Stone Cold (7 page)

CHAPTER 16

O
LIVER
S
TONE STARED
at the wall opposite him while the two thirty-something men in shirtsleeves with their guns and badges hanging on their black belts hovered around like vultures over roadkill. His voluntary appearance at the FBI’s Washington Field Office had not earned him any brownie points, even with Alex Ford of the Secret Service accompanying him to the interview. Alex had told the agents in charge of Carter Gray’s homicide investigation about Stone’s recent heroics in foiling an espionage ring. However, the agents had brushed that off.

One of them said to Alex, “I deal with murder and I got a big one hanging around my neck and a lot of pressure from upstairs to get results.” He plopped down in front of Stone at the small table.

“Now let’s try the name thing one more time. What’s yours?”

“Oliver Stone, like I told you the last four times you asked.”

“Let me see some ID.”

“And as I told you four times before, I don’t have any.”

The other agent said incredulously, “How does anybody in the twenty-first century not have ID?”

Stone looked at him, bemused. “I know who I am. And I don’t really care if no one else does.”

“So you came all the way down here to tell us what—nothing other than the fact that you’re apparently a famous film director who dresses like a bum?”

“Actually, I came down here to tell you that I visited Carter Gray at his home last night at
his
request. I arrived around nine and left about forty-five minutes later. He sent his driver for me. The man can certainly vouch for the fact that when I left, the house was still standing and the man inside that house was still alive.”

Alex interjected, “Have you talked to the driver?”

The two agents glanced at each other. One said to Stone, “What’d you two talk about?”

“It was private. I’m certain it had nothing to do with what happened to Mr. Gray.” Stone of course had every reason to believe that what Gray had told him about the other three men dying was very much tied to Gray’s death.

“I sense uncooperative behavior,” the same agent said.

His partner added, “And I sense an obstruction charge coming. You like to sit in a jail cell, Mr. Stone, while we run down who you really are?”

Stone said calmly, “If you believe you have enough to charge me then charge me. If you don’t I’m late for another appointment.”

“You’re a busy man are you,
Mr.
Stone?” one of the agents remarked sarcastically.

“I try to stay productive. But I’ll make a deal with you.”

“We don’t do deals.”

“I’ll go with you to the crime scene. If I see anything that strikes me funny, I’ll let you know.”

“Strikes you funny? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” the first agent said.

“Just what it sounds like.”

“No way in hell are we taking you to the crime scene.”

“If you killed the guy you might be looking to screw up some evidence,” the other agent said.

Stone sighed. “Call the director of the FBI, please.”

“Excuse me?” one agent snapped, looking incredulously at him.

“Call the head of the FBI. He sent me a commendation letter recently. By coincidence I brought a copy of it with me. I called his office before coming down here. I told him if I had any trouble, I’d give him a call.”

Stone handed the letter across to the agent. With his partner looking over his shoulder they read it word for word, then glanced at Alex, who merely shrugged.

Stone said, “Do you call or do we choose not to bother the director and just go to the crime scene? I don’t have all day.”

“No reason to bother the director,” one of the agents said finally.

Stone rose. “Delighted to hear it.”

CHAPTER 17

S
TONE WALKED NEAR
the wreckage of Carter Gray’s house with one of the FBI agents and Alex Ford.

“Gas explosion?” Alex asked the agent.

“That’s what it looks like, although I’m not sure how it was possible. The place wasn’t that old. And it had all the latest safety features.”

Stone was staring at what was left of the house he’d been sitting in only last night. “Where was his body found?”

“Sorry, can’t say. The
remains
of a body were found in the bedroom.”

“Positive ID?”

“Suffice it to say that we consider this a homicide investigation regarding the owner of the property.”

“Did you find the driver to confirm Oliver’s story?”

The agent shook his head. “The man’s gone missing. He was with the CIA. Not sure what the story was there. Of course, that means we just have your word for it that he drove you home,” he added, eyeballing Stone.

“If I were going to blow up the man I wouldn’t have told anyone I was meeting with him, especially a United States Secret Service agent. And I certainly wouldn’t have done the deed on the very night I did meet with him.”

