“An assassination?”
“Yep. To cover up a spy operation right spang in the middle of one of America’s most important high-tech sectors. Right here in Simi Valley. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”
“You could have written the story anyway?”
“Tried, didn’t I? Tried my damnedest. Editor said without the witness, without the papers, it was too risky. He was right too. Anyway, after that, I sorta lost heart. I was being audited by the feds by then, like I told you, and the editor was hired away to work for the L.A. Times. The Clarion got new owners. Things started to slide for me personally. I got fired for drinking, or so they said, although I never missed a deadline. Well, I suppose the biggest news story of my life just fizzled out. Which is the story of my actual real life too, I guess.”
Here she came to a natural pause and sat back, exhausted by her story and by the excitement of his visit, by the chance that after all these years vindication had come calling. She drained off her glass, set it down on the desk, placed the little pistol beside it, and buzzed at him.
“So what you gonna do with all I told you, son? You really gonna get the CIA off its ass? It’s not too late, you know. I could let you have my files. They’re all on this CD here. Everything there is to know about that accident, personnel records from Red Shift. You could take it all to Langley. Nail those treasonous bastards.”
She held up the CD, breathing hard, and Dalton knew the book she was going to write was never going to happen. He took the CD from her skeletal fingers and she closed them over his hand, pressing hard.
“You’re more than just a pretty boy, else I would never have blabbed on like I did this afternoon. This thing here, it’s all I have left to give to anybody. Kids don’t call. Friends all dead. I’m in the end of days here. I was gonna win… a Pulitzer….”
She released his hand and fell back into her chair, her eyes closed, wheezing through her trachea implant. Woodstein jumped up on her desk and stared at her for a while before turning his impassive gaze onto Dalton.
“Barbra…?”
She opened her eyes, waved him away, and went deep inside herself again. A hot wind stirred the drapes and the cooler ticked away like an old clock in the corner. Her lips were blue and her eyes, when closed, looked purple and sunken. The image of death itself was almost visible there, just beneath her skin, like a face rising in a pool.
Dalton pulled her laptop around, placed the CD inside the slot, put a blank disk in the burner, copied it, and placed the original on the pile of papers in front of her. He reached out and stroked Woodstein a couple of times. The cat arched, pressing against him, and then pulled away. The cat crept slowly into her lap, she placed one bony hand on his back, and in a moment they were both asleep. Dalton turned the fan on them, touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers, and left.
Airborne again, rising up over the Rockies with the sunset a thin turquoise band far behind them, Irene staring out the porthole as the earth turned beneath them like a whale sounding in a limitless ocean of the purest blue, Dalton put Barbra’s CD into his laptop and opened it up.
It was all there: her notes, scanned in and perfectly organized, cross-references, websites noted, copies of transcripts, letters, all of the material laid out and charted through a general menu.
Clearly she had been — still was — a great investigator, and given any chance at all she would have made this story a national sensation. But of course she never had any real chance at all, because the entire intelligence community was lined up against her.
She was lucky to be alive.
Halfway down the menu he came across a file marked “Accident Photos.” He clicked on it and found a file folder filled with JPEG images of the multicar accident scene on Interstate 25, some of them images from the Accident Reconstruction Team of the Colorado State Police, and others apparently done by a stringer for one of the local papers.
Taken from various angles, they showed a tangle of cars and trucks, dimly seen through a screen of flying snow, a close-up of a Mercedes, its rear end crushed by the blunt nose of a flatbed trailer, another shot of a cube van sitting literally on top of a small red Fiat, another that showed a wide gap in the barrier, apparently torn open by a vehicle, another shot, taken from the bridge, showing a pickup truck lying on its roof on a shoal of boulders at the edge of the Purgatoire River a hundred feet below, a smaller red plastic object close by it.
More random shots of people standing around, looking stunned or avid or simply curious, depending on their natures, here a shot of the first patrol cars arriving. Cops deploying. Now the ambulances. A fire truck: a hundred different images showing the long line of cars and trucks lined up on both sides of the Interstate.
And a medium shot of a man standing beside the open door of his eighteen-wheeler, part of the door visible, a sign saying FREIGHTWAYS. The man’s expression was unreadable, opaque, even guarded, as he stared into the lens, his mouth half-open as if to voice some objection and his other hand halfway to his face as if he had intended to shield it from the camera.
Under this shot was a notation that read:
DALE FRANCIS FETTERMAN??
FREIGHTWAYS DRIVER / MATERIAL WITNESS??
CURRENT LOCATION UNKNOWN??
Dalton stared at the image of a much younger Willard Fremont for a long while. Fremont had told him that “Fetterman” was one of his operational covers.
Somebody in the Agency had decided that Consuelo Goliad had to go away (the reasons for that weren’t yet clear — something to do with Red Shift Laser Acoustics and FrancoVentus Mondiale) — but it was damned clear to Dalton that they had put Fremont’s unit on the job.
Fremont had told him that they had never actually executed anyone, but they sure as hell killed Consuelo Goliad. Along with a whack of other people. Bystanders. Innocent bystanders, including two members of the Escondido clan, one of whom was related to Ida Escondido.
And Ida Escondido was one of the two people who ID’d the corpse of Pinto Escondido out there at Comanche Station.
The other one was a kid named Wilson Horsecoat.
Comanche Station.
Dalton reached up, touched the intercom buzzer.
Irene turned to stare at him, her jaws wide, her eyes white around the rims. She had been scrubbed and cleaned and fed and walked and given a mild tranquilizer but she still look terrified and lost. He rubbed her behind the ear and she licked his wrist.
“Yes sir?”
“We’re not going back to Langley yet, Mike.”
“No problem, sir. Where to?”
“Southeastern Colorado.”
“How about Colorado Springs? We can land at Schriever Air Force Base?”
“No. I need a civilian airport.”
“Nearby?”
“Near as you can make it.”
“Okay. Let me punch it up. Will Pueblo do? They got an airport there that can handle a Gulfstream.”
“Pueblo’s fine.”