Third Strike: A Charlie Fox Mystery

by Zoe Sharp

  No, he wasn’t, I reflected, but he was a damned good interrogator. Cold, ruthless and utterly relentless. I’d been on the receiving end during my Special Forces training and, even though a part of me had always clung to the shrinking reality that it was all just a game, his innate menace and his aptitude for arrowing in on fear and weakness had terrified everyone who’d had to endure it.

  “We reasoned that identifying her would be by far the best way to neutralize whatever threat she presented,” Sean continued, sounding perfectly reasonable.

  “And afterward?”

  Sean met his gaze straight and level. “We left Ms. Blaylock relatively unharmed.” He always was a better liar than me, too.

  “But you’re telling us you had no idea of where she was going, or what she was doing?” Parker asked at that point, deflecting whatever doubts Collingwood might have been about to express. “Do your people normally inform you if they’re traveling overseas, for instance? Are they flagged at Immigration?”

  “No—o,” Collingwood said slowly, sounding like he was drawing the word out to give himself time to think. “They’re not obliged to tell us. It was only after she disappeared that we ran checks and found she’d bought a plane ticket to the UK.”

  So, he’d known Vondie had left the country long before I’d told him about my mother, I realized. And knowing we knew meant the rules of the game shifted slightly, that now he had nothing to lose by giving us a little more. Collingwood reached for the buff folder again and leafed through it, still careful not to let us get a look at the contents.

  “Here you go—she flies into Manchester, England, just over a week ago. After that, we lose her. She just drops right off the grid. According to the Brits, she hasn’t used any of her credit cards or even switched on her cell phone since she landed. She missed her return flight, didn’t turn up at work when she was due. I don’t mind telling you that we’re seriously concerned for her safety.”

  “Was she traveling alone?” I asked, trying to keep any inflection out of my voice.

  Collingwood ducked his head again, then made a little side-to-side movement, which I took to mean yes/no/maybe.

  “She booked and paid for the flight herself, but we pulled the manifest,” he said cautiously, opening his case for that piece of paperwork and handing it over. I took it without comment, leafed through the pages. It came as no surprise to find Don Kaminski on there as well, but I let my eyes drop past his name without a waver, sedately read all the way to the end and put the sheaf down onto the table.

  When I looked up I found Collingwood had been watching me closely. But if the disappointed twitch in the side of his face was anything to go by, I hadn’t shown him what he’d been hoping to see.

  Where his left hand hung over the arm of the chair his fingers performed an unconscious little dance, rubbing the pad of his thumb across his fingertips, back and forth like he was checking the viscosity of oil, or asking for a bribe. I wondered if he was even aware he was doing it.

  “Okay, people—cards on the table time,” he said at last, tiredly. “We believe Agent Blaylock has been working with a guy called Don Kaminski, but I’m sure this information comes as no surprise to any of you—seeing as how you initially sent around a mug shot of Kaminski at the same time as that picture.” He nodded to the blowup of Vondie and allowed himself a wry smile. “I’m assuming from the fact that you stopped asking about him, that means you ID’d him pretty fast. Am I right?”

  Parker inclined his head a fraction, a faint encouraging smile on his lips. It was the first movement he’d made since he sat down again. On either side of him, Sean and I were doing our best impersonations of the sphinx at Giza.

  Collingwood gave a snort of frustration at our lack of a more emphatic response.

  “Look, I know the business you’re in is pretty tight-knit, cliquey, so if you identified Kaminski and the outfit he works for, you’ll already know about his current contract and you’ll understand our, ah, interest?”

  If Kaminski was working for the Boston hospital, I couldn’t for the life of me work out how someone like Collingwood might be involved, but I had a feeling if we played this right, we might just be about to find out.

  I tried not to hold my breath, tried to force my muscles not to tense. Parker, with heroic restraint, merely gave a polite, almost bored nod, as though this was all information we were well aware of and he wished Collingwood would cut to the chase.

