I retraced my steps and cautiously turned the corner to his street. I needn’t have worried about breaking cover. A crowd had gathered in front of the fire trucks and police cars. I joined it and pushed toward the front. Beyond men in heavy clothes, carrying oxygen tanks, I made out the solid form of Clem Simmons. I didn’t have his cell-phone number so I had no option but to attract his attention. After he’d finished talking to an attractive red-haired woman, I managed that. Looking away from me, he bent under the barrier tape and walked down the street. I gave him a minute and then followed. He was waiting for me at the corner.
“What happened?” I asked breathlessly.
“We’re pretty sure it was a bomb.” His eyes lowered. “A powerful one, too. There’s nothing left of Joe’s apartment. The fire chief has taken his men out as he thinks the whole building might come down.”
“Any human remains?”
He nodded slowly. “Small pieces. No identification possible yet.”
I knew it had to be Joe. “Fuck,” I said. “I’m responsible for this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got him into this, didn’t I?”
“You’re saying that a reporter with his track record wouldn’t have gone after these creeps if you hadn’t been involved? Don’t be so goddamned conceited.”
I thought about that. He was right. Joe was already on the ball about Woodbridge Holdings, and he would have looked out for me and Karen even if I hadn’t gone to him. It was a slight to my friend’s memory to suggest otherwise.
“You want to come in, Matt?” Clem Simmons asked, his expression softening. “If they got him, they’ll be after you, too.”
“Let them come,” I muttered.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any clearer idea of who they are yet?” He knew I wasn’t telling him everything, but it didn’t seem to be bothering him unduly.
“Put it this way,” I said. “We’ve been looking at a company called Woodbridge Holdings. Heard of them?”
He nodded. “They own the Star Reporter.”
“As well as a range of other companies-logging, property, pharmaceuticals-you name it, they’re into it.”
“Got any evidence linking them to Joe’s death? Or to the other murders? Or to what happened to you?”
“Watch this space,” I said. “Or rather…” I took out my cell phone. “Give me your number.” I saved it. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Don’t do anything illegal, will you?” The words sounded more like an invitation than a warning.
I snorted and turned away. Typical cops. They wanted you to do their dirty work. Then a picture of Karen rose up before me. She was in the Metropolitan Police uniform she rarely wore and she was smiling, one hand on her gently convex belly. I swallowed a sob and turned away.
The blonde woman span round and emptied the magazine of her semiautomatic pistol into a life-size human target twenty yards away. The man in gray next to her took off his ear-protectors and clapped slowly.
“Very good,” he said, watching as the target was pulled in. “Three to the head, three to the chest and three to the abdomen. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”
The woman nodded and handed the weapon over. She had only started target shooting five days before and she had been surprised at how proficient she was. She had impressed the instructors at judo and karate, too, and had taken to knife-fighting with alacrity. At first she had been worried that the baby she was carrying would slow her down, but that hadn’t been the case. The doctors monitored her every day and the little boy was doing well. She wished she could remember who the father was, but it didn’t matter. The people in the camp would look after her and her child. They were a real family.
“They’re waiting to take you to the lab, Karen,” the shooting instructor said, pointing to the door.
Karen followed the other personnel in gray uniforms down the passages to the place where she had recently spent so much time. The machine was ready for her, lights flashing and tubes pulsing above the bed. At first she’d been frightened by it, worried that its close proximity to her body would harm the baby, but now she looked forward to the daily sessions. She could never remember what happened when the humming got louder, apart from a feeling of deep satisfaction and belonging. The music, which she had originally found discordant, now brought her a calm desire to participate, to strive for something glorious; and the rhetoric that she had once found disturbing now increased her devotion every time that she heard it. As for the images of men in field-gray and women in white blouses and black skirts, they inspired her.
She was one of them, and always would be.
In time, her son would join the movement, too.
Thirty-Six
I went back to my hotel across the river, and ate the burger and fries I’d bought. The food tasted like nothing, but I needed to keep my strength up. I was down, hit badly by Joe’s death, but I knew I had to keep searching, had to find Karen. But how was I to do that without Joe’s help? I had received e-mails from him with useful material, but nothing that broke the case. He had hinted he was on the brink of discovering something hot, but the bomb would have destroyed all his equipment and records.
Or would it? I thought about that. Joe had security cameras and a warning system. They must have been disabled to enable his killer or killers to get in, but he might still have had time to react before the explosion. I tried to put myself in the dead man’s place. The obvious thing to do would have been to call the police. Or me. Clem would have told me if Joe had contacted him. Perhaps Joe realized it was too late for that; perhaps his landline had been disabled, too. So what other options did he have? I found it hard to believe that he would have waited patiently for death like an animal in a slaughterhouse, even if it had only been a matter of seconds. He was proficient with computers, but they had all been atomized, as had his cell phone. He no doubt had an off-site backup facility, but he hadn’t given me access. What else could he have done? I had a vision of Joe in the bar, his keys on the table by his glass. There were two memory sticks attached. Could that be the answer? Could he have tried to get a memory stick out of the apartment?
I pulled on my jacket and left the room in a rush. Joe’s place was on the second floor. His office had windows to the front and rear of the building. Was it possible he had got a window open and thrown a stick out?
I ran across the bridge and caught a cab in Georgetown, getting the driver to let me off at the street behind Joe’s. I walked to the corner and looked round cautiously. The barrier tape was still up and police personnel were in evidence, despite the late hour. But the firemen had gone, and they had been the ones in the yard out back. I decided to try there first.
I moved silently over the low fences and made it to the space behind Joe’s apartment. There was tape around it, but no one was on watch. I took in the area. I reckoned Joe would have thrown a stick as far as he could, so I started at the rear of the yard, using the flashlight I had brought with me. The surface of the area was broken and covered in rubble from the walls, so I had to run my fingers through each handful. After ten minutes, during which I kept looking toward the building in case someone approached, I had found nothing. Before I moved closer to the source of the blast, I looked over the wall that separated Joe’s yard from the one on the parallel street. Bingo. Hanging from a tattered shrub was a black memory stick. I grabbed it and made my exit.