The Sentinel (30 page)

"I ain't no rat."

Garrison pointed the SIG-Sauer at Timmons's right leg.

"Don't shoot!"

"Talk."

"I went to Vincent as a favor. A guy I know offered me ten grand to find him a hit man. Supposedly there was some paper out on some guy who'd ripped someone off for a lot of money. The contract was for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He wanted a shooter from outside the country - someone reliable, a professional. All I did was make a few calls. I knew Spike Vincent had connections across the pond, so I asked him if he knew anyone who fit the bill. He told me about this Alexander; some dude he'd served time with. Vincent gave me his E-mail address and I passed the information on. I'm not guilty of any crime. I'm bleeding, man. You got to get me to a hospital or I'm gonna die."

"The guy who was looking for the hit man. I didn't hear a name."

"You ain't no cop. Who the fuck are you?"

Garrison slapped him across the face with the gun, knocking him down. As he tried to get up, Garrison kicked him. Timmons fell backward, into the shallow river.

"Eddie Richardson," Timmons said after spitting water.

"Where can I find him?"

"I met him in a bar called the Corral Club. He seemed like a together guy. I know he's done some time. That's about it. All I did was give him some information. A pass-off kind of thing. What happened after that, I had no control over. I'm an innocent bystander. Why should I get screwed behind something like this? I'm going to bleed out, man."

"I'll take you to the hospital just as soon as you tell me what you know about Richardson."

"Medium build, brown hair. He weighs more than you.

"Where can I find him?"

"Look, dude. I can't tell you something I don't know. This Richardson is a secretive-type person. That was one of the reasons he and I didn't hit it off after a couple of weeks. He was a damn liar. I don't know where he is staying. And I just didn't trust him."

Garrison raised his gun and took careful aim.

"What the hell are you doing? I told you everything I know. I swear I'm telling you the-"

Aiming the SIG-Sauer slightly to the right of Timmons, Garrison fired. Timmons shrieked and fell into the shallow water as the fire flash momentarily lit the river. Timmons struggled to his knees and patted his chest to see if he had been hit. Garrison aimed at his head.

"Richardson is staying in a motel-at the Viking Ship Residence Inn in Vienna, Virginia. That's near Washington, D.C. I talked to him day before yesterday. He said he wouldn't be coming back for about a week. But if you tell him I ratted him out, he'll kill me."

"If I get back there and I find out that you called him and told him I was looking for him, then all bets are off. I'll be back to finish you."

"I won't. I swear."

Garrison drove Timmons's car to Bakersfield Mercy Hospital and left him at the emergency entrance.

Garrison cruised south to Highway 99, ascending from the Central Valley flatland up the Grapevine, a steep grade leading through the mountainous Tejon Pass toward Los Angeles. His mind was filled with what he had learned. It was a jumble of facts that barely fit together, leading to someone named Eddie Richardson. The case reminded Garrison of other investigations where the facts were disparate, like blackbirds that swooped down now and then, wings fluttering, only to fly away again. Some of the cases remained unsolved to this day. But something about this investigation was different and, for the life of him, he couldn't put his finger on it.

About forty minutes later, he reached the bottom of the grapevine, where two main L.A. freeway arteries led into the smoggy Los Angeles basin. He took Highway 210, leading south and east to Interstate 10, leading toward Ontario Airport, east of Los Angeles. He would depart from Ontario rather than the Bakersfield or Los Angeles International Airport, where he assumed agents might be monitoring outgoing flights, looking for him.

At the Ontario Airport he parked his car in a pay lot and used his cell phone to make a reservation under the name Joachim Porzig on a flight from L.A. Airport to Mexico City. He believed that the Porzig passport that he'd used to fly from D.C. had probably been reported stolen by now, and the reservation would create a false trail for his pursuers that would give him more time.

In the departure terminal, Garrison roamed about a ticket counter until he spotted a man similar to him in age and description. He got in line behind him. The line moved to the ticket counter, where the man purchased a ticket. The clerk asked for his driver's license and the man took a wallet from his inside jacket pocket, displayed the license, and paid for the ticket. Garrison departed the line. The man left the counter and walked to a departure area, where he shrugged off his jacket and hung it over the back of a lounge seat. He sat down and began reading a magazine. Garrison sat next to him. When the man rose to make a call from a pay telephone a few feet away, Garrison looked about quickly to see if anyone was watching, then reached into the jacket and pulled out the wallet. He walked to an American Airlines ticket counter, hoping that no one had seen him.

Garrison asked a harried young female clerk for a one-way ticket to Washington, D.C. She filled out a ticket. She asked for his identification. He handed her the driver's license that was in the wallet.

During the flight back to D.C, Garrison gazed across the wing at a wide ledge of rain clouds far in the distance: shimmering gray cotton painted in the sky. He wondered about Martha Breckinridge - what she'd thought after hearing that he'd escaped from custody - and about Eleanor. Was she working to clear him? Or had someone in the White House convinced her he was an assassin? Garrison felt alone and abandoned. Experience had taught him that the answer to most cases - the key that opened the lock - was invariably found not just in assimilating the relevant facts, but in the way one looked at them. He had to find that way. There was no turning back. He knew that he had crossed the point of no return.

