Quantico Rules Page 18

  “He’s pissed off, but it’ll pass.” I reached out and touched her hand. “After all, you were down in Brookston trying to protect him from another mess like Grady.” I forced a smile. “He might even give you a bonus.”

  I turned away to avoid the look of relief in her eyes.

  I spent the rest of the night in a chair by the foot of her bed, but left her sleeping in the morning to try to get my own head back in some kind of order.

  Lost in thoughts as malignant as cancer, I almost missed the Quantico exit off I-95, had to swerve across three lanes to make it. I drove much too fast through the piney woods and red Virginia clay, tires squealing against the two-lane road that took me the mile or so to the FBI academy, past a dozen brick buildings to the immense gymnasium out back. Inside, I hurried to the locker room, to one of many head-high stacks of wire baskets, unlocked the one assigned to me, changed my clothes for shorts, sweatshirt, and high-top Nike Air Jordans, then headed for the weight room.

  Row after row of Lifecycles stretched out before me, step-machines, rowing machines, and treadmills. Tons of free weights and Nautilus equipment.

  I grabbed a pair of twenty-five-pound dumbbells, sat on the end of a nearby bench and did curls—three sets of ten—first with my weaker left arm, then my right, until I was gasping for breath, until the floor was soggy with sweat. Then bench presses. Ten quick reps with a hundred and fifty pounds, then five at two-hundred, and a warmdown with ten more at an even hundred.

  It began to work. The pain in my gut dissipated. The terrible images of Lisa in the church, in the hospital, began to fade. The questions about Robert Bennett only got worse, however.

  He wasn’t an FBI agent. I didn’t waste a second dismissing the possibility. FBI agents don’t exist outside the official rolls. That Bennett was impersonating an agent was another thing altogether. Such a thing happened a lot, the benefits too obvious to enumerate.

  But what did the criminal calling himself Bennett hope to gain by what he was doing? What was there about Brenda Thompson’s secret abortion that Bennett could turn into personal gain? What could be important enough to him about her secret that he was willing to kill a real FBI agent to keep it hidden?

  A familiar voice interrupted.

  “Hey, Puller, you gonna play b-ball this morning?”

  I glanced toward the doorway, toward the gangly figure of Glen Rogers, like me another Quantico gym rat. I shook my head. Our regular Sunday morning game was going to have to do without me this time.

  “Too much to do,” I told him. “Gonna run the lines and call it a day.”

  Glen disappeared. I grabbed a towel and headed for the main gymnasium.

  Like everything else at Quantico, it was oversized. In addition to the central basketball court, there were four baskets along each side for the smaller courts that ran across the main court. Retractable bleachers were drawn back against the side walls, making the place look even bigger.

  At the far end, Glen Rogers and the rest of the guys were already hard at their four-on-four half-court game. For a moment I thought about changing my mind and joining them, but decided not to. I needed more pain than that, so I ran the lines instead.

  I jogged to the main court baseline, opposite the game at the other end, bent at the waist and raced fifteen feet to the near foul line, dug to a stop—shoes squealing against the varnished maple—and sprinted back to the baseline. Without a moment’s hesitation to the top of the key and back. Then to the three-point line and back. Finally to midcourt, all the way to the ten-second line and back.

  Then again. And again.

  Five times altogether.

  Finally, chest heaving, my eyes sweat-burned, I stopped, stood with my hands on my knees, my head down. Jesus Christ, I thought, but it had worked even better than the weights. For a few moments at least I’d forgotten all about Thompson and Bennett. My breathing returned to normal as I straightened up and started for the showers, and my second decision about the Brenda Thompson case in as many days.

  Eyes closed against the pounding water, hair filled with shampoo, I knew what I had to do. Even more importantly, what I would never be able to convince myself not to do.

  And I knew something else as well. That there’s a big difference between quitting and stopping. Just because Finnerty had demanded I stop didn’t mean I was about to quit. I turned off the water and left the shower room.

  I glanced at the clock at the far end of my row of lockers. Glen Rogers’s game would not wind up for an hour. I would have plenty of time to think of a way to attack him.

  I started by badgering Glen into holding off his shower until I finished with him, then followed him out of the gymnasium to a squat building next door, another brick building that matched the rest of the campus, but this one without windows and a roof buried under a forest of antennas.

  At the front door he pushed a button set into the jamb, stared directly into the video camera mounted above the door. I heard a loud click, Glen twisted the knob and pulled the door open. We went through and headed for his office, down a bare concrete hallway to a room even smaller than mine back at WMFO.

  Glen moved to his desk and sat. I took a plain metal chair from the corner and sat across from him. He was hard to see behind three computer-monitors and several other electronic gadgets I didn’t even try to identify. His mustache and goatee made him look like central casting’s idea of a psychotherapist, and come to think of it we’d played that role with each other more than a handful of times through the years.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Looked like you were trying to kill yourself back there.”

  “I won’t waste your time trying to con you. I need a bird.”

  Rogers’s smile disappeared. I talked faster.

  “I’ve got a problem, Glen. A big problem. Can’t solve it any other way.”

