Another explosion rocked the structure, and she jumped off the front porch a few seconds before it came tumbling down. The concussive force of a second explosion knocked her through the air, and she landed hard, all the breath squeezed from her. She felt all sorts of heavy things hitting all around her, like mortar fire. She lay there in the dirt, her head cut, her lungs drowning in lethal fumes, her legs and arms bruised and battered. The next thing she knew sirens were everywhere and the sounds of heavy equipment surrounded her. A man in bulky clothing knelt down next to her, gave her oxygen, asked if she was okay.
She couldn’t say anything as more trucks and cars lumbered up the drive and teams of volunteer firefighters attacked the inferno. As she lay there, the remaining parts of Sean King’s house collapsed and fell in. Only the stone chimney remained standing. With that searing image in her mind Michelle blacked out.
When Michelle awoke, it took her a few minutes to realize she was lying in a hospital bed. A man appeared next to her, holding a cup of coffee and wearing a relieved expression.
Jefferson Parks said, “Damn, we almost lost you. The firemen said a thousand-pound steel beam that got blown off the house was lying six inches from your head.”
She tried to sit up, but he put a hand on her shoulder and held her down.
“Will you just take it easy? You got the shit kicked out of you. You can’t just get up and waltz away after something like that.”
She looked around frantically. “Sean, where’s Sean?” Parks didn’t answer right away, and Michelle felt tears rushing to her eyes. “Please, Jefferson, please don’t tell me…” Her voice broke.
“I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know. Nobody does. They haven’t found any bodies, Michelle. No indication Sean was even there. But they haven’t finished searching. It’s, well, it was a bad fire and there were gas explosions. I guess what I’m trying to say is there might not be much to find.”
“I called his house last night, there was no answer. So maybe he wasn’t home.”
“Or maybe it had already blown.”
“No, I heard the explosion when I was driving up to his house.”
Parks pulled the chair up next to the bed and sat down. “Okay, tell me exactly what happened.”
She did, with as much detail as she could remember. And then she recalled what else had happened, an event that had gotten pushed to the back of her thoughts by what had occurred at King’s house.
“Someone tried to kill me at the inn last night, right before I went to Sean’s. They fired through my window and into my bed. Luckily I’d fallen asleep on the couch.”
Parks’s face turned red. “Why the hell didn’t you call me last night? No, instead you go running into a building that’s exploding. Do you have a death wish?”
She sat back and pulled at the corners of her sheet. Her head was hurting, and she noticed for the first time that there were bandages on her arms.
“Did I get burned?” she asked wearily.
“No, just cuts and bruises, nothing that won’t heal. I don’t know about your head. You’ll probably just keep doing stupid things until your luck runs out and you lose that.”
“I just wanted to make sure Sean was okay. I thought if they went after me, they’d go after him too. And I was right. That explosion was no accident, was it?”
“No. They found the device that was used. Said it was pretty sophisticated stuff. It was set right next to the gas piping in the basement. Blew the place sky-high.”
“But why? Especially if Sean wasn’t even there?”
“I wish I could answer that, but I can’t.”
“You have people looking for him?”
“Everybody and everywhere we can think of. The FBI’s in the loop, the Marshals Service, Secret Service, Virginia State Police, locals; nothing’s turned up yet, though.”
“Anything else? Any leads on Joan? Isn’t there anything?”
“No,” Parks said in a discouraged tone. “Nothing.”
“Well, I’m going to get out of here and get to work.” She started to rise again.
“What you’re going to do is lie there and get some rest.”
“You’re asking the impossible!” she exclaimed angrily.
“I’m asking the reasonable. You fly out of here all banged up and disoriented and maybe black out in your truck and kill yourself and someone else, well, I don’t see how that can be a positive thing. And remember, this is your second stint in the hospital within a few days. The third time might be the morgue.”
Michelle looked ready to erupt again, but then she just lay back. “Okay, you win for now. But the minute something happens you call me. If you don’t, I’ll track you down and it won’t be pretty.”
Parks held up his hands in mock protest. “Okay, okay, I’m not looking to make any more enemies, I got enough already.” He went to the door, then turned back. “I’m not going to give you any false hopes. The chances we’re going to see Sean King again are pretty remote. But while there’s still a chance, I won’t sleep.”
She managed a smile. “Okay. Thank you.”
Five minutes after he left, she hurriedly threw on her clothes, dodged the nurses on duty and escaped the hospital by a rear exit.
67
King awoke to total darkness. It was also chilly wherever he was, although he had a growing suspicion of where that might be. He took a deep breath and tried to sit up. It was as he’d thought. He couldn’t. He was restrained. Leather bindings, by the feel of it. He turned his head, letting his eyes adjust to the blackness, but there was no ambient light here; he could make out nothing. He could be floating in the middle of the ocean for all he knew. He stiffened as he heard murmuring from somewhere; so low were the noises he couldn’t tell if they were human. Then he heard footsteps coming toward him. And a few seconds later he felt the presence of someone next to him. Then this person touched him on the shoulder, gently, not threatening at all. And then the touch became a clench. As more pressure was exerted and then something pricked his skin, King bit his lip, determined not to cry out at the pain.
