The Big Dig (20 page)

I drove by the dark
and icy river. Street lamps glittered along the Esplanade and I was glad I'd taken up smoking again. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have had a pack at the ready. I'd have had to stop at a store.

When Timothy McVeigh was arrested, he wore a T-shirt with the slogan
“Sic Semper Tyrannis”
emblazoned across his chest. That's what John Wilkes Booth yelled after he shot Lincoln in the old Ford Theater. “Thus always with tyrants” is a rough approximation. The back of McVeigh's shirt was devoted to a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

I'd need to tell the cops within twelve hours, or risk disaster. I could trust Mooney,
knew
I could trust him, but on something like this, he'd bring in the Bureau immediately. I knew who'd taken Krissi: Veronica James and her Charles River Dog Care colleagues, bent on vengeance for Waco. I knew why they'd taken her: to force her parents to give them access to the Dig site.

Fournier had blundered in over his head, thinking Liz Horgan had her own reasons for stalling progress and limiting access—money reasons. He'd tried sexual blackmail, backed by veiled threats on the IG's hotline. Someone had overheard a phone call, lured him back to the site, killed him. A member of the gang that had kidnapped Kristal Horgan? Or possibly Gerry Horgan? I wasn't sure which. I ground out my cigarette butt in the dashboard ashtray. Horgan's automatic rested uncomfortably at the base of my spine.

Where would they hold the girl?

I left my car a block from Dana Endicott's brownstone in a space reserved for resident parking. A ticket was the least of my worries. I rang the doorbell, waited, willing her to be home. I knew she'd been released from the General because I'd called, but what if she'd—Someone hit the buzzer without asking who it was, an action so suspicious I almost transferred Horgan's gun to my hand.

My client answered the door in person, tying a robe around her waist. She had puffy eyes, a bandage over her right temple, an eager expression. Her face fell when she saw me.

“You ought to use the chain.” It amazes me, the carelessness of city people who ought to know better.

She opened the door wider and an inquisitive nose hit my crotch. She had one dog on a leash. The others frisked around her. “What is it? Have you—”

“The neighbors don't need to hear this.”

“I'm sorry. Come in.”

“Will the dogs let me?”

She gave a hand signal, and they backed off.

“I'd hoped it was Veejay, but Tandy would have known,” she said regretfully.

“Is that Tandy?”

“Yes. The one with the tail like a husky. She's a trained hunter. Elkhounds are almost like bloodhounds.” She knelt and patted the two goldens, detaching the leash from the bigger one's collar.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

I met her eyes. “Are you alone?”

“Except for the dogs. Esperanza wanted to stay, but I told her I'd be fine.” She led me through the opening between the fish tanks into the room with the paintings. I wondered what the dogs made of the fish swimming behind glass. “You seem—I don't know—angry.”

“I don't like to be lied to.”

“I haven't lied,” she said. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I know about Veronica's sister.”

“I'm sorry, but—which one?”

If she knew, she was dangerous. If she didn't, she was a gullible fool. Not a muscle tensed in her face to betray her. She didn't seem alarmed or upset.

I said, “Veronica's older sister, Leslie, died in 1993 in the FBI assault at Waco, Texas. They never really figured out how many died. Some say seventy-four, some seventy-six. I've seen it up into the eighties. There were twenty-seven children. One was Veronica's nephew.”

She sat down on a deep green sofa, sinking into it abruptly as though her legs would no longer support her.

“The sister had married,” I went on, as my client gaped, struggling to find words. “Her name was no longer James.”

“Oh my God, poor Veejay. But she never said—”

“Poor Veejay is heavily involved in a plot to avenge her sister. And that's where you come in.”

“I don't—I had no—”

“Something made Veejay very attractive to the people she's working with, and I'm guessing it was money, your money.”

“I didn't pay her. I told you—she didn't pay rent, but that's all. She worked.”

“You never gave her money?”

“Of course not.”

“Don't try to protect her. She's been using you, living here, waiting for her moment.”

“I never gave her money.”

“You never gave her money for
anything
? For charity? For an old dogs' home?”

She leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands covering her face.

“Tell me.”

“Oh, God. No one can know about this. If my family—”

“What charity?”

