Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  “He is under control! He’s nothing more than a stupid redneck from Texas. His investigative abilities are the math tricks of an idiot savant He can’t see anything but what’s caught in his tunnel vision.”

  “Prove it to me, Roland. Get him back on track or stop him, I don’t care. There must be something we can use against him.”

  Peck shook his head. “There’s plenty to be had, but he’s never been smart enough to keep any of it secret. He doesn’t seem to care. And now with him facing a possible prison term…”

  “What are you suggesting, Roland? Are you suggesting we do something overt to stop him?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Peck said simply. Hallorin could hear in his voice that he was testing. He wanted Hallorin to end the conversation there, to prove that he still had confidence in the man he had treated like a son. Hallorin reached a hand out and gently stroked Peck’s cheek. “This is becoming a comedy of errors, Roland.” Peck tried to pull away, but Hallorin grabbed him by the back of the neck. “There’s no room for that, is there? The election is in two weeks and you’ve given me nothing. I will be the president of the United States. I won’t let anything get in the way of that.” Peck tried to pull away again and Hallorin closed his hand tighter, holding him immobile. “Do you understand?”

  twenty-nine

  Tom Sherman dodged yet another dazed hooker and fell back into step behind the D.C. cop who was escorting him toward the station’s holding pen. “Let’s pick it up,” Sherman said, letting the irritation creep into his voice. The man looked back at him, about to say something smart-assed, but then wisely thought better of it and upped his pace a bit.

  Sherman’s anger and frustration at this situation was the first thing he’d felt in a long time—the first thing that had broken through the fog that descended on him after his daughter’s death. He found himself having to struggle to maintain outward calm as they continued through the broken hallways and past the grimy people inhabiting them. If any harm had come to his friend, the cop responsible for putting a former FBI agent into the general population was going to take a serious fall.

  They stopped at a steel door with a small grate set into it, and Sherman watched impatiently as the cop in front of him fumbled with his keys. It was dead silent on the other side of the door. Sherman leaned around his escort and tried to look through the window grate.

  “Easy, now …”

  The voice was Beamon’s, hesitant, cutting through the eerie silence. Sherman looked down at the cop, who seemed to have finally turned up the correct key. “Get me through this goddamn door, now!” The lock clicked and Sherman pushed the man aside, rushing through the door and running down the corridor, hoping that there was still something left of his friend to bail out.

  “… I’m not saying that there aren’t some fine automatic weapons on the market, I’m just saying that they’re never going to be as reliable as a wheel gun.”

  Sherman slowed his pace to a walk as the cell Beamon was occupying came into view. He was sitting cross-legged on the narrow bench along the back wall, casually dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. No less than ten dangerous-looking young black men took up the rest of the cramped space, with the bigger ones sitting next to Beamon on the bench and the weaker-looking ones on the floor. They seemed to be hanging on Beamon’s every word.

  “But I got motherfuckin’ fourteen in my clip,” a young man with a teardrop tattooed next to his eye said.

  Beamon looked at him and took a calm drag from his cigarette. “Son, if you need more than two to get the job done, you shouldn’t be playing with guns.”

  Everyone in the cell erupted into laughter.

  “Looks like my ride’s here,” Beamon said, standing and tossing what was left of his pack of cigarettes to the young man who had been the target of his joke. “Good luck to you gentlemen. Hopefully, I won’t see you in prison.”

  Beamon stopped as he and Sherman approached the glass double doors that led to the street. “I, uh, think I probably have some papers to sign. Tommy.”

  Sherman grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him along behind. “No, you don’t.”

  “What about my stuff?” Beamon protested. “They’ve still got my—”

  “It’s being delivered to my house.” He gave Beamon’s arm another tug. “Do you mind? Let’s get the hell out of here before they change their minds.”

  Sherman’s Cadillac was illegally parked directly in front of the station, though no one had mustered the will to ticket it. By the time Beamon slipped into the soft leather passenger seat, Sherman had already started the engine and was pulling away from the curb. Beamon barely managed to get the door closed before it clipped a parked cruiser.

  “What the hell are you doing, Mark? Practicing?” Sherman said, turning and staring at him over his glasses in that patented expression that had struck fear into the hearts of at least half of the FBI’s workforce at one time or another.

  “Don’t do that. Tommy,” Beamon said, pointing at his face. “I hate that”

  Sherman turned back and concentrated on the road. “Do you have any idea how many markers I had to call in so you could just walk out of there?”

  “Yeah, I do. And I appreciate it”

  His friend didn’t seem to hear. “What do you think is going to happen if this little episode gets back to the Bureau? You don’t think they’re going to use it? Pull your head out of your ass, Mark.”

  “Look, it’s—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up for once. Look, Mark, whatever happens, the next few years are going to be tough for you. There’s probably nothing you can do about that now. But when that’s all over, you’re still going to have half your life ahead of you. What are you going to do with it?”

  Beamon sank a little further into the leather seat “It’s not something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about”

  “Well, maybe you should start, because you’re really screwing up here. What is this I hear about you and Carrie?”

  “Come on, Tommy. She didn’t need to be dragged into this.”

