“Did you talk to either one of them?”
“Talked to Sam a lot. Furnace is always kicking out on me when I need it the most. He’d come over and get it going. When I still used to drive, he and Tyler would change the oil, check the tires, give my car a good wash. Nice people. Now, Jean, not so much.”
“You talked to her?”
“Tried to. Hard for me to get around. Got DVT, arthritis, Type Two diabetes, bad kidneys, and my liver’s nothing to write home about. You name it I probably got it. Doctors going to pickle me after I’m gone so they can study all the things I got wrong.” She stopped and looked questioningly at Michelle. “Brain fart, honey. Where was I?”
“You were trying to talk to Jean Wingo?” Michelle said helpfully.
“Hell yes, excuse my French. Now, going across that street for me is like running a marathon, but I did it, more than once. Even baked her a pie to welcome her to the neighborhood and I don’t, as a rule, bake anymore because I’m just an Alzheimer’s moment away from burning down the place. Now what did she do? Took the pie, thanked me, and shut the door in my face. Another time saw her out in the yard watering the flower beds. I started over to chat with her. She looked at me like I had dog poop on my face and went inside before I got halfway across the street.”
“Not the friendliest of neighbors,” said Michelle in a commiserating tone.
“Not a neighbor at all, least to my way of thinking.”
“Any idea where she might have gone?”
“No. But good riddance, in my mind. I’m just worried about Tyler. Now, that boy loves his daddy. Now his daddy’s gone and the woman his father was presumably hitched to is gone. Lots of turnover. Don’t know what’s coming down the pike next.”
“Me either,” said Michelle. “Well, thanks.”
“Anytime.” Dobbers squinted up at her. “Saw that feller of yours. Tyler said you were partners. Ex-super-spies or some such.”
“Former Secret Service,” corrected Michelle.
“Damn fine-looking man. If I were younger I might be shooting for hubby number four. Now, piece of advice.” She looked the tall Michelle up and down. “You got all the goods right where they should be. So if I were you I’d bag and tag his cute buns, honey, before some hussy gets there first. And they will. Enough of ’em out there. So long, gotta pee.”
She turned and waddled back inside.
Michelle just stood there, her notebook open and not a single word written on the page.
She walked across the street and stared at the spot where Jean’s car had been parked. Michelle had a description of the car and its tag number from seeing it earlier. She just didn’t have a way to run a BOLO on it. Only the cops could do that. But she agreed with Dobbers. She didn’t think Jean Wingo was coming back. If Wingo’s marriage had been a sham to provide cover for his mission, what was keeping her here?
She pulled out her phone and called McKinney. It went to voice mail. She left a message about meeting them that day at their office.
She walked around to the back of the Wingos’ house. Tyler had given her a key and permission to enter. At least that would be her story if the cops showed up.
She started on the main floor and worked her way up. She didn’t bother to check for prints; she had no database to run them against. That was another downside to being a private investigator. She would love to know what Jean’s background was. If she’d been recruited to play a role, she might be in the military or a contractor thereto. That might give them a lead on her current whereabouts. Maybe McKinney could provide that service if he agreed to team up.
She took a few minutes to walk around Tyler’s room. She imagined how much he was suffering, wondering whether his dad was alive or not. She hoped they could bring him some sort of resolution.
She entered the Wingos’ bedroom. If they were simply playing a role, she assumed the two adults were not sleeping together, not an easy subterfuge in a house this small. She methodically searched through the bedroom and closet and didn’t find anything very helpful. Jean Wingo had taken all of her clothes and apparently most of her personal possessions, since there weren’t many feminine items left.
No computers. No hard-line phone. No cell phones.
She sat on a chair in the bedroom and stared around the space wondering if she had missed something. She looked out a window that gave her a view onto the backyard.
Green trash can by the back door. She might as well go through that while she was here. She heard a loud engine and the sound of hydraulics. She peered out another window in the bedroom that looked out onto the street. The trash truck was coming down the street. She looked at the blue container at the curb. Or maybe it was a recycling truck making its rounds.
The next instant Michelle was running flat-out down the stairs, out the front door, and leaping off the porch, landing on the front lawn. She reached the recycling bin seconds before the truck pulled up to collect it.
When one of the men jumped off the truck’s rear and eyed her she said breathlessly, “Lost my wedding ring in here. You can skip me this week.”
She rolled the bin up the driveway and into the backyard.
She closed the gate behind her and opened the top of the bin. It was half full.
