US Marshall 03 - The Rapids (4 page)

“Should have called them before you left New York,” he said to the ceiling. But he hadn’t talked to them at all since Janssen’s arrest.

He let his eyes close, pushing back an image of Night’s Landing and the old log house his grandfather had built, thinking instead about Maggie Spencer and Tom Kopac and what it was about the diplomatic security agent that bothered him.

M
aggie pulled up to Rob’s hotel in her Mini at eight. She didn’t know what else to do except drag him to ’s-Hertogenbosch with her.

He greeted her with a charming smile and two espressos and folded himself into her small car without complaint, handing her one of the espressos. “What is it, about two hours to ’s-Hertogenbosch?”

He pronounced the full name of the southern city the same way her Dutch friends did—flawlessly. It translated as “the duke’s forest” and was typically shortened to Den Bosch, which Maggie could pronounce easily enough. “Should be,” she said, pulling out onto the street.

As he sipped his espresso, Rob dug out a pocket map and checked their route. “Den Bosch was founded in the twelfth century by Hendrik I of Brabant.”

“Ah.”

“Biggest attraction there is Sint Jan’s Kathedraal.”

Maggie didn’t let herself react to his use of the Dutch name for St. John’s Cathedral, where she was supposed to meet her anonymous caller, her ulterior motive for going to Den Bosch on a warm Saturday morning. “You’ve been reading tourist brochures, I see.”

“We might need something to do after we look at the spot where the Dutch police picked up Janssen. Do you know the address of his safe house?”

She nodded. “We could go there, too.”

“Maybe it has window boxes.”

His sarcasm was barely detectable, which, Maggie decided, only made him more dangerous. She’d underestimated him. Dismissed him as not serious, indulged in stereotypes because she hadn’t wanted to deal with him—she’d had better things to do than take care of a deputy marshal who counted among his friends the U.S. president. But Deputy Dunnemore was proving himself to be a much more complicated case than she’d anticipated.

She got onto the motorway, the traffic relatively light on a Saturday morning. “If you don’t want to go to Den Bosch, I can drop you off somewhere else.”

“I’m into the idea now. Have you seen many sights since you’ve been here?”

She reached for her espresso and took too big a sip, nearly burning her mouth, then shook her head,
putting the coffee back in the cup holder. “I’ve only been here three weeks. I haven’t had much time. I vary my run just so I can see more of the streets in The Hague.” She made herself smile through her tension. She didn’t like hiding her real purpose for going to Den Bosch from him. “I could get into castles.”

“All work, no play,” Rob said, looking up from his map. “Does that describe you, Maggie?”

“I don’t know. I’m not that introspective.”

“Interesting, since you’re the new kid, that you should be the one to get the tip on where to find our guy Janssen.”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“Where were you before here?”

“Chicago.”

“And you grew up in…”

“South Florida, for the most part. We moved around a lot before my parents were divorced.”

“They still live there?”

“My mother does.” She left it at that.

But Rob persisted. “Your father?”

“He died a year and a half ago.”

“I’m sorry.” No hesitation, no awkwardness. He had the social graces down pat, when he wanted to use them. “Any theory why Janssen was in Den Bosch?”

She shook her head, reminding herself that Rob’s family had nearly all been killed because of Nick
Janssen and she should cut him some slack. But he wasn’t going to change the subject, obviously. He’d keep grilling her about Janssen and Den Bosch and the tip until she put a stop to it. She didn’t know if he was suspicious of her because of the tip or just tenacious—or both.

“Why do you think the marshals sent you here?” she asked casually. “Given your personal connection to Janssen—”

“No one sent me. I asked to come here.”

It wasn’t the answer she’d expected. “They let you?”

Janssen’s arrest stirred up the media. “I had a lot of reporters on my tail. This way I’m out of sight, out of mind.”

“Or out of sight and they’ll all want to know why and show up here next?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so. Have you had many reporters contact you?”

“Not directly. A few have contacted Public Affairs.”

“I guess it’s not nearly as interesting to have an international fugitive arrested as a presidential connection exposed.”

She tried more of the espresso. Rob had done fine yesterday at the embassy. He was good at small talk, at ease with people. His connection to President Poe made people eager to meet him and be on their best behavior, but in the end, Maggie thought, it hadn’t made that big a difference. The guy was likable. The
mistake, she suspected, was to assume that translated into being a soft touch.

