Getting Away Is Deadly

by Sara Rosett

  I shrugged. “I’m still not sure who to believe. So, is that his name, Faiza?”

  “No,” Tony said and didn’t elaborate.

  “And that was him at the reflecting pool on the Mall?”

  “Oh yes. That was him.” Tony folded the paper and slipped it into the inside pocket of his dark suit jacket. Apparently, his talkative mood had dried up and he wasn’t going to answer my questions like he had on the night of the fund-raiser. But I figured I could keep asking him questions of my own.

  “So, you know about his…” I waved my hand at his suit where the paper had disappeared. I had done the right thing, hadn’t I? Tony was the one to give it to, wasn’t he?

  Tony finished my sentence for me. “About his association with groups that raise money for radical causes? Yes.”

  “So, he does…what? Sends them money?” Mitch asked.

  Tony nodded. “Yes. We know what he’s doing.”

  “You’re letting him send them money? And you know he works in this hotel?” My voice became sharper with each question. “He could be dangerous. How can you let him work here? What if he does more than send money? He could endanger people here.”

  In contrast to my rather piercing tone, Tony’s voice was low and smooth. “We know what he’s doing. We’re watching him. We’re letting him do it.” He said the last line with special emphasis.

  Mitch said, “You’re using him to lead you to the groups that are questionable. The ones that are funneling money to radicals?”

  Tony didn’t agree with him aloud, but dipped his head in Mitch’s direction. I took that as an acknowledgment that Mitch had hit on the truth. Tony glanced back at me. “We’re watching him and he’s not going to do anything without us knowing about it.”

  “But why would he use the business center here at the hotel?” I wondered aloud. “Isn’t that a little risky?”

  Tony said, “I can’t say anything about the person you saw today, but I can say, in general, people who don’t want to leave a trail of information that connects them to certain transactions often use public computers.”

  It did make sense. Unlike using a personal computer, the computer at the hotel business center was open to any hotel guest. It would be difficult to trace activity on it back to anyone. And Faiza—even if it wasn’t his real name, that was how I’d begun to think of him—could slip in there and log on to his free e-mail account during slow times or right before or after his shift. I didn’t know all the ins and outs of the Internet, but it seemed like his free e-mail account would also give him some degree of anonymity.

  “I can assure you that the hotel staff and all public parts of the hotel are under careful scrutiny,” Tony said, then shifted the conversation away from the desk clerk. “Now, the reason I’m so rudely interrupting your vacation,” he said briskly.

  “It hasn’t felt like a vacation for several days,” I muttered. “And it’s getting more surreal by the moment.”

  Tony continued in his businesslike tone. “I talked to Summer today and she said she took some mail from Jorge’s apartment.”

  I said, “Summer talked to you? Obviously, she didn’t listen to me.”

  “That’s nothing new. Summer never listens to anyone,” Mitch said.

  “She definitely knows her mind.” There was a moment when I could swear the two men sized up each other. I glanced back and forth between the two of them, not sure what was going to happen.

  Mitch said, “That’s a pretty accurate assessment of my sister.” The tension eased.

  Tony seemed to relax a little as he turned back to me. “She said you might still have the mail that was in Jorge’s mailbox?”

  “I’ve got the envelope that held the check from Lena. Summer has the check.” I walked over to the dresser.

  “I know. Summer gave it to me.” I must have looked surprised because he added, “It’s evidence. Bagged and tagged. I’m not keeping it. I need the rest of the mail.”

  “You want Jorge’s junk mail?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it junk. You’ve still got it?”

  “Yes,” I pulled it out from under a stack of magazines and newspapers on the dresser and handed it to him, but I wished I could look through it again. Why did he want it?

  “Thank you very much.” Tony headed for the door. “Sorry to disturb you.”

  “Wait. What’s in there? I saw you check his mailbox the other day. You were looking for junk mail?”

  “You saw that, did you?” He looked from me to Mitch, seeming to evaluate us for a moment. Then he pulled out the glossy flyer for teeth whitening. “There is no Potomac Dental Center.”

