End Game

by David Baldacci

  Inside, Robie was already looking around.

  “You think Walton left something behind to help us find him?” said Malloy.

  “That’s the only reason we’re here,” replied Reel curtly.

  The place was small enough that the search didn’t take long. They regrouped in the front room.

  Reel said, “We know his cell phone was missing, but it’s been turned off or else it went dead, because it couldn’t be tracked.”

  “Laptop?” asked Malloy. “There wasn’t one found. I told you that before but you didn’t comment on it.”

  “It’s not been confirmed, but I doubt if he would have taken one with him,” said Robie. “He wasn’t working and he could be reached if need be, so having a computer was just something that could be lost or stolen.”

  “And I bet there are strict rules about that in whatever agency you work for,” noted Malloy, gazing inquiringly at Robie.

  “All federal agencies have strict rules about that,” interjected Reel. “Even the Department of Agriculture.”

  “Okay, so where does that leave us?” asked Malloy. “We didn’t find a clue that I could see.”

  Robie was looking at the fly-fishing tackle that was still lying on the table by the door. He picked up the rod and looked at it. “We messed up before about JC Parry. Walton didn’t need a guide because he knew the rivers here well.”

  “Right, so?” said Malloy.

  “So maybe we messed up about something else,” opined Reel, staring at Robie. “Maybe we didn’t see something else that’s staring us in the face.”

  Malloy gazed around the room. “There’s not much here. I mean he didn’t leave much behind. His clothes and toiletries. His Glock ten-mil. Georgetown cap in the truck. His fishing gear.”

  “You said the Glock was taken in as evidence?” said Robie quickly.

  “Yeah, I told you that when we came out here the first time.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In our evidence room back at the station.”

  “Robie, what is it?” asked Reel.

  He looked at her. “Someone I know once communicated something really important using a gun. I mean literally using the weapon to convey a really important message as to the person’s location.”

  Reel flinched as though she’d been slapped. That person had been her.

  Malloy looked between them. “Who the hell are you talking about?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Reel quickly.

  Robie said, “And it worked. It allowed me to find the person.”

  Reel said, “And did you tell Blu…Walton?”

  “I did. He was quite impressed with the method. I’m sure he docketed it away like he did every other piece of information he ever received.”

  “Until maybe he needed to pull it out and use it,” said Reel.

  “Let’s go find out,” said Robie.

  Chapter

  44

  PIECE BY PIECE.

  Both Reel and Robie had taken turns field-stripping the Glock. Fully assembled, it now lay on a cloth on Malloy’s desk.

  The three of them were staring down at it. They had found nothing of interest. No additions had been made. No deletions, either.

  As they were standing there, Derrick Bender walked in and slapped his hat against his pants leg to knock off some dust.

  “Who died?” he said jokingly, staring at their very serious faces.

  Then he blanched when none of them cracked a smile. “Shit, don’t tell me somebody did die?”

  Malloy shook her head. “No, we were just hoping that this gun would give us a clue as to what happened to Mr. Walton.”

  Bender drew next to the desk and looked down at the Glock. “I’m not following. Why would it?”

  “Just a long shot,” said Reel.

  “Well, that gun won’t be any good for a long shot,” said Bender, grinning. “Barrel’s too short.”

  “Shit,” said Reel.

  “What?” snapped Robie.

  In answer Reel hit the Glock’s mag release and put the mag aside. Then she made sure the chamber was empty.

  “You got a gun-cleaning kit around here?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” said Bender. He hurried over to a cabinet, opened the doors, and pulled out a box with a handle. He brought it over and gave it to Reel.

  She opened it, found what she wanted, and took out the long, thin piece of metal.

  “A bore brush?” said Robie.

  She nodded and inserted it into the Glock’s barrel. She moved it slowly and carefully into the barrel, then twisted the rod clockwise and counterclockwise before slowly pulling it free.

  “What’s that?” said Bender.

  A bit of white had emerged at the muzzle.

  Reel said, “You got tweezers?”

  Malloy opened her desk drawer, rummaged around, and pulled out a tiny pair.

