Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  He just didn't know.

  Back in his office, he sat at his desk, laid the gun on it, and stared for a minute again at his computer. Picking up his telephone, he got the pulsing dial tone that meant he had messages, and entered his password.

  The first message was from an obviously very distraught, though composed, Tara, who had called him on Monday night. "Ron. Evan Scholler came by to visit me today at the school. We had a long talk with one another and he told me some things that shocked me-you probably have a good idea what they were.

  "I don't know what to say to you, other than that I just want you to know how completely violated I feel. And how used. I don't know how you could have lied to me so much. I'm leaving this message on your machine on purpose because I don't want to talk to you, or even see you anymore. I can't believe you've done this. It just doesn't seem possible that anyone could be so cruel and so selfish. I'm so sorry for who you are, Ron, but not for what I'm saying. Good-bye. Don't call me. Don't come by. Just stay away. I mean it."

  The phone still at his ear, he hadn't let up his grip yet on the receiver when the next message began. The call had come this morning, about six hours ago. "Mr. Nolan. My name is Jacob Freed. I'm a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I wondered if we might be able to take a few minutes of your time to talk to you about a routine matter involving national security that's come to our attention. I don't mean to be unnecessarily vague, but I'm sure you understand that these days some things are best left unsaid over the telephone. If you could call me for an appointment at your earliest convenience when you get in, or alternatively, I'll try to get back to you in the next day or two. My number is…"

  When Nolan finally hung up, he sat unmoving with his right arm outstretched and his hand covering the Beretta. After a minute or two, he let go of the gun and moved his hand over to the mouse. As soon as he saw the "My Pictures" icon, he realized that he'd made an error by not erasing that file before he'd gone away. Opening it now, intending to close the barn door after the horse had escaped, he checked the access record and saw that someone had, indeed, looked at the file two days before-the same Monday that Tara had spoken to Evan Scholler.

  Though it might be too late, he still thought it would be better to delete the file now, so that if the FBI came and looked…

  Except he knew that there wasn't really any such thing anymore as truly deleting something. Experts could always retrieve whatever it was from the hard disk.

  Still, his finger hovered over the mouse as he stared at one of the many pictures he'd taken of Mr. Khalil's house while he was working on access and egress. One click and all of that would at least be gone for now.

  Sitting back, his eyes narrowing, he took his hand abruptly off the mouse. Suddenly, he decided that he did not want to delete the picture file after all. Although he would have to remove the memory chip from the digital camera in the desk drawer and get rid of it. Tapping his index fingernail against his front teeth, he sat as if in a trance for a full minute, and then another one.

  The idea looked perfect from every angle.

  He reached again for the telephone.

  "Agent Freed, please."

  "This is he."

  "Agent Freed. My name is Ron Nolan. You left me a message about a national security matter and asked me to call for an appointment."

  "Yes, sir, I did. Thanks for getting back to me."

  "I think maybe I should be the one thanking you, sir. I've just returned from a business trip. While I've been gone, somebody let themselves into my house. I was going to call the regular police, but then I got your message. I don't know if you know it, but I do some sensitive work with Allstrong Security, a government contractor in Iraq, and I thought what you wanted to talk about might have something to do with that."

  "Well, as I mentioned, perhaps it would be better to meet in person to talk about the issue that's come up with us, although if you're reporting a robbery or burglary, you should probably call the regular police. That's not really our jurisdiction."

  "Agent Freed, this wasn't a robbery. Whoever it was didn't take anything. They left something. Plus, they messed with my computer. I don't know what it's all about, but it's almost like somebody's trying to plant something on me."

  "Like what?"

  "Well, I just found one thing, but there might be more. I'm afraid to look in case he's planted a bomb someplace."

  "Who's he?"

  "I don't know. I mean the person who broke in."

  "Okay. So what's the one thing?"

  "This is what's so weird. It's a backpack full of ammunition and, you're not going to believe this, it looks like about a half dozen hand grenades."

  "Hand grenades?"

  "Yes, sir. As you may know, I've been over to Iraq several times. I know the ordnance. And these look like fragmentation grenades to me."

  Freed and his partner, a middle-aged fireplug named Marcia Riggio, sat with Nolan on the small, oak-shaded back patio. Inside the townhouse, a three-man team of forensics specialists, having already confiscated the backpack with its contents, were fingerprinting every clean surface and cataloging anything that might be of interest-Nolan's other gun from the bed's headboard, the digital camera in the desk drawer, downloading his hard disk.

  Nolan didn't want to rush anything with these federal cops. He didn't want to appear to point them in any specific direction. But now, as Agent Riggio looked up from her notepad, Nolan decided that it was getting to be the time. "Let me ask you something," he said. "Is there any scenario you can think of that makes any sense of this to you?"

  The two agents exchanged a glance. Riggio got the nod from Freed and took point. "Do you have any enemies?" she asked.

  Nolan frowned. "Even if I did," he said, "what does this do to hurt me? Unless I pulled the pin on one of those grenades, which anybody who knows me knows I'm not going to do."

  "Maybe it's not about hurting you," Riggio went on. "Maybe it's about framing you."