  The flyer looked like the countless ones I received and trashed every day. I wouldn’t have glanced at it twice. Tony continued. “It’s a message to Jorge, setting up a time and meeting place, a meeting that I don’t want to miss. You have to have the grille, a piece of paper with holes in it, to read the message. You put the grille over this and then you can read the message.”

  “And you’ve got the grille?” Mitch asked.

  Tony nodded. “I do. I just needed the message. Thanks.” He shook hands with Mitch and then with me. “Hopefully, I’ll be less rushed next time I see you. Don’t worry about Summer. My…inquiries…are about to wind up. Once that is finished, we’ll inform Detective Brown about Jorge’s real identity and that will help take the pressure off Summer.” The door closed behind him and Mitch looked at me.

  I dropped onto the bed. “That was weird.”

  Mitch sat down in a chair and pulled on his shoes. “Who would have thought someone would use junk mail to send a message?”

  “I know, but it does make sense in a twisted sort of way,” I said. “Junk mail is so annoying that I don’t pay any attention to it. I just toss it, but what if someone called the phone number on the flyer?”

  Mitch looked up as he tied his shoes. “It probably isn’t a real number, but I guess someone could set up a phone number and take messages. Or maybe they had one of those phone mail message centers with the automated voice and forty options. I know after a few minutes of that I’d just give up and call somewhere else.” Mitch stood up. “So, are you ready for one more museum?”

  “We’re going to a museum? More sightseeing after everything? That doesn’t seem right.”

  Mitch picked up his phone and clipped it on his belt. “It’ll be better than sitting around this room all day. Tony’s going to take care of what he needs to with that information, and when he wraps up his end of things, the focus of Detective Brown’s investigation will change.” Mitch held out my purse for me.

  I stood in the middle of the room for a few seconds, then reluctantly took my purse. He was right. We’d done what we could. Tony would do his job and bring in the members of the cell—at least, that’s what I thought he meant when he said his inquiry was near an end—and then that would help reveal that there were more people who had a motive to want Jorge dead besides Summer. I sighed. I didn’t really want to look at aircraft and spaceships, but it would be better than looking at the hotel room walls for the rest of the day.

  A few hours later, I stood on the wide walkway that bisected the second floor of the museum. I leaned against the railing and gazed at the Spirit of St. Louis. Suspended at eye-level with me, it hung above the open-entry atrium where tourists flowed in, swirled around the moon rock and Mercury 7. John Glenn had orbited the earth’s atmosphere in Mercury 7. Since Nadia was touring Mount Vernon today, she wasn’t here to act as impromptu tour guide. I’d had to read the information card. I flipped to my map of the Mall to see how far we were from the National Gallery of Art. Maybe we’d have time to go by there before the day was over.

  Air and space definitely weren’t my things. The museum was interesting, but the place didn’t enthrall me, like some of the other museums had. I gazed at the Spirit of St. Louis, thinking how light and fragile it looked compared to some of the sleek modern displays, like the lunar capsule and the missile below it. Th
e small plane I could relate to. It made me think of the Jimmy Stewart movie and the first solo transatlantic flight. The plane looked a little out of place against the lines of the glass and steel atrium.

  “Imagine flying all the way across the Atlantic in that little thing,” I said to Mitch.

  “Umm.” His head was down as he focused on the map of the building. He glanced up, saw where I was looking, and said, “Yeah. I have to hand it to Lindbergh. That was flying.”

  “I’m not as interested in the rest of it. The missiles, the moon stuff.”

  “That’s okay. Want to catch a show at the IMAX?” Mitch asked.

  “No. I have to meet MacInally, but you go ahead.”

  “Oh no. Today we stick together.”

  “Sounds good.” I checked my watch. “It’s almost three. I figured it would be easier to see him from up here. Do you want to look at anything else later?” I asked.

  “No. I’m good. I’ve seen everything. I thought you wanted to see this museum.”