He again consulted his map. “Janssen was picked up on a canal?”

“The Binnendieze. I wasn’t sure of what it was, either. It’s a shallow river, but it looks and feels like a canal. Den Bosch is located in a triangle where the Aa and the Dommel join to form the Dieze River, which eventually runs into the Maas.”

“Ah. So I see on the map.”

“Water’s a big deal in the Netherlands. About a third of the country’s below sea level. We tend to think in terms of the North Sea, but river flooding is a concern, too.”

“Binnendieze—does that mean ‘little Dieze’?”

“Aren’t you the one who speaks all the languages?”

He finished his espresso without answering.

“I heard it was seven,” Maggie persisted.

“Well, one of them isn’t Dutch.”

She laughed. “
Binnen
means inner, or inside. It’s the section of the Dieze that runs within Den Bosch’s original city walls—it’s sort of a natural moat. They’ve cleaned it up and run boat tours on it these days.”

“Bet it used to be the town sewer.”

“That’s what I understand. The tour’s unusual because it takes you
under
the city, actually under people’s houses. For safety reasons, centuries ago,
people could only build inside the city walls. When they ran out of room, they started building over the waterway.”

“Very clever.”

“It sounds like a fascinating tour, doesn’t it?”

“Better than the cathedral, if you ask me.”

Maggie got off the A2 motorway and drove toward the city center, Rob pointing out a stunning fountain featuring a gold dragon in the middle of a roundabout. Remembering directions she’d gotten from a Dutch police inspector, who hadn’t questioned her reasons for asking, she found her way to the boat-tour entrance and parked nearby.

It was a pleasantly warm morning under a clear Dutch-blue sky, a perfect day to play tourist—except that wasn’t why she and Rob were there, Maggie reminded herself as they walked along a shaded street. The narrow, shallow waterway flowed next to them, below street level. Steps lead down to a small dock for the boats, a crowd gathering for the next tour.

“Janssen had two dogs,” Rob said, stopping along the open black-iron fence above the waterway. “Rhodesian ridgebacks.”

“Big dogs.”

“Do we know what happened to them?”

“They weren’t with him when he was arrested. I doubt he had them with him when he took off in May.”

“How long do we think he was in Den Bosch before you got the tip?”

From his tone, Maggie knew he didn’t expect her to have an answer. “Not long, but that’s not a guess at this point. Den Bosch strikes me as an unlikely place for the leader of an international criminal network to turn up. It’s possible he—”

She stopped.
Who was that?
A man in front of a café just down the street…balding, rumpled.

Tom Kopac?

Rob was instantly alert. “What is it?”

“I think I recognize someone. Hold on.”

Maggie started toward the café, but Tom had disappeared. She pushed past the outdoor tables, where a few tourists were enjoying coffee, and checked inside, her eyes quickly adjusting after being in the bright sun.

Nothing.

Had she mistaken someone else for Tom?

No. She was positive it’d been him.

He must have continued past the café or cut down another street.

She headed back outside and scanned the scene.

Rob stood behind her. “What’s going on?”

“A colleague at the embassy is here. Maybe he’s like us, just checking out where Janssen was picked up.”

“Did he work the case?”

She shook her head. “No. But he’s a good guy. A friend.”

“What’s his name?”

“Kopac. Tom Kopac. He works in economic relations.”

Rob frowned at her. “He came by my hotel last night.”

“Tom did? Why?”

“Checking me out. Are you two—”

“No.”

She thought she detected a flicker of amusement at her forceful answer. “You DS agents are the expert drivers. Could he have followed us out here?”

“It’s not like I’m on a secret mission or driving around the secretary of state. I wasn’t paying that close attention, but I doubt—” She realized she sounded very serious and deliberately lightened up. “I’m sure he didn’t follow us.”

“Did he see you just now?”

“You mean, was he running away from me? I don’t know.”

At the same time, they noticed a change in the crowd at the entrance to the boat tour. A sudden tension, gasps.

Screams.

Maggie and Rob charged back down the street, heading for a half-dozen people who were standing at the open fence, pointing into the water. A woman was screaming.

“Een man…”

A man.

Maggie picked out another word.
Gevallen…
Fallen. Fell.

“A man’s fallen into the river,” Rob said tightly.

