The Blackbird Papers (3 page)

3

T
he sound of a phone pierced the room's silence, causing the ser-pentine tangle of honey-colored legs and arms to unwrap. Ster-ling Bledsoe killed the racket in the middle of the third ring.

“It's five o'clock in the morning,” he grumbled into the phone. “This better be good.”

“Wilson,” was all that the woman's voice could muster before dissolving into sobs.

“Kay?” Sterling whispered, now sitting up in the bed. “Is that you?” There was a muffled response. “I can't understand what you're saying,” he said.

There was a pause before a man's voice took over. “Sterling Bledsoe?” The voice was official and in charge. “Are you the brother of Professor Wilson Bledsoe?”

“Yes,” Sterling said. “What the hell is going on?”

“This is Detective Paul Hanlon of the Hanover Police Department,” the man replied. “Sorry to wake you so early in the morning, sir, but your brother is missing.”

“Wilson, missing?” Sterling asked, unable to make any sense of the words. “What the hell do you mean, Wilson's missing? Where's Kay?”

“She's right here,” Hanlon said. “One of the other officers is trying to comfort her, but I don't think she's in any condition to talk right now.”

Sterling looked at Veronica, back asleep under the covers. He left the bedroom and walked down the hall until he reached the kitchen. “What happened to Wilson?” Sterling demanded. His voice had quickly gone from confusion to anger.

“We're still trying to piece together all the information we have,” Hanlon answered. He chose his words carefully.

“Skip the bullshit,” Sterling shouted into the phone. Sterling Bledsoe knew a lot about police evasions—he was an FBI agent. He had spent the better part of ten years in the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia, where as a supervisory special agent he led an elite team of investigators that handled only the most difficult and highest-profile cases. “Tell me what the hell happened to my brother.”

“Please calm down, Mr. Bledsoe,” Hanlon said a little edgily.

“Calm down? You wake me up at some ungodly hour, tell me that my brother is suddenly missing, then you want me to calm down. I want some answers, dammit!”

“We don't really have many right now,” Hanlon said. “Your brother was heading home last night after a party at the president's mansion. He spoke to his wife twice and said he'd be home shortly for dinner. No one has seen him or heard from him since.”

“What time was the last communication?” Sterling asked. His detective instincts had already switched on. He was thinking more like an investigator than a brother.

“Just after seven last night,” Hanlon said. “He was traveling north on River Road and stopped to help a stranded truck.”

“Has anyone found the truck?”

“Negative. Our men are out there right now, but there's no sign of the truck or the Professor's car.”

Sterling had been on the other end of these phone calls all too often and knew that it was an unpleasant experience. But the fact that it was his only brother who was missing both scared and infuriated him.

“What time did Kay call in the missing person?”

“The first call came in to dispatch at twenty-one hundred hours. The second was logged in at twenty-three hundred, and the last at oh three hundred this morning.” Hanlon's responses were short and automatic. No original thought, something that worried Sterling. Local police departments tended to be slow and lack creativity. Sterling knew exactly how they worked, having cleaned up many of their sloppy investigations. Now he dreaded the idea that his brother's life might rest in the hands of a small, untested department tucked away in a rural mountain town.

Sterling looked at his clock. “Have you entered him into NCIC yet?” The National Crime Information Computer centralizes criminal records and data on fugitives, stolen property, and missing persons. The FBI and authorized federal, state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies can enter data into the elaborate system as well as extract information for the purposes of an active investigation. With just a few keystrokes, they can keep track of everything from the FBI's ten most wanted to stolen handguns. Sterling had used it many times to identify corpses.

Hanlon cleared his throat. He wasn't sure what Sterling Bledsoe did for a living, but it was obvious that he wasn't unfamiliar with police work. Bluffing would be a waste of time. “Mr. Bledsoe, typically we'd wait a little longer before entering someone into the computer. There's no reason to suspect any criminal activity or anything like that, at least not yet. We are, however, putting all available manpower on it. We realize that your brother isn't just anyone. He recently won that science award and a helluva lot of money.”

“Big fucking deal about the award,” Sterling shot back. “He also won the Nobel and nothing happened.”

“That I know,” Hanlon said. “But this is worth $2 million, double what the Nobel's worth.”

Sterling knew damn well how much money his older brother had just won. He didn't need to hear it from some local cop who didn't even know which countries sponsored the awards. Sterling's gut was already churning and it was telling him that money wasn't the motive. Wilson was a frumpy academic, not some industrial titan. He and Kay had plenty of money, but they lived a pretty simple life. Not too many people would have a sense of how much they were actually worth.