  I smiled. “I came because I thought you wanted to see it. I figured, planes, you know. That’s your thing. My plan was to hang out with you today and see what you wanted to see.”

  “I see planes every day.”

  “Yeah. That’s right.” It was a classic case of knowing someone so well that I missed the most basic thing. “Well, what do you want to see? After we talk to MacInally we can go anywhere you want to.”

  “The natural history museum sounded interesting. That was the one with the dinosaurs, right?”

  “Among other things,” I said. I could happily prowl around there some more. “I don’t see MacInally. Let’s go down a little farther.”

  We turned and I let my hand trail along the shiny banister as we walked. “I guess I’m not very good company today. I’m having a hard time focusing. I keep thinking about the whole incident with the desk clerk. Actually, my mind keeps skipping from that to what I read about Lena. It doesn’t match with what MacInally said.”

  “And that bothers you.”

  “Yes. It does.”

  When we reached the end of the banister, we both leaned on our elbows and watched the crowd.

  “So, what did it say about her online again?” Mitch asked.

  “Her bio with STAND says she grew up in Georgia and graduated from the University of Georgia, where she got a degree in nursing. She was an Army nurse in the late sixties to the early seventies, which was during the Vietnam War, but the Web site doesn’t say where she was sent. Those dates fall during the time that MacInally was wounded in Korea, so she could have been there. She could have met him in Korea.”

  “So ask him about it today,” Mitch said.

  “I’m going to.”

  “There was something else. I didn’t have time to tell you. I looked up Alan Archer, too.”

  “And?”

  “It was harder to find information about him, but there are several prominent mentions of his time in Vietnam. Lots of medals.” Mitch would have known the significance of many of the names that didn’t mean much to me, but I couldn’t remember all of them.

  “Was he career?” Mitch asked, meaning had Archer made the military a career?

  “Yes. He retired a full bird colonel. He’s had civil service jobs at the Pentagon since then. Now he’s on the BRAC. That was it.”

  We’d been watching the crowd and I said, “Look at that man. That’s got to be the world’s worst toupee. Do you see him?”

  “How could I not?” Mitch said. The man had to be at least in his sixties, but his hair was a solid black and the hair above each ear rose straight up in a huge curl. The two rolls of hair met in the center of his forehead and dipped toward his nose. It was like a really bad cartoon sketch of John Travolta’s character in Grease.

  I scanned the room again. “Oh, wait. There’s MacInally.” He had on a tan windbreaker over a golf shirt. He was the one person who wasn’t moving around on the floor below us.

  I waved and caught his eye, motioning that we’d come down the escalator. A few minutes later we’d moved to the food court area and were seated at a table under a very noisy air conditioner. MacInally set a cup of coffee down on a napkin. Mitch handed me a chocolate shake before settling into his chair.

  “I probably shouldn’t drink this,” I said and took a long slug on the straw.

  “Calcium.” Mitch winked. “You need it. And you’re on vacation.”

  “Right. I’ll just tell my doctor the extra fifteen pounds I gained this week is all calcium,” I joked.

  MacInally had been removing the lid from his coffee and didn’t seem to have heard our exchange. “I forgot what a racket there is in here,” he said as the vent droned above us.

  The only up side was that we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing our conversation. “It’s all the glass,” MacInally said. The room was a boxy modern-day conservatory with glass ceiling and walls. Add throngs of tourists, several fast food restaurants cranking out steaming fries and burgers as if they were on conveyer belts, and the place bordered on sweltering.

  “So, you’ve enjoyed your visit here?” MacInally asked.

  “I have,” I said. “I’m not so sure about Mitch. It’s been work for him. He hasn’t really seen anything except the Ronald Reagan building. And restaurants, lots of restaurants.”

  Mitch shrugged. “It’s been fine. I’ll see a few things this weekend.”

  MacInally took a sip of his coffee and pleated the edge of his napkin. “How much longer are you here?”

  “Just until Monday. We fly out in the afternoon.”