There were more screams, excited words in Dutch that all ran together to Maggie’s untrained ear.

Rob obviously spoke enough languages that he was able to make out the basics. “They think he’s dead.”

“Not Tom—”

She didn’t know why she said his name.

When they got to the fence and looked down at the river, they could see the body of a man floating facedown in the shallow water, drifting downstream.

The balding head, the stocky build, the rumpled clothes.

“Hell,” Rob breathed. “It’s him. Kopac.”

Maggie turned away and took in a breath, pushing back a rush of emotion, then forced herself to look again at Tom’s body.

Blood.

His head…

The images she was seeing came together, registered. He’d been shot at the base of his neck, the bullet going upward into his brain.

Tom. My God.

There was almost no hope he was alive.

Rob pounded down the stairs to the waterway, and Maggie jumped after him, a man yelling to them in Dutch. From the tone of his voice, she knew he was worried about them.

She understood his fear. “A shooter. Rob, if there’s a shooter—”

But another look at Tom confirmed, at least in Maggie’s mind, it hadn’t been a sniper attack. There was no one hiding on a rooftop—or in the bushes, as the gunman who’d shot Rob had done in Central Park four months ago.

From what she could see, Tom had been shot up close and personal. She felt a sense of revulsion, anger and grief, even as she forced herself to pull back from her emotions and focus on the problem at hand.

Rob pushed out to the edge of the dock. “Someone will have called the police by now.”

As he spoke, Maggie heard sirens. Neither she nor Rob had authority as law enforcement officers in the Netherlands. Given the circumstances, they weren’t even armed.

But they had to make sure there was nothing they could do for Tom.

Rob knelt down and grabbed Tom’s arm. His body was snagged on a support post, and Maggie helped, taking hold of Tom’s belt. His skin was warm, water pouring off his clothes as they managed to get him up onto the platform.

He was dead. He’d probably died instantly.

“I just saw him,” Maggie said. “It wasn’t, what, even five minutes ago? The killer can’t have gotten far. Someone must have seen something, someone—”

Rob glanced up at the frightened and horrified
people along the fence. “At least we know one of us didn’t kill him.”

Maggie nodded. At least they knew that much, if not a damn thing else. Like why Tom was here. If he’d spotted her, heard her. If he’d taken off because he didn’t want to talk to her.

If he’d known his killer.

And if his killer had anything to do with the American fugitive who’d been picked up in Den Bosch two days ago.

“Come on,” Rob said. “The Den Bosch police are going to want to talk to us.”

A dead American in their small city?

The local police most certainly would want to talk to the two U.S. federal agents who’d pulled him out of the river.

“He was the kind of guy who got homesick for Krispy Kreme doughnuts,” Maggie said, realizing her front was soaked with river water.

“A nice guy,” Rob said.

“A very nice guy.”

It was four o’clock before Rob and his DS escort left the police station, their clothes finally dry, every question asked of them answered. Maggie pushed ahead on the narrow, sunny street. “I need to walk,” she said.

Rob didn’t object. It was a hot, still afternoon. The city seemed quiet, almost as if it were mourn
ing the violence that had taken place there a few hours ago.

An exhaustive search hadn’t produced a single lead on Thomas Kopac’s killer so far.

No one saw anything. No one heard anything.

Except for Maggie Spencer.

Rob said nothing as he walked alongside her. She seemed preoccupied. Not, he thought, that she was an easy woman to read.

Various Dutch and American authorities had swarmed the Den Bosch police station, including the FBI and Regional Security Officer George Bremmerton, Maggie’s immediate boss. All of them grilled both her and Rob about what they’d seen that morning, what Maggie had talked about with Kopac in recent days, why he’d shown up at Rob’s hotel last night.

Although she knew Tom Kopac well enough to consider him her first real friend since she’d arrived in the country, Maggie had been straightforward and professional with her answers. She’d also had her own questions, namely, if there was anything about Tom Kopac that she hadn’t been told.

Rob had that same question himself.

Den Bosch police were trying to locate people who’d been in the vicinity of the boat tour that morning, interviewing the café’s wait staff and manager—anyone who might have seen the American who’d turned up in the Binnendieze. Maggie’s sighting of
Kopac and the subsequent commotion along the river pinpointed the approximate time he’d been killed.