Last Man Standing (29 page)

His cell phone rang, just like the letter said it would. They must be watching him. He slowly held it up to his ear.

“Kevin?”

Toona turned his head around when he heard the name. Macy sat impassively.

“You all right, little man? They treating you okay?” Francis said into the phone. He nodded at the answer he heard. They spoke
for about a minute and then the line went dead. Francis put down the phone.

“Mace?” he said.

Macy instantly turned and looked at him.

“Mace, we got to get to this Web London dude. Things have changed.”

“You talking killing or information exchange? You want him to come to us, or us go to him? Be better if he found us, if you’re
talking info. You want him dead, though, I’ll go to him and it’s done.”

Macy was always logical like that. He read your mind, thought for himself, reviewed the possibilities and took the pressure
off his boss from having to do all the analysis, making all the tough decisions. Francis knew that Toona would never be like
that, and even Peebles was limited in that capacity. Damn ironic that a little white boy with a vicious streak would become
his number one kind of guy, his soul mate of sorts as much as black and white could be.

“Info, for now. So he comes to us. How long you reckon?”

“He’s been seen nosing around in that Bucar of his probably looking for clues. I’d say it wouldn’t take all that long. He
comes our way, we got a nice carrot to dangle in front of him.”

“Let’s do it. Oh, and Mace, nice call on that other thing.” Francis glanced at Toona.

“Just doing my job,” replied Macy.

K
evin looked up at the man as he put the phone away.

“You did real good, Kevin.”

“I want to see my brother.”

“One step at a time. You just talked to him. See, we’re not bad people. Hell, we’re into family stuff, see.” He laughed in
a way that made Kevin think he wasn’t into family at all. He rubbed his finger where his ring had been.

“Why you let me talk to him?”

“Well, it’s important that he knows you’re okay.”

“So he do what you tell him to do.”

“Damn, you really are one smart kid. You want a job?” He laughed again, turned and left, locking the door behind him.

“What I want,” Kevin called after him, “is out of here.”

W
eb had not read a paper in several days. He finally bought a copy of the
Washington Post
and went through it over coffee at a table near the large fountain at the Reston Town Center. He had been making slow circles
of the Washington metropolitan area and racking up some serious motel bills for the Bureau. Web occasionally looked up and
smiled at the kids climbing up on the ledge and throwing pennies into the fountains while their mothers held on to their shirttails
so they wouldn’t go plunging into the water.

He had gone through Sports, Metro, Style, working his way backward to the front section. On page A6 his nonchalant attitude
disappeared. He reread the article three times and looked closely at the accompanying photos. When he sat back and digested
it all, he found himself coming to conclusions that didn’t seem possible, so far-fetched were they. He touched the damaged
side of his face and then pressed a finger against the spot of each bullet hole. After all this time was he going to have
to confront it again?

He punched his speed dial. Bates wasn’t in. Web had him paged. The guy called back a few minutes later. Web told him about
the article.

“Louis Leadbetter. He was the judge down in Richmond who tried the Free Society case. Gunned down. Watkins was the prosecuting
attorney in the case. He goes in his house and it implodes. All on the same day. And then you got Charlie Team. We were the
team that responded to the Richmond Field Office’s request. I killed two of the Freebies myself before I got my face toasted
and two holes in me. And then you have Ernest B. Free himself. Busted out of prison, what, three months ago? One of the guards
was paid off, got him out in a transfer van and ended up with his throat slit for his trouble.”

Bates’s reply was surprising. “We know all that, Web. We’ve had our computers crunching that stuff, and then those two deaths,
murders, happened. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“You better come on down.”

W
hen Web arrived at the WFO, he was escorted to the strategic operations room that had all the bells and whistles one would
expect at the deep-pocketed crime-busting federal behemoth, including the standard-issue copper-coated walls, sophisticated
interior security system, white noise at all vulnerable portals, retinal and palm scanners, stacks of high-powered computers,
video equipment and, most important, fresh coffee in high quantities and a mound of hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Web poured himself a cup and said hello to some of the folks scurrying around the large room. He looked at computer-generated
diagrams of the courtyard and its environs that had been tacked to large boards and mounted on the walls. There were pins
at various places on the diagrams that represented, Web knew, significant points of evidence or clues. The bustle of feet,
the nonstop clack of computer keys, the ringing of phones, the rustle of paper and the ballooning body-heat index told Web
that something was up. He had been part of these war room operations before.

“Oklahoma City set the standard way too high,” said Bates with an ironic smile as Web sat down across from him. “Now everybody
expects us to examine a few hunks of metal, check a few videotapes, run a few plates, hit some computer keys and bingo, we
have our man hours later.” He dropped his legal pad on the table. “But it almost never works that way. Like everything else,
you need some breaks. Well, we just got a bunch telegraphed to us. Somebody definitely wants us to know he’s out there.”

“I’ll take a lead however it comes in, Perce. Whoever it is can’t control how it’s followed up.”

“You know I really hated it when you left WFO to go climb ropes and shoot big guns. If you’d stuck with me, you might have
made a decent FBI agent one day.”

“You make your bed, you lie and die in it. You said there was something else?”

Bates nodded and slid a news clipping over to Web, who looked down at it.

