Inside Out (25 page)

57

Concord, North Carolina Sunday

Winter sat at the table, watching his son fight to contain his growing excitement. Winter had stayed busy around the house all weekend. There were plenty of minor repairs to take care of. While he worked, Rush stayed close and they talked and laughed. It helped to keep his mind off Greg and the other thoughts that stalked him. He and Lydia decided to celebrate Rush's birthday on Sunday afternoon. Winter didn't know what Monday would bring his way.

The handicap had taken its social toll on Rush. Most of the friends he had made before the accident hadn't remained close for long. After the novelty wore off, most sighted children found it difficult to maintain a relationship with someone so radically different. Friendship with Rush meant the loss of things that were important to children that age: video games, basketball, baseball, movies, bicycles. Since the accident, Rush had become more and more comfortable with children like him. Angus McGill, a neighbor Rush's age, was the only one of Rush's old pals who still visited, but he was out of town with his parents.

“Well,” Winter said. “What should we do now?”

“We could sit on the porch,” Lydia said.

“Aren't you guys forgetting something?” Rush asked, fighting back a smile.

“I don't think so,” Winter said, trying to sound sincerely confused. “Mama, what's that?” Winter got up, lifted a package from the sideboard and placed it on the table in front of his son. “A present?”

Rush placed his hands on the package.

“I don't know,” Lydia said.

Rush felt the edges of the box. “What is it?” he asked.

“Open it and see.”

Rush removed the ribbon, peeled off the paper, and pried open the box. He reached in.

“It's something plastic.”

“Could be,” Winter said.

Rush lifted the object by the edges and placed it down on the table, flat-side down.

“Sculpture art?” Rush had been to museums where there had been sculpture and other tactile work he could appreciate with his fingers. In art classes, he had made three-dimensional objects in clay, wood, cloth, and paper.

“Sort of art. That guy Moses Mink who brought his statues to your school made it for me. You tell me what it is,” Winter said.

As Rush's fingers moved over the surface of the piece, the contours started to make sense. What he was feeling suddenly appeared as an image in his mind, and his heart leaped with sheer joy. “It's . . . you!” He started laughing and ran his fingers over the cast impression of his father's face. “It's a picture of you!”

“It's a mask, so you won't forget me. How cool is that?”

“That's way, way far-out cool! That's the number-one best present ever.” He laughed again. “I can't believe it.”

Rush made a big deal over the other gifts: a stack of audiobooks from the Trammels, two sweaters and two pairs of jeans from Lydia, and a check from Eleanor's father, who had moved to Nova Scotia with his third wife. When Rush left the table, he was carrying the mask.

58

Charlotte, North Carolina Monday

From his Explorer, Winter watched Rush and Nemo join other students to walk up the stairs to his school. His cell phone buzzed.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?” Hank Trammel asked.

“Dropping Rush off.”

“Can you come see me?”

“What's up?”

“I'd rather tell you when you get here.”

It was impossible to read Hank's voice.

His phone rang again almost immediately after he'd set it aside.

“Yeah?”

“Say hello first, Winter,” Lydia scolded.

“I thought it was Hank.”

“I wondered if you would mind stopping by the grocery store on your way home.”

“Something's come up. An important meeting at headquarters. It may take a while.”

“I don't know why one tells you to rest a few days and then another tells you to come to work,” his mother complained. “It's like they don't care what you go through. I know that news story about the plane crashing upset you. I know you didn't want Rush to think about all that, but you can tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Did you know any of those people?”

“I knew most of them.”

“Did it—”

“Mama, if I could discuss it with you, I already would have. When I can, you'll be the first to know.”

Hank Trammel's stiffly formal manner and his stern face set off warning bells in Winter's mind as he sat across the uncharacteristically ordered desk. Hank flipped open a file folder and studied the first page. “Chief Marshal Shapiro got preliminary findings from the FBI this morning and faxed this to me, asking that I share it with you.”

Winter felt his anticipation growing at the possibility that the case had already been broken.

“Were you aware that Greg Nations had an offshore bank account?”

“No,” Winter replied. The question surprised him. He couldn't think of one reason he should have one. “But people have bank accounts all over. I doubt it's illegal to have an offshore account.”

Hank pushed the photocopy toward Winter, spinning it around so he could read it. He pointed to the balance.

“Four hundred thousand dollars was deposited by wire before Nations arrived on Rook,” Hank said. “His cell phone records show that he called the bank the day that transfer was made. He's had this account for two years. He opened it with a ten-dollar deposit and, over its life, the amount of wire transfer deposits has ranged from twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars. Eleven days ago, four hundred thousand was wired into it from a Swiss bank.”

“Come on, Hank. What proof do they have that this is Greg's account, that he had any knowledge of it?” The notion that Greg had that kind of money was ludicrous.

Hank pushed over the second sheet from the folder—the paperwork to open the account. Winter recognized the scribbled signature as Greg's, unless it was a superb forgery. He felt nauseous.

“Anybody can put anybody's signature on a document. This is a photocopy.”

“The FBI found the originals hidden in his house when they searched it over the weekend.”

“So they say.”

“They say Greg knew Sam Manelli.”

Hank showed Winter a grainy picture of Greg talking to Sam Manelli. It looked like a surveillance shot taken from a distance.

“We meet criminals all the time,” Winter said. “Besides, pictures can be faked.”

