Lethal

Chapter 22

Honor’s eyes remained fixed on Coburn as the man on the telephone repeated to her how dangerous he was. When she didn’t respond, Hamilton prompted her. “Mrs. Gillette?”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, “I… I’m listening.”

“Coburn is lethal. He’s been trained to be. But the fact that he abducted you instead of killing you—”

“He didn’t abduct me, Mr. Hamilton. I came with him voluntarily.”

Several seconds ticked by before Hamilton said anything. Then he cleared his throat and politely asked if Coburn was treating Emily and her well.

She thought of his threats, real and implied, and the strong-arming, and the battle royal over possession of the pistol, but she also remembered his snatching up Emily’s bankie and Elmo as they fled the house. She thought of his taking a chance on being captured to buy them food and water.

And she thought of his coming back rather than deserting them.

She said to Hamilton, “We’re all right.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Put Coburn back on.”

She passed the phone to him. He said into it, “Talk to me.”

“You first.”

He talked Hamilton through the mass shooting and everything that had transpired since. He was concise and ended by saying, “I had no choice but to get her and the kid out of there. They’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

“You’re certain that this policeman you killed was Sam Marset’s assassin.”

“I saw him do it.”

“Along with his twin.”

“Correct.”

Hamilton took a deep breath and expelled it loudly. “Okay. Except for the warehouse killer’s identity, and the misconception that Mrs. Gillette was kidnapped, that matches everything Tom VanAllen told me.”

“Tom VanAllen. Who’s VanAllen?”

“My successor down there.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“When it became apparent that you’d kicked up a shit storm.”

“You talked to this VanAllen before taking my call?”

“I wanted to get a feel for the situation from his perspective. I wanted it unfiltered. I even asked him if you were an agent from his office working undercover.”

“Gee, you’re a stitch.”

“I needed to know what he knew or suspected.”

“I’m kinda interested in that myself.”

“As far as local law enforcement is concerned, you’re a friendless dock worker who went postal and shot up the place. That’s good. Now that I’ve talked to you, I’ll admit to VanAllen that I tricked him in order to get his unbiased assessment, and then I’ll enlist him to help bring you and Mrs. Gillette in. Once you, she, and the child are safe, we’ll figure out how to go in and mop up.”

Coburn frowned, pulled at his lower lip with his teeth, and looked hard at Honor. Finally, he said, “Negative.”

“Excuse me?”

“Negative. I don’t want to come in yet.”

“Don’t worry about your cover. It will remain intact. The official word will be that you died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a standoff with federal agents. We’ll make arrests based on the intel you’ve gathered so far, but no one will know where it came from. You’ll be reassigned to another part of the country, and no one will be the wiser.”

“Sounds swell. Except that I haven’t finished the job here.”

“You’ve done well, Coburn,” Hamilton argued. “You’re getting out alive, which is no small accomplishment. And you’ve fingered some key people in The Bookkeeper’s organization. I’ve got men from San Antonio to key points east, all the way to the Mississippi/Alabama line, standing by to make arrests, soon as I give them the green light. You took out one of The Bookkeeper’s main facilitators this morning.”

“But we don’t have The Bookkeeper.”

“I’m satisfied.”

“I’m not. Something big is about to happen. I want to put him out of commission before it does.”

“Something big, like what?”

“A new client. A Mexican cartel would be my guess. I think that’s why Sam Marset was bumped. He was whining over a couple of his trucks getting stopped and searched. Those two weren’t hauling anything except potting soil, but it spooked Marset, because he was guaranteed that none of his trucks would be subject to search. The Bookkeeper wanted to shut him up. He doesn’t need a complaint department at any time, but especially not now.”

Hamilton considered it, then said, “But the new alliance isn’t a sure thing.”

“It’s pending.”

“Can you identify the cartel?”

“No. My time ran out Sunday night.”

Again Hamilton took several moments to mull it over. Coburn watched Honor watching him.

Finally Hamilton said, “We’ll go with what we’ve got. With or without this pending arrangement, you’ve built a case. It’s enough.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. No federal prosecutor is going to touch this unless he’s got a smoking gun or an eyewitness who’ll swear his life away to see justice done, and no one is going to do that even if he’s guaranteed a new identity in Outer Mongolia, because everybody’s scared shitless of The Bookkeeper.

“It would also be a P.R. nightmare for the bureau. Sam Marset is just a name to you, but in these parts he was looked upon as a saint. Drag his name through the mud without absolute proof of his corruption, make charges that won’t stick, and all you’ll do is cause resentment among the law-abiding population and put the offenders on red alert.

“Then the DEA will get pissed off and blame us for sending every dealer underground. Same with the ATF, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security. Everybody will get skittish and back off stings they had planned, and we’ll all slink back to square one with nothing but our dicks in our hands.

“If you bring me in now, that’s what will happen. After a week or so, when things have cooled down, the smugglers will return to supplying their customers. They’ll go on killing each other, plus a few innocent bystanders now and then whenever a deal goes south, and those casualties will be on your head, and on mine for not finishing my job.”

Hamilton waited several beats, then said, “Bravo, Coburn. That was a very impassioned speech, and I hear you.” He paused again. “Okay. You stay. But as good as you are, you can’t clean this up by yourself, especially now that you’re a suspected mass murderer. Badges down there would love to get in their target practice on you. You’ll need backup. VanAllen will provide it.”

“Nix. The Bookkeeper has informers in every police department, sheriff’s office, city hall, and courthouse. Every-freaking-body is on the take.”

