Hunter: A Thriller (6 page)

Annie caught up with her a few moments later, as she neared her limo. “How are you managing, girlfriend?”

“Okay, I guess. For now.”

“Do you want to ride with your family, or would you like me to give you a lift?”

“That’s a great idea. I need to get away from them for a few minutes.”

They got in Annie’s car, then followed the line of cars to leave. The lane continued a little farther into the cemetery, then curled around and doubled back on itself toward the exit.

As they drew abreast of the tent, Susie gazed for the last time at her husband’s casket.

“Annie—who’s that?”

She slowed the car. She had time only for a brief glimpse.

A dark-haired man in a gray suit stood beneath the tent, his back toward them. His hand rested on Arthur Copeland’s casket.

“I’m not sure.”

BETHESDA
,
MARYLAND
Friday, September 5, 9:45 a.m.

“
Maaooww
.
”

“Not now.”

“
Maaaaaoooow
.
”

“Let me finish this.”

“
Mrrraaaaaaoooooow
.
”

Hunter sighed, folded the newspaper and tossed it aside on his small dining table. “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” He took another sip of coffee from an oversized brown ceramic mug.

Luna was strutting back and forth across the kitchen entranceway like a furry black-and-white sentry. Then she stopped to glare at him impatiently.

He got up, cinched tight the belt on his white terrycloth bathrobe, and padded in his bare feet past her into the kitchen. She pranced after him eagerly, her tail standing straight up like a wobbly periscope. He pulled off the lid of a large tin can he kept on the floor beside the refrigerator. The fishy scent assaulted his nostrils. He grabbed a handful of the dry food and dumped it into her empty metal dish.

“There.
Crunchies
.”

She sniffed the contents, then looked up at him expectantly. The black patch of fur over one eye made her look like a feline pirate.

“
Maaaaoow
.
”

He sighed again and bent to pet her. At that, she happily plunged her face into the brown spirals and stars. His petting elicited a combination of contented purring, crunching, and snuffling noises.

“Okay. You’ve eaten. I’ve pet you. Now let me alone.”

He returned to his coffee and the morning
Inquirer
and finished reading his article. To his inner ear, as he thought of it, his writing sounded different in newsprint than on the computer screen.

“All right. Listen up and tell me what you think of this:

“
What happened in the Copeland case is not rare. Today, eighty to ninety percent of all convictions stem from pre-trial guilty pleas, invariably to reduced charges, negotiated between prosecutors and defense attorneys, and rubber-stamped by judges. These cynical maneuvers let criminals evade the full penalties of their crimes; permit lazy prosecutors to enhance their political careers by boasting of high ‘conviction rates’; let defense attorneys quickly handle a large number of clients (and collect a large number of fees) without having to prepare for trial; and help harried judges clear clogged court calendars and jammed jails.

“
In short, plea-bargaining is the triumph of expediency over justice. Everyone leaves the courtroom smiling—except for crime victims like Susanne and Arthur Copeland. Ignored by all during the proceedings, they can only look on in shocked disbelief. And too often, at the end of their day in court, they discover that they have been mugged again.
”

He lowered the paper, looked at the cat.

In the kitchen entranceway, Luna raised her front paw and started to lick it.

“Once again you fail to appreciate the nuances of literary craftsmanship.”

He poured himself another mug of coffee from his four-cup pot and took it into the bathroom. While he showered, he thought of Arthur Copeland’s funeral.

He dressed and stepped out onto his bedroom balcony. It overlooked the courtyard pool area inside the apartment complex. Because it was past Labor Day, it was deserted down there now. A green tarp covered the pool. White plastic reclining chairs were folded up against the walls. He glanced at the sky. Overcast. The weather guy had said today’s outlook was uncertain.

For sure.

He came back in, closed the sliding glass door, went into his small den. Removed the false front below the bottom shelf of his wooden bookcase, reached in, and extracted a small pile of file folders. He tossed them onto his computer desk and slid into his swivel chair.

The first three files were copies of the ones Wonk had obtained. He spread them apart.

Bracey.
Valenti
.
Wulfe
.

He rocked back, closed his eyes, and could still see their faces.

You can still walk away, you know.

He remembered the faces of Susanne and Arthur Copeland.

He opened his eyes. Saw his reflection in the blank gray of his computer screen.

No. You can’t.

You’ve never been able to walk away.

He moved the three folders aside and opened another. It contained over a dozen sheets, each listing a name and related biographical data. He studied them for a while, then pulled out five.

Something touched his leg. The cat had followed him into the den and now was stropping back and forth across his shins.

He reached down, picked her up, put her on his lap. Started to scratch her head.

“So, what do you say, Luna?”

She purred and closed her eyes while he rocked and scratched.

“It would be a huge step for us, you know. If we do this, there will be no turning back. Ever.”

She rubbed her cheek against his stomach.

“So you’re okay with this.”

She raised her face, looked at him, and blinked.

“But this time Dylan Lee Hunter can’t go it alone. It’ll have to be a team effort.”

He turned the biographical sheets toward the cat and fanned them out. Five names. For all the specialized roles. Planning, logistical support, intelligence, infiltration, and field operations.

