by A P Bateman
Fight to survive
Kill to win
Win to leave
21
The ride out to Kathy’s house took Stone about twenty-minutes. The Mustang was no longer there, having been towed to the shop where Stone had the original restoration performed. There was crime scene tape all around the house and a Washington PD officer was sitting in a cruiser outside the perimeter. Stone parked up the bike and took off the half-face helmet, hung it on the handlebar. He approached the officer and showed the man his ID.
“You got a partner in there?”
“No.”
“You’re here alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Just sat on your ass at a crime scene?”
“That’s what it looks like.” The officer was in his forties, overweight and clearly hadn’t had a promotion since joining the police department. He sneered a little, or maybe the bitterness of failure and the weight of life had stuck to his face permanently. “Just following orders.”
“And they were?”
“What business is it of yours?”
Stone smiled. “It’s a Secret Service crime scene.”
“So what the hell am I doing here?” the man sneered.
Stone straightened up. Tapped his fingers on the roof. “I guess we needed donuts,” he said, drumming his fingers louder. “I don’t know; we don’t have a department of fat, bitter, underachievers to guard our crime scenes as yet. Maybe we’ll outsource it to private security someday, I guess until then we have to make do with the local police department.”
The cop grabbed the door and went to barge it open. The sneer had gone, replaced by rage and he put his shoulder against the door as he opened it. The door opened, but only made it a few inches. Stone had his knee against it, most of his weight pushed into it. As much as the cop tried to push it, the door went nowhere. The man was flushed red, he gritted his teeth together and heaved. Stone acted as if he hadn’t noticed.
“Normally when we ask for a crime scene to be secured, we expect a patrol, some basic security protocols,” Stone said. He drummed his fingers on the roof like he was bored. “The thing is, if you’re sat here, someone could get in a window or door around the back and either contaminate the crime scene, or remove crucial evidence.” The cop looked up at him, stopped pushing on the door and sat back in his seat. He was breathing hard. Stone looked across the grass and nodded to the neighbour’s house. “Did somebody collect the dogs?”
“What?” the cop asked, looking a little dejected, but a whole lot less angry. “I don’t know anything about any dogs.”
“The owner got the neighbour to look after her dogs.” Stone stood up and stepped back from the car. The cop got out slowly and looked back across the roof of the patrol vehicle to the neighbouring property. Stone nodded towards the house. “Couple of big wolf things, the neighbour has them. Has the owner of this house been back yet?”
“Nope,” the cop was calmer now. If anything he looked as if he realised he’d been foolish.
“Ok,” Stone said. “Go do a sweep of the rear of the house and walk a few random patrols around it. Sit on the porch for a while, then sit round the back. Your patrol vehicle shouts that you’re here from the front, you take care of the back and sides.” He turned and walked to the neighbouring house and climbed the steps. He looked back and saw the cop walking dutifully around to the rear of Kathy’s house. He had worked with local police departments for as long as he’d been in the Secret Service. It was inevitable. But also inevitable, was their contempt at knowing that the Secret Service answered to no other agency and could commandeer any department, organisation or law enforcement body within the United States. It never stopped local law enforcement trying to assert themselves though, and Stone felt he’d taken it pretty softly on this guy. He had taken a police chief’s career and pension before and not lost a minute’s sleep over it. He had found in his work that even when tasked with protecting the President’s life, some people just couldn’t let go, couldn’t float with the tide for a few days. There was always someone who had to stick a wrench in the cog and threaten to crash the entire machine.
Stone cupped his hands against the glass and looked inside. The house was empty. There were no furnishings or anything to show anybody was living there. He thought back to the previous evening. The man on the doorstep, the woman shouting from downstairs. Why would they have been living there with no furnishings? Had they been in the middle of a house move? Kathy would surely have known if that had been the case. He started to feel uneasy.
Around the back of the house Stone saw the thick tyre marks on the grass. He walked up to the deck and looked inside the kitchen window. Empty. He had moved enough times to know it couldn’t be done that quickly. There was always cleaning to be done, boxes to shift, furniture to move. The tyre marks and the size of the tread would denote a large vehicle, maybe a removal truck, and the parking was better here than around the front where the ground had been laid over to garden and parking for two mid-sized vehicles.
Stone took out his cell phone and dialled Kathy again. Voicemail. He dialled the service desk and asked to be put through to the Rapid Reaction Unit, the team who had secured the property.
“Agent Yates speaking.”
“Ernest, Rob Stone.”
“What, you don’t like voicemail or something?”
“What?”
“I’ve rung round the clock. You have a half dozen messages. And about twenty missed calls.”
