Under Pressure: A Lucas Page Novel

by Robert Pobi

  He was staring into the void when Whitaker came in, holding up her phone. “There was an explosion upstate—town called Medusa. Two people killed. They found an IED trigger on site—it looks like the same kind we found at the internet hub on Eighth. C-4 again. We don’t know the manufacture or batch yet, but Calvin-Wade Curtis’s team is already on the way and Kehoe wants to know if you think it’s worth our time going up there.”

  “How far is it to Medusa?”

  “It’s near Schenectady. Two plus hours by car. An hour in a chopper.”

  Lucas thought about the bomb that Seth Hockney delivered to Federal Plaza aboard his personal helicopter. “Who was the victim?”

  “Victims—plural. Fifty-one-year-old woman and her twenty-six-year-old son.”

  “What was her occupation?”

  “She was a cashier at a gas bar.”

  “And the son?”

  “Worked for the local agricultural board doing some kind of computer gig.”

  Lucas was about to wave her away when something came to him. “Where was his degree from?”

  Whitaker punched into whatever file she had up. “SUNY Cobleskill.”

  Lucas pulled up some facts about the school out of his memory chip. “In?”

  She bit her lip as she scrolled through the file. “Started out in cellular biology, but graduated in computer programming.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, it’s worth our time.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Then pack your bag, Mr. Grinch—we’re going on a road trip!”

  52

  The Hockney Building

  Dr. Saarinen was in his office on the floor that had been occupied by the management team of Horizon Dynamics but was now home to only him, two receptionists, and a roster of ghosts. He was looking out the window without seeing the city when William Hockney entered. Mr. Frosst was with him, but he stayed by the door, his face flat and emotionless. He didn’t make eye contact.

  Everything William Hockney did had presentation to it; he didn’t come into a room—he entered it. But even a man like William couldn’t lean into the wind indefinitely, and the past few days had dulled some of his poise. Saarinen knew grief was like that—it aged those left behind while stopping the clock for those it had taken, and they remained inaccurate fireplace mantel portraits grinning back with unfulfilled promise. And even though Seth had been in his seventies, he was still William’s little brother, which had to carry all kinds of baggage.

  Saarinen understood how grief could sculpt a person. His son’s death had very nearly destroyed him. But he had been lucky with his work. His ideas were bigger than he was, and even though it wasn’t enough, it mitigated the pain. At least some of the time. But his wife had never found a balance, and for the past ten years he had been living with a thin projection of the woman he had known. Sometimes, when he caught her from a certain angle, she hadn’t even been there.

  But William Hockney had always seemed impervious to the machinations of human emotions—it was almost his trademark. It was Seth who had been the dreamer.

  It was impossible to deny that William Hockney was one of those fabled figures that dotted the history books. And not because he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. No, he was one of those rarefied beings who possessed the intangible x factor of greatness. It was not something you could buy. It was not something you could inherit. And it was not something you could imitate. In truth, it was not even something you could define. But it was easy to recognize, and one look at William Hockney told you he had it. Which was maybe what made his son such a disappointment to him—even through the optimistic lens of fatherhood, it would have been difficult to miss the lack of promise.

  Hockney headed straight to Saarinen’s bar and poured three fingers of whiskey—one of the obscure Japanese brands that he liked—into two tumblers. He placed them on the coffee table and sat down, facing the other sofa—which was his way of telling Saarinen that he was expected to take a seat.

  Saarinen was still feeling a little foggy from last night’s dance with the bottle of Finlandia, but now was not a time of restraint.

  “How are you, Timo?” Even in his grief, William was tastefully dressed. But he also looked tired and preoccupied.

  Saarinen didn’t know what to say, so he sat down and they drank in silence for a few moments.

