Lost Lake

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Emily Hobson, Victor Hobson’s wife of fifteen years, had supper waiting when he arrived home a little after eight. Two years before he met Emily, Victor had been engaged to a teller he’d met while investigating a bank robbery. His fiancee had broken off the engagement because she couldn’t put up with his erratic hours and his refusal to discuss the details of his work. Emily was a fingerprint examiner in the FBI lab. She’d retired after their second child was born. Victor worried that she would be bored silly if she stayed at home, but she had surprised him by being perfectly content to raise their children and put up with him. Victor knew that he’d been lucky to find someone who understood his job from the inside.

After dinner, Victor checked on his children. His son was working furiously at a video game, and his daughter was talking on the phone with her best friend. They both grunted at him-a clear indication that they wished to be alone-so Victor walked downstairs and turned on CNN. The Supreme Court had heard another case involving Miranda rights; a suicide bomber had killed seven people in a cafe in Jerusalem; and there had been a surprise development in the Little League case.

As the newscaster discussed the breaking story in Oregon, the station ran a clip of the brawl that had led to the arrest of a Little League coach on multiple assault counts. Victor stood up when the handheld camera focused on the face of the man the announcer identified as Daniel Morelli. The announcer explained that an unknown woman had helped Morelli escape from the security ward at the county hospital where the defendant had been imprisoned. A police artist’s sketch of the woman and a mug shot of Morelli flashed on the screen.

Hobson had flown to Lost Lake shortly after the murder of Congressman Eric Glass. Vanessa Wingate had already been removed from the hospital by her father. The only positive result of his trip had been an opportunity to look through Carl Rice’s army records, which had been supplied to the sheriff by Vanessa’s father. Hobson still had a copy of the file, which contained the only photograph he had been able to locate of Rice. The face in the mug shot was older and careworn, but there was no question in Hobson’s mind that Daniel Morelli was Carl Rice.

The newscasters started talking about a plane crash in Brazil, and Hobson turned off the set. The day after Morris Wingate had declared his intention to challenge President Charles Jennings for his party’s nomination, Hobson had received a call from Ted Schoonover, an ex-CIA man who was the president’s chief troubleshooter. Schoonover had invited him to breakfast at a Greek restaurant in a strip mall in a Maryland suburb. Hobson was willing to bet that no one with any clout in D.C. had ever set eyes on the place. Schoonover was a short, chubby man with thinning hair and a double chin, certainly not the type of person you would notice in a crowd. After their meeting, Hobson had run a check on him. Except for some basic employment information, Schoonover’s file was eerily blank. Hobson had been able to determine little more than the fact that Schoonover had served with Charles Jennings when Jennings was the director of the CIA. When Hobson tried to get more information about the ex-spook he was told that he was not cleared to look at the relevant files.

Over breakfast, Schoonover had asked Hobson if he’d heard Wingate’s announcement. Then he asked the FBI man to brief him on the events at Lost Lake and their aftermath. When Hobson was finished, Schoonover asked if there was any new information on the whereabouts of Carl Rice. Hobson had told Schoonover that he’d had no new information about Rice since the mid-1980s. Schoonover told Hobson that the president wanted to know immediately whenever there were any developments in the case.

Hobson had not contacted Schoonover after his phone conversation with Vanessa Wingate, because he had nothing concrete to report. Now he took Schoonover’s business card out of his wallet and dialed the cell phone number that the president’s aide had written on the back.

“Talk to me,” Schoonover said after three rings.

“This is Victor Hobson. There’s been a new development in that matter we discussed.”

“You up for a late-night snack?”

“The same place?”

“See you in a half hour.”

A sign on the door said that The Acropolis closed at eleven P.M., but Ted Schoonover was sitting inside eating baklava and sipping thick Greek coffee when Hobson parked outside at eleven-thirty. Before Hobson could knock, a balding man wearing a white apron let him in, then relocked the door.

“You want some coffee? The baklava is the best,” Schoonover said.

“I’m fine.”

“Then fill me in.”

“Vanessa Wingate called me a few days ago and said that she knew how to find Carl Rice, but she wouldn’t tell me anything else. I had her call traced to a motel, but the clerk said that she’d checked out. I questioned her boyfriend. He says that he has no idea where she went. I didn’t call you, because I didn’t have anything solid and Vanessa is-well, to put it charitably-odd. She was raving about her father trying to kill her. The boyfriend told me that she’d called 911 and told the cops that he was being attacked in their apartment when that wasn’t true.”

“Where is this going?”

“Have you heard about the brawl at that Little League game in Oregon?”

“I read something about it.”

“I think Carl Rice is the man the police arrested at the game. I’m pretty sure that he was in Portland, Oregon, as of last night.”

“What do you mean, ‘was’?”

“A woman broke him out of the security ward of the county hospital.” Schoonover stopped eating and gave Hobson his full attention.

“On TV tonight, they showed a mug shot of the man who escaped. The newscaster called him Daniel Morelli. I can’t be certain, because the photo in Rice’s file was taken when he was in his twenties and the man in the mug shot is years older, but it definitely looks like Rice, and the artist’s sketch of the woman looked a lot like Vanessa Wingate.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I thought I’d send an agent out to Portland to keep tabs on the manhunt.”

Schoonover thought while he dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

“No,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “You take care of this personally.”

“I’m an assistant director. I can’t go running off to Oregon for God knows how long. Rice has hidden successfully for twenty years. I have no idea how long it will take for the police to find him.”

“Don’t worry about your other work. I’ll take care of that with the director. You’ll offer FBI assistance on this. Once Rice is arrested, you’ll call me and I’ll take over. Your job is to make certain that no one gets to this guy before I do. No one, is that understood?”