The Sixth Man kam-5

by David Baldacci

“Checking some other things out.”

  “Murdock will be all over your ass if you get near his investigation.”

  “It won’t be the first time we’ve rubbed the official machine the wrong way.”

  “Just giving you my two cents.”

  “So why’d you stop here then if you’ve got nothing to tell me?”

  “Man was killed. Like to know who did it.”

  “That’s what I want, too.”

  Dobkin scuffed the road with his shoe. “Got a chain of command. You’re not in it. Got a family. Can’t throw my career in the toilet. Not for nothing. Sorry.”

  “Okay, I get that. I appreciate what you’ve done.” Sean headed back toward his car.

  “Any idea who took a shot at you?”

  Sean turned back around. “No, other than it wasn’t the first time they’d fired a rifle. That fact was pretty clear.”

  “I’ll look into that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why didn’t you notify the police? Somebody tried to kill you.”

  “No, they were warning us off. Different thing.”

  “I’ll still look into it.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You don’t seem to be taking this too seriously.”

  “I take it very seriously. I just doubt you’re going to find anything.”

  “We’re pretty good at our job,” Dobkin said stiffly.

  “I’m sure you are. But something tells me the other side is pretty good at its job, too.”

  The two men stared at each other and seemed to reach a silent meeting of the minds.

  Dobkin finally pointed at the Ford. “If I were you I’d get those windows covered over. Supposed to rain tomorrow.”

  Sean watched him drive off and then he steered the Ford back to Martha’s Inn, his coat buttoned all the way up against the damp chill coming through the open windows.

  CHAPTER

  20

  MICHELLE FLASHED her light around as she walked toward the back of the house. She’d had some dinner, reported back to Sean, and mulled over what she’d found thus far. She’d waited until it was well after dark before heading to Bergin’s house. She wasn’t breaking and entering, but the nighttime suited her better for these types of activities.

  Ted Bergin had lived in an eighteenth-century farmhouse that he had restored about five years ago, just in time for his wife of forty years to die in a freak car accident. Sean had provided Michelle with this nugget of information, and it had served to deepen her empathy for the man and make her want to find his killer all the more.

  The house was about eight miles from his office. The location was rural and isolated, with rolling green hills serving as a picturesque backdrop. She wondered what would happen to the place now. Maybe in his will he had left the property to Hilary Cunningham for years of faithful service.

  The woman had given her a key to the house. She explained that Bergin had kept a spare at the office in the case of an emergency.

  Well, I guess this qualifies as such.

  Michelle opted for the rear door, because she liked to avoid entering anyplace through the front entrance. Or at least she did ever since she’d nearly gotten herself ripped in half when thirty rounds from a machine gun clip had blasted through the front door of a home in Fairfax, Virginia, that she had been standing in front of a second before.

  She eased the door open and peered in, flashing her trusty Maglite around.

  Kitchen, she easily concluded after the beam bounced off the refrigerator and then a stainless steel dishwasher. Michelle closed the door behind her and advanced into the space.

  The house was not large and the rooms were not numerous, so after an hour she had pretty much covered the basics. Unless she was committed to tearing up floors and ripping open plaster walls, she wasn’t going to find anything of significance. Ted Bergin had been a man of tidy habits who had opted for quality over quantity. His possessions were relatively few but of excellent craftsmanship. She found a deer rifle and a shotgun locked behind the barred glass of a cabinet hung on the wall in what looked to be the lawyer’s library/home office. Boxes of ammo were housed in a drawer built into the lower part of the cabinet.

  She’d found a shotgun vest, fishing tackle, and other sporting gear in a mudroom and concluded that Bergin had been an avid outdoorsman. Maybe if he’d retired from the practice he would still be alive and enjoying his golden years. Well, there was no maybe about it—he would have.

  In a photo album she discovered a number of pictures of Mrs. Bergin. Several showed the woman in her twenties and thirties. She was pretty, with a coy smile that had probably garnered the attention of many young men. There were other photos where the lady’s hair had turned white and the skin had wrinkled. But even later in life there had been true warmth and even mischievousness in her expression. Michelle wondered why they had never had children. Maybe they couldn’t. And were of a generation that didn’t have the availability of fertility clinics and surrogate wombs, although they could have adopted.

  She put the album down and considered what to do next.

  Michelle wondered why the police or FBI had not been here yet. Perhaps they were confining their investigation to Maine, which seemed shortsighted since the man’s murder in Maine might be tied to something in Virginia not connected to Roy. And if his killing was tied to his representation of Roy, relevant evidence could certainly be down here as well. And there was the letter from Brandon Murdock. He, too, apparently wanted to know who Bergin’s client was. Yet something must have been filed with the court. Though maybe it was filed under seal. That might be a way to keep it from becoming part of the public record.

  But it would seem that the FBI would be able to get past any sealed document.

  She decided to go back to Bergin’s library one more time, just in case she might have missed something. She sat at his desk, which was ornately carved wood with the gravitas of a judicial bench, and turned on the green lawyer’s lamp. No computer here. A few files. Some legal pads with scribbles on them. His answering machine held no messages. The mailbox outside had been empty. That did strike her as odd, since mail should have been delivered since he’d been in Maine. Unless he’d had it cut off until after his return.

