He stepped out onto the house’s tiny back porch and lit a cigarette. He looked at the neatly wrapped plastic bundle lying by the steps. He sighed. It had been a chore wrestling Lundgren’s body out the door, and getting him into the trunk of the car wasn’t going to be any easier, especially considering the things that were already packed there. He had decided to abandon this safe house, but he had a lot of gear stored here; weapons, explosives, and the other tools of his trade. He didn’t want to leave them behind where someone could stumble across them, and they very well might come in handy on his quest. But now, with a body to dispose of, he’d most likely have to move some of the bulkier items around. He decided to take a break beforehand. He sat down on the steps and took a drag off his cigarette. It was clouding over, with the faint smell of rain on the wind. DeGroot savored the moment.
He had to admit, he liked it here. The area where he had grown up had been hot and dry. The scant rainfall and lack of major rivers had made drought a constant and lurking specter. But the land here was rich, webbed with creeks and small rivers. He turned them over in his mind, considering their suitability for what he had to do next. While he thought, he picked up a pair of pants from the neatly folded pile on the steps. He pulled Lundgren’s wallet from the back pocket and flipped it open. He removed the small amount of cash from it. He flipped idly through the plasticine folders one last time. Military ID, PX card, driver’s license. The wallet had produced nothing particularly useful before, and he didn’t expect anything different now.
He was, he admitted to himself, just stalling. He pulled the cards out, one by one. He’d scatter them randomly at various places away from the body. As he pulled the cards out, a small card fell from between them. DeGroot picked it up. It was a business card, a fancy one. The raised lettering read “Black, Diamond, and Healy, Attorneys and Counselors at Law.” In smaller letters beneath were printed a name and phone number.
“Tamara Healy,” he said out loud. “Now who might this be?” When he flipped the card over, he got his answer. Scrawled on the back of the card in blue ink was a note: “Talk to my lawyer. C.”
“Hmmm,” said DeGroot out loud. “I might just have to do that.” He stood up. “Okay, tjommie,” he said to the body. “Time to get back to work.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Marie sat in the waiting room of Black, Diamond, and Healy, leafing through a magazine without actually looking at it. She wondered if Tamara Healy would make an issue out of paying her for the time already expended. She wondered how long her rapidly dwindling savings would hold out. She wondered what it was that Keller had done to piss the client off.
“Damn it, Jack,” she whispered under her breath. She had already halfway decided that she was going to drop the case after what she had found out about Carly Fedder. But when she found out that Keller had gotten them fired, the cold feeling of financial panic she had experienced made her wonder if she had ever intended to go more than halfway. Part of her didn’t like the feeling that she would continue working the case, even against her better judgment. Another part of her, fiercer and more primitive, defiantly told her that she would do anything to keep a roof over her and her son’s head.
Marie sighed. Being a cop had had its share of ambiguities and gray areas. But it had been nothing like this. As a police officer, she had been part of a community. There were people she could turn to, who could give her some feedback as to right and wrong. But she had been severed from that community forever. She knew now the way her fellow cops had turned away from her demonstrated their ethical guidance may have been suspect, to say the least. She still missed it.
Tamara Healy interrupted her reverie by breezing into the waiting room from the hallway leading back toward the offices. She clutched a sheaf of phone message slips in one hand and motioned Marie into the hallway with the other. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Marie,” she said over her shoulder as Marie followed her. “Mondays are usually kind of a zoo around here.” She led Marie into a small conference room. “Coffee?” she said. Marie shook her head no.
“So,” the lawyer said as she sat down at the head of the table. “Before we discuss this little friction between our client and Mr. Keller, tell me what you’ve found out.”
Marie took a deep breath. “You may not like it,” she said.
Healy smiled grimly. “Maybe,” she said. “But I like surprises even less. Especially when they happen to me in court.”
“Okay,” Marie said. She told Healy about her interviews with the day-care personnel. The lawyer listened without expression, asking a terse question here and there. Marie finished by saying, “I don’t know if Carly Fedder is the right person to have custody of Alyssa.”
Healy arched an eyebrow at her. “Oh?” she said. “And the better choice would be the absentee father that she barely knows? The one who barely showed an interest for the first five years of the girl’s life?” She held up her hand and stopped Marie’s answer. “We don’t get to make those choices, Marie. That’s why we have the folks in the black robes. All I do is present my client’s side. Something Dave Lundgren never gave my client…our client…a chance to do.” Marie must have still looked doubtful. Healy leaned forward, her eyes locked earnestly on Marie’s. “Think about it this way,” she said. “You used to be a cop. And a good one, from what I hear. Did you like it when people took the law into their own hands?”
“I didn’t,” Marie admitted.
Healy’s voice picked up intensity, as if she were building to the climax of a closing argument. “Well, that’s exactly what Sergeant David Lundgren did, Marie. He didn’t give the law a chance to work. He just grabbed that girl and took her away from the only home she ever knew. It may not have been perfect, but it was her home. And now she’s God knows where, with no way to know if she’s safe or not.”
“Wow,” Marie said. “You’re pretty good.”
