“She probably had a key,” said Lia.
“Maybe,” said the trooper. He ran his light across the door near the window.
“Can we look inside?”
“Sure. That’s why I brought the key.”
Lia waited for the trooper to open the door. The car had been locked when it was found after Forester’s death. The contents had been removed before the car was brought here.
“Did you do a full crime scene work-up on it?” Lia asked.
“It’s not a crime scene,” said the trooper.
“She must have wanted something inside the car. Otherwise why come here?”
“I can’t argue with you, but I don’t know what it would be. We took the contents and gave them to the Secret Service. Service came and looked at the car themselves. Unless there’s a hidden compartment somewhere.”
“Maybe there is.”
The trooper shrugged. “You can search it, too.”
Lia slipped into the driver’s seat, and began looking around the interior of the car. As the trooper said, everything that had been inside had been removed, including the owner’s manual in the glove compartment.
So what did Amanda want? A receipt or something tucked somewhere no one else might see?
Why would that be valuable?
Maybe it would show she and Forester were together … that she killed him.
Impossible.
“There’s a notebook that seems to be missing,” said Lia.
“Everything we found in the car, we turned over. There’s a list and photos.”
“Did you take apart the seats and the linings and things?” Lia asked.
The trooper frowned. “You know, not for nothing but, this case is pretty cut-and-dried. The guy killed himself.”
“So why did Amanda Rauci come here?” asked Lia. “Maybe she was looking for his notebook, too,” she added, answering her own question as they walked back toward the gate. “Maybe she doesn’t think it’s a suicide and she wants to figure out who did it.”
Lia got down on her hands and knees, outside of the car. It wasn’t easy to see up under the seat, and so she fished with her hand.
“Can we take the seats out to look inside?” she asked.
The trooper turned to the owner, who sighed, then went off for a set of tools. Two hours later, they were certain that nothing was hidden there.
“I have to tell you, it really, really looks like a suicide,” said the trooper as he and Lia walked toward the gate.
“So everybody says.”
“If it’s not, then what is it?” asked the trooper.
Lia stopped to pet the dogs, unable to think of an answer.
90
“IF THIS TURNS out to be useful to you in any way, I would appreciate a mention to my mayor,” Chief Ball told Amanda Rauci when she got out of her car. He’d been careful to make sure he parked at the front, blocking the view of the vehicle at the back. Once he turned off the outside floodlight, her car would be invisible.
“Come on—that door there takes us direct to my office,” he said. “A letter from your director—that would be gold. You wouldn’t believe the sort of small-town politics I have to deal with. They wanted to cut my part-time budget in half this year. Basically, that would eliminate coverage five nights a week. We hit on a compromise, but I still go without two nights a week. That’s kind of classified, if you know what I mean. Don’t want the bad guys finding out.”
“Sure.”
The sarcasm in her voice was impossible to miss. But that was fine, Ball thought—she was buying the act, completely off guard.
“You have no idea the kinds of things we put up with in a small town,” Ball told her. “It looks peaceful, but believe me. If we weren’t here, watch out.”
The chief pulled his keys off his belt and unlocked the door. He kept talking, playing the local-yokel angle to the hilt.
“I get asked to fix traffic tickets all the time. I mean, well, in some cases what are you going to do, right? You can use your best judgment if it’s something out of the ordinary. You look at the driving record and you figure, well, all right, just one mistake and what the heck. Why screw up the guy’s insurance rates, you know? Especially if he’s just a working guy like you. But some of the things I’ve been asked to do—I have to draw the line. That’s why I have trouble with the politics. A letter from your boss in my file, that’s something that will count, though. They’ll read it at the village board meeting, see; the local Jimmy Olsen cub reporter will mention it; people will know. It’ll help the department. Not me. I’ve been here so long they can’t touch me. It’s the department this will help.”
He opened the door and flipped on the lights. The budget cuts he was complaining about were real, and in this case were a good thing—he didn’t have to worry about a night man, because there wasn’t one on tonight. But the town assessor occasionally came back to the village hall to work after he put his kids to sleep. That gave Ball about sixty minutes to get the job done.
Sooner was always better than later.
“So, do you think you can help me there?” Ball asked as Amanda stepped inside. “You don’t have to reveal anything to me. I know you guys have to follow your own procedures and whatnot. I respect that.”
“If the notebook is helpful, I’ll certainly ask my boss to say something about it,” offered Amanda.
“Thanks. It’s right there on the desk. Excuse me a second—just going to hit the boys’ room out front. Hey, want coffee or anything?”
“No thanks.”
AS SOON AS she saw the notebook, Amanda was glad she’d come. It wasn’t anything like the ones Forester used; true, it was a stenographer’s notebook, but it had a slick cover, which he wouldn’t have liked, because it couldn’t be written on and was too flimsy.
She reached into her purse and took out the real notebook. She’d show it to Ball, explain why this one was wrong. There’d be no reason for him to call anyone else.
Amanda flipped the real notebook open, looking for a page of handwriting that would be easy to compare. As she did, she noticed a page with some impressions on it in the middle of the book—writing maybe, from another page that had been so carefully removed that she hadn’t noticed it before.