  There were pleasantries they could exchange—sympathies and understanding nods—over their respective losses. But they didn’t have that kind of relationship. Seth had been the glue between them, and a mutual acceptance of awkward silence was their form of conversation. Now that Seth was dead, any dreams of bringing Horizon’s magic (and therefore profitability) to the world were over. So there was not much to tie them together, other than their own very different versions of grief. This was going to be the Enjoy-the-rest-of-your-life conversation. Saarinen couldn’t see things unfolding any other way.

  Saarinen had come to the office today only because sitting in the guarded penthouse overlooking the museum would just be wasted time. And there were still things to do.

  After his liquor was consumed, Hockney said, “I came here to ask you what you want to do with Horizon.”

  Which was the last thing in the world Saarinen had expected—William Hockney never made business decisions based on emotion. And trying to salvage Horizon was a foolish dream. All of the management was gone—and they were not the kind of people you could replace on an unemployment website. It would take years of recruiting at universities and poaching from other top-tier companies. And they would have to rebuild the corporate ethos—all in the shadow of what had happened at the Guggenheim. They would no longer be industry leaders; they would be playing catch-up with new companies that filled the vacuum left in their wake. No, Horizon was more than dead—it was cremated and its ashes were scattered in the wind.

  “Horizon is over, William. I am over. I don’t have it in me anymore.” He looked over at the old man. “And neither do you.”

  “Timo, Seth talked me into buying Horizon, then talked me into putting you at the helm. And a handful of years later we were about to launch an IPO with a billion-dollar potential. We did it once, we can do it again.” He slowly pushed himself out of the sofa, picked up the bottle of whiskey, and poured them each another drink before placing the bottle down on the marquetry top. He slowly folded back into the leather.

  Saarinen held the glass up in a half toast. “Thank you, William. But I am not interested. I have been fighting with…” He stopped because it wouldn’t serve any purpose.

  “People like me?” The old man waved it away. “I have spent my life playing the devil, Timo, and I have no problem with the epitaph I leave.” He took a sip of whiskey and pulled his lips back over his teeth.

  “Then yes…”—Saarinen again raised his glass in another halfhearted toast—“people like you. I don’t have it in me anymore.”

  “So Horizon is dead?”

  Saarinen knew why he was asking—a lot of money hinged on the Paraguayan infrastructure deal. And without Horizon, they would have to restructure. But Saarinen wasn’t going to continue. “I am afraid so, William.”

  The old man nodded over at him. “Then I thank you for your service and wish you well in your future endeavors.”

  Frosst came in and helped the old man out of the sofa. And as he did, he looked over at Saarinen and smiled—it was a gesture that William Hockney did not see. And there was nothing kind in it.

  53

  County Route 357 Upstate New York

  Lucas had opted for Whitaker’s driving instead of a ride in a helicopter. Not that he misunderstood the statistical safety of the sky over the road, but the idea of Seth Hockney flying over the city with explosives in his lawyer’s briefcase was still fresh in his sorting software. So for one of the few times in his life, he went for gut over brain.

  They were Pac-Manning the backcountry roads west of Schenectady and he could not stop
himself from hearing the imaginary wonka-wonka-wonka sound of the vehicle icon on the GPS screen.

  Even with the imminent arrival of Old Man Winter, it was beautiful up here. Autumn was Lucas’s favorite season, and he knew a lot of it went back to that night at his last foster home when Mr. Potts had driven him out to observe the stars for the first time. And some of it no doubt had to do with that very first conversation he had with Mrs. Page on the stone terrace the day she had adopted him. But all that could very easily have been outweighed by the Event—which had happened one day in late August.

  They rounded a gentle curve in the road and the world slipped back into focus as they arrived at what looked like a country fair but which the GPS announced as their destination.

  The road was clogged with pickups and SUVs, all stopped, engines idling, brake lights staring them down. People were walking on the shoulder in both directions. It was a slow kind of walk that you didn’t see back in the city—not even in Central Park on the weekends. No one yakked into cell phones.