  “What right do you have to make a decision like that for her? Take it from me, Mark. None of this other crap matters in the end. She’s the best thing in your life. Walking away from her is as big a mistake as you’ve ever made.”

  “Maybe. But it was mine to make.” Beamon leaned his head against the window as Sherman maneuvered through the heavy D.C. traffic. They were out of the city and onto a lightly traveled rural highway before either of them spoke again.

  “What do you know about David Hallorin’s declassification program, Tom?” Beamon said, hoping that his friend would allow himself to be drawn into a less volatile subject matter.

  Sherman didn’t answer for a full thirty seconds. “What does that have to do with a girl who killed her boyfriend in West Virginia?”

  Beamon realigned his gaze from the rolling countryside speeding by to the side of his friend’s face. When they’d worked together, Beamon had found Sherman’s near omnipotence somewhat disconcerting. He still did. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know.”

  Another long silence. “You probably know more about it than I do, Mark. I was long gone from government service before that piece of legislation. A good program that was long overdue, from what I heard.”

  Beamon nodded. “I thought so too….”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know. Tristan Newberry worked alone in an old warehouse full of government documents—apparently part of the declassification program. As near as I can tell, the last thing he looked at was a box full of misfiled FBI stuff from the seventies.”

  “What do you mean he worked alone?”

  “I mean he worked alone. He and a security guard were it.”

  Sherman’s brow furrowed noticeably as he considered that. “And you think he might have stumbled across something in those old FBI files that got him killed?”

  “You tell me. You were there.”

  Sherman shrugged. “You’ve
heard the stories, Mark. Most of them are true. Hoover did keep his eye on important people. But after he died and Rehnquist took over, that pretty much ended. Frankly, anybody powerful enough to have been targeted by Hoover would be either well into their eighties or dead by now. With the political witch-hunt that’s going on and the leaking of the Vericomm tapes, I can’t imagine that the press would be very interested in the indiscretions of a bunch of men who, if they’re lucky, are in a nursing home.”

  Beamon sighed loudly. “Yeah, I’m reaching here. If I was eighty-five years old and someone came up with a thirty-year-old tale of illegal conduct, I’d take the respirator out of my mouth and laugh in their face. And if it was sexual misconduct—hell, at that age, I’d be proud.”

  Beamon reached for the cell phone anchored between the seats and dialed the number of the law firm that had hired him. “Chris Humbolt, please. This is Mark Beamon.” He was put right through.

  “Mark. How are things going? It’s been a week since we’ve talked.”

  Subtle, but what he meant was “it’s been thirty-five thousand dollars since we’ve talked.”

  “It’s going well,” Beamon lied. “I’m closing in, but I need some help—someone to do a little research for me. I assume that you have a Harvard-educated whiz kid around there who knows everything about everything?”

  “Princeton, actually, and her name’s Cindy. Tell her what you want and it will be magically produced. Hang on, I’m putting you through to her.”

  There were a few clicks followed by a cheerful voice. “Hello? Mr. Beamon, are you there?”

  “Cindy, hi. I hear you’re the resident research queen.”

  “Never heard it put that way, but I guess I am.”

  “Here’s what I need. Information regarding the speculation that J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI to conduct illegal investigations and surveillance.”

  “Whew,” she breathed into the phone. “You’re talking about a fair amount of data, there, Mr. Beamon.”

  “Mark.”

  “Mark. Could you narrow it down?”

  “‘Fraid not. I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for. Give me a good cross section and make it fit in one box I can lift—keeping in mind that I’m not very athletic. If I need more detail on anything I’ll call you.”

  “Not a problem. ASAP, I assume.”

  “What else? I’ll let you know where to send it.”

  “I’m on it. Bye.”

  Beamon hung up the phone and leaned back into the seat.

  “What are you doing, Mark?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Run away.” Sherman paused briefly, the concentration etched on his face. “Marry that beautiful woman who loves you and take a shot at the good life.”

  Beamon ignored his friend’s comment Marriage and stepfatherhood just wasn’t something he needed to be thinking about right now. “I can’t quit now, Tommy. You know that.”

  “Too much like losing?”

  “I want to see how it turns out.”

  There’s not going to be a happy ending for you in this, Mark. Jesus, I just had to get you out of a goddamn D.C. holding pen.”

  “Look, Tommy. I’m not sure this girl did what everybody thinks she did, okay? I feel a little sorry for her. I also think I’m being played. I have a pretty strong feeling that somebody’s setting me up and I’m getting pretty fucking tired of it.”

  “Let the police handle this, Mark. That’s their job.”

  “Okay, how about this, Tom? I need the two hundred and sixty-five grand to get a lawyer because I didn’t like the D.C. holding pen and don’t want to spend the next two years in a place just like it. Incidentally, weren’t you supposed to be looking into that for me?”

  Sherman nodded. “I have looked into it for you and you know what I found? That you are a profoundly unpopular man. Did you really put a bra in Jerry Tracker’s suitcase before he left the National Academy conference?”