“You’re saying you think VanAllen—”

“I’m saying give me forty-eight hours.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“All right, thirty-six.”

“What for?”

Coburn focused more sharply on Honor. “I’m on to something that could blow the top off.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“You pick.”

“Shit.”

Honor could sense Hamilton’s frustration. Through the phone, she heard him blow out another gust of breath.

Finally he said, “This something involves Mrs. Gillette, doesn’t it?”

Coburn said nothing.

“I’m not a rookie either, Coburn,” Hamilton said. “You don’t really expect me to believe that you chose her house, out of all the houses in coastal Louisiana, to hide in, and that while you were there, you just up and decided to ransack the place. You can’t expect me to believe that without some über-strong motivating factor she came with you of her own free will after watching you fatally shoot a family friend in her living room.

“And you certainly can’t expect me to believe that you, of all people, have taken a widow and child under your wing out of the goodness of your heart, when it has come under debate many times whether or not you even possess a heart.”

“Aw now, that really hurts my feelings.”

“I know Mrs. Gillette’s late husband was a police officer. I know that the recently deceased Fred Hawkins was his best friend. Now, call me crazy, but the coincidence of that has got my gut instinct churning, and even on an off day, it’s usually pretty damn reliable.”

Coburn dropped the sarcasm. “You’re not crazy.”

“Okay. What’s she got?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does she know who The Bookkeeper is?”

“She says no.”

“Do you believe her?”

Coburn stared hard at her. “Yeah.”

“Then what’s she sitting on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop jerking me around, Coburn.”

“I’m not.”

Hamilton swore under his breath. “Fine, don’t tell me. When you’re back in Washington, we’ll discuss your insubordination in addition to the long list of offenses that you—”

“You’re using scare tactics now? Go ahead, kick me out of your stinking bureau. See if I give a fuck.”

Hamilton added even more heat to his voice. “I’ll supply VanAllen with whatever it takes to find you and bring you in, by force if necessary, for the safety of the woman and child.”

Coburn’s jaw turned to iron. “Hamilton, you do that, and they’ll likely die. Soon.”

“Look, I know VanAllen. I appointed him myself. I grant you, he’s no dynamo, but—”

“Then what is he?”

“A bureaucrat.”

“That’s a given. What’s he like?”

“Mild-mannered. Beleaguered, even. His personal life is shit. He’s got a special needs son, a tragic case who ought to be in a perpetual care home but isn’t.”

“How come?”

“Tom doesn’t discuss it. If I were guessing, I’d say the expense makes it out of the question.”

Again Coburn pulled that thoughtful frown that Honor was beginning to recognize. “Give me forty-eight hours. During that time, you check out VanAllen. If you can convince me that he’s honest, I’ll come in. With luck, I’ll have got the goods on The Bookkeeper by then.”

“In the meantime, what are you going to do with Mrs. Gillette and the child?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me talk to her again.”

Coburn handed the phone to her.

“I’m here, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Mrs. Gillette. Have you been following our conversation?”

“Yes.”

“I apologize for some of the language.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What’s your take?”

“On what?”

“On everything that’s been discussed.”

“Is Lee Coburn his real name?”

He seemed taken aback by the question. It was several seconds before he replied in the affirmative, but she wasn’t entirely convinced of his truthfulness.

“Why did the woman in your office say that he was dead?”

“She was under my orders to. For Coburn’s protection.”

“Explain that, please.”

“He’s been in a very precarious situation down there. I couldn’t risk someone coming to suspect him of being an agent and calling an FBI office and weaseling out verification of it. So I put it through the bureau pipeline that he’d been killed while on assignment. It’s even in his service records in case a hacker gets into our system.”

“You’re the only person who knows he’s alive?”

“Me and my assistant who answered the phone.”

“And now me.”

“That’s right.”

“So if something happened to Coburn, any information that he’d passed along to me regarding Sam Marset and The Bookkeeper, or anything that I’d picked up inadvertently, would be extremely valuable to the FBI and the Justice Department.”

He answered with reluctance. “Yes. And Coburn is willing to place your life in jeopardy in order to safeguard that information. Tell me the truth. What have you got? What’s Coburn after?”

“Even I don’t know, Mr. Hamilton.”

She figured that he was questioning her veracity during the long silence that followed.

Then he asked, “Are you saying any of this under duress?”

“No.”

“Then help me get other agents to you. They’ll come in and pick up you and your daughter. You don’t have to fear any reprisal from Coburn. He won’t hurt you. I’d stake my career on that. But you need to be brought in so I can protect you. Tell me where you are.”

She held Coburn’s gaze for several long moments while her common sense waged war with something deeper, something elemental that she couldn’t even put a name to. It tugged at her to abandon her innate caution, to stop playing it safe, to forsake what she knew and to go with what she felt. The feeling was powerful enough to make her fear it. She feared it even more than she feared the man looking back at her with fierce blue eyes.

She went with it anyway.

“Didn’t you hear what Coburn told you, Mr. Hamilton? If you send other agents in after us now, you’ll never get The Bookkeeper.” Before Hamilton could respond, she returned the phone to Coburn.

He took it from her and said, “Too bad, Hamilton. No sale.”

“Have you brainwashed her?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Waterboarded?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Jesus Christ. At least give me a phone number.”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“All right, goddammit! I’ll give you thirty-six. Thirty-six, and that’s—”

Coburn disconnected and dropped the phone onto the bunk, then asked Honor, “Do you think this tub will float?”