The Innocent

  just how he was built.

  He felt an immediate freedom. A washing away of responsibility.

  He drove from his mind the promise that he had made to Julie to let her help find out what had happened to her parents. It was a false promise anyway. He’d had no business making it. Fulfilling it, he told himself, would only end up getting the girl killed.

  Yet it didn’t really matter one way or another to Robie. He kept telling himself that as he prepared to finish what he had started.

  His mind had not changed on one thing. This was about him. Despite their detour down to the squad Curtis Getty had been in.

  This is about me. And it’s also about something bigger.

  Now he had to find out what that was.

  This was once more a chess match. The other side had just made a move.

  Robie had to decide if it was a legitimate move or something else.

  He gunned up and set out to do just that.

  CHAPTER

  88

  THE FIRST STOP was the bank. Robie talked to the employees, but they had no helpful information. Gabriel Siegel had left his briefcase behind but it contained nothing helpful. Yet its presence did tell Robie that Siegel’s hasty exit had been unplanned and not related to the business of the bank. He was pretty certain of that already, but in his mind it was now confirmed.

  As Alice Siegel had indicated her husband’s car was still in the parking lot. It was a decade-old Honda Civic. Robie picked the lock and searched it but found nothing useful. He drove off in his car, wondering what had prompted Siegel to simply leave his place of business.

  Next stop was the hospice. He had forgotten something when he was there before.

  The guestbook.

  The receptionist let him look at it. While she was attending to other business he took photos of the pages for the last month or so. Then he walked down the hall to Elizabeth Van Beuren’s room.

  Nothing much had changed. She was still lying in the bed with a big pipe stuck down her throat. The sun was still coming in the windows. There were flowers. The photo of the family.

  And she was still dying. Hanging on to life, probably because she was a soldier and it was just part of her psyche. And the ventilator didn’t hurt. At some point the family would have to make a decision about that.

  Like the nurse had said, this place wasn’t designed to cure or even prolong life. It was to let folks die with dignity, in comfort, in peace.

  As he stared at Van Beuren, Robie decided she didn’t look too peaceful.

  They should just let her go. Just let her pass to a place better than this one.

  He picked up the photo and stared at it. A nice family. Alexandra Van Beuren was pretty, with soft brunette hair, a playful smile. Robie liked how the camera had captured the energy in her eyes, the life there. The dad looked rugged, but weary and haunted, as though he might have predicted the fate that would befall his wife in the not too distant future.

  At some point in his life Robie had supposed he could have had a family like this. He was long past that, of course. But sometimes he still thought about it. Right at that instant, Annie Lambert’s face appeared in his thoughts. He shook his head clear. He just didn’t see how something like that was possible.

  He walked back out into the fading sunshine and set off for Arlington.

  To the bar that Jerome Cassidy had built.

  He made good time and pulled to a stop in front of the bar at around five o’clock.

  He walked in, ordered a beer, and asked for Cassidy. The man came out a few minutes later and approached Robie, an uncertain look on his face. He eyed the beer like it was a stick of TNT about to go off.

  “Like to talk to you,” said Robie.

  “What about?”

  “Julie.”

  “What about her?”

  “You planning on telling her you’re her father?”

  “Let’s go sit.”

  Cassidy led him over to a booth in a corner. There were about fifteen customers in the place.

  They settled in their seats and Cassidy said, “Early drinking crowd comes in around five-thirty. Place will be full by seven. Standing room only by eight. Empties out around eleven-thirty. D.C. plays hard and works hard. Folks get up early. Especially the ones in uniform.”

  Robie cradled his beer but didn’t drink it. He waited for Cassidy to pull the trigger on answering his question.

  The man finally sat back, slid his palms along the top of the table, and looked at Robie.

  “First, how the hell did you know?”

  “Guys don’t write bundles of letters to ‘friends.’ Especially guy friends. You don’t spend time and money tracking them down. And I saw how your face lit up when Julie walked in. You hadn’t seen her since she was a baby, but you instantly knew who it was. Not that hard to figure out, actually. And I recently saw a photo of you when you were in uniform twenty years ago. There may be a lot of her mother in Julie, but there’s some of you too.”

  Cassidy blew out a long breath and nodded. “Think she knows?”

  “No, I don’t. Would it matter to you?”

  “Probably.”

