Final Approach (16 page)

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Vince said. I was thankful not to be facing him. “When you said you were down here helping a friend, and had lied about a new job, you left out a few important details.”

There was a light quality to his voice. My throat was too tight to answer.

He continued, “I’m not a part of that, you know. I’m nothing like her.”

My eyes stung. I told myself it was still too early to trust him enough to explain about Mattie’s case and the boat accident. That’s when I realized I was still thinking of it as an accident. Like David, I struggled with my own form of denial. I wasn’t strong enough yet to think in terms of my husband’s murder.

I sniffled and folded my arms, my back still turned. “Why’d you come here today?”

He moved up beside me. I was careful to keep my eyes forward. Vince rested his hands on the railing.

“The short answer is, to find out what David knew.” His tone was quiet. He took a breath and started again. “Trish is a time bomb. I know that. I also watch the news. I didn’t like what I saw this morning, particularly the part about the missing plane. I called David. He was worried sick because Trish didn’t come home last night. He doesn’t even
know
her. The woman he sleeps with is an actress and a fraud.”

He drummed his thumbs on the balcony railing and continued. “Her brother has a rap sheet a mile long. And she’s doing worse things, I think, but has no record at all. Never anything to call her on. To me, that’s scarier. You’ve seen her. Appearances are deceiving.”

I remembered her beautiful smile in the picture on Scud’s laptop.

“Years go by with no consequences,” Vince was saying, almost musing, “and it seems she gets bolder. I hooked her up with Rick and Marie. Figured a new job around nice folks would be a step toward a cleaner life, but…” He didn’t bother to finish.

I listened, curious about the references to her earlier crimes. It wasn’t clear if he knew exactly what those crimes were, but either way I was disappointed and angry he hadn’t intervened somehow. If he’d ever bothered to follow through with his hunches and turn her in at any point along the way, Eric Lyons might be alive. Casey might be home.

“I have a question for you now.” He placed a hand lightly on my shoulder, encouraging me turn toward him. I did the best I could, but had no courage for eye contact.

“You know things about Trish I’m learning for the first time,” he said. “She’s the reason you were at the drop zone this week.”

I nodded.

“The time you spent with me, was that to get leads on Trish?”

The shaky breath I heard after his question told me those words hadn’t come easily.

I looked up at him. “I didn’t know you were related until yesterday.”

His expression brightened almost imperceptibly.

I added, “You might have mentioned that earlier.”

He smiled then, a genuine smile like the ones I’d enjoyed all week. I feared that in the lightness of the moment, he might try to hug or kiss me, or do some other demonstrative thing to confuse me even more. I copped out and shifted my eyes toward the parking lot again, turning my face away from him. I wasn’t feeling the same closure to our conversation.

“I need to know the truth, Vince,” I said, my mind still on my little girl. “How much of this did you know? Did you ever cover for her?”

He didn’t answer, but I heard the door open behind me. By the time I turned around, the door to David’s apartment was closing between us.

Chapter Thirty-three

Jeannie sidled up to me at the balcony railing. She’d come out so quickly after Vince left me there, I wondered if she’d been watching the door. Almost as swiftly, she lit a cigarette.

“I thought you two would be out here forever.” She took a draw on her Salem Light. Its tip flared.

She turned her head to exhale and let the cigarette rest between her fingers.

Jeannie’s smooth, ivory hands were so beautiful they even made a cigarette look tolerable. I’d watched her smoke enough to know something here was different.

“You’re usually a better actress.”

She rubbed what must have been a stiff spot on her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You never wait this long before the second puff. I can tell you’re fake-smoking, using it as an excuse to be out here.”

She waved the smoldering tip in front of my face. “Am not.”

Even outside, the smoky odor was oppressive. “That’s obnoxious. What do you want?”

She huffed and dropped the nearly-new cigarette onto the concrete porch, where she used the toe of her shoe to smash it. Then she edged it forward, under the railing, until it fell. We watched it disappear into the shrubbery below.

“What’s up with you two?” she finally whispered, nodding toward the door.

I felt my shoulders sag. “I don’t have energy for this.”

She put a hand on my arm. “I’m not imagining it, am I? Something’s going on.”

“Maybe there could have been,” I said. “That talk we had ended badly. I can’t look at him now, much less talk to him.”

She brushed a wisp of bangs away from her eyes and studied me for a moment. In her gentle look, I found the unwavering support of a lifelong friend.

“You don’t need this today. We should go.”

I nodded.

“I’ll get Richard.” She gave a weak smile and went inside.

I stayed on the balcony, trying unsuccessfully to think about one thing at a time. I rehearsed what I’d say to the police. When I came to the part about Trish’s money, I remembered the bag of cash was still on David’s sofa. I opened the front door to grab it.

Jeannie and Vince were together in the living room. They looked at me, startled, and the moment was as awkward as if I’d found them naked.

“Richard’s wrapping up with David, in the office,” Jeannie said.

I looked down, snatched my bag off the sofa, and left.