  “So, what exactly is your interest, Mr. Collingwood?” he said, his face deceptively placid.

  Judging by his weary expression, Collingwood took Parker’s question as awkwardness rather than ignorance. He gave a gusty sigh. “Storax Pharmaceutical, of course.”

  Storax.

  The name couldn’t have hit me any harder if it had been plastered all over the front of the taxi that had tried to run me down.

  Storax. The company that manufactured the drug Jeremy Lee had been taking before he died—with or without his knowledge. The company that had obligingly sent two of their people up to Boston allegedly to assist in his treatment. Where had they been, I wondered, when the good doctor had been administered his fatal overdose?

  My father had been convinced that it was the hospital who’d been covering up some kind of clinical error, but now Collingwood had shed a whole new light on the situation. The question was, what should we do about it?

  “And why exactly is one of the lesser-known government agencies interested in Storax?” It was Sean who asked the question, which was just as well—I wasn’t capable of speech. I was amazed that Sean could sound so calm in the face of the information Collingwood had just dropped, apparently unwittingly, into our laps.

  Collingwood’s eyes narrowed, as if he realized he’d said more than he should, and I could see his mind backtracking, trying to work out what advantage we might gain from it. After a moment he seemed to come to the conclusion that he had nothing to lose by saying more.

  “Storax Pharmaceutical contracts with the U.S. government to produce certain, ah, vaccines. Anything more than that is classified information,” Collingwood said, ducking his head again like a boxer expecting to dodge blows. “But let me just say that we keep an eye on their other activities. A very close eye. Storax is just about to be granted worldwide licenses for this new bone drug of theirs, based largely on the success of clinical trials to date. If there’s a problem and they’re covering it up, we need to know and we need to know fast.”

  “If Storax holds government contracts, surely you have some authority to go in and do some kind of audit,” I said.

  He gave a sad little shake of his head at my naïveté. “Storax is a global corporation,” he said. “A multibillion-dollar enterprise. Heck, they probably have more people on the payroll just to lobby for them in Washington than our agency has on its entire payroll, period. We can’t fight that unless we have an ironclad case. They’ll shut us down in a heartbeat. And that brings me to your father, Miss Fox. Where is he, by the way?”

  “Somewhere safe,” Parker said, jumping in before I had the chance to answer, even if I’d had the inclination to do so. “What is it you want with him?”

  “If Storax is falsifying any of its research, I’m sure you can appreciate the implications for the national security of this country, Mr. Armstrong,” Collingwood said heavily. “If Richard Foxcroft has any evidence to support his claims that Dr. Lee was given that overdose as some kind of cover-up, we need to talk to him.”

  “Why should we trust you?” I said flatly. “If Storax is behind what’s been going on, they’ve fought dirty so far and it’s damn near ruined him. Don’t you think he’s had enough?”

  “We need to know what he knows,” Collingwood said, stubborn. “I don’t suppose I need to remind you how, ah, difficult we could make life for your father if he doesn’t cooperate?”

  Parker pushed his chair back and rose, the movement sudden but smooth and controlled all at the same time. He leaned forwards slightly and plan
ted both his fists very deliberately onto the desktop, letting his shoulders hunch so that Collingwood was left in no doubt about the width of them, normally so well disguised by careful tailoring.

  “Do I need to remind you that one of your agents is guilty of kidnapping?” he asked, his voice gentle enough to make me shiver. “That she and Kaminski threatened to torture and rape a defenseless old lady? How would that look on tomorrow’s front page?”

  “Almost as bad as the old lady’s highly respectable husband getting caught in a bordello with a teenage hooker,” Collingwood shot back. He gave another gusty sigh. “Look, this is getting us nowhere. I just want to recover my agent and find out what her involvement is with Storax, and what they’re hiding. Foxcroft can help.”

  He returned Parker’s glare with a cool stare of his own before shifting its focus to me. The upper corners of his eyelids folded down until they almost touched his lashes, making his gaze seem deceptively sleepy. “You want a way to get your father out of the mess he’s in, and no doubt he wants to get to the bottom of this other guy’s death up in Boston. Am I right?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, I nodded.

