Three Minutes to Midnight (6 page)

“You don't. I will check in with you. Just need your info.”

Mahegan never provided anyone the number to his smartphone. The device itself had protections, such as the ability to track multiple satellites at once or over time while remaining anonymous. If someone with hacking skills were somehow to identify his phone number, they would be able to find him. But there was very little likelihood of that occurring.

Griffyn gave him his card with a handwritten cell phone number, which Mahegan would dial only from a pay phone, if he could find one.

“Thanks. Where do you think the body is?”

“We're taking samples right now. This is where you could help us. We don't have Cassidy's info in our database, but I'm sure you guys do.”

“Roger. Give me a vial, and I'll get it analyzed and get back with you.”

Griffyn disappeared for a minute and came back with a Baggie with a small test tube.

“Small sample, but should be good enough,” Griffyn said.

“We'll see if it works.”

“Thanks. I look forward to the partnership.”

“Me too.” Mahegan nodded and pocketed the Baggie in his blazer.

They shook hands.

Mahegan said, “I'm heading out this way.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the balcony. “You guys may want to process that as a possible egress or ingress route.”

“Already planned on it,” Griffyn said.

Mahegan turned and slid the balcony door open with his bare hand.

“Hey, you need some latex gloves!”

He put his other hand on the sliding glass door, as if he had stumbled. “Sorry. You're right.”

But the truth was, Mahegan knew his prints had been on that door for a couple of weeks. That was when he had found the picture of his father, who apparently had also been hunting James Gunther.

CHAPTER 6

M
AHEGAN STOOD IN THE THROCKMORTONS' BACKYARD, WATCHING
the adjoining home's lights peek through the wooded acreage like searching beacons. The air was calm and unusually cool. The September sun had set, and the cloudless night allowed the day's heat to diminish upward.

A movement to his right caught his attention, and he saw the tousled hair of a young boy attempting to hide behind a tree trunk. He was sneaking quick looks at Mahegan, as if unaware that Mahegan could see him. Mahegan casually walked to the fence separating the backyard from the side yard as the boy discreetly slid behind the tree, rotating around its trunk to remain hidden. Mahegan drifted slightly toward the tree when he knew it was impossible for the boy to see him. Quickly, Mahegan had a hand on his shoulder, and the young boy yelped, unaware that Mahegan had closed the gap.

“You live here?” Mahegan asked. As he went to drag the boy from his hiding place, Mahegan noticed he was squatting there. The boy was actually nearly six feet tall, gangly, and had a constellation of acne on his face that was so severe, it deserved a nomenclature from Greek mythology.

“No . . . no, sir.” He had the scared look of a teenager who was used to being perceived as trustworthy and loyal but who had been caught doing something terribly bad. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he was calculating the fence's scalability.

“Name?”

He did not reply. Mahegan tightened his grip on his shoulder. “Nathan.”

Mahegan waited for him to say more, but he didn't. “So, it's like Cher or Bono? Just one word?”

“Nathan Daniels,” he said with an edge of defiance, as if the name should mean something to Mahegan. As Mahegan processed Nathan Daniels's name with those of Griffyn and Throckmorton, he began to wonder if he was dealing with Pilgrims just off the
Mayflower
. Fancy names. “Big money names,” his mother used to call them.

“What brings you up this way, Nathan Daniels? Out for a stroll?”

“I don't have to answer any of your questions,” he said.

Mahegan pulled out his badge for effect. “Actually you do. You've entered a crime scene . . . or perhaps you were here all along?”

“No tape in the backyard. I came across the fence.” He pointed with his chin at the slatted wooden fence, which stood eight feet high. Mahegan noticed three horizontal support beams that made for perfect steps. He scanned the backyard, a forested football field of land.

“Just trespassing, then?”

“Just . . . curious. Not trespassing.” Then he added, “My dad's a lawyer. I know how this works.”

“Okay. I'll let you call him when we get to the station, then. I'm sure he'll be happy to get out of bed and come pick you up when we're done with you around midnight.”

“You can't just take me in!”

Mahegan flipped him against the tree and pulled his arm behind his back, as if he was going to cuff him. He pressed the boy's face up against the bark of the pine, which was oozing a bit of sap. “You are violating a crime scene and could be a witness or a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“Murder?”