“Have you called state yet?” Sterling asked.

“No, we're still treating this as a local matter between us and the department in Vermont,” Hanlon said. “The investigation is just beginning. If the time comes when we need to bring them in, we will, of course, make the call.”

“Where exactly did Kay say he was when she spoke to him last?” Sterling was in his apartment in New York City, but he was thinking like he was in Quantico.

“He was still in the car, just a few minutes from home.”

“Did she get an exact location?”

“No, just that he was stopping somewhere on River Road, not far from the house.”

“Is the area secured?” Sterling had already mapped out the scene in his mind.

“Like I said, Mr. Bledsoe, we're just beginning our investigation.” Hanlon's voice wasn't friendly. “It's been less than ten hours since he was last heard from. It takes some time to gather all the facts and put everything together.”

“Goddammit, Hanlon! If this is a missing person case, there's not a second to spare. Every tick of the clock can mean the difference between life or death. If River Road was his last identified location, don't you think it would make a world of sense to secure the area? Random car traffic or even roaming animals can destroy any evidence that's there.”

There was a pause at the other end. “Anything else, sir?” Hanlon sighed.

“Yeah. Tell Kay I'm on the next goddamn plane!”

4

S
terling Bledsoe moved quickly and silently, packing enough clothes to last him a few days. He was more nervous than he wanted to let on, which is why he decided not to wake Veronica until he was heading out the door. Getting her upset wouldn't do either of them any good.

He walked into his small study and quietly closed the door behind him. He pulled out a small notebook that had been taped underneath his desk. He thumbed through the names of some of the most powerful people in Washington and stopped on Daniel J. Murphy, director of the FBI.

The phone rang once. “Murphy here.” Even at five in the morning, the director growled like a man in charge.

“It's Bledsoe, Murph,” Sterling said. “I've got some trouble up here.”

“A student of yours has finally figured out what you really do for a living,” Murphy cracked. One of the deals he had made with Sterling to keep him from leaving the Bureau was to allow him to teach an anatomy course at Hunter College one semester a year. Murphy never understood why it mattered so much to one of his top investigators to teach at some dinky city school.

“Wilson is missing,” Sterling said.

Murphy's voice tightened. “How long?”

“About ten hours, from what I can gather. But who knows with the locals.”

“Sorry to hear that, Sterling.” He knew as well as Sterling that finding a missing person alive was always a race against the clock. The first twenty-four hours were critical. After that, the chance of a happy reunion dropped drastically with every passing minute. “Was he up at Dartmouth?”

“Yup. That's where I'm heading right now.”

“Have they called us in yet?”

“No, but I'm sure they will soon.”

“Anything suspicious?”

“A $2 million science award just hit the bottom of his bank account.”

“Holy shit. You think it's a kidnapping?”

“I doubt it, which makes me feel even worse. Kidnappers would want him alive. Whatever the hell it is, I don't feel good about it. I need a favor, Murph.”

“Shoot.”

“If we get the call, I want to lead the case.”

Murphy let out a sigh. “Sterling, you know I can't do that. Against policy.”

“Fuck policy, Murph. This is my brother we're talking about. I want the case.”

“Goddammit, Sterling,” Murphy groaned. “You're putting me in a tough position. Sixteen Hundred will be down my throat if you fuck this up.” Sixteen Hundred was their internal code name for the White House.

“So I'm in?”

“Every bone in my body tells me to keep you out.”

“Murph, you know me. I can do it by the book with your blessing or I can do it on my own. It's your call.”

“Doesn't sound like I have much of a goddamn choice.”

“Thanks, Murph. I owe you.”

“Be careful, Sterling. And for Chrissake keep a level head.”

“Don't I always?” Sterling said before hanging up. He really didn't want to hear the director's answer.

S
terling loaded his shield, his Beretta Tomcat because it was easiest to conceal, and several bullet magazines into his travel bag. Though most of his work centered on evidence collection and analysis, he always left home prepared. He returned to his bedroom to finish packing.

There were several things already bothering him about the call from Hanover. He didn't like it that Kay, who was always under control, was too distraught to speak. Then there was Hanlon, the local tight-ass, practically reading his answers from a police academy training manual. He had good reason to doubt the locals' ability to handle a case like this, especially if it really turned into something. Hanover was a quiet town centered on the college. Crime wasn't a part of their everyday lives; they weren't likely to have the kind of experience needed to crack a case like this.

