kitchen staring at each other.
They’d grabbed some burgers and fries on the way back and had eaten in the car. But while their bellies were full, their heads were still empty of any promising leads.
“Okay, let’s go through it again,” said Robie.
“Do we have to?” said Julie. “It seems like a waste of time.”
“Most of investigative work can be a waste of time. But you have to do it to get to the parts that actually mean anything,” shot back Vance.
Robie looked at Vance. “Your turn.”
Vance said, “Okay, we’ve gone down some scenarios that petered out. Let’s retool and start by ruling out some people. From what you said about Van Beuren I don’t see how she can be involved in any of this. She’s been in hospice for months. She’s got a machine breathing for her. Her husband and daughter are just watching her die, basically.”
Robie nodded. “And Siegel seems to be just as clueless. He’s more concerned about losing his job. And he seemed genuinely surprised when I told him why I wanted to talk to him.”
“So maybe you were wrong, Robie,” remarked Vance. “You said it was what Julie mentioned, about the other squad members, that caused them to try and kill her. It just doesn’t appear to be the case.”
Robie said, “But what about Cassidy?”
“What about him?”
“He knew the Gettys. I don’t personally buy the fact that he couldn’t find them. Or that he didn’t know that any of his other squad members were around. The guy has cash, and cash gets you results. And while he seemed genuinely surprised that Curtis and Sara were dead, it just seems pretty odd.”
Julie said, “My mom and dad never mentioned him. That’s pretty odd too, considering how close he said they were. I mean, why didn’t they answer his letters?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” agreed Robie.
Vance was about to say something when her phone buzzed. She looked at the number.
“Don’t know that one. But the area code is northern Virginia.”
“Better answer it,” said Robie.
“Hello?” said Vance into the phone. The person on the other end of the line started speaking fast.
“Wait a minute, slow down.” Vance clamped her phone against her ear with her shoulder, pulled out a notepad and pen, and started scribbling.
“Okay, okay, I’ll be right over.”
She clicked off and looked up at Robie.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“Maybe you were right after all,” said Vance.
“About what?”
“That was Gabriel Siegel’s wife. I left my contact info with her.”
“Why was she calling?”
“Her husband got a phone call just after you left him. He walked out of the bank right afterwards and never came back. He missed a meeting with a client and a luncheon the bank was holding. He’s just disappeared.”
CHAPTER
86
THEY DIDN’T DRIVE to the bank but instead went straight to Gabriel Siegel’s house. His wife was waiting at the door as they pulled into the driveway. Robie led them up to the front porch. The woman looked at him strangely until she saw Vance behind him.
“We’re partners,” Vance said curtly. “Robie, this is Alice Siegel.”
“Mrs. Siegel, we’re here to help find your husband.”
Alice Siegel nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. When she caught sight of Julie she once more looked confused. “Who is she?”
Robie said, “It’s not something we can go into right now, ma’am. Can we go inside?”
Alice stepped back and let them pass through into the house. They settled in chairs around the living room.
Robie looked around. The interior had been done mostly on the cheap. But it was neat and clean and functional. The Siegels were clearly frugal. The bank probably didn’t pay that much. But the Siegels obviously stretched dwindling dollars as far as they could go, just like millions of other families were doing right now.
Vance opened the conversation. “So you said he received a phone call and then walked out. Any idea who called him?”
“No one at the bank knows. I was hoping the call could be traced.”
“Did it come to his line at the bank or his cell phone?”
“His office line. That’s how they knew he had gotten the call.”
“But if it came to the office didn’t someone at the bank ask who was calling your husband?”
“I think they just put the calls through. It’s a business, after all. I guess the person who answered just assumed Gabe would want the call. They don’t have a formal receptionist or anything. Banks don’t really do that anymore. They’ve scaled back.”
“So your husband told me,” said Robie. “Did the person at the bank say it was a man or a woman?”
“A man. Are you going to go there? I mean, isn’t the trail getting cold?”
“We’ll cover that end, Mrs. Siegel,” said Vance. “But no crime has been committed. And your husband isn’t technically missing. He went off apparently of his own free will.”
“But he didn’t come back. He just walked out. That’s not normal.”
“Could he have had an accident?”
“His car is still in the parking lot.”
“So he might have walked off,” said Robie. “Or gotten a ride from whoever called him. Have you tried calling his cell phone?”
“Twenty times. I texted him too. Nothing back. I’m very worried.”
Robie eyed her closely. “Is there a reason why he would have just walked off like that?”
“The phone call. It must be.”
Vance added, “But we don’t know that the two events are connected. He might have been planning to walk off anyway. The timing of the call might just be a coincidence.”
“But why?”
Robie said, “He mentioned to me that you were both worried he might lose his job at the bank.”
“Well, walking out like that is a pretty good way to ensure that he will lose his job,” snapped Alice.
“And you’re sure he didn’t try to contact you? On your cell? Maybe on your hard line?”
“We don’t have a hard line. We cut that out when Gabe’s pay was reduced last year.”
“Can you think of any reason why your husband would just up and walk off like that?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Well, you came to talk to him. And then he disappeared. Maybe you can tell me the reason.”
That was fair enough, thought Robie.
“Your husband was in the Army during Gulf One,” he began.
“Is that what this is about? But he’s been out of the military for years.”
“He was a member of a squad,” continued Robie. “We were interested in that squad.”
“Why?”
Robie hesitated and glanced at Vance. She said, “We were just interested, Mrs. Siegel. We wanted to ask your husband if he’d been in touch with anyone from his old squad.”
“I know that he knew Elizabeth Claire Van Beuren. They had kept in touch.”
“We know about her.”
“She’s dying.”
“We know that too,” said Vance. “Anybody else he ever mention?”