“Yes, Nathan, murder.” Mahegan let up on him a bit and said, “Now would you like to talk, or do we need to go to the station?”

Nathan was silent for a moment, then said, “I'll talk, but damn, bro, you need to chill.”

Mahegan noticed when Daniels turned around that he was wearing an Aerosmith T-shirt and blue denim pants. He also saw the light from a smartphone pulsing in his pocket. He had placed it on silent and now was receiving a call.

“Need to get that?” Mahegan asked.

“Just my mom probably. Let's do this.”

“It's easy. Tell me what you know.”

He fidgeted for a second, kicked at a few rocks, and looked up at Mahegan. “I don't think I've committed any crime, but if I have, you gotta promise me immunity of some type.”

Mahegan stared at him for a second and then saw it. There was a fiber-optic cable running up the tree. He followed its course onto a branch that extended to the house. The cable terminated at a small blinking camera that was aimed directly at the open windows of the master bedroom.

Nathan stood there, sweating, probably wondering if Mahegan was going to tell his parents he had been secretly taping the swingers' parties at the Throckmorton home. “You're not going to tell anyone, are you?”

Mahegan considered his leverage and perhaps the fact that Daniels had terabytes of Throckmorton quasi porn. “I'm not sure I have any other option, Nathan.”

“C'mon, man. You gotta be cool here. What can I do?”

“I don't know. What do you have for me?”

Nathan, an obviously smart kid, processed what Mahegan had just asked him. A slow grin grew on his face. “I have every party they've had for the past two months. Fair trade?”

“Depends on the quality,” Mahegan said.

“This will blow you away. The tree is our panoramic vision. We're also inside the house.”

Admiring the kid's pluck, Mahegan restrained his interest. “Why'd you do this?”

“You kidding me? One day we're . . . uh, I'm . . . looking in the backyard, and there's, like, ten gorgeous babes lying out by the pool, topless. That's why, uh, I did this.”

Mahegan looked at the camera and could see it easily panning to the pool on the far side of the yard. “Okay, here's the deal. In exchange for my silence, I get the recordings, and no one else does. Clear?” Mahegan knew that he was most likely on those recordings, and while he would be impossible to identify, it was a loose end he didn't need.

Nathan gauged Mahegan's intentions for a moment with discerning eyes, then said, “Clear.” He then handed him a flash drive. “This is the past two days.”

It was almost 10:00 p.m., and Mahegan had been at the scene for over an hour. Before the real cops decided to inspect the backyard, Mahegan told Nathan to remove the camera and the fiber-optic cable and then meet him out front with the previous two months of video. As Nathan scaled the tree, Mahegan began walking toward the house and noticed Grace, the Asian lab tech, step out onto the deck off the master bedroom. Ascending the short stairway, he called out, “Hey.”

“What are you still doing here?”

His immediate goal was to avert her eyes from Nathan's activities, so he decided to turn her attention to the inside of the house. “I was just thinking about the bloodstain,” he said, motioning beyond the sliding glass door, which she had opened carefully with a latex-covered hand. Mahegan noticed she had slender fingers to match her petite frame.

“Out here?” she asked, placing a hand on her hip, skeptical.

“I thought I might find a blood trail here, but no joy.”

She stared at Mahegan a second, and he felt that thrum of connection again. At a different time and under different circumstances, he could visualize them grilling out and knocking back a couple of beers on this nice deck overlooking Nathan's media empire and the pool. Not wanting to make too much of his fantasy, he said, “Either the victim walked out under her own power or someone carefully wrapped her up and carried her away.”

She paused, as if to consider whether to reveal something to him, then said, “We didn't find any brain matter mixed in with the blood. Actually, it was just blood so far.”

“So it's quite possible she was rushed somewhere to be taken care of.”

This time she rolled her large almond eyes at Mahegan and said, “You enjoy the occasional pun, I can see.”

“Either to a hospital or a lake, I'm thinking.”

“We've called all the emergency care facilities in the area. No joy, as you say.”

“That leaves the lakes: Shearon Harris and Jordan.”

“Or perhaps she wasn't wounded badly enough,” she admitted.