For the next half-hour, I couldn’t speak to Jeannie about it because Richard was with us in the car. We were headed toward the Texas Medical Center, a virtual kingdom of hospitals inside Houston’s I-610 loop. An HPD buddy had told Richard where Clement was being treated for his gunshot wound. Jeannie figured we could double up our mission and get my leg fixed too.

We parked in the garage and found our way to the congested emergency room. An old man with an oxygen mask sat beside a father pressing an ice pack onto his son’s arm. In the corner, a toddler wailed in long bursts. Another was drooped eerily across his mother’s lap. Both children were still in pajamas at one o’clock in the afternoon.

“This looks bad,” I said.

“Check in and ask about the wait,” Richard said. “There should be time to hit the cafeteria before you get called.”

“Time to eat
and
speak to Clement, I’d say.” Jeannie cast a sideways glance at a woman coughing into a bloody rag. “Go check in, Em. These people freak me out.”

I filled out the requisite paperwork. A chorus of elevator dings echoed in the halls behind me. Persistent crying seemed to carry from all directions in the vast hospital. I wondered about Casey. Wherever he was, was he crying too?

When I finished, we followed signs to the cafeteria and passed an information desk. Richard wanted to ask about Clement, so he got in line behind a group of disoriented visitors and waited. Jeannie and I took the opportunity to visit the nearby gift shop. Balloons and flower arrangements crowded the entrance to the small, over-stuffed store and I almost knocked over a vase of carnations.

“I should get him something,” I said. “What do you get for a guy?”

Jeannie surveyed the arrangements and shook her head. “Not flowers. Do they sell any porn here?”

She laughed. I scanned the room for irritated parents.

“You know,” she said, turning toward a shelf of candy, “I think he likes you.”

I picked up a basket of gourmet coffee samples and walked toward the counter.

“He’s FBI, Jeannie. I don’t think he’s supposed to like anybody.”

She met me at the counter and added a pack of Wrigley’s to my coffee basket.

“Not Clement, you screwball. Vince.”

The clerk rang us up. Jeannie, restless in the smoke-free environment, tore open her gum with particular zeal.

“What were you guys talking about at David’s?” I asked.

We turned for the exit and found Richard walking toward us, struggling through a jungle of ribbons hanging from a collection of helium balloons.

“There you are,” he said. “I have Clement’s room number. Had to say I was his brother.”

I stole a glance at Jeannie. Our conversation had been put off again. She folded a piece of spearmint gum onto her tongue and winked.

***

After lunch, it seemed nothing had changed in the E.R.’s waiting room except the numbers on its clock. Everything else was as we’d left it, with the notable absence of the lethargic baby and the blood-cougher. I considered that a small victory.

We took an elevator to Clement’s floor and asked directions twice before finding the right corridor. A guard was outside his room, sitting in a chair between a food cart and an empty I.V. pole. He stood when he saw us.

“My name’s Emily Locke,” I said, “Could I see Agent Clement?”

“You a relative?”

I shook my head. “I have information about the case he was working on when he got shot.”

“I’d ask him for ya, miss,” the guard said, “but the nurse said he’s sleeping.”

“It’s important. Could you please check again? Maybe he woke up.”

A middle-aged nurse stopped to join our little hallway group. Her taut lips and darting eyes gave the impression she was more interested in meddling than helping.

“Sorry, miss,” the guard said. “Nature of the job. Can’t leave my post.”

“Is there a problem?” the nurse asked.

I glanced at nicotine-deprived Jeannie, chewing gum at an inhuman rate, and tried to answer before she went toe-to-toe with the nurse on my behalf.

Richard spoke first. “Could you please see if Mr. Clement will accept a visitor?”

She held his gaze a moment, as if establishing her superiority. “Mr. Clement’s resting. You can try back later.”

Beside me, Jeannie collapsed inexplicably onto the food cart, sending dirty plates, silverware, and cups clanging to the floor. The guard stepped back into the I.V. pole and it hit the wall. A plastic cup bounced several times before rolling to a stop at my feet.

Jeannie stooped to gather forks and plastic cups from the linoleum floor. Dried kernels of leftover corn and the crusts of a few sandwiches lay scattered at our feet.

The nurse watched Jeannie toss a handful of silverware onto the cart, and then shifted her annoyed gaze to Richard and me.

“Maybe you should check again,” Richard said.

***

When the guard began to scan me with his hand-held metal detector, I passed my bag to Jeannie. There was no point slowing my admittance to Clement’s room by answering questions about the money. Richard and Jeannie would wait in the E.R. and ring his room if my name were ever called, assuming it hadn’t been lost in the system or I didn’t bleed out in the interval.

Any mental fog Clement might have experienced following his rude awakening disappeared when he saw me. He pressed a button on the controller to his bed and raised the head until he was almost sitting. An I.V. was taped to his wrist, and a bedside computer monitor displayed a real-time trace of his heart rhythm. I couldn’t see any bandages. Whatever damage had been done was hidden under the bland pattern of his hospital gown.

His face was sallow, but I was struck more by its youth than its color. For the first time, I looked at Clement and saw him for what he was: a young professional, in his late-twenties at most. His dark eyes, that once seemed so shifty, were attentive and eager, despite their fatigue.