  "For what?"

  But Freed stepped in. "Before we get to that," he said, "let's go back to your enemies."

  This time, Nolan broke a grin. "I don't see it, really. I like people. I really do, and they tend to like me. My boss thinks it's a flaw in my character." He shrugged. "So I'd have to say no. No enemies."

  "Okay," Riggio said. "How about rivals?"

  "In business?"

  "Business, pleasure, whatever."

  He took his sweet time, savoring the anticipation. "The only even remotely…" He shook his head. "No, never mind."

  Freed jumped on it. "What?"

  "Nothing, really. Just a guy I knew in Iraq who used to date my girlfriend. But that was a long time ago."

  "If he's in Iraq," Freed said, "he's out of this."

  "Well, he's home now. Here."

  "And he's not over her? Your girlfriend?" Riggio asked.

  "I don't know. He had a hard time with it at first, but now I haven't seen the guy in months. But, look, this is a dead end. He's a good guy. In fact, he's a cop. He'd never-"

  Freed interrupted. "He's a cop?"

  "Yeah, here in Redwood City. His name's Evan Scholler. He got hurt over there and they let him out early."

  "So he would have had access to these types of grenades over there?"

  "Yeah, but he wouldn't have taken any home. He did a few months at Walter Reed before he came out here."

  "Soldiers have been known to send illegal ordnance and contraband stateside as souvenirs on the slow boat," Riggio said. "It's a problem. It happens all the time."

  "Well, I don't know what Evan would have…I mean, what's the point of putting hand grenades in my closet? I'm not going to blow myself up with them. It's not like they're going to get rid of me as his rival."

  Riggio and Freed again shared a glance, and again exchanged the imperceptible nod. Riggio came forward, elbows on her knees. "Do you know a man named Ibrahim Khalil?"

  "No," Nolan said. "Should I?"

  "H
e was a local businessman with ties to Iraq. He and his wife were killed last weekend."

  "Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but I've been out of town. I haven't heard about it."

  "Would Evan Scholler have known you were gone?"

  Nolan shrugged. "If he knew where I lived, he could have just checked to see if my car was in the garage. If it is, I'm home."

  "Has he ever, to your knowledge, been up here?" Riggio asked.

  "No. As I say, we're not exactly pals anymore." As though it had just occurred to him, Nolan added, "But he's a cop. He could find out where I live easy enough, couldn't he? That's what it looks like he's done."

  Freed picked it up. "So Sunday morning early you were with this same girlfriend that this Evan Scholler likes?"

  "Tara," Nolan said. "Tara Wheatley. And, yes, she's the one. So what's this all about?"

  "Those pictures you couldn't identify on your computer?" Riggio said. "They were pictures of Mr. Khalil's house before somebody killed them and hit it with a fragmentation grenade, and before it burned down."

  "A frag grenade…" Nolan didn't want to overplay his apparent naïveté. Both Freed and Riggio knew that he had seen combat, and they might even know more than that. This was about the moment in the interview that, against his own deep-seated reluctance to believe ill of a fellow soldier, he might finally come to accept the apparent truth. So he nodded somberly and met both of their gazes in turn. "He's trying to set me up. Christ, he killed them, didn't he?"

  16

  The early evening sun baked the parking lot and the landing outside Tara 's apartment. She could feel its warmth in her hand through the closed and locked front door as she stood behind it. "I told you, I won't see you. I don't want to talk to you."

  "I need to talk to you, though, T. Please. I need to explain."

  "There's nothing you can say to me. Nothing I'd believe. I can't believe you'd even come by here and try this. You lied to me, Ron. You've been living a lie for all these months."

  "No. I've been living the truth. And the truth is that I love you."

  "You don't lie to someone you love."

  "You're right. That was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. I am so sorry."

  "Sorry's not enough. I don't want to talk about this. I need you to go away now."

  "I can't, T. I can't leave it like this. Could you please open up? Just so I could see you." When she didn't answer, he went on, talking at the door. "Listen, I knew you were confused about Evan, especially the timing about how we started. I thought that if you heard he'd been wounded…that you'd feel sorry for him, or like you owed him another chance…and that whatever happened, somehow I'd lose you."

  "And now that's what's happened."

  "I can't accept that, Tara. I didn't think he was going to live. I didn't think it would matter."

  "That's not the question, Ron. You lied to me. Everything we did was false, don't you understand that? If you couldn't stand to have Evan in the picture on any level, even if he was dying, how were we-you and me-ever going to amount to anything anyway?"

  "We did amount to something."

  "No, we didn't. That's the worst part. We supposedly trusted each other. Now that can't ever happen again. Don't you see that?"

  "Because of one mistake?"

  "You really don't see it, do you?"

  "I see somebody who was terrified he was going to lose the woman he loved, who wanted to make sure they had some time together without the distraction of a wounded ex-boyfriend, who might never be coming home alive anyway."

  "That's all you thought Evan was to me, a distraction?" The chain lock rattled and the door opened the couple of inches that the chain allowed. "I'm not going to yell at you through the door anymore. I just need you to go. You're actually scaring me now, all right?"

