Tailspin

“Do you recall the name of this woman, Timothy?” Sherlock asked.

  “It was something really sweet, like Mary—no, it was Anna. I don’t know her last name. Pierre didn’t know what to do. He came to me as a friend and in confidence to ask about the possibility of my defending his son legally from a psychi atric standpoint, maybe argue the boy was delusional or brain-washed and not legally responsible, and because he was worried about his son’s mental health. I told him that no psy chiatric diagnosis would keep Jean David out of prison in a case like this. I agreed to see him, of course, but only if Jean David confessed his crime to the authorities. Many operatives might still be in danger, and the authorities needed to know about the security breach. In fact, I told Pierre it was ethically impossible for me to keep it a secret under these circumstances and that I would tell the authorities if Jean David did not.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  MacLean paused, closed his eyes, and Sherlock asked, “What happened, Timothy?”

  “Now I’ve got to speak about Jean David in the past tense. I can’t tell you how I hate that. You already know about his death, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Tell us what happened.”

  “All right. A week after I spoke to Pierre, Jean David drowned in a boating accident on the Potomac. Bad weather hit—a squall, I guess you’d call it, vicious winds whipping up the water. The bad weather was expected but still Jean David and his father went out fishing for striped bass. Pierre always believed you caught more fish in the middle of a high storm. They were heading back because the fog was coming in real thick when the rocking and rolling got to him, and he got real sick and vomited over the side of the boat. Then it gets sketchy. A speedboat evidently didn’t see them in the rain and fog and rammed right into them. Pierre was tossed overboard. Jean David jumped in to save his father. So did one of the guys from the other boat. They managed to save Pierre, but Jean David drowned. They searched and searched, but they couldn’t find his body.

  “Pierre was distraught, and as sick as he was, he kept diving and searching, but it was no use. Jean David was ruled dead, and his death was ruled accidental two weeks ago. Was it really an accident? I know what you’re thinking—Pierre and Jean David set it up between them to get him out of Washington. But, you see, there was the speedboat, and the people on board witnessed everything. They’d never heard of Pierre Barbeau. I believe that. I spoke to Pierre before he called me a murderer and hung up on me. He was grief-stricken. His son was dead and he blamed me for it. I strongly doubt Pierre could feign grief like that, at least not to me. I spoke to some mutual friends, and they agreed that both Pierre and Estelle were wrecks. He was their only child, and now he’s dead at twenty-six. Because of me.”

  Sherlock said pleasantly, “You know that’s ridiculous, Dr. MacLean. As a psychiatrist, you also know that when people are grieving, particularly when they’ve lost a loved one in a stupid accident, they try to apportion blame. You know it’s natural, you’ve doubtless seen it countless times in your practice.

  “Now, if you say something like that again, I will tell Molly and she’ll deal with you.”

  He was frowning at her words, but at the threat about his wife, his mouth split into a grin. “Oh, all right, I guess I’m just feeling sorry for myself. Damn, I sure wish Pierre had never asked to see me. I’ve waded in quagmires before, but I’ve never been sucked down quite so deep.”

  Savich said, “So you told Pierre Barbeau that Jean David had to go to the authorities and confess or you were constrained morally and ethically to report him to the police?”

  “Yes. It’s like being a priest in the confessional. If the person making the confession is planning to do imminent harm, the priest has no choice but to go to the authorities. Would I have gone to the police? Actually I forgot all about it once I was in Lexington. I would hope they know exactly what Jean David did by now, but tomorrow, maybe I’ll check in with the CIA, make sure nobody else is at risk.”

  Sherlock said, “You don’t actually know if the CIA has tracked the information leak back to Jean David?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken to the Barbeaus, either, since that afternoon when I called to express my condolences and Pierre screamed at me.

  “But whatever the CIA has found, trust me, it won’t make the evening news. The CIA’ll keep it under wraps, particularly now that Jean David is dead. They’ll simply bury it.”

  They would, of course, Savich knew, but perhaps he could find out what they knew and what they didn’t know, make sure for himself that all the other vulnerable operatives were safe. He said, “This is a tragedy that devastates, Timothy; it can make people act out of character, make them insane. I didn’t feel a motive with Lomas Clapman or Congresswoman McManus, but here, it’s bright and shiny, this beacon of grief. Do you think Pierre Barbeau could come after you, revenge for what he believes is your fault?”

