Edge

Chapter 18

A HALF HOUR later we were on the highway again, heading for the safe house.

It was a little after 8:00 p.m. and I’d been driving a fast, complicated and unpredictable route generally north though Loudoun and Fairfax counties.

In the back Ryan Kessler sat brooding, looking through his canvas bag. For ammo? Or booze? Joanne was quiet, staring out the window. Maree, calm finally, fidgeted with a pacifier, her computer. She was coming out of her hysteria but hadn’t yet returned to referring flippantly to me as a tour guide.

Principals get terrified, of course. Disoriented too, and a little bit crazy. I need the people in my organization to be 100 percent with me. My principals, though? If they can be 75 or 80, if they can do what I ask with a measure of promptness and intelligence, I’m content. A sizable portion of my task is fixing as many of their inevitable mistakes as I can and minimizing the principals’ more destructive foibles and habits.

Which is not a bad philosophy of life, I’d decided.

In fact, this was a typical sampling of principals’ behavior. From experience I found Joanne’s numbness more worrisome than her husband’s bluster and her sister’s juvenile banter and hysteria. Principals like her could melt down suddenly and explosively, and usually it happened at exactly the wrong time.

I glanced back in the mirror and my eyes met hers, which were blank and unfocused, and we simultaneously looked away.

Now that I was comfortable that there were no tails-it would be purest coincidence that Loving would find us-I made the call.

“Hello?” the deep voice answered.

“Aaron.”

My boss responded, “Corte, I heard from Fredericks, at the Hillside Inn. He said you were okay. I assumed you were on the run and I didn’t want to call.”

“Thanks.” This was one of his best attributes: He might have no instinctive feel for shepherding but he understood how we operated and he accommodated his job to ours. I said, “I haven’t talked to Freddy yet. Any casualties there?”

He answered, “No, but it’s a mess. They picked up a lot of brass, must’ve been forty, fifty shots fired. Two slugs hit guest rooms with people inside. I can’t keep the lid on this one.”

“What’ll it be?”

“Loving gave us an out with the press, believe it or not. We’ll springboard on what he said in his fax-that there was talk of a kidnapping and some organized crime involvement. I’ll trot out Bad Hector. I don’t have much choice.”

Hector Carranzo was a small-time Colombian drug figure who was named in a number of felony warrants both here and in various Latin American countries. The reports gave mixed descriptions and vague background but all included warnings of his dangerous nature and the admonition to be on the lookout for him anywhere in the country. He was known to pop up unexpectedly.

He was also a complete fiction. When we had a shootout like the one at the Hillside Inn, under circumstances where we wanted to keep the truth quiet, we blamed the incident on Señor Hector and “possible drug or other illegal activity we have yet to identify with specificity.” After we collared the primary in the Ryan Kessler case, Ellis might come back in a few days with: Ooops, we were wrong; the real perp was actually so-and-so. But Bad Hector would keep the press busy for a time.

“We’re on the way to the safe house now.”

“Good. Get there and stay there.” A pause. I knew what he’d say next. “We all want to get him, Corte. But I want you to sit tight in the safe house. No more attempts to engage Loving.”

He’d be thinking of Rhode Island.

“Only the flytrap was offensive. What happened at the Hillside was pure defense. We were trying to get away.”

“I understand that… But there may be some issue raised of why you used a halfway in this situation. Why you didn’t go directly to the safe house.”

Meaning, I supposed, was I subconsciously-or perhaps very consciously-trying to draw Loving to us? He wanted a reason. But, even though he was my boss, I wasn’t going to answer.

He caught this and continued, “It was your call and I’m not questioning it. Just telling you that the question could come up.”

I told him, “If I do anything at all, it’ll just be to help Claire track down the primary.”

“Fine,” he muttered. Ellis was having a tough Saturday, so he wasn’t treading softly any longer. “You didn’t call Westerfield. You said you would.”

“I will. It’s been busy.”

Which, though true, sounded lame.

We disconnected and I was scrolling through numbers to find Westerfield’s. But then Freddy’s name was recited on my audible caller ID.

I clicked ACCEPT and asked, “You get anything at the Hillside?”

Freddy said, “No trace. He vanished-real fast. Like Houdini. Or the allowance I give my kids. Thin air.”

“Aaron said no injuries.”