  MacInally nodded, his gaze on his coffee cup. I glanced over at Mitch as I took another big slurp of my shake. Something was wrong. MacInally seemed distracted, like he didn’t really want to be here. He folded the corner of his napkin a few more times. Maybe he didn’t know how to begin?

  I leaned over the table and said, “Mr. MacInally—” That got his attention and he opened his mouth to correct me, but I said, “Sorry. Jay. If you don’t want to talk about Noel, that’s okay.”

  “No.” He sat up straighter. “I do want to talk about Noel.” But then his phone rang. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”

  His side of the conversation didn’t amount to much. He only said yes a couple of times. Mitch slid his arm around my shoulders and leaned in to whisper in my ear, “I think he’s nervous. Maybe if I leave the table he’ll feel more comfortable.”

  MacInally said, “Fine. I’ll meet you there in an hour.” He punched a button on his phone and placed it on the table near a pile of napkins.

  Mitch stood up. “I think I’ll get one of those shakes for myself. You two go ahead. Don’t wait on me. The line’s long.”

  MacInally nodded. Did he look paler? His dark eyebrows and eyes contrasted with his skin, which looked as white as the napkin he was fidgeting with again. He took a swig of his coffee and set the cup down with a thump on the table. “Ellie, there’s no new story about when Noel and I were on leave. I just told you that so I could meet with you again.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Okay,” I said slowly. His gaze was concentrated and I leaned back in my chair. He scared me a little. I looked over his shoulder and saw Mitch waiting in the longest line, watching me. I swallowed and refocused on MacInally. We were in a crowded restaurant. I had no reason to be afraid. As I looked closer at MacInally, I saw a couple of drops of sweat at his hairline. He grabbed a few napkins and wiped his face.

  “Are you feeling all right? Are you sick?” I asked, my alarm had switched from fear to worry for him. Was he about to have a heart attack or something? He’d been through a lot in the last week. Maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought.

  “No.” He took a deep breath and leaned forward, his elbows braced on the table. “What I told you before about Noel, how he shot at the patrol that night, that was how I remembered it.” His tone was regretful, almost apologetic. “It was in the official report.”

  “Rig
ht. That’s what you told me.” Did he think I doubted him?

  “I’ve been thinking about that day.” He drained the last of his coffee. Tremors from his hand made the cup tremble for a second before he put it down. “More of it is coming back to me.” He looked up from his cup and held my gaze. “And what’s coming back to me, my memories, don’t match the official report.”

  The air conditioner droned as he waited for my reaction. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I didn’t either. It means I was lied to.” He waited for that to sink in and then he said, “And it means that Noel’s family believed a lie.”

  “What lie?” I realized my hands were icy. I put the shake down.

  “The lie that Noel killed Shipley and wounded me.”

  “What? That’s not true? But you believed it was.”

  MacInally held my gaze and said, “At the beginning of this week, I believed it. Now I don’t.” He pushed his empty cup of coffee and napkin away, making room for his forearms on the table. His color looked better, but I think mine probably looked worse. Why had he put me through that worry?

  “God, it’s a relief to say it,” he said, almost to himself. He tilted his head and asked, “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m trying to understand,” I said, crossing my arms.

  MacInally snorted. “Me, too. Look, last week I believed Noel shot Shipley and me. That’s what everyone said. I had what the docs call dissociative amnesia, but my memory loss was selective. I could remember bits and pieces, but most of that day, after the claymores went off, was gone. I remember the mosquitoes and the rocks tossed to probe our position. And until I went into the hospital a few days ago, I didn’t remember anything else. But this week, I think it was being in the hospital again…” He paused and ran his hands over his hair. “I can’t explain it, but stuff started to come back. Anyway, what I know now is that Noel didn’t fire that gun.”

  “Then who did?” A sudden horrible thought hit me. “Did you?”

  He actually laughed. “No. Now, that would have been a terrible thing to remember. Here I thought remembering what really happened was awful, but you’re right, if that was what I remembered, that would be worse.” He smiled ruefully. “Sorry. This is a little stressful. It was the other man on patrol with us, Alan, who shot me and Shipley.”