  “So you thinking of telling her?”

  “Do you think I should?”

  “Why don’t you first tell me what happened?”

  “Not much to tell, really. And I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. I cared for Sara. This was before she was married to Curtis. And she cared for me. And then Curtis came along. She and him just hit it off right from the first minute. Love at first sight. Stronger than anything we had. I didn’t feel bitter about it. I didn’t love Sara like Curtis did. And like I said, he saved my life. He was a good guy. Why not let him have some happiness?”

  “But Julie?”

  “Stupid one last roll in the bed. Curtis thought Julie was his. Sara knew better. I knew better. But I never said a word.”

  “You seem to be an impossibly good person on that score,” remarked Robie.

  Cassidy said, “I’m not a saint, never claimed to be. Done lots of people wrong in my life, especially when I’d been drinking. But Sara and Curtis, well, they just belonged together. And there was no way I could take care of a kid. It was an easy out for me, you see. Nothing noble about it.”

  “Not so easy now?”

  Cassidy eyed the full beer.

  Robie said, “You want it?”

  Cassidy rubbed his palms together. “No, no I don’t. I do want it, but no.”

  Robie took a sip of the beer and set it back down. “Not so easy now?” he said again.

  “Older you get the more regrets pile on you. I never had any intention of trying to take Julie away. Never! I just wanted to see her. See what sort of person she’d become. But by then I’d left Pennsylvania. By the time I got around to trying to find them they’d left too. Looked everywhere except for right here.” He paused and eyed Robie. “What’s going on here? Feds involved. People getting killed. Julie in the middle of it.”

  “Can’t tell you. What I can tell you is that Julie will need a friend after all of this is over.”

  “I want to help her.”

  “We’ll just have to see how it plays out. I can’t make any promises.”

  “I am her dad.”

  “Her biological dad, maybe.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t believe anybody anymore.”

  Cassidy started to say something but then stopped and smiled. “Hell, me either, Robie.” He gazed out the window. “So I told you my side. You think I should tell Julie?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the best person to advise you on that. Never been married. Never had any kids.”

  “Well, let’s assume you are the best person. What would you advise?”

  “She loved her parents. She wanted their lives to be better than they were. She wants to find out why they were killed. She wants to avenge them.”

  “So you’re saying not to tell her?”

  “I’m sayin
g my answer might be different tomorrow than it is today. But you’re the only one who can really make the call.”

  Robie stood and eyed the beer. “You’re going to make it.”

  Cassidy stared up at him. “Why?”

  “You turn down a perfectly good beer under these circumstances, you can turn it down under any circumstances. I’ll be in touch.”

  CHAPTER

  89

  ROBIE DIDN’T KNOW why he had come back here.

  It was the apartment across the street. He opened the door, turned off the alarm, and stood looking around. He had this place. He had his apartment across the street and the farmhouse. Each place was supposed to be safe, secure, and yet they weren’t. So Robie felt homeless. He half expected someone to walk down the hall and ask him what he was doing here.

  He looked at his watch. It was almost seven o’clock.

  He’d called Vance but it had gone straight to voice mail. She was probably enduring some difficult times with her boss for going off grid. He doubted she would be getting back to him anytime soon. And he was actually relieved about that. He’d texted Julie and received a terse response. She no doubt was furious that she’d been snookered into going into protective custody again. At least she would get to grow up, do something wonderful with that big brain of hers.

  After leaving Cassidy he had driven around. He’d ridden to the scene of the bus explosion, then over to Donnelly’s, which was still closed. Indeed, Robie doubted it would ever reopen. Who would want to grab a drink or have a meal in a place where so many people had lost their lives?

  Now he was here and he wasn’t sure why.

  He looked at the telescope, drew closer to it, and finally bent over slightly and gazed through it. His condo building immediately came into focus. He shifted the viewing angle slightly and looked at the line of windows representing his space. It was dark. It was supposed to be. He moved the telescope to the left and his gaze flitted over the lighted hallway running past all the apartments on that floor.

  His gaze shifted, as he knew it would, to Annie Lambert’s place. Her windows were also dark. She was probably still at work. He wondered if her day off had gone well. He hoped it had. She deserved it.

