“So, when am I going to see your place? I want to know about your life other than when you’re with me.”
“Really Garrett, I don’t think that would be wise, darling. Simon’s got this bad habit of just popping in on me from time to time. I guess the finality of it all has him feeling a little nostalgic and he finds the thinnest of excuses to see me.”
Alarm bells starting to ring in Garrett’s head. “You’re not thinking of reconciling, are you?”
“Oh, good heavens no! Don’t be silly. I just meant that if we went back to my place and he just decided to stop by, well…you get the picture. I don’t want any unneeded confrontations with him, Garrett. You have no idea what he might do to get even with me.”
Garrett nodded, a little uncertain about her answer. He decided not to press the issue and they finished their dinner. When they were done, they went their separate ways since Garrett had an important early morning meeting the next day.
Driving down Peachtree Street, Garrett thought to himself. “It would only be another month anyway so why make an issue of it?” But ‘the issue’ was still nagging at him and it wouldn’t go away. They had been making plans to be together and had even talked of children. Although the divorce proceeding would be over soon, he was getting impatient with having to deal with a third party. Patience? Not only was the word not in his vocabulary, but the behavior was totally unrecognizable to Garrett. “Get over it! Ease up and smell the roses, idiot!” he chastised himself as he pulled into the fast lane. His thoughts turning more positive now, Garrett realized he was experiencing one of those grooves in life where everything was about as close to perfect as possible, and he didn’t want it to end. He had found himself daydreaming more and more these past few weeks, barely taking notice to seemingly routine, normal things going on around him. Here he was so anxious to know Anna’s life outside the precious few hours she spent in his company, but what was his life outside those hours. Dull and colorless—filled with nothing but wanting and waiting. Garrett’s last thoughts that evening before calling it a night were that tomorrow would come, and all the tomorrows after that, but how many of them would truly come alive with Anna’s presence?
The next morning Garrett was on the interstate driving to work, lost in another daydream, when he was suddenly jerked back to reality by the ringing of his car phone. Startled, he turned down the radio and hit the speakerphone button.
“This is Garrett”, he answered.
“I thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth,” said the voice at the other end of the line had said. “You forgotten about your friends, huh?” Charles asked with his usual pomp.
Probably calling to make me feel sorry for him, Garrett thought to himself. He laughed, “I figured you’d been busy making legal precedent for all of us peons. Besides, I have been calling, you fool! Haven’t you been getting the messages?”
“Yeah, sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you, but some of us do have to work, you know. Listen, I appreciate you giving up your game tickets the last few weeks. I didn’t have time to go, but my clients really appreciated them. In fact, if this goes on much longer, they’ll be placing their requests of the particular games they wish to attend.”
“No problem, my friend. Glad to be able to further your career.” Garrett replied.
“Speaking of making special requests, the big game with Chicago is coming up in two weeks and I wanted to make sure I reserved the date with you well ahead of time. Think you could work me in, Romeo?”
“Fuck you asshole!” Garrett laughed. “At least I’m getting some!” he said, immediately feeling guilty that he had spoken of Anna as if she were some cheap pick-up.
“Oh, really?”
Garrett caught himself. Call him old fashion, but he felt awkward talking about conquests when it involved someone he had feelings for. “Well, you know I can’t talk about Anna like that. It would be diffe . . .”
“I understand,” Charles interrupted, attempting to regain their easy banter. He didn’t press the issue with Garrett, sensing, for once, that his heart really was involved. “So, what about the game? Are we on or not?”
“Of course we’re on,” Garrett replied. Just make sure you get a good night’s rest the day before so you can keep up with the kid.”
“Well, it sounds like your feeling well,” Charles observed. “Listen, I’ve got to run. I have a plane to catch, but I’ll call you when I get back into town next week”
“All right, I’ll see you then.”
Garrett laughed as he hung up the phone. The fact is, he had kind of missed his friend and felt a loss at his lack of communication. But that was typical of people in love, wasn’t it?
The car phone rang again, but expecting it to be Charles once again, he wasn’t quite as startled. Pushing the speaker button, he said, “What now? Forget your way to the airport?”
The next words made him freeze. As he heard the voice on the phone Garret’s foot instinctively reached for the brake, and he heard the irritated driver behind him blow his horn. But obnoxious horn blowing behind him could not compete with the feelings being instilled by the quiet, yet threatening message.
“This is Simon, Anna’s husband,” the older, distinctly British voice stated. “I want you to stop this ridiculous charade with my wife, do you understand? I don’t know what she has been telling you, but if it’s a ‘til death do we part’ relationship you have in mind, let me just inform you that we will not be getting a divorce. This time she’s pushed me too far. In fact, while she’s been spending nights out with you, she’s shamefully neglected our daughter. I’m not about to let you, or any other of Anna’s casual affairs split up this family and cause my daughter to be another statistic from a broken home.” Without hesitating, he demanded, “She’s my wife, Garrett! Do the right thing and end this relationship.”
