Walk the Wire

by David Baldacci

  “And you’ll charge a nice premium for it when all is said and done,” commented Stuart.

  “That’s sort of the point,” Dawson said. “But it’s also not cheap to rehab, and it’s really hard to find workers. Everyone wants to frack. It pays a lot.”

  “That’s not my problem,” said Stuart.

  “We built those other tract neighborhoods for your workers as fast as we could.”

  Stuart laughed, pulled a short cigarillo from his pocket, and stuck it in his mouth unlit. “Your old man went cheap on the materials like he always does. I’ve had complaints from my workers. That’s why I’m starting to build my own.”

  Dawson looked at him sternly. “If they have complaints, they should take them up with us, not you. We have an entire department that focuses solely on matters like that.”

  Stuart rolled his eyes. “Sure, sure, I bet that’s a priority for you all.”

  Dawson apparently had had enough. She looked at Decker and Jamison. “Well, I hope you find who you’re looking for. If you’ll excuse me.”

  As she turned to leave, Shane called out, “Bye, Caroline. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  She didn’t look back but merely waved.

  Decker noted that Stuart McClellan eyed her every step of the way.

  After she was gone, Stuart said, “That girl has some issues. Anger issues.”

  “She seemed perfectly reasonable to me,” said Jamison.

  Shane said, “She works hard, Dad, you have to admit that.”

  “I do admit that. And I wish you worked just as hard.”

  “Well, work’s not everything in life.” Shane turned and gazed in the direction where Caroline had gone.

  Stuart followed this and then stuck a finger in his son’s broad chest. “You work for your family. You work for me. Your loyalties lie there, son, no room for anything else. And if you make work everything in your life for a long enough time then you’ll find you have the means to do what you want when your work is done.” He glanced at Decker. “Do you not agree?”

  “I think everybody’s different. So one-size advice doesn’t fit all.”

  “Well, with that perspective it’s a wonder we ever liberated ourselves from the British or won World War II. I wish you luck with your investigation, and with that attitude I think you’re going to need all the luck you can get.”

  He turned and strode off.

  Shane looked at them sheepishly. “He . . . gets on his soapbox a lot.”

  “I’m sure,” said Jamison.

  “Nice meeting you,” said Shane, and then he hurried after his father.

  Jamison looked at Decker. “I couldn’t stand being around his father for five seconds.”

  When Decker didn’t answer she looked at him. He was staring pensively at the ceiling.

  “What are the McClellans doing here?” he said.

  “Why is that our concern?”

  “Because you never know how things will pan out, Alex, that’s why.”

  “THAT IS ONE of the most unusual buildings I think I’ve ever seen, especially in a place like this,” said Jamison as she, Decker, and Kelly drew closer to the chopped-off pyramid representing the centerpiece of the Douglas S. George Defense Complex. They could see now that it was surrounded by other far-more-ordinary-looking buildings.

  Kelly said, “I remember as a kid seeing it and imagining all sorts of things going on inside there. We pretended that it was a castle with a damsel in distress inside that we were going to rescue. We would charge it on our bicycles and minibikes.”

  Jamison glanced at him with an amused look. “And did you ever rescue her?”

  Kelly grinned sheepishly. “Only in our dreams. The fact was you couldn’t get near this place. As kids we did come close sometimes. Even once ran into a soldier carrying a big-ass gun. I think we all wet our pants when he suddenly appeared out of nowhere. But he was nice. Didn’t give us a hard time. We were just dumb boys messing around. He gave us some gum and a warning and sent us on our way.”

  “You said there were some incidents here before?” noted Decker.

  “Just stupid stuff. Couple of drunken fights.”

  “Anything else?” Decker persisted.

  “Not really.”

  “Okay,” said Decker, looking thoughtful.

  They were cleared through a security post manned by a quartet of very serious looking men wearing Level 2 body armor and holding combat weapons. They were dressed all in black with SECURITY stenciled on the backs of their vests.

  “Vector?” said Decker, reading this name off the label on one of the guard’s sleeves.

  Kelly said, “Vector is the contractor that runs this place. They’re the subsidiary of some big player in the arena. Least that’s what I heard.”

  They drove to a one-story brick building. It was within walking distance of the pyramid.

  Decker eyed the line of ambulances parked in a row next to the pyramid.

  They were escorted inside by a uniformed guard and led down a short corridor to a large office. The guard left and Kelly introduced them to Colonel Mark Sumter. He was medium height, about fifty, trim with a bald head and intense blue eyes. He was dressed in an ABU, or Airman Battle Uniform, that carried a camouflage design.

  He invited them to sit down across from his desk in three straight-back chairs. “Good to see you, Joe.” He looked at Decker and Jamison. “So you’re the FBI? How can I help?”

  Decker said, “There’s been a murder. A young woman named Irene Cramer.”

  “Yes, I heard about that.”

  “She taught school at the Brothers’ Colony,” added Kelly.

  “Did she?” Sumter looked interested. “Do you suspect someone from there might have been involved? They’re very religious folks, from what I understand. Pacifists, in fact.”