Finally he managed to say in a very calm tone, “Look, you’re not going to crush me to death with your hands, so just back the hell off!”
The pressure immediately ceased and the footsteps moved away. King felt the sweat on his brow. Then he became chilled and felt sick to his stomach. They must have shot him up with something, he decided. He turned his head to the side and vomited.
At least being able to retch made him feel alive. “Sorry about the rug,” he muttered. He closed his eyes and slowly dozed off.
Michelle’s first stop was King’s ruined home. As she walked through the rubble, firefighters, police deputies and others were inspecting the damage and putting out small blazes. She spoke with some of them, and they confirmed no human remains had been found. As her gaze ran over the rubble of what had been Sean King’s “perfect” home, Michelle grew increasingly despondent. There was nothing she could learn from this. She went down to the dock and sat on King’s sailboat for a while, gazing out at the calm lake, trying to draw some strength and inspiration from being at least close to things the man so dearly loved.
Two items were bothering her greatly: the warrant for Bob Scott, and verifying the whereabouts of Doug Denby. She decided to do something about both. She drove back to the inn, calling her father along the way. As a very well-respected chief of police, Frank Maxwell knew everybody in Tennessee worth knowing. She told her father what she needed.
“Is everything all right? You don’t sound too good.”
“I guess you haven’t heard, Dad. They blew up Sean King’s house last night, and now he’s missing.”
“My God, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She said nothing about the attempt on her life. Years ago she’d decided not to confide too much to her father about her professional side. His sons could walk into danger, and their father would consider it simply part of the job. However, he’d not take
it well that his only daughter had almost been killed. “Dad, I need that info just as fast as you can get it.”
“I hear you. It won’t take long.” He hung up.
She arrived at the inn, grabbed Joan’s notes from her room and made a series of phone calls concerning Doug Denby, the last to Denby’s home in Jackson, Mississippi. The woman who answered would give her no information about Denby, not even confirming that he lived there. That wasn’t so odd, since Michelle was a stranger. And yet if Denby had money and no obligation to show up at a job every day, he could be anywhere. And no one she’d talked to could provide Denby with alibis for any of the critical times in question. His position in the Ritter campaign definitely made him a suspect, yet what would be his motivation?
The ringing phone startled her. She snatched it up. It was her father. He spoke succinctly as she wrote down the information.
“Dad, you’re the best. I love you.”
“Well, it would be nice if you visited more often. It’s your mother who keeps asking,” he added quickly.
“Deal. When this is all wrapped up, I’m heading home.”
She dialed the number her father had given her. It was the law office that had handled the sale of the property in Tennessee to Bob Scott. Her father had already called the lawyer and told him Michelle would be calling.
“I don’t know your father, but I’ve heard wonderful things about him from mutual acquaintances,” the attorney said. “Now, I understand this has to do with a sale of land.”
“That’s right. You handled the closing of that property from a decedent’s estate to a Robert Scott, I believe.”
“Yes, your father mentioned that in his call. I pulled the file. Robert Scott was the purchaser. He paid in cash; it wasn’t that much actually. It was just an old cabin, and while there’s substantial acreage it’s all woods and ridges and very remote.”
“I understand the previous owner didn’t know there was a bunker on the property.”
“Your father mentioned the bunker. I have to admit I didn’t know either. It wasn’t in the title search. And I had no reason to suspect there was one. If I had, I suppose I would have gone to the army. I really don’t know. I mean what do you do with a bunker?”
“Have you actually been to the property?”
“No.”
“I have. The bunker was accessed through a door in the basement.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Why?”
“There was no basement. I have the floor plan for the cabin in front of me.”
“Well, there might not have been a basement when your client owned it, but there is now. Perhaps this Bob Scott knew of the bunker and built the basement to have access to it.”
“I suppose that’s possible. I was looking back through the chain of title, and there have been multiple owners since the army. In fact, when the army owned it, there was no cabin. One of the subsequent owners built it.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any photos of Bob Scott, would you? It’s really important,” she added.
“Well, we normally make a copy of the party’s driver’s license when we do a real estate closing—you know, to verify identities since they’re signing legal documents for recordation.”
Michelle almost jumped in her excitement. “Can you send me that picture by fax, like right now?”
“No, I can’t.”
“But it’s not privileged information.”
“No. That’s not it.” He sighed and said, “Look, when I opened the file this morning, it was the first time I’d looked at it since the transaction closed. And, well, I didn’t find the copy of Mr. Scott’s driver’s license.”
“Maybe you forgot to make a copy.”
“My secretary has been with me thirty years, and she’s never forgotten before.”
“So maybe someone took the copy out of the file.”
“I don’t know what to think. It’s just not here.”
