“Lonnie works a floating shift at the Cinch Valley Number Two Mine. I didn’t even know he and Danny hung around with each other.”
“They didn’t as far as I knew,” added Abby. “He’s never come to the house. He’s not, well . . .”
Tyree said, “Abby’s too polite to say that Lonnie is definitely white trash. He’s come my way a few times, petty crap, stealing gas, poaching, and then there’s the addiction thing of course. Thanks for the tip, Ben. I better go check it out.”
“Has anybody told Shirley about Willie and Bob?” Abby said.
“I haven’t, but I expect she knows by now. But I’ll check in with her too.”
“I’d check her real well too, Sheriff,” Stone said.
“You think Shirley’s involved in this somehow?”
“Let me put it this way, you don’t nag your husband about deer hunting only to see him go out and get shot. What are the odds?”
“You think it was premeditated?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily except the shooter was Rory Peterson, who ended up murdered.”
“Right.” Tyree tapped his gun holster with his thumb. “Who’d ever thought the town of Divine would end up like the damn Wild, Wild West?”
He left and Abby pulled her chair closer to Stone and laid a hand on his. “I brought your bag with the clothes I packed for you. It’s in the closet.”
“Thanks, Abby.”
“And I took Danny’s cell phone from your pocket and put it in your nightstand.”
“Won’t Danny need it back?”
“I don’t think he wants to talk to anybody right now.”
“I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you.”
“I think you’ve suffered a lot more than me.”
“It seems so complicated, I wonder if we’ll ever get to the bottom of it all.”
She looked down as she said this and Stone thought he knew why. “If Danny is involved in something not quite legal, Abby, I’m pretty sure it didn’t involve murder.”
She looked up. “You’re a mind reader too? Sort of unsettling.” She sighed. “I know my son, or at least I think I do. But there’s also the chance he might be involved in something really crazy.”
“Let me tell you something. When those guys on the train came after us again, Danny dropped one of them with a gut shot. The kid was beaten but he punched Danny again. Your son could have landed a haymaker but he didn’t. Said it wasn’t sporting to hit a man when he was down. That doesn’t sound like a cold-blooded killer to me.”
“I lost Sam. I can’t lose Danny too.”
He gripped the woman’s arm and pulled her to him. “You won’t, Abby. I promise.”
CHAPTER 54
REUBEN WAS IN TROUBLE. He’d driven into South Ridge and had nearly run into Joe Knox as the man walked down the streets of the small, plain town. After about an hour, he’d climbed back in his truck and driven off. An excited Reuben had phoned Annabelle and filled her in. Then, on the way out of town while barely keeping Knox in his sights, Reuben had blown a tire on the Indian. He’d pulled off the road and phoned Annabelle again.
“Sit tight, Reuben,” she’d said. “We’re going to finish up the two towns and then we’ll pick you up.”
“Why not come now and we can tail Knox?”
“He’ll be long gone by the time we get there. And if he didn’t find Oliver in South Ridge, we might find him first. What town do you think he’s headed to next?”
Reuben checked the map and looked around to gauge things. “If I had to guess, I’d say this Divine place.”
“Okay, call back if anything else comes up.”
Reuben clicked off, looked sourly at the flat tire and then kicked it. After all these years the Indian had finally let him down. And the thing was he usually carried a spare in the sidecar, but he’d taken it out so he could fit all the crap Annabelle had asked him to bring.
He sat on the side of the road and figured the odds. If this was the first town Knox had cleared, he still had three more to go. So the odds that Oliver was in Divine were one in three. Not great, but not terrible either. He would just have to keep his fingers crossed that Divine didn’t turn out to be the jackpot for the federal agent and a probable death sentence for Oliver.
Melanie Knox had tried calling her father several times. The fact that Joe Knox had not answered or called her back wasn’t surprising. Yet her last conversation with him had left her feeling disturbed. There had been something, well, fatalistic about his comments. A seize-the-moment sort of thing as though he was doubtful there would be many more tomorrows.
On impulse she took a cab to his town house and asked the driver to wait. When she unlocked the door, she was surprised that she didn’t hear the alarm warning sound. Her father was scrupulous about setting the security system when he was away. When she turned on the lights, Melanie had to fight the impulse to scream.
