Saving Faith (9 page)

Reynolds had been considering this possibility from the moment she had seen Newman’s body. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t see how that could be the case.”

Massey coldly ticked off the points on his fingers. “We’ve got one dead man, a missing woman and a pair of boots. Put it all together and I’m looking at a third party being involved. Tell me how that third party got here without inside information.”

Reynolds spoke in a very low tone. “It could be a random thing. Lonely place, possible armed robbery. It happens.” She took a quick breath. “But if you’re right and there is a leak, it’s not complete.” They all looked at her curiously. “The shooter obviously didn’t know about our last-second change of plan. That Connie and I would be here tonight,” Reynolds explained. “Ordinarily, I would’ve been with Faith, but I was working another case. It didn’t pan out and I decided at the last minute to hook up with Connie and come out here.”

Connie glanced over at the van. “You’re right, no one could have known about that. Ken didn’t even know.”

“I
tried
to call Ken about twenty minutes before we got here. I didn’t want to just suddenly appear. If he heard a car pull up to the safe house without prior warning, he might have gotten spooked, shot first and asked questions later. He must have already been dead when I tried to reach him.”

Massey stepped toward her. “Agent Reynolds, I know you’ve been handling this investigation from the beginning. I know that your use of this safe house and the closed-circuit TV surveillance of Ms. Lockhart were all approved by the appropriate parties. I understand your difficulties in pursuing this case and gaining this witness’s trust.” Massey paused for a moment, seeming to select his words with great care. Newman’s death had stunned them all, although agents were often in harm’s way. Still, there would be definite blame assessed in this case, and everyone knew it.

Massey continued, “However, your approach was hardly textbook. And the fact is, an agent is dead.”

Reynolds plunged right in. “We had to do this very quietly. We couldn’t exactly have surrounded Lockhart with agents. Buchanan would’ve been gone before we had enough evidence for prosecution.” She took a long breath. “Sir, you asked for my observations. Here they are. I don’t think Lockhart killed Ken. I think Buchanan is behind it. We have to find her. But we have to do it quietly. If we put out an APB, then Ken Newman has probably died in vain. And if Lockhart is alive, she won’t be for long if we go public.”

Reynolds looked over at the van just as its doors closed on Newman’s body. If she had been escorting Faith Lockhart instead of Ken, the odds were that she would have lost her life tonight. For any FBI agent, death was always a possibility, however remote. If she were killed, would Brooklyn Dodgers Reynolds fade in her children’s memory? She was certain her six-year-old daughter would always remember “Mommy.” She had doubts about three-year-old David, though. If she were killed, would David, years from now, only refer to Reynolds as his “birth” mother? The thought itself was nearly paralyzing.

One day she had actually taken the ridiculous step of having her palm read. The palm reader had warmly welcomed Reynolds, given her a cup of herbal tea and chatted with her, asking her questions that tried to sound casual. These queries, Reynolds knew, were designed to gather background information to which the woman could add appropriate mumbo-jumbo as she “saw” into Reynolds’s past, as well as her future.

After examining Reynolds’s hand, the palm reader had told her that her life line was short. Significantly so, in fact. The worst she’d ever seen. The woman said this as she stared at a scar on Reynolds’s palm. Reynolds knew it was the result of falling on a broken Coke bottle in her backyard when she was eight.

The reader had picked up her cup of tea, apparently waiting for Reynolds to plead for more information, presumably at an appropriate premium over the initial fee. Reynolds had informed her that she was strong as a horse with years in between even a simple bout of flu.

Death needn’t be by natural causes, the palm reader had replied, her painted eyebrows rising to emphasize the obvious point.

On that, Reynolds had paid her five dollars and walked out the door.

Now she wondered.

Connie scuffed the dirt with his toe. “If Buchanan is behind this, he’s probably long gone by now anyway.”

“I don’t think so,” Reynolds replied. “If he runs right after this, then he’s as good as admitting guilt. No, he’ll play it cool.”

