“Who was it?”
“Cilla Miley, the one who Stu Wilgus called about.”
“Because she’d seen your brother hunting with somebody, right?”
“Yeah. I’d tried her the other day and left my number.”
Anna started punching in a number.
“You’re calling now?”
“They’re farmers, they’ll be up. Besides, she sounded pretty upset.”
Anna turned away for privacy, nodding her head a few times and saying little. When she turned back around her brow was creased with worry.
“She said she found something, out where she saw Willard with his friend.”
“Found what?”
“She wouldn’t say. She said I had to see it for myself, but you could tell it shook her up. She said she barely slept a wink.”
“Where’s their farm?”
“Toward Cambridge. We could stop on the way.”
The innkeeper brought out a basket of muffins and a platter of eggs and bacon, but they ate little and hardly spoke. Anna looked troubled, and Henry was still haunted by the vision of Willard, out there on the shoulder as he swallowed the last of his pills.
The Miley farmhouse was up a long gravel drive, with soybeans to the right and corn to the left. After a curve there was a small green lawn to the left that sloped down to a new-looking cottage along a tidal creek, with a picturesque view and its own dock.
“Is that theirs?”
“Used to be. They sold it a while back to help make ends meet. Two acres on the water, probably worth more than all fifty acres of their beans and corn.”
“What kind of name is Cilla?”
“Short for Priscilla. There she is.”
A thin woman with a gray bun crossed the broad front porch of a two-story frame house and came down to the lawn. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt. The house was white clapboard with green shutters, with big oaks to either side. Cilla, moving with urgency, was ready with a hug the moment Anna stepped out of the car. Anna introduced Henry as a friend, but Cilla barely nodded in acknowledgment.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the funeral, sweetheart. I was just so, well…”
“No need to explain. It was a circus.”
“It’s just a shame what you’ve had to go through. Your poor, poor mom and dad. Your poor brother. And now after what I’ve seen.” She shook her like she was trying to make it disappear.
“Stu said you saw him hunting with a friend, out on the edge of your property?”
“Some friend.” She shook her head again. “You’ll see. It’s out in those woods.” She pointed toward the soybeans, over their shoulders, and then set out across the field. She didn’t seem to notice she was treading on the beans as she went.
“Willard was the only one of ’em with a gun. That’s why this shook me up so much, because it must have been him doing this.”
When they came closer to the woods, Cilla stopped and pointed.
“See that path, running into the trees?”
“Yes.”
“Take that. You’ll find it. I’m not going back in there. Not ever.” She had crossed her arms, like she was trying to stay warm, even though it was sunny and pleasant. “I’m going back in, so I’ll say goodbye now.” Then, to Henry, “You take care of her, now.”
She turned to go, this time picking her way carefully across the rows of beans.
“Goodness,” Anna said.
The path entered the trees between thickets of briar and poison ivy, so they proceeded in single file, stepping carefully. Beneath the canopy of oak, maple, and cedar was a tangle of underbrush, although the path had clearly gotten some recent use. A wren called out in alarm at their approach and flitted toward the clearing. They walked twenty yards, then thirty.
They broke free of the trees. Anna, leading the way, nearly fell back into Henry. She wobbled and then steadied herself, but would go no farther. Now he could see what had upset her. He eased alongside her, and they stared in silence.
Just ahead in the clearing, fifteen or twenty feet away, was a large sheet of plywood propped upright against an oak. Drawn across it in black ink, probably by a felt-tip marker, was a crude silhouette of two human torsos, at about the same level as a couple sitting up in bed. The plywood was shredded by bullet holes. Ten feet away from the target, the muddy ground was pounded flat by boot prints.
Anna sank to one knee and put her hands to her face. She cried out, either in anguish or rage, and he knelt beside her and put an arm around her shoulder.
“Target practice,” she said, voice shaking. “We have to get this bastard. Whatever it takes.”
“We will,” he said. “We will.”
* * *
* * *
The Walgreens was a brick building surrounded by asphalt, with a green metal awning over the front entrance and the name splashed across the top in red script. Over to the right was a drive-through window for the pharmacy. Henry looked at Anna.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’ve decided to just stay angry. That’s the only way forward. What’s our plan?”
“We’ll ask if their records show what time of day the prescription was issued. Because it had to be Merle who picked it up. Once we nail down the time, we’ll ask to see their security footage. All these pharmacies have cameras trained on the registers. It’s one of the highest-risk spots for a robbery.”
“You think they’ll let us see it?”
“I’ve got a plan for that. It involves some deception, but…”
“Fine. You’re good at that.”
He winced. They sat in silence for another few seconds. Then Anna unlatched her door.
“Hold on,” Henry said. “I was just thinking about the way someone like Merle would handle this.”
“And?”
“Well, he’s already sticking his neck out with a forged prescription and a fake ID, so the last thing he’d want to do is put his face in front of a checkout camera.”
