The Winner

by David Baldacci

  than the poor he solicited.

  He had discovered LuAnn Tyler as she rode the bus to work. Jackson had sat across from her, in disguise, of course, blending into the background in his torn jeans, stained shirt, and Georgia Bulldogs cap, a scruffy beard covering the lower part of his face, his piercing eyes hidden behind thick glasses. Her appearance had struck him immediately. She seemed out of place down here; everyone else looked so unhealthy, so hopeless, as though the youngest among them were already counting the days until burial. He had watched her play with her daughter; listened to her greet the people around her, and watched their dismal spirits noticeably lifted by her thoughtful comments. He had proceeded to investigate every element of LuAnn’s life, from her impoverished background to her life in a trailer home with Duane Harvey. He had visited that trailer several times while LuAnn and her “boyfriend” had not been there. He had seen the small touches LuAnn had employed to keep the place neat and clean despite Duane Harvey’s slovenly lifestyle. Everything having to do with Lisa was kept separate and immaculate by LuAnn. Jackson had seen that clearly. Her daughter was her life.

  Disguised as a truck driver, he had spent many a night in the roadside diner where LuAnn worked. He had watched her carefully, seen the terms of her life grow more and more desperate, observed her stare woefully into her infant daughter’s eyes, dreaming of a better life. And then, after all this observation, he had chosen her as one of the fortunate few. A decade ago.

  And then he had not seen or spoken to her in ten years; however, a rare week went by that he did not at least think of her. At first he had kept quite a watchful eye on her movements, but as the years went by and she continued to move from country to country in accordance with his wishes, his diligence had lessened considerably. Now, she was pretty much off his radar screen entirely. The last he had heard she was in New Zealand. Next year could find her in Monaco, Scandinavia, China, he well knew. She would float from one locale to the next until she died. She would never return to the United States, of that he was certain.

  Jackson had been born to great wealth, to every material advantage, and then it had all been taken away. He had had to earn it back through his skill, his sweat, his nerve. LuAnn Tyler had been born to nothing, had worked like a dog for pennies, no way out, and look at her now. He had given LuAnn Tyler the world, allowing her to become who she had always wanted to be: someone other than LuAnn Tyler. Jackson smiled. With his complete love of deception, how could he not appreciate that irony? He had spent most of his adult life pretending to be other people. LuAnn had spent the last ten years of hers living another life, filling in the dimensions of another identity. He stared into the lively hazel eyes, studied the high cheekbones, the long hair; he traced with his index finger the slender yet strong neck and began to wonder once more about those trains, and the truly wonderful collision they might one day create. His eyes began to shine with the thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Donovan entered his apartment and sat down at the dining room table, spreading the pages he had taken out of his briefcase in front of him. His manner was one of subdued excitement. It had taken several weeks, dozens of phone calls, and a massive amount of leg work to accumulate the information he was now sifting through.

  Initially, the task seemed more than daunting; indeed it had seemed destined for failure through sheer numbers. During the year LuAnn Tyler had disappeared, there had been over seventy thousand scheduled international passenger-aircraft movements at JFK. On the day she presumably fled there had been two hundred flights, or ten per hour, because there had been no flights between one and six A.M. Donovan had whittled down the parameters of his search at JFK to include women between the ages of twenty and thirty traveling on an international flight on the date of the press conference ten years ago, between the hours of seven P.M and one A.M. The press conference had lasted until six-thirty and Donovan doubted she could have made a seven o’clock flight, but the flight could have been delayed, and he wasn’t taking any chances. That meant checking sixty flights and about fifteen thousand passengers. Donovan had learned during his investigation that most airlines kept active records of passengers going back five years. After that the information was archived. His task promised to be easier because most airline records had been computerized in the mid-seventies. However, Donovan had met a stone wall in seeking passenger records from ten years ago. The FBI could get such records, he had been told, but usually only through a subpoena.

  Through a contact at the Bureau who owed him a favor, Donovan had been able to pursue his request. Without going into particulars and naming names with his FBI contact, Donovan had been able to convey the precise parameters of his search, including the fact that the person he was seeking had probably been traveling under a newly issued passport and traveling with a baby. That had narrowed things down considerably. Only three people satisfied those very narrow criteria and he was now looking at a list of them together with their last known addresses.

