Inside Out

by John Ramsey Miller

  “In my motel room along with my leather jacket.”

  “You think there's a bullet still in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure that one of those women killers fired that round? Could either of the marshals have fired it?”

  “I'm positive the younger woman did, because I remember feeling it get hit. Why?”

  “Might support your story. I'm going to send somebody to your motel. In the meanwhile, you just relax.”

  Relax? Sean almost laughed out loud.

  81

  Charlotte, North Carolina

  While a deputy went to the downtown motel to retrieve Sean's leather jacket and her backpack containing the damaged laptop computer, Trammel e-mailed Director Shapiro. Sean sat on the couch, at first watching him but soon relaxed enough to nod off.

  After the runner returned from the motel, Hank sent Sean's computer to his technician, Eddie Morgan, so he could retrieve the bullet from inside it. Trammel planned to send that along with Sean's Smith & Wesson for ballistic comparison purposes.

  Trammel sat on the couch next to Sean. “Tell you what,” he started after she had woken, “you call me Hank and I'll call you Sean. That okay?”

  “It's fine.”

  “Sean, Rook Island and Ward Field are on a need-to-know-only deal. I have a good overview on the incidents, but I'm curious about what happened on Rook. I'd like for you to tell me what Winter did there when those men attacked.”

  “He saved my life.”

  “I know that. I'd like to know what you saw—how he did what he did.”

  Sean studied Winter's boss, unsure of what she should say. Trammel reminded her of a proud parent wanting to hear about his child's football game. “I'll tell you, if you're sure it's all right.”

  “The reports won't give it justice and Winter won't blow his own horn. So I want you to tell me everything.”

  Sean had gotten to the part in the radar shack where Winter was taking the UNSUB's suit off when the receptionist interrupted by tapping on the door, then opening it. She entered carrying a FedEx package. “Sir, I think you might want to see this. It's addressed to Winter and the return is a cafeteria on the Norfolk Naval Base. I know you said if we heard anything from Winter to let you know, and while this isn't from him—”

  “A cafeteria at Norfolk?” Trammel queried, reaching out for the package.

  “Reed is the only name in the return box.”

  As the receptionist closed the door behind her, Trammel opened the package and extracted a manila envelope as well as a number-ten envelope with the Navy's seal on it. Trammel unfolded the enclosed letter and displayed a worried expression as he read. “Fletcher Reed?” He stood and carried the package to his desk. “Sorry, Sean, this is important. I gotta check out this fellow.”

  “Fletcher Reed is a lieutenant commander with the shore patrol. He was on Rook Island before the FBI arrived.”

  Hank tore open the larger envelope and flipped through the contents; a stack of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets of paper. From the few Sean could see, each of the pages had pictures and type on them. He swiveled his chair to his computer and typed an e-mail using two fingers. Two minutes later, as he studied the pages from the envelope, a bell alerted him that he had received a response. Seconds after reading the short message, Hank stacked as many of the pages in his fax machine as could fit and sent them.

  Sean watched from the couch. After Hank had finished faxing the pages, he left the room carrying them and returned two minutes later with a duplicate set. He carefully put the originals back into the FedEx envelope and slipped that into a larger envelope, which he sealed. Hank put the photocopies into a manila envelope. That done, he buzzed his secretary. When she came in, he handed her the originals. “Put this in the vault for now. This'll go out to the chief marshal with a couple of things Eddie is working on,” he told her.

  “If the bullets they removed from those bodies in Richmond don't match your gun or the dead deputy's Glock, that's solid reasonable doubt. FBI technicians don't miss much by way of evidence. It's doubtful that you shot your backpack with the same gun that killed those deputies. If you were a professional, and there was nobody chasing you off, you sure as hell wouldn't have left your bag containing your money and a passport behind. There should be evidence from all six of the weapons you mentioned. They can't believe you fired three guns from so many directions.”

  “They can interpret the evidence they don't miss however they like.”

  “You shouldn't worry about that. Director Shapiro has a seat in the big game. He'll do everything he can to help you, but you have to help us by not running off again. I want your word of honor on it.”

  “You have it. There's no place to run to and nobody who can help me.”

  “Okay, so you guys were in the radar shack,” Hank said suddenly. “Winter dropped from the rafters on that sumbitch and snapped his neck.”

  82

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  The slipstream caught the cigarette that Johnny Russo flicked out of the Lincoln. He lit another before he closed the window.

  A mile after leaving the interstate, Spiro turned right at the crossroads. He drove another fifty yards, then steered the Lincoln onto Sam's property. The gatekeeper opened the front gate while a guard gazed out of the window of the small building. Russo watched the gatekeeper pull the lever on the wall. Even though he had seen the guard disarm the device designed to protect Sam from unwelcome guests, he reminded Spiro to slow as he approached the bridge erected over the man-made gully a hundred yards beyond the gate.