  She slapped her forehead.

  Jesus, I’m really losing it.

  Ted Bergin hadn’t driven up to Maine; he’d flown. There was a single-car garage addition to the farmhouse. It was off the kitchen. She entered the garage and studied the sturdy Honda four-door. It was about ten years old but in good shape. She spent thirty minutes going over every cubic foot of it. Among the many things the Secret Service had taught her how to do quite thoroughly was search a car. However, that was usually to check for bombs. She had a feeling whatever was eluding her was far more subtle.

  She sat in the passenger seat and thought about it. If Bergin didn’t use a computer and he wanted to keep the information about his client secret, where would it be if not at his office, on his person, or at his house? Unless he had memorized names, phone numbers, and addresses he probably would have written it down somewhere, in order to keep it handy. He was a pen and paper man, after all.

  Michelle’s gaze finally fixed on the glove box. She had already been through it once and found the usual things. A spare pen, state inspection pink slip, car registration, and the Honda’s pristine operating manual.

  Her fingers closed around the manual. She skipped to the back, where there were blank pages for one to fill in maintenance records. Michelle had never known anyone to actually do that, but—

  There it was, smack in the middle of the blank pages.

  Kelly Paul. Home and cell phones and a mailing address that would put Paul somewhere west of here, near the West Virginia border—if Michelle remembered correctly the location of the town Bergin had written down. This had to be it. The client. Unless Kelly Paul happened to be a Honda salesman. Michelle really didn’t think that was the case.

  She ripped the page
out, slid it into her pocket, got out of the car, and closed the door.

  And froze.

  She was no longer the only person in the house.

  CHAPTER

  21

  SEAN KING PARKED his rental on a side road and walked toward the causeway. He’d gone back to the inn after running into Dobkin. But he’d grown restless, and there still had been no word from Megan. He wondered how many waves it would cause if he made a stink about the Bureau keeping the lawyer under wraps, perhaps against her will. He’d concluded that if she didn’t appear by morning he would have to take some sort of action.

  He’d checked in with Michelle. She’d told him about her finding the letter from Murdock at Bergin’s office. Other than that, she didn’t seem to be making much progress. She’d told him she was planning to go to Bergin’s house later tonight. He hoped she would have better luck there.

  He stared in the direction of it. Across the causeway was Cutter’s Rock. It was dark enough that he could actually see some of the lights of the facility from where he was standing. The Atlantic Ocean lapped against the rocky shore, waves pounding hard enough to lift sprays of saltwater onto the road. He buttoned up his jacket. A vehicle was pulling down the causeway. Sean stepped back out of the way as it turned toward him and ducked down behind some boulders lining the shore. As the car passed, he lifted his head slightly above the rock.

  Carla Dukes. There was no mistaking the lady with her big, blocky shoulders. Sean checked his watch. Nine o’clock. The woman was pulling very long hours. Maybe Cutter’s was just that sort of place.

  He ducked down again when another car passed. A lot of traffic for this time of night in such an isolated place. He’d raised his head just in time to see the driver. He’d had on his interior light, glancing down at something.

  Sean ran to his car, fired it up, and spun onto the road. He sped up, caught sight of the car’s taillights, and then fell back a bit.

  Although he was nervous about being spotted, Sean managed to keep the other car within sight, losing it only briefly on turns before it came back into his sight line on the straightaway. They finally turned off the main road, away from the ocean, and headed inland for about two miles. Another set of turns, and Sean was growing more nervous. There was no way the guy could not have spotted him. The three cars slowed. Dukes turned into a small subdivision of newly built cookie-cutter homes. Probably built, Sean assumed, to house the personnel at Cutter’s Rock and spark a whole series of downstream employment. Now all the country needed were more murderers to put away and the economy would simply boom.

  Dukes pulled into the driveway of the third house on the right.

  Sean was surprised when the tail car turned down the same road, passed Dukes’s house, and turned left at the next block. Did the guy live here, too? Was he just driving home and not tailing Dukes?

  Sean parked his car, got out, and started walking. He turned up his collar both because of the cold and also to help hide his face. Dukes’s house was a small, vinyl-sided two-story with a minuscule front porch. There was also a two-car garage that Dukes had pulled into. Sean watched the garage door crank down on its chain track.

  About fifteen seconds later the lights came on inside the house. Probably the kitchen, thought Sean, since most floor plans followed that design.

  Sean kept walking, turned left at the next block, and looked for the other car. The street was dark, no lights except for meager ones coming from the occasional house. People here were apparently early to bed. Sean could see his breath and not much else. His gaze swiveled from side to side. The houses here had garages, too, and if the guy had pulled into one, Sean had lost him. He mentally kicked himself. What he should have done was keep driving after he knew where Dukes lived until he reached the next block and then wait there to see what house the other car had turned into. It was a mental error leading to a tactical mistake that a man like Sean King deemed personally unforgivable.

  He had drawn near to a dirty, heavy-duty Ford F250 workhorse of a truck parked on the street in front of a two-story identical twin of Dukes’s house when it happened.