  “What the fuck?” Whitaker asked, and pulled into the oncoming lane to get around the line of vehicles. She didn’t bother with the lights or siren. One errant pickup’s driver decided that she was trying to cheat the system, and he began to pull out, so she hit the asshole lights and blipped the siren for three chirps. He eased back into his lane.

  The cops at the roadblock eyed them suspiciously as they approached, but they kept talking, neither one coming over or moving the traffic gate. Whitaker cranked the siren for a second and that got their attention. The lower man on the totem pole came over with an irritating slowness.

  Whitaker rolled down her window.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but no vehicles allowed beyond this point.” Up ahead, the road was filled to capacity with emergency vehicles and law enforcement cruisers and SUVs.

  Whitaker stretched her face into a smile, but there was nothing remotely friendly about it—she looked like she was gearing up to bite someone. She pulled out her badge. “FBI.”

  “Are you supposed to be here, ma’am?”

  Lucas turned to watch because he didn’t want to miss this; Whitaker was nothing if not predictable.

  She pulled the smile off her face and said, “It’s Special Agent Whitaker, not ma’am. Now open the fucking gate.”

  The officer stared openmouthed for just under the too-long time stamp, then closed his mouth. “Yes, ma—I mean Special Agent … um, Whitamcallit. Right away.” He nodded at the other country cop by the barrier, who dragged it out of the way, leaving an arc of painted pine splinters on the road.

  “I fucking hate the country,” Whitaker said a little too loud as she rolled up her window.

  “I’m sure the feeling is mutual.”

  “Oh, it is. Why do you think they don’t have black people out here?”

  “They have black people out here.”

  Whitaker waved a hand at the windshield, indicating the world beyond. “Yeah? Where?” Pedestrians were allowed past the first barrier, but the crime-scene line was still a few hundred yards farther up. People milled about—the bombing was obviously the most exciting thing to happen around here in a while.

  “Well, maybe not right here. But they’re here. This isn’t Sweden.”

  “I went to Sweden for a basketball tournament in high school. They have more black people there than they do here. And by here, I mean right here.”

  People walked in the road and Whitaker had to flash her headlights or tap the horn to get them to move.

  “I lack the sufficient data to either agree or disagree.”

  “Three hundred people outside, all of them white, and you lack the sufficient data? This is why we don’t work together more.”

  Lucas did an instantaneous head count. “First of all, there are only precisely eighty-three individuals that I can see right now. Second, we don’t work together more because I can only take you in small doses. And it’s not because you’re black.”

  “So you’re on their side.”

  “Their side? That sounds a little paranoid.”

  “Really? Because all the white people are now looking at the car and pointing.”

  “No one is looking in the car and…” Lucas stopped because some of the people were pointing. “Maybe they’re pointing at me.” But they weren’t; they were pointing at Whitaker.

  Daylight Savings was in a few days—but that was only to roll the clocks back an hour. Outside it looked like they had been rolled back a hundred years. “What the fuck?” he said.

  “Maybe I should have you sit in the back—they could take that.”

  Lucas was grateful when they arrived at the second barrier.

  The man at the gate had obviously been notified of their arrival via radio, and the barrier was immediately dragged open, this particular cop smiling as they pulled through, his attention laser-focused on Whitaker.

  The scene was a quarter mile up, in a field.

  Two of the bureau’s vehicles were on site—one belonging to the bomb squad and the second to the forensics team. Two local fire trucks were on the shoulder, away from the house, along with an ambulance; six or so pickup trucks; two Econolines that had county crest magnets on the doors; two semitrailers—one carrying a backhoe, another a bulldozer; a dump truck; two garbage trucks; and what looked like a snowplow.

  “Looks like they called out everyone except the Marines.”

  “Small towns. People pull together.” But they did that back in the city, only it took a larger catastrophe to unfreeze the neighbor bone.

  Whitaker pulled onto the shoulder about a hundred yards from the driveway, a ribbon of gravel that ran four hundred feet from the road to between a pile of burned-out rubble that had been a house and a smoking mound of cinders of what might have been a barn.

