“If I hadn’t seen that plane go down I never would have met you, Pell. And most likely I would not have seen my wife in bed with another man. I would have come home to her relaxed, naive and horny. Never knowing or suspecting anything. Would I have been better off not knowing?”
“Maybe it was your destiny for you to see the plane go down? To hear David’s story”
“Destiny sucks.”
“I’m going to go now,” Pell said after an awkward moment. “I’m really sorry about what happened last night.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. I’m sure that someday I’ll be glad it happened.”
“Maybe so. Is there someplace I can grab some breakfast around here? I’m starving. We haven’t eaten since we left Bangor yesterday afternoon. You should eat too – keep your energy up Chris,” Pell pointed out.
Chris shook his head. He was in no mood for eating. He gave Pell directions to a local diner, and handed him the keys to the rental car.
“Good luck, Pell.”
“Thanks for everything. I’ll be in touch,” he said as they shook hands.
Chris went back into his office and sat down. What was he going to do now? His staff would be showing up for work in a couple of hours, and he had little or no desire to see any of them.
He decided to get on with his life, starting immediately. He had to persevere.
DAY 4 – WEDNESDAY, JULY 1
7:53 am Quincy, Massachusetts
Pell dropped the phone on the seat next to him. The answer had been exactly as he predicted.
“We’ll do some more poking around but from what I’ve seen so far, there’s nothing here. I don’t know exactly what you stumbled on but it’s not worth a lot of man-time right now. We’ve got other big cases going on that are for real. Go back up to Bangor,” Carl had said. Then the bastard had hung up without giving him a chance to argue.
Carl Moscovitz was either a complete fool to drop this case, or he had realized Pell was onto something big and would be going after every lead possible, just without Pell. If it were the latter and it proved out, Pell would be willing to bet that if his name were even mentioned, it would only be in passing. Carl was very good at self-promotion but, with all that was at stake, could he be stupid enough to simply drop it?
Pell climbed back into his car and looked at the clock in the dash. It was a little before 8. He had a hunch his next appointment might throw some light onto the situation. If Carl found out that he was actively working the case, he would have him fired but that was better than languishing in an unsatisfying job, always saying ‘what if’ or ‘if I had only’ for the rest of his life. Sometimes moving on was hard to do; change was scary, but stagnation, or in his case slow decay, had proven much worse.
He navigated the early morning traffic crush as he drove to Cambridge. He felt terrible physically, the alcohol withdrawal was affecting him badly. Yet, somehow everything was clearer, brighter. The skyline of the city was crisp and defined. The color of the sky was a vibrant blue he hadn’t seen, or appreciated, in years. Even the sound of the traffic around him had a musical quality. He had a positivity this morning that he hadn’t felt in years.
He left the administrative building with a skip in his step. It never ceased to amaze him at how helpful people wanted to be when he displayed his FBI credentials and informed people quietly that they had been personally selected to help on a very important case that only a select few people had details of.
In just under an hour, he had managed to get copies of some of Sarah Burns’ undergraduate transcripts and, most importantly, he had found that she had a mentor when she was in school, Maurice Andleman. As the head of the biology department back then, and an advisor to the elite students, he had taken Sarah under his wing and nurtured her. In a note in her file, he had written that she could be the smartest student he had ever had the pleasure of teaching, but more importantly, at least to him, was that she had vision. She could see what biotechnology could do, where it could go – beyond the obvious.
Maurice had retired twelve years ago and moved to New Hampshire. Harvard had an address but no phone number, and a quick call to information confirmed that the guy had no phone. Pell climbed into his car for the drive up to New Hampshire to interview him. Maurice probably hadn’t heard from Sarah since she left school, but this was the strongest lead he had.
He sat for a moment to clear his head. It had been over thirty-six hours since his last drink at the Lo Maine. His body felt tired and achy, his head hurt and his hands trembled. He could really do with a drink right now, just to ease his way up to New Hampshire. But no, he had made a commitment to himself and he wasn’t going to fall off the wagon after just thirty-six hours.
After a moment, he pulled himself together and reached forward to adjust his mirror. As he did, he thought he saw one of Carl’s men, Steve Strange, getting out of a car parked on the other side of the college garage.
He slouched down in his seat. Indeed, it was Agent Strange, and Pell watched him walk into the administrative building entrance. He walked with the cocky confidence that comes with being an up and coming Bureau man. Pell had seen young guys like Strange many times over the years. They had all the right stuff – athletic, smart, educated and ambitious. But most of them just didn’t have what it really took to excel in this job. That certain something that could never be taught – call it street smarts, call it morally malleable, call it whatever… Pell had it, Jenkins had it, not many others did.
“Damn,” Pell muttered. Why the hell would one of Carl’s men be visiting the University? Surely the only reason could be that Carl was after information on Sarah Burns. Which meant that son of a bitch must be working on the case after all.
He needed time to get up to New Hampshire, find Maurice Andleman, and talk to him before Carl and his cronies turned up. He climbed out of his car and walked over to Agent Strange’s car. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his Leatherman tool and opened the pliers. Taking a quick look around the parking lot, he quickly snipped off the valve stems on each tire. Air whistled as it rushed out, and the car settled slowly down onto its rims.
He felt much better as he drove away. His head had cleared, he felt in control and he was following a hunch. He had that buzz in his stomach like the old days when things were going well and everything was starting to come together. An hour and a half later he took the highway exit in New Hampshire and drove along a winding rural road. The natural beauty of the soaring, tree covered hills, the blue sky and the sparkling crystal lakes went unappreciated as he churned over the questions he had for Maurice Andleman. After about fifteen more minutes, he came to the lake that Maurice had retired to, Lake Horace. A dirt road led down toward the glistening, mile-long lake. At a junction there was a pole covered with small wooden arrow shaped signs that pointed in different directions down three merging roads. On each sign was the name of a family. Following the arrow for Andleman, Pell maneuvered the car carefully down a winding, deeply rutted, lakeside road. A mixture of shacks, mobile homes and beautiful houses that any normal man would be happy to have as a year round residence, not just a summer cottage, lined the dirt road.
As the road narrowed to the width of one car, he came to Maurice Andleman’s. He would have expected a retired Harvard department head to have one of the mansions, but as he pulled into the driveway, he was surprised to see a single-story, somewhat run-down building. It looked like any camp back up in Maine.
He parked on the side and got out, noticing the empty driveway – not a good sign. A thick carpet of brown pine needles covered the ground to the front of the camp and up onto the stairs leading into a screened-in porch.