  "How can I be scaring you, T? I'm here begging you just to listen to me, to give me another chance." He shifted his weight. "Is it because of him?"

  "Do I still love him, you mean? I don't know about that. I lost track of who he was, and now I don't know what I feel. But I know you're scaring me now. And why? Because you lied. And lied and lied."

  "I lied once, T. Once to try to protect what we were starting to have, that's all."

  "No, it isn't, Ron. What about Masbah?"

  "What about it?"

  "You firing on that innocent family. I Googled you and read all about it. You started that whole thing."

  Ron hung his head, wiped his brow against the glaring heat. "I was trying to protect the convoy. I thought the car was on a suicide mission. You had to have been there, but I can't apologize for what I did."

  "The report said they'd stopped way back."

  "You can't believe everything you read. It was a damn close call and if I waited another two seconds, we all could have been dead."

  "Most of you died anyway. How about that?"

  "Not my fault. The point is that if I fired too soon, and I'm not saying I did, it was on the side of caution."

  "Ron. You killed an entire innocent family! Doesn't that bother you at all?"

  "It bothers me a lot, T. It makes me sick to think about it. But I can't say, given the circumstances, that I wouldn't do the same thing again. It was a split-second, life-or-death decision, and I decided I had to try to save my men."

  "That's not what Evan says, Ron. And he was there too."

  "I guess he doesn't mention the part about me pulling him out of the line of fire and getting him out of there alive."

  "So now you're the hero?"

  "I'm not saying that. I'm saying Evan's memory maybe isn't the most reliable thing in the universe right now. I'm also saying that he's got a reason to make me look bad."

  "He didn't make you lie."

  "How many times do I have to apologize for that? However many it takes, I'll do it."

  "And what about the other lies?"

  "What other lies? There were no other lies."

  "How about me ripping up that last letter that you delivered to me?"

  "You didn't rip it up."

  "Right. But you told Evan I did."

  "No, I didn't. Did he tell you that?"

  "Yes."

  "Then he's lying."

  "I don't believe that, Ron. And what about when you visited him at Walter Reed, when you told him I said he'd made his own bed and he could sleep in it?"

  Nolan looked down and shook his head.

  "What?" she asked him.

  "That's not true, either, T. Why would I say that? I went to see him to see how he was doing, if he was going to be all right. That's all. He's the one who didn't want to hear anything about you."

  "That's not what he told me."

  "No, I guess not. And why, do you think, would that be?"

  Through the crack in the opening, he saw her close her eyes, lean her head up against the wall next to the door. He was wearing her down, getting to her. "Do you want to hear something else?" he asked. "Something truly scary, especially if you think your friend Evan is so innocent and so nice. You want to hear what he left in my house after he broke into it last weekend?

  After Tara watched Nolan finally drive away, she went into her living room, sat down, and put her feet up on the coffee table. Templing her fingers over her lips, she closed her eyes and tried to get herself to breathe deeply. A whirlwind of conflicting possibilities and emotions was literally causing her body to shake.

  Ron Nolan had maintained a sustained falsehood, but did that mean that every word out of his mouth was a lie? She hadn't expected him to show up here, or to own up to the lies upon which he'd based their relationship. Perhaps the truth was that he loved her and had made a mistake. A terrible mistake, yes, and one he sincerely regretted.

  Just like killing the Iraqi family.

  What was the truth in that story? Had he been justified shooting when he did? And in fact, had he pulled Evan to safety and saved his life? They'd been outnumbered and surrounded. If there had been a bomb in the car, none of them would h
ave survived. Might she have made the same decision to fire under the same circumstances?

  It struck her forcefully that maybe it was she who was being unfair. Ron Nolan had always treated her well, better than well. He'd literally saved her life that time in San Francisco. And surely his appearance today to beg her forgiveness-even while admitting he'd done the unforgivable-spoke to a depth of character she'd never given him credit for.

  People grew, people changed, people learned from their mistakes. And if what Ron had told her about Evan were true? He might himself be in danger.

  No. She could not believe that. That was more of Ron's poison, trying to get inside her.

  After seeing Evan in her classroom, and then the intimacy last night, she knew what she felt-not just the still-powerful physical bond, but a connection that went down to the bottom of her soul. It was irrational, chemical, fundamental, and she knew that she would never feel it with anyone else.

  But now, according to Ron, Evan had lied to her too. A known liar accusing another of lying. It was like game theory, where "A" always told the truth, and "B" always lied, but you didn't know which was the truth-teller and which the liar. Who did you believe?

  Could Evan have made up the story about Ron saying she'd ripped up his letter? Or the Walter Reed moment? Evan admitted that his memory had been faulty, especially early on. Could he have lied to her and not even known he was lying? Finally, could Evan have broken into Ron's house and tried to frame him for a murder? A murder that he himself had committed?

  Tara could not believe any part of that. She knew who Evan was. Even after all this time and all of their problems, she knew his heart.

  He was not a liar. He was not a murderer.

  And this meant that Ron Nolan was lying to her again. And lying to the FBI. And possibly to the local police.