by Tom Clancy
Rob drove the thirty feet or so toward the house, coasted left onto the dirt-and-gravel track branching toward it, and suddenly heard the dogs barking like crazy out back in their pen.
A sense of foreboding crept over him. There was no way Cynth would leave them in the pen under any circumstance, not in this torrent. What they were doing outside? And what in the world could possibly be causing them to make so much noise?
As he ducked out of the Camaro to the front door, keys in hand, Rob had time to note almost unconsciously that nobody had come to the window upon hearing him pull up.
Oblivious to the accordion folder on its stand beside him, Rob paused in the doorway to wipe the soles of his shoes on the entry mat, an act of habitual normalcy in a life from which every trace of the normal was about to depart. He would never recall anything else from the time he swung off the road until after the police arrived. He would not even remember mustering the presence of mind to call them on his cell phone . . . this hole punched in his memory by shock and horror the only mercy availed him that day, and perhaps all that kept him sane in the countless tormented days and nights to come.
For Rob Howell, the chasm between before and after would open with that automatic, momentary pause.
So absurd and yet so natural.
Wiping his shoe bottoms on the mat.
“Cynth?” he called from inside the door.
No answer.
“Cynth? You home?”
Still no answer.
Rob moved farther through the house, saw the kitchen light was on, and found his gaze suddenly drawn to a puddle of wetness on the small section of floor visible through its entry from his angle in the middle of the hallway. Something was spilled there on the floor. Something red. Splashed across the floor tiles, tendriled out into the thin puttied spaces between them. A gleaming puddle of red on Cynth’s precious new kitchen tiles, which Rob had painstakingly laid himself not three months earlier as a fifth anniversary present to her.
His heart thumped.
“Cynth?”
Not a sound except for the greys barking outside.
Dread perched on his shoulders like some cruel taloned bird, Rob rushed into the kitchen, looked down near the feet of the table, and began screaming wildly into the silence of the house, his legs melting away underneath him, the world blurring out in a gush of tears, screaming, screaming, his wails of horror and grief rising from the bottom of his lungs until they shredded off into hoarse, hysterical sobs.
What he had seen was an abomination.
“Hey, Roger, you made it!” Hugh Bennett said in a bassoon voice, coming over from the parlor entry. “Been looking forward to this a while . . . heard you were finally on the way from the airport! Guess it’s been quite a haul for all of us staying here—except Tom o’ course!”
In Gabon only a few hours, Roger Gordian was not too surprised to find King Hughie waiting for him at the large colonial home of Thomas Sheffield, an expat Sedco official whose guest he would be for the next couple of days.
What did catch him unprepared was the retinue of perhaps eight or ten suited, seated Sedco executives in the parlor behind Hughie.
“Good to see you.” Gordian looked into his large, broad-cheeked face. Bushy white eyebrows ran together under the forehead like a solid raft of clouds. “Everyone’s here for dinner?”
Bennett slapped him on the back as they shook hands.
“And an informal meeting, Gabon-style!” King Hughie said. “They say people like doing business at night in these parts! And I say, great! No time beats the present for ironing out the details of tomorrow’s ceremonious occasion!”
Gordian looked at him. Did he really believe everything that left his mouth had exclamatory value?
“I hope you’ll understand that I need time to freshen up,” he said. “It has been a long trip.”
Hughie looked over at Sheffield, who had been standing beside Gordian in apparent mortification.
“Not a problem!” he said. “Tom’s got himself a damn well-stocked wine cellar . . . and his cook went and prepared some beee-eau-ti-ful hors d’oeuvres to tide me over while I do my sampling!”
The two police detectives arrived first thing the next morning with an attitude of impatient irresistibility.
Megan’s response was to be patiently immovable.
She had sized them up the moment they entered her office and known they were poised to intimidate. Perhaps because they were men addressing a woman, or law officers accustomed to throwing around the weight of their authority, or for some combination of those or other reasons. She didn’t really care. They had stated what they wanted. She was determined to learn more about why they had come before offering her compliance. But although they wore their game faces as well as she did, and a sense of pressing urgency could be felt on both sides of her desk, Megan thought her clearer view of their relative positions might give her a bargaining edge.
The leveler was how much their presence worried her. She couldn’t afford to let them see it.
“Ms. Breen, we need to speak to Roger Gordian about his daughter,” said the senior investigator for the third time. His name was Erickson. Probably in his late forties. Big squarish face, cornflower blue eyes, a crop of wavy, canary blond hair wet from the rain outside. He sat with his right leg across his opposite knee, wearing brown off-the-rack mufti under his open raincoat. “You say he’s traveling someplace?”
“He’s abroad on business,” she said. “In Africa. It’s no secret.”
Erickson studied Megan across her desk. “Even so, you must be able to reach him. Or his spouse.” He paused, added, “We’ve tried their residence but no one seems to be present.”
Megan converted the tension in her facial muscles to an expression of firm resolve. Erickson seemed dogged but not confrontational. He might be the one to deal with.