“I don’t like this,” Massey said. “I say we APB Lockhart and bring her in, assuming she’s still living.”

“Sir,” Reynolds said, her voice tight, edgy, “we can’t name her as a subject in a homicide when we have reason to believe she wasn’t involved in the murder, but may well be a victim herself. That opens the Bureau to a whole civil-action can of worms if she does turn up. You know that.”

“Material witness, then. She damn well qualifies for that,” said Massey.

Reynolds looked directly at him. “An APB is not the answer. It’s going to do more harm than good. For everybody involved.”

“Buchanan has no reason to keep her alive.”

“Lockhart is a smart woman,” Reynolds said. “I spent time with her, got to know her. She’s a survivor. If she can hang on for a few days, we have a shot. Buchanan can’t possibly know what she’s been telling us. But we do an APB naming her as a material witness, we just sign her death notice.”

They were all silent for a bit. “All right, I see your point,” Massey finally said. “You really think you can find her on the Q.T.?”

“Yes.” What else could she say?

“Is that your gut talking, or your brain?”

“Both.”

Massey studied her for a long moment. “For now, Agent Reynolds, you focus on finding Lockhart. The VCU people will investigate Newman’s murder.”

“I’d have them lockstep the yard looking for the slug that killed Ken. Then I’d search the woods,” Reynolds said.

“Why the woods? The boots were on the stoop.”

She glanced over at the tree line. “If I were here to ambush someone, that”—she pointed toward the woods—“would be my first tactical choice. Good cover, excellent line of fire and a hidden escape route. Car waiting, gun disposed of, a quick trip to Dulles Airport. In an hour the shooter’s in another time zone. The shot that killed Ken entered the back of his neck. He’s facing away from the woods. Ken must not have seen his attacker, or else he wouldn’t have turned his back.” She eyed the thick woods. “It all points there.”

Another car pulled up and the director of the FBI himself climbed out. Massey and his aides hurried over, leaving Connie and Reynolds alone.

“So what’s our plan of action?” Connie asked.

“Maybe I’ll try to match those boots to my Cinderella,” Reynolds said as she watched Massey talking to the director. The director was a former field agent who, Reynolds knew, would take this catastrophe extremely personally. Everybody and everything associated with it would be subject to intense scrutiny.

“We’ll cover all the usual bases.” She tapped her finger against the tape. “But this is really all we have. Whoever’s on this tape we hit hard, like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Depending on how this turns out, we might not have many tomorrows left, Brooke,” said Connie.

 

CHAPTER 8

Lee gripped the steering wheel so hard his fingers were turning white. As the police car, lights blazing, raced past him going in the opposite direction, he let out an enormous breath and then pushed hard on the accelerator. They were in Lee’s car after having ditched the other. He had scrubbed down the inside of the dead man’s car, but he could have easily missed something. And nowadays equipment existed that could find things completely invisible to the naked eye. Not good.

*  *  *

As Faith watched the swirling lights disappear into the darkness, she wondered if the police were heading to the cottage. Did Ken Newman have a wife and kids? she wondered. There had been no wedding band on his finger. Like many women, Faith had the habit of making that quick observation. Yet he’d seemed like the fatherly type.

As Lee maneuvered the car through the back roads, Faith’s hand moved up, down and then drew a vertical line across her chest as she finished crossing herself. The near-automatic movement conveyed a subtle sense of surprise to her. She added a silent prayer for the dead man. She whispered another prayer for any family he might have. “I’m so sorry you’re dead,” she said out loud, to help assuage her mounting feelings of guilt for simply having survived.

Lee looked over at her. “Friend of yours?”

She shook her head. “He was killed because of me. Isn’t that enough?”

