Authors: David Baldacci
“Chief, it’s pretty damn hard to miss.”
What she was looking at through her optics was the biggest office building in the world, with a footprint like no other, five-sided, in fact. She slumped back.
What the hell is the connection to the Pentagon?
“She wasn’t alone, right?” asked Mace.
“No, a guy was with her. Damn shame what happened to her.”
“Can you describe the guy?” asked Roy.
The waiter turned to him. “You think he had something to do with her death?”
“Haven’t ruled out anything yet.”
“Are you with the cops?”
“Private eyes,” said Mace. “Hired by her family. Have the cops been by yet?”
The man nodded. “Yep.”
“So you were going to describe this guy?” prompted Mace.
“White guy. Around fifty, salt-and-pepper hair, cut short and thinning. Not as tall as you,” he said, indicating Roy. “About five-ten. Dressed in a suit.”
“Glasses? Beard?”
“No.”
Mace showed him Watkins’s DMV photo.
He shook his head. “Wasn’t that guy.”
“You didn’t get a name?” she asked.
“No, Ms. Tolliver paid the bill.”
“See him with her before?”
“Nope.”
“How were their appetites?”
“Real good. Ms. Tolliver had the filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and a side of veggies. Coffee but no dessert. The guy had the salmon with a salad and a cup of clam chowder beforehand.”
“Wine, cocktails?”
“She had a glass of the house merlot. He had two glasses of char-donnay.”
“Good memory.”
“Not really. When the police came, I went back and looked at the ticket.”
“You remember the times Tolliver and the guy came in and left?” asked Roy.
“In about seven-thirty, left over two hours later. I remember looking at the clock when they sat down because my cousin said he was going to stop by around quarter till and have a drink at the bar, and I knew it was getting close to that time.”
“And you’re pretty sure on when they left?”
“It was Friday night, but we’ve only got fifteen tables and traffic was slow. In fact, there were only two other tables occupied, so I did notice. And the bill has a time and date stamp when it comes out of the computer. They didn’t hang out after she paid the bill. Bussed their table myself.”
“Did either of them appear nervous or anything?” asked Mace.
“Well, they didn’t come in together. She was here first and then he came in. They sat at that table over there.” He pointed to an eating space in a small niche. “Pretty private because of the wall there.”
“Did they leave together?” Roy asked.
“No. She went first, then he did. And he was kind of looking down the whole time, like he didn’t want anyone to get a good look at him.”
They asked him a few more questions, and Roy left his business card in case the waiter remembered anything else. As they walked along outside Mace pulled the reports she’d gotten from the ME from her pocket and glanced through them.
“What?” asked Roy.
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”
“So it wasn’t Watkins she had dinner with. There’s another guy out there.”
“Seems to be. And they obviously didn’t want folks to see them together. Out-of-the-way place, secluded table, came and left separately.”
“We left my car at the garage. What now? We can’t walk to Alexandria.”
“We can cab it to Altman’s house, grab my bike, and then go from there.”
“Do you think whoever’s after us knows you’re staying at Altman’s?”
“It’s possible.”
“But what if they go after Altman for some reason? You know, leverage against you somehow?”
“Herbert told me there are three full-time security guards who live on the premises. I guess after the run-in with the HF-12 drug crew, Abe decided some of his own muscle wasn’t a bad thing. One’s a former Navy SEAL, another used to be a sniper with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, and the other one is former Secret Service with five years in Iraq under his belt in counterterrorism.”
“Damn. I never noticed those guys when I was there.”
“That’s sort of the point, Roy.”
The cab dropped them at Altman’s. She took a few minutes at the guesthouse to slip some items into her knapsack. As they walked outside to where her bike was parked Roy said, “What’s in the goodie bag?”
“Stuff.”
“Stuff for breaking and entering?”
“Get on.”
Roy barely made it on the Ducati before Mace punched the clutch with her boot and the back wheel gripped the asphalt for a single moment before its energy was released and they shot down the road. The automatic gates parted and Mace worked the clutch to top gear. Minutes later they blew down the windy, tree-bracketed GW Parkway, whipping past cars so fast Roy could barely see the drivers.
He finally yelled into her ear, “Why so damn fast?”
“I have a fetish for speed.”