  Next, Donovan pulled out his address book. The number he was calling was a firm called Best Data, a well-known national credit check agency. Over the years the company had amassed a large database of names, addresses, and, most important, Social Security numbers. They serviced numerous firms requiring that information, including collection agencies and banks checking up on the credit of potential borrowers. Donovan gave the three names and last known addresses of the people on his list to the person at Best Data, and then provided his credit card number to pay for Best Data’s fee. Within five minutes he was given the Social Security numbers for all three people, their last known addresses, and five “nearbys,” or neighbors’ addresses. He checked those against the records from the airlines. Two of the women had moved, which wasn’t surprising given their ages ten years ago; in the interim they had probably moved on to careers and marriages. One woman, however, had not changed her address. Catherine Savage was still listed as living in Virginia. Donovan called directory assistance in Virginia, but no number came up for that name and address. Undeterred, he next called the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, or DMV, and gave the woman’s name, last known address, and Social Security number, which in Virginia was also the driver’s license number. The person at DMV would only tell Donovan that the woman had a current, valid Virginia driver’s license but would not reveal when it had been issued or the woman’s current address. Unfortunate, but Donovan had chased lots of leads into brick walls in the past. At least he knew she was now living in Virginia or at least had a driver’s license in the commonwealth. The question now was where in the commonwealth might she be? He had ways of finding that out, but decided in the meantime to dig up some more information on the woman’s history.

  He returned to the office where he had an on-line account through the newspaper and accessed the Social Security Administration’s PEBES, or Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement database on the World Wide Web. Donovan was from the old school when it came to research methods, but even he occasionally lumbered out to do some Net surfing. All one needed to find out information on a person was their Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, and the birthplace of the person. Donovan had all of those facts in hand. LuAnn Tyler had been born in Georgia, that he knew for certain. However, the first three digits of the Social Security number he had been given identified Catherine Savage as having been born in Virginia. If LuAnn Tyler and Catherine Savage were one and the same, then Tyler had obtained a phony SSN. It wasn’t all that difficult to do, but he doubted whether the woman would’ve had the connections to do it. The PEBES listed a person’s earnings going back to the early fifties, their contributions to the Social Security fund, and their expected benefits upon retirement based upon those contributions. That was normally what was shown. However, Donovan was looking at a blank screen. Catherine Savage had no history of wage earnings of any kind. LuAnn Tyler had worked, Donovan knew that. Her last job had been at a truck diner. If she had received a paycheck, her employers should
have withheld payroll taxes, including amounts for Social Security. Either they hadn’t or LuAnn Tyler didn’t have a Social Security number to begin with. Or both. He called up Best Data again and went through the same process. The answer this time, however, was different. As far as the Social Security Administration was concerned, LuAnn Tyler didn’t exist. She simply did not have a Social Security number. There was no more to be learned here. It was time for Donovan to take some more serious steps.

  That evening Donovan returned home, opened a file, and took out IRS form 2848. The form was entitled “Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative.” A relatively simple form as Internal Revenue documents went, but one that carried extraordinary power. With it Donovan could obtain all sorts of confidential tax documents on the person he was investigating. True, he would have to stretch the truth a little in filling out the form, and a little falsification of signature was involved, but his motives were pure, and, thus, his conscience was clear. Besides, Donovan knew that the IRS received tens of millions of requests a year from taxpayers for information about their tax returns. The fact that somebody would take the time to match signatures was beyond the realm of probability. Donovan smiled. The odds of it would be greater even than the odds of winning the lottery. He filled out the form, listing the woman’s name and last known address, put in her Social Security number, listed himself as the woman’s representative for tax purposes, and requested the woman’s federal income tax returns for the last three years, and mailed it off.

