Zero Option

48

Carrothers sat there in open disbelief when Sparks had finished explaining everything he knew. “A psychic?” he said. “You’re asking me to believe that a psychic told Stafford about this thing? A teenage girl? Who cannot speak? Jesus Christ, Sparks.”

Ray Sparks threw up his hands. “You did ask, General. I’m only telling you what he told me. You figure out some other way that Stafford could know about your so-called hypothetical weapon, and I, for one, am more than ready to sign on. But that’s what he told me. That’s why he’s in Graniteville. That’s why he isn’t here to talk to you.” “And there’s a woman involved in this?” asked Agent Kiesling.

“The woman who runs this orphanage, school, whatever it is. I don’t know how much she knows about this problem you’re chasing here, but he did tell me she interprets for the girl.”

“Where are they, exactly?”

“At a place called the Willow Grove Home. It’s a combined group home and special school. An orphanage, basically.”

“Are the woman and Stafford involved with each other?” Kiesling asked.

“Don’t know. His wife left him last year. They might be involved with each either, or he may just be trying to protect her. She’s apparently scared to death of a government witch-hunt and the media exposure that would follow, especially on the psychic angle. Stafford’s afraid Carson might come after them, because he told Carson about Graniteville, that day after the airport deal.”

Carrothers thought about that. “Psychics. Next you’re going to tell me she’s on contract to the CIA.”

“Yeah, right, remember that goat rope?”

Kiesling said with some relish.

“Where the Agency spent a gazillion bucks trying to get psychics to read spies’ minds, then got their asses handed to ‘em when the media and Congress found out? Embarrassed the shit out of them.”

“They should have been embarrassed,” Carrothers said, getting up to refill his coffee cup. “Psychics, mind probes; the Shadow knows … what utter bullshit.”

Kiesling began to pace around the room. “I know I’m the newbie to this case, General, but I’ll tell you what I’m beginning to think. I think this Mr. Stafford may have had an ulterior motive going here. You said Tangent put a million in cash on the table?”

“Now wait a fucking minute,” Sparks spluttered.

“Hold on, Mr. Sparks,” Carrothers said, sensing where the FBI agent was going to go with this. “So?”

“I made some calls while we were waiting. My sources tell me this guy’s down here in Atlanta because he’s on his own agency’s shit list — no offense, Mr. Sparks. His wife had just dumped him, his career’s down the tubes, and he’s lost the use of one arm. Every time he looks up, he sees the rim of the toilet bowl swirling past his face. And all of a sudden he knows an awful lot about your hypothetical problem, General. One of the ways that could happen is if he and this Carson guy made some kind of deal.”

“No way,” Sparks said immediately. “Dave Stafford is a maverick, but he’s no bent cop. Look, if he was involved in this, why in the hell would he have told me jack shit? Huh? You explain that, Kiesling!”

“In case it went wrong, Sparks. He was covering his ass. He was a civil servant, just like the rest of us. Gimme a fuckin’ break here: Which one of us ever does anything without first covering our asses?”

Sparks just glared at him.

“Besides,” Kiesling said, “look how he probably worked it. Suppose he found out about the weapon deal and honied in. Forced Carson to split the money. If the deal went right, he stood to collect five hundred large. If it went south, he could always say he warned you, his boss, about it, but he couched it in such terms that you wouldn’t have believed it in a hundred years. A teenage psychic, for Chrissakes? And now he’s resigned? How fucking convenient.”

“But most of the money was counterfeit!” Sparks said. “You said—” “Fuck that!” Kiesling shouted as he bent over Sparks’s desk. “Neither of them knew that. Either way, I don’t give a shit. I’ve got an agent dead.

He was married. Had kids. I don’t even have a body for them. You listening to me? We had to go get a funeral home to give us an urn so we could sweep up some ashes from what was left of that fucking DRMO!”

Sparks started to reply, but Carrothers raised his hand to stop it. He thought about what the FBI man was insinuating. In a way, Kiesling’s theory made some sense, more sense than Sparks’s story about some psychic kid. On the other hand, Stafford had not impressed him as being that kind of guy, and his own long and successful Army career had taught Carrothers to trust his own judgment about people.