“I can't remember the name. Some fresh air camp for dogs. I mean, I give to tons of charities. Why wouldn't I give to one recommended by a friend?”

“I need the name.”

“I don't remember.”

“Where's your checkbook? You didn't give her cash, did you?”

I followed her upstairs, into the spotless kitchen, helped her find the purse that sat on the floor next to a flowered chair. She handed me her checkbook with a curt, “Look for yourself,” and sank onto a stool at the granite counter. I ran my index finger down the check register. The lines were close together, jammed with crabbed handwriting and the kind of sums I'll never find in my own checkbook.

“What has she done? How much trouble is she in?” Dana spoke haltingly, as though the words were being forced out of her mouth.

“She kidnapped a girl.”

“You're wrong.”

There were sums to Saks and Neimans, American Express, MasterCard, to well-known local charities, the Boston Adult Literacy Foundation, the Jimmy Fund.

Camp River Ridge
—river as in Charles River Dog Care, ridge as in Ruby Ridge—an echo, a statement. The check was for $30,000. To her, it must have seemed like a nickel. To them? How many “patriots” had it kept afloat?

“What did she tell you about the place? Where is it?” If it existed.

She raised a shaky hand to her bandaged head. “Just a minute. Please. I'm trying to think. Okay. It was in New Hampshire. Fresh air, dogs, an inner-city escape thing. I think it had just started, or they were going to start it this summer. Yes. It was starting. Veejay thought she might want to be a counselor there. I didn't want her to go.”

“Did she give you any literature?”

“I don't know. There may have been a flyer, a handout, but I haven't seen it in months.”

“Where were you when she gave it to you?”

“I don't know. I don't remember.”

“What color was it?”

“I don't know.”

I kept at her. Maybe the flyer was blue, a folded sheet of flimsy paper, two pages of sparse printing. She was sure the camp was in New Hampshire, but I couldn't get a town, not even an area, southern or northern.

If any of the New England states harbored western-style militias, I'd bet on New Hampshire, with its “Live Free or Die” credo. The Jaguar whose plates currently masked Dana Endicott's Jeep had been stolen in New Hampshire. Claire Harper could find out the name of the town.

“Do you have the cancelled check?” I asked.

“You're wrong about the kidnapping. Veejay's not like that.”

“How did she come to work for the dog care place? Did she answer an ad?”

“She heard about it.”

“From?”

“I don't know. It doesn't make sense. Why would she tell me she was going away for the weekend? Why not just leave?”

“Why would she leave, when she's got a perfect setup here?”

“Then why didn't she say she'd be gone two weeks, a month? Why hasn't she called me?”

Why, indeed?

“A change of plans,” I said.

“I don't buy it.”

“Veejay's in it up to her neck. The girl went with her, trusted her.”

“Give me my checkbook.” She flattened it on the counter, started to write. “I'll pay you. To keep my name out of it. To save her, to help her.”

“She's in too deep,” I said.

She kept writing in spite of my protest, tore off the check, and handed it to me. Thirty thousand. The same amount she'd donated to Camp River Ridge.

“Keep me out of it,” she said. “Try to save Veronica. I'll do anything to help.”

“Give me the cancelled check.”

Within fifteen minutes, she found the small slip of blue paper in a file in the study. I couldn't make out the signature of the endorser, but the name of a New Hampshire bank was stamped on the back.

I took a silver pen from a holder, a sheet of stationery from a box, scribbled a few hasty lines.

“Dana, do you recognize this mark?”

She swallowed and licked her dry lips. In her robe, with her bandaged head, and tousled hair, she hardly looked like the polished woman who'd hired me. “Yes.”

“What does it mean?”

“Mean?”

“What is it?”

“I don't know.”

“Where have you seen it?”

“On Veejay,” she said in a small voice. “Underneath her left breast.”

The cold night air felt
bracing. I'd hardly slept with Leland Walsh in my bed, but I wasn't tired. I'd passed beyond exhaustion, had no desire to rest. I wanted to keep going, keep working, but I was stuck. The Registry had closed hours ago, and while I could reach Claire at home, how could she in turn squeeze midnight information from the New Hampshire Commission of Motor Vehicles?

