,” Muertos said, pointing up and to the right, to one of the two picture-frame windows on the next level up.
“I’ll go see what I can see,” Walker said, then he put his hands over his eyes to shield out the sun’s glare from over his shoulder and looked at the window beside the entry door. The interior of the townhouse was dark. No movement. He passed Muertos his phone. “You wait here. Try calling her phone again.”
“Maybe she’s out.”
“Not without her car.”
“A colleague might have picked her up.”
“Maybe,” Walker said, “but since we’re here we have to check.”
“And what if there’s no answer?” Muertos replied. “Break in? Steal her car while we’re at it?”
“If we have to,” Walker said.
“We could try buzzing all her neighbors, see if they’ll let us in the building.”
“Maybe, but that won’t help us get in through her apartment door,” Walker said. “The window is our easiest bet.”
“She’s probably at work.”
Walker exhaled, looked to Muertos, and said, “Let’s just check things out while we’re here, okay? Just in case she’s inside and needs our help.”
Muertos took a moment, then said, “Okay. Try the window.”
“Right. Wait here, I’ll buzz you in.”
Walker went through into the garden next to the entry. Smooth white pebbles the size of chicken eggs crunched underfoot as he headed to the first-floor window. Birch trees lined the fence next to the footpath, already brimming with new pale green leaves. There was a basement level, and the house was raised, so the first floor was actually about mid-thigh level, half a floor above street level. Walker heard the hiss of a fan under there, either connected to a boiler or gas ducted system. Walker pulled himself up, then used the first-floor window architrave to climb up and reach the sill of the second-floor window. He did a chin-up and hauled himself up.
He looked inside Overton’s front window. It was a lounge room beyond, hard to see into for the sun being behind him and reflecting against the glass. There was a lamp on inside. Maybe she was home—would she leave that on all day if she was headed out? Maybe she’d gone for a morning run to clear her mind. He sat sideways on the window sill, then put the tips of his fingers under the bottom of the casement window and lifted.
Nothing happened. The window was locked. Either that or it was painted shut. The window frame looked as though it had been painted over every inauguration since McKinley.
Walker could see through the lounge to another room, and beyond that a window. A window that was slightly open. He dropped himself down to the gravel, gave a signal to Muertos to stay put, and ran around the block. This street faced onto the green space of Lincoln Park, and the houses were mostly detached and yet to be converted to apartments. He counted his paces to match those of Overton’s apartment, and went through the front yard of a white timber-clad colonial mansion, taking the paved side throughway to the backyard. There he climbed over a gate, and then, beyond the manicured courtyard space and over an eight-foot brick fence, was the back of Overton’s building. He could make out the window that was open about a hand span. The back of the house had a steel fire escape that serviced each apartment, some kind of mandated twentieth-century add-on. He hopped the fence and dropped down to a small yard, full of outdoor chairs, a couple of tables and a lonely potted citrus.
Walker scaled the fire escape and looked through the back door into the kitchen.
The lights were on. And the oven, too—he could see that the dial was turned to grill, and the dim light of the oven was the same yellow glow behind the glass of the Beetle’s headlights.
There was something else, too. Smoke. Clinging to the ceiling. Dark gray. Like something had burned to charcoal some time ago and was hanging around and slowly seeping through the gaps around the light fixtures. A smoke alarm flashed a red light, but no sound emanated, as though it had long ago run out of effort in alerting anyone.
Walker couldn’t see Overton, but his gut told him this wasn’t right, and he tried the door handle. Locked. He went for the window, opening it silently and climbing inside. The smell inside was one of burned greasy food. The smoke was coming from the oven, a very fine stream of dark vapor. He saw on the bench an empty packet for frozen fries. They would be little more than black dust by now. He figured they’d been in the oven hours. There was an open bottle of pinot grigio on the counter, half-empty. Walker pictured Overton getting home, thinking about the calls she had to make, and opening some wine to build up courage. Some kind of last supper before kissing her career goodbye, or searching for some solace in food and alcohol before making a midnight call to her boss to report the missing agent Clair Hayes.
Then what? Or was she waiting for someone? He couldn’t see any glasses to accompany the wine bottle, but there had easily been two glasses poured out.
Maybe she did call it in. And someone came over to get all the details. And they drank while talking it all through . . .
Walker headed up the hall, through the silent apartment. To his right was an open doorway, and it was a bedroom, and the bed was made. He continued onward, toward the lounge room and the big bay window that he’d tried to
open. The hall opened up to the lounge. To his right was a desk and computer set up in a corner as a little home office. The front door was next to that. Its chain was on, which meant she hadn’t left through the front door.
But then Walker discovered that she hadn’t left at all.
In the lounge there was another smell, this one different from smoke, but to Walker, just as familiar.
Death.
28
“No . . .” Muertos saw the look on Walker’s face and she started to cry. She put her whole body into it. Walker went to put an arm around her but she shrugged it off and wiped her tears on a sleeve then pushed through the open front door and across the room, where she stood suddenly still, looking down at her friend’s body.
Walker stood next to Muertos. She was still crying, but they were now silent tears, the saline streams running down her cheeks in a constant flow.
Walker looked down at Overton, splayed out on a rug. Gunshot wound to the head, her service automatic near her open hand, her body arranged like a chalk outline. It was a well-lit room, leaving nothing to the imagination. The contents of her head had turned from pink and red to a dull red-brown. It was at least four hours old. Somewhere between ten and four hours, because it was just over ten hours ago that they’d said goodbye to her.
“She would never have done this, if not for me,” Muertos said. “No. No. I can’t believe it. Not her. No. Not like this. No. Oh, Sally, why . . .”
“She didn’t do it,” Walker said.
Muertos looked at him.
“This was a clean-up crew,” he said.
“She . . .” Muertos’s mouth opened and closed a few times with no sound coming out.
“She didn’t shoot herself,” Walker said. He surveyed the room—no obvious sign of a struggle—and then looked back to the body. The entry wound was under her chin, a blackened burn mark around the small ragged hole. An unlikely spot for a suicide. You’d put the gun in your mouth, blow out the back of your head. There was something final about biting down on the steel barrel, and that way you couldn’t miss. Under the chin, you’d worry that the weapon wasn’t aimed properly—a couple of degrees off and you’d shoot out your cheek or eye socket or a corner of your brain and be left forever incapacitated, forever reminded of your failure.