Extreme Denial Part 22

"Hal and...?" Decker tried not to show his surprise. "Yes." His reflexes tightened. "I know them. Let them in."

Hal and Ben were the two operatives who had taken him into custody in the St. Regis lobby after his bitter resignation the previous year. They had questioned him about his motives, had finally decided that he wasn't a threat to security, and had allowed him to proceed to the sanctuary of Santa Fe-with an implicit warning that his anger about what had happened in Rome had better not prompt him to tell tales out of school.

Now he had to a.s.sume that they were the investigators his former employer had sent in response to his emergency telephone call about the attack on his house. As they appeared in the doorway, Decker noted that they didn't look much different from the last time he had seen them-trim and tall, about six feet, 190 pounds, close to Decker's age, forty-one, their features hard, their eyes wary. They wore jackets, khaki pants, and st.u.r.dy street shoes. After scanning the living room, they a.s.sessed Esperanza and focused on Decker.

"What's going on?" Hal asked. "Why the policeman outside? What happened down the road?"

"It's a long story. This is Sergeant Esperanza. Sergeant, meet Hal Webber and Ben Eiseley." The last names were fict.i.tious, matching false identification that Decker knew they customarily carried. "We hung around with each other when I worked in Virginia. They told me they planned to come out this way one of these weekends, but I guess it slipped my mind that it was going to be Fiesta weekend."

"Sure," Esperanza said, obviously not buying the story. He shook hands with them, comparing their trim-hipped, strong shouldered build to Decker's similar physique. "Are these more real estate salesmen who know about setting bombs off by remote control?"

Hal looked puzzled. "Bombs? Is that what happened next door? The place exploded?"

"Sergeant, would you give me a moment to be alone with my friends?" Decker started to guide Hal and Ben toward a door that led to a small barbecue area off the kitchen. "No," Esperanza said.

Decker stopped and looked back at him. "Excuse me?"

"No. I won't give you a moment to be alone with them." Esperanza's weathered face hardened. "From the start, you've been evasive and uncooperative. I won't tolerate it any longer."

"I thought you said you'd been asked by the FBI to stay away from the case."

"The attack on your house. Not the explosions next door."

"The FBI?" Ben asked, puzzled.

"Whatever you need to tell these men to bring them up to speed, you tell them in front of me," Esperanza said. "Bring me up to speed."

"The FBI?" Ben said again. "I don't get it. What does the FBI have to do with this?"

"Sergeant, I really do need to speak to these men alone," Decker said.

"I'll arrest you."

"On what charge? A good lawyer would have the charges dismissed by tonight," Decker said. "At the very least, I'd be out on bail."

"On Sat.u.r.day of Fiesta weekend? Your lawyer would have a h.e.l.l of a problem finding a judge to listen to him," Esperanza said sharply. "You wouldn't be out of jail until tomorrow, maybe Monday, and I don't think you want to lose that much time. So pretend I'm not here. What do you want to tell these men?"

Time, Decker thought, anxious. I've got to start looking for Beth right away. I can't afford to lose two days. Frantic, he felt tom between conflicting motives. Until now, he had been determined to protect his former employer from being implicated in the investigation, but other, more urgent priorities now insisted-he had to find Beth; he had to find out who wanted to kill her.

"I used to work for the U.S. government."

"Hey, be careful," Ben told Decker.

"I don't have a choice."

"The government?" Esperanza came to attention. "You're talking about-"

"Nothing I can't deny," Decker said. "These men were a.s.sociates of mine. They're here to help find out if the attack last night had anything to do with sensitive matters I was involved with."

"Take it easy," Hal told Decker.

"That's as specific as I'm going to get," Decker told Esperanza, his gaze intense.

Esperanza's gaze was equally intense. Slowly, the detective's lean features became less rigid. He nodded.

Decker turned to Hal. "You got here sooner than I expected."

"We were in Dallas. We had the company jet. It's less than a two-hour flight."

"Thanks for coming."

"Well, it seemed the only way," Ben said. "We were told telephone contact with you wasn't secure. We wanted to touch base, clear up some confusion about something you said when you reported the attack, and then get in touch with the local feds."

"Which you've already done," Esperanza said. "Talked to the FBI."

"No," Hal said with concern.

"Not in person, but over the phone," Esperanza said.

"No," Hal said with greater concern.

"But the head of the local FBI office spoke to me this morning and made an official request to take over investigating last night's attack," Esperanza said.

"You mentioned that earlier, but I didn't understand what you were talking about," Ben said. "No one on our end has talked to the feds yet. We wanted a firsthand look before deciding if we had to involve them."

Decker felt a deepening premonition, a quickening through-out his nervous system.

Esperanza antic.i.p.ated the question for which Decker urgently needed an answer. "Then, if you didn't ask for federal intervention, who in G.o.d's name did?"

4.

Steering sharply from Old Santa Fe Trail onto Paseo de Peralta, Sanchez drove the police car as quickly as he could without sounding the siren in the congestion of downtown Fiesta traffic. Stark-faced, Hal sat in front with him. Conscious of his rapidly beating heart, Decker hunched between Ben and Esperanza in the back.

Esperanza finished a hasty conversation on a cellular telephone, then pressed a b.u.t.ton that broke the connection. "He says he'll be waiting for us."

"What if he doesn't tell us what we want to know?" Decker asked.

"In that case, I'll have to make some phone calls to Virginia," Ben said. "Sooner or later, he will tell us. I guarantee it."

"Sooner," Decker said. "It better be sooner. It's been two hours since Beth ran down that slope and got in that car. She could be in Albuquerque by now. h.e.l.l, if she went directly to the airport, she could be on a plane to anywhere."

