HUNTER

by Bidinotto, Robert

  She shut her eyes. Held them closed a moment more.

  Decided.

  She replaced the plastic bag within the envelope. Fastened the clasp. Placed the envelope on the seat again.

  Then she keyed over the ignition. Backed out of her parking space. Headed for the exit.

  She did not look into the rearview mirror again.

  THIRTY-SIX

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  Wednesday, December 24, 11:21 a.m.

  Hunter stood in the middle of the living room, going over things in his head one more time, just in case he missed anything.

  He’d never kept much here in the way of personal items, and he’d moved a lot of it out, a bit at a time, in recent weeks. What little was left now was in the trunk of the car downstairs.

  He had already packed his bug-out bag and had Luna’s pet carrier ready to go. He’d shredded the files from the hidden drawer in the bookcase, stuck the other items in the bug-out bag. Though the computer was still up and running, he planned to take it with him. But just in case he couldn’t, the hard drive was ready to be pulled out and transported. Or destroyed at the touch of a button, if it came to that.

  He had also moved his other vehicles late last night to one of his other safe locations before returning here by Metro. That left only the BMW downstairs, which they still didn’t know about, and which he’d use to make his escape.

  Today, after rising before dawn, he packed the last towels and bed sheets. Then he scrubbed down everything, every surface, and followed up by vacuuming floors, curtains, rugs, and upholstery. He had a garbage bag waiting for Luna’s litter box and food dish, which he’d take with him tonight and dump somewhere.

  This afternoon, the professional cleaning company would come in and do the whole thing again, including the carpets. Whistle-clean for the holidays—that’s what he’d told them he needed. And a big bonus if you do an absolutely immaculate job, everywhere. Don’t leave a crumb. I have a sister with life-threatening allergies, you see....

  That about covered things. The rest, he could handle by phone and mail, from remote locations.

  He took a seat on a wooden bar stool at the kitchen counter, making sure not to touch any surface with his hands. Now, to think about the hours ahead.

  They were up to something; that was certain.

  He had left the GPS tracker program open on the computer. She had not gone to work back at the Agency on Tuesday or today. In fact, her car had not left her driveway since Monday night. Nor had the police stakeout resumed here.

  That made no sense. No sense at all. They were preparing something, and no doubt trying to lull him into lowering his guard.

  But he was one step ahead of them. He would bail out of here before they arrived, and vanish again. Right after tonight’s mission.

  The cat wandered in, stopping to look at him and sniff the air, wondering about the lingering ammonia smell. She made a small rrrrr noise; it sounded like an inquiry.

  “I know, girl. I liked it here, too. But remember: There’s always Grayson’s place downstairs.”

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Wednesday, December 24, 2:14 p.m.

  He walked up to the front desk of the Hotel Royal Summit and smiled at the pretty young clerk.

  “Hi. My name is Shane Stone, and I’m here regarding the MacLean function this evening. They told me to talk to Sarah in event planning.”

  The girl smiled. “I’ll call her,” she said, reaching for the house phone.

  After she made the call, he added, “Also, I believe you have a guest room key card for tonight, reserved for me by Mr. Wayne Grayson?”

  “Let me check, sir.... Here it is,” she said, handing it over. “Number 315. I see that it’s prepaid for you, Mr. Stone. I hope you’ll enjoy your evening.”

  “I’m sure I will. Merry Christmas.”

  Within moments, a thin, middle-aged woman with short, bleached-blonde hair marched across the lobby and up to them, her heels making clip-clop sounds on the marble floor.

  “Yes, sir. I’m Sarah Wright. May I help you?”

  He smiled at her, too. “Shane Stone. Wayne Grayson contracted with my company to prepare the multimedia video they’ll be playing tonight. I’m here to check out and augment the audio-visual system. He told me the two of you met and made the arrangements.”

  “That’s right. I’m glad you’re here early. Let me show you to the Grand Ballroom.”

  He followed her down the hallway, and they turned through open double doors into a vast function room.

  Huge chandeliers blazed over a sea of round tables covered with white linen cloths, alternating red and green napkins, and glittering crystal and dinnerware. Twisted strands of green and red crepe paper ribbons stretched across the expanse of the ceiling. An enormous, decorated Christmas tree stood in the right front corner of the ballroom. On the left, workmen were laying down sections of a parquet dance floor over the blue-and-gold-patterned carpet.

  “This is really great,” he said, surveying the place.

  She smiled. “Well, Mr. Stone, do you need any help from us? Or are you able to handle things on your own?”

  “Thanks, Ms. Wright, but I think we’ll manage. We appreciate all your help.”

