From the Ashes (11 page)

“Until tomorrow morning at nine, then.”

The line disconnected, and the agent stared at the floor for a moment. It hurt him to lie to Greer – even if by omission – but revealing the truth of what had just transpired with the Rickner brother would hurt even more.

He took a dark blue sweatshirt from Michael’s closet and put it on, an attempt to hide the bloody wound his torn undershirt exposed. The sleeves were too long, Michael having been two inches taller than Ramirez, but it would do. He grabbed two plastic grocery bags from the recycling bin in the kitchen, placing the laptop and power cord into one, the wet sweatshirt, towel-wrapped sword, and scrubbing brush in the other. He snuffed out the candles, poured the liquid wax down the kitchen sink, and wrapped the rest of each candle in the towel in the bag. There certainly was no reason to tell Greer about his little slip-up. Something big was brewing over at the Division, and Greer didn’t need this as a distraction. No, Enrique Ramirez cleaned up his own messes, before they became problems for anyone else. He had sanitized the scene himself, and done a darned good job of it, all things considered. There was just one last loose end to tie up, and he would do that on his own. No, there was no reason to inform Greer, or even officially involve the Division at all.

Enrique would take care of the other Rickner brother himself.

Blocks away from Michael’s apartment, Jon ducked into a clothing store, trying to catch his breath as he wandered around the store, pretending to browse through the racks of designer shirts. Looking around him, he verified that he was almost alone in the store. The lone sales clerk was helping the only other customer in the store, a college-age kid sporting spiky hair and already wearing designer threads. Satisfied at his relative privacy, Jon whipped out his phone and called 911. After reporting the incident in the apartment as best he could, he hung up and dialed Mara’s cell number.

“Hello?” she answered hesitantly.

“Mara, it’s Jon.”

“Oh, sorry. Haven’t programmed your number in my phone yet. Did you—”

“Listen, I was just in Michael’s apartment and some guy broke in and tried to kill me.”

“What?” she replied incredulously after a moment of stunned silence.

“A guy, a pro from the looks of it, just broke into Michael’s apartment while I was there. He was looking for something. I got the jump on him, injured him I think, and I managed to get away, but barely.”

“Wh— Jon, what— Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. Mara, I think this guy might’ve been the one who killed Michael.” Mara replied with silence, a silence Jon figured held a battle of emotions: relief at the affirmation of her hope that Michael had indeed not committed suicide, anger, and a new wave of grief at the thought – or rather the apparent confirmation of her suspicion – that he had been murdered. Jon was undergoing a similar emotional battle himself, now that the blind rage that had consumed him at the apartment was abating.

“Oh God, Jon...” she started, the whole sordid affair starting to sink in. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. A little sore after the James Bond moves I had to pull off, but I’m still alive.” He winced as soon as the last words had left his mouth, realizing that his brother hadn’t been as lucky in
his
encounter with the intruder.

“We have to go to the cops, Jon. They’ve got it all wrong. They’re calling Michael’s death a suicide. And if this guy’s still out there, he has to be caught.”

“I’ve already called them. They said they’d send somebody. I’m going to meet them outside the building.”

“I’m leaving now. See you there.”

***

Jon was pacing outside the building, waiting for the cops to let him know it was safe to come up, when Mara walked around the corner. His face brightened slightly when he caught sight of her, and he ran to meet her.

“I parked around the corner. What’s going on?”

“They’re up there right now clearing the scene. Apparently the guy who attacked me is long gone, but they’re checking neighboring apartments and stairwells and such.”

“Michael’s backpack,” Mara said in a tone that didn’t seem to expect any sort of response, brushing her fingers affectionately over the bag that was slung from Jon’s shoulders.

“Yeah, I’m fine too; thanks for asking.”

She chuckled and gave him a smug smile. “Glad to see you made it out in one piece. Any permanent damage?”

“I’ve had worse. Bruised and banged up a little. But he was bleeding all over the place. I cut him with Michael’s rapier. His DNA’s gotta be all over that apartment.”

“You attacked him with a
sword?”
Mara didn’t even try to suppress a laugh. “You are
so
your brother’s brother, you know that?”

Jon managed a smile himself. “Adventurers born in the wrong century. No more blank spaces on the map.”

“Maybe maps aren’t the only things with blank spaces.”

Jon grunted. “True enough. And filling in the blanks is just as dangerous as it’s always been. But with all the evidence our fight left behind, I’d say Michael’s killer is as good as nabbed.”