Healy looked startled for a moment, then grinned.
“Sorry,” she said. “I get a little carried away.” She leaned back. “Anyway,” she said, “let’s move on. I had a message this morning that a couple of FBI agents dropped by, wanting to see me.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“Hell, no!” Healy said. “And you don’t, either. Anything I know is covered by attorney-client privilege. And since you work for me, so are you.”
“They’re looking for Jack…Mr. Keller, too,” Marie said. “And he thinks they’re watching my house.”
For the first time, Healy looked concerned. She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Him…I don’t know. He’s not really officially an employee. I could argue that he’s covered by privilege, but it’s not a slam dunk.”
Marie smiled wryly. “It won’t make any difference to him if he’s covered or not. If he doesn’t want to talk, he won’t. And he’s not happy with the FBI right now.”
“Still,” Healy said, “I want to cover the bases here. We’ll put him on the payroll. Special consultant or something. Ask him to call me.”
“What about the client?” Marie said. “She wants us fired.”
“Don’t worry about Carly,” Healy said. “I’ll straighten it out. But it might be better to just let me deal with the client from now on.”
Marie stood up. “Thanks,” she said.
Healy stood up as well. “I’m not just being nice,” she said. “It’s better to have you two inside the wire rather than out.”
Marie pondered that. “Thanks anyway,” she said.
Healy shook her hand. “Don’t mention it.”
It wasn’t until she was on her way out the door that Marie realized she had talked herself back into remaining on the case. She laughed ruefully to herself. “Played again,” she muttered.
***
The Chinese restaurant Wilcox had picked out had a railroad theme, with the dining area divided into long, narrow rooms like dining cars. Booths ran down either side of the central aisle. The booths had high backs that blocked off sounds of conversation. “You havin
g buffet?” the slender waitress said in heavily accented English as Keller slid into the booth.
“I’m waiting for someone,” Keller said. “Give me a few minutes.”
The waitress looked baffled for an instant, then smiled broadly. “Okay,” she chirped. “Something to drink?” It was obvious that she had exhausted her entire stock of English. Keller ordered a beer. The girl nodded and walked off.
Wilcox arrived at the same time as the beer. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a cheap off-the-rack suit that had seen better days. From his haggard, baggy-eyed look, so had Willcox.
“You having buffet?” the girl repeated. Wilcox nodded and ordered water.
“So,” Keller said after they had filled their plates. “The FBI. What’s the deal?”
Wilcox pushed some rice around on his plate. “It’s not just Lundgren,” he said. “There are two others missing.”
“All Deltas?” Keller asked.
Wilcox nodded glumly. “All from the same unit.”
“And all just back from Afghanistan,” Keller said.
Wilcox nodded again. “The two FBI agents—Gerritsen and Rankin—are from a Bureau task force. They’re working the terrorist angle.”
Keller shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Terrorists would want to make an example. They wouldn’t disappear these guys. They’d blow them up.”
“That’s what I keep trying to tell them,” Wilcox said. “But anything that could even remotely be terrorist related has them all jumping at shadows. Now they’re even doing background checks on all three, seeing if maybe they might have crossed over.”
“What, you mean defected?” Keller snorted in derision. “Right. These guys are motivated. They’d cut their own nuts off before they’d join the other side.”
Wilcox’s jaw tightened. “I know that, and you know that,” he said. “But the Bureau doesn’t know that. And let’s be real. There’s a lot more corners here than you realize. Hell, they may have formed their own side.”
Keller considered that for a moment. Then he looked at Wilcox and spread his hands. “So why are we here?”
Wilcox took a deep breath. “We’re here to pool information,” he said. “Maybe something you know will fit with something I know that makes sense.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Wilcox gave him a humorless smile. “Then we’ve both wasted our time, and if someone learns about this, my career is over, probably worse. The only consolation I have is that you’d probably end up in the same prison as me.”
“Got it,” Keller said. “I don’t like you; you don’t like me. But we have to work together. Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte will end up playing us in the movie.”
“I’d rather be played by De Niro,” Wilcox said.
“With my luck, it’ll end up being Adam Sandler and Whoopi Goldberg,” Keller said. “But why are you really here?”
“There’s a child involved. I didn’t know that before. Neither the FBI nor the Special Ops types thought that was important enough to fill me in on. I happen to think that’s pretty damn important.”
“You have kids.”
“Yeah. Two.”
“Okay,” Keller said. “Fair enough.” He filled Wilcox in on what he and Marie had learned so far. Then he leaned back and took a sip of his drink. “Your turn.”
Wilcox hesitated, then took a deep breath. “The two other guys that disappeared at the same time as Lundgren were named Mike Riggio and Robert Powell. They went through training together. Hung out together off duty.”
“They were tight.”
“All those types get pretty tight with one another. Comes with the territory. But yeah, they were buddies. For one thing, they were the only unmarried guys on the team. They didn’t have any close family connections. Riggio’s parents were both dead, and Powell’s were divorced. His psych profile said he wasn’t close to either of them. Didn’t say why.”
