The Jury Master (41 page)
Molia whispered back, “Kiss her on the cheek. And don’t play with Grandpa’s trains. You know how he can get.”
He hugged both children again in a fierce embrace, then stood and turned to his wife. Maggie rubbed her forearms as if trying to warm them. “I’ll call you.”
She nodded, gathered both children, and started down the porch steps.
“Hey,” Molia said softly.
Maggie ushered the children to Banto, who had met her halfway up the walk.
“Can we turn on the siren, Marty?” T.J. asked.
“Not a police car if you can’t turn on the siren,” Banto said, leading them down the path to the cars.
Maggie turned and rushed back up the steps, hugging her husband like a sailor returning from war. “Don’t you make me raise those two kids alone, Tom Molia. Don’t you do it; don’t you dare do it.”
“I won’t,” he whispered.
“If you die on me, I swear I’ll kill you.”
He released his grip, his cheeks saturated with his own tears and hers. “Then I won’t die on you. Who loves you, babe?”
She closed her eyes as if struck by a pain. “Who loves
you,
babe?”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and walked her down the porch steps. The officers followed at a respectful distance, leaving Sloane alone to watch from the porch. Banto helped Maggie into the backseat, then shook his partner’s hand.
“You sure you don’t want my help?” Banto asked.
“I’m trusting you with my family, Marty. Don’t let anything happen to them.”
“Nothing will. You’re a pain in my ass, but I can’t take Franklin alone.” Then Banto lowered into the car and shut the door.
The detective stood on the sidewalk watching the procession make its way down the street, their departure punctuated with two short blasts of the sirens to pacify his son. Then the cars turned right and were gone.
Tom Molia paused for a moment as if to gather his emotions, then wheeled and walked briskly back up the path, taking the porch in a leap. He pulled open the screen door. Sloane followed him inside and watched as the detective unlocked the dead bolt to a closet in the front room, pulled out a Kevlar vest and flung it on the couch, then brought out an assortment of handguns and rifles, as if taking inventory of a small gun shop.
“First we’ll pay a visit to Rivers Jones.” He laid out his weapons as he detailed how they would gather enough direct evidence to implicate Parker Madsen. With three dead men all bearing the same tattoo, they had enough to get the feds involved, but Molia wasn’t interested in that at the moment.
“Going to the feds would be like blowing a shrill whistle in a crowded theater,” he’d said. “We’d get everybody’s attention, but not much else. All it would do is give Madsen, and whoever else is involved, a chance to get their defenses in order.”
Sloane knew that would effectively end the investigation, and that would effectively end his quest to figure out his own identity. But he also knew that the detective’s plan was born of anger and not reason. It would not work. Madsen was too well insulated. Rivers Jones was likely a pawn, a fall guy in the event anyone got close. They needed the Justice Department to cooperate, to say Joe Branick had killed himself. Jones was that guy. Sloane knew there was only one way they were going to get close to Peak or Madsen, and that was by using the file. That was what they wanted most. That was the bargaining chip. It was the only way to end it, however that might be. He needed to stop the killing.
As Molia discussed his plan and took inventory of his weapons, they heard an otherwise familiar sound that at the moment was so unexpected, it took them both time to determine what it was. The phone on Sloane’s belt was ringing. He snatched it and flipped it open, expecting to see Tina’s number on the lighted display. The caller ID was blocked.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Sloane.”
A man’s voice, somehow familiar, though Sloane could not place it in that instant. “Who is this?”
Molia stepped toward him, and Sloane hit the speaker button on the side of the phone.
“Who this is, is not important, Mr. Sloane. You have turned out to be a formidable adversary. The two men you disposed of were highly skilled and highly trained soldiers. So was the man in San Francisco. I commend you.”
Sloane looked to Molia and mouthed the word “Madsen.” “Whatever they were, General, at the moment they’re just dead.”
The caller did not dispute his identity. “Yes, that’s my understanding.” It was Madsen.
“What do you want?”
“I have a proposition for you, Mr. Sloane, a
settlement
of sorts, to use a word that I’m sure you can appreciate.”
“I’m listening.”
“A meeting, just you and I, alone.”