  MacLean squeezed his eyes closed and whispered, “This utter consumption of self by inconsolable grief—I’ve seen it before. But Pierre? I don’t know; I doubt it, though. I’ll tell you, any murder attempts from that quarter would come from Estelle. She’s the one who’d want me dead, not Pierre. Estelle would bust the balls off a coconut.

  “I read people very well, agents, and I’ll tell you, what Pierre knows, Estelle knows. She’s the driver on that marriage bus. I’ll bet you Pierre didn’t tell her he was coming to ask me for help. But if he told her afterward, Estelle would see me as a danger to both her and her husband. Even with Jean David dead, she’d be afraid that I’d stir up talk. And of course there’s her family in France. I met them a couple of years ago. I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want to be on their bad side.

  “I have other patients with what you might call embarrassing incidents in their pasts, but not with any more juice than these three.”

  Savich said, “If you recall, Timothy, you blocked us from getting a list of all your patients. I hope you’ve since changed your mind. I really don’t want anyone to kill you on my watch.”

  MacLean nodded. “You’ll have the list as soon as I can get my receptionist to go into the office and make you a disk.” They listened to him make the phone call. When he hung up, he said, “In a couple of hours she’ll bring it here. I’m seeing the specialist from Duke again this afternoon. I don’t know why he’s making the trip since there’s not a thing he can do but nod and try to look both wise and sorrowful about my condition. He’s going to tell me what to expect in the future. Isn’t that nice of him, the insensitive clod? As if I don’t already know what my life is going to be like before I croak—which might be soon, if the person out to kill me succeeds. Maybe that would be a good thing. Then this mess—namely me—would be history.”

  Sherlock said, looking him straight in the eye, “Here’s what I think: none of us knows what medical science will come up with next. Whatever weird diseases we contract could be helped or even cured next week or maybe next year. We simply don’t know.

  “I have a friend hanging on by his fingernails hoping for better antirejection drugs so he can have a pancreas transplant. And the thing is, it could happen. I know he wants to live. He has hope, boundless hope. As a doctor, sir, you should have hope, too.”

  She paused, her voice a quiet promise. “We will do our very best to keep you safe. If someone knocks you off after we’ve worked our butts off to keep you alive, I’ll be extraordinarily pissed, Timothy. Forever.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then grinned hugely, showing silver on his back teeth, before pressing his head into the hard hospital pillow.

  When they left, Agent Tomlin’s sexy smile wasn’t returned. It fell right off his face when he realized Agent Sherlock was upset.

  Sherlock looked straight ahead as she and Dillon walked to the elevator. “Given this horrible disease, given there’s no cure, and finally, given what will happen, without fail—I think I might kill myself if I were him. All the rest is hooey.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Savich said, as he pressed the button in th
e empty car. “You believe exactly what you told Timothy. Life gives and life takes. The thing is, you simply never know, can never predict, and given the pace of science, you put up with what’s on your plate, you do your best with the hand you’re dealt, and you hope.”

  She leaned into him, sighed. “Some things are so sad. I hate feeling helpless.”

  “I do, too.”

  When the elevator doors slid open Savich and Sherlock stepped into the lobby to see Jack and Rachael walking toward them.

  Jack said, “I just got a call from Ollie, and was on my way up to you guys. You won’t believe this. Timothy’s office was torched early this morning, his computer toasted, hard disk destroyed, all his hard-copy files burned to a crisp.”

  Sherlock raised her eyes to the heavens. “Why can’t things ever shake out easy?” She kicked at a big ceramic flower pot with fake red geraniums in it.

  “You don’t even seem concerned, Jack,” Savich said. “What do you know that we don’t?”

  “It so happens Molly gave me his laptop, and it has all his patients on it.”

  “Make note of this, Rachael. Jack here’s a prince,” Savich said. “I was looking forward to a lovely eggplant po’ boy for lunch, and now you’ve made that possible.”

