“I’ll call him back.”
Justin watched as Reggie walked back into the living room. She didn’t slink or slither. She walked. Kind of heavily. He liked it. The way it was so unaffected and unself-conscious. She started to ask him if he wanted more coffee, but he quickly put his finger to his lips.
“Thanks, Gary. I’ll be at the station in about half an hour.”
“Ben said he’d have the info in about five minutes. If he can get it at all.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, he’s good.”
“If he doesn’t go to prison by the time he’s sixteen, he’s definitely got a future ahead of him.”
“I’ll give him your number, tell him to call you directly. Is that okay?”
“It’s perfect,” Justin said. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
He went and finally poured himself that second cup. In the living room, he sat down next to Reggie. As soon as he was settled in, he realized the close proximity made her uncomfortable. She didn’t move but he could feel her tense up. He waited a few seconds, stretched as if his back was stiff, stood and stepped over to the chair a few feet away. He could see her instantly relax.
“I’ll get going in a minute,” she said. “I just need a little more coffee.”
“Do you want to talk about last night?”
She shrugged, tried to keep it casual, but her body stiffened as if he’d brought up a taboo subject. “Is there something to talk about?”
“Not really. Nothing happened. I just don’t want it to be awkward.”
“It won’t be,” she said. “I know how to behave professionally. Last night. . We were both vulnerable, but nothing happened.”
Her tone was surprisingly distant and cool. There was no vulnerability today. Last night she’d been inviting. This morning there was a wall around her. A brick wall. He suddenly felt like a teenager, unsure of himself and off balance. The phone rang, letting him escape from his discomfort.
“Yeah,” Justin said into the receiver.
“It’s Ben,” the voice on the other end said. “Gary’s brother.”
“You got anything for me, Ben?”
“Do I really get my iPod?”
“It’s practically in the mail.”
“Okay, I got everything you wanted. You have a fax in your house?”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “Do you?”
“No. But I can fax it straight from my computer. I’ll do it right now ’cause I gotta get to school. My mom’s already ready to kill me.”
“Tell her I’ll write you the world’s greatest letter of recommendation when you’re ready for college. That’ll calm her down.”
“I don’t think anything can calm my mom down when she’s like this. What’s your fax number?”
Justin gave it to him and a few seconds later his fax machine rang. Moments after that, Justin was holding a sheet of paper with a well-
designed layout of La Cucina restaurant, not dissimilar from the table layout of Harper’s in Chuck Billings’s notebook. A second piece of paper had the names of everyone who had a lunch reservation from the day before, the day of the bombing, and the tables where they were to be seated.
Justin checked the list of names first. Martin Heffernan had a reservation. For two people. The restaurant had put him at table seventeen.
Justin went back to the page with the table layout. Table seventeen was to the left of the room after you came in. It was in the exact area to which Muaffak Abbas made a beeline with his bomb.
Justin Westwood forgot that Reggie Bokkenheuser was even in the room. He raced back to the phone, dialed a number in Providence.
“Wanda,” he said, when the FBI agent answered her phone. “Don’t say my name out loud.” There was silence from the other end. “Do you know who this is?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you call me back on a secure line? I’m at home.”
“You do know you’re starting to piss me off,” she said.
“Secure line. As fast as you can.” And he hung up.
“Well, I must say.” Reggie was looking at him now, her legs once again tucked under her. “You’ve piqued my curiosity.”
“I’ll explain later,” he said. “I think you’d better get out of here. Get to the station.”
She saw the look on his face, decided to skip any further banter. Reggie just got up and went upstairs to put her clothes on. The phone rang before she came down.
“Okay,” Wanda Chinkle said. “Now what?”
“Do you have any vacation time coming?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Listen,” Justin said. “These bombings. Harper’s and La Cucina. They’re not what they appear to be.”
“More of your paranoia?”
“No.” He told her about Martin Heffernan and the location of Abbas’s bomb. He told her about Bradford Collins and the location of Bashar Shabaan’s explosive.
“You got all this just since you were up here?”
“These weren’t random terrorist bombs, Wanda. We’re talking about victim-specific attacks here.”
“It’s a stretch, Jay. It’s a huge stretch.”
“I don’t think so. Chuck was onto something. He said that Shabaan’s bomb wasn’t a suicide device. That it was set off from somewhere else. By someone else. And he told somebody. I’m pretty sure that same somebody killed him. Or got him killed. And I’m also pretty sure that the somebody works for the goddamn FBI.”
“Jay-”
“Listen to the rest of it. Heffernan knew that plane crash wasn’t an accident. My guess is he’s the guy who rigged the manifold. But at some point, he also must have known it was tied into the Harper’s bombing. He probably figured it out on his own. And maybe he opened his mouth. He had a big one. So they had to kill him, too.”
“Jay, you’re starting to sound-”
“Yeah, I know how I sound. But guess what, Wanda? The FBI are the only ones, other than me, who knew Chuck had started to figure out something was wrong. They probably knew Heffernan’s role, too. And they’re both dead.”
“What does this have to do with my taking a vacation?”