“I'm not saying it's true,” Hank told Winter. “But Greg specifically asked for you to be attached to this operation.”

“Yes, he did.”

“How often before this had he asked for you on a WITSEC operation?”

Hank already knew the answer.

“Shapiro has to consider that maybe Greg didn't expect any of his men to be killed. Maybe he was double-crossed. Maybe they were supposed to shoot Devlin from a distance.”

Even though Winter realized Hank was just passing the information along, he felt like he was being tortured. “If Greg was dirty, he would never have brought me into it.”

“Did Greg tell you about his military experience?”

“He trained Special Forces.”

“Winter, according to the FBI, Greg trained people in special weapons, effective and unorthodox killing, and interrogation techniques. He tell you that? Did he tell you he started with military intelligence, worked directly with the CIA? He guarded defectors.”

“No, he didn't. What about the dead UNSUBs on Rook?” Winter offered. “They were obviously soldiers. The armed forces fingerprint and take blood for DNA. Those dead men won't lead to Greg.”

“Those four killers were soldiers. The FBI matched their prints.”

“I knew it.”

“Winter, according to the Bureau they were Russians—ex-shock troops. You know what happened after the wall fell—Russia couldn't even afford to fix their equipment or feed their soldiers. A lot of them hired themselves out to the Russian mob as freelance killers out of necessity. The four you killed on Rook Island arrived in this country after Manelli was arrested.”

“They weren't Russian soldiers, Hank. One of them had a distinctly Southern accent. I'll tell you what this is. The FBI is lying, or being fooled. And you can tell Shapiro to tell the Bureau that no matter what they come up with, they can't convince me that Greg sold out a witness.”

“Have you thought about . . .” Hank started, then reconsidered. “Winter, what if it's true? What if they're right? What if Greg did take money from someone like Manelli for doing a small favor? Someone could use that to blackmail him and make him do something much worse.”

“Not Greg,” Winter said, resolute in his conviction that Greg was being made a patsy in this investigation.

“Nearly a half million dollars . . .”

“Hank, once when we were in Georgia leaving Glynco, he turned around and drove back ten miles because he found out a clerk had given him change for a twenty instead of the ten he had given her. We were looking at missing a flight because of it. That's the kind of man Greg was.”

“We're not talking about ten dollars. It isn't like you to ignore evidence because it doesn't fit what you think is true.”

“What I think is that somebody is framing him. Maybe it's the FBI.”

“Why?”

“Because they have to explain how this all happened. They have to make people think they're on top of everything, which is as far from the truth as it gets. Think what solving this is worth to careers, what not solving it will cost them. It wouldn't be the first time they put a spin on something to suit their purposes.”

“This is more than public relations. You just got through saying that Greg didn't tell you the truth about his military service.”

Winter was dumbfounded. “I never asked, and it doesn't matter.”

“You know, it isn't smart to be behind a bull when you know he's gonna sit down. There are bound to be some complicated politics in all of this.”

“What are you saying, Hank?”

“Greg didn't have a family to get hurt. You do. If you're right, this is a done deal. You don't understand the politics at work here well enough to know when to get out of the way. Fight the Bureau and the A.G. on this and they might make room for you in the same fire they're looking to roast Nations' reputation over.”

Winter wasn't so naive he doubted that could come to pass.

Hank said, “Sometimes a situation comes along where somebody gets sacrificed. Maybe holding up one bad apple would be a way to save the USMS and maintain the credibility of the entire witness security side. You can see what's a stake for the USMS, Justice, and the FBI.”

“If Greg didn't do it, then somebody else did. If they stop looking at Greg, then whoever's responsible might do the same thing again,” Winter said.

Hank scowled and placed his hands on the file. “Winter, all I know is what Shapiro wanted you to know.”

“Does he believe what the FBI told him?”

“He told me that he thinks the speed at which everything was put to rest is unusual. The Russian military cooperated immediately here; even though identifying those men as theirs makes them look bad and has the potential to create an embarrassing incident when our relationship is delicate. There's a chance they wanted to cooperate with us, since it means clamping down on their Mafia.”

Winter shook his head. “Bull.”

“I'm your friend, Winter. The truth is that there's nothing you can do.”

“What, we all just let this run its course?”

Hank shrugged and put the pages back inside the folder. “The only reason I know about what happened on Rook and Ward Field is because Shapiro thought I needed to know. There's one other thing he asked me to tell you. Sean Devlin slipped away from the marshals who were watching her.”

“I'm sure she had a reason,” his calm tone belying the stab of terror he experienced on hearing the news.

“He didn't say.”

“Is he sure she wasn't grabbed by Manelli's people?” Winter tried to keep his voice even, despite his mounting sense that Sean was in grave danger.

“She slipped surveillance on purpose. She pulled some kind of a ruse with two rooms.”

“Is he going to search for her?”

“I think he's looking for her. I'm sorry about all of this, Winter. You know that.”

“So am I, Hank,” Winter said, standing. “So am I.”

When Winter climbed into his Explorer and slammed the door, two men in a Chrysler sedan three blocks away knew it because a light on the computer screen between them began blinking. The driver waited beside the curb and didn't move into traffic until the Explorer exited the garage and the driver saw it coming toward them.

“You got audio?” the driver asked the second man.

The man with the earphone in place nodded and held a thumb up. “He's growling.”

“Growling, as in like a dog?”

“Yep.”