Just as troubling to Sterling was his relationship with his only brother. Sterling didn't know Wilson—not like brothers should. In fact, he had spent most of his life hating Wilson, the chosen one in the Bledsoe household. Pops was constantly rambling about Wilson's success, and his mother openly worshipped him. Sterling's whole childhood was spent trying to figure out ways to escape his brother's shadow, but the comparisons were always there.

The fifteen years that separated the two brothers had something to do with their emotional distance, but Sterling's deep sense of inferiority played a much larger role. Nothing he did was ever good enough. If he proudly brought home a report card with all A's and one B+, his father glanced at it and reminded him that Wilson had had a
perfect
card all the way through high school. And when Sterling made the basketball team, his mother murmured that Wilson had been the champion of the chess team and won the state tournament two years in a row.

Sterling had acquired his love for science only through a desire to surpass Wilson. He decided, however, to distinguish himself in a different field. Sterling's choice was anatomy. In childhood, he had dissected the dead mice and birds his cat dragged home late at night. He loved probing the striated muscles and following the tiny network of blood vessels. It was his mastery of anatomy, both animal and human, that had put him on the fast track in the world of homicide. His college professor, a retired FBI agent himself, had discreetly suggested to Sterling after class that the Bureau could use a smart, ambitious young man like him.

For an entire year, Professor Martin Gilden, ex–field office director of the FBI, tutored his favorite student on the nonclassified inner workings of the Bureau. He delighted the impressionable Sterling with grand stories of horrible crimes solved by great detective work. The Bureau was a special place, he had assured Sterling Bledsoe, but it wasn't a place for those who dreamed of stardom. Many would benefit from his work, but most if not all of his efforts would be conducted in anonymity. The Bureau was full of unsung heroes, definitely not the place for those seeking celebrity. One afternoon, Gilden sketched a career outline that would shape young Sterling's behavior. He needed to keep up his grades, stay on the right side of the law, and always run in the opposite direction from trouble. If he could accomplish all three and was serious about a future in the Bureau, Gilden would make the necessary calls.

Sterling followed the outline to the letter, and Professor Gilden stayed true to his word. Sterling began just like the others, with a mandatory two-year training period, but in short order ambition and guts earned him a promotion and assignment to the most elite homicide unit. He led a team that was only called in on special cases—high-profile crimes or when the political stakes were so great that the director couldn't afford a botched investigation. Through the years, Sterling had earned a name for himself, twice receiving commendations from the director. Everyone in Justice, from the attorney general on down, regarded Agent Bledsoe as a comer.

Veronica opened her eyes as Sterling came back into the bedroom. She was gorgeous, like all his women. Wilson may have gotten their parents' attention, but it was Sterling who had always gotten the attention from women. He was tall and tightly muscled, and even as an adolescent, a flash of his smile would make married women fidget nervously.

“Where were you last night, baby?” Veronica purred in a morning voice that had made him late to class on more than one occasion. One of her long, toned legs was uncovered. Seeing it took some edge off his tension.

“I was over at the school finishing up a few things.”

“But I waited up for you well past midnight.”

“And I'm sorry for that. I should have called.” He reached down and kissed her on the forehead, then he walked to the closet and pulled out a sweatsuit and running shoes. He was in no mood for being questioned.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Something's wrong up in Hanover,” he said, stuffing more clothes into the suitcase. “They can't find Wilson.”

“What happened?”

“He's been missing for ten hours.”

“Where is he?” Veronica was the most beautiful girl that Sterling had ever dated, but she was certainly not the smartest, especially so early in the morning.

“They don't know, Ronnie,” he answered teasingly. “That's why he's considered missing.”

“It's too early for me to think,” she said, slowly bending her exposed leg. She yawned but didn't bother to cover her mouth. Sometimes she had the manners of a guy, and when she did things like not cover her mouth it made her even sexier. Sterling fought the temptation to meet her back under the covers.

“I'll call you when I figure this out,” Sterling said. He reached for a quick kiss, but she pulled him down farther and explored the inside of his mouth.

“That's so you won't forget about me,” she said, finally releasing him. She fell back against the pillow.

“Little chance of that.” He smiled. “Do me a favor and leave a note for the students on my office door. Cancel office hours for next Monday and Wednesday, but I'll be back for class next Friday.” Sterling spoke with his usual confidence, but a bad feeling in his gut told him that his plan to be back in a week was overly optimistic.