  As the Lincoln passed between the hills that guarded Sam's privacy from both sight-seers and surveillance teams, Russo saw two of Sam's bodyguards sitting in a golf cart parked beside the driveway. The pair returned Johnny's wave as Spiro drove past. Sam's guard consisted of serious-minded professionals, who in the way of well-trained attack dogs, were expected to respond only to their master's commands. Sam had recently imported seven young Sicilians—all blood relatives of his bodyguards—which put the number of men he had protecting him at fourteen—by far the largest number ever. He had always been satisfied before with a driver and two others who trailed him in a second car. His caution was indicative of the change in Sam since Dylan Devlin prompted his arrest.

  Johnny's mission was tricky because the old man could always sniff out deceit. Sam based life-and-death decisions on a man's facial tic, a shifting eye, or the moisture of a hand he was shaking.

  Spiro parked in front of the house beside Sam's Cadillac. Three of the new guards stared at the newcomers as though they had never seen them before.

  “Damn Zips,” Spiro said distastefully.

  “Wait with the car,” Johnny told him. “Make nice with the boys. It's important you develop a relationship with them, since you're going to be working with them from now on.”

  “How, with sign language? They shouldn't come here if they can't talk English.”

  “Whose fault is it you never learned to speak Italian? Maybe I'll get you some foreign language tapes for Christmas.”

  Inside the house, Johnny found Sam standing at his expensive gas range overcooking sausages in a big cast-iron skillet. Two of his recently imported young guards sat on stools at the counter waiting like patient hounds.

  “Johnny!” Sam said. “You hungry? Grab a plate.”

  “Nah, Sam,” Johnny said. “I passed by my house and ate with the kids a little while ago.” The idea of putting anything Sam cooked into his stomach was only slightly less frightening than having a crackhead holding a cocked pistol to his temple. “I wanted to get a shower and change.”

  “It's nice to keep close with your kids. Where's Spiro?”

  “With the car.” Understanding why Sam had asked, he added, “He ate already, too.”

  Sam reached over and turned the radio up before he spoke to Johnny in a low voice. “They don't understand English,” he said, meaning the young men seated at the counter. “So,
what you got up your sleeve?”

  Be calm, Johnny. “Sean called me.”

  Sam burned Johnny with his gaze. Smoke was seconds from billowing from the black skins of the sizzling meat. He pulled the skillet off the flame. “So when was it she called you?”

  “This morning.” He spoke with a nonchalance he didn't feel. In his mind he pictured morning as actually being late at night. “She wouldn't say where she was, just said she saw you on TV, and that it wasn't her fault about—”

  “Where is she?”

  “She wouldn't tell me. I asked her and said I'd send somebody to get her. I even offered to go myself. She wasn't interested.”

  “You came straight here?” Sam asked.

  “Sure.”

  Sam smiled at him warmly. “After you passed by your house to eat a little bite with the family and wash up?”

  “It was one thing after the other all night, last night. I stank. I had to shower so I wouldn't draw flies,” Johnny said, trying to lighten Sam's mood.

  Sam's now-clouded eyes were impossible to read; the smile had turned into a sneer. “You wanted to shower and eat before you brought me this word I been crazy out of my head to get?”

  Johnny tried to picture Sam as an old man more dead than alive. With Sam standing there, the image wouldn't take shape because Sam looked as invincible as he had when Johnny was a child. That cancer sure had its work cut out for it.

  “You get in touch with Herman yet?” Sam asked, changing the subject.

  “His number is disconnected,” Johnny said, bracing himself for a storm. Herman Hoffman's contact number did indeed have a message saying it was no longer in service. Only the last time Johnny had called it, one of Herman's men had called him back within seconds. The cutout's message had been that despite appearances, everything was under control. Johnny had no choice but to believe him.

  “We need to talk,” Sam said. “Go on downstairs and wait for me. I'll be right there soon's I feed the boys.”

  The guards were eager as Sam speared the sausages and put them on their plates beside the nests of linguini, which looked seriously undercooked. Johnny suspected that as soon as Sam left, the men would dump the inedible feast down the garbage disposal.

  Downstairs, outside the steam room, Russo changed out of his clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist. He was pissed that Sam thought he had nothing better to do than look for that bitch, but he had no choice—for the time being.

  He comforted himself with something he had read in a book of World War II battles. The greatest generals in history had the ability to turn their weaknesses into strengths.

  Johnny Russo saw himself as a general who had proved time after time that he could improvise with the best of them.

  83

  Javits Federal Building

  New York, New York

  Because of what he had learned since the Rook Island massacre, Winter wasn't about to trust the FBI. He had sat at an interrogation table in a room at FBI headquarters since being rescued three hours earlier. Two agents had taken turns sitting with him, asking him the same questions over and over. He was a veteran of interrogations from the other side of the table, and he couldn't answer any of their questions without opening up more lines of questioning that he couldn't afford.

  He couldn't say how he came to be in the basement of the destroyed building without telling them that he had been kidnapped by cutouts posing as FBI agents. He couldn't tell them any of what Fifteen had told him. Nor could he tell them what he had witnessed on the upper floors of the bombed building. He couldn't tell them the killers on Rook Island and at Ward Field were more cutouts controlled by a CIA-connected man named Herman Hoffman, who was hooked directly to CIA satellite feeds. And, equally important, there was nothing he could say to these people that would help Sean Devlin, if she was still alive, which seemed doubtful based on the fact that they had located her. His best chance to accomplish anything was to tell Richard Shapiro everything he knew and let the director decide how to proceed.