“Why would I do that?” Sloane asked, though it was exactly what he’d had in mind.
“Because you have a package, and I have a need for that package.”
“I asked why
I
would meet with
you,
General, not why you would meet with me. It’s readily apparent what you want.”
“Very good. I would expect such a precise and reasoned response from an acclaimed trial lawyer such as yourself.” Madsen paused. “In order for there to be a successful negotiation, each side must have some leverage, something to bargain with, something the other side would want. Am I correct? Is that what you’re getting at?”
“I assure you, Mr. Madsen, there is nothing in this world that you could have that I would want.”
“I find that response very disappointing, Mr. Sloane. I must admit that I had been looking forward to meeting you, or should I say, meeting you again? That was quite an accomplishment, getting into the West Wing of the White House. I believe it to be unprecedented, and clearly indicative of someone highly intelligent, skilled, and composed. But if you think I would make such a statement without the ability to back it up, then I can only say that perhaps I have overestimated you, or you have underestimated my resolve.”
“I haven’t underestimated you at all, Mr. Madsen.”
“Oh, I beg to differ.”
“David?”
Molia pulled his face away at the unexpected sound. Sloane closed his eyes. His head slumped to his chest.
“Tina,” he whispered.
“You will see, Mr. Sloane, that I am not a man who makes bold proclamations I cannot keep.”
“Madsen, you son of a bitch. So help me God—”
“I’m glad to hear she is of as much importance to you as I suspected.”
“Madsen, you listen to me—”
Madsen’s voice hardened. “You are in no position to be making threats or demands, Mr. Sloane. Nor is there any need to make this personal. Consider it a business transaction. You have a package. I want it. You bring it to me, and I release the woman to you. Simple, neat, and clean.”
“Where?”
“That information will be given to you at a later time. You are to come alone, Mr. Sloane. Do not bring the detective. Do not bring the police. If you are listening, Detective Molia—and I assume you are—then know this: I will kill the woman if I smell you within five miles. Mr. Sloane, I will contact you on this phone. Trying to contact me or to trace this number will be quite futile, I assure you. Your calls are also being monitored. If you call anyone while you are en route, I will know it. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Now, I’d suggest you get moving. You have two minutes before I call back with your next set of instructions. One hundred twenty seconds. If you are not moving, alone, the woman will die.”
“Madsen . . .”
“Time is running. Precisely two minutes starting . . . now.”
Sloane shouted, “Madsen!”
T
OM MOLIA PACED
the hardwood floor near the front door, the keys to Banto’s Jeep firmly in his grip. “No way. I can’t let you do it, David.”
Sloane looked at his watch. He had a minute and forty-five seconds to be on the move. “You heard him. He’ll kill her.”
“He’ll kill her anyway, and he’ll kill you. Madsen is a trained killer, David. You don’t stand a chance, and there is no guarantee he will go alone.”
“He’ll go alone. His ego won’t permit him to think he needs anyone else to get the job done. I’ve become a challenge for him. He wants the challenge.”
“Which is exactly why you’re not going alone, macho bullshit aside.”
Sloane looked at his watch. He was under a minute and a half. “This isn’t about Macho bullshit.”
“Then what
is
it about?”
“You don’t understand, Tom, and I don’t have time to explain it to you, but I cannot let her die. I can’t sit by and watch another woman I love die. I’ve had to do that twice. If this is the only way to keep her alive, then I have to try. I have to do it.”
“We can—”
“We don’t have time,” Sloane growled, adamant. “We don’t have time to make plans. We don’t have time to call in backup. Give me the keys.”
“I’ll follow you at a safe—”
He held out his hand. “Give me the keys to the car.”
“I’ll hide in the trunk.”
“Jeeps have no trunks.”
“Then I’ll hide in the fucking backseat.”
“You don’t think he’s thought of that? You don’t think there’s somebody outside right now, watching?” Sloane looked at his watch. Under a minute. “We’re running out of time.”
“I have a stake in this, too, David; they killed Cooperman and Peter Ho. This is not just your battle.”
“Then give me the chance to do this for both of us. If you don’t, Tina will die and we both will have lost. You have a family to think of. You have two small children who need their father, and a wife who needs her husband. I don’t have anything in this world but Tina. She’s it. If he kills her, I don’t care whether I live or die.”