Michelle had realized just in time that no sane person who was about to disappear would take the time to put out the recycling. So maybe there was something in there that she needed to get rid of and didn’t want possibly found on her. Maybe that was what Jean Wingo had been thinking when she’d mixed up the trash and recycling days.
It took her twenty minutes of searching but finally her hand closed around the letter, or rather the envelope. It was addressed to Jean Shepherd, but not at this house. She folded the envelope and put it in her pocket.
A minute later she was racing down the street in her Land Cruiser.
CHAPTER
33
NOT THAT LONG AGO SEAN KING had been cemented in a chair next to a hospital bed in which Michelle had been lying near death. Ever since that time he had loathed the inside of a hospital. If he could have avoided ever entering another one, he would have. But he couldn’t. He had to be here.
Dana was still in the critical care unit and thus her visitors were limited to immediate family; one had to phone the unit to gain admission. He had lied and told the nurse who answered the phone that he was Dana’s brother in from out of town.
He was directed to her room but stood by the door before going in. Dana was in the bed with IV and monitoring lines running all over her. The machine keeping track of her vitals hummed and beeped next to the bed. The blinds on the window were closed. The room was fairly dark. Dana wore a breathing mask, which was helping to inflate her damaged lung.
He took a few hesitant steps forward, hoping he wouldn’t run into General Brown here. The last thing he wanted was an altercation. His face hadn’t recovered from the last beating. And though Dana wasn’t conscious, he didn’t think something ugly like that would help her recovery.
He drew up a chair and sat next to her bed. Her chest rose and fell slowly, if unevenly. He slid a hand through the bed rails and gently gripped her wrist. She felt cold and for one terrifying moment he thought she was dead. But she was breathing, and the monitor showed her vitals, while weak, to still be recordable.
He bent lower, his head resting lightly on the cool surface of the bed rail. He had assumed this position for over two weeks while waiting for Michelle to open her eyes. He had never figured to be repeating this ritual so soon and certainly not with his ex-wife.
“I’m so sorry, Dana,” he said softly. He let go of her wrist and let his hand dangle.
He closed his eyes and a few tears leaked out. He was startled when something touched him. When he opened his eyes he saw that her fingers had closed around his. He looked at her face. Her eyes were still shut, her breathing still weak. He stared down at her fingers once more, thinking he must have imagined it. But there they were, intertwined around his.
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He didn’t make a move until about twenty minutes later when her fingers slipped off his and she seemed to fall into a deeper slumber. He sat with her for another half hour and then made his way out, wiping fresh tears from his eyes.
He turned the corner and ran into the one person he had dreaded seeing.
General Brown was not in uniform today. He wore slacks and a blue blazer and assumed an angry expression as soon as he saw Sean.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped. He looked over Sean’s shoulder at the double doors leading into the critical care unit. “Have you been in there to see Dana? You bastard!”
He cocked his arm back to throw another punch. This time Sean didn’t simply stand there and receive it. He hooked Brown’s forearm, spun him around, and drove the arm up his back to such an angle that Brown cried out in pain. It was fortunate the corridor was empty at that moment.
Sean said into his ear, “Yes, I did see Dana. She moved her hand, in case you wanted to know. Now I’ll remove my hand and let you go, but if you want to take another swing at me I suggest you wait until we get outside.”
Sean stepped away and Brown, rubbing his arm and grimacing, faced him. “If you come back here again I’ll have you arrested.”
Sean eyed him. “The men came into the mall from the direction that Dana did. We arrived first. No one followed us, that I guarantee. So that means these men followed Dana there, not us. They asked me to call her and get her back after I sent her to get the police from the mall substation. They knew she was important.”
“You sent her away to get the police?” said Brown, looking confused.
“Only she came back and helped us. In fact she ended up saving our lives. She’s a very brave woman who I know loves you very much.”
“And yet she betrayed me by telling you information that I gave to her.”
“She did it because I asked her to. In hindsight it was both selfish and stupid of me to involve her. But I did it because I was trying to help a young man find his father.”
Brown studied him. “Wingo?”
Sean nodded. “But how did those men know of Dana’s involvement? I had dinner with her out of the blue. She had no idea why. And yet men start following her after she speaks with you. Men who used to be in the military.”
Brown thought about this. “Are you suggesting that I might have a leak in my office? That’s impossible,” he added dismissively.
“Do you have another explanation?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” Brown barked.
“No, you don’t. But your wife is lying in there because a man who was following her shot her. And the only reason I believe he was following her was because she knew things about Sam Wingo that you told her. Now, we killed those three men. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t others out there.”
