Cape Disappointment (41 page)

“You must think your cellphone is somewhere close by, huh?” Bert whispered. It was clear from the way Hoagland tipped his head to hear better that he had been counting on it. “Your cellphone? So they can triangulate on us? It's riding back and forth across Puget Sound on a ferry.” Hoagland did a good job of not looking disappointed, but even so, I could see something in his slack facial muscles had changed.

Bert gestured for me to follow him toward the door of the barn. When we were a sufficient distance from Hoagland and the radio, he said, “I think we squeezed this plum about dry. I been workin' him most of the day, and that's all I got. And don't look at me like that. You were askin' questions, too.” Bert was grinning and I could see some of the same bravado and insanity Elmer displayed when he found himself in a bind. He was proud of his achievements here but knew he'd handed himself an enormous problem.

“You kidnapped him and now you don't have anything to show for it.”

“The hell I don't. He as well as admitted the plane was brought down by a government agency. That the NTSB report is a cover-up.”

“He didn't say the government brought it down.”

“He's working for a federal agency, and they're covering it up. It was the government. You heard him.”

“What I heard was a man tied to a chair telling you what you wanted him to say.” Bert was right. I did believe the confession, but I had to
play devil's advocate, because everything we'd heard was not only in-admissable in a court of law but also in the court of public opinion.

“I didn't prompt any of that. That all came out of his own brain.”

“I'm to take your word for that?”

“The week before that plane went down I saw this asshole meet with James Maddox. That's how I knew it was going to happen.”

“Hoagland and Maddox?”

“That's how I knew to get Kathy out of there. I knew Timothy has been specializing in plane crashes.”

“That's it? You saw him with Maddox?”

“Well, I didn't exactly see them together. But they were in the same hotel. I ended up saving Kathy's life because of it. I would have saved them all if I could have. I would have run my truck into the plane, but all that would have done was put them into another plane. Which would have gone down. I'd be locked up and they'd be dead. Kathy included.”

“How was it you came to catch him in Maddox's vicinity?”

“It was just … I was just there.”

“Why?”

“Thomas, you know if we let him go, he'll sic a team of agents on us. They'll spare no expense to track us down. I once saw them spend four million government dollars tracking down a clerk they thought needed to die, and he'd done a hell of a lot less than what we've been doing here. Whether you like it or not, you're in this up to your neck.”

“And if we turn him over to the local police?”

“You give him to them, you'll have to turn me in, too. He knows there's two of us. You can't tell them you found him tied to a chair in some field.” Bert grinned, then handed me the beanbag gun and the Taser. “I guarantee this. You turn me over to the cops, I'll be dead inside of two days. Suicide, burst appendix, brain aneurism, whatever. And your hunt for whoever tried to kill your wife and murdered all those others will hit a brick wall. He doesn't know who you are now, but he will as soon as you turn him over. Their cleanup squad will take you out; and Elmer, too. Kathy. Maybe even your paper boy and the guy does your taxes. That's how they work.”

Hoagland had been eerily calm while threatening us, and if he was
connected to people ruthless enough to take down a plane with eleven people on board, there would be no hesitation to eliminate a pest like Bert Slezak. Hoagland's threats had been matter-of-fact, a dull business transaction contemplated by a dull man. I'd seen his kind before and I trusted my gut. He'd threatened us because he thought we were lightweights and hoped to panic us into making a mistake, but the threats were genuine. We couldn't let him go. But we couldn't murder the man, either. And if we ever revealed who we were, we would eventually end up dead.

“Tell me about seeing Hoagland and Maddox before the crash,” I said. It was the one piece out of all this information that stuck in my craw. James Maddox, my ex-boss, my friend, the man I'd felt beholden to for so many years, had taken a meeting with an individual who'd come to town to cover up a multiple murder— including the murder of my wife— and had taken that meeting prior to the Sheffield crash. I wanted to believe Bert was lying, but I couldn't. Hoagland said he'd been contacted about the crash investigation before the plane went down. I believed Hoagland. I also believed he was going to make sure we died if we gave him the chance.

“A week or so before the crash I saw one of Hoagland's flunkies at the Renaissance in Seattle,” Bert said. “The guy was an operative I knew from a job we did together years ago. Hoagland came down to the lobby to talk with him. I hung around long enough to see Maddox come in, without his normal entourage. He walked right past them, like they didn't know each other, but you could tell they did. They had a meeting. Trust me on this. Or ask him yourself.”

I went back and whispered the question in Hoagland's ear, and he jumped. Because of the cacophony of the radio, he hadn't expected me to be so close. “What?” he asked.

“You have a meeting with Maddox before the plane crash? Here in Seattle?”

“We're old friends. I met him in D.C. when he was in the House of Representatives. His company worked with mine.”

“What did you talk about?”

“The weather. I told you. We're old friends.”

“Did he know the plane was going down?” I touched the Taser to his shoulder but didn't fire it.

“If you're going to hurt me, he knew. Otherwise, he didn't.”

I'd reached a wall I couldn't get through. Bert had mousetrapped me. While he held the riot gun, I'd had no choice but to go along with the program, but now that I was holding the weapons, I could untie Hoagland, let him go free, drive him back to his hotel, and apologize— get Bert and me both killed. Or take him to the police and help him swear out a complaint against Bert— get Bert and me both killed.

There was little doubt Bert had committed a crime, but I hardly believed it a crime he should die for. Hoagland, on the other hand, had implicated himself in an ongoing felony perpetuated against the whole country, a plot to influence an election by removing one of the candidates. Power brokers in D.C. wanted Sheffield out of the Senate. In order to achieve that end, they'd murdered her and nine other people.