  “Will this work?” she asked, handing them to Reel.

  Reel gripped the tweezers and eased the ends onto the edge of white. She slowly pulled, and the white was revealed to be a piece of paper rolled up.

  “Damn,” exclaimed Bender. “How’d you think to look there?”

  “When you said the barrel was too short for a long shot,” replied Reel. “Thanks for the suggestion.”

  Bender grinned and squeezed Reel’s shoulder. Reel patted his hand in return.

  Robie observed this and once more felt the hair on his neck fire up. But then he glanced at Malloy and his anger quickly subsided.

  Reel slowly unrolled the paper.

  “Is anything written on it?” asked Malloy.

  “No,” said Reel, looking disappointed. “Just this.”

  She held up the paper for all to see.

  It was a stick figure holding what looked to be a ball over its head.

  “Anybody have a guess?” said Reel. “Walton obviously wasn’t much of an artist.”

  “If he had an opportunity to put that in the gun for us to maybe find, why not just write out what he wanted to tell us,” said Malloy.

  “Maybe he didn’t know enough to write it out. And it might have been discovered by someone else that he didn’t want to let on about what he knew.”

  “So it’s like a code?” said Bender.

  “Sort of, probably,” said Robie.

  “Well, he outsmarted himself then,” said Reel. “Because he stumped us too.”

  Robie took the paper from her and studied it. “This obviously means a person. Does it refer to him? To someone else?”

  “I don’t know how we answer that,” interjected Malloy. “We don’t know enough. Like why is he holding a ball? If that’s what it is. It almost looks like he’s about to shoot a basketball, and for the life of me I can’t see how sports figures into this.”

  Robie said, “Walton played sports when he lived here.”

  Reel said, “But I thought we had decided his past didn’t figure into his disappearance. It was tied to the prisoners in the van. If that’s not the case anymore than we are right back at square one.”

  “I’m not saying that’s the case,” replied Robie. “But we at least know that Walton knew he was in danger and that he tried to leave us a clue. And while we may not know what it means now, we might figure it out at some point. In fact, we have to figure it out.”

  “Do you think it speaks to where he’s been taken?” said Bender.

  “Since he left the gun behind, how would he know where they were going to take him before they took him there?” said Reel.

  “That’s a good point,” conceded Bender, a hopeless expression on his features.

  “We have to figure out the clue,” said Reel. “It’s the only one we have.”

  Robie and Reel left Malloy and Bender at the station and made their way back to the hotel.

  “We have to do something, Robie,” said Reel as they entered the lobby. She looked at her watch. “We’re going to be talking to the director in less than four hours. We have to have something
to tell her.”

  Reel’s phone buzzed. She answered, listened for two minutes, and then said curtly, “Thanks.” She put her phone away and looked at Robie.

  “Well?” he said.

  “We might have another lead.”

  “Who was that?”

  “The sat guys. They managed to break into Lambert’s bird and see what it saw.”

  “And?” said Robie impatiently as she fell silent.

  “They went back about a month focusing on the convenience store late at night. They saw the van at Clyde’s. It all happened like Lamarre said. Van pulled in, trouble with the reader, and Lamarre came outside. And then the van drove off in the direction of Lambert’s bunker.”

  “Did it actually go to the bunker?”

  “They don’t know. The bird swung away before that could be revealed. But it was damn close. Within a couple of miles, they said.”

  “A couple of miles out here is a lot of space to cover.”

  “But what else is out there other than Lambert’s bunker, Robie? I doubt they were driving around in circles with prisoners in the back of the van. And Blue Man asked for a tour of the place. He was interested in it for some reason. And I’m thinking that interest stems from the prisoners in the van he was told about.”

  “Okay, but are you suggesting that Lambert is bringing prisoners to his bunker? For what reason? And if so, why would he have offered us a tour of the place, much less Blue Man?”

  “Well, he sure as hell didn’t show us the whole place,” said Reel. “There must be lots of nooks and crannies down there to stash people.”

  “Granted, but for what purpose?” persisted Robie.

  “Maybe we should take a ride and try to find out.”