  It took two months and numerous prodding phone calls, but the wait was worth it. Donovan had devoured the contents of the package from the IRS when it finally came. Catherine Savage was an awfully wealthy woman and her tax return from the prior year, at a full forty pages in length, reflected that wealth and the financial complexities that level of income bore. He had requested her last three years’ worth of returns, but the IRS had only sent one for the simple reason that she had only filed one return. The mystery behind that had been cleared up quickly, because Donovan, as Catherine Savage’s tax representative, had been able to contact the IRS and ask virtually every question that he wanted about the taxpayer. Donovan had learned that Catherine Savage’s tax situation had sparked a great deal of initial interest with the IRS. A U.S. citizen with such an extraordinary level of income filing a tax return for the first time at age thirty was enough to jump-start even the most drone-like of Revenue agents into action. There were over a million Americans living abroad who simply never filed returns, costing the government billions in unpaid taxes, and consequently this was an area that always received the IRS’s attention. However, the initial interest had quickly dissipated as every question the agency had asked had been answered and every answer had been supported by substantial documentation, Donovan had been told.

  Donovan looked at his notes from the conversation with the IRS agent. Catherine Savage had been born in the United States, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in fact, and then left the country as a young girl when her father’s business had taken him overseas. As a young woman living in France, she had met and married a wealthy German businessman who was a resident of Monaco at the time. The man had died a little over two years ago and his fortune had duly passed to his young widow. Now, as a U.S. citizen with control of her own money, all of which was passive, unearned income, she had begun paying her income taxes to her homeland. The documents in the file were numerous and legitimate, the IRS agent had assured Donovan. Everything was aboveboard. As far as the IRS was concerned, Catherine Savage was a responsible citizen who was lawfully paying her taxes although residing outside the United States.

  Donovan leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head. The agent had also provided Donovan with another piece of interesting news. The IRS had very recently received a change of address form for Catherine Savage. She was now in the United States. In fact, she had returned, at least according to her records, to the town of her birth: Charlottesville, Virginia. The same town where LuAnn Tyler’s mother had been born. That was far too much of a coincidence for Donovan.

  And with all that information in hand, Donovan was fairly certain of one thing: LuAnn Tyler had finally come home. And now that he was so intimately familiar with virtually every facet of her life, Donovan felt it was time that they actually meet. How and where was what he started to think about.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sitting in his pickup truck parked on the side of a sharp bend in the road, Matt Riggs surveyed the area through a pair of lightweight field binoculars. The tree-filled, steeply graded land was, to his experienced eye, impenetrable. The half mile of winding asphalt private road running to his right formed a T-intersection with the road he was on; beyond that, he knew, sat a grand country estate with beautiful vistas of the nearby mountains. However, the estate, surrounded by thick woods, couldn’t be seen from anywhere except overhead. Which made him wonder again why the owner would want to pay for an expensive perimeter security fence in the first place. The estate already had the very best of nature’s own handiwork for protection.

  Riggs shrugged and bent down to slip on a pair of Overland boots, then pulled on his coat. The chilly wind buffeted him as he stepped from his truck. He sucked the fresh air in and put a hand through his unkempt dark brown hair, working a couple of kinks out of his muscular frame before donning a pair of leather gloves. It would take him about an hour to walk the front location of the fence. The plans called for the fence to be seven feet high, made of solid steel painted glossy black, with each post set in two feet of concrete. The fence would have electronic sensors spaced randomly across its frame, and would be topped by dangerously sharp spike finials. The front gates, set on six-foot-high, four-foot-square concrete monuments with a brick veneer, would be of similar style and construction. The job also called for a video camera, intercom system, and a locking mechanism on the huge gates that would ensure that nothing less than the head-on impact of an Abrams tank could ever open it without the permission of the owner. From what he could tell, Riggs didn’t expect such permission to be granted very often.

  Bordered by Nelson County on the southwest, Greene County to the north, and Fluvanna and Louisa counties on the east, Albemarle County, Virginia, was home to many wealthy people, some famous and some not. However, they all had one thing in common: They all craved privacy and were more than willing to pay for it. Thus, Riggs was not entirely surprised at the precautions being undertaken here. All the negotiations had been handled through a duly authorized intermediary. He reasoned that someone who could afford a fence such as this, and the cost was well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably had better things to do with his time than sit down and chat with a lowly general contractor.

