Six Seconds

66

Great Falls, Montana

Nearly two hours before dawn, the motel phone next to Graham’s bed rang.

Half awake, he grabbed it on the first ring.

“Corporal Graham, it’s Teale in FIS. I’ve just e-mailed your photos to you.”

“Okay, hang on.” Graham got on to his computer, went into his e-mail, found the attachment and opened it. Jake Conlin stared back at him, bald, with a Vandyke beard, along with photos showing his left and right profiles. “Got it. Great. Thanks, Simon. Gotta go.”

Graham called Maggie’s room.

Some forty minutes later, they were back at the Sky Road Truck Mall.

Graham printed off copies of the photos in the twenty four-hour business office. They started in the big restau rant. The strains of country music, the smells of strong coffee, frying bacon and the clink of cutlery filled the air as they showed people Jake’s updated mug shot and asked for their help.

They approached bleary-eyed drivers coming off all night runs and early risers fixing to hit the road. They went from table to table, receiving head shakes, shrugs, a “looks familiar,” a “maybe, I don’t remember,” an “I’m not sure,” a “naw,” a “good luck” and “I’ll say a prayer for you.”

Maggie was growing anxious as they left the restau rant for the store.

At the checkout, the first person they went to was a tall man in a battered cowboy hat paying for toothpaste and shampoo. Maggie asked for his help.

“Sure, darlin’.” His smile faded as he realized Graham was with her. “Just got in from Denver, I’m beat, but go ahead, show me your pictures.”

The cowboy looked at the updated photos and scratched his whiskers.

“Now, tell me again. Who’s asking and what’s this about?”

“I’m his wife and he’s with our son. I need to talk to him.”

“Whoa. I don’t want to get involved in no family spat, you understand.”

“Sir,” Graham said, “no one’s asking for that. Please, have you seen him?”

“And you would be?”

Graham told him.

“Police?” The man handed the picture back. “I’m not so sure.”

“Sir, this lady’s just trying to find her little boy.”

“I’ve seen that man in your picture,” another voice said.

Maggie, Graham and the cowboy turned to the clerk,

386 Rick Mofina a girl in her twenties with a small diamond stud in her pierced right nostril.

“Sorry,” she said, “I overheard you and peeked.”

“You saw Jake Conlin?” Maggie was hopeful.

“His name’s not Jake. It’s Burt Russell.”

“How do you know that?” Graham wrote it down.

“That’s him in your picture. I held truck magazines for him a couple of times. He said his name was Burt Russell. He comes in every couple of weeks.”

“You have anything with his name on it, a credit-card receipt, check, an order, anything with proper spelling or an address?”

“No, he’s a cash customer.”

“Any idea where he lives?”

The girl shook her head.

Encouraged by the lead, Graham used a public landline phone to call Reg Novak, his friend in D.C., to query Montana Highway Patrol and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.

“Can you run the name Burt Russell, and variations on the spelling, through state motor vehicle records. He might be the RO of a large truck.”

“Give me some time to make a request,” Novak said. “You’re running up a big tab with me. Going to cost you Flames tickets if I ever get out your way.”

“You’ve got a deal, Reg.”

Graham and Maggie found a booth in the restaurant.

After they ordered breakfast, Maggie went to the restroom. Waiting alone, Graham glimpsed morning headlines about that day’s papal visit to Montana.

As the sun rose, a new concern dawned on him.

What if Ray Tarver’s conspiracy story was re motely valid?

What if Jake Conlin and the pope’s visit to Montana were linked?

Graham paged through his notes from his interview in Washington with Tarver’s reporter friend, Kate Morrow. Before he died, Tarver’s ex-CIA source had told him about intelligence out of Africa on plans for a “large-scale attack being planned for a major target.”

But the information was vague, like countless other threats.

Walker, the Secret Service agent protecting the pope, knew all about Tarver’s theories. Graham kept turning pages. Walker said Tarver “lived in a fantasy world with other conspiracy nuts.” Walker had chased Tarver’s leads, which in the end, “turned out to be jackass theories.”

Yes, but given today’s events, shouldn’t he pass his info to Walker? Walker’s card was in Graham’s note book. He tapped it, wondering if Arnie Danton had applied luminol to Tarver’s campsite yet. Graham needed to know the result.

If the Tarver deaths were truly an accident, then his boss, Stotter, was right.

He’d been traveling the U.S. on a wild-goose chase.

Graham ran his hand over his face, then called Walker’s cell phone.

He got his voice mail and left a message.

Leaving the restroom, Maggie was stopped by some thing she hadn’t noticed before. Outside Barney’s, the second restaurant, the painter’s drop sheet that had covered the entrance wall yesterday was gone, reveal ing a gallery of people.

Photographs of men, women and children were tacked to a corkboard headed, Birthday Blasts At Barney’s. Maggie was drawn to scores of glowing faces and searched them until she came to a pair of eyes that pierced her.

Logan.

She gasped and touched his face.

He was smiling, but something was not right. In the same picture, she saw Jake. So different. Bald head. Goatee. A half smile. On the table before them, a cake with the words, Happy Birthday, Samara. Who was that?

A woman was also in the picture, seated with Jake and Logan. Midthirties, dark hair, beautiful. Maggie caught her breath.

The other woman.

Maggie studied her, looked hard into her eyes. They were deep, intelligent, giving off a fierce light of defiance.

Maggie leaned closer, almost squaring off with her.