“Knock on wood,” Mara said, lightly rapping her knuckles against her own skull.

“Mr. Rickner?”

Jon turned to see a tall female officer with dirty blonde hair standing in the doorway of the building, beckoning to him.

“Yeah?” Jon’s eyes were wide, a hopeful expression on his face. “Did you find him?”

“Sir, I need to verify your statement.” The officer was stone-faced. “Could you go through what happened again?”

Jon took a breath in exasperation. “Just like I told the 911 operator. I was in my brother’s apartment when a Latino guy picked the lock and broke in. He moved like he was looking for something, and when he realized I was in there, he drew a gun and started creeping toward the bedroom, where I was hiding. I defended myself with a sword my brother kept in his room.”

The officer, whose name badge identified her as G. Mabry, cleared her throat. Jon paused and looked at the officer, but it was clear she wanted him to continue his statement.

“I cut him across his midsection, and he started bleeding everywhere. He shot probably a dozen times at me, both in the apartment and as I was running down the fire escape and out of the alley.”

“Uh huh.”

Officer Mabry studied Jon, her arms crossed, an eyebrow raised quizzically, like she was trying to figure out what kind of game he was playing, as though his complaint was a distraction for some unknown offense of which he was guilty.

“What’s the problem?” Jon raised his hands in front of him, palms up, in frustration. “That’s the same statement I gave the 911 operator. Why are you looking at me like I’ve grown a second head?”

“Come with me, please, Mr. Rickner.” Officer Mabry turned to go back into the building.

Jon looked at Mara. “Can she come-”

“I can’t, Jon.” Mara’s hand was on her cross again, polishing the silver between her thumb and forefinger. “I just can’t go in there yet. It’s still too fresh.”

“Mr. Rickner?” Mabry was tapping her thumb on her belt, waiting.

“I’ll be right back,” Jon told Mara, squeezing her shoulder. He entered the building with the officer, lost in thought. The building was a little run-down, and it lacked security guards and closed circuit cameras. The chances of getting this guy on tape were negligible. The apartments next door and across the hall were vacant, and Jon didn’t remember hearing many daytime noises from Michael’s floor at all earlier. Everyone was probably at church, at work, or sleeping off a late-night bender. No witnesses, except Jon and the evidence. And, as he followed Officer Mabry up the stairwell, he got the distinct impression that even that wouldn’t help catch the intruder.

Exiting the stairwell, they approached the door to Michael’s apartment. Another officer, a rotund yet muscular man with a shaved head, stood outside the door.

“We finished the door-to-door,” the officer, whose badge read J. Rioux, told them. “No one saw or heard anything.”

Jon gritted his teeth as Mabry led Jon into the apartment. Another cop was there, writing something on a pad of paper. Michael’s bags were still by the doorway. The PS3 and TV were still in the living room. But what surprised Jon was not what was there, but what was missing.

The blood trail, the sword, the bullet holes, all of the evidence was
gone.
A faint chemical smell hung in the air, but none of the cops seemed to take any notice of it. Jon looked around the apartment with wide-open eyes and a gaping mouth, dumbfounded.
Had
he imagined the whole thing?
No, no way,
he thought, feeling the soreness in his upper back from where he had rolled over the backpack while on the dumpster lid. He walked through the scene of the fight, but no bloodstains were visible. No rapier covered in the assailant’s DNA. No bullet holes in the ceiling. Nothing.

Surprised but undaunted, Jon stalked down the hall to the bedroom and scoured the room for bullet holes. There were two roughly round patches in the wall above the bed that were a slightly different color than the white-painted drywall around them. Bullet holes?

“There!” Jon pointed to the wall, and Mabry slowly trudged into the room, expecting to be disappointed. “Bullet holes.”

“Bullet holes? Come on, Mr. Rickner. Please stop wasting the department’s time and resources.”

“They’re bullet holes. He shot at me and the bullets ended up there.”

“I see two holes where some former occupant hung a picture or two and spackled over them before he or she moved out.”

The glass rapier display case yawned open, visibly empty. Jon pointed to it. “I fought back with the sword that was in that case. It’s gone now. I cut him with it and he took it with him.”

“And why did your brother have a sword, exactly?”

“It was an heirloom.”