  Binoculars dangling around his neck, he dutifully trudged down the road until he found a narrow pathway into the woods. The two most difficult parts of the job were clear to him: getting the heavy equipment up here and having his men work in such cramped surroundings. Mixing concrete, punching postholes, laying out the frames, clearing land, and angling sections of a very heavy fence, all of that took space, ample space that they would not have here. He was very glad to have added a healthy premium to the job, plus a provision for a cost overrun for exactly those reasons. The owner, apparently, had not set a limit as to the price, because the representative had promptly agreed to the huge dollar amount Riggs had worked up. Not that he was complaining. This single job would guarantee his best year ever in business. And although he had only been on his own for three years, his operation had been growing steadily ever since the first day. He got to work.

  The BMW pulled slowly out from the garage and headed down the drive. The road going down was lined on either side with four-board oak fencing painted a pristine white. Most of the cleared land was surrounded by the same style of fencing, the white lines making a stunning contrast to the green landscape. It was not quite seven in the morning and the stillness of the day remained unbroken. Th
ese early morning drives had become a soothing ritual for LuAnn. She glanced back at the house in her rearview mirror. Constructed of beautiful Pennsylvania stone and weathered brick with a row of new white columns bracketing a deep front porch, a slate roof, aged-looking copper gutters, and numerous French doors, the house was elegantly refined despite its imposing size.

  As the car passed down the drive and out of sight of the house, LuAnn turned her eyes back to the road and suddenly took her foot off the gas and hit the brake. The man was waving at her, his arms crisscrossing themselves as he flagged her down. She inched forward and then stopped the car. He came up to the driver’s side window and motioned for her to open it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the black Honda parked on a grass strip bordering the road.

  She eyed him with deep suspicion but hit the button and the window descended slightly. She kept one foot on the accelerator ready to mash it down if the situation called for it. His appearance was innocent enough: middle-aged and slight of build, with a beard laced around the edges with gray.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, her eyes attempting to duck his gaze at the same time she tried her best to note any sudden movements on his part.

  “I think I’m lost. Is this the old Brillstein Estate?” He pointed up the road toward where the house was.

  LuAnn shook her head. “We just recently moved in, but that wasn’t the name of the owners before us. It’s called Wicken’s Hunt.”

  “Huh, I could’ve sworn this was the right place.”

  “Who were you looking for?”

  The man leaned forward so that his face filled her window. “Maybe you know her. The name is LuAnn Tyler, from Georgia.”

  LuAnn sucked in a mouthful of air so quickly she almost gagged. There was no hiding the astonishment on her face.

  Thomas Donovan, his face full of satisfaction, leaned even closer, his lips right at her eye level. “LuAnn, I’d like to talk to you. It’s important and—”

  She hit the accelerator and Donovan had to jump back to avoid having his feet crushed by the car tires.

  “Hey!” he screamed after her. The car was almost out of sight. Donovan, his face ashen, ran to his car, started it up, and roared off down the road. “Christ!” he said to himself.

  Donovan had tried directory assistance in Charlottesville, but they had no listing for Catherine Savage. He would have been shocked if they had. Someone on the run all these years didn’t ordinarily give out her phone number. He had decided, after much thought, that the direct approach would be, if not the best, at least the most productive. He had watched the house for the last week, noted her pattern of early morning drives, and chosen today to make contact. Despite being almost run over, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had been right. Throwing the question at her out of the blue like that, he knew, was the only sure way to get the truth. And now he had it. Catherine Savage was LuAnn Tyler. Her looks had changed considerably from the video and photos he had seen from ten years ago. The changes were subtle, no one single alteration really dramatic, yet the cumulative effect had been marked. Except for the look on her face and her abrupt departure, Donovan wouldn’t have known it was her.

  He now focused on the road ahead. He had just glimpsed the gray BMW. It was still far ahead, but on the curvy mountain road his smaller and more agile Honda was gaining. He didn’t like playing the daredevil role; he had disdained it in his younger days when covering dangerous events halfway around the world, and he disliked it even more now. However, he had to make her understand what he was trying to do. He had to make her listen. And he had to get his story. He hadn’t worked twenty-hour days the last several months tracking her down simply to watch her disappear again.

  Matt Riggs stopped for a moment and again studied the terrain. The air was so clean and pure up here, the sky so blue, the peace and quiet so ethereal, he again marveled at why he had waited so long to chuck the big city, and come to calmer, if less exciting,