“I don’t know. You can ask at the front desk, Commander. I’ll take you back downstairs now, if you don’t mind.”
They checked at the front desk and found out that Admiral Sherman had indeed been there but had already left.
They signed out, went out to the front entrance, and stood on the steps.
The pyomise of rain had been fulfilled as a light drizzle blew in from the northwest. The parking lot was illuminated by -several tall light standards, whose tops were now veiled in a misty orange glow.
“Well,” Kare said.
“Yeah, well,” Mcnair replied. “Not that he’s been a very good suspect up to now. But I can’t feature a gvy for murder who makes this little pilgrimage for ten years, no matter what it looked like originally.”
Karen had a sudden thought. “Do you suppose Elizabeth Walsh knew about this? And that’s why she’left him the insurance-policy money? She had no other relatives.”
Train nodded thoughtfully. “Possibly. But I think the more important question now is whether or not we want to go talk to Sherman,” Train said. “Tell him what his son admitted to. That he’s been part of Galantz’s -little program.”
“Not here,” Karen said immediately. “I don’t think he should know that we know about this. Besides, we promised.”
Mcnair nodded. “Once I found out where he’d gone, what he was doing here, I left a message on his voice mail at home to contact me,” Mcnair said. “But that was before I knew that the oni was involved.”
“We need to find out how Galantz set this up,” Karen said. “I’m beginning to think he planned to use. the son in some fashion for a long time. Probably from when he ran across the kid in Marine recon school.
God knows, Jack has as good a motive to destroy his father as Galantz does. Or at least he thinks he does.”
“Why don’t we do this?” Train said to Mcnair. “Let us sit down with Admiral Sherman and walk through the son’s status. We’ll tell him that you got antsy when you couldn’t contact him, tracked him up here, and discovered that his wife was still alive. You told us. We don’t need to get into what he does up here. He visits, that’s all. But we can tell him what his son said, since we’re the ones who heard it.
Maybe we’ll tell him you’re not in that loop yet, and see what he comes up with.”
“And what good does that do? I want to move on Galan Z.”
“I’m not sure, but I’m thinking if we can maybe, just maybe, put father and son back together, we can maybe use Jack to trap Galantz.”
Mcnair studied the ground for a moment. “That’s a real reach, G-man. But maybe that’s the best we can do. And you’ll keep me cut in on what you get out of that?”
“We have so far, haven’t we?” Karen said.
“Yes, you have, Commander. Which is the intelligent thing to do, when there’s homicide on the table. But I’m also worried about the Navy getting ahead of us. I told Mr. von Rensel here that my bosses have been getting some heat about this case from some federal sources-as in the Sherman problem involves a federal situation best left to federal solutions. It wouldn’t stun me if the Navy told both of you, for instance, to return to the fort and leave Galantz to the real Indian fighters.”
Train looked sideways at Karen. Mcnair caught it.
“Uh-huh. Already happened, am I right?” he said.
“Sort of,” Train -said. “Although I’m not entirely sure what the game is. I take my orders from the Navy JAG, Admiral Carpenter, as does Commander Lawrence here.”
“And those orders currently are what, specifically?” Mcnair demanded.
“Not to pursue Galantz. Not to interfere with the efforts of other people who might be pursuing Galantz. To keep Commander Lawrence safe from any more attempts on her life.”
“And Admiral Sherman was sent on some kind of temporary duty? Is that like suspension with pay?”
“Not normally, but in this case, I’d say he was put somewhat in limbo,”
Train said. “It’s almost as if the admirals are waiting for something to happen. But I don’t know what the hell it is.”
Mcnair nodded but remained silent. He drew his Coat closer around his throat as the drizzle deepened into rain.
“I think,” he said, “I need to go talk to my lieutenant again.
This is getting too political for us snuffles. And if the feds are well and truly in it, it’s gonna get pretty screwed up.”
He looked up at Train with a wry smile. “No offense intended, G-man.”
Train laughed. “None taken. No arguing with reality.”
“So’we’re agreed?” Karen persisted. “We’ll get in touch with Admiral Sherman, Navy-to-Navy, as it were, and see where it takes - us?”
“I guess So,” Mcnair said. “But just in case, let me confirm your car phone numbers.”
Train and Mcnair exchanged numbers and then Mcnair closed his notebook.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m headed back to D.C. And, Commander, when you have your meeting with Sherman and Junior, leave that forty-five at home, all right?” Mcnair grinned again as he headed for his car. Train wisely said absolutely nothing.
An hour later, Karen put the road map back up in the sunshade over her seat and switched out the map light. “Route 216 from here down to the interstate,” she said.
“Got it,” Train replied. -“It’s nice having a navigator. I usually wing it and then get to see lots of unusual sights.” ‘“Not that you would stop and ask for directions?”
“Naw. Against all the guy rules.”
“Right. Is Mcnair still behind us?”
Train looked in his mirror and said yes. They were headed down a two-lane state road in the darkness of the Maryland countryside.
Mcnairhad followed them out of the hospice parking lot in his departmental car. Train was maintaining a fairly constant sixty in deference to the slick roads.
“So,” she said, “how do we go about getting in touch with Admiral Sherman?”
“Call him,” he said. “We know he’s up here at the hospice tonight. I’m going to assume he’s checking his voice mail.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I guess we’ll contact with him at the motel. I had hoped not to reveal that we know the details of this situation.
It like a Peeping Tom, looking at that tape.”
Karen had been struggling with that problem since they had left the hospice: how to regain contact with the admiral without letting him know what they now knew.
It started to rain a little harder, and Train slowed down to fifty-five.
The two-lane black asphalt road glistened in their headlights between indistinct boundary lines. They appeared to be passing through some low foothills, with intermittent farmsteads fleetingly’ visible under barnyard security lights among the trees. The farmhouses were all, built practically on the edge of the road, and the barns were enormous. Train looked back in the mirror.
“Not much happening out here in the sticks on a Friday night,” he said.
“We and Mcnair are the only people out here.”
As if to make a liar out of him, a. pickup truck came past in the other lane, trailing a cloud of spray. Train had to hit the windshield cleaners after the truck passed. Karen turned in her seat as the truck went past, which momentarily illuminated the car behind them. She looked and then turned around quickly.
“I don’t think that’s Mcnair,” she said. “Unless his car sprouted one of those cop-car spotlights since he left.”
Train looked into the side mirror and then the center mirror. “I can’t see anything but headlights. You sure?”
“I think so. I’m going to look again the next time a car comes past. How far back do you think that car is?”
“Maybe ten lengths. He’s been pretty constant. That’s why I assumed it was Mcnair.”