O’Shea didn’t even bother responding to the joke. Tech guys — especially those in the Bureau’s Investigative Technology Division — always thought they were funnier than they were. “Please tell me you got a hit on Wes’s phone,” O’Shea said.
“Nope. But after taking your advice and watching his friends, I did get a hit on the fat kid’s.”
“Rogo’s?”
“For the past few hours, it’s quiet as death. Then ping, incoming call from a number registered to an Eve Goldstein.”
“Who’s Eve Goldstein?”
“Which is why I looked her up. Y’know how many Eve Goldsteins there are in Palm Beach County? Seven. One owns a Judaica store, one’s a school principal, two retirees—”
“Paulie!”
“… and one who writes the gardening section for the Palm Beach Post.”
“They switched phones.”
“Ooooh, you’re good. You should get a job with the FBI.”
“So Wes is still with Lisbeth?”
“I don’t think so. I just called the newsroom. She’s apparently on another line. I think she gave Wes her friend’s phone and ditched his on the plane or something. Telling you — boy’s smart,” Paul said. “Lucky for you, I’m smarter.”
“But you traced the new phone to his current location?”
“It’s an old model, so there’s no GPS. But I can get you to the closest cell tower. Cell site 626A. On County Road, just a few blocks south of Via Las Brisas.”
At the center of the long dock, O’Shea froze. “Las Brisas? You think he went to—?”
“Only one way to find out, Tonto. Be careful, though. With Nico out there, headquarters just opened their own investigation.”
Nodding to himself, O’Shea reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a black ostrich-skin wallet and matching CIA badge. As he flipped it open, he took one last look at the picture in Micah’s driver’s license. From the messy brown hairstyle and the crooked bottom teeth, the photo had to be almost a decade old. Before the teeth were fixed. Before the hair got meticulously slicked back. Before they were making real money.
O’Shea didn’t like lifting his old friend’s wallet, but he knew it’d buy him at least a day in IDing the body. Though right now, as he readjusted his shoulder holster and rechecked his gun, all he needed was an hour or so to wrap things up and leave this life behind.
They’d created an alter ego for Egen as The Roman. Certainly, O’Shea could create something new for himself.
“How fast you think you can get there?” Paul asked through the phone.
Grinning to himself, O’Shea tossed Micah’s IDs from the dock into the water. They floated for half a second, then sank out of sight. “At this rate? I’ll be in and out lickety-split.”
76
Try calling him again,” Dreidel said as he spun the acid-free archival box around and checked the dates on its typed spine: Boyle, Ron — Domestic Policy Council — October 15- December 31.
“Just did,” Rogo said, working his way through his own stack and checking the last few boxes in the pile. “You know how Wes gets on the job — he won’t pick up if he’s with Manning.”
“You should still try him agai—”
“And tell him what? That it looks like Boyle had a kid? That there’s some note referencing May 27th? Until we get some details, it doesn’t even help us.”
“It helps us to keep Wes informed — especially where he is right now. He should know that Manning knew.”
“And you’re sure about that?” Rogo asked. “Manning knew about Boyle’s kid?”
“It’s his best friend — and it’s in the file,” Dreidel said. His voice cracked slightly as he looked up from the last few boxes. “Manning definitely knew.”
Rogo watched Dreidel carefully, sensing the change in his tone. “You’re doubting him, aren’t you, Dreidel? For the first time, you’re realizing there might be a crack in the Manning mask.”
“Let’s just keep looking, okay?” Dreidel asked as he tilted the final two milk-crate-sized boxes and scanned the dates. One was labeled Memoranda — January 1-March 31. The other was Congressional AIDS Hearing — June 17-June 19. “Damn,” he whispered, shoving them aside.
“Nothing here either,” Rogo said, closing the last box and climbing up from his knees. “Okay, so grand total — how many boxes do we have that include the May 27 date?”
“Just these,” Dreidel said, pointing to the four archival boxes that they’d set up on the worktable. “Plus you pulled the schedule, right?”
“Not that it helps,” Rogo replied as he waved Manning’s official schedule from May 27. “According to this, the President was with his wife and daughter at their cabin in North Carolina. At noon, he went biking. Then lunch and some fishing on the lake. Nothing but relaxing the whole day.”
“Who was staffing him?” Dreidel asked, well aware that the President never traveled without at least some work.
“Albright…”
“No surprise — he took his chief of staff everywhere.”
“… and Lemonick.”
“Odd, but not out of the ordinary.”
“And then those same names you said were from the Travel Office — Westman, McCarthy, Lindelof—”
“But not Boyle?”
“Not according to this,” Rogo said, flipping through the rest of the schedule.
“Okay, so on May 27th, barely two months before the shooting, Manning was in North Carolina and Boyle was presumably in D.C. So the real question is, what was Boyle doing while the cat was away?”
“And you think the answer’s in one of these?” Rogo asked, circling the tops of the four boxes with his hand.
“Those’re the ones that have date ranges that include May 27th,” Dreidel said. “I’m telling you,” he added as he flipped off the top of the first box, “I’ve got a good feeling. The answer’s in here.”
“There’s no way it’s in here!” Rogo moaned forty-five minutes later.
“Maybe we should go through them again.”
“We already went through them twice. I picked through every sheet of paper, every file, every stupid little Post-it note. Look at these paper cuts!” he said, extending his pointer and middle fingers in a peace sign.
“Voice down!” Dreidel hissed, motioning to the attendant by the computers.
Rogo glanced over at Freddy, who offered a warm smile and a wave. Turning back to Dreidel, he added, “Okay, so now what?”
“Not much choice,” Dreidel said as he scanned the remaining thirty-eight boxes that were stacked like tiny pyramids across the floor. “Maybe they filed it out of order. Flip through each box — pull out anything that has the date May 27th on it.”
“That’s over 20,000 pages.”
“And the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll know the full story,” Dreidel said, tugging a brand-new box up to the worktable.
“I don’t know,” Rogo said as he gripped the handholds of a beaten old box and heaved it up toward the desk. As it landed back-to-back with Dreidel’s box, a puff of dust swirled like a sandstorm. “Part of me worries we’re sifting through the wrong haystack.”
77
Edmund had been dead for nearly twelve hours. During hour one, as Nico strapped him into the passenger seat of the truck, thick frothy blood bubbles multiplied at the wound in Edmund’s neck. Nico barely noticed, too excited about telling his friend about Thomas Jefferson and the original Three.