Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  "Why's that so bad, Fred? Don't they have a lot more resources than we do?"

  "Oh, no question," Spinoza said. "More resources, more money, more access to data, the whole nine yards. The thing is, though-they don't share. So we wind up spending a week finding stuff they already have. It's kind of a race to see who can get there fastest, but we've got one leg tied behind our backs."

  "I don't think that's exactly the expression."

  "No?" Spinoza popped his last bite of sandwich. "Well, that's what it feels like."

  He knew the locksmith from Ace Hardware both from his high school class and from his men's softball team. Now, at a few minutes before two o'clock on an afternoon after Evan had told his lieutenant, James Lochland, that he was suffering from a migraine and needed to go lie down in his dark bedroom, Dave Saldar pulled up outside of Nolan's townhouse and parked in back of Evan's CR-V.

  Evan, in his police uniform to reinforce his legitimacy, got out of his car and they high-fived each other on the sidewalk. After a couple of minutes of catching up-Saldar had heard some of Evan's story from guys on the team-they got around to what Evan had called Dave up here for.

  "You didn't hide a spare under a rock or something?" Saldar asked.

  "No. I didn't think I'd ever forget my keys. Who forgets their keys?"

  "My wife does every time she leaves the house."

  "Yeah, well, I don't. I never have before."

  "I would love one thin dime for every time I'd heard those exact words. Why do you think the world invented locksmiths?"

  "I never could figure that out."

  "Well, now you know." Saldar inclined his head toward the town-homes. "Okay, which one's yours?"

  They went down to Nolan's doorway, partially enclosed and blocked from the street by an L-shaped, glass-block privacy screen. Saldar got out his tools and went to work. Evan found that his legs were weak enough that he had to lean against the screen for support. With each passing second, the enormity of the implications of what he was doing worked on his system. He felt as lightheaded as he'd been on Nolan's night raid outside of BIAP. A jackhammer pulse pounded where they'd cut open his skull. The migraine he'd invented for Lieutenant Lochland threatened to become a reality-pinpoints of light exploded at the outer edges of his vision. He kept looking to the street, nearly passing out when a yellow Miata convertible crested the incline and drove by.

  Saldar, noticing something in his reaction, glanced up at him. "You all right?"

  "Good," he said. In fact, he could feel the sweat breaking on his forehead. Summoning all the control he could muster, he brought his hand up and dragged it across his brow.

  At last, Saldar turned the knob and pushed the door open. "There you go, a minute and fifteen seconds. This could be a new record."

  "I'm sure it is, Dave. That's awesome."

  Saldar was holding open the front door. "Hey, are you okay, Ev? You really don't look so good."

  "I'm all right. The head's acting up a little, that's all." He reached back for his wallet, thinking, I've got to get him out of here! What if Nolan shows up? But keeping it casual, he said, "So what's the damage?"

  "Let's call it thirty, since we're friends. You want, you can go grab your set of keys and I can make you a couple of quick copies right out of the truck, five bucks each."

  "That's all right." Evan fished out two twenties. "I know I've got some dupes inside. I've just got to remember to put 'em out here somewhere for next time. But right now I think I'd better get in there and lie down a minute."

  "Sure, okay. But let me run and get you your change."

  "No, keep it."

  "I can't take tips from teammates, Ev. It's one of my rules. I've got some cash back in the truck. Won't take me thirty seconds."

  He put a firm hand on his friend's shoulder. "Dave, really, I'm hurting a little here. Thanks for your help, but I've got to get horizontal pretty quick or I'm going to get sick. Seriously. Take care of yourself. I'll see you around."

  "You need a doctor?"

  The effort for even half a smile was almost too much to bear. "You don't let me get inside pretty quick, you're gonna need a doctor. You hear me?"

  "All right, all right. But stop by the field sometime. We're still playing Tuesdays and Thursdays."

  "I will. Promise."

  "I'll buy you some beers with your tip money."

