A Minute to Midnight

by David Baldacci

  She cleared the rooms downstairs and then headed up the steps to the second floor.

  There were three bedrooms up here, and the last one was set up as a home office.

  The bedrooms held nothing of interest.

  The office was different. In a file cabinet there was a treasure trove. An old Stetson hat, and a stringy white wig. And even more incriminating, photos of Frankie Gomez, Hanna Rebane, Beth Clemmons, and Layne Gillespie.

  Pine sat down at the wooden desk set against one wall and stared down at the pictures of the dead people.

  She ran her gaze around the room wondering if she was looking at the living quarters of a serial killer who had killed at least four people and perhaps more.

  Her gaze found and held on the edge of a wire that was snaking under the bed. It was almost invisible, but the light was coming in at just the right angle to reveal it. She bent down to look at where it was going. She saw the red light.

  The next moment she leapt up, pulled the mattress off the bed, ran for the bathroom while dragging the mattress behind her, slammed the door, and threw herself into the bathtub with the mattress covering her.

  An instant later the bomb she had seen under the bed detonated.

  Chapter 69

  LEE, LEE, COME IN HERE right now. Get off that tree. You’ll fall and hurt yourself.”

  “Momma, don’t be mad at her. She’s just being Lee. She likes to climb things. She’ll figure out how to get down.”

  Pine looked first at her mother and then her sister. Both stood on the saggy porch of their house. Julia Pine looked mad at her tomboy daughter, while Mercy Pine looked pleased that her sister was, well, just being herself.

  That was the way it had always been with them: Lee doing what she loved and often getting into trouble because of it, and her sister defending her to the last.

  The swirls of mist in front of her eyes deepened as the two most important people in her life vanished.

  The next moment Pine sat up, a rush of air coming out of her compressed chest with such force that she thought she had also expelled both her lungs in the process. It was like she had just surfaced from a long dive. She pushed the mattress off her and coughed and spit up vile things from her mouth. The bathroom was in shambles, the mattress covered with debris.

  But I’m still alive.

  Yet she could smell smoke and the fire that was causing it, so she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She rolled out of the bathtub and rose on unsteady legs, her ears still ringing with the sound of the explosion. The bathroom door had been blown off its hinges and all she could see outside was a wall of fire.

  She turned to the only escape route she had: a single window over the tub. She didn’t have to break the glass because it had already been shattered by the explosion. She cleaned out the remaining shards using a towel, climbed through the opening and out onto the roof.

  She slid down to the end of the shingles, swung her legs over the side while holding on to the edge of the gutter, and hung there for a few moments while looking down and judging the distance she was going to fall.

  She let go, hit the dirt, rolled, and came up running.

  The fire must have hit a gas line somewhere in the house because the next thing she knew there was a second, far larger explosion, and a concussive wave hit her from behind and propelled her through the air for a good ten feet. She tumbled another dozen feet before coming to a stop, breathing hard and groaning from the punishment she had just endured.

  She slowly stood, holding her lower back, her left arm dangling uselessly because it had been popped out of joint.

  Son of a bitch.

  This had happened to her once before, at a weightlifting competition gone horribly wrong when one of the collars on a barbell load with weight plates she’d been attempting to lift failed. The weights had tumbled off one side, and she was thrown in the direction of the unbalanced weight on the other side. She had slammed into the floor and her shoulder had been wrenched out of place. And she had had it popped back into place by a doctor in attendance. It was the most searing pain she had ever felt. But it had been only for a second. What she was feeling right now was nearly as bad and would not be going away anytime soon unless she did what she knew she had to do, because the doctor had showed her how, just in case that ever happened to her again.

  Pine found a tree, placed her shoulder against it at a precise angle, closed her eyes, took three rapid breaths, and pushed the injured side of her body hard into the solid wood.

  She screamed in pain. And fury.

  And then it was over. The relief was immediate, though she was still sore. She shook out her arm, turned, and looked back at what had been Jerry Danvers’s “little” cottage. There was barely anything left. She used her phone to call the police and fire department and then turned to look at the main house. No one had come rushing out at the sounds of the explosions, and she wondered where the hell the staff was.

  She hobbled slowly back to her truck. She couldn’t clamber over the wall as yet. She was still too banged up to manage it. But she was able to open the front gate from the inside.

  She got into her truck and sat there for a few moments, trying to take everything in.

  Her mind kept going back to the vision of her mother and sister, watching her climbing a tree.

  “Momma, don’t be mad at her. She’s just being Lee. She likes to climb things. She’ll figure out how to get down.”

  That’s what I’m good at: figuring things out.

  Her sister had always believed in her. Pine hoped she was up to the praise.

  She called Tyler Straub and told him what had happened.

  “Jesus, are you okay?” he exclaimed.

  “Barely. Where is Jerry?”

  “He wasn’t out there?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have no idea. The guy’s gone AWOL.”

  Pine clicked off. Going against all standard FBI protocols, she decided not to wait for the fire truck, but she left the gate open for the emergency vehicles.