“Do you remember what Bob Scott looked like?”
“I really only saw him once, for a few minutes, at the closing. And I do hundreds of those a year.”
“Would you take a minute and think about it and try and describe him to me?”
The lawyer did so, and Michelle thanked him and hung up.
The description the lawyer had given was too vague for her to know if it was Bob Scott. And in eight years people can change a great deal, particularly those who’ve fallen out of the mainstream, like Scott. And she had no idea what Denby even looked like. God, she was going around in circles. She took several deep breaths to calm herself. Panicking was not going to help Sean.
Unable to move forward on any of her lines of inquiry, she started wondering about King’s. He said he was working on something—something that required extra research. What had he said? He’d gone somewhere. She racked her tired mind trying to think of it.
And then she had it. She grabbed her keys and ran for her truck.
68
Michelle walked quickly into the UVA law library and up to the service desk. The woman who was there wasn’t the one who’d helped King, but after Michelle asked, she was directed to the librarian who had.
Michelle flashed her Secret Service badge and told the woman she needed to see what King had been researching.
“I heard on the news about his home burning down. Is he all right? They didn’t say.”
“Well, we just don’t know right now. That’s why I need your help.”
The woman told Michelle what King had asked for, then took her to the same room and logged her onto the system.
“It was the Martindale Hubbell directory,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry, I’m not a lawyer. What exactly is Martindale Hubbell?”
“It’s a directory of all licensed lawyers across the U.S. Sean has a set at his office, but it was the most recent one. He needed a directory that went back some time.”
“Did he mention how far back?”
“Early seventies.”
“Did he mention anything else? Anything that would narrow it down more?” Michelle didn’t know exactly how many lawyers were licensed in the U.S., but she figured there were far more than she had time to look at.
The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, that’s all I know.”
She left, and Michelle looked at the screen with a discouraged expression when she saw that the directory contained well over one million names. There are over a million lawyers in the United States? No wonder things are so screwed up.
Not really knowing where to start, she ran her gaze over the home page and noticed a drop-down screen that made her sit up very straight. It was entitled “Recent Searches.” It listed the last few documents the user from this remote location had been working on.
She clicked on the first item there. When she saw the name of the lawyer listed, and where he was from, she leaped up and sprinted through the library, causing many aspiring attorneys to stare.
She was on her phone before she even got to her truck. Her mind was racing so fast, filling in the blanks at such a fierce rate, that the person she called said hello three times before she even realized it.
“Parks,” she yelled into the phone, “it’s Michelle Maxwell. I think I know where Sean is. And I know who the hell is behind this.”
“Whoa, just slow down. What are you talking about?”
“Meet me in front of Greenberry’s coffee shop at the Barracks Road Shopping Center just as fast as you can. And call up the cavalry. We’ve got to move fast.”
“Meet you at Barracks Road? Aren’t you in the hospital?”
She clicked off without answering.
As she sped off, she prayed they wouldn’t be too late.
Parks met her in front of the coffee shop. He was alone, and not looking happy. “What the hell are you doing out of the hospital?”
“Where are your men?” she asked.
The marshal looked to be in a foul temper. “What, do you think me and
the cavalry just sit around the campfire waiting for you to blow the bugle? You call and scream in my ear and don’t tell me a damn thing, and you expect me to conjure up some army and I don’t even know where the hell we’re supposed to be going. I work for the federal government, lady, just like you, with limited budgets and manpower. I’m not James Bond!”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I was just really excited. And we don’t have much time.”
“I want you to take a deep breath, collect your thoughts and tell me what’s going on. And if you’ve really cracked this thing and we need the manpower, we’ll get it. It’ll only take a phone call. Okay?” He looked at her with equal parts hope and skepticism.
She took a long breath and forced herself to calm down. “Sean went to the law library and looked up some information on a lawyer who I think represented Arnold Ramsey when he was arrested back in the seventies.”
“Ramsey was arrested? Where did this angle come from?”
“Something Sean and I just stumbled on.”
Parks looked at her curiously. “What was the lawyer’s name?”
“Roland Morse, a lawyer from California. I’m certain he’s Sidney Morse’s father. Sidney Morse must have known Arnold Ramsey way back when, maybe in college. But that’s beside the point. Jefferson, it’s not Sidney, of course; it’s Peter Morse, the younger brother. He’s behind all this. I know it sounds like a stretch, but I’m almost positive it’s him. Sean looked away for an instant, and Clyde Ritter was killed and his brother’s life was ruined. He’s got the money and the criminal background to put this all together. He’s avenging his brother, who’s sitting in a mental hospital catching tennis balls. And we never even had him on our list of suspects. He’s got Sean and Joan and Bruno. And I know where.”
When she told him, Parks said, “Well, what the hell are we waiting for? Let’s go!” They jumped into her truck, and she laid rubber off both rear tires getting out of the parking lot. While she was doing that, Parks got on his phone and commenced summoning the cavalry. Michelle prayed they were not too late.
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