  "Deal," Evan said, stepping inside the door. "Later."

  He stood in the living room. Part of him had a hard time believing that he was truly here, illegally inside another man's home. It felt surreal. This wasn't who he was. It wasn't the kind of thing he'd ever done, or even thought about doing.

  But now, once inside, he couldn't let those considerations slow him down. There was no telling when Nolan might return. Evan had no idea what hours he worked, or what he did on a day-to-day basis, or even if he had any regular schedule at all. If there was something incriminating to be found in this place, and Evan's guts told him there was, he had to find it and then get out fast. It wasn't a matter of finding evidence that could be used in court-he simply wanted the knowledge.

  Or at least that's what he let himself believe. He would decide then how to use what he knew at his leisure.

  The room he was in was Spartan, furnished with a leather couch and matching twin leather chairs in front of built-in, mostly empty, bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. A large mirror over the mantel gave an impression of space, but the room probably wasn't more than ten feet wide. Half of the back wall was a glass doorway that opened onto a small brick patio, shaded by large oak trees. A potted plant squatted in the corner. The first glance told him that there would be nothing of interest here, but he forced himself to slow down and make sure.

  When he was done, he parted the blinds in the front window, saw nothing out in the street, and crossed the tiled entry area that led into the kitchen, which didn't have much more personality than the living room. It was, however, quite a bit more exposed, since the double-wide window over the sink looked out over the small lawn to the street beyond.

  It didn't appear that Nolan did a lot of cooking for himself-the refrigerator had eggs, beer, a pack of American cheese, and milk, with tomatoes and lettuce in the vegetable bin, and some condiments, while the freezer held three boxes of frozen spinach, a carton of ice cream, and a few packages of chicken breasts and ground beef.

  A door next to the refrigerator led out to the small single-car garage, where Nolan had hung his empty duffel bag and two empty backpacks on hooks on the far wall. An uncluttered workbench obviously hadn't seen much use, and neither had the drawers under it.

  Back in the kitchen, Evan finally got his nerves under control as he scoped out the street again and then ducked under the window passing through. Just off the living room in the back of the house, he entered a decent-sized den with a desk and a computer. The wall featured a tacked-up map of Iraq with several color-coded pins stuck in various spots-Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, Abu Ghraib, Anaconda. Evan tried the mouse first to see if the monitor screen came on, and when it didn't, he hit the button on the CPU. While it booted up, he went through the next door into the bedroom and stopped in his tracks.

  Drawing a heavy breath, he crossed over to the bureau next to his enemy's perfectly made bed and picked up the photograph of Nolan and Tara in a heavy silver frame. They were hugging each other for the picture, obviously from the deck of a boat out on the Bay, both smiling out at him on a lovely day. He held the picture long enough that the urge to smash it against the wall came and went. Then, replacing it carefully in its original position, he went back to his searching in earnest. Dresser drawers, bathroom drawers, cupboards, and closets.

  The headboard of the bed yielded up the first weapon, another M9 Beretta, the same weapon that Evan had carried in Iraq. He smelled the barrel and picked up no odor, then removed the clip and verified that it was full. But a pro like Nolan, if he had used the gun, would have cleaned it and reloaded immediately afterward.
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br />   The bedroom closet, neat like the rest of the house, contained another backpack on the top shelf. This one he emptied out on the bed piece by piece. It held another Beretta 9mm, ten clips of ammunition, and six hand grenades. Evan didn't know for sure if they were fragmentation grenades or the so-called flash/bangs, which were nowhere near as lethal. But either way, he was willing to bet that they were illegal in the hands of private citizens. Evan was sure that they would be of interest to the police, once he figured out a way to get some law enforcement person interested in Nolan as a suspect in the Khalil murders.

  Replacing the backpack, he went back into the den and sat in front of the computer. Clicking on the icon labeled "Allstrong," he scanned through a few documents-mostly what appeared to be copies of or amendments to government contracts or work orders that the company had secured overseas. There were also a significant number of e-mail files, and several résumés of people who had served in the military, which attested to the kind of work Nolan was probably doing over here Stateside. Evan entered a few more of the documents and searched for the name Khalil, but came up empty.