  The car he’d been looking for had been hidden by the mammoth truck. It pulled out hard and fast, its engine whining with the effort, and bore down on him. Sean threw himself into the bed of the truck. He landed on top of some tools and a coil of heavy chain that jabbed hard into his ribs and stomach. When he looked over the edge of the truck’s bed, the only thing he saw were the winking lights of the car before it turned back onto the lead-in road. A few seconds later the car and its driver were gone. Sean drew a short breath and pulled himself up. He felt around his rib cage where the tools and chain had impacted.

  The lights in the house snapped on. Sean clambered out of the truck as the front door of the house opened and a man was framed there in the light. He had on boxers and a white T-shirt and his feet were bare. In his hand was a rifle.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the man bellowed, as Sean came into view. The man edged the rifle muzzle in his direction. “What are you doing to my truck?”

  A dog started barking from somewhere.

  “I’m out looking for my dog,” Sean said, pressing one hand against his side where he felt something wet. “It’s a white lab, named Roscoe. I was here visiting Mrs. Dukes on the other block and he jumped out of my car. I’ve been looking for him for over an hour. I thought he might have jumped in the back of your truck. I’ve got a truck just like this and he rides in the back. I’ve had that dog for eight years. I… I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  The gun barrel lowered as a woman in a pullover sweater and leggings joined the man at the door. The man said, “Our old mutt just died. Like losing a kid. You want me to help you look for him?”

  “I appreciate that, but old Roscoe never did like strangers.” Sean pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Here’s my phone number. I’ll leave it in the back of your truck. You see Roscoe, you can call me.”

  “Okay, will do.”

  Sean put the piece of paper in the truck bed and pinned it there using a can of paint that was in the truck.

  “Thanks, and good night. Sorry to disturb you.”

  “No problem. Hope you find him.”

  Thank God for dog lovers.

  He walked on, got in his car, and drove back to Martha’s Inn. He limped up to his room. He’d banged his leg jumping into the truck. He took off his shirt and examined the bloody puncture wound in his side. That had also come from landing on a pile of tools and chains in the back of the truck. As he cleaned himself up, Sean wondered whether he had just encountered Ted Bergin’s killer.

  He gingerly lowered himself into bed after downing a couple of Advils. He was going to be stiff tomorrow. He mentally chastised himself for not getting the license plate number of the car. But as he thought about it, he never remembered seeing it clearly.

  He picked up the phone and called Eric Dobkin. The man was now on duty, riding in his state cruiser. He was about fifteen miles from Martha’s Inn. When Sean explained to him what happened, Dobkin thanked him, said they’d get a BOLO out on the car and driver, and clicked off.

  Next he called Michelle’s cell phone. There was no answer. That was unusual. She almost always answered her phone. He phoned again, left a message asking her to call him. Hundreds of miles away, he felt helpless. What if she was in trouble?

  He lay back against the pillow, trying to make sense of everything that had happened thus far but finding no answers.

  CHAPTER

  22

  MICHELLE DUCKED down behind Bergin’s sedan, her hand on the butt of her pistol. She’d felt the vibration of the phone in her pocket but didn’t have time to answer. She crab-walked to the rear of the car and tried the garage door. It was locked. She found the locking mechanism, turned it, and pulled upward. The door was heavy, but she was strong. Leverage wasn’t the problem. It was the sound. The running track and pulleys of the door must not have been lubricated in
ages. Lifting it only a few inches caused a screech that hammered in Michelle’s ears.

  She had just given away her position to whoever was in the house and gotten nothing in return for her troubles. She set the door back down and hustled to the front of the car. The door into the house was right there, only she had a feeling that walking through it right now would not be good for her health.

  It might be the cops. It might be the FBI. If so, why didn’t they announce their presence? If they think I’m a burglar, they might not. And if I announce myself and it’s not the cops? Classic Catch-22.

  She looked around the twelve-by-twelve box she was trapped in. Neither door was an option. That left the small square of window that opened out onto the side yard, away from the front door. She snagged a can of WD40 from the worktable, undid the window clasp, sprayed the track with the lubricant, slid up the window, thankfully with virtually no noise, and hoisted herself up and through, landing on her backside in the grass. She was up in an instant, her gun out, her nerves calm, her eyes and ears alert. She came around the side of the garage and surveyed the area. Only her Toyota was visible. In any event she would have heard another car pull up, so she now assumed it was not the cops or the FBI. They tended to make lots of noise when no hostages were in play.

  Whoever was here had left his vehicle somewhere else and come on foot. That was clandestine. That smacked of nefarious purpose. That indicated a direct threat to her safety.

  She hit the ground as soon as she heard the slide on the pistol being racked back. The round struck to her right, plowing into the dirt and covering her with grass and particles of compressed earth. She rolled to her left, fired twice in the middle of the maneuver and in the direction of the shot aimed at her. She did a half crouch, glimpsed a figure from across the yard, fired again, and threw herself behind a tree next to the garage.

  Had she heard a scream? Did her round strike home? She’d seen a figure, fired right at it. No more than twenty meters. Even under these conditions she should have—