I didn't have the clout; I didn't have the power. But how could I sleep, knowing what I knew?

When I can't sleep, I drive. I took the Mass Ave Bridge across the river, Memorial Drive outbound, thinking, at first, that I'd try a circuitous route home. Instead I found myself exiting at the BU Bridge, cruising the back streets of Cambridgeport, chain-smoking three cigarettes in the Strawberries parking lot before changing my mind and heading downtown.

Monday night is a dead night in Boston, the theaters dark, the tourists gone, the revelers sleeping off the weekend. I spotted an empty parking space on Bowdoin Street near the JFK Building, pulled on gloves and a hooded scarf. Gusts of icy wind tried to rip the scarf off as I crossed the bricks and cement of City Hall Plaza, descended the steps to Congress Street, moving closer to Faneuil Hall. I began counting my steps at the statue of Samuel Adams, pacing steadily eastward, toward the ocean and the site. Patrons drank and laughed in the marketplace. Diners lingered over after-dinner drinks in the restaurants. Lights twinkled off mica chips in the pavement and distant music welled from a hotel bar. I stopped walking before I got to Atlantic Avenue, took shelter behind a street lamp, and estimated the last twenty-five yards. I didn't want the night watchman to notice me.

I turned and made my way slowly back toward the hall, counting paces again to make sure I'd measured accurately the first time. The Cradle of Liberty, site of the great Patriot's Day tribute, would be jammed at six o'clock tomorrow evening, the old meeting hall on the second floor SRO. I'd heard they were planning to hook up outdoor speakers to accommodate the overflow crowd. The honored speakers, the honored guests, would be concentrated inside the hall: the ex-presidents, the Massachusetts senators, Senator Gleason of Idaho, who'd once chaired a committee that had given the FBI a clean slate on Waco.

The old hall looked serene and untroubled behind its shield of concrete barricades. They'd protect the national monument from a truck bomb, an Oklahoma City bomb. But they wouldn't protect it from explosive charges in tunnels, in old sewage or drainage tunnels widened and redirected with borrowed tools. Maybe the humming noise I'd heard the night I'd rescued Leland Walsh had come from underground machinery, from a drilling rig borrowed off another Horgan site or ordered especially for this one.

There's a post office inside the hall, gimcrack tourist shops on the first floor. It was always like that. Even in 1742 when it opened, there was space for a market as well as the meeting hall for town gatherings. Here James Otis, Sam Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren, the “Sons of Liberty,” gave impassioned calls for opposition to the sugar tax, the stamp act, the tax on tea that provoked the Boston Tea Party.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Jefferson had said nothing about the blood of innocent bystanders. Jefferson hadn't lived to witness IRA bombings in London department stores, Israeli teenagers blown to bits while eating pizza in crowded restaurants.

There was no visible police presence around the historic hall, and why should there be, with the Patriot's Day event sixteen hours away? As I'd paced the distance from hall to site and back again, had I walked over a finished tunnel, or were patient tunnelers still digging beneath my feet? Did they live down there? Was everything ready? Were they waiting till D-day to bring in the explosives? I swallowed suddenly, hearing Liz Horgan describe the location of the locked storage shed in my memory. If it was flush along the west slurry wall, it could be a blind, positioned to conceal the entrance to the tunnel.

Twenty-foot-thick sections of bedrock had been blasted from the bottom of Boston Harbor to make way for the harbor tunnel. When the major explosions went off, there'd been an environmental brouhaha over the inadvertent killing of fish. The solution: a fabulously expensive “fish-startle system” to keep migrating fish away from the blasting zones. After spending a million dollars to startle fish, who'd question a few hundred bucks' worth of explosives ordered by a reputable contractor?

I shivered and backed away. I didn't think Krissi Horgan was down in the tunnel, in the darkness, but I didn't know, and that was maddening. I wanted to make a move, do
something
. I could grab the night watchman, threaten him with Horgan's automatic, force him to take me to the girl. If he refused, would I kill him? If he agreed, would he bring me to a spot where I'd be outgunned, outnumbered?

I wanted to do something, but not something foolish, not something fatal. In the morning, Claire could tell me where to look. I had time. They wouldn't blow the building till Senator Gleason was safely inside.