  Lacking a password, though he tried several obvious ones, he couldn't get into Nolan's regular e-mail file. The icon named "My Pictures," by contrast, came right up. Immobilized by what he feared he might see there-more photos of Nolan and Tara in much more intimate settings than the deck of a boat-he finally clicked on the first folder and, finding not even one picture of Tara, sighed in relief.

  These appeared to be shots Nolan might have taken when he was shopping for a house. Here was a tree-lined street just like the one he lived on, cars parked along the curb. Then different angles, in different lights, on another house, large and grandiose. In fact, on closer inspection, on the clearest picture from directly in front of the building, the place was actually a pink-hued monstrosity. What in the world, Evan wondered, could Nolan have seen in the place that would have prompted such a detailed study?

  Suddenly recognition straightened him upright. In the paper that morning, Evan had seen a black-and-white picture of the remains of Mr. Khalil's house, which of course no longer looked very much like the residence in this picture. But in the article, hadn't he read something about the house being pink?

  Hurriedly he started pulling open the drawers to the desk. There was a digital camera in the middle drawer and for a second he considered looking at what it contained. But he couldn't take the time. He checked his watch-two forty-five. He'd been in here too long already. In the lower right drawer, he found an open ten-pack of floppy disks. Four remained in the box, and with his hands shaking now, he took one out, inserted it into the A-disk slot, and copied the file from the "My Pictures" photo onto the disk.

  Ejecting the disk, he put it in his breast pocket, then sat back, took a breath, and walked himself through turning the computer off the careful way, through the "Start" menu.

  Keenly listening for the sound of the garage door opening, or of a car pulling up out in the street, he forced himself to wait until the terminal screen went black. Then he got out of the chair and replaced it where he hoped and thought it had been. He pushed all the desk drawers flush against their inserts. Checking one last time to make sure that he still had the disk in his pocket, he walked back up through the living room, locked the front door from the inside, looked out through the window, saw that it was safe, and let himself out.

  14

  The last child had gone home two hours ago; the sounds from the hallway were small and distant. The occasional whirrings of the Xerox machine way down in the office barely registered on Tara's consciousness as she looked out at the view from her classroom window. She'd always considered it a particularly fine view, with the small grove of scrub oak hugging the hilltop just across the street. She could imagine that the hilltop was far from anything mundane or suburban-say, in Tuscany, where she'd never been. Sometimes in the late afternoon like this, with the springtime scents of lilac and jasmine coming up on the breeze mingling with the closer smells of pencil and chalk, this classroom was her favorite place in the world.

  She felt that she could count on her fingers the times when she'd been the absolute happiest and most content, and many of them had been right here. Some of the long-timers here at St. Charles had gotten perhaps a little cynical over the years, but either Tara hadn't been here long enough yet, or she didn't have the genes for cynicism; she wasn't that kind of a person. She still loved her kids. Every year a new batch, and every year with fresh challenges-oh yes, thank you, challenges-but also with something new to learn, to connect with, to love. New clay. That was how she always thought of her classes when the year began. New clay.

  Sitting back in her desk chair, she daydreamed, her face relaxed in contented repose, an almost infinitesimal upturn to her lips. It had been a day almost exactly like this one, soft and scented-had it been three years now? She remembered that the whole day she'd felt almost sick with herself since she'd been so easy on the first date with this new guy, Evan. Too easy. She'd been too attracted and let him know it and wasn't really inclined to fight herself. Not against that kind of heat.

  But what if it turned out to be that old cliché and he didn't respect her and never called again? Hell, she was an intelligent woman with a fine career and knew that she would never build her world around some man, but the thought of never again seeing this man she'd met only one time just suddenly didn't seem bearable.