“You ever crash this thing?”
“Not yet,” she screamed back over the whine of the Ducati’s engine.
Roy clutched her waist with both hands and muttered a brief but heartfelt prayer.
“You didn’t learn that in prison,” he said in a scoffing tone.
“How do you know that?”
“Trust me, I just know.”
“Are you insinuating that I bent the rules while I was a cop?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I mean, I’m not insinuating it, I’m stating it as a fact.”
“Go to hell, Roy.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know the security system’s not on?”
“I already snuck a peek through the glass sidelights on the front door. Green glow coming from the security touchpad means security off. Cops probably had the alarm company shut it down when they came to bag and tag. They almost always forget to tell them to turn it back on.”
There was an audible click and Mace turned her tension tool like a key. “And we’re in.” They closed the door behind them and Mace on a small flashlight with an adjustable beam. She widened the focus and looked around.
“This is a rec room with a full bar over there,” Roy said as he pointed up ahead and to the right. “And there’s a media room through that door over there.”
“Nice.”
“If the cops already bagged and tagged, what can we hope to find?”
“Stuff they missed.”
They went room by room. One space had been outfitted as a home office. There was a large desk, wooden file cabinets, and builtin bookshelves but no computer.
“I think she had a laptop in here,” said Roy. “The cops might’ve taken it instead of using the flash drive you talked about.”
Mace was eyeing a pile of documents she’d pulled from a file cabinet. “Do all lawyers at Shilling bring this much work home?”
Roy ran the light over the papers. “Looks to be some docs from a private stock acquisition we did last month. We repped an oil exploration company in the U.A.E. that was buying a preferred minority interest in a Canadian shale oil field. It was done through a specialized broker in London and there were several other piggyback purchasers with packaged financing securitized over a number of debt platforms in about ten countries that had also had some sovereign fund participation and a buy-sell playing-chicken option.”
“I have no idea what you said, but I think it just made me horny.”
“If I’d only known that’s all it took.”
“So how much are we talking dollar-wise?”
“A little over a billion dollars. Paid in cash.”
“A billion in cash!”
“That’s how Diane could afford this place. She probably paid for
it
in cash.”
Mace’s brow creased.
“What are you thinking now?”
“I’m thinking I should have gone to law school,” she growled. While Roy went over Tolliver’s office, Mace methodically covered the bedroom, guest rooms, bathrooms, and the garage. She finally arrived in the kitchen, which had a small brick fireplace with a wooden mantel and extended into the well-appointed dining area that had as its centerpiece a ten-foot-long table constructed from reclaimed wood. There were views of the Potomac through several large windows.
Mace checked the cupboards, the refrigerator, the stove, and the dishwasher. She opened jars and cookbooks, and dug into flowerpots in case Tolliver had bought one of those mini security boxes that look like something mundane. She examined piece by piece the trash that had obviously
not
been bagged, tagged, and taken by the cops. Roy joined her while she was seated in a chair still going through the garbage.
“Find any banana peels with secret writing?”
“No, but I did find a meat wrapper, veggie peelings, and a moldy piece of bread. Along with an empty bottle of red wine.”
“So that was Diane’s last meal.”
“We’ll all have one someday.”
Mace rinsed off her hands in the sink. “Anything suspicious in her files?”
“Not really.”
Mace started walking up and down the room, hitting the walls, floor, and ceiling with her light. “See all the shiny surfaces?”
“Fingerprint powder.”
“That’s right.”
She reached the wall at the far end of the room, turned, and started back. When her light flicked to the ceiling she stopped. “Roy, grab a chair for me.”
He brought it to her and she stood on it on her tiptoes, shining the light around the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling. She handed him the light. “Get up here and tell me what you see.”
He stood on the chair. “Scratches on the paint and what looks to be dirt smudges.”
“Somebody moved the smoke detector.”
“Well, you’d do that to change the battery.”
“How about this?”
Roy stepped off the chair and angled the light to where Mace was pointing at the carpet. He got down on his knees for a better look. “Paint flakes?”
“You’d think they would’ve been vacuumed up. Unless it happened after she was dead. Let me see that detector.”
Roy got back on the chair, unhooked the wires, and handed it to her.
