Glass Tiger (21 page)

For the same reason, he drove the Cherokee and Franklin’s GPS transmitter to the Ravalli County Museum in the old county courthouse on Bedford Street. If they bothered to track him there, they would figure he was just killing time.

He let a collection of American Indian artifacts fascinate him for an hour, then went out the ground-floor men’s room window, leaving it unlocked, and went shopping. To buy more time, he needed to give Hatfield something tough to explain away.

In a variety of stores, he bought underwear, shirts, socks, a waterproof pouch to use as a wallet, two pairs of
pants and one warm jacket, shaving gear, a pair of shoes and a pair of ankle-length boots, a belt. He also bought a wood rasp, Providene-Iodine 10% topical antiseptic microbicide, gauze bandages and adhesive tape, and thin opaque medical gloves. At the last minute, he bought two more $10 phone cards. They could be traced but it took time. He paid cash for everything. At the bank, he cashed the FBI’s severance check, and drew out his day’s limit of cash on his ATM card. After today, his money belt would have to see him through.

Everything fit into two grocery shopping bags he left under the men’s room window at the museum while he hauled himself back up inside. He walked sedately out the front door, drove around to pick up his purchases, and went back to the motel. No messages on the phone. No intrusions into the room. He hadn’t expected any. They were so damn sure of him, like his FBI taggers in D.C., that he felt only contempt for them. And anger.

He paid through the next day, telling the room clerk not to bother making up the room in the morning, and put out the DO NOT DISTURB sign before going to bed.

Thorne rolled out at four a.m., silently tore up the bed, laid a lamp on its side, and tipped over a chair. His cash was in his money belt, his money clip was on the dresser with a few bucks in it, along with his keys and watch, the FBI badge, and the wallet that held his i.d. and driver’s license. His passport was hidden in his suitcase where they were sure to find it.

He left the clothes he had worn the day before tossed over the room’s still-upright chair, left his shoes with yesterday’s socks stuffed in them under it. He also left all his old clothes in the dresser right where they were, and left his suitcase in the closet. He would carry no miniature bugs away with him.

He put on new socks and the new boots, then dropped the shopping bag with his new shaving kit and his extra new clothes on the grass below the rear window. With gloved hands, he quietly broke the glass inward and artistically scattered shards of it around on the floor.

Only then did he draw the wood rasp across his forehead and let blood splatter around the room and on the window sill. After he disinfected and bandaged the cut, he put on his money belt and dressed from the skin out in his new clothes.

A two-step run, and he dove through the glassless window, tucking and rolling as he hit the grassy slope behind his room. He waited. No window opened, no lights went on, no pale blob of face looked out at him. When they came to clean the room the following
morning, they would find what looked like a murder scene, and call the cops, who would be all over the crime-scene before Hatfield could close things down.

Thorne went through the woods to Andy’s Dakota four-by-four parked two blocks away. In his waterproof pouch was his new i.d.: driver’s license, social security card, library card (expired), and three unemployment benefit payment stubs. All of them legal and valid, all identifying him as one Benjamin Schutz: Benny the Boozer’s full and real name. Also in the pouch was his FBI commission card. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Not because someone would challenge it – how many civilians knew what FBI credentials looked like? – but because eventually it would get back to Hatfield that the card was in play. Once that happened, the noose would tighten.

The wood rasp, bandaids, disinfectant, and surgeon’s gloves went into three different dumpsters on his way out of town.

An hour later, he ran Andy’s Dodge Dakota in under the firs at the mouth of the valley, and left the keys on the tire. Carrying his shopping bag, he walked northwest on the national park service road Andy had pointed out, checking out the dirt tracks going off on either side. No vehicle passed him, not one.

Four miles north of the valley, he followed a barely-visible abandoned logging trace. A quarter-mile in, he found a single truck tire track in a patch of hardened mud. No more tracks, but a heavy vehicle’s passage was marked by broken twigs and matted-down grass for another quarter-mile.

In the thick underbrush under the pines, where it would be well-hidden from the road and invisible from the air, was a dark green 4-Runner. He pulled away the
fragrant fir boughs and checked the license number: California 5
CWD
046. A current registration-month sticker on the license plate, a previous year’s sticker under that. It was Corwin’s car.