“The fact that the house blew up right after he met with you
is
the reason you’re a suspect,” the agent countered.

“And it’s also the reason I’m out here,” Stone said. “Because the faster you find the real killer, the sooner I’m off that list.”

“Anyone else around?” Alex asked.

The agent nodded, his gaze still on Stone. “A guard. He came out of the guesthouse over there and got hit by some debris and was actually on fire. He says he remembers somebody knocking him down and putting out the flames. He passed out and the next thing he remembers is being put in the back of an ambulance. He’s in the burn unit at a hospital in Annapolis. He’ll be okay.”

Alex said, “So there
was
somebody else out here last night.”

The agent was still staring at Stone, who raised his hands and said, “You can check me for burns, if you’d like.”

“It wasn’t the other guy, the driver?” Alex said quickly while giving Stone a “knock it off” look.

“The guard was in so much pain he could only see it was a guy,” the agent admitted. “But if it
was
the driver why should he have run off?”

“He would if he had something to do with the explosion,” Stone noted. “And the fact that he’s gone missing now? Not to tell you how to run your investigation, but it is something to think about.”

“We have thought about it,” the agent said gruffly.

“Find anything useful in the house?” Stone asked.

“If we did, you would not be on the list of people we would inform.”

Stone smiled, turned away and saw it. He said slowly, “Well, since I’m not in the loop you won’t mind if I just take a walk along the cliffs. Be sure to keep me in your line of sight in case I make a run for it.”

As he walked away the agent said to Alex, “Okay, fed to fed, who the hell is that guy?”

“Someone I’d trust my life with. Someone I
have
trusted my life with.”

“Care to share?”

“No, it’s national security stuff and you’d never believe me anyway.”

The agent stared at the rumpled Stone. “National security! The guy looks borderline homeless.”

“Actually, he works in a cemetery,” Alex said helpfully.

The agent just shook his head and then followed Stone, who was over near the cliffs.

What had caught Stone’s eye was the gas regulator post. As he headed toward it the same agent called out, “We’ve checked that out already. Obvious point.”

“And?”

“And it was working fine and no forced entry.”

“There wouldn’t be any sign of forced entry if the person knew what he was doing. But the gas pressure can be manipulated from here?”

“Presumably. But we checked the box and the pressure hadn’t been changed.”

Stone recalled the long window of Gray’s house looking out onto the cliffs. There was something gnawing at his memory. He turned back to the agent.

“Well, if you can change the pressure, you can change it back.”

“Okay, anything else strike you funny?” the man asked.

“Let’s say you greatly increase the gas pressure going into the house, which blows out the safety overrides. In seconds the place is filled with gas.”

“But you need something to ignite that gas.”

“Turning on a light would create enough of a spark to do it.”

“True. We’ve got some bomb-sniffing dogs coming out. Unless they turn up some dynamite or C4, we might have to look at the gas angle more closely.”

Stone suddenly remembered what he needed to. He left the agent and rejoined Alex.

“Anything occur to you?” Alex asked.

“You fill the house with gas by manipulating the pressure. A light spark will ignite the gas, but if Gray is asleep you can’t count on that. And you don’t want him to smell the gas and escape. So you have a man standing about two hundred yards from the back of the house, near the cliffs over there. He fires an incendiary bullet through the window. The bullet passes through the glass, igniting on impact and triggering the gas explosion. If they find a colored bit of metal in there it may be from the bullet’s nose. Incendiary rounds are typically colored so people don’t mix them up.”

Alex nodded thoughtfully. “But how would he get away? The front was blocked. Unless the guard who got burned passed out and didn’t see the guy get by him.”

Stone and Alex walked back over to the agent. “Any evidence of the person leaving through the woods over there?” Stone asked the FBI man.

The agent shook his head. “We’ve been all over it. No trace, and there would have been. And there’s no easy way to get back to the main road from there.”

“But the person could have left directly by the main road, then?”

“Don’t think so. I forgot to mention that the guard who got burned said the guy who helped him ran back this way, not toward the road.”

Stone walked over to the cliffs with the agent tagging along. “Then he went out this way. Probably came in the same way.”