  *

  He went outside to where he had parked the panel truck near the delivery entrance. Snow was already falling, though the temperature was not yet cold enough for it to stick. That made his work less problematic.

  He opened the back doors of the vehicle, lowered the rear ramp, then rolled out a utility cart. He brought it in through the delivery entrance, down the hallway, and into the ballroom. He put on work gloves. Then, he pushed the cart over to the corner platform housing the sound board, microphones, computerized audio-visual equipment, and video cameras.

  For the next hour, he strung cables, fiddled with the equipment, enlisted the staff for sound checks and lighting levels. At one point, he opened a tool kit on the cart and bent over the laptop computer running the audio-visual system. He also borrowed a long ladder from the maintenance staff and climbed up to the ceiling near the back, installing several electronics components on some high braces.

  Just before 4:30, he left as he had come.

  *

  At 5:30, the hotel’s event technicians entered. The head of the wait staff paused to watch them work, wondering why they were performing the same sound and light checks all over again.

  These rich people, he thought; for them, everything has to be just so. He sighed, then went to see how things were going back in the kitchen.

  *

  At 6:45, a black 2007 BMW 7 Series rolled into the hotel parking lot. The driver didn’t leave it with the valets, but parked it himself, front facing outward, at the side of the building, not far from the delivery entrance.

  A dark-haired man with a goatee emerged, wearing an expensive black wool coat over a tuxedo, and carrying a large black-leather briefcase. He walked through the falling snowflakes to the front entrance, then headed straight to the elevators, where he pressed the button for the third floor.

  *

  When Annie entered the ballroom at 7:30, she spotted her father in the midst of a knot of guests near the dais. She threaded her way through the tables and arriving guests.

  His eyes lit up when he saw her. “There she is!” he said, spreading his arms for her.

  With his strong features and boyish shock of strawberry hair, he was still movie-star handsome, and his tuxedo revealed a body that was still tall, lean, and erect. Yet she saw in his face what the recent months had cost him. There was something different about his eyes—a missing sparkle, perhaps—and his cheeks looked drawn, as if he had lost weight.

  “Hi, Dad.” She stepped into his embrace.

  “I’m so grateful you decided to come,” he whispered in her ear. “It means so much to me, especially right now.”

  “I know,” she whispered back. “I’m here only for you, Dad.”

  In fact, she hated being h
ere. She didn’t believe in his cause. During the past few months, she had come to despise it. And she wouldn’t have attended, except for his pleas.

  *

  In Room 315, he had tossed his overcoat on the bed and hung his tuxedo jacket on the back of a chair. Now he sat at the room’s desk, watching the screen of the powerful wireless laptop that he had removed from the boxy briefcase.

  The image on the screen was being transmitted from the tiny, battery-powered, wireless-operated video camera that he had installed overhead in the ballroom a few hours ago. He could use his laptop mouse to direct the movable lens of the camera, panning or zooming in and out. The whole setup was expensive and hard for most people to obtain.

  For most people.

  He spotted her almost immediately when she entered the ballroom. He was not particularly surprised that she was present. Nothing much surprised him anymore.

  He zoomed in on her, then panned the camera to follow as she and her father walked up the steps onto the dais and took seats next to each other in the center of the long table. She wore a long, pale yellow evening gown. Her beauty was breathtaking. But his appreciation felt abstract and remote, as if he were in a museum looking at some ancient sculpture of a beautiful woman.

  He glanced at his watch. It would still be a while before it was his turn to participate in the festivities. He sat back to watch.

  *

  She had insisted to her father, as a condition of her attendance, that she would be seated as far as possible from Carl Frankfurt. She was relieved that the shrink was sandwiched between two dowagers near the end of the dais.

  The older man to her right, a trustee, had given up on her quickly when she responded monosyllabically to his attempts at small talk. And her father, on her left, was engrossed in conversation with the politician next to him. For the moment, she could be alone with her thoughts.

  Thoughts of him.

  She still could not come to grips with the chaos that had engulfed them. It was as if they were trapped between two colliding realities: one, a sane, joyous world that they inhabited together; the other, a nightmarish, paranoid universe where no one could be trusted and nothing understood. And it felt as if they had been slipping back and forth, unpredictably and disastrously, through some black hole that connected those incompatible worlds.

  She had tried countless times to resign herself to the impossibility of their relationship. Yet something deep within her rebelled. Rebelled at the indignity of being a victim of circumstance. She had never submitted to “fate” in her entire life, about anything else.

  How could she surrender to it now, over something this important?

  How could two people, so close and so right for each other, have allowed outside circumstances to drive them apart?