  And she had gotten up from her desk, sick at herself, and went to smell the outdoor smells by the window, which always helped when she was worried or depressed, and she looked down and there Evan was, getting out of his car with a bouquet in his hand. The happiest single moment of her life.

  Sighing, she opened her eyes, surprised at how quickly the contented daydream had retrieved enough emotion to nearly bring her to tears. Breathing deeply, she dabbed at her eyes and pushed back from her desk, thinking that, oh, well, it was time to go home. No need to dwell on the past. It was still a beautiful day, with the incredible floral perfume outside on the breeze.

  She crossed over to the window to smell the day one last time. And then she looked down.

  In the street, Evan was getting out of his car. No flowers. But it was him nevertheless, coming to see her at last.

  Tears welled again, and her hand went to her mouth. Then, after a moment, she brought it down to rest over her heart.

  "HI."

  "Hi."

  "I thought you might be here."

  "You were right. It's a beautiful afternoon. My favorite time."

  "I remember."

  A silence. She'd been standing when he got to the classroom door, and now she boosted herself back onto her desk. "So how are you?" she finally asked. "You look good."

  "I'm okay. I still get headaches, but basically I'm Mr. Lucky."

  "That's what I've heard. I'm glad for you. Glad you're alive."

  "Me too." He moved a step closer to her. "Are you all right? You look like you've been crying."

  She shook her head, smiled with a false brightness. "Allergies. The downside of all these blooming flowers." She sucked in a quick breath and let it out, then tried another smile that died on the vine. "I tried to call you."

  "I know. I was a shit. I could say I was still recovering and don't remember anything about it, but that'd be a lie. I'm sorry."

  She shrugged. "I was a shit too. Too inflexible. Too stupid."

  "Okay," he said, "we're a couple of shits."

  "Stupid shits," she corrected him. And finally a small smile took.

  "Better," he said. He looked away, over at the window to the oak-studded hillside. Coming back to her, his jaw somehow had a harder line. He drew a breath and blew it out sharply. "You still seeing Ron Nolan?"

  Biting at her lower lip, she nodded, answered in a very small voice. "Sometimes."

  "Love him?"

  She shrugged, shook her head, shrugged again. "I don't know, Evan. We've had some good times, but I don't know. Love's a big word."r />
  "Yes, it is. What are we going to do about it?"

  "What do you mean, we?"

  "You and me. We. The usual meaning. The fact that I love you."

  "Oh, God, Evan." She shook her head from side to side. "Don't say that."

  "Why not? It's true."

  "Well…" She slipped herself off the desk and walked over to the windows again, stood still a moment, then turned back to him. "Please don't say that," she repeated. "I don't know what to do with that."

  "You don't have to do anything. Although that's one of the reasons I came here. To tell you that. Just so that if you were wondering, you'd know."

  Her gaze settled on his eyes. "Okay," she said softly. "Okay, now I know." Bringing her hand up to her forehead, she pushed until her fingers went white, then pulled her hand away. "Were there other reasons?"

  "Other reasons for what?"

  "For why you came here. You said one reason was to tell me you loved me. What was another one?"

  Evan's brow clouded over-he couldn't remember. For an awful moment, he thought he might have forever lost the real reason he'd come to see Tara today. He hadn't come to tell her he loved her. He hadn't been sure of that until he was with her. But then they'd started talking and that had come out and now he was unable to retrieve the real purpose of his trip here. "I'm trying to remember," he said. "Can you give me a couple of seconds?"

  This was the first time she was seeing an effect of his injury, and he was acutely aware that this moment might change everything forever between them. He might, in her eyes, now be damaged, challenged, handicapped-somehow not as sharp as he'd been, not quite exactly the same person. Not quite her equal.

  He couldn't let that happen.

  Closing his eyes, concentrating, he thought, "Come on, brain, come on. Retrieve it." Then he opened his eyes as the answer found its way to his tongue. "The other reason I came here," he said, "is I wanted to ask you a simple factual question."