Lethal

Chapter 19

Son of a bitch!”

Coburn hissed the profanity under his breath out of deference to the kid. As for her mother, who’d already frowned at him for a slipped bullshit earlier, she was now staring at him as though a horn had grown from the center of his forehead.

He waggled the cell phone. “I guess you heard that.”

“That Agent Lee Coburn has been dead for over a year? Yes, I heard that.”

“Obviously she hasn’t got her facts straight.”

“Or I bought into your lies and now I’m—”

“Look,” he said, angrily cutting her off. “I didn’t ask for you either, okay? You want to go back to your house, take your chances with Doral Hawkins and anybody else who’s in The Bookkeeper’s pocket? Fine. Go. I’ll hold the door open for you.”

It wasn’t fine, of course, and he wouldn’t let her go even if she chose to. On her own, she wouldn’t live long. He’d been described as cold and heartless, and the adjectives fit. But even he would be uncomfortable sending a woman and four-year-old to certain death. Besides, she would be useful, now and later, toward building a case against The Bookkeeper. She probably knew a whole lot more than she was aware of. Until he’d wrung every last ounce of information from her, she stayed with him.

On the other hand, she and the kid were going to be a major pain in the ass.

He hadn’t counted on having to take care of anybody but himself until Hamilton could bring him in, and that was going to be dangerous enough, what with every gun-wielding yahoo within a hundred miles believing him to be a killer and kidnapper. He’d more or less resigned himself to not making it out of this intact, if he lived through it at all.

But now he was responsible for Honor and Emily Gillette, and with that responsibility came the commitment to seeing that they survived even if he didn’t.

Essentially taking back his offer to let her go, he said, “Whether you know it or not, you hold the key that will bust open The Bookkeeper’s crime ring.”

“For the umpteenth time—”

“You’ve got it. We just have to figure out what it is and where to find it.”

“Then drive me to the nearest FBI office and escort me in. We’ll all look for it together.”

“I can’t.”

“Because?”

“Because I can’t blow my cover. Not yet. Right now Hawkins and The Bookkeeper think that I’m just the freight dock worker who was lucky enough to get away. An eyewitness to the mass murder. Which is bad. But not nearly as bad as an eyewitness who’s also an undercover federal agent. If they discover that, the target on my back gets bigger.”

“But the FBI would protect you.”

“Like Officer Fred Hawkins of the Tambour P.D. was going to protect you?”

He didn’t have to spell it out. She connected the dots. “The Bookkeeper has local FBI agents on his payroll?”

“I’m not willing to bet my life against it, are you?” He gave her time to answer. She didn’t, which was as good as her saying, No, I’m not. “You wouldn’t be sitting there if you didn’t believe at least some of what I’ve told you.”

“I’m sitting here because I believe that if you’d intended to hurt us, you would have done so as soon as you arrived yesterday. Also, if everything you’ve told me is true, then our lives, mine and Emily’s, are in danger.”

“You’re right so far.”

“But the main reason I came with you has to do with Eddie.”

“What about him?”

“You’ve raised two questions that I want answered. One, was his death really an accident?”

“It was made to look like it, but I don’t think it was.”

“I have to know,” she said with feeling. “If he died of an accident, that’s one thing. Tragic, but acceptable. Fate. God’s will. Whatever. But if someone caused the crash that killed him, I want them punished for it.”

“Fair enough. What’s the second question?”

“Was Eddie a bad cop or a good cop? I know the answer to that one. I want you convinced of it, too.”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” he said, meaning it. “He’s dead. All I care about is identifying The Bookkeeper and putting him out of business. The rest of it, including your dead husband’s reputation, makes no difference to me.”

“Well, it makes a huge difference to me. And it will to Stan.” She gestured to the cell phone still in his hand. “I should call him, tell him we’re okay.”

He shook his head and pocketed the phone.

“He’ll be beside himself when we turn up missing.”

“I’m sure he will be.”

“He’ll fear the worst.”

“That you’re at the mercy of a killer.”

“He won’t know otherwise. So, please—”

“No.”

“That’s cruel.”

“So’s life. You can’t call him. I don’t trust him.”

“You mistrust on principle.”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“But you trust me.”

He looked at her askance. “What gave you that idea?”

“To have dragged me along with you, you must trust me to some extent.”

“Not as far as I can throw you. Probably even less than you trust me. But, like it or not, we’re dependent on each other.”

“How is that?”

“You need my protection to survive. I need you in order to get what I came after.”

“I’ve told you repeatedly—”

“I know what you’ve told me, but—”

“Mommy?”

The kid’s voice interrupted him. Honor dragged her vexed gaze off him and looked back at her daughter. “What, sweetheart?”

“Are you mad?”

Honor reached over the car seat and patted Emily’s knee. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Is Coburn mad?”

Hearing the kid say his name caused his gut to clench. He’d never heard his name spoken in a child’s voice. It sounded different.

Honor pasted on a smile and lied through her teeth. “No, he’s not mad either.”

“He looks mad.”

“He’s not. He’s just… just…”

He did his earnest best not to look angry. “I’m not mad.”