Molia shook his head. “I’m sorry, David. I’m not going to let you commit suicide.”
The detective turned his back and started for the door. Sloane grabbed the lamp off the side table and swung it like a bat, hitting Molia in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor. He dropped to one knee, put a hand just to the right of Molia’s chin, and felt a steady pulse.
“And I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I left your wife a widow and your children without a father.” He took the keys to the Jeep from Molia’s hand, quickly gathered what he needed, and pushed open the screen door as the cellular phone rang in his hand.
F
ORTY MINUTES LATER,
Tom Molia sat on the couch in his living room, holding an ice pack against the back of his head. Standing over him was a contingent of people, but his focus was on the large African-American man who looked as if he’d just gone twelve rounds with George Foreman in his prime and lost. Next to him was an equally tall, attractive woman.
“How did you get my name, Detective?” Charles Jenkins asked.
“Sloane said he was looking for you. He said you used to work with Joe Branick and you might be the key to telling us what the hell is going on.”
Jenkins spoke to the woman. “He remembered me.”
“He said he saw you in a dream,” Molia said. “And don’t ask me any more than that. Given the pounding in my head at the moment, I’m amazed I remembered your name.”
Molia had awoken on the floor with the keys to the Jeep missing, Maggie’s favorite lamp broken, and a headache that four Tylenol had not touched. He put out an all-points bulletin on Marty Banto’s Jeep, giving strict instructions that anyone seeing it was to call in its location but otherwise to stand down. Then he took his only option: He dialed the number for Langley, provided his credentials, and said he had information on the death of Joe Branick. That got him to the first gatekeeper. Once there, he mentioned the name Charles Jenkins. That set off alarm bells that kept pushing him up the chain of command and did not stop until he was talking with William Brewer, the director of the CIA. Half an hour after hanging up the telephone with Brewer, Molia’s neighbors got the second thrill of their evening when a helicopter touched down in the cul-de-sac and delivered the two people standing in his living room.
Jenkins filled in Molia about the village in the mountains of Oaxaca, and a massacre that had taken place there thirty years earlier.
“And you saved him?” he asked, referring to Sloane.
“I didn’t save him, Detective. Fate saved him that day.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, Mr. Jenkins, but right now
we’re
fate. If we don’t find Sloane, he’s dead. Madsen will kill him.”
The telephone rang. Tom Molia snatched it from its cradle and spoke into the receiver, listened for a beat, then handed the phone to Jenkins.
Jenkins listened intently. When he hung up he told Alex Hart that Brewer reported that they had been unsuccessful in locating Parker Madsen.
The phone rang again. This time the call was for Tom Molia. “You’re sure?” Molia asked the caller. “No. Nobody is to do anything,” he said, hanging up. “We don’t have much time.”
“What is it?” Jenkins asked.
“They just spotted the Jeep. I know where they’re going,” Molia said, grabbing the Sig. “It seems our Mr. Madsen has a flair for the theatrical. He’s bringing this full circle.”
“Full circle?”
“Where we found Joe Branick’s body.”
“How far are we?” Jenkins asked.
“Too far, I’m afraid,” Molia said.
Black Bear National Park,
West Virginia
S
LOANE STOOD LOOKING
up at a crescent moon streaked by the contrail of a jet. Stars pierced the night sky like pinholes in a children’s theater canvas backdrop, but offered little in the way of usable light. The hushed sounds of a river flowing resonated with the symphony of insects, and the air was heavy from the humidity of the day. Thick brush and tall, slender trees, standing like attentive soldiers waiting for the events they were about to witness, surrounded the clearing. Sloane knew from the newspaper articles that Black Bear National Park was where they had found Joe Branick’s body, but he didn’t imagine that Parker Madsen chose their meeting place for sentimental reasons. No, the general had chosen it for the same reason it was chosen as the place to end Joe Branick’s life: It was remote, dark, and heavily wooded, which allowed for the element of surprise, and a loud noise such as a gunshot would echo on the still air in every direction, making its precise location impossible to detect with any degree of accuracy.