  As she drove back toward Andersonville, she drew several long breaths and willed herself to calm down and to think.

  Lee will figure it out, Momma, she always does.

  She decided to get back to basics to “figure it out.”

  They had one definitive connection: Myron Pringle and the dead porn stars.

  They had another somewhat attenuated connection: Myron Pringle and Frankie Gomez through the Mercedes-Benz car dealership.

  She pulled off the road and scrolled through her recent calls. She found the one she wanted and made the call.

  “Don Bigelow,” said the voice.

  “Don, it’s Agent Pine with the FBI.”

  “Hey, Agent Pine. I hope you found whoever hurt that kid.”

  “We’re getting closer. Look, I know that Myron Pringle bought the AMG from you last year, but has he brought it in for service this year, within the last six months or so? It’s really important.”

  “Let me check with that department. Just hold on.”

  She heard good, old-fashioned Muzak for about a minute before he came back on.

  “The car was brought in a month ago.” He told her the date.

  “Okay, now my next question is, was it on one of the days that Frankie Gomez was at the dealership?”

  “Hang on again, I’ll have to check with Roger Duncan. I don’t know off the top of my head, but he probably would.”

  “Why don’t you just transfer me to him, so you don’t have to play intermediary?”

  “Oh, good idea. Hold on.”

  About thirty seconds later Roger Duncan came on the line.

  “Don said you were asking when Frankie was here?”

  “Yes? Do you remember?”

  “It was two different times. I remember because those were the only two Saturdays I worked in the last couple months.” He told her the dates. The more recent one coincided with the date of service for Pringle’s Mercedes.

  “T
hat’s great, Roger, I really appreciate it.”

  “What does this have to do with Frankie?”

  “I’m trying to get a connection between him and a guy who had an AMG serviced that day.”

  “An AMG S63?”

  “Yes, you remember it.”

  “We don’t sell many AMGs here. They’re pretty expensive. It’s basically the same model and wheelbase as the S560, but with a lot more power and torque under the hood.”

  “Do you remember the man, Myron Pringle? In his fifties, really tall?”

  “No, I don’t remember anyone like that. But she was really nice to Frankie. Even bought him a candy bar from the vending machine.”

  “‘She’?”

  “The lady who brought the car in. She saw Frankie and asked about him. I told her about us taking him in. She was nice to him, bought him the candy bar and all, like I said.”

  “Wait a minute, you’re telling me a woman and not a man brought in the S63 for service?”

  “Yeah.”

  The image of Lauren Graham flashed through her mind. “Describe her.”

  When he was done, Pine thanked him and pulled back onto the road and sped off to a new destination.

  It wasn’t Lauren Graham. The description he had given her fit Britta Pringle exactly.

  Chapter 70

  ON THE WAY Pine phoned Laredo and told him what she had learned and also about being nearly blown up.

  “I didn’t wait for the first responders. I know that’s not how we do things, but there was no way around it.”

  “I think you did the right thing,” replied Laredo. He promised to meet her at the Pringles’ and also to loop in Wallis.

  She drove fast down the tree-shrouded lane and soon reached the fantastically modern house. She stopped, got out, and surveyed the property, her mind going a mile a minute.

  Britta had taken the car in. Britta had met Frankie Gomez and even bought him a candy bar. Why would she have done that? Were both Myron and Britta involved in this? Or was it just her? If so, where the hell was Myron? She was about to head up to the front door but then changed her mind.

  She went around back and stared, not at the rear of the main house, but at Britta’s Cape Cod. She looked around but neither saw nor heard anyone about.

  She pulled her gun, skirted by the side of the pool, hustled up the steps to the Cape Cod, and peered through the window into the room overlooking the pool.

  She tried the door adjacent to the window and it opened. She moved through and closed it behind her. The only illumination was from the sun coming through the glass.

  She swiftly made a search of the house. It was decorated beautifully and looked totally unlived in, which surprised her. This supposedly was Britta’s thinking place. She wondered where Britta really did her thinking.

  On the top floor and in a room at the back of the house facing away from the pool, she found it. She knew that because it was the only door in the place that had been locked.

  She shot the lock off with her Glock.

  When Pine stepped into the room, she noted that all the shades were drawn, casting the room into near total darkness.

  She found and turned on a light. It was a sterile environment. Plainly furnished, with not a trace of warmth in the place. And then she noticed the bureau. She opened it. Inside was what could only be described as a shrine to her dead children.

  Along with numerous mementos from their childhood and lives as young adults, there were multiple pictures of Mary and Joey Pringle. Pine recognized them from the photos Britta had shown them earlier.

  One showed them sitting next to the pool. Mary was wearing a bikini and Joey was shirtless and in jeans. Pine peered closer at Joey. She picked up the photo and took it over to the window, where she drew back the drapes to let the light in.

  The next moment Pine confirmed what she thought she had seen.

  Joey had a St. Christopher’s medal around his neck.