“Sorry, I…”
“Forget it,” the man was curt. He was a New Yorker. The Bronx. There never needed to be an explanation. Some would say he was curt; others would say he was rude. He was neither. It was a geography thing. “We had a team secure this woman, Kathy Newman’s house. Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Yates paused. “At least it was meant to look that way. No body. No blood. No DNA, except for yours. And your set of prints. On the desk, the door handles and on a couple of coffee cups.”
“Impossible.”
“No. There was a hell of a lot of bleach though. Or traces of it. Industrial strength, spray gun would be my bet. Toxicology will come back on that. And there were some dog hairs, but no dogs.”
“The dogs went to the neighbours.”
“My team leader went there. No dogs. No people, no furnishings, no trace. Again, cleaned with industrial bleach. No DNA.”
“But there were people in that house last night!”
“Did you see them?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go in?”
Stone felt a wave of heat wash up his neck and into his face. “No. I waited. Kathy spoke to the guy on the doorstep. His wife was shouting downstairs. Who was it? What did they want? That sort of thing.”
“But you didn’t go in.”
“No.”
There was a pause. “My guess is the house was already empty, boxed up and cleaned. After you left they finished cleaning the last things like door handles, the thresh holds and were out of there. I’ll get some enquiries done, find out who owns it, whether it’s rented, who leased it, that sort of thing.”
“Ok,” Stone paused. “While you’re at it, do the same thing with Kathy Newman’s house.”
“You can’t ask her?”
“No,” Stone paused. “No, she’s not answering her phone and I don’t know where she is.”
22
“I don’t know where she is. I don’t much care either.”
Stone looked at the woman in front of him. She was fifty, a red head and Stone could tell by the lines of her cat’s bum mouth that she smoked heavily. He could smell the smoke and nicotine on her clothes, saw the yellow stains on her fingers.
“When did you last see her?”
She was irritated by Stone’s presence. She had a paper to run, more important things to do than to talk to a government employee about a waning reporter’s absence. “A week,” she paused, skim-reading a sheet of copy in
front of her. “I don’t know, ten days?”
Stone took the copy out of her hand and for a moment she looked ready to explode. “Ms Kowalski, let’s not do this. You will tell what I need to know. How difficult it becomes is down to you. Ten minutes of your time, a call from you to your personnel department, then I’m out of here and on my way. Or, I’m going to have to pull some strings, shut your presses down for a day, have you suspended for non-compliance of an informational request aiding a government inquiry. Your assistant editor will enjoy the challenge of sitting at your desk for sure…”
“Ok! I get it!” she picked up the phone and asked someone for time sheets and payroll details. She looked back at Stone. “Kathy was good. But that was a long time ago, and to be honest, it was before she was with us. I hired her on a wave of great achievements. Those days were gone before she took up with the Washington Post. I suppose it eats at you, but there comes a time when you have to get on with it. You can’t let it get to you forever. We all have family problems, but in this game you can’t languish. The stories are there; they won’t wait for you.”
“Break-ups can be tough,” Stone commented. He’d had enough experience.
She frowned. “Break up? What are you talking about? She hasn’t had a partner since she’s been here. I’m talking about her father.”
Stone remembered the bar, the cream soda. Her comment about nostalgia. He nodded, understood. “He died, I know.”
The editor sat back in her seat and frowned at him, it bordered on sympathy. “Do you actually know anything, Agent Stone? He isn’t dead. He’s in a nursing home in Virginia. Kathy used up all of her leave – compassionate and holiday. The paper even granted her a short period of time to get things in place, move him to Washington DC, or one of the suburbs. Kathy has barely filed copy since. We were going to let her go next month, the board have had enough. She just beat us to it, that’s all.”
“What is wrong with her father?”
“Age and Alzheimer’s. She could have just left him; it’s not like he would have known. What good has it done? The old fart is sat there chewing on his carpet slippers and Kathy Newman has squandered her talent and career sitting with him and talking to someone who doesn’t know who the hell she is anyway.”
There was a knock at the door and a young woman walked in with a file. She handed it over to Kowalski, smiled at Stone and walked back out. The editor perused the file, then handed it over.
“Here, keep it. It’s a copy anyway. She hasn’t been in for twelve days. Nobody’s spoken to her either. If you see her, tell her she’s fired.”
“Tell her yourself.” Stone stood. He took the file and looked down at her. “That old guy with the slippers. That was your Dad, right?”
“What if it was?” she asked, her tone hostile, defensive.
“Well, I hope in between bouts of coherence and complete periods of blankness and despair, Kathy’s father is proud of her for hanging in there. For doing what it takes and putting family before her career. I hope your father could say the same.” Stone saw a flicker behind the woman’s eyes, a break in her harsh façade, but he said nothing more as he turned and walked out of her office.