  *

  The wait staff had cleared the main course, poured more wine, and served dessert. Ken MacLean saw the hotel’s event coordinator nod at him from below the dais. He checked his watch; just after nine. He returned the nod, then turned to the guest of honor. “It’s about that time. We’ll run the film first, then I’ll introduce you.”

  “That’s fine, Ken,” said Congressman Morrie Horowitz.

  MacLean got up and went to the podium. He looked out upon the eight hundred faces that turned to him expectantly. He let their conversations die down, then spoke.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I do hope you’ve enjoyed your dinner. Now it’s time for us to reflect upon and celebrate the foundation’s many achievements over the past year. It has been a year of both triumphs and challenges. But thanks to your faithful support and participation, the MacLean Family Foundation is poised to make the coming year our best ever.”

  He smiled and waited for the applause to end.

  “To remind you of where we have been, and to excite you about where we are headed, a new foundation benefactor, Mr. Wayne Grayson of Los Angeles, has prepared a short film. I’ve not yet seen it, but he assures me that it will help us remember this very special occasion. If we could have the lights lowered a bit, please?”

  MacLean returned to his seat. His daughter smiled at him and patted his knee. The lights went down in the ballroom. He turned to the big screen.

  *

  In Room 315, he moved the computer’s mouse and clicked two icons on the screen.

  The first click sent a wireless command to a device he’d placed inside in the master computer in the ballroom, shutting it down. The dummy video he’d provided the staff would not play.

  The second click sent a wireless command to activate a DVD player he’d hidden under the dais. It began to run his video, transmitting it through a cable he’d connected to the giant screen.

  *

  Annie watched the name of the foundation fill the screen.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said a booming, electronically distorted voice. “As supporters of the MacLean Family Foundation, we have gathered here to celebrate Christmas....”

  The screen abruptly filled with a horrifying image of a woman’s body, half-naked and bound, sprawled in a field.

  “Oh my God!” a man’s voice pierced the darkness from somewhere in the audience.

  A woman shrieked.

  Then a rising chorus of muttering, punctuated by angry shouts.

  The booming voice went on, overpowering the cries from the audience.

  “But unfortunately, this beneficiary of the Foundation’s programs won’t be celebrating Christmas with her husband and children. Because Julie Madison was murdered by”—the photo changed to a mug shot of a bald man with tattoos on his cheek—“Richard Garney, a serial rapist who was granted parole early this year, thanks to the testimony of”—the slide changed again—“this man. That’s right, it’s our very own Dr. Carl Frankfurt! Dr. Frankfurt, you see—”

  Shocked, she turned to her father. In the light from the screen she could make out his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Hey! What is this?” shouted the congressman seated next to him.

  “Stop this!” screamed Frankfurt, leaping to his feet. “Shut that off!”

  “...And this next beneficiary of the foundation’s work this past year was little Tommy Atkinson,” the unstoppable metallic voice thundered. “He doesn’t look too good in this photo, though, does he? That’s because one day, Tommy, age eight, met this man, Rory Miller—a pedophile who managed to avoid prison. How? By entering a foundation-funded treatment program—”

  As the din from the audience rose, her father jumped up, knocking over his chair. He stumbled and pushed his way past others on the dais to reach the podium.

  “Let’s have the house lights—and please, turn off that TV screen!”

  The chandeliers suddenly blazed, exposing a scene of bedlam: hundreds on their feet, shouting, screaming—others staring at the screen in mute, open-mouthed horror—women covering their eyes—one throwing up convulsively at her table—couples rushing toward the exits—wine glasses falling—people yelling at the tech crew in the back, who were shaking their heads frantically and waving their arms in helpless frustration....

  “Friends! Please! Don’t panic! Don’t run!”

  Her father, standing helplessly at the podium, shouting into the microphone, unheeded, his ashen face reflecting the horror of the spectacle before him.

  She had remained rooted to her chair, feeling as if all the blood in her body had been drained, leaving her paralyzed.

  Then she rose slowly to her feet. She scanned the room, from one side to the other.

  After a moment, a nearby sound penetrated her consciousness. She turned and saw her father crumpled in a chair on the now-empty dais, his body hunched forward, sobbing uncontrollably as he gazed out at the wreckage of his life.

  She walked over to him, knelt. Let him bury his face on her shoulder. Stroked his thick, unruly hair.

  *

  In room 315, he watched the horror unfold.

  It was the horror that he was simply reflecting back upon th
em.

  The horror that they had caused for so many others.

  He felt not a shred of pity for them. He thought instead of their victims. The countless victims that these self-righteous, sanctimonious bastards preferred to forget.

  Well, he would not let them forget. This night was their reminder.

  He watched as they scrambled for the exits, like roaches caught in the light and scurrying for cover.