Murder Suicide (22 page)

"Interesting."

"So what’s next?" Anderson asked.

"We need to track whether Coroway filed any patents with the Copyright Office in D.C.," Clevenger said.  "I want to know whether Vortek was really a bust or not."  He looked in his rearview mirror, saw a dark blue Crown Victoria about fifteen yards behind him.  He thought he’d seen the same car as he was traveling up Route 95 to Newburyport.  He had a bad feeling someone had tailed him all the way from Chelsea.  He moved into the fast lane, accelerated to seventy-five mph.

"Would inventions for the military be recorded?" Anderson asked.

"Let’s find out," Clevenger said.  He remembered Jet Heller’s question about whether he had been down in D.C. to visit with military contractors.  "It’d also be nice to try to get a handle on whether Coroway licensed Vortek to Boeing or Lockheed or whatever."  The Crown Vic hadn’t changed lanes, but was keeping up with him.  He cut across three lanes, figuring he’d take the next exit and quiet his paranoia.

"I’ll get the names of the board members for the biggest companies in the industry," Anderson said.  "We can check them against our contacts, see if there’s a way in.  Maybe one of my friends from Nantucket can help."

Anderson had been Nantucket’s Chief of Police before coming to work with Clevenger.  "Great.  I’ll call you after I talk to Kyle Snow.  I’m headed to the jail now."  He took the exit.  The Crown Vic took it with him.

"Cool."

"Hold on.  I think I got somebody following me," Clevenger said.

"Where are you?"

"Up near Newburyport."

"You dropped those discs with O’Connor?"

"Yeah.  Can you get somebody on the force up in Newburyport to go by his house?  Fifty-five Jackson Way.  They may have followed me up there."

"You got it.  Stay on the highway.  Don’t get off for anything."

"Too late.  I just got off in Georgetown.  Route 133."

"Get back on 95.  I’ll call you in one minute."  He clicked off.

Clevenger heard a siren behind him.  He looked in the rearview mirror, saw a flashing blue light on the dash of the Crown Vic.  He could make out the figures of a male driver and male passenger.  He pulled over, pulled his pistol out of its holster and wedged it under his thigh.

The driver stayed behind the wheel.  The passenger, a tall man about fifty-five, with thinning hair and glasses, walked up to his window.

He rolled it down.

"Dr. Clevenger?"

"Who’s asking?"

"Paul Delaney, FBI."

"Pleasure to meet you.  You could have called my office for an appointment."

Delaney smiled.  "I’m very sorry.  I’m going to need to search the truck, Doctor."

"Not without a warrant, you’re not."

"Got one."  Delaney reached into his suit jacket.  Before Clevenger had a chance to make a move, the nose of a pistol was pressed against the back of his neck.  "Eyes in the back of your head?" Delaney asked.  "Read my warrant."  He nodded toward the Crown Vic.

Five seconds later the passenger door of Clevenger’s truck opened, and Delaney’s partner, a rotund man at least six feet tall, leaned into the cabin and started searching under the seats, in the glove compartment.  He lumbered into the passenger seat.  "Got to pat you down, Doc’," he said.

Clevenger’s phone started to ring.  He glanced at the caller I’d.  North Anderson.

"We’ll be done in no time," Delaney said.  "You can call back."

The fat man ran his hands over Clevenger’s chest, arms, legs.  He found the gun, held it up for his partner.

"Just leave it in the glove compartment," his partner said.

"If you tell me what you’re looking for, I might just give it to you," Clevenger said.  "We can skip the Dragnet routine."

"The computer discs.  You were given them in error."

Clevenger’s phone started ringing again.

"Whose error?"

"Detective Coady’s," Delaney said.  "Amateur move.  They should have been turned over to the FBI."  He nodded at Clevenger’s cell phone.  "Answer it, if you want.  Maybe Billy needs you."

Clevenger knew how famous his son was, but hearing Delaney use his name didn’t sit well with him.  "If you’re threatening my son, you’d better be authorized to pull that trigger."

Delaney didn’t bat an eye.  "I apologize.  This has nothing to do with your son.  I’m sorry I mentioned him.  But to answer your question, I am authorized to pull the trigger if you refuse the search and resist being taken into custody."