“Scott Wingo . . . that name rings a bell.”

“Yeah, he defended our friend Ernest B. Free. I wasn’t at the trial, of course. I was still recuperating. But the guys who
were there talked about Wingo.”

“Slick and smart. He cut his guy a sweetheart deal. And now he’s dead.”

“Murdered?”

“Atropine was applied to his telephone receiver. You pick up the phone, you naturally press it against your skin, near your
nostrils and such. Atropine is absorbed through the membranes much faster than via the bloodstream. Causes your pulse to go
into over-drive, breathing constricted, can make you hallucinatory, all within an hour or so. If you have bad kidneys or other
circulatory problems so the body can’t quickly rid itself of the stuff, that would speed up the poison’s effect. Wingo was
diabetic, had heart problems and was confined to a wheelchair, so atropine was the perfect choice. He went in alone on Saturdays,
so nobody would be around to help when he started feeling the atropine hit him. And on weekends he was known to return a lot
of calls, or so the folks in Richmond tell us.”

“So whoever killed him knew both his medical history and his work routine?”

Bates nodded. “Leadbetter got shot when he turned on the light to read an article another judge supposedly told him about.
The marshal who took the call said it was a Judge Mackey. Of course, it wasn’t.”

“The phone again.”

“That’s not all. Watkins’s neighbor was pulling out of his driveway at the time Watkins was walking up to his house. He told
police that he saw Watkins reach into his pocket and pull out his phone. The guy couldn’t hear the phone ringing, but he said
it looked like Watkins was answering a call. Gas in the house, he hits the talk button. Boom.”

Web said, “Wait a minute. A cell phone isn’t like a light switch. It doesn’t have the right type and amount of electrical
spark to ignite gas.”

“We examined the phone, or what was left of it. The forensic folks actually had to scrape it off Watkins’s hand. Someone had
planted a solenoid inside the phone that would cause the exact type of spark necessary to ignite that gas.”

“So somebody had to snatch his phone, probably while he was asleep or away from it for any length of time, plant the solenoid
and then they had to be watching him when it happened to get the timing that exact.”

“Yep. We checked the logs for Watkins’s and the marshal’s phones. Both calls were made with disposable calling cards you buy
with cash and then discard. No record.”

“Like undercover agents use. I take it yours hasn’t surfaced yet?”

“Forget our undercover.”

“No, I’ll just come back to him later. So what’s the latest on Free?”

“Nothing. It’s like the guy’s gone to another planet.”

“Is the organization still active?”

“Unfortunately, yes. You probably remember they disavowed being part of the hit on the school in Richmond and Ernie wouldn’t
rat on his soul mates, said he’d planned the job himself without their knowledge, so there went that case. The other gunmen
were dead, two of them thanks to you. We couldn’t crack any of the other members and get them to testify, so the Free Society
was never even charged with anything. They laid low for a while because of all the negative publicity, but word is they’re
coming back with fresh blood.”

“Where are they now?”

“Southern Virginia, near Danville. You better believe we’ve got that place covered. We figured old Ernie would head there
after his escape. But so far, nothing.”

“After all this, can’t we get a search warrant for their headquarters?”

“What, we go to the magistrate and say we’ve got three murders, six if you count Watkins’s family, and we think this Free
Society might be behind them, but we’ve got absolutely no evidence linking them to the hit on HRT or anybody else? Wouldn’t
the ACLU just love to hit that one out of the park?” Bates paused. “It all makes sense though. Prosecutor, judge, perfect
motive for revenge.”

“But why the defense lawyer? He saved Ernie from lethal injection. Why take him out?”

“That’s true, but you’re not talking about rational people, Web. For all we know, they’re pissed because their fellow madman
served one day in prison. Or maybe Ernie had a falling out with the guy and when he got out he decided to take them all out.”

“Well, at least that should end the killings. There’s nobody left.”

Bates reached in a file and pulled out another slip of paper and a photograph. “Not quite. You remember there were two teachers
gunned down at the school too.”

Web took a deep breath as the painful memories came flooding back. “And the boy, David Canfield.”

“Right. Well, one of the slain teachers was married. And guess what? Her husband was killed three days ago in western Maryland
while driving home late one night from work.”

“Homicide?”

“Not sure. It was a car crash. Police are still investigating. Looks like a hit and run.”

“Telephone involved?”

“There was one in the car. After we contacted them, the police said they would check the phone logs to see if he received
a call right before the crash.”

“How about the other teacher’s family?”

“The husband and kids moved to Oregon. We’ve contacted them and they’re under twenty-four-hour surveillance right now. And
we’re not stopping there. You remember David Canfield’s parents? Bill and Gwen?”

Web nodded. “I was in the hospital at MCV for a while. Billy Canfield came to visit me a couple of times. He’s a good guy.
He took the loss of his son really hard, who wouldn’t? I never met his wife, and I haven’t seen Billy since.”

“They moved. Live up in Fauquier County now, run a horse farm.”

“Anything strange happen to them?”

“We contacted them as soon as we made the connection. They said nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. They knew about
Free’s escape. And to quote Bill Canfield, he said he doesn’t want our help and he hoped the bastard came after him because
he’d just love to blow his head off with a shotgun.”