  He’d died by gunshot. An accident, Britta had said. The St. Christopher’s medal found on Frankie Gomez had been damaged by a gunshot. Blood and remnants of a buckshot found there by the ME.

  Now Pine was certain the medal had belonged to Joey. He’d been wearing it when he’d died from a gunshot wound, apparently a shotgun. Now the question was: Had it been an accident, as Britta had said? Or had he been murdered or committed suicide? And if so, why?

  There was a TV housed in the cabinet. And in a drawer underneath the TV was a DVD. Written on the case in pen was “Dorothy and the Ruby Red Nipples.”

  She slipped it out of the case and put it in a DVD player that was attached to the TV.

  She took up the remote and fast-forwarded through the credits and into the opening scenes. She hit the Play button and the film slowed to normal speed. It took about three minutes before she saw her.

  Mary Pringle stepped in front of the camera. She was dressed in the same sort of outfit that Judy Garland had worn in The Wizard of Oz, complete with ruby red slippers, although it was far more revealing than Garland’s. The doorbell rang. She opened it and there were three men there dressed as the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. Within two minutes, and after limited stilted dialogue, they had no clothes on and were going at it full-bore right there on the couch, three on one. Mary was groaning and moaning on cue, but Pine doubted the woman had really enjoyed a minute of it. The act looked painful and debasing.

  Pine hit the Reverse button and went back to the opening credits. Dorothy was played by Desiree Debauchery, obviously Mary’s stage name.

  She turned the film off and put down the remote.

  In the same drawer with the DVD was a faded news clipping from a paper in Florida.

  She picked it up, unfolded it, and read the headline.

  “Porn Actress Overdoses.”

  The news article was brief, but it did say that the person who had discovered the body was Joey Pringle.

  And then Joey Pringle died from a gunshot wound shortly thereafter.

  Suicide?

  Pine took pictures of everything with her phone, including some of the film footage.

  She was putting the things away when she heard it.

  A splash.

  She pocketed the DVD and news article, closed up the bureau, and hurried down the stairs. She walked quickly across the room and looked out the window facing the pool.

  There was a red hand truck perched next to the pool. The surface of the water was rippling.

  She pulled her pistol and stepped outside.

  She looked around but saw no one. She slipped over to the side of the pool and looked down into its depths. As the water stopped moving and cleared, she saw something.

  It was Myron Pringle staring back up at her. He was barechested and in his swim trunks. A yellow float was nudging one side of the pool.

  Pine laid her gun down, took out her phone, the DVD, and the news article, and put them on a lounge chair, then dove into the water. She quickly reached the bottom, gripped Myron under the shoulders, and kicked off the bottom. She struggled to bring him to the surface, but finally managed to break the top of the water. She drew in a long breath before going under again. She kicked her feet and started moving to the side of the pool. She finally managed it and reached the steps. She tugged Myron up them and onto the side of the pool.

  She checked his pulse and found none. His eyes were closed, his chest still.

  She started performing CPR, pushing down on his chest, silently counting as she did so.

  Come on, come on. Don’t die on me.

  She kept pounding away, willing his heart to start breathing and his lungs to fill with air and push out the water there.

  Finally, with a long gasp and his body lurching upward, he started breathing again.

  She turned him on his side and manipulated his diaphragm until he vomited up the water he’d swallowed. Pine laid him back down and checked his pulse. It was weak, but his heart was still beating. If the splash had been him goin
g into the water, she thought she might have pulled him out in time to avoid any brain damage.

  Now she had to get him to a hospital as fast as possible. She turned to reach for her phone.

  And that was the last thing she remembered as the stunning blow landed against her head.

  Chapter 71

  PINE SLOWLY CAME TO and looked around. She had a searing pain in her head and her wet clothes felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds.

  She discovered she was back inside the Cape Cod.

  Pine focused on the woman sitting across from her and pointing her own Glock at her.

  Britta looked remarkably composed. Her hair was perfectly styled, and her cream slacks held not a single wrinkle. Her light blue blouse and white sweater over it were immaculate. She could have been heading out to a garden party or a lunch at a nice restaurant.

  “Where’s Myron?” said Pine.

  “Back where he is supposed to be,” she said calmly.

  “In the pool?”

  “Where he’s supposed to be.”

  “Then he’s dead?”

  “I certainly hope so. A terrible accident. It happens when nonswimmers fall off their float when no one is around, especially when they’ve been drinking. When they test him at the autopsy, he will be found to have a very high blood alcohol level. You panic, your lungs fill with water, and it’s over very quickly.”

  Pine looked at the woman somewhat in awe. This was a very different person from the seemingly frightened and out-of-her-depth wife that she and Laredo had recently interviewed.

  “You really put on a show for us at your house,” said Pine. “You had me convinced you knew nothing and were genuinely worried about Myron.”

  “I was worried, only not about Myron.”

  “You wanted us to find the porn videos,” observed Pine.

  When Britta didn’t respond, she said, “Is this all about revenge? I saw the video of Mary. And your son’s accident was really a suicide, right?”