“Any other kinds of ‘matter' mixed in with the blood?” Mahegan was looking for clarity regarding the type of wound and whether there might be an entry or exit point on the body, given the report of a gunshot.

“We're running all the tests.”

An awkward silent moment passed before Mahegan said, “Any chance I can give you a call . . . to get the results?”

She grinned, and her teeth were perfect, framed by full, pouty lips. “What happened to your big, bad team of Army CID agents? Where are Leroy Gibbs and DiNozzo?”

“That's television and Navy. Wrong on both counts. I'm the lead guy. When they heard there was no body, they decided to let the situation develop some.”

She removed her latex gloves, pulled out a pen, grabbed his hand with delicate fingers, and wrote a number on his palm. “Hope you don't sweat,” she said.

Mahegan noticed a small tattoo on her wrist:
Esse quam videri
. “To be rather than to seem,” he said, translating the Latin.

She turned her eyes upward from his palm and smiled. “State motto. It's henna. I change it every few months, when it wears out.” Then she nodded over Mahegan's shoulder and laughed. “Your boy is about to fall out of the tree.”

As Mahegan turned around, Nathan landed with a thud on his back, fiber-optic cable and the camera wrapped around his body like packing tape. He appeared okay, and when Mahegan turned back to address Grace Kagami, the beautiful mirror, like a specter, she was gone. Mahegan returned to the backyard, helped Nathan out of his fiber-optic web and removed the GoPro camera with the external battery pack.

“What are you doing?” Nathan asked.

“I'm guessing this stuff cost you some decent change, so while you go and get me an external drive's worth of home movies, I'm hanging on to this. If you're not back in fifteen minutes, I'm ringing your front doorbell.”

“Not cool, man. I already gave you the thumb drive.”

Mahegan said nothing.

“But okay.” Nathan pointed to a window above the fence. “That's my room. I've got my own entrance. I'll be up there and back down. Don't squeeze me if it's twenty minutes. This stuff takes time.”

“Fifteen. Front door.”

Demonstrating surprising athleticism, Nathan was over the fence in record time. On the return trip he didn't bother coming all the way over but simply climbed the fence halfway and chucked Mahegan an external drive.

“Everything I got. Peace out.”

Mahegan removed the data card from the GoPro, then stuffed the small external drive, about the size of a wallet, into his back left pocket and made his way through the side gate toward his car.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two men talking near the side of the house, behind a square brick chimney. He recognized one from his Army days and the other from the pictures in the house. Sam Blackmon, retired Army colonel, was talking to Brand Throckmorton, lord of the manor. Blackmon wore a leather coat, a black turtleneck sweater, and black dungarees. The bulge under his coat indicated he was carrying a pistol. Throckmorton was wearing a blazer, an ascot, a button-down shirt, and neatly hemmed dress slacks that fell atop expensive Italian shoes. Evening wear. They had triggered a motion-sensor light, which shone on them like a theater spotlight. It seemed that Blackmon was mostly listening, though, as Throckmorton gesticulated wildly with his hands.

Mahegan had served with Blackmon on different missions, but the colonel had always been higher up the food chain and had never had more than a passing interest in Mahegan, who respected Blackmon. He had heard Blackmon's retirement had led to a position as CEO of a private security company. He guessed it was the one owned by Throckmorton. Mahegan could envision Blackmon getting a late-night call to come to the scene of a crime to help sweep up the shattered glass of the evening.

Mahegan eased through the expansive side yard, using tall holly bushes to block his exit. He registered that Blackmon might be someone he wanted to contact about the case, should he need inside information on Throckmorton. He reached his car without detection, and as he fired up the engine, Nathan Daniels's face was hovering outside the passenger-side window. Mahegan pressed the button to lower the glass.

“By the way, dude, I think you're on the video.”

Indeed, Mahegan thought, he was.

“You like living?” he asked Nathan.

“Yeah, man.”

“Then keep your mouth shut.”

He handed the kid back his GoPro. Pulling away in his Cherokee, Mahegan thought about what he had learned inside the Throckmortons' house on his previous visit. Those memories both fueled his drive to find Gunther and emptied his soul.

It wasn't good.