“They know about you. You were asking about the pilot’s fingerprints. And you had an appointment with Chuck. Knowing you, your date was on the record, right there in your appointment book.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re connected to both of them. So it won’t take long for somebody to figure it out. Disappear, Wanda. Take a paid vacation starting now. Or just get the hell out of there. But disappear.”
“Jay, I just can’t leave-”
“They’ve killed a lot of people already. Two people are dead, Chuck and this guy Heffernan, just because they knew something about the Harper’s bombing and the plane crash.”
“Okay, Jay, let’s look at this logically. Who killed them?”
“I don’t know. Have you ever run across an FBI agent named Hubbell Schrader?”
“He’s the head of the New York bureau. . For God’s sake, Jay! You’re not saying he’s responsible for-”
“No. I’m not. I said I don’t know. But I just met Schrader and I didn’t like him.”
“You don’t like anyone.”
“Well, I particularly didn’t like him.”
“All right. Well, what about the other two guys? Collins and Cooke. Who killed them? Or better yet, why were they killed?”
“I don’t know that either. I just know that the four of them are dead. Don’t be the fifth.”
“I-”
“You’re what? You want me to tell you what you are? You’re the only other person they can connect to those two things.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t think they can tie me to it. Not for sure. I was just doing my job at the beginning, trying to get the pilot’s fingerprints. They don’t know what I have or don’t have. You gave me Cooke’s name and they don’t know that. Or do they?�
��
“No,” she said. “At least they don’t know it from me.”
“Well, Schrader was asking. I protected the both of us, at least the best I could. I don’t think they’ve got anything other than circumstance to connect me to Billings. There was no reason for him to mention me. I wasn’t talking to him about anything official. I told that to Schrader, too, and he seemed to buy it.”
“Let me think about it, Jay.”
“Wanda. .”
“I said I’ll think about it. I’m not ignoring what you’re saying. I just need to decide what to do about it.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“My neighbor’s. The apartment next door. She’s making me a nice hot cup of tea, which I’m going to drink and figure out whether you’re crazy or not.”
“Well, when you figure it out, lemme know.”
He hung up the phone just as Reggie came back downstairs. She was back in her jeans and boots.
“I’ll go get changed,” she said. “I can be at the station in about twenty minutes.” He didn’t respond to her, his mouth had opened a bit and his eyes were closed. “Is that okay?”
“Shit,” he said. And now his head was thrown back. “Shit shit shit shit!” He opened his eyes and, as she backed her way toward the front door, he snapped his fingers at her. “Hold on. Don’t go anywhere.” Justin grabbed for the phone again and dialed. “Gary,” he barked into the mouthpiece. “Call Thomas and Dennis. Tell them to find out where the hell Ray Lockhardt lives and tell them to get over there as fast as they can.”
“The guy from the airport?”
“Yeah. The manager. Get ’em to his house ASAP. If he’s there, tell them to make sure he stays there. And make sure they stay with him.” Justin slammed the phone down. He turned back to Reggie. “Come on,” he said.
“Like this?” She pointed down to her noncoplike clothes.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just like that.”
Justin stopped only to grab the gun that he kept locked in his desk drawer. He didn’t brush against Reggie on the way out or grab her by the hand. He looked at her the way he’d look at any other cop and just said, “There’s another one, goddammit! There’s already a goddamn fifth person.”
He knew it. As soon as he realized that Ray Lockhardt was in the picture, that Ray had also known that the plane that Hutchinson Cooke crashed had not gone down by accident, he knew he was going to be too late. And he was.
There was very little traffic this early at the East End airport. Ray’s office was dark and locked. Justin told Reggie to wait there and then he moved slowly, a defeated gait to his walk, to the nearer of the two private charter services. The guy working the counter was named Don and Justin asked if he’d seen Ray Lockhardt yet this morning.
“No,” Don said. “He’s usually in by now, checkin’ up on things, but I ain’t seen him.”
Justin went back to Lockhardt’s office.
“You know how to pick a lock?” Reggie asked.
“Sure,” Justin said, and took his gun out of its holster, used the butt to smash the beveled glass panel above the doorknob, then reached inside and opened the door. He didn’t wait for Reggie, he stepped quickly inside the office, flicked the light on.
Ray Lockhardt was sitting in his chair, behind his desk. Everything looked fairly normal. Except for the blood splattered on the back wall of the office. And the bullet that had shredded most of the right side of Ray’s face.
Justin rubbed his eyes. The headache was coming on big-time.
Dr. Morgan Davidson walked into the East End Harbor police station. He nodded at the usual bunch of cops, all of whom he knew. And he smiled at the sexy young woman sitting at one of the policemen’s desks. Dr. Davidson had an eye for the ladies. And they were usually pretty good about eyeing him back.
“If there’s anything you need,” he said to the woman with a wink, “let me know. If they’re not doing what they should for you. I know these guys pretty well.” She nodded. “Morgan Davidson,” he said. “Doctor Davidson.”