“Okay, people,” Carrothers said. “Let’s cool it for a moment. Put that theory on hold. Let’s get back to our primary objective: rinding Carson and the weapon. Mr. Kiesling, could you please go check on what the sweep has produced?”

Kiesling took a deep breath to compose himself, glared at the red-faced Ray Sparks, and left the office. Carrothers closed the door behind him for a moment and turned to Sparks. “I’m not sure I subscribe to Mr. Kiesling’s theory, Mr. Sparks,” he said. “That doesn’t strike me as being Stafford’s style, having met the man.”

Sparks threw a pen across the room. “I was about to suggest there was another way Stafford could have found out,” he said. “And that was if Tangent had told him.”

Carrothers shook his head. “We’re wasting time and energy with all this “Who shot John?’ stuff. Of course, the Bureau and the Justice Department are probably very anxious to divert attention away from their man Tangent’s little stunt, especially after it got one of their own people killed last night.”

“Cover-up,” Sparks said in disgust. “That’s becoming the Bureau’s hallmark these days. I remember when they were the best of the best.

Look, General, Dave Stafford’s a pain in the ass, and, yes, he put some senior people in the shifter, but they were bent and he is not. This is partly my fault, because I reacted the same way you did to the psychic business. But what if the damned girl is a psychic? I mean, I wasn’t going to bring this up in front of Godzilla out there, but the police have been using psychics and profilers for years. Hell, it was a Bureau guy who wrote the book on profiling. Now, hypothetically and all that shit, I don’t know just how desperate you guys are, but if it was my ass, I’d be asking the girl some questions and hoping like hell she was a fucking psychic!”

Carrothers nodded but did not reply. He had had exactly the same thought. Kiesling had been cut in on the real problem here, but he was obviously letting himself be swept up in the cop-killer frenzy that was developing. With Sparks following, he went to the DCIS conference room, where Riesling’s FBI team had set up a temporary command post. The lead agent reported on the statewide search for Carson and his government pickup truck, an effort that included state and local law-enforcement agencies. There had been no contact reports on Carson, but there had been a report of a stolen license plate and magnetic door signs at a rest area out on I-85 northeast of Atlanta. The man making the report remembered parking next to a green pickup truck, although there had been no one in it when he went to sleep. The time frame fit for someone trying to get out of Atlanta after the Fort Gillem fire.

Carrothers went to a map of Georgia and was shown the location of the rest area. The agent reported that there were vehicle checkpoints established on all the interstates in Georgia, with a double barrier on the Carolina and Tennessee borders. Local law in three states had been alerted, and the fact that an agent had been killed would keep them focused. Carrothers studied the map. Georgia was a much bigger state than he had realized. He looked at the single red pin sticking into the rest area on I-85. All that geography, and all they had was that one pin. Then he spotted the name Graniteville, next to a tiny dot up along the Carolina border, about two inches above the red line of the interstate highway. Wasn’t that where Stafford was?

“Graniteville,” he muttered to himself. He looked over at Sparks, who was talking with the DCIS office manager, who had come in with a stack of phone messages for him from “Washington. Sparks only frowned and stuffed them in his pocket. The office manager began to tell him something else, but he waved her off. Carrothers looked back at the map.

Stafford is supposedly in Graniteville, he thought. If Carson had heisted those plates and the signs to cover up the government serial numbers on his truck, then he could be in or near the Graniteville area.

More importantly, so could the Wet Eye cylinder. He felt a growing urge to do something besides sit around and wait. Perhaps he should go to Graniteville and talk to Stafford directly, or, hell, even the girl, but he did not trust the FBI just now. They were too fired up about getting Carson, and their bosses were under enormous pressure to find a way to shovel this tar baby into someone else’s yard.

In fact, they had every incentive just to shoot Carson on sight, which would not necessarily solve the Army’s problem.

He glanced over his shoulder at Kiesling, who was talking to his agents.

From their expressions alone, he confirmed his sense of it: If they did find Carson, he was going to die resisting arrest.

“Mr. Kiesling,” he said. “I’m going to go back to Fort Gillem, where my mobile command center is. I need to check on the progress of the DRMO fire investigation and dampen down any residual press interest. Why don’t you stay here with your team until we get some locating information on Carson? You can call my mobile command center as soon as you have something.”

“Yes, sir,” Kiesling said. “Although I still think we ought to be having some face time with Mr. Stafford.”