Stone checked his cell phone again as he reached his motorcycle parked on the street outside the Washington Post’s offices. He hadn’t received the messages from Yates. A call to his network provider had drawn a blank. He had called Yates, who had read back the number. The correct number. Stone never left a personal greeting message on his voicemail, choosing the network carrier’s setting instead, but he hoped Yates had misdialled. Otherwise someone else was picking up his messages.
He called Max, who was sounding tired. “Just checking the coordinated for Edwards’ GPS were still at the location you gave me.”
“They are,” he paused. “Kathy just called, I checked and the vehicle hasn’t moved. She’ll meet you there.”
“What?” Stone cursed. “You’ve heard of operational security, haven’t you?”
“Sure. What’s the problem?”
“I’m not entirely sure of Kathy’s credibility. I need to check further.”
“Shit, sorry. I just thought…”
“What?”
“Well, last night. You know? With the whole ear-stroking, hip swaying thing. I thought you were close. I thought if you weren’t, you soon would be.”
“From the man who actually changed his name to Max Power to score girls?” Stone cursed inwardly. He shook his head. Max was right. They had been very soon after. Now he felt bitter, like he’d been played. “How long ago was this?”
“An hour.”
Stone swung his leg over the Ducati. He reached for his helmet with his other hand. “Ok. Look, check up on the house. Find out what the deal is. The neighbouring property too. And when you’ve done that, run a full background check on Kathy Newman.”
“Sure. I can like, sleep when I’m dead and shit.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“What’s the problem with Kathy?”
“I don’t know. Yet. Check out her father too. I gather he’s in a nursing home in Virginia.”
“East or West?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hell, why don’t we throw in the entire eastern seaboard?”
“If it makes it easier.”
“Ouch. You’re mean.”
“I get meaner. You done it yet?”
“I’m on it.” Max hung up.
Stone called Yates. The agent sounded terse. Or maybe he’d just won the lottery. It was hard to tell. “Hey, you called back.”
“I’ve called. Don’t tell me you’ve left another message?”
“I have.”
“On this number?”
“Your caller ID just showed up. You’re in my phone book.”
“Shit. My phone is compromised.”
“Come back, I’ll organise a handset and new number. A burner.”
“I will, but I need to be somewhere.”
“The house. The neighbour’s place, that is. Empty for seven weeks. If that broad took the dogs round, she knew it was a set-up. The real estate agent even checked the place and showed a couple round it two weeks ago.”
“Could this couple have been the same one who took in the dogs?”
“I’ve got people looking at it, but don’t expect much. A call from a burner, a viewing and no further contact. I wouldn’t hold out much hope.”
“But Kathy would have known.” Stone said flatly.
“Yes. Where’s the broad now?”
“I don’t know. But I think I know where to find her.”
23
The Ducati could really move through the traffic. Stone kept it up around seventy, weaving around slower cars and between the lanes. The brakes were powerful but smooth and the traction control was a revelation compared to the slight mistake and you die handling of the Honda VTR 1000 he last rode ten years ago. The bike which nearly killed him and put a break on his motorcycling for a decade. He only found out that the biking fraternity called it The Widow Maker after he’d crashed. When the road joined the two-lane, Stone dropped a gear and saw one-hundred-and-thirty before settling down to a hundred as he headed east towards the Chesapeake and the small, picturesque town of Churchtown, south of Shady Side.
Stone remembered the Chesapeake well from his childhood. His family would rent a beach house near North Beach for two weeks every summer and both Stone and his brother would swim and go crabbing and fish and get sunburned all day long. When Stone was fourteen he would act as his older brother’s wingman with teenage girls as they ventured into the town and onto the boardwalk to hang around the arcades and hotdog stands. Andrew was two years older and having a cute younger brother didn’t hurt, especially if the girl he liked had a younger sister in tow.
Stone had left the I95 and passed through Upper Marlboro where he had remembered a particularly hot day and a river flowing into a small lake at Mount Calvert. The brothers had rigged up a rope swing
high in the boughs of a tree and had taken turns to drop the twenty-feet or so into the river. The rope swing went down well with the local children and had still been there on subsequent trips. Stone remembered his brother fondly, but as always, felt saddened by his death. Sometimes he tried to forget everything, to avoid feeling that way, but he reasoned it was better to remember the good times and take the sadness that accompanied it. The same went for remembering his father. Otherwise, what was the point of it all? He had come to realise that there was no cushion in life and that experiences, good or bad, made you what you were.
Stone was still hustling along. Overtaking traffic and using third and fourth gears with their savage acceleration and massive torque breaking. The bike was a cruiser-come-street-racer and had such massive acceleration that many fairing-clad Japanese sports bikes would struggle to match it up to a hundred. The air was cold and his thin suit offered such little resistance to the wind that the speed had turned late summer to winter against his skin. As he reached the outskirts of Churchtown, he slowed the motorcycle and within a few minutes driving at the speed limit he started to warm steadily.
