Lethal (47 page)

In the interest of time, Doral decided to shelve that enticing thought for future consideration and, in the meantime, to find Honor and Coburn. He wanted that asshole dead whether The Bookkeeper had ordered it or not.

With that goal in mind, he had called Amber, the airheaded receptionist at Tori’s fitness center. He reintroduced himself as the guy she’d met at the sandwich shop the day before and had asked her out for a drink.

She’d played hard to get. It was after eleven o’clock, she’d said peevishly. Why had he waited so late to call? She had to open the center at six a.m.

Doral had said the first thing that popped into his mind. “I just hate to see a good kid like you get blindsided.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tori is interviewing other girls for your position.”

The plausible lie had worked like a magic wand. He was invited to come to her place for a nightcap, and all it took was two vodka tonics for her to start enumerating all the advantages that Tori Shirah had over her, including a house on Lake Pontchartrain that she’d cheated an exhusband out of.

He left Amber with a promise for dinner at Commander’s Palace soon and immediately reported his findings to The Bookkeeper. Laying it on real thick, he had volunteered to personally drive to Tori’s house on the lake and check it out.

His efforts had paid off. Big-time. He hadn’t located Coburn or Honor, but he’d discovered Emily sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms, and that was almost as good.
The sooner he reported something positive to The Bookkeeper, the better the working climate, and the healthier for everybody.

Cursing his own sound judgment, which was preventing him from sampling what he’d lusted after since adolescence, he zipped up, then bent down and whispered, “Your pussy will never know what it missed.”

He backed away and aimed the pistol down at Tori’s head.

Hamilton’s jet set down at Lafayette Aero at 03:40 Central time, gaining him an hour. The FBO was virtually shut down at that hour of the morning, so the only personnel there were the ground crew.

Hamilton was the first off the aircraft. He pleasantly greeted the man with the chocks and told him that they were an advance team sent by the State Department to set up security for the upcoming visit of a government dignitary.

“Really, who? The president?”

“I’m not allowed to say,” Hamilton replied, smiling genially. “We don’t know how long our errand will take. Our pilots will stay with the plane.”

“Yes, sir.”

Meanwhile the six men who had disembarked with Hamilton unloaded their gear and stowed it in the two black Suburbans with the darkly tinted windows that Hamilton had requested to be waiting for them on the tarmac.

If the young man wondered why an envoy from the State Department required automatic weapons and S.W.A.T. gear, he wisely contained his curiosity.

Within minutes of the jet’s landing, the team was speeding away in the Suburbans. Hamilton gave his driver the
VanAllens’ home address, and he programmed it into the built-in GPS. Hamilton wanted to stop there first and pay his respects to Tom’s widow. He owed it to Tom. He owed it to her. After all, it was he who had sent Tom to that meeting on the abandoned railroad tracks.

It was incredibly presumptive to call at this hour of the night, but hopefully she would be up, surrounded by friends, neighbors, and kinfolk, who had rushed to her in response to the news of Tom’s death.

What he feared, however, was that he would find her alone. Their son’s circumstances had been extremely isolating for the couple, and in large part that isolation had been self-inflicted. Based on what Hamilton knew of Janice, it wouldn’t be out of character for her to withdraw from society completely now that Tom was dead.

The agents from Tom’s office who had delivered the tragic news had reported to Hamilton that they’d been asked to leave shortly after their grim duty was dispatched.

Agents sent to question her in connection to the murder of her husband had emailed him afterward that Mrs. VanAllen had been cooperative in answering all their questions but had shown them to the door as soon as they concluded the interview and had refused offers of a chaplain or grief counselor to stay with her overnight.

She had rebuffed Hamilton by cursing him and then flatly refusing to speak to him when he called a second time. He strongly suspected that all extensions of consolation had been similarly rejected.

He hoped he was wrong. He hoped he would find her house filled with people, making this meeting between them less awkward, less conspicuous, and his purpose less obvious.

Because, although his main reason for coming was to
pay his respects, he also had an ulterior motive. Call it a fishing expedition.

There was an outside chance that Janice knew something about The Bookkeeper, even if it was tidbits of information that Tom had scattered and that, over time, she’d picked up and put together as one does the spilled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Even accidentally, pieces got linked together to form at least a partial picture.

Hamilton needed to know what Janice VanAllen was privy to.

Meanwhile, he didn’t waste the travel time in the van. He placed a call to the sheriff’s office in Tambour and demanded that he be connected to Deputy Crawford. He was told that Crawford was in the temporary command center but had gone down the hall to use the john.

“When he comes back, tell him to call me. This number.”

He disconnected and checked his phone yet again to see if Coburn had tried to reach him. Nothing. Two minutes later the phone vibrated in his hand. He answered curtly, “Hamilton.”

“This is Deputy Crawford. You asked me to call. Who are you?”

Hamilton identified himself. “The bureau lost a man down there tonight.
My
man.”

“Tom VanAllen. My condolences.”

“Are you investigating the case?”

“I was initially. Once VanAllen was IDed, your guys took over. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

“I have been. But I think there’s something you should know since it relates to your other cases.”

“I’m listening.”

“Tom VanAllen went to that abandoned train track
tonight with the sole purpose of picking up Mrs. Gillette and bringing her into protective custody.”