"Let's find out." Esperanza pressed b.u.t.tons on the cellular phone.

"Who are you calling?"

"Security at Albuquerque's airport."

"What if she used the airport in Santa Fe?" Hal asked. "I'll call there next. The local airport has only a few small pa.s.senger flights. Prop jobs. It won't be hard to find out if she was on one of them."

Someone answered on the other end of the line; Esperanza started talking.

Meanwhile, Decker turned to Ben. For a disturbing moment, he suffered a kind of double focus in which he was still being questioned by Ben and Hal as they drove him through Manhattan the previous year. Or maybe that debriefing had never stopped and what he was going through now was a waking nightmare.

"Ben, when you arrived at my house, you said you wanted to clear up some confusion about something I mentioned when I reported last night's attack. What were you talking about?" Ben pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. "This is a faxed transcript of part of your phoned-in report." Ben ran a finger down the page. "The case officer you spoke to said, 'But you're not our responsibility any longer.' You replied, 'Hey, you sure thought I was when I quit. You were all over me. I figured your security checks would never stop. d.a.m.n it, two months ago, you were still keeping me under surveillance.' "

Decker nodded, feeling a swirl of deja vu as his words were read back to him. "So what's the problem?"

"The case officer didn't comment at the time, but he had no idea what you meant by your last statement. He double-checked your file. No one from our organization has been maintaining surveillance on you."

"But that's not true," Decker said. "Two months ago, I saw a team. I-"

"At the start, when you first came to Santa Fe, we kept a watch on you, yes," Ben said. "But then it seemed easier and cheaper to monitor your financial records. If you suddenly had more money than your new occupation could explain, we would have been all over you, wondering if you'd been selling secrets for cash. But everything about your income has been copacetic. You seemed to have gotten over your att.i.tude toward the problems that made you quit. There wasn't any need for visual surveillance. Whoever was watching you, the team definitely wasn't from us."

"You expect me to believe Brian McKittrick decided to watch me on his free time when he wasn't working for you?"

"Brian McKittrick?" Hal asked sharply. "What are you talking about?"

"I told you I saw him."

"Two months ago?"

"McKittrick was in charge of the surveillance team," Decker said.

"But McKittrick hasn't worked for us since February." Decker was speechless.

"His father died in December," Ben said. "With no one to protect the son, your complaints about him began to sink in. He screwed up on two other a.s.signments. The organization dumped him."

Esperanza put his hand over the mouthpiece on the cellular phone. "Can you guys keep it quiet? I can hardly hear. Luis?" He leaned forward toward Sanchez. "The Albuquerque police want to know if we've got a description of the car Beth Dwyer drove off in. Did the eyewitness give you one?"

"The old lady didn't know much about cars." Sanchez steered around a crowded curve on Paseo de Peralta. "She said it was big, it looked new, and it was gray."

"That's all?"

"Afraid so."

"Swell. Just swell," Esperanza said. "What about the man who was driving? Did she get a look at him when he hurried out to put Beth Dwyer's suitcase in the trunk?"

"When it comes to noticing people, this woman has twenty-twenty vision. The guy was in his early thirties. Tall. Built solidly. Reminded her of a football player. Square jaw. Blond hair."

"Square jaw? Blond ...?" Decker frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"Reminded her of a football player? That sounds like-"

"You know somebody who looks like that?"

"It can't be." Decker felt breathless. What he'd just heard didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. "Brian McKittrick. The description fits Brian McKittrick. But if he isn't working for you," Decker said to Ben, "who is he working for?"

5.

Decker didn't wait for Sanchez to brake to a full stop in a no-parking zone before he rushed out of the police car and over to a long, three-story-high, clay-colored government building. Flanked by Esperanza, Hal, and Ben, he ran up wide concrete steps to a row of gla.s.s doors, in the middle of which a fortyish man of medium height and weight, with well-trimmed hair and short sideburns, waited for them outside. The man wore slacks and a blue sport coat. A pager was hooked to his belt. He carried a cellular telephone.

"This better be good. I was at a Fiesta party." The man pulled out a set of keys and prepared to unlock one of the doors. His sober gaze was directed toward Esperanza, who hadn't had an opportunity to change his singed, soot-covered s.h.i.+rt and jeans. "What happened to you? On the phone, you said this has something to do with what we discussed this morning."

"We don't have time to go up to your office," Decker said. "We're hoping you can tell us what we need right here."

The man lowered his keys from the door and frowned. "And just who are you?"

"Stephen Decker-the man whose house was attacked," Esperanza said. "Mr. Decker, this is FBI senior resident agent John Miller."

Decker immediately asked, "Why did you intervene in Sergeant Esperanza's investigation of the attack?"

Miller was caught by surprise. He took a moment before replying, "That's confidential."

"It looks as if the attack wasn't against me, but against a woman I've been seeing. My neighbor. Her name is Elizabeth Dwyer. She calls herself Beth. Does that name mean anything to you?"

This time, Miller didn't pause. "I'm not prepared to discuss the matter."

"Her house blew up this afternoon."

Miller reacted as if he'd been slapped. "What?"

"Have I finally got your attention? Are you prepared to discuss the matter now? Why did you intervene in the investigation about the attack on me?"

"Elizabeth Dwyer's house blew up?" Startled, Miller turned toward Esperanza. "Was she there? Was she killed?"

"Apparently not," Esperanza said. "We haven't found a body. Someone who looked like her was seen getting in a car on Fort Connor Lane a few seconds before the explosions."

"Why didn't you tell me this when you called?"

"I'm telling you now."

Miller glared. "I don't like being manipulated."