  Decker shrugged. “We’re just gathering facts, conducting interviews, nailing down timelines.”

  Jamison interjected, “I guess it’s unusual to be sharing property lines with a religious organization.”

  Sumter bristled a bit. “The DoD, with all its money, somehow found it imperative to sell off most of the land surrounding this installation. Now, I have no problem with the Brothers. I’m just not used to being on base and seeing a tractor plowing a field in the distance. Or oil rigs pumping up crude from the earth. I’m one who likes more buffer, particularly with what we do here.”

  “And what is that?” asked Decker. “Kelly just gave us a thumbnail sketch.”

  Sumter instantly adopted a more guarded look. “Much of what we do is classified.”

  “Just the nonclassified parts then,” said Decker. “Kelly here said you watch the sky for nukes?”

  “In part. Have you ever heard of PARCS?”

  “As in like parks people visit?” said Jamison.

  Sumter smiled. “No. It’s an acronym, just like everything else in the military. It stands for Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack Characterization System.”

  “Long name.”

  “And it’s justified. Along with watching for nuclear weapons, we also track earth-orbiting objects.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Decker.

  “We’re sort of like air traffic control for outer space. We analyze and track about twenty thousand objects per day, from giant satellites to small space debris. We can spot something the size of a soccer ball at a distance of two thousand miles.”

  “Expensive pair of binoculars,” commented Decker, drawing a sharp and somewhat unfriendly glance from Sumter.

  Jamison said in a more casual tone, “I understand you have a bar and even a bowling alley on-site.”

  Sumter smiled. “Yes. Drinking and bowling, not the best of combinations, but still, it allows people to wind down.”

  “How long has Vector been running this place?” asked Decker.

  “The United States Air Force runs this place,” said Sumter firmly. “But Vector’s involvement is fairly recent. I can’t give you the exact date b
ecause that’s classified.”

  “So getting back to Irene Cramer. Has she ever been here?” asked Decker.

  “No. And she wouldn’t have the clearance to get on the installation.”

  “Would she know any of the people who worked here?”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Well, she worked right next door,” said Jamison.

  “Yes, but no one from the Brothers can just stroll over here.”

  “Cramer had a second occupation,” said Decker.

  “What was that?”

  “An old-fashioned way of terming it would be a ‘lady of the night.’ ”

  “She was a hooker?” said Sumter, sitting upright.

  Decker just stared at him.

  Now Sumter looked more guarded. “And you think one of the men here . . . ?”

  “I just want to acquire the facts. It’s sort of like your radar here, always sucking up information.”

  Sumter eyed Decker in a new light. “I, uh, I can make inquiries.”

  Decker said, “Actually, we would prefer to do that. I doubt that anyone here will volunteer that they paid a hooker. Wouldn’t that land them in trouble?”

  “It could. But we’re experienced with ferreting out the truth.”

  Kelly said, “Why don’t you make a first sweep, narrow it down, and then we can interview those folks?”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “This is a murder investigation,” said Decker. “A young woman was badly butchered.”

  “And this is a U.S. military installation,” retorted Sumter. “And we do things a certain way. Now, if that’s all, I can get on with my duties and you all can do the same.”

  As they were leaving Decker turned back. “You have many accidents here?”

  “No. It’s not really a dangerous place to be stationed. Beats the hell out of Iraq or Afghanistan,” he added with a forced grin.

  “That’s great. Keep up the good work.”

  As they were walking to their truck, Jamison said, “Why did you ask him that?”

  “Because I wanted to know the answer,” Decker said bluntly. “And that answer has led to another question.”

  “What’s that?” asked Kelly.

  Decker pointed to the ambulances. “If this is such a safe place, what the hell are all those for?”

  WHEN DECKER GOT BACK to his hotel room he ended up taking Jamison’s advice and called his sister, but probably not for the reason his partner had intended.

  Renee exclaimed, “Okay, I’m going to stroke out, Amos Decker calls his big sister. Stop the presses.”

  “Growing up, I never really realized how funny you were, Renee.”

  “Disappointed how our last conversation went? Want to make amends?”

  “Right now, I just want Stan’s cell phone number.”

  “You didn’t get it from him when you saw him?”

  “It didn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances.”

  She gave him the number and he put it in his contacts. “Thanks. Stan said Diane’s husband lost his job?”

  “That was a year ago. Tim’s back on his feet and Diane has a good job. They’re doing okay. And I guess it’s a good thing they don’t have any kids they have to support. Now, don’t call me for another year.”

  “What, why?”

  “I need time to recover from the shock of talking to you twice in such a short time.”

  He next called his brother-in-law. Baker was at work but got off at five thirty. Decker arranged to meet up with him at the OK Corral Saloon at seven thirty.

  He had some time to kill and decided to put it to good use.

  He pulled out a copy of the pathology report from the postmortem that Walt Southern had performed on Irene Cramer’s remains. He went over it, page by page, line by line. When he got to one sentence, buried in the middle of a long paragraph near the end of the report, he sat up.