****

CHAPTER 24

GARRISON SHOWED HIS badge to the motel clerk at the Viking Ship Residence Inn in Vienna, Virginia.

"Do you have a Richardson registered here?"

The motel was a forty-room establishment that was next door to a supermarket. Fearful of renting a car, Garrison had taken the Metro from Dulles Airport to Vienna and then walked from the station to the motel.

"What's this about?" the clerk said.

He had a deep accent that Garrison guessed was East Indian. He was fiftyish and morbidly overweight. He wore a white Guayabera shirt with ink marks on the pockets and his eyeglasses were coated with dandruff flakes.

"A security matter."

"Mr. Richardson is in Room 785."

"May I see the registration card?"

Reaching into a file box behind the counter, the clerk thumbed through a few dividers, then handed Garrison a registration card. Garrison read it. Eddie Richardson had registered a week earlier, listing his address as a post office box in Bakersfield. There was neither an automobile license number nor a telephone number listed on the card.

"Has he made any telephone calls from his room?"

The clerk let out his breath as if exasperated, and checked another file. "No telephone calls."

"Have you seen him today?"

"There are too many guests staying here for me to keep track. I am not their father and mother."

"Id like you to call his room to see if he's there. If he answers, just make up some excuse-"

"I know what to do." The manager dialed the phone and held the receiver to his ear for what must have been a full minute. "No one answers." He set the receiver down.

"I'll need the key."

"Do you have a search warrant?"

"No. But if I get one, it gives me the right to kick in the door and tear up the room. Handing over the key for a few minutes could save you some repair bills."

Garrison wasn't going to wait. He had to get inside the room to see what Richardson had in there.

The manager opened a drawer, took out a key, and handed it to him.

Garrison glanced at some room numbers to figure out the location of Richardson's room. On the second floor, he put his ear to the door of Room 785. He heard a radio inside, playing loudly-a talk show? Garrison drew his gun. Using his left hand, he slipped the key into the lock and shoved the door open. The light was on. He walked inside with gun at the ready, his finger on the trigger.

There was a body on the floor next to the bed, curled in the fetal position. Garrison moved closer. It was Hightower and he was obviously dead. His grayish pallor and the expression of frozen anguish on his face would have made a startling Halloween mask. Garrison stepped back.

"What the hell?"

Garrison bolstered his gun. Kneeling down, he touched Hightower's arm. Stiff. He'd been dead for a few hours. Hightower was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. On his chest were three bloodstains that had melded together and dried into fuzzy, uneven red circles. What had Hightower been doing in Richardson's room?

Garrison stood and returned to the door. Taking the key out of the lock, he pulled the door closed. He began searching the room. A half-full bottle of Yankee Clipper whiskey was on the dresser table. The drawers held only socks and T-shirts. A small garment bag on the floor next to the bed had nothing in it but men's clothing. He lifted the mattress and pulled it away from the bed to check behind. Nothing. Garrison picked up a wallet on the bed. It contained a few hundred dollars and a Florida driver's license in the name of Eddie Richardson. The identification photograph on it was of Frank Hightower. Garrison felt a chill travel down the back of his neck.

Richardson was Frank Hightower.

What the hell is going on? Garrison asked himself. It didn't make sense. Hightower, using the fictitious name Richardson, had hired the hit man, Garth Alexander, and then reported the assassination plot to Garrison. Hightower's information had been a ruse to lead Garrison and the rest of the Secret Service away from the real conspirators. Someone had used Hightower to throw up a smoke screen. And whoever it was had just made sure that Hightower wouldn't be able to tell what he knew. It was a sophisticated plot that reeked of insider's knowledge of both the Secret Service and the White House.

In a trashcan next to the dresser Garrison found a copy of yesterday's Washington Post, some empty cigarette packages, coffee shop receipts, chewing gum wrappers, orange peels, a receipt from a Pizza Hut restaurant in Beltsville, Maryland. Someone had written, "MEET - 9 PM - EVERY OTHER DAY," on it.

"Beltsville," Garrison said to himself.

Beltsville, Maryland, was where the Secret Service Training Academy and SOT, Flanagan's special unit, were located.

The phone rang, startling Garrison. He let it ring again before picking up the receiver.

"Yes?"

"This is the motel manager. Uh, I found some more telephone records. Would you like to see them?"

"I'll be right down."

"Very good."

The phone clicked.

Garrison knew something was wrong. He could feel it. He moved to the window and peeked through the venetian blinds. The manager opened the motel office door and waved in the direction of a four-door Mercury in the corner of the parking lot, then went back inside.

Flanagan and Beatty got out of the Mercury.

Garrison realized that Flanagan had been waiting for him. How did he know he would come here? Garrison ran to the bathroom and peeked out the louvered window. To the right, a black, late-model Mercury was parked blocking the alley. The two men in it looked like Secret Service agents. To the left, the alley ended behind a tire store. A chain-link fence separated the alley from a supermarket parking lot. Garrison stood frozen for a moment, thinking about what to do, then grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911.