She turned it over. “Smoke detectors are popular items to substitute with surveillance pin cameras.”
“Surveillance? Of Diane?”
“They tapped her computer, why not her home?”
“So why didn’t the police find it?”
“They probably removed it before the cops searched the place. I think you need to go to your office tomorrow and do some real digging.”
“You really believe it’s tied to Shilling?” he said skeptically.
“Billion-dollar contracts? Companies in the Middle East? Uh, yeah.”
“It’s actually pretty boring stuff. Just business.”
“One man’s business is another man’s apocalypse.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just humor me and check around. Come on, I’ll drop you off at your condo.”
Outside, they climbed on the Ducati. Before Mace started the engine, she turned and looked at him. “So why did you tank the HORSE game?”
“Why do you think?” Roy said quietly.
Mace found she couldn’t meet his gaze. She slowly turned back around, engaged the engine, and they sped off.
“Roy, did you hear about the fire here last night?”
Roy tried his best to seem surprised. “There was a fire? Where?”
“Well, actually there wasn’t a fire. Somebody pulled the fire alarm. That’s a crime!”
“Yeah, I know. Who would’ve done that?” he said impassively.
“The fire department guys were pissed. I heard they traced it to the alarm pull on the fifth floor. I guess they’ll run the key card access records to see who was here last night.”
At this comment Roy’s ass clenched like a boxer’s fist. He’d used his key card to get in the building with Mace. That would be on the database. If no one else was in the building last night, how was he going to explain that? What was the penalty for falsely pulling a fire alarm?
This day could not get any worse,
he thought.
He was wrong about that.
“Roy?”
He looked up as he entered the firm’s lobby. Chester Ackerman was staring at him.
“Yeah, Chester?”
“What the hell happened to your face?”
Roy touched his still swollen eye and bruised cheek. “Ran into a door.”
“I need to talk to you.
Now
.” Ackerman turned and marched off.
Roy eyed Jill, the young receptionist, who’d been watching the two men closely. “Any idea what’s going on, Jill?”
“You’re in trouble, Roy.”
“That one I’d figured out. Any idea why?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Roy dropped off his briefcase in his office and headed to Ackerman’s. He closed the door behind him and sat down across from the man.
“You’re looking less stressed out, Chester,” Roy began amiably.
“I have no idea how that’s possible,” Ackerman shot back. “Because I feel like my damn head is going to explode.”
Roy crossed his legs and tried to look mildly curious. “So what’s up?”
Please, God, don’t let it be about the damn fire alarm.
“What the hell is this I hear about you representing the man the police have arrested for Diane’s murder? Please tell me that is complete and total horseshit.”
“Hold on, I can explain that—”
Ackerman rose, looking even more agitated. “So it’s true?”
“I met with the guy. He wants me to rep him. I haven’t—”
“You
know
Diane’s killer? You actually know the bastard?”
“Wait a minute, it hasn’t been proved that he is Diane’s killer, Chester.”
“Oh for God’s sakes. He was in the building that morning. No, he was
trespassing
. And I understand some of the evidence the police found ties him to the murder.”
“Who told you that?”
“What I want to know is how you could possibly think of defending this person?”
“I guess it’s that whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing they taught us in law school.”
“Don’t give me that crap. And besides, you work for this firm. We do not do criminal defense work. You cannot accept an assignment like that without the firm’s approval, specifically my approval as managing partner.” Ackerman added in a snarl, “And you don’t have a chance in hell of getting it.”
“I only met with the guy once, okay? I defended him on an assault charge when I was with CJA. But I don’t think the guy did it, Chester.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think. You are not representing him. Period.”
Roy stood. “I’m not really liking your whole tone here.”
“Trust me, you’ll like it a lot less if you go down that road.”
“I can quit.”
“Yes, you can. But why in the hell would you? Give up the golden egg for some homicidal homeless freak?”
Roy felt his face growing hot. “He’s
not
a freak. He’s a veteran. He fought and bled for this country. He’s still got North Vietnamese shrapnel a few millimeters from his spine.”
“Right, right. And he killed Diane. So make your choice.”
Roy turned to the door. “I’ll let you know.”
“Kingman!”
“I
said
I’ll let you know.”
Roy slammed the door behind him.