  Collingwood smiled at me. “See? Same goal.”

  “This is all very romantic,” Sean said, his voice dry, “but how do you intend to consummate this marriage of convenience?”

  Collingwood frowned briefly at the flippancy. “We trade,” he said. “First off, you, ah, assist me in recovering my rogue agent.”

  “Always assuming that we have any ideas in that direction,” Sean agreed placidly. “And in return?”

  Collingwood shrugged. “I listen to Foxcroft’s side of the story, drop the word in the right ears to make sure all that, ah, trouble he got himself into over in Brooklyn goes away,” he said, “and in return he gives me his professional take on the death of this guy Lee, and any possible connections he can make between that and Storax.”

  We fell silent. It was an answer. In fact, from where I was sitting, it was the only answer—or the start of it, at least. Collingwood’s fingers were twitching again as he regarded us.

  “Well?” he demanded. “Do we have a deal?”

  “I think that’s up to the good doctor, don’t you?” Parker murmured. He glanced at me, eyebrow slightly raised. I nodded slightly and he leaned forwards, pressing the intercom button on his phone. Bill Rendelson’s voice barked from the speaker in acknowledgment.

  “Bill, ask Mr. and Mrs. Foxcroft to step into my office, would you?”

  Parker let go of the intercom button and sat up to face Collingwood’s obvious consternation that one of his objectives, at least, had been within such easy reach. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  CHAPTER 15

  My father listened with absolute concentration to the proposal the government man put forward, as though he had any number of choices in the matter. When Collingwood was done outlining what he had in mind, my father’s face was grave despite the fact that he was being offered deliverance, or something pretty close.

  It was my mother who spoke first.

  “What are the risks?” she asked, glancing around the group of us. “These dreadful people have already threatened us and only a few days ago someone tried to kill my husband—and my daughter, too,” she added, a touch belatedly for my taste. “Will agreeing to help you make them stop? Or will it only make them try harder?”

  Collingwood pursed his lips, but I saw that gleam was back in his sad-looking eyes again. He’d clearly dismissed my mother from his calculations almost as soon as they’d been introduced. She was the dictionary definition of genteel, if far from the defenseless old lady Parker had described. I sometimes found it easy to forget that under that blue-rinsed exterior lay a formidable, albeit largely dormant, brain.

  “Ma’am, we’ll do our best to ensure your safety. We need your husband’s testimony if we’re going to make anything of this. Besides,” he added with a reassuring smile, gesturing around Parker’s office, “these people are the best in the business. My recommendation would be for you to put yourself entirely in their hands.”

  “In that case, are you also going to foot the bill for their services?” she said pleasantly.

  Collingwood looked momentarily taken aback. “I will certainly put that to my superiors, ma’am,” he said, noncommittal.

  She nodded and smiled, seeming placated. Collingwood waited a moment, as if to make sure she wasn’t going to come back with anything else, then began gathering up his papers. He picked up the flight manifest I’d looked at, and in doing so uncovered the blowup of Vondie Blaylock that had been hidden underneath it. The photograph suddenly seemed to lie starkly exposed in the center of the table and was all the more shocking because of it.

  I heard a simultaneous sharp intake of breath from both my mother and father.

  Then my father stretched out and picked up the photo and there was the slightest hesitation in the reach, as though he didn’t really want to look but couldn’t help himself. He took his time studying the image and, when he was done, he glanced across at Sean with taut disdain curling his lip.

  “Your handiwork, I presume,” he said coldly.

  “No, actually,” I said. “Mine.”

  For a second he allowed his bitterness to have free rein before he ruthlessly clamped down on it. But there was something in his face when he looked at me that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps now when he looked at his only child, the product of both his genes and his nurturing, there was something missing.