The place had been trashed. Initially she thought it had been broken into and her first inclination was to run out in case the burglars were still here. To be safe she raced back to the cab and explained to the driver what she’d found. She told him that if she wasn’t out in five minutes to call the cops. She hurried back in, picked up a heavy vase in the foyer and moved cautiously forward, leaving the front door open just in case.
It took less than five minutes for her to discover that the place was empty. She leaned out the front window of the upstairs bedroom and waved to the cabbie that all was okay. Melanie ducked back inside and started doing a more thorough search. She knew that her father kept two safes in the house. One was in the bedroom and the other was behind a panel in the garage; both had been undisturbed. Nor did it appear that anything of value had been taken.
That left only one possibility. Whoever had broken in had been searching for something other than valuables. And whoever it was had her dad’s alarm code.
She went into her dad’s study and looked around. She knew this was where he kept items from work, although she was also aware that her father did not routinely leave any important items lying around. She turned on the light, bent down and started going through the piles of papers on the floor. Thirty minutes later she had found only one thing of interest. It was a list with names on it. She didn’t recognize any of them, but one did capture her attention.
Alex Ford was a Secret Service agent working out of the WFO. Why he was on a list in her father’s house she didn’t know. But she did know one thing: she was going to call him and find out if he knew anything about what her father was involved in.
She ran back out to the cab after locking the door and resetting the alarm. As she sat back breathless in the taxi she had the sickening feeling that her father’s “job” had finally come back to bite him. Hard.
CHAPTER 55
ALEX FORD WAS SITTING in his kitchen working his way slowly through a bowl of soup and a beer. He had been largely going through the motions at work since his last meeting with the Camel Club, or what was left of it. He’d driven past the cottage at Mt. Zion Cemetery in the hopes that Annabelle might have returned. He’d tried to call Reuben several times without success. And Caleb had been absent from the library. Unexpected personal issues, he’d been told when he called for him there.
He knew what they were up to. Working together to try and save Oliver. And a big part of him hoped they were successful.
When the phone rang he groaned. It was probably his boss trying to scrounge up some overtime drones to pull some low-level protection duty. Well, tonight he was busy. He had TiVo reruns to catch and tomato soup to finish and beers to pour down his throat.
“Hello?”
It was his boss, but he wasn’t looking for overtime. He told Alex that he would be receiving visitors any moment now. And that he was to cooperate fully with them.
“Who are they?”
But the man had already hung up.
The knock on the door came barely thirty seconds later, which told Alex that his boss was i
n communication with his “visitors” and had just given them the all-clear. He poured the rest of his beer down the kitchen sink, tucked in his shirt, quickly adjusted his tie and opened the door.
Alex was six-three but the white-haired, bony-faced fellow facing him had him by at least two inches.
“Agent Ford, my name is Macklin Hayes. I’d like to have a word with you.”
Alex stepped back and motioned the man in, peering behind him to see if he was alone. There wasn’t anybody else, but Alex knew enough about Hayes to understand that the man went nowhere by himself. He closed the door and indicated a chair for Hayes to sit in.
“Thank you.”
Alex plopped down across from him and tried to appear nonchalant.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“I believe that one of my subordinates, Joe Knox, came to see you about a certain matter?”
Alex nodded. “He did. Had some questions about someone I knew.”
“John Carr?”
“He asked about Carr, but I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Oliver Stone then? You do know the man calling himself Oliver Stone?”
“Most Secret Service agents who’ve pulled White House protection duty do.”
“But you were closer than most?”
Alex shrugged. “I’d call him an acquaintance.”
“You were far more than an acquaintance. And you’re going to tell me everything that you knew about his plans to assassinate Carter Gray and Senator Simpson. And whether you helped him to escape. At worst that makes you a coconspirator. At best, an accessory before and after. In a matter as grave as this one, either one gets you put away for life.”
Well, the man doesn’t waste any time, does he? “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Hayes drew a slip of paper from his coat and glanced at it. “Nearly twenty years in the Service, good record. You were the one guarding the president in Pennsylvania when he got kidnapped.”
“I was the only one left standing.”
“So you were there when he disappeared. Did you have anything to do with his reappearance? And more to the point, did your friend Stone?”
“Again, I—”
Hayes didn’t let him finish. “Ever heard of Murder Mountain? A vanished CIA agent named Tom Hemingway? A piece of evidence that your friend Stone held over Carter Gray? Or a former Russian spy named Lesya?”
Alex, of course, knew about all of these things, but stayed silent because what could he possibly say that would do him any good?