The kid didn’t buy it. Not entirely, but she switched subjects. “I have to tinkle.”

Honor looked at Coburn, a silent question in her expression. He shrugged. “If she’s gotta go, she’s gotta go.”

“Can we drive to a gas station? I could take her—”

“Un-huh. She can go in the bushes.”

Honor debated it for about fifteen seconds, then was prompted with a plaintive “Mom-mee.” She opened the car door and got out. As she helped Emily from the backseat, she told her that they were going to have an adventure and led her by the hand to the rear of the car.

Coburn heard nothing more except a few conspiratorial whispers. Emily giggled once. He tried to block out the practical implications of a female having to pee in the great outdoors and instead to concentrate on more pressing problems. Like deciding what to do next. As Honor had said, they couldn’t keep driving around in a stolen car.

So where could they go? Not to his place. It was sure to be staked out. He didn’t trust Stan Gillette to safeguard them. He was in thick with the Hawkins brothers, so chances were good he was crooked. Honor was certain of his love and loyalty to her and Emily, but Coburn wasn’t ready to accept that, not without seeing evidence of it for himself. Gillette could also be a law-abiding former Marine who would feel honor-bound to notify the authorities immediately. In which case he still had to be rejected.

The deed done, Emily opened the passenger-side door and grinned across at him. “I did it!”

“Congratulations.”

“Can I ride in front?” she asked.

“No, you cannot.” Honor guided her into the backseat.

“But I don’t have my car seat.”

“No, you don’t.” Honor shot a condemning glance at Coburn for abandoning the kid seat along with her car. “We’ll break the rule just this once,” she told Emily as she helped her to buckle up.

When Honor was once again in the passenger seat, Coburn asked, “Do you know of someplace we can go?”

“You mean to hide?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. We’ve gotta stay out of sight until I can get through to Hamilton.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I know where we can go.”

Tom VanAllen was awakened early that morning with the startling news that Fred Hawkins was dead and that Honor Gillette and her child were missing from their home. Both the murder and the kidnapping were attributed to Lee Coburn.

When Tom shared this news with Janice, she registered total disbelief, and then remorse. “I feel terrible about the unflattering things I said about Fred yesterday.”

“If it’s any comfort to you, he would have died instantly. He probably didn’t feel a thing.” He told her about Doral’s finding the body.

“That’s horrible. They were so close.” After a moment of silence, she asked, “What were they doing at Honor Gillette’s house?”

He told her about the discovery of the boat. “It was a few miles from her house, but near enough to worry them, so Fred went to check on her. According to Doral, when Fred arrived he found that the house had been tossed.”

“Tossed?”

He described the condition of the house as it had been described to him by Deputy Sheriff Crawford. “Fred’s body was lying just inside the front door. Coburn apparently came up behind him.”

“Just like he shot Sam Marset.”

“Looks like. Anyway, I need to go, see it for myself.”

He hated having to leave the house before helping her with the arduous morning routine of getting Lanny cleaned, dressed, and fed. Because he couldn’t chew or swallow, Lanny got his nourishment through a feeding tube. Mealtimes weren’t pleasant.

Janice, however, was understanding about duty taking him away. She told him she could handle things at the house and for him not to worry. “This is a crisis situation. You’re needed.” As she saw him off, she whispered in his ear, “Be careful,” and even went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

Most of his work was done sitting behind a desk. He supposed that the exciting elements of this case represented to Janice more of what she’d had in mind when he told her he wanted to become an agent for the FBI. He surprised and pleased her by kissing her back.

He got lost twice on the back roads but finally found the Gillette place, arriving just as Crawford was about to leave. The two introduced themselves and shook hands. Crawford brought him up to speed.

“I’ve turned it over to our CSU. They’ve got their hands full with this one. Your agents have come and gone. They’re meeting me back in town, where we’ll set up phone lines, organize a task force, divide the labor. Tambour P.D. has offered us space for a command center on their top floor.”

“Yes, I talked to my men on my drive down. I emphasized that cooperation is key, and that priority one is to find Mrs. Gillette and the child before they come to harm.”

Crawford looked at him with an implied Duh, which Tom tried to disregard. “Anything enlightening come from Doral Hawkins?”

“Not much. He says he received an excited call from his brother just as dawn was breaking. Got here as fast as he could. Fred’s boat was tied up at the dock. First sign that something was out of joint, the front door of the house was standing open.”

“What did he make of the mess inside?” Tom asked.

“You mean in addition to his brother’s body? Made the same thing I did of it. Somebody—we gotta presume Coburn—was searching for something.”

“Like what?”

“Anybody’s guess.”

“Was it found?”

“Anybody’s guess. Nobody seems to know what Coburn was after. Not Doral, not Mrs. Gillette’s father-in-law.”

He told Tom about Stan Gillette’s untimely arrival at the crime scene and described the former Marine down to his spit-and-polished shoes. “He’s a real hard-ass, but in his present situation, I probably wouldn’t be a nice guy either,” the deputy admitted.

The investigator took his leave, but gave Tom permission to walk through the house. He was conscientious to stay out of the way of the technicians who were painstakingly picking through the mess, trying to gather evidence. He was in and out in a matter of minutes.