  As he watched he saw her come down the street on her bike. He continued to watch as she walked her bike into the building. Counting off the seconds in his head, he positioned the telescope so that it was right on the elevator bank on his floor. The doors opened a few seconds later and Lambert got off, rolling her bike next to her. She unlocked the door to her apartment and went inside.

  Robie moved the telescope and watched as she parked her bike against the wall, took off her jacket and tennis shoes, and padded down the hall in her socks. She made a stop at the bathroom. When she came back out she continued down the hall. Robie lost her but picked her back up again about a minute later. She’d taken her blouse off and replaced it with a sweatshirt. Part of him wanted to go over and see her. Then he saw her lift up a long black dress on a hanger with a sheet of plastic over it. It had been draped over a chair. She took the plastic off and held the dress up to her. It was a strapless gown, Robie could see. She lifted up another garment. It was a matching jacket. The last items she picked up were three-inch black heels.

  Annie Lambert was going out on the town tonight, it seemed. And why shouldn’t she? thought Robie. Part of him felt jealous, though. It was an odd emotion for him. It didn’t sit well.

  He sat down, put his feet up on a leather ottoman, and gazed at the ceiling. He was so tired, couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly slept. He drifted off and awoke with a start some time later. From the foggy recesses of his mind he remembered something and drew out his phone. He brought up the photos he’d taken of the guest register at the hospice.

  He scrolled from screen to screen, not expecting to find much of interest. And he didn’t. The only name he recognized was Gabriel Siegel from about a month ago. That made sense because Siegel had admitted he’d last visited Van Beuren at that time.

  He scrolled to another page. There was nothing.

  He hit another page. Nothing again.

  But then something caught his eye.

  It wasn’t a name.

  It was a date.

  There was an entire day missing in the guestbook. He enlarged the screen as big as he could. He looked at it closely. Down in the far left corner of the frame he spied it.

  A triangle of paper. It would have gone unnoticed by anyone looking at the guestbook itself. It was too small. But with the pixels swollen to an unnatural size on his phone, Robie knew what it was. The remains of the page that had been ripped out of the book. Probably while the front desk had been unoccupied.

  Why would someone have taken a page from a hospice guestbook?

  There could only be one answer. They wanted to cover up whoever’s name had been written in there. They wanted to wipe away the record of someone who had visited Elizabeth Van Beuren.

  Was it Broome? Getty? Wind? Two of them? All three?

  Siegel had told him that he hadn’t seen Broome for ten years and hadn’t seen Wind or Getty since Gulf One. Cassidy had said he hadn’t seen any of them since the war except for Getty.

  But what if Broome or Getty or Wind had found out that Van Beuren was here and had come to visit her while she was still lucid? Siegel had said she was in and out of it. And had she let something slip? Something that had led to all three of them having to be silenced? It seemed a bizarre notion, but it was no more strange than any of the other theories that had floated through Robie’s mind lately.

  Robie looked at the date before and after the missing page. Eight days ago. That would fit with the timeline. Siegel hadn’t been targeted since he’d stopped coming a month ago. Rick Wind had been the first to die. Counting back, it seemed that Wind might have been killed shortly after he had possibly visited Van Beuren. And if Curtis Getty hadn’t come to the hospice, that would explain the heated discussion that the waitress at the diner, Cheryl Kosmann, had witnessed. Broome had told Getty. He then might’ve told Wind. Or it could have been the other way around. Robie couldn’t know for sure without seeing which of them had visited the woman. Getty didn’t have a car, so it was doubtful he’d driven all the way out to Manassas.

  No chance could be taken. Husbands, wives, and an ex-wife, who was also a potentially dangerous government lawyer, had to be killed.

  The Broomes had managed to escape. For a time. But with Robie’s involuntary help they had managed to get them too.

  Robie’s mind next drew to the timing of the insertion of the ventilator.

  It kept a terminally ill woman alive.

  But it also did something else.

  It prevented her from saying anything during her lucid moments.

  From saying anything else!

  They had put the tube in her to shut the poor woman up.

  But whatever she had told one or more of her former squad members had been the reason they had been killed.

  Robie raced out of his apartment and took the elevator down.

  He had a hospice visit to make.

  CHAPTER

  90

  VISITING HOURS WERE OVER. But Robie’s repeated raps on the glass front door brought an attendant. He flashed his badge and was allowed in.

  “I need to see Elizabeth Van Beuren,” he said. “And I need to see her