“Reggie Bokkenheuser,” the woman said. “Sergeant Bokkenheuser. If you’re here to see Chief Westwood, he’s in the office back there.” As the flustered physician bobbed his head up and down nervously, then headed for the office, she added, “And thanks for the tip, Doc. I’ll let you know if I need you.” Then she winked.
Inside the small office, Davidson closed the door behind him. “New officer?” he asked.
“You mind if we skip the small talk just now, Morgan? I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
The doctor shrugged, put his report on the desk in front of Justin. “Lockhardt’s been dead about twelve hours. Which means he was probably killed around seven or eight last night. No surprise, it was the bullet that did all the damage. Probably a.38, shot from very close range. That’s about all I can give you right now.” When Justin didn’t answer, Davidson said, “You all right?”
“Oh yeah,” Justin said. “I’m just great.”
When the doctor left, Justin sat on the edge of the desk for a good minute.
Bradford Collins, Hutchinson Cooke, Chuck Billings, Martin Heffernan, and now Ray Lockhardt. Not to mention Jimmy Leggett and nearly seventy other innocent victims.
He picked up the phone, called Wanda Chinkle, once again insisted she call him back on a secure line. When she returned the call, he told her that Lockhardt was dead.
“You still want to think about what you’re going to do?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Wanda,” he said. “What do you think it is that makes a good cop? I don’t mean just cop, I mean investigator, FBI, whatever.”
“Lots of things,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Doggedness. Determination. The ability not to panic under pressure.”
“Yeah. All that’s true.”
“But that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“No. You know what makes a good investigator?”
“What?”
“The ability to see things.”
“What kind of things, Jay?”
“Patterns. Why people do things. How they do things. But mostly a good cop sees something that happens over here, then connects it to something that happens over there. You agree?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll go along with that.”
“Well, there’s a connection, I mean a real connection, between what happened at Harper’s and what happened at La Cucina. Not just a connection, a lead. A way to find out who’s behind all this. Only your guys are ignoring it. Because they don’t want to find out who’s behind it.”
“I can’t believe that, Jay.”
“How about if I make you believe me?”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I’ll catch the guy who did it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll catch the guy who blew up the two restaurants. The guy the lying scumbags you work with don’t want caught.”
“You’re a good cop, Jay. And you can make all the connections you want. But you’re a crazy son of a bitch if you even think about getting in the middle of this.”
“I am a crazy son of a bitch, Wanda. That’s why you’ve gotta find something out for me. Just one thing. If you can do it without getting yourself killed.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Jacks,” he told her.”
“What?”
“Jacks. The little kid’s game. The little pointy things.”
“Whatever you might think, I’m still a girl. I know what jacks are. What about them?”
“I want to know if your boys found any in La Cucina. After the bombing. But be careful. I’m not screwing around here. Don’t go anywhere without other people. Other people you know and trust. Don’t get caught alone. And especially watch out for anyone official who’s involved in this investigation.”
She paused again. Then: “While I’m being careful. . and while, as usual, I’m s
pending my life trying to give you something you need to know. . what exactly are you going to do?”
“I’m the new chief of police,” Justin Westwood said. “I’m gonna do my fucking job.”
PART TWO
16
Special Agent Hubbell Schrader had never thought of himself as a violent man.
He had never struck his wife, or any other woman, no matter the provocation, nor had he so much as spanked any of his three children when they were still of spanking age.
He rarely raised his voice, he did not grind his teeth, he had never experienced even the remotest form of road rage, he did not have a residue of anger that he carried around with him, as so many law enforcement officers he knew carried with them, and as best as he could remember, going all the way back to childhood, he had never even been in a fistfight.
Which is why he was so surprised when he woke up several mornings ago to realize that he had, in his life, killed six people.
He had no regrets about any of the first five deaths. They had all come in the line of duty and all of them had been fully investigated and validated. Three of the killings were, in fact, viewed so positively he could trace his latest promotion-Special Agent in Charge of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation-directly back to them. They had occurred at the end of a kidnapping case; the six-year-old daughter of the U.S. senator from Oregon had been taken, part of a protest against the senator’s stand in favor of gay marriage. At least that’s what the kidnappers had said. Schrader knew that was bullshit. Kidnappings were never political. Kidnappings were only and always about one of two things. They were either personal-someone couldn’t have a child but wanted one; someone hated the parent and wanted to deprive him or her of a most beloved possession-or they were about money. Nothing in between. The senator’s daughter was about money. But the people who snatched the kid weren’t bright enough to pull it off. They left a trail so traceable they might as well have scattered breadcrumbs leading to their doorway. Schrader had broken the case easily but the endgame got messy. Three of the kidnappers-two men, one woman-used the little girl as a hostage. There was a shootout. One agent serving under Schrader took a bullet in the leg, had his kneecap shattered, and was now on permanent disability. Schrader took out all three perps. The little girl was saved, Schrader was proclaimed a hero-got his fifteen minutes of fame on the front page of the New York Post and even had some movie producer give him thirty-five thousand dollars as option for his “life rights,” although nothing ever came of it other than his wife got a long weekend in Bermuda and his kids’ college funds got padded. Within a few weeks of the rescue, he was put in charge of the New York office.
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