“This is a classified military matter.”
“Tell that to a sixteen-year-old kid who’s been told his dad is dead even though he really isn’t.”
Brown’s anger slowly faded. “I wasn’t aware of that. But I still don’t think I can help you.”
Sean watched him, trying to detect any wavering in his features. “Your wife is lying in a hospital bed because a man shot her. If I were you, I would want to make sure that all the people responsible were appropriately punished.”
Brown leaned against the wall and studied the patterned linoleum floor.
Sean moved closer. “The DoD is burying all of this. No surprise. But in doing so I hope they’re also not covering up the truth. Because if they are this stops being a national security issue and starts becoming a criminal act.”
Brown glanced up sharply. “I’m not hiding anything.”
“By allowing others to hide it I lump you with them. Guilt by inertia.”
“That’s your opinion and I could give a crap what you think.”
“It’s not really an opinion, just a basic concept. Telling the truth is the best policy.”
“That’s a very naïve approach,” Brown said in a sneering tone.
“I thought when you put on the uniform honor was a big part of it.”
“It is a big part of it,” Brown snapped.
“And if mistakes are made shouldn’t they be corrected? Even if a secret comes out? Especially if we’re talking about an innocent person’s life?”
“I’m just one person, King.”
“So you just put your head in the sand and look the other way? Is that what honor means to you?”
“What the hell do you want from me?”
“I want your help to set this right.”
“My help? Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do?”
“I do, actually. And if you say no and walk away and sit with Dana, I’ll completely understand. I’ll work the case from another angle. But I will work it. I bear tremendous responsibility for Dana almost dying. I have to make it right.”
“Then you might run right up against the Pentagon.”
“I’m a licensed private investigator. And I know of no law that says I can’t investigate a matter on behalf of a client.”
“But national security.”
“Yeah, I keep hearing that phrase. People use it like a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the more you use something the less effect it has, at least for me. And this is America. So when push comes to shove, liberty trumps all else.”
“Until you lose that liberty.”
“Been there, done that, General. And I’m still here.”
“You’re still taking a risk. A big one.”
“I don’t care. Comes with the territory. And I owe it to someone.”
“Who? The kid?”
“No. Dana.”
Brown glanced away, looking thoughtful. Sean could almost see the mental machinery humming through the man’s scalp.
“No promises. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“I appreciate that.” Sean handed him his card.
Brown took it and started to walk off but then stopped and turned back.
“When I put on the uniform, I did put on a sense of honor. And duty. Not just to the Army. But to my country.”
“I felt the same way in the Service.”
Brown twirled Sean’s card between his fingers. “I’ll be in touch.”
He walked off to Dana’s room.
As Sean left the hospital his phone buzzed.
It was Michelle. She spoke in terse, energetic sentences.
Sean listened and then ran flat-out to his car.
CHAPTER
34
MICHELLE MAXWELL WAS NOT GOOD at waiting. In the Secret Service that had been one of the things that had most irritated her—the tedium.
She drummed her fingers on her steering wheel while she eyed the horseshoe-shaped motor court in south Alexandria, Virginia, right off Route 1, or Jeff Davis Highway, as it was known here. The area had once been nice but no longer was. And it was no longer that safe, either. The homes, strip malls, and other businesses around here had all seen better times. They were tired, used up, and, in some cases, abandoned and falling down.
Michelle was focused on the motor court. Specifically, room 14 at the Green Hills Motor Court. The name had made her smile when she’d first seen it since there were no hills, green or otherwise, around here. There was trash in the parking lot, mostly consisting of beer cans, used needles, empty condom packs, and smashed bottles of Jack and Black and gin. The paint on the doors and walls was peeling. The neon sign had long since lost its neon.
And yet Jean Wingo, or Shepherd, or whoever she really was, had letters addressed to her here. So presumably she had stayed here. Michelle kept drumming her fingers but the itch in her brain was telling her to act, to move, to knock down a door, to take somebody prisoner, or to kick someone’s ass.
When the other car pulled into the parking lot she got out at the same time Sean did. They met in the middle of the nearly empty lot. She showed him the envelope with the address of
the motor court and explained in more detail how she had discovered it.
“Really, really good work, Michelle,” he said earnestly.
“And I really, really thank you,” she said back jokingly until she noticed his still-serious expression.
“Is it Dana?”
“I saw her. She gripped my hand.”
“Sean, that’s great. Right?”
“Yes, it is. Really great.”