End Game

by David Baldacci

  “Because I’m not stupid. I know that when someone goes missing this long and it wasn’t voluntary that chances are not good that they’re still alive.”

  “We’re working on the assumption that he is still alive. He’s a resourceful person, more so than the average person.”

  “I’m well aware of Roger’s capabilities,” Claire said bluntly. “But I also know that the fact that he is still missing and has not communicated with you does not bode well for his safe return.”

  “I’m not going to give you false hope, Claire. Things do not look good. But I’m doing my job and I’m going to keep doing my job until we find him.”

  “Dead or alive?” she replied.

  “We’re going to find him,” Reel said again.

  Claire finished her wine. “Good, because I’ve been thinking about what you said about regrets. Maybe Roger and I should have another go at it.”

  Patti set her beer down. “What, you’re going to get married?”

  “I didn’t say that. But what if we did? I’m not getting any younger and neither is he.”

  “You’re assuming that he wants to,” said Patti.

  “We’ve had talks,” answered her mother. “I’m not sure we’re all that far off in our opinion of the future we might have. Together.”

  “Well, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” exclaimed Patti.

  “I haven’t really talked about it,” replied Claire.

  Patti was about to say something in return when the door to the bar opened and there stood Robie.

  He saw them and hustled over to their table.

  “What’s up?” asked Reel coldly, no doubt thinking of where he had just come from.

  “We’ve got a big problem,” answered Robie.

  Chapter

  57

  REEL COULDN’T TAKE her eyes off the bloodstain.

  Valerie Malloy’s blood presumably.

  Robie stood to her right, staring at the same spot on the floor.

  Derrick Bender was on her left. He was on the phone talking to the state police.

  He clicked off and looked at them. His face was weary and when he spoke, his voice was scratchy.

  “They’re putting out BOLOs, and they’re sending in a forensics team to go over this place.” He looked around. “I can’t believe it. Who the hell would have done this? She’s the sheriff.”

  “Do we know her movements?” asked Reel. She was looking at Robie.

  “She called me tonight. She wanted to meet.”

  “About what?”

  “About my run-in with some of Dolph’s guys.”

  “What!” exclaimed Bender. “I was out there processing the scene.”

  Robie took a couple minutes to explain what had happened.

  Bender said, “She didn’t tell me you were involved in that. What were you doing out there at that time of night?”

  “Just driving,” answered Robie, still staring at the blood. “Before he died one of the guys said something about the silo. I had asked him where Dolph was and he said in the bunker. I called Malloy and told her about all this. She came to investigate.”

  “So you saw her then?” said Bender.

  “No, before she got there I went over to the bunker to check things out, see what I could see. Malloy called me while I was there and asked me to meet her here. I did, only she wasn’t here.”

  “Did she call you from here?” asked Reel.

  “No, she was on her way back. I was about another fifty minutes out, so that’s the time window we’re dealing with for when she was taken.”

  “So you didn’t see Malloy at all tonight then?”

  This came from Reel.

  He looked up from the blood. “No,” he said curtly.

  She looked at Bender. “When will the state cops be here?”

  “It’s going to take them about two hours.”

  “Great. Based on what the dead guy said, can we get a warrant for the bunker?”

  Bender said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to make some calls. But it’ll have to wait until the morning. The closest judge is a hundred miles away.”

  “Great again,” said an exasperated Reel. “I’m sure if Dolph is at the bunker he’ll just stay right there until we execute the warrant and come and get him.”

  “Lambert could get us in there,” noted Robie. “He’s there right now. I saw him drive into the bunker while I had it under surveillance.”

  “And if he is housing Dolph there why would he do that?” countered Reel.

  “Maybe he knows nothing about it.”

  “And maybe I’m a Martian,” snapped Reel.

  “It might be worth a shot. Otherwise, we’re not getting in there anytime soon.”

  Reel shook her head stubbornly. “But if he lets us in that either means he’s not in on it, or he’ll have Dolph hidden away from us somewhere in there. And if he’s not in on it there has to be someone on the inside who is, otherwise Dolph would never have gotten in there. Maybe it’s one or more of the guards. And they’ll alert Dolph that we’re coming.”

  Robie leaned on Malloy’s desk and rubbed his temples. “So what do we do?”

  Bender said, “Why would they have targeted the sheriff?”

  “Because she’s been helping us investigate this case,” said Reel.

  “Right, but she’s been doing that for a while.”

  “So you’re saying something might have changed?” said Robie.

  “It’s possible. I mean they came for her right here. They attacked her judging by the bloodstain and the knocked-over furniture. I’m surprised no one heard anything.”

  “Everybody in town at this hour is at the bar,” Reel pointed out. “And there was so much noise in there you could barely hear yourself, much less something down here.”

  “Maybe she saw something out where the guys died,” said Bender. “That’s why she wanted to meet with you.”

  “She said she just wanted my statement,” replied Robie.

  “She might not have wanted to mention it over the phone,” persisted Bender.

  “You were out there, too,” said Reel. “Did you see anything? Or did she say anything to you that might explain what happened to her?”

  “No, nothing. It was pretty straightforward. A wrecked car and three dead guys. One from the trauma from the crash and two from gunshot wounds.”

  “How would whoever took her have found out about something she had discovered?” asked Robie.

  “Maybe she let it slip to someone she shouldn’t have,” said Reel. “We might check her phone log to see who else she might have talked to tonight.”

  Bender said, “We got ways to check that.”

