“Jesus, Dana, who is this guy? The Invisible Man? Somebody has to have seen him.”
“Sir?” Maltravers said, her eyes on the wall above him.
“What is it?” Sebastian said, recognizing the tone. She thought he had screwed up.
“Do you think we should have taken the D.C. detectives off the cases?”
He frowned. “Given that the order was mine, yes, I do. Obviously.”
“Yes, but…they have local knowledge.”
“So do our people, Dana.” He looked at her and realized she hadn’t finished. “Go on then, spit it out.”
“Well, I spoke to a contact in MPDC last night. He reckons that Simmons and Pinker are still working the cases in their own.”
Peter Sebastian’s face flushed. “Are you sure about that? Chief Owen assured me they weren’t.”
Maltravers raised her shoulders. “I can’t be a hundred percent certain, sir. Anyway, they might find something we could use.”
“They’d better not. We’d look like major losers then. Now sit down. I want to run through all the murders and update my orders.”
He did so, Dana Maltravers writing copious notes and giving her thoughts. The problem was, neither of them thought that the new orders would result in anything earth-shattering.
“What about Matt Wells, sir?”
“Keep the full alert in operation.”
She nodded. “I agree.”
Sebastian eyed her dubiously. “At the very least, we have to rule him out.”
“Right, sir. About Richard Bonhoff-how much do you want to release to the press?”
“Everything.”
“Including the fact that he was looking for his missing children here?”
“What?” Sebastian peered at the relevant file. “I didn’t see anything about that.”
Maltravers gave a thin smile. “Oh, sorry, sir, that report mustn’t have got through yet. The wife confirmed it yesterday evening. Gwen and Randy are their names. Apparently they’re twins.”
“Do the D.C. detectives know about that?”
“I don’t know.” The young woman looked surprised at the question.
“Find out.” Sebastian stared at her. He could see she wanted to know why he was so interested, but she didn’t have the nerve to ask why. He watched her leave, then closed the door behind her.
Peter Sebastian needed to make some rather delicate calls. Roasting the Hate Crimes department for their slow response to his inquiry about the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant’s threatening of Professor Singer was one thing. Trying to discover why the CIA was putting the squeeze on his FBI boss was another. And finding out just what Clem Simmons and his partner were doing was the last. Then he could get back to catching the killer.
I was in the back of Clem’s car, keeping my head down.
“We should be working on the explosion,” Pinker said, glancing over his shoulder at me blankly. He had made it clear that he didn’t approve of me being involved.
“We know who’s responsible for that,” I said, even though I knew I wasn’t expected to speak.
“So where are their names, addresses and contact numbers?” Pinker demanded. He shook his head when I didn’t answer. “Asshole.”
“What Matt means is that the same people who don’t want him to get any closer killed Joe Greenbaum, Vers,” Clem said, keeping his eyes to the front. We were parked on a roadside in northwest Washington.
“Oh, excuse me,” his partner said sardonically. “I forgot that the Secretary of State had ordered diplomatic immunity for limey number one here.” He turned to Simmons. “Jesus, Clem, have you lost it completely? This guy’s a suspect in at least two murders.”
“Back off,” the big man said. “We’re not investigating those cases now, not officially. I’m only interested in making sure there are no more murders in this city.”
“And exactly how is cozying up to this shithead going to achieve that?”
I leaned forward. “We’re going to ask your friend Gordy Lister some awkward questions, Versace.” Clem had told me about the newspaperman. I reckoned he must know plenty about Larry Thomson’s and about Woodbridge Holdings’s activities.
The detective turned his head toward me. “You don’t get to call me that, jailbird. You gotta earn the right.”
I smiled. He reminded me of my friend Dave, small of frame but large of spirit. That could only be to my advantage-if he didn’t cut my balls off first.
“There he is,” Clem said.
I watched as a skinny man in a brown leather jacket and cowboy boots came down the steps of a town house. Apparently Lister rarely used the place, but he’d been keeping clear of his usual haunts.
“Oh, shit,” Pinker said, reaching for his weapon.
Three men built like top-weight wrestlers came out after Gordy Lister and formed a defensive wall around him.
“We still going for it?” Pinker asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Clem said, a smile on his lips.
They both got out. I stayed where I was-as they told me-but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be there for long.
Clem walked behind the group as they headed for a large black SUV. When he called out Lister’s name, the group stopped and Lister’s face appeared between the solid sides of two of his bodyguards. I couldn’t hear the discussion, but it was pretty obvious Lister wasn’t interested in cooperating. The big men closed around him again.
That was when Pinker made his move. Holding his pistol in a two-handed grip, he ordered them all to stay where they were. They did so, for about ten seconds. Then one of the gorillas lunged at Pinker with unexpected speed, knocking his gun away. Another of the men bore down on Clem. I got out of the car, my heart racing.
By the time I was across the road, Lister was climbing into the SUV
.
“Hey, assholes!” I yelled.
That got their attention. Two of the men stayed on the detectives. The third moved toward me. I glanced past him at Lister. The newspaperman had screwed up. Instead of driving away, he’d stayed to watch the fun. I was about to make him regret that.
My man had a crew cut and a face disfigured by steroidinduced acne. There was also a bulge in his jacket under his left armpit. I made a move for that. As the gorilla tried to grab my arm, I stepped inside and landed the toe of my boot in his unprotected groin. “The vomit shot” my friend Dave had called that, and he’d been sent off more than once for using it on the rugby pitch. As the gorilla went down, I slipped my hand inside his jacket and grabbed a large semiautomatic. I thumbed the safety off and turned the weapon on Gordy Lister.
“He’ll be dead before you can aim at me,” I said over my shoulder to the others.
Lister looked like he’d been caught in the lights of an eighteen-wheeler. My eyes told him I didn’t have any qualms about shooting him and he wasn’t prepared to take a chance on my shooting skills. Good move.
“Let them go,” he said to his men. “Let my friends the detectives go.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clem and Pinker clap handcuffs on the gorillas. Then Pinker went to check on the guy I’d kicked.
“Clear,” he called, after pocketing a set of knuckle-dusters.
Clem went over to Lister and grabbed him.
“Let’s go.”
Pinker got in the back with Lister and I took the front passenger seat.
I turned to the rear. “So, can I call you Vers now?”
Gerard Pinker stared back at me and then grinned. “Guess you can at that. Long as I can call you Field Goal.”
I shrugged. I’d been called worse.
Gordy Lister followed our exchange with the expression of a small boy who had inadvertently walked into a lions’ den.
The woman was sitting in the back of a Jeep Cherokee, holding on tight. The driver had been told she was pregnant and he was driving carefully, but the track between the tall pine trees was deeply rutted. Still, she wasn’t worried about the child. The doctors had assured her the journey wouldn’t affect her son’s well-being.
Before she left the camp, she had dressed in a black trouser suit that fitted her very well, the elastic in the waist expanding to accommodate her swollen belly. Apparently the clothes had belonged to her before she had been introduced to the teachings of the party. They had been ripped and made dirty. Her story was that she had been kidnapped by rough men who had kept her locked up in a dark room, giving her enough to eat but never talking to her.