  Chapter

  45

  “OKAY, I THINK I can see twenty miles ahead, and it looks exactly like the twenty miles we just passed,” said Reel.

  They had started at Clyde’s Stop-In and left in the direction the Agency people had told them the van had taken.

  “We just passed the road going to Lambert’s bunker,” said Robie.

  “So that could be where the van went.”

  “If so, I don’t see how we’re going to get in there without Lambert knowing about it. You saw the security measures on the perimeter. And then how do we open the blast door? You got a nuke handy?”

  Reel said, “And we don’t even know for sure if the van is connected to Blue Man’s disappearance.”

  “Damn, Jess, let’s not keep turning the wheel back on that. Lamarre knew about the van. He told Holly who told JC Parry who told Blue Man. So Lamarre goes missing and so do Blue Man and Parry.”

  “And it seems that Lamarre was taken, too, because he left his suitcase behind,” admitted Reel. “But what about Holly? How would anyone have known that Lamarre told Holly about the van while they were in rehab?”

  “Well, like I just said, she told Parry. And Parry told Blue Man.”

  “Right, but Holly didn’t expressly say that she told Parry or Blue Man about where she’d gotten the information from.”

  “That’s true,” said Robie. “Though she might have.”

  “Let’s assume that she didn’t. How would someone have found out Lamarre was the source?”

  “He told his girlfriend, Beverly Drango,” pointed out Robie.

  “And she said she told no one. And she hasn’t disappeared.”

  “Well, she hadn’t when we saw her.”

  “But isn’t it odd that they would snatch Lamarre from her house and not take her too?” said Reel. “I mean why wouldn’t they assume that he had told her about what he saw?”

  Robie thought for a few moments. “They would have had to assume that he would tell her. But maybe she wasn’t there at the time.”

  “They could have gone back when she was there. Or put eyes on the place so they’d know when she did come home. And yet there she still was when we went to her house.”

  “Maybe we need to talk to her again.”

  “Maybe we do.”

  As they drove along Robie said slowly, “That was a good deduction you had about the gun based on what Bender said. You two seem to feed off each other well.”

  “Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that going on around here,” Reel shot back.

  Robie glanced away, whatever he was about to say forgotten in the wake of Reel’s not-so-subtle reply.

  After a few moments of silence he said, “Patti told me that their father’s been gone I guess for a while. But she didn’t say what happened to him.”

  Reel looked at him. “He died in a car accident twelve years ago. Drunk driver killed him. Derrick told me at the party at his mom’s house.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  “Life is tough, Robie. But you just have to keep slogging through.”

  * * *

  Later, they were approaching the house when Robie slowed and then stopped.

  “What?” said Reel, scanning ahead.

  “No Land Cruiser.”

  “She’s probably at work. It’s not quite five o’clock.”

  “The front door is open.”

  Reel slipped her gun from its holster. “You take the front, I’ll hit the back.”

  Robie parked the car and they climbed out. Reel immediately darted to her right, went around the detached garage, and flitted to the back of the property.

  In his mind’s eye, Robie, who knew her so well, could visualize every tactical movement his partner would make on her way to the house.

  Robie shifted from cover point to cover point until he reached the front door. Standing to the side, he called out, “Ms. Drango? Agents Robie and Reel. We need to ask you some more questions.”

  There was no answer, not that Robie was expecting one.

  He used his foot to nudge the door fully open. “Ms. Drango, are you in there? If so, please call out and reveal yourself.”

  No calling out and no revealing.

  Again, he wasn’t surprised. He was just wondering where they would find the body.

  And maybe her killer.

  He entered the house and immediately moved to his left and took up cover behind a ragged couch. He peered over the top of the furniture in time to see Reel’s face peeking out from the doorway into the kitchen.

  “Clear here,” said Reel.

  “Bedroom,” replied Robie.

  The door was nudged open and it took all of ten seconds to search the room.

  “Clothes gone,” said Reel, examining the empty closet as Robie pulled open the empty bureau drawers. “She’s run for it. Question is, because she was scared or because she was in on it?”