Free Fall (32 page)

"Well, maybe you should start, because you're really screwing up here.

What is this I hear about you and Carrie?"

"Come on, Tommy. She didn't need to be dragged into this."

"What right do you have to make a decision like that for her? Take it from me, Mark. None of this other crap matters in the end. She's the best thing in your life. Walking away from her is as big a mistake as you've ever made."

"Maybe. But it was mine to make." Beamon leaned his head against the window as Sherman maneuvered through the heavy D. C. traffic.

They were out of the city and onto a lightly traveled rural highway before either of them spoke again.

"What do you know about David Hallorin's declassification program, Tom?"

Beamon said, hoping that his friend would allow himself to be drawn into a less volatile subject matter.

Sherman didn't answer for a full thirty seconds.

"What does that have to do with a girl who killed her boyfriend in West Virginia?"

Beamon realigned his gaze from the rolling countryside speeding by to the side of his friend's face. When they'd worked together, Beamon had found Sherman's near omnipotence somewhat disconcerting. He still did.

"Maybe nothing. I don't know."

Another long silence.

"You probably know more about it than I do, Mark. I was long gone from government service before that piece of legislation A good program that was long overdue, from what I heard."

Beamon nodded.

"I thought so too ..."

"But?"

"I don't know. Tristan Newberry worked alone in an old warehouse full of government documents apparently part of the declassification program.

As near as I can tell, the last thing he looked at was a box full of misfiled FBI stuff from the seventies."

"What do you mean he worked alone?"

"I mean he worked alone. He and a security guard were it."

Sherman's brow furrowed noticeably as he considered that.

"And you think he might have stumbled across something in those old FBI files that got him killed?"

"You tell me. You were there."

Sherman shrugged.

"You've heard the stories, Mark. Most of them are true. Hoover did keep his eye on important people. But after he died and Rehnquist took over, that pretty much ended. Frankly, anybody powerful enough to have been targeted by Hoover would be either well into their eighties or dead by now. With the political witch-hunt that's going on and the leaking of the Vericomm tapes, I can't imagine that the press would be very interested in the indiscretions of a bunch of men who, if they're lucky, are in a nursing home." Beamon sighed loudly.

"Yeah, I'm reaching here. If I was eighty-five years old and someone came up with a thirty-year-old tale of illegal conduct, I'd take the respirator out of my mouth and laugh in their face. And if it was sexual misconduct hell, at that age, I'd be proud."

Beamon reached for the cell phone anchored between the seats and dialed the number of the law firm that had hired him.

"Chris Humbolt, please. This is Mark Beamon." He was put right through.

"Mark. How are things going? It's been a week since we've talked."

Subtle, but what he meant was "it's been thirty-five thousand dollars since we've talked."

"It's going well," Beamon lied.

"I'm closing in, but I need some help someone to do a little research for me. I assume that you have a Harvardeducated whiz kid around there who knows everything about everything?"

"Princeton, actually, and her name's Cindy. Tell her what you want and it will be magically produced. Hang on, I'm putting you through to her."

There were a few clicks followed by a cheerful voice.

"Hello? Mr. Beamon, are you there?"

"Cindy, hi. I hear you're the resident research queen."

"Never heard it put that way, but I guess I am."

"Here's what I need. Information regarding the speculation that J.

Edgar Hoover used the FBI to conduct illegal investigations and surveillance."

"Whew," she breathed into the phone.

"You're talking about a fair amount of data, there, Mr. Beamon."

"Mark."

"Mark. Could you narrow it down?"

""Fraid not. I don't exactly know what I'm looking for. Give me a good cross section and make it fit in one box I can lift keeping in mind that I'm not very athletic. If I need more detail on anything I'll call you."

"Not a problem. ASAP, I assume."

"What else? I'll let you know where to send it."

"I'm on it. Bye."

Beamon hung up the phone and leaned back into the seat.

"What are you doing, Mark?"

"What do you mean?"

"Run away." Sherman paused briefly, the concentration etched on his face.

"Marry that beautiful woman who loves you and take a shot at the good life."

Beamon ignored his friend's comment. Marriage and step fatherhood just wasn't something he needed to be thinking about right now.

"I can't quit now, Tommy. You know that."

"Too much like losing?"

"I want to see how it turns out."

"There's not going to be a happy ending for you in this, Mark. Jesus, I just had to get you out of a goddamn D. C. holding pen."

"Look, Tommy. I'm not sure this girl did what everybody thinks she did, okay? I feel a little sorry for her. I also think I'm being played. I have a pretty strong feeling that somebody's setting me up and I'm getting pretty fucking tired of it."

"Let the police handle this, Mark. That's their job."

"Okay, how about this, Tom? I need the two hundred and sixty-five grand to get a lawyer because I didn't like the D. C. holding pen and don't want to spend the next two years in a place just like it. Incidentally, weren't you supposed to be looking into that for me?"

Sherman nodded.

"I have looked into it for you and you know what I found? That you are a profoundly unpopular man. Did you really put a bra in Jerry Tracker's suitcase before he left the National Academy conference?"

"It was a joke, for Christ's sake! How the hell was I supposed to know he was actually having an affair with a woman who wore a double D?"

Beamon's voice lowered to a mumble.

"And who would have thought that brain-dead kiss ass would ever get promoted to an assistant director slot."

"Look, Mark, I don't have any details yet. What I do know is that there are some very powerful people in the government intent on using you as a diversion and some very powerful people in the Bureau who are more than happy to just stand by and laugh."