  “It was a joke, for Christ’s sake! How the hell was I supposed to know he was actually having an affair with a woman who wore a double D?” Beamon’s voice lowered to a mumble. “And who would have thought that brain-dead kiss-ass would ever get promoted to an assistant director slot”

  “Look, Mark, I don’t have any details yet What I do know is that there are some very powerful people in the government intent on using you as a diversion and some very powerful people in the Bureau who are more than happy to just stand by and laugh.”

  “Honestly, Tom. I was hoping for a little more dazzling insight.”

  Sherman seemed uncertain as to what to say for a moment, then he slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road.

  “What are you doing, Tom?”

  “Look,” he said, turning fully to face him. “You know how people at the Bureau used to like to speculate behind my back on how much I’m worth?”

  “Sure,” Beamon said. He himself had joined in on some spirited and often drunken debates on that very subject.

  “What’s the popular theory these days?”

  “I think you’re up to about fifty mil.”

  Sherman nodded thoughtfully. “Truth is, I lost more than that when the market crashed and I barely noticed.”

  Beamon laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not actually. Look, my point is this—”

  “I know what your point, is, Tommy. And I thank you. But I can’t take your money—”

  “How about a job then? I can—”

  “Tommy—enough. You can’t keep running to my rescue every time I shoot myself in the foot. I’m a grown-up, remember?”

  thirty

  Darby could barely see the outline of her arm and the deep cut across the back of it. She pushed the wound closed and spread a liberal amount of Krazy Glue across it, then let the breeze blow it dry. The combination of stress and hunger-induced light-headedness was making her clumsy and she’d walked right into the open cap on her truck. Tomorrow, she would make the drive to town and find some food. It would have to be at a free happy hour buffet or a grocery store that gave samples. Despite the added risk of being recognized in one of those places, she had no choice—she wasn’t sure she had enough gas to make it to the L.A. airport as it was.

  She pulled her sleeping bag up a little higher around her neck and propped herself against the tire of her truck. The tiny clearing she was camped in was almost pitch black—dark enough now that she wasn’t sure if she was seeing the outline of the tall pines that surrounded her or if her mind was filling them in from memory. She’d been there for a few days now, thirty miles from the nearest town and ten from the nearest paved road. She didn’t dare build a fire, so there was little more than the cold and her hunger to keep her company. Normally that wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, but the mental games she’d perfected while trapped for endless hours in tents and storms didn’t work when she jumped at every twig snap and wind gust.

  On the way there, she’d stopped at a library with Internet access and spent as long as she had dared searching for information on herself and Tristan. She’d found that most was on climbing-related sites and consisted of wild speculation in her favor. Jared Palermo had apparently organized an exhaustive search of the mountains surrounding the New River Gorge, pulling in climbers from all over the country. She hoped she’d get a chance to thank him someday. There weren’t many people lucky enough to have friends like that.

  The national media hadn’t taken much interest in her, thank God. With the election coming up and the condition of the economy, they had bigger fish to fry. What she had learned was that the police were looking for her, convinced that she was responsible for Tristan’s death. She’d also learned how he died—hacked apart by an ice tool. The image of Tristan’s bare foot hanging from the door of her van had haunted her since the night she’d seen it. With that new piece of information, though, her imagination had connected the rest of his body to it The vision came to her every night: Tristan, brutally slas
hed, staring blindly through the blood-splattered windows of her van.

  She told herself over and over that he had known what he was getting himself into when he stole the file. That she was not responsible. That revenge was the reaction of the stupid and violent. But then she remembered watching Tristan run along that ridge, leaving bloody footprints in the dead grass. She remembered lying to herself that he’d be okay on his own—that splitting up was the right thing to do.

  She’d seriously considered going to the FBI, but the men who had kidnapped them looked as much like FBI as anything else. If Tristan was telling the truth about the file contents, there was no way she could trust anyone involved with the government.

  Taking it to the press had crossed her mind. But wouldn’t they be looking for that? Wouldn’t they be waiting for her? Besides, what kind of credibility would an itinerant climber accused of murder have?

  There was too much swirling around her now. The police, Vili, Mark Beamon, Tristan—they were all too close. She couldn’t think. In three days, though, she’d be on a plane to somewhere the U.S. government couldn’t find her. A place where she could breathe. Then she’d be able to work this all out. There was no such thing as a hopeless situation, she told herself. Bad decisions were what got people killed.

  Darby lay down on the rocky ground and closed her eyes, feeling the cold of the ground work its way through her sleeping bag. She’d tried sleeping in the back of her truck, but it had quickly closed in on her. She felt safer out in the open. If she had to, she could run up into the snowcapped mountains that towered over the little clearing where she was camped. At least there she’d have a chance.

  thirty-one

  Mark Beamon forced himself to run up the steps of the D.C. townhouse Tom Sherman had loaned him, hoping that the physical motion would somehow clear his head—or at least improve his mood.

  By the time he’d reached the landing, it still hadn’t worked, so he kept up the pace across the narrow walkway to the front door. There was a medium-sized box sitting in front of it, and he nudged it with his shoe as he pulled his keys from his pocket. Whatever it was, it was heavy. Leaning over, he blew a thin layer of dust from the top. The return address read: “Reynolds, Trent and Layman.”