“So you grabbed this priceless heirloom and fought this alleged intruder with it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what happened. The empty display case-”

“Is proof of nothing. I’ve got empty display cases at home. It doesn’t mean that some swashbuckling intruder stole a sword from it.”

Jon kicked the foot of the bed in frustration. This lady just didn’t want to find a crime scene here. And then Jon saw the desk.

The laptop was not where he had left it. The intruder must have taken it.
That
was what he had been looking for.

Mara’s words came flooding back.
Michael’s research should be on his laptop.
His
research?
That’s what this guy had been after? That was why Michael was killed?

When it finally came, Jon’s voice was hushed, awed. “He took the laptop.”

“Hmm?” Mabry asked in an impatient tone.

“The guy who was here, the guy who shot at me, he took the laptop. That must’ve been what he was here for.”

“Sir, there is no sign of forced entry, and no evidence of the sword fight you claim took place. If you want to report this as a burglary, then I need you to write out a list of what was taken, and we’ll see what we can do to recover your property.” She whipped out a pad of paper and a pen from a pouch on her belt. “It is extremely important, however, that you tell us exactly what actually happened if you want to maximize our chances of finding the culprit.”

Jon narrowed his eyes in frustration. “I already
told
you what happened. The guy just... cleaned up after himself.”

Officer Mabry made a face that indicated she didn’t believe him. “Okay, how long were you out of the apartment before you called 911?”

“I don’tknow.” Jon shrugged. “Maybe ten, fifteen minutes?”

“You waited fifteen minutes between being shot at by an armed burglar and actually calling the police?”

“I don’t know how long it actually was. The guy was following me down the fire escape. I just wanted to make sure I was safe before I stopped to call anyone.”

Officer Mabry tilted her head forward and raised an eyebrow. “Fifteen minutes.”

Jon fixed her with a steely glare. “It happened.”

“It sounds pretty darned suspect, if you ask me.”

Jon shook his head in disbelief. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Look, Mr. Rickner—”

“Jon.”

“Fine. Jon. I assume you realize filing a false police report is a crime. However,” she continued with an insufferably condescending air, “you’ve suffered a loss, and it’s not uncommon for the loved ones of suicide victims to try to rationalize the seemingly inexplicable.”

“But—”

Officer Mabry held up her palm to cut him off, then continued as if Jon hadn’t tried to interject. “So as long as you don’t send our department on any more wild goose chases, we won’t press charges.” She placed her hand on the young man’s shoulder, and it took every ounce of Jon’s self-control not to shove her hand away. “I’m sorry about your loss, Jon. I really am, but you’re going about your grieving the wrong way. Don’t grasp at false hopes and
Three Musketeer
fantasies, and don’t involve the authorities in your delusions.”

Jon bit his lip, repressing the words and tones he really wanted to deliver. “Fine,” he finally huffed through clenched teeth. “I won’t.”

And he meant it. He would get to the bottom of this himself.

Langley, Virginia

Blumhurst.

The name was as distasteful to Harrison Greer as it was shrouded in mystery. The agent who went wrong. The one flaw since the Division’s inception seventy years ago. The man who had, for all intents and purposes, betrayed Greer’s grandfather, Walton Greer. And, perhaps, the key to finally getting what the Division had been seeking for the better part of a century.

Greer cursed himself for not catching this earlier. As much as he would like to, he simply couldn’t personally keep up with all of the intel on everyone that the Division had dealings with. While the Division was still necessarily small, especially by the standards of the traditionally bloated bureaucracies of Washington, the amount of information they had to pore through these days was simply massive. Gone were the days when simple phone taps and manual surveillance would suffice to glean the needed intel on a subject. The means for communication these days were infinitely diverse, quick, and vast. Cellular phones, text messaging, the Internet, email, social networking. Viral videos, tweeting. These would have been the realm of science fiction just a few years ago, yet today, they were a very real fact of life. And it made the job of controlling the flow of information incredibly difficult. Once an idea hit the Internet, it was all but impossible to stop. One user uploads it to his website, his Facebook status, or tweets it to a few friends, and within milliseconds, the great unwashed masses, from Belgium to Bangladesh, from Jordan to Jamaica, would have access to the idea, could add to it, expound upon it, flesh it out with evidence and speculation. Today, one bullet might not be heard around the world, but one idea could certainly incite revolutions around the world. Even now, revolutions were spilling across the Middle East, promulgated largely by the free flow of ideas, often inspired by people and situations in wholly different countries.