“What do you think of these five characters?”

She jumped down from his lap and trotted away, back toward her bowl.

“Nice vote of confidence.”

CONNOR’S POINT
MARYLAND’S
EASTERN SHORE
Friday, September 5, 9:35 p.m.

Victor Edward
Rostand
had come home late this afternoon after a ten-day business trip. That’s what he told his
neighbors
, Jim and Billie Rutherford, when they saw him changing a dead light bulb outside his three-car garage and walked over to say hello. Vic explained that he was only stopping in for a few hours to pay some bills and check on things. He had to leave again later that night.

Vic had moved into the brick-faced Colonial on Connor’s Point a couple of years earlier. His marketing consulting took him out of town a lot. Business must have been good, Jim and Billie figured, because the man sure liked his toys. He kept three vehicles in the garage: a blue Honda CR-V, a black Ford E-Series SUV van, and his latest: a sweet new Honda motorcycle. He had a boat tied up in his slip at the end of the street—a nice 28-foot
Bayliner
285 Cruiser. There was a rumor that he also kept a small plane over at the
Kent
Island
airport, too, but Vic laughed it off when they asked him about it.

If Vic had money, he certainly didn’t put on airs about it. He dressed casually, shaved sporadically, bought Girl Scout cookies outside the local supermarkets, ate at unpretentious neighborhood restaurants, and put in brief appearances at cookouts on the Point during the summer, where he cooked up some mean chili. Most of the time, he even cut his own grass with an old-fashioned push-type lawn mower. About the only quirky thing about him was that he wore tinted glasses day and night, because he said his eyes—which Billie guessed might be “a rich, coffee brown”—were overly sensitive to light.

Just a regular nice guy.

Like a few of the other neighbors, Jim and Billie had tried to socialize with him a bit more. He accepted a dinner invitation once, and they had a nice time. Vic brought a couple of bottles, a Syrah and a
Chenin
Blanc, and mentioned some of his foreign travels to places they’d never been, like
Dubai
and
Cairo
. Jim asked him about marketing, and Vic talked a bit about “positioning” and “branding,” but stopped after a short time because, he said, he didn’t want to bore them. Billie asked if he managed to do any dating. Vic smiled and replied that he was in a long-distance relationship with a business woman in
Chicago
, but their schedules weren’t very compatible, so he doubted it would last much longer. He complained that his work schedule just didn’t allow much time for relationships, either social or romantic.

At nine-thirty this evening, Billie sent Jim out to the Safeway to pick up some eggs and half-and-half for breakfast. Backing out of the driveway, he saw that Vic’s garage lights were on and he was putting some boxes in the open back doors of his Ford van. Jim shook his head. He’d never seen a guy stay so busy. He tapped his horn as he drove off.

*

He set the box down in the bed of the van, then heard a horn beep. He looked back to see Jim Rutherford’s car pulling away. He waved casually at the departing vehicle, closed the rear doors of the Ford, then went to the wall switch and lowered the garage door. For the next few minutes, he would need privacy.

He left the garage by its back door. He paused a moment in the darkness to savor the moonlight shimmering on the water of Connor’s Creek behind the house. A few
Canada
geese were honking out there in the marsh somewhere. Or was it the trumpeter swans? He wasn’t sure; he just didn’t spend enough time out here, much as he loved the place.

He moved behind a large pine near the house and over to the wooden shed. He opened the padlock and entered, closing the door behind him. By feel, he found and pulled a drawstring; a bare bulb lit the interior. He slid the door bolt, locking it from the inside.

The shed contained nothing but heaps of crumbling storage boxes. They were crammed with old file folders containing billing statements to a variety of companies. None of the paperwork meant anything; he’d retrieved it all from a Dumpster two years ago. He moved aside a stack of the boxes, one by one, clearing a space on the floor. You had to look very closely to see the thin slit across the dusty floorboards. He stuck a screwdriver into the crack, levered it up, grabbed the edge of the hinged trap door, and hoisted it the rest of the way open.

He made his way carefully down a crude set of wooden stairs into a small underground room with concrete walls and floors. He pulled another drawstring down there, and a second, brighter bulb illuminated his armory.

He drew two sheathed combat knives, one large, one small, from a leather-lined wooden case and placed them on a wide bench. He opened a cabinet and selected several makes of handguns and corresponding suppressors and ammo. He assembled an array of electronic equipment, burglary tools, and other useful items. These items he wrapped carefully in lint-free cloths and placed in a couple of olive-green duffle bags. Shouldering them, he turned out the light, climbed from the room, and replaced the trap door and the boxes over it. He left the shed as he had come and re-entered the garage.

He glanced at his watch. The timetable still allowed him plenty of time to get to D.C. and make the weapons transfer to the operations vehicle, so that the rest of the plan could proceed on schedule.

Ten minutes later, he backed the black Ford van out of the garage.

*

Safeway didn’t have the small size of half-and-half, so Jim had to go another mile to the Acme. By the time he returned home, he noticed that all the lights were off at Vic’s place.

That guy. Never gives it a rest. Always up to something.