Crawford took a moment to assimilate that, then asked, “How do you know?”

“Because I brokered the deal with Lee Coburn.”

“I see.”

“I doubt it,” Hamilton said. “No offense.”

The deputy was quiet for several moments, but whether because of pique or concentration, Hamilton didn’t know. Nor did he care.

Crawford said, “We’ve only got one body in the morgue. So what happened to Mrs. Gillette?”

“Excellent question, Deputy.”

“Did Coburn set up VanAllen?”

Hamilton chuckled. “If Coburn had wanted VanAllen dead, he wouldn’t have troubled himself to use a bomb.”

“Then what are you telling me, Mr. Hamilton?”

“Somebody besides Coburn and me knew about that meeting, and whoever it was wanted Mrs. Gillette dead. Somebody planted that car bomb expecting to get two birds with one stone, a cop’s widow and a local FBI agent. Somebody was made awfully nervous by that pairing, so they acted swiftly and lethally to prevent it.”

“ ‘Somebody.’ Any idea who?”

“Whoever is listening in on this conversation.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Like hell you don’t. Your department is a freaking sieve. So is the P.D., and I sadly suspect Tom’s office, too.” He paused to let the deputy dispute that. It was telling that he didn’t. Whether Crawford was dirty or not, he must not have seen the point in denying the allegation. “I’m not telling you how to do your job, Deputy—”

“
But
?”

“But unless you want a higher body count than you’ve already got, double your efforts and manpower to find Mrs. Gillette and Coburn.”

“Is she with him voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. Does Coburn work for you?”

Hamilton said nothing.

“Did Coburn, I don’t know,
recruit
her for some reason? That’s what it looks like to me. What are they on to that’s got people wanting them dead?”

Hamilton didn’t answer that one either.

The deputy sighed. Hamilton could imagine him running his fingers through his hair. If he had hair. “They’ve successfully stayed under the radar for three days, Mr. Hamilton. I don’t know what else I can do, especially since, as you say, other forces always seem to be several steps ahead of me. But if I get lucky and manage to flush them out, what then?”

Hamilton said tersely, “I’m the first person you call.”

W
hen Coburn pulled the car to a stop at the curb in front of Stan Gillette’s house, Honor said, “I envisioned us sneaking in like we did this afternoon.”

“I’m tired of dicking around. It’s time he and I had a face-to-face.”

As they moved up the front walkway, she looked at him nervously. “What are you going to do?”

“You ring the doorbell. I’ll take it from there.”

He could tell she was conflicted about what they had to do, but she resolutely stepped onto the porch and rang the doorbell. They heard it chiming inside the house. Coburn pressed his back to the wall adjacent to the door.

Honor saw him slip the pistol from his waistband, and that alarmed her. “What are you doing with that?”

“He may not welcome our company.”

“Don’t hurt him.”

“Not unless he forces me to.”

“He takes medication for high blood pressure.”

“Then I hope he thinks twice before doing something stupid.”

Hearing approaching footsteps, he sliced the air with his free hand. The door was opened, then several things happened in rapid succession.

The alarm system began chirping its warning.

Stan exclaimed his surprise upon seeing Honor, seized her arm, and drew her across the threshold.

Coburn sprang into the entryway behind her and kicked the front door shut.

He ordered Honor to disarm the security system.

Then he pushed her out of harm’s way when Gillette lunged forward and swiped at his midsection with a knife.

“No!” Honor shouted.

Coburn bowed his back, making his gut concave, but the tip of the blade cut through the oversized T-shirt and found skin.

Coburn was more astonished by the ferocity of the attack than he was hurt, and immediately realized that Gillette had planned on that. He took advantage of Coburn’s astonishment by kicking the pistol out of his hand.

Coburn hissed a curse and tried to grab Gillette’s knife hand. He missed, and Gillette drew another vicious arc with the blade, this time catching skin on Coburn’s shoulder.

“Stop it, old man,” Coburn shouted as he dodged another stabbing motion. “We need to talk to you.”

Gillette was having none of it. He continued to attack Coburn with a vengeance.

Honor, who’d silenced the incessant warning beep of the alarm system, was practically weeping. “Stan, please! Stop!”

Either the older man was maddened to the point of deafness, or he chose to ignore her plea. He seemed determined
to kill or seriously maim Coburn, giving Coburn no choice except to be equally aggressive. He had expected resistance, harsh arguments, maybe some chest-thumping from the former Marine. But he hadn’t expected a full-out assault.

Each man fought to win. They fell over furniture, toppled lamps, knocked pictures off the walls. They gouged and kicked and slugged. Coburn couldn’t let up long enough to locate his pistol and aim without giving Gillette an open invitation to plunge the knife into him. So they fought hand to hand, as they’d both been trained to fight, as though it was a life-or-death contest.

And all the while Honor was begging for them to stop.

“Give it up,” Coburn growled as he deflected the knife yet again.

But Gillette didn’t relent. He was out for blood. Coburn’s blood. When the blade of his knife connected with Coburn’s forearm, cutting it clear to the bone, Coburn yelped an obscenity. He thought, to hell with the man’s age, his high blood pressure, and Semper Fi. He attacked with everything he had in him and kept at it until a well-placed blow to Gillette’s head caused him to lose his footing and stagger backward.