She held it to the light, trying to see what it said. When that didn’t work, she reached over and took a pencil from the holder on Chief Ball’s desk.
She could tell right away that this wasn’t just a page of notes; there were too many words. It was a letter—a short, terrible letter that Gerald Forester had started to write to his sons.
Guys:
I can’t explain how I feel, like rocks have covered me, rocks that follow me everywhere like live animals, pushing me down. I hate them. I hate everything. I can’t stand it any more. I hate what I have to do.
And I’m sorry. So sorry.
Amanda Rauci felt a tear well at the side of her eye. She put the notebook down on the desk and took a tissue from her purse.
BALL WATCHED FROM the corner of his eye as Amanda put down the notebook and picked up her bag.
Was she going to leave? Was she getting a gun?
He couldn’t seem to get himself to act. He knew what he had to do, but he didn’t want to. Or rather, he didn’t want it to be necessary to do.
Do it now!
The paralysis that had held him still finally melted away. He reached into his pocket and took out the wire.
Quickly, quickly!
Chief Ball hadn’t strangled anyone in more than thirty years. The key to success was surprise, especially in this case, since Amanda Rauci was presumably trained in self-defense tactics. She was sitting, though, and unsuspecting. He waited to strike until she put the tissue down and her hands were in her lap.
His wrists swept forward and then up and back in a graceful, easy, instant motion. From there, it was all strength and weight.
Rauci reached back, trying first to grab his arms. The chair slipped down; she lost her fo
oting. Ball pulled his hands farther apart and kept his feet braced. He felt her weight, pulling against him. Something erupted inside him, a black energy that flooded his arms.
Killing someone with a wire was personal. Even if you had the advantage, the tables could be turned right up to the last instant; there was a huge amount of risk. At the same time, your victim was within inches of you, not dozens or hundreds of feet away. You were as close as if you were making love.
Amanda managed to get her foot up against the desk, but Ball realized what she was trying to do just in time. He pushed off to the right and pulled back, dragging her across the floor before she could throw herself back into him. The chair slid across the room. Ball threw his knee against her back, leveraging it against her as they twisted down to the floor. She was desperate now, her oxygen-deprived brain realizing that it didn’t have long to live.
Ball was desperate as well. Adrenaline surged in his arms as he pulled against the wire. He pushed his knee hard against her back, harder and harder, pressing as she continued to struggle. His body began to swim with sweat. A metallic, musky scent rose to his nose. He slipped down to the floor with her but hung on.
Amanda Rauci dug her elbow into his gut. Ball clamped his teeth together and held on.
And then it was done.
Ball didn’t realize it at first, and when he did realize it, he didn’t trust it. He kept his arms taut, his knee braced. He lay on top of his victim, his clothes soaked in perspiration, his lungs venting like an overworked blow furnace.
THE LAST THING she thought was how unjust it was. Not this, not the attack or her death, but for the boys. They’d be haunted by something they had no control over for the rest of their lives.
BALL GOT TO his knees, still holding the garrote. Amanda Rauci’s lifeless body followed, her head bobbing to the side. The wire had gone deep into her neck, and in fact had cut into his own hands; their blood mixed together on her shirt.
Blood.
There wasn’t much of it, but there was more than he wanted. The floor would be easy to clean, but he’d have to move quickly.
The chief’s fingers trembled as he unwound the wire. Damn bitch. What’d she make him kill her for? Why the hell didn’t she just mind her own business? Why didn’t they all mind their own business?
It was Gordon’s fault. He’d set Forester on Ball. The funny thing was, he had convinced Forester that evening when he stopped him on the road in the car. Ball knew he had. He could tell by the Secret Service agent’s face.
“I wasn’t even in that unit,” Ball had told him. “I knew who McSweeney was, but he wasn’t my CO. Just dig up my military record. Come by tomorrow and I’ll help if you want.”
And Forester had nodded. Then he’d gone off and killed himself.
Jerk.
Ball got to his feet. There was too much to be done now to waste time cursing his rotten luck.
91
IT DIDN’T TAKE nearly as long as Gallo had feared for the information about Amanda Rauci’s request to be forwarded to the NSA. It turned out that the credit-checking company staffed its computer center around the clock. Gallo talked directly to a tech there, explaining that they were trying to figure out whether a Secret Service guy had killed himself or not; the tech cut through the red tape and gave him the details he wanted.
In the meantime, he’d done a search and discovered that Christopher Ball was the police chief in Pine Plains—one town over from the library where Amanda Rauci had used the computer.
“Why would she be checking out the police chief?” Gallo asked Rubens when he found him in the Art Room a short while later.
“A very good question, Mr. Gallo. Let us see if Ms. DeFrancesca can supply an answer.”
RUBENS WAS JUST about to talk to Lia when one of the Art Room communications specialists told him that National Security Advisor Donna Bing was calling for him. Rubens told Marie Telach to brief Lia on what Gallo had found, then went to the empty stations toward the back of the Art Room to talk to Bing.
He glanced at the clock on the console as he sat down. It was five past nine. Bing didn’t skimp on her hours.