He listened with interest as I explained what brought me to Houston.

“I certainly had my eye on you,” he said. Even his voice seemed tired. “There’s no employment file for you at NASA.” He gave a disapproving look and added, “But you already know that.”

“You had me checked out?”

“Had to. You showed up at the drop zone on the heels of a kidnapping, then spent a lot of time in the company of my prime suspect.”

I imagined my name scribbled in the margins of Clement’s field notes. A mental image of a thick file with notes about his “prime suspect” followed.

“What’s Vince’s part in this?”

Clement hesitated. “Officially, we can only talk about
your
part in this. But, off the record, near as I can tell, your friend’s involvement stops at mistaken identity. We’ve been chasing this ring for years. Had a lead in Texas, a pilot named Townsend. FAA records showed only one, Vincent, which is the reason I went undercover at his drop zone. His cousin Trish had become Dalton by the time she got her pilot’s license, so our FAA search on her maiden name never hit on her. Seems our informant had old intel.” He shrugged. “We caught a break. They fly for the same place. In that respect, Vince led us to the pilot we really wanted.”

I let it sink in. Relinquishing my doubts about Vince felt wonderful until I realized what a jerk he must have thought I was.

Clement lifted a glass of water from his bedside table and drank gingerly.

“Back to you,” he said. “When your NASA story didn’t check out, I looked further and learned about your husband and daughter.” He paused. “I’m sorry, by the way, for your loss.”

I nodded.

Clement continued, “Was it ever suggested to you that their accident was related to your involvement in the Reed trial?”

I thought about Wesley Reed—the man who almost sold Mattie at a roadside diner in Austin. The one who got off because I missed the trial. Having my fears articulated by a government agent put a fresh sting into an old wound. His question made it impossible to tell my story in order. I skipped to the meat.

“My daughter didn’t die in that boat wreck, Mr. Clement. She was sold to a couple in Galveston. At least, they were in Galveston four years ago. You have to help me find them.”

Clement leaned forward. I wondered if he should be sitting so upright. He shifted his weight, impervious to the pain he must have felt.

“How do you know that?” His brow furrowed and glanced quickly at his bedside table, then back at me. I thought it might have been a habitual search for a notepad.

I started by explaining what happened at the hangar after he was shot.

“Thanks, by the way,” he interrupted, “for making the 9-1-1 call. My mom will probably send you cookies and Christmas cards for years.”

I smiled. The more we talked, the more normal he seemed. He listened to my story about stowing away on the Otter, and grew intent when I came to the part about hiding behind the crates.

“You see what was in the crates?”

“I tried to find out,” I said, “but Kurt came after me before I could tell.”

I rubbed my shoulder where it had been smashed under the lid.

“Whatever it was, was really hard,” I added.

He frowned. “Weapons, then.”

“Excuse me?”

“With this network, it’s three things.” He counted them on his fingers as he listed them. “Narcotics. Weapons. Human freight.”

Human freight. Clement made it sound like a shipment of tomatoes or lumber.

“Drugs and weapons too? But…” I was too confused to finish.

“They operate in cells, and matrix their resources. Trish’s cell traffics babies, but that’s not all they do.”

“Are you saying Trish was making a weapons shipment last night for another arm of her criminal ring?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “And maybe another arm of her ‘criminal ring’ as you say, was placing a baby somewhere for her.”

He took another sip of water.

“Infiltrating their system has been no small effort,” he added. “I’ve been with the Bureau six years. This cell’s been my whole career, and its parent ring has taken a nice bite into the careers of dozens of other agents.”

“I have something you’ll want to see then,” I said.

The printouts from Scud’s hard drive were in my pocket. I unfolded them and passed them to Clement. He took them with the hand that had the I.V., still giving no indication of pain. Where anesthesia was concerned, it seemed new facts in his case were medicine enough.

I walked to his bedside and reviewed the papers with him, describing my suspicions about the columns’ significance. Clement’s eyes followed my finger over the page.

“This entry is Casey Lyons,” I said. “The date matches when he disappeared, and this is his age and gender. This little girl is missing from Houston,” I pointed to the row for an eight-month-old female. “It doesn’t look like she’s been sold yet. Maybe you can find her.”

“Look at those cities,” he said, more to himself than me. “And the names. I can’t believe he actually attributed the crimes.” He was looking at the column that associated names like Kosh and Dalton with the kids they took. “It’s like they’re keeping score.”

It was then I realized what I was up against. I wasn’t only battling the criminal network Clement had described, which, admittedly, surpassed even my worst fears. But I was keying in on something else. I was in this to find Annette and Casey, but Clement’s priority was to bust the ring.

“Is the FBI going to find my daughter, Mr. Clement?”

He looked up from the list.

“I sincerely hope so,” he said. “We want to bring all these kids home.”

“When will you start following up on this list?”

“I’m sure a parallel effort will begin after I brief my office on this new information.” He raised the papers slightly. “My team will want to spend time with you, hear your story. When we have it sorted, we’ll reorganize resources and follow up your leads.”