The Brea File (22 page)

“Could be,” said the taciturn Rayburn. “But he isn’t the only one around.”

“What do you mean?” Wagner grabbed a napkin and wiped some juice from his chin.

“I’ve seen another one a couple times. Don’t know his name, but I know his face.”

“You’re sure he’s an agent?”

“Uh-huh.” Cal Rayburn glanced sleepily around the busy cafeteria. The place was about ready to close. Which made it close to the time of night the FBI vehicle was stolen from the parking lot. He attacked his wedge of pizza, chewing it methodically. “Maybe our boss isn’t telling us everything. Maybe he’s got a backup team assigned to give us competition.”

Jack Wagner grinned. “Hell of a waste,” he said.

* * * *

Paul Macimer left the office in the late afternoon. Jan’s car was not in the drive or garage when he arrived home. He found Kevin alone in the family room. “How’s it going, Kev?”

The boy ducked his head and mumbled something. He picked up his baseball glove from the couch beside him, stuck his left hand into the glove and slapped a fist into the oiled pocket.

“Do you know where your mother is?”

“She had to go to the store.”

“When are you going to get over being mad at me?”

Kevin studied the spotless floor. “I’m not mad.”

“Disappointed?”

The boy hesitated, stuck his fist again into the glove’s pocket and shook his head.

“Still think I should have gone against those robbers with guns blazing? Have you thought about what that might have meant? The risks involved?”

“I know. It’s just that… I don’t know what I thought.”

“I think I do,” Macimer said gently. “I was more than a little bit disappointed myself, if you want the truth. Maybe I can do better the next time. Or make sure there isn’t a next time. But sometimes, Kevin, the thing you’d like to do isn’t the right thing.” Hearing his own words, he wondered if they sounded as hypocritical to the boy as they suddenly did to him.

Kevin pounded his glove, avoiding his father’s gaze. “I bet you could take those guys!”

Macimer was silent a moment, studying the boy, resisting the strong desire to take him in his arms. He didn’t want to embarrass Kevin any more than the boy already was. “Just remember this, Kevin. I wouldn’t have stood by while anything happened to you or your sister or your mother. No matter what.”

Kevin looked up at him, his manner suddenly sheepish, his eyes suspiciously moist. “I know
that
.”

Macimer grinned. “Good. Were you planning on using that glove, or were you only improving the pocket?”

“Davey and I were gonna play catch.”

“Okay, go ahead. Don’t be late for dinner.” As Kevin bolted toward the sliding patio doors Macimer called after him, “Is anyone else home?”

“Just Linda!”

Macimer watched the boy race across the yard, heading for the home of Davey Kramer. Kevin had been eager to escape, but his step seemed lighter, more buoyant after the brief exchange.

I wouldn’t let anything happen to you
. Confident promises, Macimer thought. He was remembering again Jan’s fears that not only she but also the children might be being followed. And watched.

* * * *

He found Linda in her room. The door was open but Macimer tapped lightly with his knuckles. “Okay if I come in?”

She was lying on the bed, propped up against the headboard with a copy of
People
magazine in her lap. Her extension phone was on the pillow beside her but the instrument was in its cradle. “Sure,” she said, without expression.

“Mom had to run out?”

“Yes. She went so fast she didn’t even ask if I wanted anything.”

Macimer found a place to sit on a chair crowded with cushions in the shapes of stuffed ladybugs, frogs and other comical creatures. It was his afternoon for trying to mend fences within his family. He knew why Jan had gone out so suddenly, probably soon after his telephone call saying he was leaving the office early. She hadn’t given Linda a chance to go with her. She had created an opportunity for Macimer to have his talk with Linda.

“Mom tells me you’re having trouble with what happened that night with the robbers. That you haven’t been able to forget it—to put it behind you.”

“What did you expect?” The question was sharp. Linda’s eyes were cool, alarmingly adult, strikingly like her mother’s when Jan was feeling hostile.

“I don’t know. It happened to you in a different way than it happened to me.” Macimer, trying to prepare for this moment, had found no magic words, few that seemed any good at all.

“What can I tell you? There are people like that. They have all kinds of things pushing them, all kinds of motives. Sometimes nothing more than anger.”

“Don’t try to make me feel sorry for
them!
” Linda cried. “Those creeps! I don’t need to understand them. They made me feel like I was some kind of bug they could squash anytime they wanted. Only first they’d have some fun, you know, like pulling off the wings and the legs.”

“That’s one of the hardest things to learn,” said Macimer. “That there are some people to whom you don’t matter at all. Even your life means nothing to them. Nobody ever found that easy to accept.”

“You know what it was mostly?” Linda demanded. “The macho thing. Strutting around this house, those two apes telling each other and trying to show the girl what big men they were. I’m beginning to think all men are the same. Some just have nicer manners.”

“We’re not all the same,” Macimer protested. He smiled. “What about your brothers? Look at Chip. Can you imagine him hurting anyone deliberately, especially a girl? You, for instance?”

