Duty and Honor

4

Like most special operators, Jack maintained a go-bag, yet another lesson given him by John Clark and Ding Chavez. In Jack’s case, his rucksack, a 5.11 Tactical Havoc, was filled with the necessities of his chosen profession.

His first order of business was a Hail Mary. While he had little doubt his comprehensive access to The Campus’s mainframe computer had been suspended, he wondered what might have been left available.

Jack opened a browser on his laptop and navigated to the Hendley Associates website, then to its secure backdoor portal. Fingers crossed, he plugged in his username and password. After a moment the portal’s main window appeared. All of the access tabs were gray, ghosted out, save one: Level One. Jack clicked on the tab, and a new screen opened up. There was a message in his inbox. It was from Gavin Biery:

While Level One was just the tip of The Campus’s information iceberg, it did give him access to basic investigation tools. Through a shell company, Hendley Associates maintained a private investigation firm that served primarily to provide useful cover for its operatives. Enquestor Services existed only in cyberspace, but its various licenses and documentation were irreproachable — including the private investigator’s badge Jack carried.

“Thank you, Mr. Biery,” Jack muttered.

He clicked to the tab marked “Credit Inquiries.” From his rucksack he grabbed a magnetic barcode swiper, plugged it into his laptop’s USB port, then slid his attacker’s Motel 6 key card through it. While he knew the location of the motel — Springfield — he didn’t know which room the card belonged to. After a moment, the information appeared on the screen: room 142. A piece of luck, Jack thought. Ground-level room with exterior access; the less interaction he had with the lobby staff, the better.

Within minutes he was on I-95 heading west. The rain was holding off. The afternoon temperatures had risen to the mid-seventies, causing the still-damp streets to steam. Fifteen minutes after leaving the Oronoco, he turned onto Springfield Boulevard. The motel, a long, whitewashed four-story building, overlooked the Franconia Road/I-95 cloverleaf. Jack did a full circuit of the building, then followed the placards to an entrance on the east side. He found a spot fifty feet away, tucked up against a line of hedges, and backed into it. He shut off the ignition.

Jack felt his heart rate pick up. While his attacker certainly wasn’t coming back, the mystery man was a possibility. The chances were better than even that he’d already cleaned out the room. Jack hoped not. This room was his sole lead. There was something else tickling his mind: anticipation. He’d missed this, he realized. He missed The Campus.

He and Dom, Ding, and John Clark stayed in touch and had lunch or beers once a week or so, but it wasn’t the same. Though they’d done nothing to prompt this, Jack had begun to feel like an outsider. What they all lived and breathed was Hendley’s off-the-books missions. This was prevalent in the business, on both the civilian and military side — a natural by-product of being good at a job that frequently tries to kill you. That was a fair, if generalized, definition of addiction, wasn’t it? Maybe. If so, months of withdrawal and he still felt the lure of it. There were worse vices, right?

He drew his Glock, eased back the slide until he saw the glint of brass in the chamber, then reholstered. He got out of the car and headed for the entrance.

With the swipe of the key card, the door gave a satisfying click. Jack used the back of his thumb to pull open the door, then stepped into the vestibule. Through the inner door he followed signs to room 142. The hallway was empty, but as he passed doors he caught strains of muffled conversation, a game show playing on a television.

He stopped before 142. A PRIVACY PLEASE placard was hanging from the lever handle. Jack pressed his ear to the door. Listened. All was quiet. He glanced down the hall again, saw it was clear, then drew the Glock, stepped closer to the door’s hinge-side jamb, and swiped the key card. He used his fist to push down the lever handle, then nudged the door open with his foot.

He paused. Listened again. Nothing stirred inside the room. He counted to ten, then took a breath, let it out.

With the Glock in the compressed-ready position, Jack shouldered through the door and into the short hallway. Bathroom on his right. To his left was a closet with dual sliding mirrored doors. Both were open, and on the floor was a black hard-sided roller suitcase. Ahead he could see a chest of drawers and the foot of a queen bed, and the window. The sheer curtains were drawn, casting the interior in pale light.

As the door swung shut behind him, Jack backed up, putting more distance between himself and the bathroom door. He paced forward, checked the bathroom. Empty, door fully open, shower curtain back. He took another step down the hall and peeked around the corner into the main room. Clear. He holstered the Glock.

The room was like any other you’d find in a branded motel: low-pile carpet, white walls, a bed with two nightstands, and a small round table and two chairs beside the window. The air smelled faintly of pine-scented disinfectant.

Jack took a moment and stood still in the center of the room, taking it in. The space was tidy but lived in. Here and there things were out of place, the kinds of checklist details maids attend to, but the PRIVACY PLEASE placard outside suggested housekeeping hadn’t been here.

There was nothing personal on the nightstands, chest of drawers, or table. No change, no receipts, no pocket detritus of any kind. The bedcovers were pulled up, but the bed wasn’t made.

And no sign of drug paraphernalia.

This wasn’t the room of a homeless crackhead.

Jack walked to the bathroom. Beside the sink, lined up beside each other, were a toothbrush and a miniature tube of toothpaste. In the shower he found a half-empty bottle of complimentary shampoo and a used bar of soap in the holder. Hanging neatly from the curtain were a towel and washcloth, the latter folded once lengthwise, the former stiff from being air-dried. The trash can beside the toilet was empty.