  When Fred Archer entered the room, the agent sitting across the table from Winter stood up and left, closing the door behind him.

  “Hello, Fred,” Winter said.

  “Every time I turn around, I run into you, and its always under unpleasant circumstances.”

  “I want to talk to my director,” Winter said.

  “You think I care what you want?” he carped.

  “It's a matter of life and death.”

  “What isn't with you?”

  “Sean Devlin is in danger.”

  “First tell me how you came to be in a bomb factory—a building used to house killers working for the Russian Mafia.”

  “I'm not sure that's the case.”

  “Don't try and tell me you didn't know that. We know you were in on this with Gregory Nations.”

  “I wasn't.”

  “Why were you meeting with them, then? How are you the sole survivor? Don't tell me you were their captive, because you had a gun on you when you were found. Were you trying to destroy the evidence linking you and Nations to them and got caught by the bomb you set? How is it you ended up in the basement? Did you come down after setting the charges, to find the door locked?”

  Winter's temper flared as he realized that Fred was trying to counter any possible explanation he might have. “Sean Devlin's life depends on me talking to Richard Shapiro. Is that good enough?”

  “Mrs. Devlin's stock isn't worth much with the United States Marshals Service these days.”

  “How's that?”

  “In Richmond last night, your ‘damsel in distress' killed two of your fugitive recovery deputies. She also killed the witnesses; an old clerk, a cabdriver who'd been carrying her around on errands since she arrived there, and an innocent woman who was caught in the crossfire. Every cop in America is searching for her. Her life is in danger only if she resists arrest.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She's about as good at killing as her husband was. Despite her innocent act, she was in up to her eyeballs with Dylan Devlin.”

  Archer took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and tossed it on the table. It was an FBI flyer showing a sketch that resembled Sean as she had appeared in the surveillance picture Winter saw in Hoffman's building. Winter wondered how Archer would respond to a little bit of the truth.

  “Looks like a photograph of her I found in that building, which was taken of her in Richmond coming out of the Hotel Grand.”

  Winter saw Archer's eyes shift their focus.

  “Does the Hotel Grand mean anything to you?” Winter asked.

  “What would that picture prove?”

  “It would prove that people located her in Richmond and sent a photograph of her here to the people who were in that building. If somebody was killed in Richmond, whoever took that picture was responsible, not Sean Devlin.”

  “But you don't have the picture, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then there's no proof of what you say, is there? You're grasping at straws, Massey. We've got you by the balls, and no fantasy can save you.”

  “Something's been bothering me, Archer. At first I figured you just wanted to close this investigation down fast and that was why you were framing Greg Nations.”

  “Framing?” Archer laughed.

  “But it's more than that. They got to you, didn't they?”

  “Who's they?” Despite his protest, Archer's face reddened.

  “We both know who they are.”

  Archer leaned in close. His breath was stale, his eyes angry. “You should have stayed out of this. I have more than enough evidence to hang you. You're going to be spending your twilight years looking through steel bars, you murdering prick.”

  Archer's cell phone buzzed and he put it to his ear. “Archer.” He straightened. “Yes, sir? I'm with him now.” He sat on the edge of the interrogation table and stared down at Winter as he listened. “When?” He frowned. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

/>   His expression soured as he pocketed the cell phone. “We're leaving here in a few minutes,” he told Winter.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So can I make a phone call?”

  Archer set his phone down in front of Winter and left the room. Winter looked over at the mirror set in the opposite wall, imagining Archer behind it, glaring in at him. Winter dialed USMS headquarters, gave his name to the operator, and asked to be connected to Chief Marshal Shapiro.

  “I'm glad you're okay,” Shapiro told him.

  “Sir, it's urgent that I talk to you ASAP,” Winter said. “Sean Devlin is in imminent danger. I—”

  Shapiro interrupted, “She's safe, under our care. Chief Deputy Trammel will meet you in New Orleans this afternoon and explain everything. We'll talk as soon after that as possible.”

  Archer returned as soon as the conversation was over. Winter handed the phone back to him. “If you have the pull, I could use a shower, and some clean clothes would be great.”

  Archer left the room again, and Winter stretched his aching arms. He had no idea what was going on, but short of being skinned alive, it would be preferable to what he had been through over the past two days. He looked at himself in the wall mirror and smiled at the stranger whose dust-white hair made him look like a much older version of himself.

  He was sorely relieved that Sean was okay and wished he knew the story on Richmond. The very idea that she could kill two fugitive recovery professionals and innocent people was ridiculous. How he was so sure of this, he didn't understand. He only knew that what he had seen in her eyes, made him believe, unequivocally, in her innocence.

  When his phone rang, Fred Archer was in a borrowed office just down the hall from where Massey was taking a shower. He was poring over the reports coming in from the search of the ruins of the bombed building. “Archer,” Fred answered.