Burt knew Miss Katelyn wasn't like that, and when the elevator doors opened the following night and she wasn't standing there, he believed she was gone forever, and gone nowhere good.
18
When Nina woke at just before five she knew there was no point trying to sleep again. She and Ward had been up for two hours after Monroe's call, trying to work out what it meant and what it didn't mean. So far as she could see, it could be only one thing. Somehow, somewhere, Zandt had managed to tread heavily on the toes of someone close to the Straw Men. They hadn't been able to get to him direct, so they'd set him up. She'd tried throughout the night to get hold of him. His phone was turned off.
Ward had sobered up quickly, and in the end made a suggestion she knew she had to take seriously. She had to get Monroe somewhere private, and tell him some things. Not on the phone. Face to face. If she was going to try to convince him that there was a group of men and women operating behind the face of what most people understood as America, that they killed and lied and now had her ex-lover in their sights, they were going to have to be in the same room to do it. It probably should have been done three months ago, but — racked with paranoia and with several deaths on their hands — none of them had believed it the right thing to do.
Right now, that seemed like a mistake.
She drank five cups of coffee, working out what she was going to say. How much could be revealed about what had happened up at The Halls, without putting any of them in jail. She waited until seven, when she knew that he would be awake and on his feet. If she could catch him before he left for work, perhaps they could meet. She was walking over to the phone when it rang.
It was Monroe. He was already in the office. He instructed her to meet him there immediately, and he didn't sound like someone she could tell anything at all.
— «» — «» — «»—
He was waiting for her outside the elevator on the sixth floor. His face looked like stone.
'Charles,' she said, quickly. 'I need to talk to you.'
He shook his head curtly and turned to walk down the corridor. A little way along he threw open a door and stood back, waiting for her. She made up the distance hurriedly, stepped inside.
Room 623 was the kind of anonymous corporate space which exists in every good-sized company in America. Under business conditions it says 'Look: we can afford the best stuff out of the catalogue. We're not afraid of you.' What it was supposed to convey in law enforcement Nina had no idea. A large wooden table loomed in the middle, polished to a high reddish gloss and surrounded by the most expensive and least used chairs in the building. One wall of windows looked down over the back parking lot; the others were panelled to waist height but otherwise bare. There was a poorly framed photograph of someone receiving a commendation, not recently, and nothing else.
A man in a dark suit sat in a chair that had been positioned so that it stuck out from the top left corner of the table. He was above average height and had the kind of skin which makes a man of a certain age look like he's been injection-moulded in very hard plastic. His hair was neatly cut. His eyes were a flat, pale blue. His lashes were long. He was not wearing a tie and everything about his shirt said this was because he didn't have to. He was in his mid fifties. Despite being put together with due regard for all the conventional aesthetic beats, Nina thought he was one of the most unmemorable-looking men she'd ever seen. Nothing specifically said he wasn't an agent, but he wasn't. He certainly wasn't the SAC from Portland, whom she'd met.
'Good morning,' she said, holding out her hand.
He didn't shake. He neither introduced himself nor smiled. Nina left her hand in place for five seconds, then dropped it. She stood her ground a few moments more, giving him the chance to stop being an asshole. He didn't take it. She held his gaze as long as felt necessary, then looked away.
She could play that game. 'Whatever,' she said.
'Sit down and be quiet,' Monroe snapped. 'You're here to listen. You're asked a direct question then you may and should answer it. Otherwise zip it. Understood?'
Nina knew then that something was badly wrong. Monroe had faults. He had a tendency to think he was smarter than he was, and to believe that criminals — and other agents — would respond to the same management techniques as appliance salesmen. But he was above all else professional, and yet his tone spoke of anger and personal grievance.
He was still staring at her. 'Understood?'
'Sure,' she said, spreading her hands. 'What's…'
'The Sarah Becker case,' he said, and Nina's heart sank further. Even though this related to hat she needed to tell him, this was not the way could happen. Not in front of someone else, and especially not in front of the guy in the corner. Why not sit on one side or the other, incidentally? He had made himself impossible to ignore and yet Monroe had not introduced him. He seemed unwilling to even acknowledge his presence. It was as if there was a ghost at the end of the table, one Nina could see and he could not.
'Okay', she said. Monroe opened his folder, There were neat notes on the paper within, but he didn't refer to them.
'The Becker family claims their daughter simply turned up on their doorstep,' he said. 'Out of the blue, after being missing for a week. Says she was released near her abduction location, which she claims was in Santa Monica, and walked home by herself. A neighbour says otherwise, claims she saw the girl brought to the Beckers' doorstep by a man and a woman and that a car driven by a third man waited for them across the street. This neighbour is elderly and I wouldn't normally be interested except that a teenage girl of Sarah's description and condition received emergency treatment at a hospital in Salt Lake City the night before. She was admitted at the same time as a woman who was suffering from a gunshot wound to the upper right side of her chest. Both patients disappeared early the next morning. And all this at pretty much exactly the time that you sustained just such an injury, apparently in a hunting accident in Montana.'
Nina's head hurt and her heart felt as heavy as stone. She shrugged, knowing she was not going to be able to tell Monroe anything at all. Not now, not ever.
'The hospital sighting engages my interest,' he continued, 'because between there and a town called Dyersburg in Montana — the town near to which you flew, only the night before — used to be a development called The Halls, now a hole in the ground that everyone from the local cops to the NSA would like to have explained. The cops are particularly interested because they have a missing officer, a dead realtor, and two other unexplained fatalities.'
Nina said nothing. Monroe stared at her. The man in the corner looked at her too. Finally it had begun to piss her off.
She turned to him and asked: 'Who are you, exactly?'
The man gazed back at her as if she was the vacation roster for a company he didn't work for.
When she looked back, Monroe's eyes were cold. 'You think I'm an idiot, Nina? Is that what it is?'
'No, Charles, of course not,' she said. 'This is old ground. I don't know anything more about Sarah Becker's return than you do.' He kept silent, forcing her to continue. 'I was in Montana visiting John, as I said at the time and several times since.'
'Right,' he said, blankly affable, and Nina began to feel even more disconcerted. Something about his abrupt switch in tone made her understand there was more going on than she'd realized, and that she was about to find out what it was.
It wasn't Monroe who spoke next. It was Corner Man. His voice was dry and unaccented, somewhat nasal.
'This would be John Zandt, correct?'