“Well, we know where he is. If nothing turns up on Carson in the next six to eight hours, maybe we’ll go check out your theory. But please let’s remember the objective here: Carson.”

After Carrothers had left, Sparks headed back to his office. The office manager intercepted him again. “I was trying to tell you earlier,” she said. “There was one message in that stack for Mr. Stafford, from his ex-wife’s lawyer. He said they were reopening the court case and that they needed some more discovery papers. I told him Mr. Stafford was on assignment in Graniteville, at that Willow Grove Home, and gave him the number. I hope that was all right.”

Sparks gave a hollow laugh. “That’s just what Dave needs at this juncture: a call from his ex-wife’s damned lawyer. He’ll hate you for that one, Leslie.” He shook his head and went back into his office, closing the door behind him.

Stafford was waiting in Owen’s office while John Lee was having a long talk with her out on the porch. It had turned into a warm day for the mountains, and the house had not been shut up for air conditioning yet.

The sheriff wanted Gwen and Jessamine to leave Willow Grove until Carson was caught and the matter of the weapon resolved. What Stafford had not yet picked up was where she was supposed to go. Besides that, Gwen was visibly unhappy with the idea of leaving the little kids behind. They had moved out to the porch to continue their discussion, and Stafford had tactfully withdrawn from what might become an argument. He thought there might be more to their conversation than just Gwen’s leaving.

He thought about what he had done that morning, and he was surprised to feel no regrets.- He knew there’d be fallout over the mess at the DRMO, and that he wasn’t going escape all of it, but he was hoping his resignation would take him out of the direct line of fire once the big guns at DCIS headquarters got embroiled in the Army’s problem. He had been ready to accept Gwen’s invitation to stay at the house, except that now John Lee’s insistence on her going into hiding somewhere might have upset that plan. He wondered again if John Lee’s motive was to get Gwen out of harm’s way, with harm having multiple definitions.

He got up and moved around her small office, looking at the certificates and the family pictures. That one must be her father, he thought. Same strong face and eyes. Strangely, there were no “pictures of any women who looked like Gwen. There was one somewhat faded local newspaper picture of Gwen getting her degree down at the university, with her father standing proudly beside her. He peered closer to read the caption identifying them, and he saw the last name: Hand. Dr. Winfield Hand and his daughter, Gwinette Hand.

He looked around at Owen’s desk, saw the nameplate: Gwen H. Warren. And where was Owen’s mother? Owen had said her mother had died, but nothing about a divorce. He remembered her saying mat her father had helped to found the orphanage. He heard sounds of Gwen returning, and he went into the kitchen to meet her. The kids had just finished lunch and were being shepherded upstairs by Mrs. Benning while the cook cleaned up. Gwen led him out the back door and onto the lawn behind the house. The sheriff, apparently, had left. He asked her what was going on.

“John Lee wants me to disappear for a little while, with Jess,” she said. “Part of me says that’s a good idea; the other part is worried about the little ones. I don’t like leaving them alone with all this trouble brewing.”

“John Lee might be right, Gwen. It’s not the little kids who would be the focus of the government’s attention, assuming it’s coming this way, I mean.”

They reached the barnyard gate and turned around to go back toward the house. The sun burned through the high mountain air with a vengeance. “I know that,” she said. Then she stopped. “I think John Lee might have another reason than just getting us clear of trouble.”

He nodded and kicked a pebble off the path. “Yes, I understand. I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. And you are right: I’m quite attracted to you. But John Lee’s also right: You and Jess ought to bail out. The best thing I can do is to stay here, hold down the fort, until we see what happens.”

She nodded. “Those feelings are not necessarily just one way, Dave. I like you very much. But there’s too much you don’t know about me, and with all this other—”

“I could just go,” he said. “Get out of here, get out of your hair entirely.”

“I’d feel a lot better if you stayed, especially since you’re one of them — the government, I mean.” She faced him then, and there was some pain in her expression. “John Lee has been making the same assumptions that you have,” she said. “I like you very much, but a lot of that is sympathy for your situation — what you’ve been through this past year, with your job, your wife, your injury. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m simply not ‘available,’ not the way you imagined. I — we — do need your help. But not—”

“I understand,” he replied, suddenly anxious to shut this off. The message was clear, and he was beginning to feel acutely embarrassed. “I helped bring this thing into your world, so the least I can do is to see it through. If the FBI or the Army comes here, I do know the beast when I see him, and I can talk the talk. Will you stay with relatives?”