The phone stopped ringing, then started right up again.

"I guess those files are pretty important," Clevenger said.  "I don’t have them."  He nodded at the phone.  "You mind?  That’s Billy now."

"Go ahead."

Clevenger clicked on the phone.

"Frank?" Anderson said.

"Five blue discs.  Next to my computer in the loft.  Go..."  He felt a flash of pain as Delaney smashed the butt of his gun into the back of his head.  Then he blacked out.

*            *            *

He woke up shivering, slumped in the passenger seat of his truck, in an empty corner of the parking lot of a Shaw’s Supermarket at the Georgetown Plaza strip mall.  His head felt like someone had used it in a game of volleyball.  He ran his hand over his scalp, felt something sticky and looked at his fingers.  He was bleeding.  Delaney, or whatever his real name was, had pistol-whipped him.  He looked at his watch.  9:40.  He’d been out about twenty minutes.  He looked for his cell phone, couldn’t find it.

He threw the door of the truck open and stumbled to the pay phone outside Shaw’s.  He fed in three quarters and dialed Anderson.

"Where are you?" Anderson asked.

"Georgetown Plaza.  They knocked me out, drove me here in my truck and left me.  You alright?"

"I’m fine.  It looks like they had three teams.  One got to the loft before I did and took the discs.  Your computer, too."

"Billy alright?"

"Yeah.  I called his cell.  He had left the loft right after you."

"How about Vania?"

"They had to be tailing you the whole way up to his house.  They took all his software and hardware, including the discs.  But he’s all right — physically.  He was taking his little girl to kindergarten when they ransacked the place."

"Where is he now?"

"He bundled up and went sailing."

"C’mon."

"Really.  Guy must be some sort of Zen master.  He said there’s not much he can do until the FBI returns his property.  His boat’s still in the water."

"Where are you?"

"The office.  They came here after the loft."

"They take the computers?"

"The computers.  All our discs.  They went through the files, but didn’t seem to find anything interesting.  They wanted Kim’s BlackBerry, but she basically told them to fuck themselves.  They took a look at it, then backed off."

"I don’t blame them," Clevenger said.  He smiled, in spite of everything, which triggered a bolt of pain to shoot from the base of his skull into his forehead.  He closed his eyes.

"You there?"

"I’m here."

"Are you all right to drive or should I come up and get you?"

"I can drive.  I’m gonna find Coady.  He had to know this was coming down.  Then I’ve got Kyle Snow at Suffolk County."

"I’ll work the board of directors issue, and all that."

"Let’s meet at the office.  One o’clock all right?"

"See you there."

*            *            *

The desk sergeant at Boston P.D. walked Clevenger to Coady’s office, then disappeared as Coady stood up from behind a gray metal desk piled high with case files.

Clevenger walked up to the desk.  His head was pounding.  His eyes hurt when they moved.  "Did you know this was coming down?"  He gripped the edge of the desk to keep himself steady.

"Did
I
know?"

"You brought me close to keep me away?  Were you worried Theresa Snow would hire me to really work the case?"

Coady didn’t respond.

"Someone pay you?" Clevenger pushed.  "Coroway?"

Coady stood up.  "You’ve been hanging around crazy people too long."

"When did you first bring the FBI in?"

Coady’s neck reddened.  "I’ve been straight with you from the beginning.  Where do you get off...?"

"You want to try to sell me the double suicide theory again?  Or maybe you’re ready to settle for murder-suicide."

"I’m not trying to sell anything.  What kind of show are you putting on here, anyhow?  If anything, you sold me out."

"Right.  I’m subverting your fine investigation."

"I’m not the one with contacts in D.C.," Coady seethed.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I’m..."  He stopped, looked toward the door.

Clevenger turned around and was left speechless.  Standing in the doorway was beautiful Whitney McCormick, MD, the FBI forensic psychiatrist, the woman who had risked everything with him to reel in the Highway Killer, a.k.a. Jonah Wrens.  The woman who still visited him in dreams.

Coady walked past her and out the door.  He shut it behind him.

"I asked North where to find you," McCormick said in a gentle, almost vulnerable, voice.  "I made him promise not to tell you."