There was an underlying question even more basic than what I was asking. Did I trust Bert Slezak?

He'd saved Kathy's life.

He'd also kept her drugged for ten days and told her I was dead.

He'd called me at the gym seconds before the bomb went off. We still hadn't talked about that.

“The bomb,” I said, walking back toward Bert.

“It was meant for you all along. They knew you were asking questions. Don't you see? Make it look like it was Maddox they were after, when they were really trying to nail you. If people are setting bombs for Maddox, it turns him into a saint of sorts. Isn't that how they're playing it to the press now?”

“That bomb was meant for
me?”

“How hard is it to fix a bomb so it goes off during a forty-minute speech? You can't tell me they screwed that up. If you can build a bomb, you can work a timer. I can't believe you haven't thought of this before.”

“I've been on morphine.”

“You on morphine now?”

“I've taken some pills, but I'm okay.”

“Maddox worked a variation on what I think was the original plan by running in to get you. The public thought he was risking his life, but it was like betting on a two-headed nickel. He knew there was no second bomb.”

“Why save me if they were trying to kill me?”

“Why not ask why he didn't go in right away?”

“You've got a point. Waiting for me to bleed out?”

“He'd save you, but not until he thought you were going to die anyway. Except he mistimed it and you survived.”

I looked across the barn at Hoagland, who was struggling with his bonds. Bert followed my eyes and said, “In the old days, bombs used to be one of his specialties.”

“You ask him about it?”

“I've asked, but you're welcome to give it a shot.”

Thinking about how close I'd come to pulling the trigger on the Taser a moment earlier, I said, “No. I want this to end.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“I'm thinking.”

“Kind of like holding a wolf by the ears, isn't it?”

“Your brother used that phrase a few days ago.”

“You realize if the situation were reversed, we'd both be dead already.”

WE WERE ON INTERSTATE 90,
Bert and I in the front seat of my Taurus, our package in the trunk. I'd already passed two state troopers parked alongside the road. An hour from now we could get stopped and nothing short of a dog team would find anything suspicious, but if we got pulled over now, we were going to end up in prison. Normal citizens didn't drive around with federal officials hogtied in the trunks of their cars. Hoagland's condition wasn't going to make things any better for us.

“They'll find him up here,” said Bert, who had argued vociferously that we dump Hoagland down a well or sink him in the ocean with weights anchored around his neck. “He had a bad rep in the Company. Even people who worked with him were scared of him.”

“Are you saying you're scared of him?”

“Hell, yes. And you would be too if you had an ounce of common sense.”

“If I had an ounce of common sense I would have called the police the minute you gave me the Taser back.”

We drove up into the clouds toward the closed ski areas.

At this time of year there was often a light dusting of snow on the highest peaks, but the clouds had come in low enough to obscure them. Traffic was light except for big trucks laboring on the final grade at the summit, their stacks smudging the late afternoon with sooty diesel smoke. The peaks around us were dappled with alpenglow. We
were heading for a place called Cabin Creek, about ten miles on the other side of Snoqualmie Pass. I'd cross-country skied there in the winter, when it was splendid, but any other time of year it was nothing more than an old unpaved road. When we pulled off the interstate and took the overpass into Cabin Creek, patches of blue sky appeared overhead. It was a typical weather pattern for the area, wet and rainy on the west side of the Cascade Range, dry and warmer on the east.

As I drove across the overpass and onto the rutted gravel road, Bert scanned the area for official vehicles, state, federal, or otherwise. “I think it's clear,” he said.

There were no other cars on the dirt road, and it didn't look as if there had been for a while. The color of blue in the sky and the absence of sun indicated it would be dark soon. A quarter mile down the road, we stopped next to a gated side road. Bert and I looked at each other, then went around to the trunk, opened it, and considered the motionless lump inside the tarpaulin. Together we picked it up and lugged it west along a narrow path I remembered as a ski trail in the winter. We walked almost two hundred yards, well out of sight of the road, before we put him down. I leaned over and tried to catch my breath; Bert likewise. My stomach wound was still aching and bleeding from the beanbag hits. When some time had passed, Bert whispered, “I hear a car on the road.”

“Crap!”

“Quick,” Bert said. “Go back and shut the trunk. They see it open, they'll know we dumped something. They'll come back in here to see what it was.”

There wasn't a lot of time to think about it. I jogged back to the road, but if there had been another vehicle roaming the vicinity, it was gone by the time I got there. I slammed the trunk, and by the time I turned around to go back, Bert was running down the slope toward me carrying a bunched-up canvas tarp against his chest.

“Hurry,” he yelled. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

“I want to check on Hoagland.”

“Forget it. He's right behind me.”

“You were supposed to loosen things. Not set him free.”

“I cut one rope and he jumped up at me. He must have been playing possum.”

“Christ.”

“I know. I barely got out of there.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“He didn't see me. He didn't have the tape all off his face, but it was close.”

I reversed the car up the road, then turned it around and drove back the way we'd come, checking the rearview mirror repeatedly to see if Hoagland was chasing us on foot, but he wasn't anywhere in sight. Should he get disoriented, it could easily take Hoagland hours to make his way out of these woods. However, a smart man would hear the freeway and head toward the white noise of fast-moving cars and trucks and be safe within minutes. He would figure out where he was by the road signs.

WE CRAWLED THROUGH
rush-hour traffic on the 520 bridge, a mass of clouds and occasional points of sunlight needling us from the fading sunset over the Olympic Mountains in the west. As was often the case at this time of day, even Seattle's side streets were jammed. I let Bert out in Montlake amid a massive traffic tie-up. “Sure you want me to let you out here?” I asked.