“I believe Mrs. Gordian is visiting with relatives,” she said. “But you have my full attention. As the senior executive at UpLink in his absence, I’m responsible for managing its affairs. They include observing Mr. Gordian’s privacy and keeping him from being unnecessarily distracted. If you’ll tell me—”
“How about you make those job responsibilities include giving us some cooperation?” interrupted the other man.
He’d introduced himself as Detective Brewer, strong emphasis on the job title. Thin, narrow-eyed, and about ten years younger than his partner. A small-town cop from Sonora who was suffering from an overkill of TV crime dramas and thought tactless and pushy equaled urban tough. He wore no topcoat over his navy suit and had left his umbrella in the stand out in her reception room.
Megan directed her response at Erickson.
“If I’m to contact Mr. Gordian, I need to know generally what brings you here,” she said.
The older cop sat very still. His eyes showing a flicker of compromise before the flat resistance dropped back over them.
“We need some information about his daughter,” he said.
Megan concealed her disappointment. It was only when she braced for the question she needed to ask that her control almost faltered.
“Has anything happened to Julia?”
Erickson took a breath, released it. Megan saw his foot move up and down over his knee.
“We have to get in touch with Roger Gordian,” he repeated again, clinging to his laconic manner.
Megan waited before she answered. Her office was silent. The double-pane glass of its windows completely deadened the lash of wind and rain against them, somehow increasing her awareness of the dark splotches of moisture on Erickson’s coat.
“So far we’ve been talking through a wall,” she said. “It’s difficult to come together that way. How about we step around it and see if it works any better?”
Brewer shook his head angrily, almost rising off his chair. “We don’t have to do anything or step anywhere. We are conducting a police investigation, and you should be aware you’re on the brink of obstructing—”
>
Erickson got his partner’s attention with a tap on the knee, held up a preemptive hand. He looked embarrassed.
“Consider us as having stepped,” he said.
Megan kept her eyes off Brewer’s flushed face as he settled back in his chair. Compounding his belittlement would serve no useful purpose.
“I realize that whatever has brought you here must be very serious,” she told Erickson. “And you can rest assured I’m ready to help you reach Mr. Gordian and anyone else who has to be contacted. If there’s bad news to be broken, however, I intend to be the person who does it. As a second in this company and a close family friend. But I obviously can’t until you tell me what this is about.”
Erickson sat there looking at Megan another moment, shrugged, and uncrossed his legs.
Then he leaned forward and told her.
“Still ain’t heard nothing from Africa?” Thibodeau said.
“Not yet,” Megan said. “Pete’s on his way to tell Gord right now.”
“Seems like it’s taking a while,” Ricci said.
“When I spoke to him, he was outside the city. It’s night in Gabon, and I don’t think there are any passable roads through the jungle. He’s flying back to Port-Gentil in one of our helicopters.”
“What was the problem reaching Gordian yourself?”
Megan looked at Ricci across the small conference table. “He’s staying as a guest at a local Sedco executive’s home to avoid the bugs in the hotel walls, and they’re behind closed doors having a late consultation about that affair on the oil platform. Hughie Bennett and his entire court are in attendance, and I don’t want the boss to hear this news over the phone under those circumstances.” She paused. “Better Pete tells him in person. He should be there any time.”
Ricci did not answer. His glassy calm eyes gave no clue to what he might be thinking or feeling. Megan saw her reflection in them and could not keep her own nerves from becoming exposed. That was unlike her, and she resented him for it—how much more of herself might be revealed on the mirror’s surface?
She sipped from the glass of water beside her to relieve her parched throat.
“I don’t know, Rollie,” she said. “My mind is everywhere at once. I know I’ll pull it together, but for now I just can’t center.”
Thibodeau nodded grimly.
“Soup to soup,” he said. “Be a Creole saying I heard a lot growing up. Ain’t no food for the pot tonight, we find something to put in it tomorrow.”
She gave him a thin smile. “I’ll try to remember that one.”
“Oui.”
Megan was quiet a moment. With the detectives in her office, she had called Nimec to break the news about Julia, then phoned Ashley Gordian’s sister’s house in Los Angeles, gotten the answering machine and left an urgent message for Ashley to get in touch. After that she had summoned Ricci and Thibodeau down here into one of UpLink SanJo’s underground safe rooms—a spare rectangular enclosure that was little more than the conference table and four windowless, two-foot-thick concrete walls webbed with an array of interstitial countersurveillance systems.
It hadn’t taken her long to share what she knew, and none of it was encouraging. Julia Gordian was gone from the animal shelter where she did volunteer work a number of days a week. The woman whose husband operated the shelter had been shot dead along with her infant daughter, their home a crime scene Erickson had described as beyond horrible.
“This Rob Howell,” Ricci said now. His eyes went to Megan as he spoke. “Those cops figure he’s clean?”
“He’s under no suspicion of having been involved,” she said. “His co-workers saw him arrive at the hotel Sunday morning, then rush back home—he’d forgotten a bookkeeping file of some sort. His cell phone LUDs show the calls that were placed from his car to his house and the greyhound rescue center. He uses FastTrack for his bridge tolls, and account deductions were recorded both ways at the plaza lanes off Highway One into San Gregario. He also bought gas with a credit card on his return trip. In both cases the systems show when those expenses were paid and back up his story.”