He returned to the main room, put on a pair of leather golf gloves, and started his search. The nightstands were empty, as were two of the chest’s drawers; the uppermost one contained rows and stacks of staple clothing: socks, underwear, jeans, plain cotton T-shirts in blue, black, and red. He carefully sorted through each item and found nothing — not even labels, all of which had been cut out.

He retrieved the suitcase from the closet and laid it on the bed. There were no luggage tags, either personal or airline-issued. He unzipped the suitcase. It was empty. Jack ran his fingertips around the nylon fabric inner lining. Again, no luck. Jack returned the suitcase to the closet.

This room was special-operator tidy. A place for everything and everything in its place. Functional, efficient, anonymous. It gave him nothing.

“Maybe…” Jack murmured.

He picked up the phone and dialed the main desk.

“Motel Six, how may I help you?”

“Hi, I’m in room 142,” Jack said. “Can you get me a copy of my charges up to this point? My office manager needs it.”

“Certainly, sir. I can e-mail it—”

“Hard copy would be better, actually. Just slip it under the door. I’m going to jump in the shower.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“One more thing,” Jack replied. “When do you show me checking out?”

“Uh… hang on… Day after tomorrow, sir.”

Jack thanked him and hung up.

The desk clerk was as good as his word. A few minutes later a lone sheet of paper wormed its way beneath the door. He waited for the footsteps to fade back down the hallway, then retrieved the bill. In the occupant information section, there was no address. How did his attacker manage that? Jack wondered. The vast majority of hotels wouldn’t book a reservation without an address. There were ways around this, but they took finesse.

In the payment section, all but the last four digits of the credit card were X’d out.

But there was a name.

Eric Weber.

Even assuming the name was real, Weber was common, as was Eric, and without an address Jack had no way of narrowing his search. He put a pin in it and turned to his next task.

He left the room, and to kill some time he browsed through a couple used-book stores. After nightfall, he headed west toward Telegraph Road and turned off. He found a BP gas station across the road from the Supermercado and parked on the side of the building.

From his rucksack he took a gray hoodie and baseball cap. He donned both, then locked his car and walked to Lenore, then west across Telegraph to the grocery store. The parking lot was half full of cars, with shoppers, mostly Latinos and some whites, coming and going through the automatic doors. The sound of rickety shopping cart wheels echoed across the pavement. The automatic doors hissed open and shut.

It was seven forty-five, fifteen minutes before the store’s shift change.

Jack couldn’t help but glance at the guardrail on the far side of the parking lot. No cars were parked there. He stood in the near-darkness for a few moments and scanned the front of the store for surveillance cameras. Though there were plenty of them inside, little mirrored bubbles jutting from the ceiling, out here he saw none.

Jack pulled the cap down close to his eyebrows, then walked to the entrance and posted himself beside it. To each passerby he gave his rehearsed and, he hoped, well-acted spiel: He was looking for his homeless brother, someone said they’d seen him around here, followed by a description of his attacker. Most walked past him, either without responding or with some muttered excuse or a flat “No.” Occasionally a shopper would stop, listen for a moment, then sadly shake his or her head and wish him luck.

At 7:55, a familiar face appeared, one of the regular cashiers, a short early-twenties woman with large black eyes. She’d checked him out a few times but was shy and rarely looked him in the eye.

“Hi, excuse me,” Jack said. “I’m looking for my brother. He’s missing.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, stepping around Jack and heading for the door. “I need to—”

“Tall, skinny, maybe wearing a dark hoodie. He’s homeless. We’re worried about him. Please.”

The cashier slowed, then stopped and turned. She backed farther into the light coming through the front windows, putting some distance between them. A local, he guessed. She gave no sign she recognized him.

“How tall?” she asked.

“Six-five or so.”

The woman hesitated, then said, “Wait. There was a guy. I seen him a few times in the last week. He was panhandling, asking for change. I gave him a few dollars but felt kinda stupid, you know.”

“Why?”

“I came in early for my shift last night, about seven-thirty, and I saw him get dropped off, right down there.” She pointed toward the far end of the building.

Seven-thirty, Jack thought. A half hour before he arrived. Good timing. Here was another habit he’d let slip — that of varying his daily routine to make himself a harder target for both surveillance and ambush.

She said, “It was a real nice car, not a beater or anything. I figured if he had a car like that or had a friend with a car like that, he shouldn’t be creeping for money.”

Jack frowned. “I’m sorry he did that. He’s got problems, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“What’d the car look like?” he asked.

“White, newer, like a Nissan or Toyota. Midsize, I think.”

“Did you see the driver?”

She shook her head. “Wait a second. There was something on the news… Wasn’t some guy hit on Kings Highway last night?”

“Really?” Jack replied. “Did they describe him? Did he have ID?”

“No, I don’t know. Sorry. You could call the police. I hope it’s not him, but maybe…” She let the words trail off, tilting her head in sympathy. “I gotta go.”

“Thanks,” Jack said as she disappeared through the doors.

White midsize car. Did the headlights silhouetting his mystery man the previous night belong to this car?

Jack drove home, parked in the garage, then took the elevator up to his floor. The doors parted, revealing the vestibule. Sitting on the leather bench against the far wall was Doug Butler.

Jack stepped out. “Hey, Detective,” he said tentatively.

Butler stood up. “We gotta talk.”