The keys were stashed in front of the left rear tire. It had a full tank of gas and fired up immediately. He rifled the glove box. Maps and a flashlight, the manual, paper napkins. Then he remembered that in California, a vehicle’s registration and insurance papers were usually stowed behind the sun visor on the driver’s side. They were there, and they were electrifying.

The truck was registered to a Janet Kestrel, c/o Mrs. Edie Melendez at an address in an LA suburb. A woman could explain the months when Corwin dropped out of sight. A lover, travelling with him? An assassin who helped him plan the Delta murders?

Whoever she was, she was the real, solid lead Thorne had been hoping for. If he could find her. He got back to Highway 93, then drove north toward 1-20 to get out of Idaho as soon as possible. At Spokane, Washington, he would get another interstate that would take him south toward California.

Crandall laid the Hamilton
Daily News
on Wallberg’s desk in the Oval Office, folded so the pertinent below-the-fold headline was prominent: MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE FROM LOCAL HOTEL

Wallberg read the article as if the newspaper were a poisonous viper writhing toward him across his desk.

‘When did this happen?’

‘Two days ago, Mr. President. It cycled routinely to Shayne O’Hara because of the town’s proximity to the attempted assassination site, then routinely from his office to us.’

‘Set up a meeting with Hatfield, ASAP.’

—

‘Talk to me,’ snapped the President.

Hatfield was literally on the carpet, standing at attention in front of the President’s massive hardwood desk in the Oval Office. He had not been asked to sit down.

‘Mr. President, as you know, when we dismissed Thorne at Camp David he was to await further orders at the Mayflower Hotel. Instead, he left word that he was going to Fort Benning, Georgia, to spend a couple of days with an old Ranger buddy.’

‘Did he know his return to Kenya was all arranged?’

‘I sent the ticket to the Mayflower myself.’

‘You checked on the Fort Benning angle, of course.’

‘A room had been reserved in the BOQ by his buddy, but Thorne never showed. Victor Blackburn is career Army, he would not jeopardize his pension by covering for Thorne. They haven’t seen each other for ten years. In fact, he’s just pissed off.’

Wallberg frowned. ‘What have we learned in Montana?’

‘Franklin and Greene have taken over the investigation from the locals. Everything of Thorne’s was left behind. Everything. Rental car, keys, his FBI badge, his money clip with cash in it, his wallet, shaving gear, i.d., clothes, luggage. We found his passport hidden behind the lining of his suitcase. The room’s rear window was broken inward, and a great deal of blood was splattered around. Our lab is rushing the DNA testing, but it almost certainly is Thorne’s blood.’

‘Could it have been… Corwin?’ It was a half-whisper.

‘Mr. President, Corwin is dead.’ Hatfield leaned across the desk, ebony features intense. He had practiced this move in the mirror. ‘But Thorne is alive. It was a non-lethal amount of blood spattered around. Non-lethal, Mr. President. And one vital piece of identification was not recovered from that room.’

Wallberg was staring at him. ‘Which is?’

‘His commission card with the FBI seal on it. Don’t you see, sir? He left his badge behind but took the card.’ Hatfield let the tension build, then sat down abruptly, unbidden. Franklin’s quick work had given him time to force his tame psychiatrist, Sharon Dorst, to give him the ammunition he needed. ‘The psychiatrist who did Thorne’s initial fitness evaluation noted a strong identification with Corwin. They are a generation apart, but as you know, their profiles are extremely similar.’

Wallberg was shaken. ‘Meaning that the identification is so strong that Thorne is going to start stalking—’

‘No chance, Mr. President. His aversion to killing is too deep, based on a devastating personal loss for which he feels responsible. But he feels a need to understand Corwin. He couldn’t do that from Kenya, so he went to Montana instead.’

Thorne tunnelling back into Corwin’s life might be almost as dangerous for Wallberg and his ambitions as another sniper stalk. He slapped his hand on the desk in time with his words.

‘Find him. Corral him. Rein him in. Shut him down.’

Hatfield had gambled on there being something real between Corwin and the President, something that Wallberg didn’t want to come out. What could it be? Was there any way he could uncover it? Meanwhile, feeding on it, using it, whatever it was, he had turned what looked like a disastrous setback into a victory!

He could hunt Thorne down and take him out with impunity. The man would just disappear, and the secret of who actually had saved the President’s life would disappear with him. Forever.