  “Eggplant?” Rachael repeated, and looked astonished. “An eggplant po’ boy?”

  “Oh yes,” Sherlock said, smiling, “grilled in only a soup çon of olive oil, available only in our cafeteria on the seventh floor of the Hoover building. Elaine Pomfrey makes the best vegetarian sandwiches in Washington, and this one she prepares especially for Dillon. Thank you, Jack, for having that great news.”

  Savich said to Rachael, “You and Jack need to go to Senator Abbott’s house—your house—get all your stuff. Then we’re going to put you in a safe house.”

  Rachael smiled at all three of them. “Nope, no safe house in this lifetime. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I intend to have a chat this very afternoon with Aunt Laurel and Uncle Quincy, after I have some nice crispy fried chicken, maybe a biscuit and mashed potatoes in your famous cafeteria. But I don’t want to hear any more about hiding.”

  Jack said to Savich, “I’ve got some more convincing to do, evidently.”

  Sherlock said, “By the way, the blood samples from two of the shooters from Slipper Hollow are in the lab. We’ll soon know if those bozos are in the system. Still no word from any medical facilities about the guy you shot in Gillette’s kitchen, Jack.”

  “Maybe they’re both dead,” Rachael said, and pushed her hair behind her ears. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Savich held up his hand. “It’s one o’clock. I’m starving. Let’s discuss this over my eggplant po’ boy.” He looked at Rachael. “And your fried chicken.”

  Jack said, “What about the guy Rachael shot in Roy Bob’s garage? Roderick Lloyd?”

  “He’s got himself a lawyer, still refuses to say a word,” Sherlock said. “Our agents searched his apartment, found some credit card receipts that might give us the gold. Lloyd has been to the Blue Fox restaurant over on Maynard four or five times in the past two weeks.

  “Our agent found out Lloyd brought a Lolita with him the past three times, according to one of the waiters, who said she gave him her cell number. We should know who she is anytime now. As for Lloyd, at least he’s no longer a danger to anybody.”

  Rachael said as they walked to the hospital parking lot, “I need a gun. Do you have one to lend me, Sherlock?”

  “Look, Rachael, I know you’re a fine shot, I know your life is on the line here, but I’d be breaking the law if I gave you one.”

  Not wonderful news, but Rachael said, “Okay, I understand. Hey, I wasn’t thinking—I bet Jimmy kept one at home.”

  Savich and Jack both opened their mouths but Sherlock held up her hand. “No, guys, if there’s a gun at home, then what’s wrong with her defending herself? It’s not as if she’s not trained and might shoot somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Thank you, Sherlock.”

  “I don’t like this,” Jack said. “I really don’t.”

  “Get over it,” Sherlock said, and looked at her husband. “No, no, bad dog, keep quiet.”

  They stopped by the Criminal Apprehension Unit on the fifth floor, introduced Rachael to all the agents present. Ollie showed her a photo of his wife and his little boy. In the cafeteria, while Savich was eating his eggplant po’ boy and Rachael was chewing on a fried chicken leg, Sherlock’s cell rang. She swallowed a bite of taco, then answered.

  She hung up barely a minute later. “We’ve got the name of Lolita—the young girl who was with Roderick Lloyd. The cell phone number she gave the waiter is for a phone that belongs to a married grad student who admitted giving the phone to a hooker in exchange for her services. He gave us her name.”

  Sherlock beamed. “Angel Snodgrass is in juvie over in Fairfax.”

  Twenty minutes later, she and Savich were in his new Porsche, zipping out of the Hoover garage.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Angel Snodgrass was sixteen years old, blessed with long, thick natural blond hair, soft baby-blue eyes, and a face clean of makeup. She did indeed look like an angel. An undercover vice cop had busted her for soliciting outside the Grove Creek Inn at the big Hammerson mall in Fairfax.

  “Angel? I’m Special Agent Savich and this is Special Agent Sherlock. FBI. We’d like to speak to you.”

  She folded her very white hands on the table in front of her and stared at them. Her nails were short, clean, and nicely buffed. “Why are you special?”