"He didn’t."  He couldn’t take his eyes off her.  She was thirty-six, slim, with long, straight blond hair and deep brown eyes.  Anyone would describe her as pretty.  But for Clevenger, she was more than beautiful.  She was a key to something locked up inside him.

He saw she was wearing the same pale rose lipstick that she had been wearing the first time he met her, a year before.  He remembered how amazed he had been that day at the way she surrendered not one iota of her femininity while briefing him on the carnage Wrens had inflicted as he crisscrossed the country.

"I’m working at the Agency again," she said.  "The past month."

McCormick had resigned as Chief of Forensic Psychiatry after her direct supervisor, a man named Kane Warner, Director of the Bureau’s Behavioral Sciences unit, discovered she and Clevenger had been lovers while tracking down Wrens.

"Same position?" Clevenger asked.

She shook her head.  "I have Kane’s old job."

"I’m impressed."  He wondered whether McCormick’s father, an ex-Senator, had had anything to do with her replacing the man who had pressured her to quit.  "Does your new job include giving me a little therapy after I get pistol-whipped for doing mine?"

"I’m not here on assignment," she said.

He nodded.  It would be so simple to go to her, take her in his arms and kiss her.  His attraction to her was magnetic.  She steadied him.  His pulse slowed in her presence.  His anxiety about the world and his place in it all but disappeared.  He thought about his old professor John Money, about his
lovemap
theory.  Maybe McCormick was his.

But even a
lovemap
doesn’t take you neatly past every obstacle.  There was the fact that Whitney was so close to her father that there might not be room to be truly intimate with another man.  There was the fact that she was back working for a law enforcement agency Clevenger had gone to war with more than once.  And above all else, there was the fact that Clevenger was committed to fathering Billy Bishop, which left him little time for romance.

"So why did you come here?" he asked her.

"To make things easier for you."

"How?"

"By getting you to forget the discs, for one thing."

"I thought you weren’t here on assignment."

"I want to be here," she said.  "No one sent me.  But you should know those discs were confiscated because they have implications for national security.  It’s nothing personal."

"It’s hard not to take a pistol-whipping personally."

She smiled.  "What I’m trying to say is that no one wants to stop you from finding John Snow’s killer.  That’s not what this operation was about.  It was about plugging a leak."

"Did they take the discs out of evidence here at the station?"

"Those discs don’t exist.  You’ll never see them or hear of them again," she said.  "Not them, not the journal."

Clevenger had left his photocopy of the journal beside his computer.  No doubt the FBI had grabbed that, too.  "Why are you involved in this?" Clevenger asked.  "A murder investigation in Boston wouldn’t usually travel to the Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico."

"I’m not involved.  My dad is."

"Ah...  Senator McCormick had been an integral part of the Intelligence Community before running for office.  Apparently, he still was.  "Why am I not surprised?" Clevenger asked.

"Don’t get started.  I don’t need you playing psychoanalyst with me."

"What if I need those discs to solve my murder case?"

"We’re talking about missile technology, Frank.  A bunch of highly encrypted data.  Mathematical equations.  What difference would seeing them make?"

"I don’t know.  That’s what bothers me."

"So be bothered," McCormick said.  "But move on."

"Or?"

"You don’t want to be part of the problem when it comes to national security.  Not these days."

That was a pretty clear warning.  "And no one told you to tell me this?"

"No.  You already took one blow to the head.  I want to save you the trouble of running into brick walls."

"I get the message," he said.

She looked genuinely worried he would ignore her advice.

"I hear you," he said.  "Okay?"

She nodded.

"So what do you say?  You around tonight?  We could get a late dinner."

"I am, if you want me to be."

"Nine o’clock?  I want to make sure Billy’s home and settled."

"He’s home by nine these days?"

"Almost never. But I always have hope."

"Good for you — and him."

"Where do I pick you up?"

"I’ll check into the Four Seasons."

Clevenger had to smile at the coincidence.

"What?"

"Nothing.  I’ll make a reservation at Aujourd’hui."

They stood there in silence several seconds.  Then McCormick walked toward him, stopping a foot away.  "See you later," she said.