The agent looked down. “That’s sheer rock, a good thirty feet.”

“It’s not sheer. There’re plenty of handholds if you know where to look.”

“Okay, you climb up. But what about the going down part?”

“Well, since I don’t see anything around here you could attach a rope to, I’m assuming he jumped.”

The agent gazed at the swirling water far below. “That’s impossible.”

“Not really.” Stone thought,
Actually, I did the same thing thirty years ago.
Only it was fifty feet up and there were people shooting at me.

Stone drove back to D.C. with Alex.

“Not a bad morning’s work,” Alex said appreciatively.

“Knowing how it was done and finding out who did it are two very different things. Carter Gray had a lot of enemies.”

“Granted, but don’t you have any guesses? I mean he had to have some reason to want to meet with you.”

Stone hesitated. He didn’t like keeping things back from Alex, but sometimes honest disclosure, even for good reasons, turned out to be a bad decision. “I don’t believe it’s connected.”

He could tell Alex didn’t buy this statement, but he chose not to add to it.

As they drove on Stone stared out the window. Three men he’d worked with decades ago were suddenly all dead. Carter Gray had met to warn him about this strange chain of events. The very night of that warning he had been blown up. Whoever had done this had found three deeply covered, highly skilled former assassins and murdered them. And then he had succeeded in killing Carter Gray, a man who had few peers when it came to outwitting the competition.

A person smart enough to do all that could conceivably discover who Oliver Stone really was. And come and kill him too.

And maybe I would deserve it,
Stone thought. Because the only thing he had in common with the dead men was that they were all former killers themselves.

CHAPTER 18

A
NNABELLE STOOD OUTSIDE
the gates of the cemetery where Stone was caretaker. After her talk with Leo and her conversation with Stone, she had made up her mind. This was not Oliver Stone’s fight. Friend or not, she could not allow him to get involved. If Bagger somehow killed him, Annabelle knew she could not live with that guilt.

The gates were locked, but with a tension tool and lock pick two minutes later they were open and she was on the front porch of the cottage. She slipped the note she had taken nearly an hour to compose, despite its brevity, under the door. A minute later she was back in her car. Three hours later she was riding into the sky inside a United Airlines jet. As the plane tracked the Potomac River on the climb out, Annabelle glanced out the window. Georgetown was directly below them. She thought she could see the little well-tended cemetery,
his
cemetery. Perhaps he was down there amid the hallowed ground working away at his tombstones, attending to the dead and buried, atoning for past sins.

“So long, Oliver Stone,” she said to herself.
Good-bye, John Carr.

“I love this Internet crap,” Bagger bellowed as he stared at the papers one of his IT guys had just handed to him.

“It is quite amazing, Mr. Bagger,” the young bespectacled man began in an immodest tone. “And frankly—”

“Get the hell outta here,” Bagger roared and the terrified man fled.

Bagger sat down behind his desk and studied the papers again. He’d retained an Internet search organization. He didn’t know what their sources were and he didn’t really care. They had delivered, that’s all that mattered. Annabelle Conroy had walked down the aisle, over fifteen years ago, with a guy named Jonathan DeHaven. They had been married, ironically Bagger thought, in Vegas. The downside was there were no pictures of the happy couple, only the names. It had to be the same Annabelle Conroy, how many people getting married in Sin City would have that name? But he had to be sure. So Bagger picked up his phone and called a PI firm he had used in the past. These folks worked right on the edge of the envelope and occasionally skirted past that barrier. He loved them for it, and also because they got results. He would have put them onto Annabelle before now, but he wanted a piece of information for them to start with, and now he had it. When people got married they signed lots of documents. And they had to live somewhere and get things like insurance, and utilities and maybe wills and cars in both the names.

He chuckled. Annabelle had posed as a CIA operative when running her scam on him. Well, he would show the lady what real intelligence was.

He said into the phone, “Hey, Joe, it’s Jerry Bagger, got a job for you. A really, really important job. I need to find an old friend. And I need to do it fast because I want to wrap my arms around her and give the lady a nice big squeeze.”