  Savich grinned. “The way I hear it, up until the time Hoover took over, the FBI was a mess—no background checks, no training, a playground for thugs. Hoover changed all that, announced his agents would from that time on be special, and so it became our title. There are lots of other special agents now, but we were the first.” Savich wasn’t at all sure if that was entirely true, but it sounded like it might be.

  Angel thought about this for a while as she studied his face. “Who’s Hoover?” she asked.

  “Ah, well, he was a long time ago. Where’s home, Angel?” he asked her.

  “Since I’m not going back there, I’m not saying.”

  “Why were you turning tricks?” Sherlock asked.

  Angel shrugged. “I wanted a Big Mac. Lots of businessmen are in and out of the Grove Creek Inn, and there are lots of guys at the mall. Since I’m so young and pretty, they usually tip me real good, too. If that cop hadn’t nabbed me, I could have had a dozen Big Macs. Now, it’s just the crap they claim is food in this pit. What do you special guys want anyway?”

  Had she been abused before she finally ran away? Savich knew this girl would get counseled here, that there would be a shot at straightening her out.

  Sherlock sat forward in her chair. “We need your help, Angel. The waiter you gave your cell number to at the Blue Fox restaurant told us you were with Roderick Lloyd. We need you to tell us about him.”

  “Why? What’d Roddy do?”

  Savich studied her, her eyes, her body movements. “Thing is, Angel, Roddy’s a very bad man. He’s in a hospital in western Virginia right now because he tried to murder a woman. It’s good for her that she’s smart and fast, got herself a rifle and shot him instead.”

  Angel nodded, tapped her fingers on the tabletop, tossed her head, sending all that beautiful blond hair swinging away from her head to settle again on her shoulders and down her back. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Roddy is always blowing hard, bragging, like that, telling me how important he is, how when there’s a problem, he’s the one folks call to solve it. He was all puffed up when he told me he had to go out of town for a couple of days, take care of this situation for a real important dude. He didn’t give me a name, if that’s what you’re wondering.

  “I was wondering why Roddy hasn’t called me, then I realized my cell is dead and I can’t charge it since Roddy locked me out of his apartment. Is he going to die?”
br />   “No,” Sherlock said, “but he’s not in terribly good shape. Lost the use of both of his hands for a while.”

  “I was thinking he was a hit man, like that,” Angel said, looking over Savich’s right shoulder, her voice calm. “I can see him blowing it, too. I mean even in bed he was always too fast off the mark, didn’t really think things through, you know? No surprise he’d screw up a hit.”

  “Did he tell you about this situation he had to handle?” Savich asked. He pulled a pack of sugarless gum from his pocket, offered her a stick.

  She took it, peeled the wrapper with long white fingers, stuck it into her mouth. She chewed, then sighed. “Well, this isn’t a Big Mac, but it’s not bad. Thanks, Special Agent.”

  “You’re welcome.” They chewed in companionable silence, then Savich said, “About the situation Roddy had to handle—we’d sure appreciate your telling us exactly what you know about it.”

  A flicker of alarm widened her eyes.

  Savich said easily, “The woman he tried to kill, the woman who shot him instead, she’s still in danger, from the people or person who hired Roddy. Did he tell you anything?”

  Angel began tapping her fingers again on the scarred tabletop. Savich wasn’t blind, he saw the gleam in her innocent blue eyes. Ah, so they had a budding deal maker on their hands. “Nah,” Angel began, “he didn’t tell me a thing, and I don’t know anything—”

  Savich interrupted her smoothly. “If you help us, I’ll make sure you get the reward. It’s . . . ah . . . I’m not really sure, maybe five hundred bucks, depending on the information.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Angel said.

  “Well, yeah,” Savich admitted, “but the thing is, it’d buy a lot of Big Macs and a new charger for your cell phone.”

  “Hmm,” Angel said. “How do I know I can trust you? I mean, you’re pretty hot, but you’re still a federal cop. It’d take weeks, maybe years before I’d get the reward.”

  Savich pulled out his wallet, saw her eyes were glued to it. He slowly peeled out five one-hundred-dollar bills, the entire amount he’d gotten from his ATM that morning. “To prove you can trust me, I’ll advance the reward. It’s yours if what you tell us is useful.”