“They were the only family each other had,” Keller said.
“Yeah. Some guys, the Army becomes their family, you know?”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “I know.”
He remembered faces, looking at him in the dim glow of a chemlite, huddled close in the confines of a Bradley fighting vehicle. Looking to him to get them home.
“Where we at, Sergeant?” a voice spoke up. It was Michaels, the guy from Louisiana they had nicknamed “Forty Mike” because of his talent with the 40mm grenade launcher. Michaels could drop a grenade within an inch of anywhere you cared to point out.
“Dunno, Forty,” Keller had said. “The GPS is deader’n shit. I’m going outside to take a piss and look around. Maybe get a fix on the stars.” The answer seemed to satisfy them. They slumped back in the web seats. Some of them pulled their helmets down over their eyes to sleep. In truth, Keller could no more navigate by the stars here than he could sprout wings and fly. But he had to say something. They trusted him.
He exited the vehicle through the rear hatch and stretched. He walked a few feet away, unzipped, and took a piss on the desert. When he was done, he heard the sound of rotor blades. It had to be one of the good guys. The bad guys no longer had an air force to speak of. He raised his hands and started waving. It was a stupid gesture in the dark, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey—”
A Hellfire missile homes in on a laser beam focused on a target from a ground observer or from the launching aircraft itself. It is primarily intended to pierce the heavy armor of a main battle tank. Against a lightly armored target like a Bradley, the effect is devastating. Keller saw the trail of the missile’s rocket motor like a bolt of white light from the sky. It touched the Bradley and the world seemed to explode. Keller was knocked to the ground by the blast. Then he heard the screaming as the Bradley caught fire.
“You okay, Keller?” Wilcox was saying.
Keller shook his head to clear it. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t look it,” Wilcox said. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” Keller said.
Wilcox’s cell phone rang. He continued to regard Keller with a doubtful expression as he pulled it out. “Wilcox,” he said. Then the blood seemed to drain from his face. “When?” he snapped. “How long had he…okay. I’ll be there. Don’t do anything…Damn it!” The person on the other end had obviously hung up the phone. He snapped the cell phone shut and looked at Keller.
“The Hoke County Sheriff’s Department just found David Lundgren’s body in Drowning Creek,” he said.
“The little girl?” Keller asked.
Wilcox shook his head. “No sign of her.” He stood up. “You’d better come with me, Mr. Keller,” he said. “I’ll need to ask you some questions on a more official basis. And your girlfriend.”
“Wait a minute,” Keller said. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“We did,” Wilcox said. “But that was before this became a murder investigation. And the terrorist angle is looking a lot more plausible.” He paused. “It looks like Lundgren was tortured before he was shot.”
***
Alyssa stared. The deer was standing not more than twenty feet away. It seemed wary, but not afraid. It was a fawn, like the picture of Bambi on the wall at Miss Melanie’s. But this one was real. She realized her mouth was open and closed it. “You stand there with your mouth open,” Miss Violet always said, “an’ birds might just nest in it.” Alyssa was pretty sure that Miss Violet was teasing, but there sure were a lot of birds up here, so she decided to play it safe. As she watched the fawn intently, a doe stepped out of the woods behind it. It must be the fawn’s mommy, she thought. She wondered what her own mommy was doing right then. She wondered where her dad was. Then it hit her. “I’ll bet Dad is going to get Mommy and bring her up here,” she said out loud. The sudden outburst shattered the silence in the clearing and the doe bounded away, followed closely by the fawn.
Alyssa
was disappointed for a moment, but the thrill of the idea that her mommy and her dad were going to come up here together blew the disappointment away like a morning fog. She scooped up FredtheFrog and looked him in the eye. “That’s it,” she told the frog decisively. “We’ll all be together, and Mommy won’t be so sad and tired all the time, and we’ll see deer every day.” FredtheFrog wisely said nothing. Alyssa looked around. The cabin where her uncles had taken her sat just below the crest of a heavily wooded mountain. There were other mountains all around, but this was the best one because it was higher. You could see forever from up here. Mommy was going to love it.
There was the heavy thunk of a vehicle door slamming, and Alyssa’s heart leaped. Maybe that was them now. She ran toward the tiny cabin, holding FredtheFrog by one leg. But it was only Uncle Mike. He had an armful of groceries in a brown paper sack. He looked upset. She ran up to him anyway. “Did you see my dad?” she asked. He looked even more upset. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing, honey,” he said. “I need to talk to Uncle Bobby, okay? Can you stay out here for a few minutes?”
“Okay,” she said doubtfully, then brightened. “I saw a deer,” she said.
“That’s nice,” Uncle Mike said absently. He went into the cabin.
Alyssa sat down on the steps. She felt deflated, like an old balloon. She looked at FredtheFrog. She ran her finger over the frog’s tummy, feeling the outline of the secret beneath the felt. Maybe FredtheFrog wasn’t talking because he had a tummyache. She was starting to get one, too.
CHAPTER NINE
Kak!” DeGroot spat out the expletive as he read the words in the file.
Safe and Sound Page 6