  He stared at me, then got up and went around his desk to the door, closed it carefully, went back and sat down. His volume dropped.

  “What the hell are you talking about, a satellite? Where did you get the idea I could do something like that, even if I wanted to?”

  “You can do it. Don’t even start up with me about that.”

  “You’re wrong, my friend, but let’s say you’re not, just for grins. Let’s say I have the power to divert a bird from one of a hundred national security matters that use a hundred percent of their allotments. You run a SPIN squad. What kind of case could you possibly have to justify it?”

  I could have told him. Maybe I’d still have to, but not yet.

  “All I need is a cell phone locate. Don’t tell me you aren’t set up for that, that you’re not doing the same thing all day.”

  “Not for background checks we aren’t.”

  I glanced back at the closed door, dismissed an urge to get up and lock it. I pulled my chair a shade closer to the desk.

  “It’s not national security,” I said, “not yet at least, but there’s no telling what it could turn out to be.”

  “So what? You still can’t walk in here and—”

  I held up my hand. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.” I stared into his dark eyes. “We go back, Glen, and not just basketball either. Lots of nights and weekends in the same car before you got transferred out here. We saved each others’ asses more than once. I owe you, but you owe me, too.”

  “Damn it, that was different.” The grimace on his face suggested it was horseshit to bring that stuff up, to use it on him for extortion. “A whole lot different.”

  “You owe me,” I repeated, ready to say it as many times as it took.

  “The old days are gone. What we did on the street has nothing to do with the kind of thing you’re asking.”

  “You owe me.”

  “This isn’t about us anymore. This is about the rules, the manual of rules and regulations. The manual specifies who uses these birds and why. I can’t just pass out satellite time like tickets to a Redskin’s game.”

  “Fuck the ma
nual. We’re talking about Quantico rules.”

  “Sure we are, but still. I like this job. You’re talking about get-your-ass-fired time.”

  I looked around his bunker. “What’s the worst they can do? Make you sit in a little concrete room with no windows?”

  Glen Rogers opened his mouth, looked like he wanted to argue some more, then closed it again and shook his head. He glanced toward the closed door, then leaned toward me.

  “Tell me what you need, you son of a bitch. Do it quick, then get the hell out of here before someone sees me with you.”

  TWENTY

  Back at the hospital I was relieved to discover that Lisa had been moved to a nursing floor. I stopped in the doorway of her room, a single room this time, and gave a soft wolf whistle.

  “Hey!” I told her. “A little makeup, you clean up pretty well.”

  “If you say so … but I’ve decided one thing.” Her voice was much stronger this afternoon. “I’ve had all of this place I can stand.”

  I moved to her, leaned over, and kissed her mouth. She kissed me back, not at all the kiss of an invalid. Her hair was brushed, her eyes lightly made up. I could smell the wildflowers in her hair, taste her lipstick on my mouth.

  “No more bandages,” I said.

  “Light covering on my head wound, but you have to pull my hair aside to see it.” She patted her chest. “The bruises are hidden, too. To see them, you’d have to pull aside my—”

  “Enough,” I told her. “It’s all I can do to keep from jumping you right there in your sickbed. Don’t make it any harder.” I glanced down at the front of my pants. “More difficult, I mean.”

  “Stop,” she said. “I’m feeling better, but it still hurts my chest to laugh.”

  But it didn’t hurt her at all to get back to the Thompson case.

  “We’re not letting go of this, Puller, not now … for sure not now.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. I was ready for an argument. What happened?”

  I touched her hand. “You happened, Lisa. The bastard who tried to kill you happened.”

  “We can get started the second I get out of here.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. Lately, all I seemed to be doing was lying to her.

  “Of course,” I said. “The moment you’re ready to go.”

  Back in my car, I reached for my cell phone. With a murder investigation going full blast, Brodsky had to be in his office. He was. I told him what I needed, that he was now officially part of my team. He grunted, then promised to call as soon as he had something. Maybe I imagined it, but he sounded less angry. Almost like he meant it.

  The Charger game started at four o’clock Sunday afternoon and sitting in my semicircular living room at the dome, I was grateful to have something to do while I waited for the sheriff to come up with the telephone number I had to have to get a lock on Robert Bennett.

  But I wasn’t nearly so grateful after the first quarter, after two San Diego fumbles and an unforced interception gave the Seahawks a twelve-point lead. Even less grateful when Seattle built its lead to fifteen.

  I knew better than to expect my Chargers to actually win a big game for a change, but they had to get it together enough to lose by fewer than six points or my thousand bucks were down the sewer with the rest of the money I’d lost over the past year.

  As the game wore on, my hopes continued to descend.

  With a minute and a half left in the game, San Diego kicked a field goal to close the margin to eight. Then they stopped Seattle three-and-out, but my stomach began to hurt as I realized what was going to happen.

  Thirty seconds left, the Chargers are in easy field goal range, but what difference did it make? All I needed was a field goal, but San Diego had no choice but to go for the touchdown and the two-point conversion. A long shot, the touchdown improbable enough, the extra points twice as tough.