“A few names from time to time. Hard to remember.”
“Leo Broome? Rick Wind? Curtis Getty? Jerome Cassidy?” prompted Robie.
“Getty, yes, that name I recall. Gabe said they had been close, but he hadn’t seen him since he’d come back. Rick Wind sounds familiar. The thing is, Gabe didn’t talk much about his military time. He was terrified that he was going to die because of the toxic conditions they fought in over there. There are soldiers dropping left and right and the Army won’t even acknowledge there is a thing such as Gulf War syndrome. After Elizabeth got sick he went into a deep depression. He thought a lot of her. He was convinced he would be next.”
Julie said, “You mentioned he and Curtis Getty were friends. Did he have any pictures of them together?”
Robie and Vance looked at Julie. Robie felt immediate guilt. He had never stopped to consider how all of this must have been affecting the teenager.
Alice looked momentarily flustered, but the earnest look on Julie’s features prompted the woman to stand up. “I believe he does. Hold on for a moment.”
She left the room and a couple of minutes later came back holding an envelope. She sat next to Julie, opened, the envelope, and took the photos out.
“Gabe brought these back from overseas. You’re welcome to look through them.”
Vance and Robie crowded in closer and they looked through the photos. Julie said, “There’s my dad!”
Alice looked at Robie and then at Vance. “Her dad?”
“It’s a long story,” said Robie.
He took the photo from Julie and studied it.
The group was standing in front of a burned-out Iraqi tank. Someone had spray-painted the words “Saddam Kabob” across the blackened shell of the armored vehicle.
Curtis Getty was on the far right, dressed in combat fatigues with his shirt unbuttoned, a pistol clenched in his right hand. He looked very young and very happy, probably to be alive. Next to him was Jerome Cassidy. His hair was brown and cut military short. His shirt was off and he looked tanned, lean, and muscular. Next to him was Elizabeth Claire. Shorter than the others, she looked tougher than all of them. Her uniform was sparklingly clean, with every button where it was supposed to be. Her sidearm was in its holster and she stared at the camera with a very serious expression.
As Robie looked at her image he thought it probably would never occur to her that she would be lying in hospice waiting to die just twenty years later.
Alice said, “That’s Gabe on the far left there.”
Siegel was thinner, with more hair. He seemed confident, even cocky, as he looked at the camera. These days he was a shell of the man who was depicted in the photo, thought Robie.
Alice pointed at two other men, standing next to each other in the middle of the group. They were taller than the others. “I don’t know who they are.”
“Rick Wind and Leo Broome,” said Robie. “We know about them.”
“Do you think they might know something about why my husband has disappeared?”
“They might,” said Robie. But he thought, We won’t have much luck asking them.
Vance, obviously reading Robie’s thoughts, said, “We’ll check into that angle.”
“I don’t know why my husband’s military service would come up now, after all these years.”
“Does your husband have anything else connected to his time in the Army?”
“Not that I know of. He had brought some things back. His helmet, boots, and some other things. But he got rid of them.”
“Why?” asked Vance.
Alice Siegel looked surprised by the question. “He thought they were toxic, of course.”
CHAPTER
87
WHEN THEY RETURNED to the farmhouse, Vance called in to the FBI and got an earful from her superior for going off grid without authorization. After the man finished his tirade Vance was able to ask him to trace the phone call Gabriel Siegel had received at the bank.
He called back twenty minutes later with the answer.
Disposable phone, dead end. He ordered Vance to come in to the office, right that instant.
Robie overheard this part of the conversation. When Vance started to refuse he grabbed her arm and said, “Go, and take Julie with you.”
His gaze went upward where Julie had gone to use the bathroom.
“What?” said Vance.
“Things are going to get really hairy very shortly.”
Vance put her hand over the phone. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“All the more reason for us to stick together.”
“But not Julie. We can’t have her in the middle of this. Take her to WFO and surround her with firepower. Then you can come back and hook up with me.”
She studied him warily, distrust in her eyes.
The voice squawked from the phone.
“Yes, sir,” said Vance into the phone. “I’ll be in directly. And I’ll be bringing Julie Getty with me. I hope we can do a better job of protecting her than we did last time.”
She clicked off and gazed at Robie with a searching look. “If you’re screwing with me…”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you seem to have a propensity for it. If you have this noble idea that you’re the only one in the world who can tackle this thing. Or that you’re somehow protecting me from danger—”
“You’re an FBI agent. You signed up for this. I have no noble thoughts in my head. All I’ve ever tried to do is my job and then survive. If I engage in any sort of fantasy it’s that I keep on believing those goals are not mutually exclusive.”
“Don’t try to confuse the issue.”
“Take your car and take Julie. Get her settled and then come back here.”
“And you’ll just be here waiting for me?” she said skeptically.
“If I’m not here you have my phone number.”
“I don’t believe this, Robie. You’re shutting me out at the very moment—”
Robie turned and walked away.
“Is that your answer? Ignoring me? Walking away again?” she called after him.
“What’s going on?” Julie peered over the stair rail at them.
Vance looked at Robie and then sighed. “Come on, Julie. We need to get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“To run down a lead.”
“What’s Will going to do?”
“Run down another lead.”
“Why are we splitting up?”
“Because our fearless leader wants it that way. Don’t you, Robie?” she added in a louder voice.
He was in the next room now and said nothing in response.
Robie watched as the Beemer with the cracked windshield and shattered rear window backed away from the house. Vance slammed it into drive and did a doughnut in the dirt and gravel before careening down the road away from him.
Robie took a deep, cleansing breath. He had never played well with others. For the last dozen years he had worked in almost total isolation. He preferred it that way. He was better alone than with a team. That’s