His drive back to Lafayette from the Gillette place took over an hour, and when he walked into his office, he did so relieved that the obligatory errand was behind him.

But no sooner had he sat down at his desk than the office line rang. He depressed the blinking intercom button. “Yes?”

“Deputy Director Hamilton is calling from Washington.”

Tom’s stomach dropped like a plunging elevator. He cleared his throat, swallowed, thanked the receptionist, and depressed the other blinking button. “Agent VanAllen.”

“Hi, Tom. How are you?”

“Fine, sir. You?”

Clint Hamilton, with customary brusqueness, cut straight to the reason for the call. “You’ve got a dung heap of trouble down there.”

Tom, wondering how in hell Hamilton had gotten wind of it, hedged. “It’s been a busy couple of days.”

“Fill me in.”

Tom talked for the next five minutes without interruption. Several times, he paused to make sure that they hadn’t been accidentally disconnected. During those pauses, Hamilton didn’t speak, but Tom could hear him breathing, so he kept talking.

When he finished, Hamilton remained quiet for several moments, long enough for Tom to dab at his damp upper lip with his pocket handkerchief. Hamilton had placed a lot of confidence in him. That faith in his abilities was now being tested, and he didn’t want Hamilton to find him lacking.

When Hamilton finally spoke, he stunned Tom with a question. “Was he one of your agents?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“This man Coburn. Was he an agent working undercover for you to investigate Sam Marset’s trucking interests?”

“No, sir. I never heard of him until I went to the crime scene at the warehouse and learned from Fred Hawkins the name of the suspect.”

“Fred Hawkins who’s now dead.”

“Correct.”

After another noticeable pause, Hamilton said, “Okay, continue.”

“I… uh… I forgot—”

“You were telling me that agents from your office are working hand in glove with the Tambour P.D.”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t want to sweep in there and piss them off. The warehouse murders are their jurisdiction. The sheriff’s office has Fred Hawkins’s homicide. But once it’s determined that Mrs. Gillette has indeed been kidnapped—”

Hamilton rudely interrupted him. “I know about jurisdiction, Tom. Let’s go back to Sam Marset. He would have been in a perfect position to engage in illegal interstate trafficking.”

Tom cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”

“Has any such connection been drawn?”

“No, nothing so far.” He told Hamilton about the search of every truck in the fleet, the questioning of each driver and other employees. “I’ve assigned agents to track down and interview anyone that we can place in and around that warehouse in the last thirty days, but so far no illegal contraband has been discovered.”

“What motive did the suspect have for killing his boss and fellow employees?”

“We’re trying to ascertain that, sir. But Coburn’s lifestyle is making it difficult.”

“In what way?”

“He’s been described as a loner. No friends, family, little interaction with coworkers. Nobody knew him well. The people—”

“Give it your best shot, Tom,” Hamilton said with palpable impatience. “Take a guess. Why’d he kill them?”

“He was a disgruntled employee.”

“A disgruntled employee.” Hamilton said it without inflection, certainly without enthusiasm.

Tom thought it smart to keep quiet.

Eventually Hamilton said, “If Coburn’s only beef was with his boss, if he wigged out over a slight he suffered on the loading dock, or because he was shortchanged on overtime pay, why’d he go to the house of a dead cop and turn it upside down? If he was fleeing the scene of a mass murder, why’d he hide out with the widow and child for an estimated twenty-four hours? And if he took them, why did he? Why not just dispose of them right then and there? Doesn’t that atypical behavior bother you like a popcorn hull stuck in your teeth?”

These weren’t rhetorical questions. Tom had worked in the Lafayette field office with Clint Hamilton only briefly, but it had been long enough for him to learn that the man didn’t waste his breath on unnecessary words.

When Hamilton was bumped up to Washington, D.C., leapfrogging the district office in New Orleans, he had recommended Tom as his successor, and, even at the time, Tom had been aware that Hamilton’s endorsement of him had been met with skepticism by some and vociferous opposition by others. Hamilton had fought for Tom, and he’d won the fight.

Each day when he entered the office where Hamilton had once sat, Tom felt pride in succeeding such an able, revered, even feared agent. He also experienced a cold panic that he wouldn’t live up to the other man’s standards or expectations. In any capacity.

If he were being baldly honest with himself, he would even go so far as to wonder if Hamilton had tossed him a bone because of Lanny. It made him hot with humiliation and indignation even to consider that his appointment had been extended out of pity, but he feared such was the case.

He also wondered where Hamilton was getting his information. He didn’t just know about Marset’s murder and what had happened afterward, but he was well informed of the details. Meaning that he had consulted someone in the local office even before calling Tom. That rankled.

However, he didn’t want Hamilton to discern his self-doubt, so he affected a confident tone. “I’ve asked those questions myself, sir. They’re unsettling.”

“To say the least. They imply that this was no mental malfunction, no ordinary shoot-’em-up by some nutcase with personality issues. Which means, Tom, that you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“First order of business, find them.”

“Yes, sir.”

After a pregnant pause the length of an aircraft carrier, Hamilton said a brisk, “I’ll be standing by,” then clicked off.