  Two failed hail-Mary passes into the end zone later, I was even flatter broke than ever. I stared at the screen. Shit. I reached for the clicker, but the ringing phone interrupted.

  “Nothing,” Sheriff Brodsky told me. “Not yet anyway, but I’ve got deputies all over the county working on it.”

  I thanked him and hung up. I watched the post-game show for a moment before turning the TV off. This was getting ridiculous, I told myself. First the Chargers, now the sheriff.

  How can a man lose every single fucking time?

  Brodsky called back at a quarter to four the next morning.

  Half asleep, it took me a few seconds to understand what he was saying.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” he said. “One of my deputies just called. He’s canvassing motels out on I-95. Finally talked to the night manager at a place called Trucker’s Rest. Gas, food, lodging. Open all night. Manager looked through his cards for the name Robert Bennett, found nothing. Deputy described the broken nose, still nothing. Manager went outside and brought back the kid who pumps gas at night. My officer went through the routine with the young man. ‘Hell, yes,’ the boy tells him. ‘Hell, yes, I remember the guy with the busted nose. Used the self-serve, then wanted me to wash his windows. I told him it was against the rules and he told me he’d shove the gasoline hose up my ass if I didn’t do it.’”

  I felt my eyebrows rising as Brodsky continued.

  “‘Those goddamned eyes,’ the kid tells my guy, ‘empty and staring at me … and I couldn’t stop looking at his nose.’”

  I blinked. “Kid get a name?”

  “Guy paid cash.”

  “What about the car? An ID on the vehicle?”

  “A big gray van, he’s certain about that much, but nothing else.”

  “Damn it.”

  “I’m not finished, Monk.”

  “Please, Sheriff, it’s too early in the morning to play games. Why don’t you just tell me what you came up with.”

  “Video. The truck stop has digital cameras mounted out at the gas pumps. To nail the people who don’t pay.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw the man who was in my office calling himself Special Agent Robert Bennett. I saw the gray van … and the tag number.”

  Suddenly I was wide-awake, a familiar surge of energy running through my body.

  “Who’s it come back to?” I asked.

  He read the printout from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

  I scribbled hard to keep up.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I read my notes back to him.

  “2002 Ford E-150 commercial van. Registered owner Southeast Fitters Warehouse. No individual listed on the registration.”

  I repeated the address, a street I was pretty sure was a bit south of Union Station, but even as I looked at the numbers I knew better than to believe them. Satan would need a Zamboni before a professional killer would offer such an easy trail to follow. I told Brodsky as much.

  “I’ve got a bigger problem,” he said. “Your people down here—the agents working the assault on Lisa Sands—they need this, too.”

  “It’s not ready for them yet. Not till I check it out myself.”

  “Why not use the locals? M.P.D. can handle this without leaving their desks.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I need to see the place myself. Get some handle on where to go with it.”

  “You’re asking me to sit on something I can’t sit on.”

  “Couple of hours, that’s all. Soon as it gets light outside.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  The address in southeast Washington was half a dozen blocks south of Union Station, not far from the grandeur of Capitol Hill but more distant than that from the congressional lifestyle. The area was one of those trying to come back from generations of poverty and crime, but there was a long way to go. It was a few minutes past seven o’clock when I steered the Caprice around the last corner and started up the street Brodsky had identified. Old houses, medium-size apartment complexes, nothing in
dustrial.

  I scanned left and right when I hit the block where Southeast Fitters Warehouse was supposed to be, but there were still nothing but apartment buildings. I slowed down and read every number on both sides of the street, but the one I wanted wasn’t there. Not at all surprised, I grabbed my cell phone to set up my next lead. Probably another waste of time, but if you have a lead you cover it. You want to do the job right, you cover every last one of them.

  A quick phone call to the Postal Inspector’s Office gave me a physical location for the post office box listed by DMV records as the address for Southeast Fitters Warehouse. The F Street South Post Office was some distance from the phony address, and the postmaster himself was already waiting for me by the time I got there.

  “Southeast Fitters Warehouse?” he said, after I displayed my creds and told him what I needed. “I can show you the index card for that box, but you might not find that name on it.”

  “Maybe I’ll see something else that helps me.”

  The postmaster was both plump and close to retirement, wearing a white dress shirt but no tie. He led me to a series of dark wood file cabinets, opened one of the drawers and flipped through the contents, stopped to pull out a three-by-five card. He handed it to me.

  “I was right,” he said. “No company name. We don’t accept them, you know, not unless we get a person’s name along with them.” He smiled, his lips twisting at the corners. “We have to have somebody to contact for late payment, to kick out if there’s any other trouble.”

  I examined the card. The name wasn’t Robert Bennett, of course. Benjamin Allard, the box holder had printed, and provided as his home address the same numbers Brodsky had given me for Southeast Fitters. I scribbled the name in my notebook, gave the card back, and thanked him for the quick service.

  “Always glad to help the bureau, Agent Monk. I used to see Mr. Hoover once in a while. With that other fella … that Clyde what’s-his-face.”

  “The director was a man with many friends,” I told him, the mandatory bureau response. “Could have been anybody.”