“Right. People’re shaken up. But so what? Life shakes you up. Nothing wrong with getting shook once in a while. Aaron’s handling the press? There’re more reporters than you can shake a stick at.”

“He’ll do what he can.”

Freddy added that the hostage Loving had taken, to coerce her husband to drive his car after us as a diversion, was safe. “Not that it mattered but she said she couldn’t identify her kidnapper. The husband got amnesia too.”

I asked, “Any indication which way Loving went?”

“None.”

“We take out their Dodge?”

“Yup. Fan and a tire. They left it fifty yards west, where they had switch wheels hidden. The abandoned one was clean. And the new one? No tire treads our boys and girls could find. And you know them… If there’s a pubic hair, they’ll get it.”

“So was there a fax with Ryan’s picture on it?”

“Yep.”

“Who was it supposed to be from? You guys?”

“Federal Department of Tax Investigation.”

I nearly smiled. An outfit as phony as Artesian Computer Design. You had to hand it to Loving.

I told him, “It said the typical: Don’t try to apprehend, just give a call if you see him? And an eight hundred number?”

“Prepaid mobile.”

“Now deactivated,” I said.

Freddy didn’t need to confirm this.

“What was the incoming fax number?”

“Sent from a computer through a Swedish proxy.”

Naturally.

Freddy wondered, “How’d he tip to the Hillside specifically and send the fax there?”

“I think he went fishing. Sent faxes to dozens of possible halfway houses. I’ll bet they’re sitting in front lobbies all over the area.”

“Jesus,” he exhaled, pronouncing the name with an initial H. Maybe he was worried about being sacrilegious. I knew he went to church at least once a week. “This guy’s earning his fee. What the hell does Kessler know that’s so friggin’ important?”

Just what Claire duBois and I were going to find out in the next few hours, I hoped.

Then Freddy got my attention, asking, “You know somebody named Sandy Alberts?”

“He give you a call?”

“Came to the office. Works for that senator from Indiana or Ohio, Stevenson.”

“I know who he is. Ohio. What’d Alberts want?”

“Just asking questions. About wiretaps, Patriot Act, so on and so forth. Got to say, Corte, your name came up. All happy, cheerful, good things. But, well, like I said, your name came up. Find that interesting.”

Interesting, I reflected glumly. “And?”

“No ‘and.’ I told him I was busy. Had to go.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“For what?”

“I’m not sure.”

We disconnected and I considered Albert’s visit to Freddy.

Then I decided I could no longer delay the inevitable. I scrolled down and found Westerfield’s number. Hit SEND.

The man answered on the second ring. My heart sank; I’d been hoping for voice mail. “Corte,” he said and didn’t slip into French. “Listen, we need to talk. But I’m in with the AG right now.”

He was sitting in the U.S. attorney general’s office on Saturday night… and he’d taken my call?

“I’ll get back to you when we’re through. This number?”

“Yes.”

“You have an alternate?”

“No.”

Click.

I pulled off onto a side road and stopped. Maree gasped and looked up, alarmed, her psychic pendulum still on the hysterical side. Joanne slipped from her coma long enough to say to her, “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“Why’re we stopping?” the younger woman asked, her voice on edge.

I said, “Just checking the car. We took some hits.”

Ryan began scanning the dark roadside like a sniper for prey.

Ahmad climbed out of the back and joined me and we inspected the Yukon carefully. It wasn’t badly damaged from the shootout or the rough escape. The SUV was doing better than my back was.

As we checked the tires, I glanced up and saw Joanne, still in the back seat, look at her watch and place a call. It was to Amanda. From the conversation, which I could hear through the open door, it seemed everything was fine. She caught my eye again then lowered her head and continued the call. She was struggling to be animated as her stepdaughter apparently pelted her with a report of her day in the country.

Ryan took the phone and, his face softening, also had a conversation with the girl.

Parents and children.

For a moment some of those memories I’d had earlier surfaced, some children’s faces among them, memories I didn’t want. I put them away. Sometimes I was better at that than others. Tonight they vanished more slowly than usual.

I got back inside and when the door slammed Ryan spun around, startled, and gripped his gun. I tensed for a moment but he oriented himself and relaxed.

My Lord, did he want to shoot everybody?

As I started to drive, my phone buzzed and the caller ID voice announced a number I recognized as the Justice Department. My finger hovered over the ACCEPT button.

I didn’t press it. The call went to voice mail and I steered the Yukon back to the main road.