‘Full National Security powers, Mr. President?’

‘Whatever it takes, Agent Hatfield.’

It was a warm day of smoggy sunshine in the LA suburb of Carson. Through the open windows of the 4-Runner came the faint stink of petroleum from the world’s largest oil refinery a few miles away, huge as a nuclear disaster site. Grace Avenue, running off Carson Boulevard, was a racial layer cake, black and brown with white frosting. Much of the street was projects, rabbit warrens set back behind narrow strips of lawn.

The address given on the 4-Runner’s registration for Edie Melendez was a small, not-quite-run-down bungalow. The door was opened by a woman of about thirty, obviously not Latina, with the square body and strong face and piercing eyes of an American Indian. But she brought with her to the door the mingled aromas of refried beans, tortillas, tacos, frijoles, salsa, hot peppers.

‘Mrs. Melendez?’ He had decided against using the FBI credentials. He held out his hand. ‘My name is Brendan Thorne.’

‘Glad to meet you.’

‘Um… do you know a Janet Kestrel? She used this—’

‘You are a friend of hers? You know where she is?’

Dead end. Thorne said, regretfully, ‘I’m sorry. I’m trying to get in touch with her myself.’

‘She is my little sister. I hoped…’ She made a flustered gesture. ‘But please, come in, por favor.’

They sat on a sagging sofa in the small living room. All the furnishings were old, worn, but everything was
scrupulously clean. She said her sister Janet was
muy guapa
.

‘Our birth name is Roanhorse, we are of the Hopland Indian clan up by Santa Rosa. When she became a blackjack dealer in Reno, she started calling herself Janet Amore.’

And after Reno, she started calling herself Janet Kestrel. Why, when her birth name was Roanhorse?

‘She just drove up here one day last fall, and said she was gonna live with us while she looked for work. But she was only here two days, then she saw something in the newspaper and got real excited. She said she had something she had to do. My husband, Carlos, he was glad when she left. He didn’t like her because he said she didn’t know her place.’

She put her hand on Thorne’s forearm, as if he was an old friend she had known for years. Her face was sad.

‘After we got married, I found out real quick that Carlos, he didn’t want me, he just wanted his green card.’ A sudden spark animated those big, dark eyes, made her momentarily vivacious. ‘Before she left, Janet told me I should leave him, and we’d go to Reno and she’d teach me how to deal blackjack.’

‘Sounds like good advice to me,’ said Thorne.

‘You think?’ she asked seriously. Then she shook her head, as if at an impossible dream. Her face became sad again.

‘The night she left, she got beat up, real bad. The cops found her in an alley behind some fancy hotel in Beverly Hills.’

What had Janet Kestrel seen in the newspaper? What did she feel she had to do? Who had beaten her up? Corwin? Why?

‘The hospital, they called me. My husband says, Wha she doin, guy had to beat her up?’ She was a good mimic.
‘He wouldn’t drive me, so I rode the bus up to see her. The hospital was real fancy, up by Beverly Hills. Cedar’s-Sinai? She looked awful. She couldn’t remember anything about what happened to her.’

‘Did the cops talk to you? Or to her?’

‘Not to me. And I only saw Janet the once. She was asleep from all the pain medication they had her on, but she woke up all of a sudden and told me where she’d parked the 4-Runner. She asked me to get her duffle bag from the truck and give it to a certain nurse. I did, a hefty black lady who was real nice. She said she would smuggle it into one of the hospital lockers for Janet, and put the key in Janet’s clothing.’

She paused and sighed, very expressively.

‘Carlos wouldn’t let me go back up there for three days. When I finally could, Janet was gone.’

Dead end indeed. ‘Ah… when did all of this happen?’

‘It was in November, early – like around election day.’ She put out her hand again, like a trusting child. ‘If you find her, you tell her Edie is ready to go to Reno with her and learn how to deal blackjack. Promise?’

‘I promise,’ said Thorne.

If he found her. But wait a minute. The hospital wouldn’t let her check out without making financial arrangements.

Cedar’s-Sinai was a hulking state-of-the art medical facility on Beverly Boulevard between Robertson and Doheny, across the street from the Beverly Center. Thorne went in after visiting hours: they would be settling into their nighttime routine, maybe they would cut him a little slack.