  He walked into another room and they heard him clicking away on a computer.

  “There’s something else,” Robie said to Reel in a low voice so Bender couldn’t possibly overhear. “I spoke with Dwight Sanders. He told me that other skinheads have dropped out on Dolph and he never went after them.”

  “So why target Holly and Luke?”

  “Because Holly knew about the prisoners, and they must have assumed she told Luke about it. That’s why they were trying to kill them, not because Luke was leaving. It was because of what Holly knew. And that follows the same pattern as the others. Everyone in the loop on the prisoners has disappeared.”

  Reel drew closer to him. “You lied to Bender.”

  He stared at her impassively. “How so?”

  “You saw Malloy tonight.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “I watched you drive off after you spoke with Patti Bender.”

  “I went for a drive.”

  She looked at him curiously for a long moment and then glanced away.

  “I took a drive too,” said Reel.

  He said sharply, “Where?”

  She told him what she had discovered from the limo driver and her trip out to Bluff Point Road.

  She pulled out the cloth that she had used to collect the
stains from the boots back at Randall’s cabin, and showed him the pictures on her phone.

  “Blank forty-five rounds, a map, and dirty work boots,” said Robie.

  He eyed the picture of the map. “Any idea where that is?”

  “No. But I was going to compare it to a larger map of the area to see if that would tell us anything.”

  Robie sniffed the rag. “I smell oil…and some other chemical. Not sure what.”

  “Why blank rounds?” asked Reel.

  “I can’t think of a reason why someone out here would want ammo that can’t hit anything. Most folks are gunned up all the time.”

  “But it has to mean something,” said Reel. “A map and dirty boots and blank rounds at a cabin used by Randall and his cronies.”

  “Lambert never mentioned that Randall came here other than for the bunker.”

  “Well, his wife clearly would prefer not to come here even for the bunker.”

  “If doomsday comes, something tells me she’ll be first in line to get in.”

  “But Randall is up to something.”

  “And maybe the Agency can help us with that,” said Robie.

  He pulled out his phone and made the call, speaking for a couple of minutes. When he clicked off he said, “They’re going over Randall’s past with a fine-tooth comb and will get back to us.”

  “In the meantime we’ve got a long list of missing persons.”

  “We do. But something tells me they all went to the same place.”

  “Lambert’s bunker?”

  “The dying guy said Dolph was there. He didn’t mention any others. But for me it’s the most obvious place.”

  “If that’s the case Lambert has to be in on it. And all the guards would have to be in on it too.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So what now?”

  “I don’t see anything for us to do right now other than catch some sleep.”

  Robie called out to Bender that they would be at the hotel.

  As they walked out, Reel said, “Are you and Malloy…?”

  “No, we’re not. But I still want to find her.”

  “I want that too,” said Reel. “Very much.”

  He glanced at her. “Why?”

  “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.”

  She walked ahead of him out into the night. Robie slowly followed.

  Chapter

  58

  WHEN ROBIE CAME downstairs the next morning Bender was waiting for him in the lobby.

  “Any news?” Robie asked.

  “The BOLO produced nothing. The state police team came and went over the crime scene. It’s human blood. But they didn’t find much else.”

  Bender drew a step closer to Robie. “Now I have to ask you something.”

  Reel came down the stairs at just that moment.

  “Ask away,” said Robie.

  “I checked her phone records. We saw the call you made to her after your run-in with Dolph’s guys. And we saw the call she made to you presumably about coming to meet her at the station. But you made an earlier call to her.”

  “I did,” said Robie.

  “What was it about?”

  “It was about me going over to see her, which I did.”

  “You went to her home?”

  Reel joined them at this point.

  “Yes, I went to her home.”

  “Why?” demanded Bender.

  “I wanted to see her. It was personal. Nothing to do with the investigation.”

  “And you just forgot to mention that last night? In fact, you lied to me because you said you hadn’t seen her. That’s a crime right there.”

  Robie shrugged. “Like I said, it had nothing to do with the investigation.”

  “So you say,” shot back Bender.

  “What, do you really think I had something to do with her disappearance?”

  “Hell, now I know you were the last one to see her,” Bender snapped.

  “Other than the people who took her. And if I did anything to her, why would I have called you in? I almost got killed last night by Dolph’s clowns. Why not go talk to the ones who are still alive?”

  “I don’t have to. They already came to me.”

  “Excuse me?” said Robie.

  “They came to me and said that you attacked their guys and murdered them.”

  “They attacked me and I defended myself. It’s not my fault they don’t know how to drive.”

  “I examined the bodies. Like I told you last night, two of them had been shot.”

  “I shot one of them.”

  “Are you confessing to murdering the guy?”

  “Self-defense. And the other guy was shot by his buddy.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Robie shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t like him,”

  “You never should have left the scene.”

  “I had somewhere to go. The bunker. I already told you that.”

  “And Valerie conveniently goes missing.”

  Robie took a step forward. “You don’t want to go there, Bender. You really don’t.”

  Bender put his hand on his sidearm.

  Robie moved so quickly Bender had no time to react. His left hand had gripped Bender’s and his right hand held a knife an inch from Bender’s throat.

  “Don’t be stupid, Bender, you’re out of your league.”

  Reel stepped between them and pushed them away from each other.

  “Don’t be idiots,” she barked. She looked at Robie. “Put the knife away and just shut up for a minute.”

  She turned to Bender, who looked shaken by Robie’s actions. She said, “We need to go over to the station and we need to tell you something about Dolph.”