  I turned away and caught Collingwood watching our frosty exchange with apparent amusement lurking in those mournful eyes. They were a dark brown color, I noticed. That, together with the drooping lids, gave him the appearance of an elderly bloodhound. But one who had suddenly picked up a hot new scent, and was hunting.

  “So,” Collingwood said, dropping his hands onto his thighs as though preparing to get to his feet, “no doubt you’ll need to discuss this—”

  “I don’t believe so,” my father said, interrupting him. Just when I thought his arrogance had reached new levels, he did cast his eyes sideways at his wife, for all the world like her opinion mattered. She nodded, and the slightest flicker of a smile crossed my father’s thin lips. He turned back to Collingwood. “I’m prepared to help you all I can.”

  Collingwood continued to rise, but only to lean across the table and offer my father a solemn handshake. “Glad to hear it, sir,” he said, shaking my mother’s hand also, almost as an afterthought, and subsiding again. He shifted his attention to Parker, waving a hand towards Vondie’s picture, which he’d left—deliberately, I’m sure—on the table. “So, Mr. Armstrong, can you help me to, ah, locate my agent so I can bring her in?”

  My mother gave a start of surprise. “Oh, but surely that’s—”

  “The woman who held you hostage—yes,” I cut in to stop her blurting out that she’d watched Sean and me take both her unwanted houseguests prisoner and that they were still being held at our behest. Regrettably perhaps, the only quick way I could think of to shut her up was to remind her. “The woman who allowed her partner to threaten to rape you.”

  She paled, then a dark, mottled flush bloomed across her cheeks. Peripherally, I saw my father’s head snap round, but I held on to my mother’s distraught gaze until I saw the understanding creep into it and strip from her tongue whatever words she’d been about to voice.

  When I let go, I expected to find my father glaring at me for raking it up. Instead, he had picked the photograph up again and was studying it afresh. It occurred to me that it was probably the first time he’d got a look at one of his wife’s captors. I don’t know how much she’d told him about her ordeal, but it must have been enough.

  Parker, who’d missed nothing of my father’s brooding double take, got easily to his feet and came round the desk to shake the government man’s hand. “Would you give us some time to make a few calls, Mr. Collingwood?” he asked politely.
r />   “No problem,” Collingwood said. “I’m grateful for any assistance you can offer.”

  Parker favored him with a bland smile. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  Sean and I followed Parker out into the reception area, closing the office door behind us.

  “Okay,” Parker said quietly. “Get on the phone to whoever’s holding those two and cut them loose.” I nodded and started to reach for my mobile. I had carefully erased the number for Gleet’s farm from the phone’s memory, but I had it stored in my own instead.

  “Oh, and tell your guy to make sure he gives them back a cell phone or access to a landline, okay?”

  I paused in mid-dial. “Okay.”

  He smiled. “Good,” he said, then half-opened the door and added, louder, “Bill, would you show Mr. Collingwood into one of the conference rooms while we make some inquiries on his behalf?”

  “Yeah, boss,” Bill said, emerging from behind the reception desk. As he passed Parker, he gave him a slight nod. Obviously, there was something going on here and I didn’t fully appreciate the finer details. But before I could ask, Gleet’s number in the UK began to ring out and I didn’t have time to wonder about it. I crossed quickly to an empty office where I wouldn’t be overheard.

  “Good thing, too,” was all Gleet had to say when I passed on Parker’s instructions. “They was starting to stink in there. Even the pigs was complaining.”

  “Just watch yourselves when you let them go,” I warned. “The woman’s got a nasty kick to her, and I wouldn’t trust the guy anywhere near your sister.”

  I heard Gleet snort even at the other end of a transatlantic phone line. “He’ll be a brave one if he tries anything on with May. She sleeps with that fuckin’ shotgun alongside her under the covers,” he muttered. “Don’t you worry, Charlie. I’ll stick the pair of’em in the back of the van and drive’em round in circles for a while before I let’em go. I’ll make sure I dump’em far enough away that they wouldn’t find the place again in a month of Sundays.”