She nodded absently but did not really answer his question. He did not pursue it. If he didn’t know where she was, no one could make him tell.

He took a deep breath and asked her about the pictures. Once again, she didn’t look at him, turning instead to look back at Howell Mountain.

“Jessamine Hand is my half sister,” she said finally. She gave him a moment to absorb that news before continuing. “By marriage. It’s a bit complicated. As I told you, my mother passed away in 1974. My father remarried two years later, to a woman named Hope, who was much younger than he was. In the course of time, three children came along. Jess is Hope’s youngest child.”

Stafford kept quiet. Maybe this would explain why she did not want to enter into a relationship. A breeze stirred the willows; Gwen turned and began walking toward them, and he followed.

“Hope had an older sister, Charity, who drowned in a quarry when she was sixteen. Officially, it was ruled an accident, but most folks who knew about it said she jumped. Charity was quite beautiful, and apparently, also quite mad. So, unfortunately, was Hope. The difference was that it took a lot longer to manifest in Hope. She was twenty-eight when she married my father. He was fifty two. The marriage was fine for a while, until the kids came along.”

“What was her illness?”

“You’re in the north Georgia mountains, Dave,” she said with a bitter smile. “Specifics of that nature are rarely discussed in these parts.

Suffice it to say, Hope’s descent into madness was not graceful. By the time Jess was born, she was hi full cry. My father was a doctor, so he knew. In retrospect, we all knew, but this is a small southern mountain town, and decent people averted their eyes.”

“What finally happened? Was she committed somewhere?”

“No.” There was another pause, and Stafford could see that she was dredging up some painful memories. “No, it ended one terrible winter night in 1986 when my father was not here. She apparently had one of her visions, as she called them, killed two of her children, and then turned the gun on herself, although she failed to kill herself. Jess was the only survivor.”

“Good Lord. And how did Jess survive?”

Gwen paused again before answering. “No one knows, or no one was willing to say at the time. I was married by then and living with John Lee.”

“But you have an opinion?”

“Jess was not quite three,” she said softly, staring out at the willows.

“I think perhaps her mother just could not bring herself to shoot her baby. But there’s another possibility. Knowing what I know now, I think perhaps her mother, crazy as she was, recognized something hi Jess. I think it’s entirely possible that Hope’s insanity was somehow caused by or reinforced by unformed mental acuity of her own. As I mentioned, she claimed to see visions, hear voices.”

“She was schizophrenic.”

“Yes, that was the official diagnosis. But no one really knows what’s going on in a schizophrenic’s mind; we have only their word for it, you see. She’s down in Milledgeville now, at Central State. Quite hopeless now.” She smiled a sad smile at the unintended play on words, then turned back toward the house.

“So Jess has been at the Willow Grove Home from the start,” she continued. “She was withdrawn as a child, but no one told her until she was seven what really happened that night.”

“And when did she stop talking?”

“She never spoke after that night. I had hopes that she was going to be able to grow away from all that, until the manifestations of her … ability began. Now I just don’t know.”

“So you kept her here first because she was family, and second, because you’re not sure of what’s going on in her mind.”

“That’s correct. Consider her antecedents: Hope and Charity, both violently, self-destructively insane; her own two sisters cut down before we could know anything about their mental development. And now Jess is manifesting mental — what, irregularities? I didn’t know what else to do.”

Stafford let out a slow breath as he thought about this history and the fact that everything he had been assuming up to this point had been wrong.

“Well,” he said. “I apologize again for bringing this other mess into your lives, and of course I’ll stay here while you and Jess get clear of it for a while. There’s a huge hunt on for Carson. He’s not a professional bad guy, so I suspect this will be resolved before too long.”

They heard the phone begin to ring up at the house. As tiiey turned toward the back door, she took his hand.

“Dave, I’m sorry. About the other, I mean. And the offer still stands.

For you to stay here and get your life reassembled. But—”

“I understand,” he said. “And I’ll think about it. But in the meantime, we need to get you and Jess to safety.”