The Innocent

Chapter





82


IT WAS A quiet tree-lined street with modest-sized houses with attached garages, houses that would sell for two or three times what they would fetch in most other parts of the country. The lots were small and poorly landscaped, the bushes around the cookie-cutter homes overgrown enough to hide most of their fronts. Cars were parked along the streets and in a few of the yards small kids played under the watchful eyes of their mothers or nannies.

Robie slowed his car and checked the addresses. Vance saw it first.

“Third one on the right,” she said. “There’s a van in the driveway. Hopefully, someone’s home.”

Robie eased over to the curb and killed the engine. He took off his sunglasses, picked up a pair of binoculars from the front seat, and surveyed the area. There were multiple attack points, too many for them to adequately cover.

“We’re way out in the open here,” he said.

“No surprise,” replied Vance. “I’ll go knock on the door. You cover me from here.”

“How about the other way around?” said Robie.

“I’ve got my FBI creds, Robie. They trump yours.”

“A federal shield is going to intimidate anyone.”

Vance already had the door open.

“If someone starts shooting, make sure you shoot back,” she said. “And shoot straight!”

Robie and Julie watched as Vance walked up to the front stoop and rang the doorbell.

Robie pulled his pistol from its holster, hit the button to roll down the passenger-side window, and kept his gaze sweeping in long arcs but always returning to an imaginary three-foot box around Vance.

“She’s pretty brave to just walk up there,” noted Julie.

“She’s a super-special FBI agent; it comes with the territory.”

“Don’t try to make nice with me, Robie.”

“So I’m Robie now? What happened to Will?”

She didn’t answer.

The front door opened and Robie fixed his gaze on the woman standing there. Vance flashed her cred pack and then took a few minutes explaining to the woman what she wanted. The look on the woman’s face—Robie assumed she was Siegel’s wife—was one of astonishment. The two women spoke for about a minute longer, and then the door closed and Vance walked quickly back to the car.

Robie saw the curtain on the front window of the house move to the side and the woman peer out.

Vance got back into the car and Robie started it up.

“Gabriel Siegel works at a SunTrust branch about ten minutes from here. Got the address from his wife.”

“She looked surprised,” said Robie.

“She was surprised. I think she thought it had to do with some problem at the bank.”

“Maybe her husband is stealing money,” piped up Julie. “Maybe he’s laundering it for terrorists. And my parents and the others found out.”

“Maybe,” said Robie. He looked at Vance. “The lady was watching you as you walked back to the car.”

“I’m sure she was. She’s probably calling her husband as we speak. So let’s get going.”

“I’ll take the meeting with him,” said Robie. “You stay in the car with Julie.”

“And when do I get to do something other than sit in the car?” she asked.

“Your time will come,” said Robie. “Before this is over everybody’s time will come.”


They reached the bank branch in less than ten minutes. Robie left them in the car and walked into the small brick building right off a busy road in Manassas. He asked for Gabriel Siegel and was shown back to a glass-enclosed cubicle about ten feet square.

Siegel was about five-eight, stocky and pale. To Robie, he had looked much better in his Facebook photo.

Siegel rose from the chair behind his desk and said, “What’s this about?”

His wife obviously had called him.

Robie flashed his badge and said, “You were in an Army squad in Gulf One?”

“Yeah, so? Does the Army want me to reenlist? Not going to happen. I did my stint. And I’m too out of shape to carry a rifle in the desert.”

He sat down in his chair, while Robie remained standing. “I’m more interested in the people you served with. Keep in touch with any of them?”

“Some, yeah.”

“Who exactly?”

“Exactly what is this about?”

The banker was showing some balls, thought Robie.

“It’s a national security issue. But I can tell you that it might be tied to the bus explosion and the deaths of those people at the restaurant on Capitol Hill.”

Siegel turned paler still. “Jesus. Somebody from my old squad was involved in that? I can’t believe it.”

“So you know them all, well?” Robie asked pointedly.

“No. I meant that, well, we all fought for our country. And to turn against it…” His voice trailed off and he just sat there, pudgy hands on his cheap desk, looking like a little boy who’d just been told his puppy had been run over by a car.

“Which of them have you kept in touch with?”

Siegel came out of his trance and said slowly, “Doug Biddle, Fred Alvarez, Bill Thompson, and Ricky Jones died. Years back.”