“You’re thinking he’d use the drive-through?”
“Yep. Better for him, but maybe better for us, too. Maybe the outdoor camera wouldn’t pick up his face, but it would definitely get his tags. Meaning all we have to do is look for a 2010 silver Camaro with a Virginia registration. Let’s go.”
A yawning pharmacist in a white smock frowned when Henry explained what he wanted.
“You’ll have to see the manager.”
The manager, no older than twenty-five, hustled over to the counter after they paged him. He was shaking his head before Henry could even finish.
“Okay,” Henry said. “Then we’ll get a warrant. But if you really want to make nice with the feds, you’ll spare us the trouble and show us the footage. In exchange, I won’t ask for a copy and I can promise you won’t have to testify.”
“Testify? Now wait a minute, what’s this all about?”
“Department of Justice,” Henry said, flashing the ID he still had from his stint in Baltimore. “But I’m not at liberty to say anything more about the nature of our investigation.”
The manager frowned and put his hands on his hips.
“Then I guess you better get that warrant.”
“Fine.” Henry got out his notebook. “What’s the best day of the week for you to give a deposition? Are Wednesdays okay?”
“Deposition?”
“In Washington. No more than a few hours of your time. Although we’ll probably need to get your pharmacist under oath, too. To nail down the chain of evidence.”
“Whoa, now. Didn’t you say earlier you wouldn’t need a copy?”
“Not if you let me see it now. But if we have to take this to a judge, well, like I said…”
“Hang on a sec.”
With a defeated sigh, he set off toward the back, dis
appearing into an office by the pharmacy.
“Is that ID even valid?” Anna whispered.
“No. But he’d have to phone Baltimore to find out.”
She smiled and shook her head. A moment later the manager poked his head out the door.
“Will there be any official record of this transaction?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Then come on back. But first have Irene scan that prescription label, to get the time of day.”
The pharmacist, who by now seemed somewhat excited about the idea of helping a federal investigation, happily obliged. The scanner beeped as she watched her computer screen.
“Nineteen hundred hours, forty minutes, and he used the drive-through.”
“Thank you kindly, Irene.”
The manager ushered them into the office, where eight video screens displayed images from around the store. He started typing on a keyboard.
“Number five up there is trained on the drive-through,” he said. “You’re lucky. We used to toss this stuff every month, but the DEA wanted us to beef up our capacity, so now everything’s archived for a year.”
“How long will it take to find it?”
“No time at all. We’ll go to ten minutes before the prescription was filled and roll it from there.”
The first image they saw was of a pickup truck pulling away from the drive-through. They fast-forwarded from there, and a few seconds later a car flickered into the frame.
“That’s it,” Anna said. It was a Camaro.
“Sweet ride,” the manager said, just like Derrick at the motor court.
They stopped the image when they had the best possible view, and then zoomed it. Virginia tag. Three letters, four numbers. Henry wrote them down.
“Need to log this in,” he said.
Henry stepped out of the office and walked up the empty aisle for cold remedies, to make sure he had privacy. He punched in a number that he used only sparingly, lest he wear out his welcome.
A familiar raspy voice answered.
“Bales.”
“It’s Mattick.”
“Still on that job?”
“More or less. I need you to run a tag for me.”
“Can’t your employer do that?”
“It will be cleaner this way.”
“Now, what could that mean?”
“Will you do it or not?”
“Give me the number.”
Henry said it twice, and then listened to the clatter of keys on a laptop. Rodney Bales gave him a name, a DOB, and an address. He thanked him and was about to hang up before deciding that he might as well make one more request while he had the chance.
“Got a minute for some advice?”
“About?”
“My employer.”
“Stop right there. I don’t even know who that is, nor do I want to know.”
“Weren’t you the one who gave them my name?”
“I gave your name to a third party, who was probably just a cutout. All he told me was the sort of talent they wanted, and at the moment you fit the bill. But I will say this: Whatever you’re doing is making some interesting ripples, some of which have even reached my little Island of Misfit Spooks. A distant acquaintance I haven’t spoken to in ages contacted me during the past week to ask what I knew about you, and not in a way that was encouraging.”
“Name?”
“I shouldn’t even have told you that. Let’s just say his interests are private.”
“Meaning corporate?”
“Meaning not government. You want advice? Here you go. Whatever you’re doing, wrap it up. Soon, and without contacting me again.”
He hung up and turned around, and saw Anna eyeing him skeptically through the window of the office. He flashed her a smile that he hoped was convincing and gave her a thumbs-up. But he had to steel himself on his way up the aisle. Who were these people, and what were they after? Equally important, what did they not want him to find out?
He put on a game face and reentered the office.
“Thank you, sir,” he said to the manager. “Exactly what we needed.”
“And, um, you’re sure I won’t have to testify?”
“Absolutely. We’ll keep your name out of this completely.”