“Don’t tell us nothing about what he did before he left his place,” Thibodeau said. “Or after he got back.”
Ricci looked at him, then shook his head.
“You consider travel distances, average road speeds, and the time Howell’s call to the police was logged, it narrows things far as opportunity,” he said. “My guess is the operation was planned for when he wouldn’t be around. Pro all the way. The phone lines disconnected at their feeder pole, more than a single type of weapon used. There were fresh tire tracks showing several vehicles at the center and at the utility station near the pole.” His eyes returned to Megan. “Is Howell available? In case we need some information from him.”
“I don’t know.” She took another drink of water. Her tongue and throat continued to feel as if they were lined with sandpaper. “I suppose I should have thought to ask—”
“You done your’n fine,” said Thibodeau. “Those detectives gave you enough to think about. Ain’t likely they would’ve been generous with that information anyway.”
Ricci kept looking neutrally at Megan.
“You told me the cops found blood at the animal shelter.”
“Yes, I did.”
“That it might be Julia’s.”
“Yes.”
“What makes them think she’s not a third murder victim?”
Megan stabbed a look at him, her shoulders rising a little.
“Let’s not try to be too delicate.”
“I was asking a question.”
“About the boss’s daughter. And my good friend.”
“I have to know what there is to know,” Ricci said. “You don’t like my way of phrasing things, I’m sorry.”
But he did not sound apologetic. Megan’s posture remained very straight, her eyes green fire in a face pale with strain.
“There was blood at the shelter,” she said. “And, yes . . . it’s believed to be Julia’s. But Erickson suggested that whatever took place in there seems of a different nature from the violence that occurred at the house.”
“Any concrete reasons?”
“He wasn’t about to submit an itemized evidence list to me, and I didn’t press my luck. We could profit from a good relationship with him if he doesn’t shy away.”
Ricci studied her a moment.
“You find out what line those cops are working, or decide that was out of bounds, too?” he said.
In her anger, Megan could have balled her hands into fists until the knuckles were white, dug her fingernails into her palms. She held her composure and folded them on the table instead.
“Nobody broke into Julia’s SUV. There was nothing stolen from the shelter, or the house where the mother and baby were killed. Nothing to indicate robbery was a motive,” she told him. “I heard a lot of words from Erickson about processing the crime scene, looking at the evidence, reconstructing what happened without assumptions. But you were a police detective. Do you actually believe they would come right out and tell me they think Julia Gordian was abducted? Right now Julia’s status is a question. She’s a phantom. A ‘whereabouts unknown.’ I don’t even know that we’ve reached the time period when she can be officially declared a missing person.”
“Doesn’t effect what we do, except maybe giving us the chance to get a jump on the feebs,” Ricci said. “Once this gets ticketed a kidnapping they’ll be all over it.”
“I can’t see how that’s bad,” Megan said. “It’s not us against them. They have resources. Expertise in the field—”
“And we know how their main office loves sharing intelligence,” Ricci said.
He was quiet and still. The silence was like a knot bunched in tightly around his thoughts.
“Won’t get us anywhere to sit here talking,” he said at length. “I’m heading out to the scene while it’s warm. Before it gets too worked over.”
Megan wanted to catch
Thibodeau’s eye but knew Ricci would not miss the slightest glance. She chose to wait, and Rollie didn’t disappoint her.
“No sense you going alone,” he told Ricci. “Better you and me get a look at things together.”
“I can handle it myself.”
“That ain’t the matter. We got to figure the local police won’t be thrilled by our visit. Be tougher for ’em to shake off two of us than one.”
Megan was quick to move in.
“Rollie’s right,” she said. “He should go, too. I’ll make some calls and pull whatever strings I can from here.”
Ricci regarded her closely. “That a suggestion or an order?”
“It’s how I want it,” she said.
Ricci kept his eyes on her a moment longer and then shifted them to Thibodeau.
“She can give you directions to the shelter,” he said, and stood. “I’ll wait down the hall.”
Thibodeau caught up to him as he was holding his palm to the biometric scanner to bring an elevator for the garage level. He looked to be sure Megan was still back in the safe room before putting a hand on Ricci’s arm.
“Keep talkin’ to me like I’m some junior rover, it’ll get settled between us in good course,” he said in a low voice. “But what you said about the boss’s girl being killed . . . you don’t want to give touch to that around Megan. Don’t want to go near it.”
“You think it’s something we should rule out?”
“I think we all got experience enough to know the could-be’s, and Meg sees things clearer than anybody you ever gonna meet. But ain’t no cause for you adding to her pain.”
Ricci shrugged.
“Fine,” he said. “Next time we meet on the subject I’ll be sure to raise the possibility the boss’s daughter took off on a cruise to nowhere.”
Thibodeau brushed his gaze over Ricci’s face.
“Take a look in the mirror some day,” he said. “You going to see one cruel son of a bitch.”
Ricci stood there a second or two without a word. Then the elevator dinged its arrival.