Unfortunately.
Rubens pressed the connect button on the communications control clipped to his belt. The unit connected to his headset via an encrypted very short-range frequency (E-VSRF). “This is Bill.”
“Billy, how are we doing on Vietnam?”
“I’m about to roll up the operation there. As I told you earlier, we’re confident that there is no connection.”
“And I told you to work harder. You’re obviously missing key information.”
Rubens considered how to respond. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had already been briefed on Thao Duong’s organization; Tommy Karr had installed permanent listening devices in Thao Duong’s house and the digital records would be forwarded to the Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI for their use. There was simply nothing else for Deep Black to do in Vietnam. Even if the President wanted them to continue investigating the attack on Senator McSweeney—as the National Security finding directed them to do—it was senseless and expensive to keep Karr and Dean in Vietnam.
“Are you still there, Billy?”
“I am still here,” said Rubens. “And personally, I prefer to be called Bill.”
“Have you proved that Vietnam was not behind the attempted assassination of Senator McSweeney?” said Bing, ignoring Rubens’s remark about his name.
“It will be hard to prove a negative.”
“Why do you always give me such a hard time? Is it because I beat you out for this job?”
“I am not giving you a hard time, Madam Advisor.”
“Have a full report on the situation to me by noon tomorrow,” said Bing, hanging up.
92
“THIS TIME OF night, where you’re going to find the chief is in bed,” said the Pine Plains assessor, who was the only one in the village hall when Lia got there. “He hits the hay around nine, nine thirty. Doesn’t like to be bothered, either. Comes in at five, though. Sometimes earlier.”
The assessor smiled and raised the cup of coffee to his lips. His small office was in the front of the building; the police department was in the back.
“How come you work so late?” Lia asked.
“First of all, job’s part-time. I have a real job in Poughkeepsie nine to five. Second of all, gets me out of the house.” He smiled, then glanced at the clock. “I usually leave by midnight, though. Another half hour.”
“I have something to talk to him about that’s pretty important,” said Lia. “Where does he live?”
“You’re going to wake him up?”
“Why not?”
The assessor smirked.
“The chief lives right around from the station, on Church Street. Number Eleven. It’s just the next block over—right at the end here, then another right. Third house on the right. Do me a favor though, OK? Don’t tell him I told you.”
93
“THE BODY, MUCH as you expect,” Dr. Vuong told Dean, recalling the state of Sergeant Tolong’s body when he’d been exhumed. “Bones. Much decay. You can see by the photos.”
Dean nodded but didn’t bother reopening the file on his lap. The sergeant had been reduced to cloth and bones by the time he was dug up.
Dr. Vuong spoke decent English, far better than Dean had expected. Roughly sixty, the doctor was ethnic Chinese and had lived in the north during the war. He was short and energetic, and the whole room seemed to move as he spoke.
“So, the commission take control of the body. I examine. We do the paperwork. Many forms to complete.” The doctor’s tone sounded almost triumphant. “The commission stay several days, then return.”
The doctor did not remember whether bullets had been recovered with the body, but there were chips and breaks on the rib cage—multiple gunshots, he thought, the sign of death from an automatic weapon. The locals had lacked the facilities for a complete autopsy under
the circumstances, and in any event were more concerned with “preserving dignity of corpse,” as Dr. Vuong put it.
“How difficult was it to locate the body?” Dean asked.
“I am not sure. I do not believe hard. The commission had directions. Many details. He was near a road.”
“Near a road?” asked Dean. “How would I say that in Vietnamese? Let me think.”
The translator in the Art Room gave him the words. Vuong said again, Tolong’s body had been found very close to the road.
“Why wasn’t he found soon after he died?” asked Dean. “During the war?”
The doctor shrugged.
“There were landmarks,” suggested Dean.
“Memory is the problem. It was said a friend bury,” noted Dr. Vuong. “Descriptions, jungle, war.” He finished his thought in Vietnamese.
“The war shook many memories,” said the translator, explaining. “It took some away, and it changed others. Some things I cannot explain. He was near the road, you have a point, but …”
“Anything is possible, huh?” suggested Dean.
Dr. Vuong nodded.
“I know this is an odd question,” said Dean, “but was any money found with the body?”
“Money?”
“American dollars?”
The doctor shook his head. Dean repeated the question in Vietnamese to make sure he understood.
“You have a good vocabulary,” said the doctor. “With more practice, you could speak very well.”
“Thank you,” said Dean. “Could you locate the spot where he was found on a map for me? I’d like to take a look.”
He ignored Rockman when the runner told him it wasn’t necessary.
DEAN STUDIED THE map as Qui drove, comparing the terrain and twists in the road to the paper as they made their way to the spot where Tolong’s body had been dug up. Dean had an extra advantage—the exact spot where the dead Marine had been recovered was recorded by a GPS reading, and the Art Room told him when he was getting close.
“Pull over there,” said Dean as they came over a rise in the road. “It was to our right.”
Fallow fields lay on both sides of the road. Dean got out of the car and began walking in the direction of the grave site.
Conspiracy Page 24