"Honestly, Tom. I was hoping for a little more dazzling insight."

Sherman seemed uncertain as to what to say for a moment, then he slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road.

"What are you doing, Tom?"

"Look," he said, turning fully to face him.

"You know how people at the Bureau used to like to speculate behind my back on how much I'm worth?"

"Sure," Beamon said. He himself had joined in on some spirited and often drunken debates on that very subject.

"What's the popular theory these days?"

"I think you're up to about fifty mil."

Sherman nodded thoughtfully, "Truth is, I lost more than that when the market crashed and I barely noticed."

Beamon laughed.

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not actually. Look, my point is this "

"I know what your point, is, Tommy. And I thank you. But I can't take your money "

"How about a job then? I can "

"Tommy enough. You can't keep running to my rescue every time I shoot myself in the foot. I'm a grown-up, remember?"

Darby could barely see the outline of her arm and the deep cut across the back of it. She pushed the wound closed and spread a liberal amount of Krazy Glue across it, then let the breeze blow it dry. The combination of stress and hunger-induced light-headedness was making her clumsy and she'd walked right into the open cap on her truck. Tomorrow, she would make the drive to town and find some food. It would have to be at a free happy hour buffet or a grocery store that gave samples.

Despite the added risk of being recognized in one of those places, she had no choice--she wasn't sure she had enough gas to make it to the L. A.

She pulled her sleeping bag up a little higher around her neck and propped herself against the tire of her truck. The tiny clearing she was camped in was almost pitch black--dark enough now that she wasn't sure if she was seeing the outline of the tall pines that surrounded her or if her mind was filling them in from memory. She'd been there for a few days now, thirty miles from the nearest town and ten from the nearest paved road. She didn't dare build a fire, so there was little more than the cold and her hunger to keep her company. Normally that wouldn't have been as much of a problem, but the mental games she'd perfected while trapped for endless hours in tents and storms didn't work when she jumped at every twig snap and wind gust.

On the way there, she'd stopped at a library with Internet access and spent as long as she had dared searching for information on herself and Tristan. She'd found that most was on climbing-related sites and consisted of wild speculation in her favor. Jared Palermo had apparently organized an exhaustive search of the mountains surrounding the New River Gorge, pulling in climbers from all over the country. She hoped she'd get a chance to thank him someday.

There weren't many people lucky enough to have friends like that.

The national media hadn't taken much interest in her, thank God.

With the election coming up and the condition of the economy, they had bigger fish to fry. What she had learned was that the police were looking for her, convinced that she was responsible for Tristan's death.

She'd also learned how he died hacked apart by an ice tool. The image of Tristan's bare foot hanging from the door of her van had haunted her since the night she'd seen it. With that new piece of information, though, her imagination had connected the rest of his body to it. The vision came to her every night: Tristan, brutally slashed, staring blindly through the blood-splattered windows of her van.

She told herself over and over that he had known what he was getting himself into when he stole the file. That she was not responsible. That revenge was the reaction of the stupid and violent. But then she remembered watching Tristan run along that ridge, leaving bloody footprints in the dead grass. She remembered lying to herself that he'd be okay on his own that splitting up was the right thing to do.

She'd seriously considered going to the FBI, but the men who had kidnapped them looked as much like FBI as anything else. If Tristan was telling the truth about the file contents, there was no way she could trust anyone involved with the government.

Taking it to the press had crossed her mind. But wouldn't they be looking for that? Wouldn't they be waiting for her? Besides, what kind of credibility would an itinerant climber accused of murder have?

There was too much swirling around her now. The police, Vili, Mark Beamon, Tristan they were all too close. She couldn't think. In three days, though, she'd be on a plane to somewhere the U. S. government couldn't find her. A place where she could breathe. Then she'd be able to work this all out. There was no such thing as a hopeless situation, she told herself. Bad decisions were what got people killed.

Darby lay down on the rocky ground and closed her eyes, feeling the cold of the ground work its way through her sleeping bag. She'd tried sleeping in the back of her truck, but it had quickly closed in on her.

She felt safer out in the open. If she had to, she could run up into the snow-capped mountains that towered over the little clearing where she was camped. At least there she'd have a chance.

Mark Beamon forced himself to run up the steps of the D. C. townhouse Tom Sherman had loaned him, hoping that the physical motion would somehow clear his head--or at least improve his mood.

By the time he'd reached the landing, it still hadn't worked, so he kept up the pace across the narrow walkway to the front door. There was a medium-sized box sitting in front of it, and he nudged it with his shoe as he pulled his keys from his pocket. Whatever it was, it was heavy.

Leaning over, he blew a thin layer of dust from the top. The return address read: "Reynolds, Trent and Layman."

It took considerable effort, but after a couple of tries, he managed to lift the box and work it through the door into the large, empty living room.

When he let it drop, the impact caused a faint jingling in the empty beer bottles lined up on the hardwood floor. Sherman had just added this place to his collection and it didn't have a stick of furniture in it yet. He made daily offers to let Beamon stay with him at his place--all of which Beamon had politely declined.

He tossed his jacket on the floor and attacked the tape on the box with one of his keys. It took some doing, but eventually the flaps popped open and he was faced with what looked like a week's worth of neatly stacked folders, books, and copied newspaper articles. He dug around in them at random for a few seconds, turning up a couple of errant video tapes and an eight-by-ten color photograph of J. Edgar Hoover's head superimposed on the body of a woman wearing a bright yellow prom dress.