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Oliver helped break up a spy ring operating in D.C. It involved one of your employees. Maybe you heard of it? He received a commendation from the FBI director.”
“Wonderful for him, but I doubt that will carry much weight when he’s caught and prosecuted for two murders.”
“What exactly do you want from me?”
“I want to know what Knox asked you, and I want to know what you told him.”
“Can’t you just ask him yourself? I’m sure he has it down in some nice, neat report and—” Alex stopped. “Do you not know where Agent Knox is?”
“I’m not here to answer questions, merely to ask them. I believe you received a phone call from a superior at the Secret Service telling you to cooperate fully.”
Alex spent the next two minutes telling Hayes what he and Knox had discussed.
“That’s all?” Hayes said in a clearly disappointed tone. “I must have Knox go through an interrogation refresher course.”
“He said he’d be coming back around to ask more questions. I’ll be sure to tell him you’re looking for him,” Alex said, getting in a subtle jab.
Hayes rose. “One piece of advice. If I find that any of what you’ve told me tonight is untrue, or if I discover that you withheld anything of importance from me, you can catch up on your solitary confinement skills at the Castle.”
“The Castle? That’s the military prison at Leavenworth. I’m not military.”
“Actually, it’s also for prisoners convicted of national security crimes. But to more directly answer your question, you’re anything I want you to be.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Alex realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out with a gush and stood up on wobbly legs. He might as well have banded with the Camel Club to help find Oliver since it looked like he was headed to prison anyway.
The phone rang again. It was probably his boss telling him he hadn’t been particularly cooperative and how did suspension without pay sound?
But he was wrong. The caller ID readout surprised him.
“Agent Ford? My name is Melanie Knox. My father is Joe Knox. Someone broke into his house and I can’t get hold of him. The only thing I found was a list with your name on it.”
“When’s the last time you heard from him?” She told him. “I spoke to him before that. I haven’t heard from him since. It could be a burglary. You should call the cops.”
“Nothing of value was stolen. The two safes he had weren’t even touched.”
“I’m not sure what I can do about it.”
“What did he talk to you about?”
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that.”
“Agent Ford, I am really worried about my dad. The last time I talked to him he sounded, well, he sounded like maybe he was talking to me for the last time. I really think he might be in trouble.”
Maybe that was why he’d gotten the visit from Hayes. His faithful dog had gone off the scent and the old man was operating blind. “When you talked to him did he give you any indication of where he might be?”
“He said something about being west of here, only a little more rural. I joked about terrorists in the hollers. And he said you just never knew.”
“This isn’t really my bailiwick, Ms. Knox.”
“I’m a lawyer in private practice with lots of connections, and while my dad has never mentioned what he actually does for the government, I know it’s not some State Department crap, that’s just a cover. Can you at least confirm that? Please?”
Alex hesitated, but the pleading sound in her voice finally got to him. “As best I can figure he was doing investigative work for the CIA, or at least in connection with them somehow.”
“Over something critical?”
“Critical enough. He’s trying to find somebody who doesn’t want to be found.”
“Can this person be dangerous?”
“Most people who don’t want to be found are dangerous.”
He thought he could hear a groan from her. “What should I do?” she said. “My mom’s dead. My brother’s in the Marines in Iraq. What should I do, Agent Ford? I don’t know anybody else to call.”
Alex sat there staring off. It was as though his nearly twenty years in the Service had simply disappeared from his memory. If Hayes had had his way, that would be more true than not. So why sit here waiting for the nuke to hit him in the head?
“Give me a number where I can reach you anytime. I’ll poke around and see what I can find.”
“Oh, God, thank you so much.”
“I can’t promise that if I find out anything it’ll be what you want to hear.”
“Agent Ford, I know you don’t know my father, but if you were in trouble there wouldn’t be anybody else you’d want covering your back more than Joe Knox. He’s as straight as they come. I hope that means something to you.”
“It does,” Alex said quietly.
CHAPTER 56
LATER THAT NIGHT Stone sat up in his hospital bed staring at the wall opposite. He checked his watch and then slipped open the nightstand next to his bed and pulled out Danny’s phone. He called Abby first and Tyree next. Abby was working at the restaurant and Tyree was out in the field trying to track down Lonnie Bruback, who, he said, seemed to have disappeared. They had found nothing in Willie’s trailer other than a couple of torn-apart propane tanks and the remnants of the cooksto
ve, he told Stone.