“And the Walgreens name? I mean, in case corporate asks?”
“Only to note your helpful cooperation in my report to the U.S. Attorney.”
They shook hands and were on their way.
52
“Who did you call just now?” Anna asked. They were back in his car with the door shut.
“An old pal on the Hill. He ran the tags for me.”
“That old job of yours is coming in pretty handy.” An unmistakable note of suspicion.
“Do you want the name or not?”
“Of course I want the fucking name. It’s just…All right. Go ahead.”
“Kurt Delacroix, age fifty-four. With an address on Winding Brook Way in Stafford, Virginia.”
“Spell it,” she said, calling up a search engine on her phone.
He obliged her.
“I’m on it.”
Henry eased into traffic as the first results popped up. She began scrolling.
“There are some property listings. There’s a Facebook account for an Australian surfer dude. There’s a blog in French.” She laughed. “Well, here’s some comic relief. There’s a YouTube, very schlocky, of a German rock band that calls itself the Kurt Delacroix Singers. Good God, the lead singer looks like that John Waters character, the one in drag.”
She went quiet for a few seconds, checking further hits.
“Here we go. There’s a quote from a Kurt Delacroix in a story from The Hill.”
“They cover Congress.”
“Where’s your notebook?”
He handed it to her. She flipped through the pages and checked her phone.
“This has to be him. He testified before that same Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, the one where The New York Times took the photo with Robert in the background.”
“In May of 2006?”
“Yes.”
“So he’s connected to Robert? The CIA guy who makes people disappear?”
“Unless they both just happened to be at the same hearing, which sounds like a stretch. The story refers to Delacroix as, quote, ‘an expert on policy toward radical Islamist movements in unstable Arab states.’ ”
“What did he say?”
“I’ll read it verbatim: ‘Resorting to military intervention in some of these situations would be like using a chain saw for an appendectomy. You’d end up killing the patient when all you needed was surgery to remove the enflamed tissue. So I would say that the most important byword is precision.’ ”
“As in targeted killings.”
“You think that’s what he’s talking about?”
“Don’t you? Especially if he works for Robert. Does the story give his employer? What’s his job title?”
“Doesn’t say. Just calls him ‘an expert.’ ”
“Pull up the website for the Federal News Service. They transcribe every hearing on Capitol Hill.”
They drove on in silence while she found the site and then searched for the May 2006 subcommittee hearing. There was a subscriber fee, which she avoided by signing up for a seven-day free trial.
“I’m in,” she said, like a safecracker.
“Keep an eye out for those four names from the Newsweek story. They’re in my notebook.”
“Got ’em. Alex Berryhill, Winslow Edinson, Kevin Gilley, John Solloway. Good God. This transcript goes on and on. On my phone it’ll take forever.”
“We’re almost to Poston. We’ll pull it up on my laptop.”
They practically ran
into the house. They logged on to the site, found the sixty-four-page transcript, and searched for “Delacroix.” And there he was, on page 19, stating his background and qualifications. He told the subcommittee he had worked for the CIA “in Berlin, Prague, Jerusalem, Beirut, a few other places.” Then they found this exchange:
REPRESENTATIVE HARTNETT: And what is your current employment, Mr. Delacroix?
MR. DELACROIX: I am a field advisor for a Washington consultant who I believe is already known to several members of this committee.
REPRESENTATIVE HARTNETT: I daresay you’re correct, Mr. Delacroix, and while I know your boss prefers to stay out of the limelight, just for the record could you please state his name, and then we’ll move on.
MR. DELACROIX: Yes, sir. Mr. Kevin Gilley.
They looked at each other. Here, at last, was the elusive Robert, and their man Merle was his employee.
“Where’s that picture of Robert?” Henry said.
Anna retrieved the letters from the bread drawer and found the clipped newspaper photo. CDG had circled Gilley’s face on the far left end of the row behind the witness. Henry jabbed his finger at the fellow seated just to Gilley’s right, who was stout, late forties, and even in 2006 had a salt-and-pepper beard.
“There’s Kurt Delacroix. Merle. The chicken catcher and the forger. The UPS man who picked up your brother’s prescription.”
“And the son of a bitch who took him hunting. These fuckers set up the whole damn thing.”
Her face was lit by anger and exhilaration, and both were contagious. Then a new thought sobered him up.
“The Sisterhood,” he said. “What about CDG and IAD? If these guys knew about your mom, wouldn’t they also know about the other two? Shouldn’t we try to warn them? I mean, if he’s really that good, and that ruthless?”
“The parcel,” Anna said. “The one my mom sent away. What was it CDG said when she got it?”
“I’ll guard it with my life.”
“Do you think we’re too late? They had to have heard about my mom by now, don’t you think?”
“Unless Gilley and Delacroix got to them at the same time. But how are we supposed to find them? All we’ve got is postmarks.”
Safe Houses Page 35