  A skinny country cop in body armor came up, his shoulders swinging like he had just come from the gym. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing bright ink on both arms that stopped at his wrists, and he had a phone in his hand. He looked like he would rather be somewhere else. “You more FBI?” he asked, his question directed at Lucas.

  Lucas nodded.

  Whitaker stepped up and the man stuck out his hand. “I’m Deputy McCoy—Owen McCoy.” He was wearing sunglasses, but Lucas could see him give her a full appraisal.

  “Special Agent Whitaker, and that’s Dr. Page.”

  Lucas gave a small wave with his prosthetic. He caught McCoy’s eyes lock on the metal fingers for an instant and the cop asked, “Iraq?”

  “No.”

  “Afghanistan?”

  “Nope.”

  He looked a little embarrassed and Lucas didn’t bother offering him an out, so he turned back to Whitaker. “Your people have been here for about an hour. I’ll walk you up.”

  Lucas watched McCoy fall into step with Whitaker and he wondered if she had noticed the way he had looked at her. Maybe it was a thing only guys could see, but it was obvious that he was attracted to her. Lucas hoped he was good at handling rejection. Or at least not crying in public.

  McCoy walked them through the last security check, which was for the immediate vicinity of the crime scene, and Lucas waved down Gail Simcoe, one of Kehoe’s people from back in the city who was the SAIC out here. She excused herself from a conversation with a space-suited acolyte who had soot and char marks on his white disposable coveralls.

  McCoy said goodbye to Whitaker and told her that he was around if she needed anything. He handed her his card with “You know … just in case.”

  Whitaker waved him away with an irritated flutter of her fingers that Lucas knew she had stolen from William Hockney. “I’m good.” And she turned her attention to Simcoe.

  Simcoe was a short woman that Mrs. Page would have called thick-boned. She had her FBI windbreaker and cap on and obviously took herself seriously.

  Simcoe closed the gap in ten clunky strides. “Page, Whitaker. You made good time.” She held out a field tablet. “Here’s what we have on the victi
ms so far. The explosives team is going through the place now.” She nodded at the pile of rubble up the driveway. “We’re hoping to have some more answers this side of an hour.”

  Lucas took the tablet and Whitaker asked, “Anything stand out about the vics?” They now had a silent agreement that she would do the talking and Lucas would open his mouth only when he wanted something—that way, no one got their feelings singed.

  “Hazel Rich: white female, fifty-one years of age; Donny Rich, male, twenty-five—her son. She was divorced. Employed at the Gas Smasher over in Greenville. Neighbors said she was quiet. Enjoyed gardening. Had a boyfriend who works at a car dealership in Albany. We checked on him—no record, no priors. Also divorced. No red flags. No obvious enemies.” Simcoe had her lecture delivery down, which was an important skill.

  “And Donny?” Whitaker asked.

  Simcoe nodded at the tablet. “Some kind of computer gig working for the local agricultural board, converting data to text for their financial reports.”

  Whitaker looked over at Lucas. “The right skill to create the letter from our guy?”

  Lucas nodded. “Could be.”

  “What was his background?”

  Simcoe had a good command of the file. “Did three years at SUNY Cobleskill; started out in cellular biology and switched to technology and communications middle of his second year. Graduated seventeen months ago. Neighbors said he had friends over on the weekends. He did chores. Took out the garbage, mowed the lawn and the field there, did all the laundry and cooking, and sold action figures on eBay to make a little money. Neighbors said he was a good kid and really helped his mom out. Didn’t drink. Besides his work for the agricultural board, he did some off-the-clock computer work for people—had an ad on the local craigslist and put up flyers. Hardware repair. Teaching oldsters the difference between the cloud and an operating system. No priors or record. Everyone said he wasn’t the kind of kid to get into trouble. No known enemies.”