Simon finished his diatribe and Garrett almost drove off of the road, barely missing a road sign in the process. He slowed his car and pulled over, his head spinning as he tried to make sense of it all.
“How did you get my mobile number?” was all he could think to ask the faceless voice on the other end of the line.
“I found it in her purse,” Simon answered. “I’ll repeat myself. As of this moment, this little romance is over. Go find someone else to carry on with. Believe me, Anna isn’t built to handle all the pressures and stresses this could create in her life!”
“I think that is for her to say.” Garrett replied, gathering his wits a little. “And what do you mean talking about a daughter? She doesn’t have any children.”
“You think not? Let me tell you, the three-year-old girl in the other room doesn’t belong to the housekeeper,” Simon spat. “Stay away from her and move on.”
With that, the conversation was ended.
Garrett found himself numb with disbelief. “Was it possible that this was true or was this guy just messing with him?” Cars were whipping by him as he sat, parked, on the side of the highway. He couldn’t believe that Anna could have lied to him, but the man on the phone had sounded so convincing. Something had been nagging Garrett, but so far, he had refused to give legs to any of those nagging doubts. Now, he knew he was going to have to confront her. The problem was, he didn’t quite know how. And why did this have to happen with everything going so well? His mind racing, he started forward and merged back into the rush hour traffic.
Garrett took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to relax. He was to meet Anna that night for dinner. Until then, he tried to put any thoughts of his confrontation with Simon out of his mind. Easier said than done, though. While he waited for the dinner hour to approach, Garrett observed that time seemed to stand still, passing slowly, distracting his thoughts like the incessant drip of a leaky faucet.
* * *
Later that evening at dinner, Garrett and Anna had been seated and were ordering drinks, but their
usual easy conversation and humorous banter was a late in coming as the especially potent martini Garrett had ordered to sooth his raw nerves. Anna could sense something ill at ease about Garret, but refused to question him, hoping it would pass and dreading that it wouldn’t. When the waiter turned to leave, Garrett finally screwed up the courage to speak.
“Simon called me in my car today,” he said, watching to see Anna’s reaction. Anna was caught off guard but quickly recovered.
“I would ask how he got your number, but Simon’s behavior never stops amazing me. So, what did he tell you?” she asked, making an attempt at a casualness she definitely wasn’t feeling.
“He told me that you were not divorcing him and that you had been neglecting your three-year-old daughter while carrying on with me,” Garrett replied directly.
Anna let out a laugh. “He said what? Garrett, that is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” She looked at him and became serious. “Darling, surely you don’t believe him.”
Garrett just stared.
“Look, I don’t have a daughter and I am divorcing Simon, whether he admits it to himself or not. Simon is a master at mind games and he is playing you for a fool,” she said, starting to get angry. Then softening a little, she took his hand. “Garrett, I do apologize to you for Simon’s call. It was cruel and uncalled for. He’s desperate for this to end!”
“How did he get my number, Anna?” Garrett persisted.
Anna looked back at Garrett, the hurt of having to explain starting to show on her face. “Okay, I do have to see him from time to time to arrange our affairs. He probably got it from my purse, Garrett. Anyway, Simon doesn’t even really know about us. I haven’t said a word. He was just fishing.”
Garrett looked around the room. “Had someone been following them?” he wondered. Leveling a, heretofore unseen, look at Anna, he asked slowly, “You sure about that?”
“Yes, my love, I am sure,” Anna said. She took his hand and smiled. “You are the man I want to be with, now and forever.”
Outwardly, Garrett relented somewhat, but his inside voice was telling him that she was either telling the truth or giving an academy award performance. Which was it? The more he thought about it, the more outrageous Simon’s claims seemed to be. He had to believe her if they were to be together, didn’t he? If not, their relationship was doomed, regardless of her true intentions. The couple finished their dinner, the mood obviously less festive. When they finished, they went home to Garrett’s and made love.
Lying in bed in the middle of the night, Garrett stared up from the bed at the ceiling. Try as he might, he could not get Simon’s words out of his head. The seeds of doubt had been sown, and it was all Garrett could do to keep them from sprouting. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, he decided he would slow things down a little and see how this would all play out. These events had jump-started something inside him that had lain dormant for quite some time. A part of Garrett, which he thought long dead, was getting a breath of new life. If for no other reason than that, he was now angry, really angry—with himself as well as Anna!
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Frank Holden stood and tossed a file back on his desk. Looking out the window of his Washington office, he rubbed the back of his neck. After poring over the files for nearly a week, something was still not adding up. He turned from the window and walked back to his desk. Picking up the phone, he dialed Buddy Gilman, hoping that the Bureau forensic team supervisor would have some additional information that could help clear the fog.
The phone was answered at the other end. “Gilman, here.”
“Hello, Buddy. Frank Holden.”
“Yeah Frank. I was just going to call you.”