Faith was surprised at how easily the words of prayer and remorse had come back to her. Because of her nomadic father, her attendance at mass over the years had been sporadic. But her mother had insisted on Catholic schools wherever the family happened to venture, and her father had followed this rule after his wife had died. Catholic school must have ingrained something in her other than the constant bite of the ruler on her knuckles from Sister Something-or-other. The summer before her senior year, she had become an orphan, her travels with her father abruptly cut short by a heart attack. She was sent to live with a relative who did not want her and who took pains to show no attention to her. Faith had rebelled however she could. She smoked, she drank, she ceased to be virgin Faith long before it was fashionable to do so. At school the daily tugging down of her skirt to below her knees by the nuns only made her want to pull the damn thing up to her crotch. All in all, it was a truly forgettable year in her life, followed by several more as she struggled through college, tried to gain some direction in her life. Then for the past fifteen years she had thought her rudder was flawless, the grand movements of her life fluid. Now she was floundering, speeding toward the rocks.

Faith looked at Lee. “We need to call the police, tell somebody that he’s back there.”

Lee shook his head. “That opens a whole other can of worms. That is definitely not a good idea.”

“We can’t just leave him back there. It’s not right.”

“Do you suggest we go to the local precinct and try to explain this thing? They’ll put us in straitjackets.”

“Dammit! If you won’t do it, I will. I am
not
leaving him back there for the squirrels.”

“All right, all right. Calm down.” He sighed. “I guess we could place an anonymous call in a little while, get the cops to check it out.”

“Fine,” said Faith.

*  *  *

A few minutes later, Lee noticed that Faith was fidgeting.

“I have another request,” she said.

The woman’s demanding style was really starting to annoy him. Lee tried not to think about the hurt in his elbow, the irritating specks of cold dirt in his eyes, the unknown dangers that lay ahead.

“Like what?” he said wearily.

“There’s a gas station near here. I’d like to wash up.” She added quietly, “If that’s okay.”

Lee looked down at the stains on her clothes and his expression softened. “No problem,” he said.

“It’s down this road—”

“I know where it is,” Lee said. “I like to get the lay of the land where I’m working.”

Faith simply stared at him.

*  *  *

In the bathroom Faith tried not to focus on what she was doing as she painstakingly cleaned the blood off her clothing. Still, every couple of minutes she felt like ripping off all her clothes and scrubbing herself down using the soap from the dispenser and the stack of paper towels on the dirty sink.

When she climbed back in the car, her companion’s look said what his mouth didn’t.

“I’ll make it, for now,” she said.

“By the way, my name’s Lee. Lee Adams.”

Faith said nothing. He started the car and they left the gas station.

“You don’t have to tell me your name,” he said. “I was hired to follow you, Ms. Lockhart.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Who hired you to do that?”

“Don’t know.”

“How could you possibly not know who hired you?”

“I admit it’s a little unusual, but it happens, on occasion. Some people are embarrassed about hiring a private detective.”

“So that’s what you are, a private eye?” Her tone was one of contempt.

“It can be a very legit way of earning a buck. And I’m as legit as they come.”

“And how did this person come to hire you?”

“Other than the fact that I’ve got a killer Yellow Pages ad, I don’t have a clue.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re mixed up in, Mr. Adams?”

“Let’s just say I have a better idea now than I did a little bit ago. Getting shot at is the one thing that has always captured my undivided attention.”

“And who shot at you?”

“The same guy who nailed your friend. I think I winged him, but he got away.”

Faith rubbed her temples and looked out into the darkness. His next words startled her.

“What are you, Witness Protection?” Lee waited. When she didn’t answer, he continued. “I did a ten-second down-and-dirty on your friend while you were busy choking out the car. He had a Glock nine-millimeter and a Kevlar vest, for all the good it did him. The shield on his belt said FBI. I didn’t have time to check for ID. So what was his name?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“Why Witness Protection?” she asked.

“The cottage. Special locks, security system. It’s a safe house, of sorts. Nobody’s living there, that’s for sure.”

“So you’ve been inside.”

He nodded. “At first I thought you were having an affair. A couple minutes inside told me it wasn’t a love nest. Strange house, though. Hidden cameras, tape-recording system. Did you know you were on stage, by the way?”

The astonished look on her face answered his question.