  Son of a bitch.

  He headed out. The rain had stopped falling, but the humidity level was off the charts. He turned left and reached the funeral home a few minutes later. A young man outfitted all in black except for his dazzling white shirt rose from behind a small desk and greeted him. Decker asked for Walt Southern, who wasn’t there. But his wife Liz was.

  She came out a minute later. Liz Southern was not dressed in black but rather in lavender. She stood out like a pink flamingo in a desert, and it occurred to Decker even more forcefully how strikingly attractive the woman was. He wondered how happy she was working with dead people. But then again, someone had to do it.

  “What can I do for you, Agent Decker?”

  “I was hoping to talk to your husband.”

  “He’s out of town. Be back tomorrow. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  In answer Decker held up the autopsy report. “Had some questions about this.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Questions about the report Walt did?”

  “It’s not unusual for detectives to have follow-up questions about a postmortem report.”

  “Well, is it something I can help you with? I’ve picked up a lot just being around Walt, and also with the business we’re in.”

  He flipped to a page of the report and pointed at one long section.

  “Buried in the middle of this it says that her intestines and stomach were sliced open.”

  She stiffened. “But isn’t it standard procedure to take out the stomach and slice it open to analyze its contents?”

  “Yes it is, only these cuts were not done by your husband. Which is why I need to see her remains. Now.”

  She led him into a room where the thermostat was set very low. It felt great after all the heat outside.

  Out of the fryer and into the fridge.

  Set against one wall were columns of small doors behind which corpses were kept in refrigerated climates.

  Southern opened one of the drawers and slid the gurney out.

  “There she is,” she said.

  Decker nodded and glanced at her when the woman made no sign of leaving. “Thanks, I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

  She seemed unsure about this but withdrew from the room.

  Decker turned to the body when something suddenly occurred to him.

  The room’s not electric blue.

  It wasn’t that he missed experiencing this phenomenon. But Decker’s brain had begun to change recently; his memory had hiccups and he had momentarily forgotten some things he thought he never would. And he didn’t enjoy change like that.

  Decker lifted the sheet off the corpse and looked down at Cramer.

  The first time he had viewed her body, he had known nothing of the woman’s past. Now he knew that she was a teacher and possibly a prostitute/escort, although the jury was still out on that. And he also knew that her past beyond her time here was a mystery.

  But what he had always known was that someone had murdered her.

  Decker turned to the pages in the report that contained photos of the deceased’s remains. There were pictures of every organ. But Decker focused on the images of the small and large intestines and the stomach. The slices referenced in the report had not been photographed, which was why Decker was here.

  He was about to do something he had never done before, something he had never even thought of doing before, but under the circumstances he could see no way around it.

  After finding them in a locker, Decker put on gloves, donned a long apron, and settled a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, and a pair of goggles over his eyes. He grabbed short-handled forceps off a tray and pulled out the Y-incision sutures, often called the “baseball stitch” because of its resemblance to that threading. Inside the revealed cavity the woman’s organs had been placed in bags to prevent leakage.

  He took out the stomach and looked at it from every angle he could. It had been sliced open on the bottom, revealing the inside of the organ, like a slit balloon. Southern had apparently used this opening to examine the
stomach’s contents because Decker could see no other incision. Whoever had made this cut had saved him the trouble. He used an overhead light to peer into the chest cavity once more and opened the bag containing the intestines. They lay coiled inside like a snake sleeping. He saw where sections of them had also been sliced open in multiple locations. He hit these spots as best he could with the light. The slits were large enough to get a hand into them. Decker knew that for sure, because he did so himself. The cuts were jagged and seemed hurried, as though the killer had either been rushed while doing it, or—

  Had he gotten frustrated?

  Decker took pictures of everything with his smartphone. He bagged the organs, closed the cavity, redid the sutures, covered the body once more, and slid it back into the drawer. Then he disposed of the gloves, apron, and mask in a metal container marked MEDICAL WASTE. He put the used goggles on a metal table. He then washed up in the sink. He let the warm water and soap flood his face and then stared at himself in the mirror attached to the wall above the sink.

  I can’t fucking believe I just did that.

  He closed his eyes. He felt like he might be sick, but he managed to keep what was in his stomach right where it was.

  Too bad Irene Cramer hadn’t been able to do the same.

  He left without speaking to Liz Southern. He had nothing to say to the woman and he wanted to get outside. His legs felt wobbly and he was again feeling nauseous.

  The heat hit him as he opened the exterior door and, surprisingly, his sick feeling began to dissipate. His body was now probably focused on dealing with the hot environment.

  He slowly and gingerly walked back to the hotel.

  Decker went up to his room, pulled out his phone, and looked at the pictures he’d taken. They were far sharper with a higher res than the grainy ones provided by Walt Southern.

  Decker might have just made a significant stride in the investigation, but the discovery had also led to a great many more questions.

  The stomach and intestines shared an attribute that none of the other organs in the body did. If you swallowed something the object would eventually travel to those two destinations. Irene Cramer had been carrying something in her belly or intestines.