“Anything on our shooter yet?” Holden interrupted.
“Quite a bit actually. I’m glad you called. Did you run across anything in Levine’s history that would suggest a relationship gone bad?” he asked.
Holden thought for a moment, “No, nothing. As far as I know, Joel dated a little bit from time to time, but he was really into his work and didn’t have the time to develop anything significant in that regard.”
“Well, we’d better start checking out some of those women he did date.”
“Buddy, what are you getting at?”
“Well, the angle of the entry wound, the caliber of the weapon used, and the hair samples we found, all point to a female assailant, and in my books that usually means a big mistake in one’s latest love affair. ”
“You guys never cease to amaze me! Don’t keep me in suspense. How in the world did you come to that conclusion?”
“First of all, the angles of the entry wounds were slightly up, indicating a shorter assailant. Levine stood five feet, eleven inches and we figured the killer was somewhere around five foot six or shorter. That doesn’t rule out a male, but it sure tilts the odds towards a woman. Which brings us to the hair we found. It was definitely from a woman.”
“What about the housekeeper. Have you ruled her out as the donor?” Holden asked.
“Yes, she is of oriental persuasion and these were Caucasian hairs; dyed. Besides, we also only found hair in the entry, and study. There weren’t any in the bedrooms or baths where you would expect to find a housekeeper’s hair.”
“Assuming that the killer was only there for a short time, how could she have lost any hair? If my memory serves me correctly, there didn’t appear to be any signs of a struggle when we inspected Joel’s apartment.”
“Our research shows that the average human sheds fifty to one hundred hairs a day. That’s two to four per hour. We found two. Guess we got lucky.”
“And the weapon?” Holden inquired.
“Well, the weapon was a .25 caliber pistol, which is a light caliber weapon. Everything else considered, this fits with the profile of a female perpetrator.
“You are pretty certain of this?” Frank inquired.
Buddy chortled.
“I didn’t mean any insult Buddy, it’s just that, if it were a “relationship gone bad” as you said, wouldn’t you have found some of her hairs in the bedroom and bath?” Frank continued.
“Normally, yes. But Levine was a “clean freak.” He had his cleaning lady in every other day; including the day of his murder. So, unless he did a quick romp in the bedroom, while you were on the way to see him, the place would have been pretty clean.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“No problem. I know you want to be certain.”
“And you said the hairs were only found in the foyer and study?”
“Yeah, and we didn’t find any prints other than Joel’s and his housekeeper’s that weren’t smudged or too old to give us an accurate reading.”
“What about prints on the files?”
“All of the files had prints. We pulled Joel’s, his secretary’s, and some other staff personnel in the office who would have had access to them. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“All of them?” Holden inquired.
“Yep, all of them,” Buddy answered.
“All right then, Buddy. Thanks for the update. I’ll call you later.”
“Sure, Frank. Later.”
Frank hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. “No wonder his review of the files made no sense,” he thought. He had been focusing much of his attention on Vincent Marks because it was the file that had been found by itself. But if the assassin had seen the other files and left them there, she had most certainly missed the file on the back porch. That was sloppy work. In the world of “high-level assassins, that mistake would probably cost her her life.
“Her,” he diverted from his train of thought. “What was this world coming to?” Regaining his concentration, he continued his internal conversation. “If she saw the files and the one she was looking for was not there, why would she have left without it? They had questioned ev
eryone in the neighborhood, and no one had seen anything, so it was probably safe to assume that she hadn’t been scared off.”
Frank’s attention turned to Vincent Marks. His profile just did not fit that of someone who would betray his country, much less hire an assassin. Sure, Vincent was powerful and ruthless in business, but Frank was certain Marks did not fit into the equation. He had way too much to lose by leaking secrets to the Chinese. Something was missing, but Holden just could not put his finger on it. He stood and started for his office door, grabbing his running gear as he left. Maybe a run around the Lincoln Monument and reflection pools would help to clear his head and give him some insight.
* * *
As Frank neared the beginning of his second lap, his mind wandered back to his first days in government service. He had attended college at Yale where he was at the top of his class academically, and his physical skills had helped him attain All-Conference honors in lacrosse. Shortly before graduating, Holden had been approached by a recruiter for the Central Intelligence Agency. At the time, they were looking for new field operatives in Europe since many of the World War II generation agents would soon be retiring. Frank, who had mastered German, Russian, and French, jumped at the offer. Four years into his career, the end of the cold war and the rising use of technology, combined to spell the end of his career as well as the careers of hundreds of other field agents. The ‘techies’ in the agency and in congress decided that it was too costly and difficult to manage human assets and that human intelligence was passe’. They won out over the traditionalists, like him, who knew there was nothing that could replace having people on the ground.
His minor experience in the field would not have landed him a very good position in the private sector, so he contacted some people he knew with the F.B.I. and was hired on by their counter intelligence division. Now Frank worked at keeping some of his old rivals from doing their work here in the States.
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