“That I know. But they didn’t live in the area. They were all spread out.”

“Yeah, but we would call each other. Exchange emails. Doug came here once and I took him around to some of the monuments. Fred got killed in a car accident. Billy put a damn gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Doug and Ricky both had cancer. Younger than me. I think it was all the crap we were exposed to over there. You know, Gulf War syndrome. I could be dying and not even know it. Every time I get a migraine I think it’s all over.”

He sank back in his chair.

Robie sat down opposite him and said, “Any of your old buddies locally that you hang with?”

“I saw Leo Broome a few times. That was a while back.”

“How far back?”

“Over ten years ago. Ran into him at a bar in Seattle, of all places. He was out there on business and I had just changed jobs and was at a seminar. He seemed to be doing okay. Think he worked for the government or something like that. Don’t remember exactly.”

“Anyone else?”

“In the Middle East I was closest to Curtis Getty. But I haven’t seen him since we got back stateside. Don’t even know where he is now.”

That would be dead, thought Robie.

“Leo Broome ever mention Getty?”

“Don’t remember. For some reason it didn’t seem like they had kept up. But like I said, that was a decade ago.”

Ten years ago, that might have been the case, thought Robie. “Anyone else? Rick Wind, for instance?”

“I read that he had been murdered. Is that what this is about?”

“Had you been in contact with Wind?”

“No. Not for years. Used to see him. But he’d gotten strange. Bought that pawnshop in that crummy neighborhood. I don’t know. It was just different.”

“How about Jerome Cassidy?”

“Nope. Haven’t heard from him since we left the Army.”

“He lives in the area. Not that far from here.”

“Didn’t know that.”

“How about Elizabeth Van Beuren? That’s her married name. Her maiden name was—”

“Elizabeth Claire. I know.”

“It was unusual having a woman in the ranks back then, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Things are different now, of course. But I always thought the combat exclusion rule for women was crap. They can fight just as good as men. And in a unit they really let their strengths shine. Guys are more macho. Women build a team perspective. And I gotta tell you, even though women were deployed in combat support positions, but technically weren’t supposed to shoot back, they sure as hell did. At least in Gulf One. And Lizzie was one of the best. She was a better soldier than I was, I can tell you that.”

“But she’s no longer in the Army,” said Robie.

“Well, there’s a good reason for that,” replied Siegel.

“You’ve been in touch with her?”

“I have.”

“So what’s the reason she’s no longer in the Army?”

“Cancer. Started in her breasts and then it spread. It’s in her brain, lungs, liver now. She’s terminal, of course. Once that stuff metastasizes, it’s over. They don’t have any magic bullets for that. She’s at a hospice center in Gainesville.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Went regularly until about a month ago. She was in and out of it. Mostly out. Morphine. I’m not even sure if she’s still alive. I should have kept up, but I guess it was just too hard to see her like that.”

“What’s the name of the place?”

“Central Hospice Care. It’s off of Route 29.”

“Okay.”

Siegel exclaimed, “I’m telling you, it’s all the crap we breathed in over there. Depleted uranium, toxic cocktails from all the artillery blasts. Fires burning all over the damn place, painting the sky black, burning crap we didn’t know what the hell it was. And there we all were, just sucking it in. That could just as easily be me in that bed waiting for the end.”

Robie handed Siegel a card. “Anything else occurs to you, give me a call.”

“What is this really all about? How can somebody from my old squad be involved in all this stuff?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Robie paused. “Did your wife give you a heads-up we were coming?”

“She did,” admitted Siegel.

“She worried about something?”

“She’s worried I might lose my job.”

Robie thought back to Julie’s theory of money laundering for terrorists. “Why? Problems here?”

“I haven’t done anything wrong, if that’s what you’re implying. But who comes into banks anymore to do stuff? It’s all online. I’ll be here for about eight hours today and I’ll see maybe two people. How much longer do you think they’re going to pay me to do that? There’s a reason banks have all the money. They’re cheap as hell. Writing’s on the wall. World has changed. And I guess I haven’t changed fast enough. Maybe I will end up carrying a rifle in the desert. What else is there for a guy my age? I can be a fat mercenary. But I’ll die the first day out there.”

“Well, thanks for your help.”

“Yeah,” Siegel said absently.

Robie left him there looking like he’d already received a death sentence.