“Lots of brothers rape their sisters.”

The comment chilled him. He reminded himself that he was talking not only to his daughter but to a young woman who had been hurt. “A great many people find an infinite number of ways to hurt each other. But that isn’t
us
, Linda. You know that. You didn’t answer my question about Chip just now because you know the answer, and it doesn’t fit with what you want to believe right now. That’s my point. All men aren’t like those two creeps. You know that from your own experience. Don’t take my word for it. Lean on what you know yourself.”

“What else would you say?” Linda answered with dignity.

“Because I’m a man? Because I’m a chauvinist myself, an exploiter of women?”

She was silent for a moment, staring at him, troubled. Then she said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

As Macimer stared at his daughter in silence, baffled and worried, wondering if perhaps Jan wasn’t right and the girl needed outside professional help, someone she could accept as objective and wise and supportive (fathers had once been supposed to be wise and supportive), another voice called out. “Yoo-hoo! Anyone there?”

Macimer and Linda exchanged glances. He offered an exaggerated grimace that brought a faint smile to her lips. They both recognized the voice, and there was an evident relaxing of the tension between them. “To the rescue, Daddy.”

“Once more unto the breach…. You see, we aren’t all bad.”

“Yoo-hoo? Paul? It’s Aileen…”

Linda looked unconvinced but willing to let their confrontation be set aside for the moment. Macimer went down the stairs to the family room. Aileen Hebert, a neighbor, stood just inside the open patio doors. Her face lit up with relief.

“Thank heaven you’re home! I saw your car, and I was hoping you’d be here. The door was open….”

“What’s happened, Aileen? Lock yourself out again?” Divorced and living alone—one child was married, the other away at school—Aileen was forever losing her car keys or locking herself out of the house.

“It’s not my fault this time, Paul. I
know
I had the house keys when I went out, I just can’t find them.”

“Everything’s locked? Have you tried all the windows?”

“Well, I think so. I put the keys in my purse as I was leaving, I remember that distinctly. I only went over to the mall to do some shopping.”

Macimer walked her back toward her house, which was two doors down the street, while they talked. She was a graying, still attractive woman in her forties whose vague manner, hair that seemed to have been used for nest building, and a tendency to dress uncertainly, as if she wanted to be ready for both a dinner party and a picnic, caused observers to overlook well-composed features and a fine figure. Macimer wondered if the vagueness, the haphazard dress and the lost keys were not all a consequence of the divorce, a cry for attention. But what particularly puzzled him about Aileen Hebert was how she could function efficiently—as she apparently did—as a secretary in one of Washington’s prestigious law firms.

“You ought to have a house key with your car keys,” he suggested.

“Well, I don’t know, Paul… I mean, you know I often forget my car keys, or leave them in the car. And if there was a house key with them and someone found them, well, they could just walk into the house, couldn’t they?”

Macimer had no answer for that.

Aileen Hebert followed him around her house, chattering as he checked the doors and windows. At the back of the house he found a bathroom window open about six inches. There was a “burglar-proof” stopper for the double-hung window, but it had been carelessly opened out to allow the window to be pushed up. Macimer found a narrow putty knife in the garage and used its blade to pry loose the catch on the screen. Then he opened the window, climbed inside, rehooked the screen, set the window stopper to the safe position and walked through the house to the front door, where he let Aileen Hebert in. Her house keys were in a tray on a table in the foyer.

“I don’t know how that happened,” she said in bewilderment. “I know I put them in my purse. I must have been thinking of something else on my way out and put them down there, do you suppose?”

Macimer grinned. “Aileen, you and keys aren’t compatible, that’s all.”

“Not only me and
keys
,” she murmured ambiguously. “Would you like some coffee, Paul? It won’t take a minute. Or a drink?”

“No, thanks, I–”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to Jan. The funniest thing happened the other day. Was it Monday? No, I think it was Tuesday. Are you sure you won’t have a beer?”

“Thanks just the same, Aileen.”

“I was listening to the radio—I always keep it on FM, you know, I like to listen to the music. The house is so empty if I don’t have the radio on. Anyway, I was changing to another station. All of a sudden, as clearly as if she were standing right there in the room with me, I heard Jan’s voice!”

Macimer paused in the doorway. “Jan’s voice? Are you sure?”

“Yes! She was talking to someone on the phone. I didn’t mean to listen but, you know, I was so
startled
. She made a date—it was with another woman, Paul,” Aileen added archly, suppressing a giggle. “They were going out to dinner.”

“Tuesday night,” Macimer said slowly.

“Yes, I’m sure it must have been Tuesday. That is…”

“I think I will have that beer,” he said. “Then I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened.”

* * * *

Macimer had come home early but his working day was not over. He spent the evening in his den, waiting for telephonic reports from Taliaferro, the case agent monitoring the surveillance of the suspect Molter from the Energy Research and Development Administration. The phone rang shortly after eight o’clock and Macimer snatched it up.

“He’s on his way!” Taliaferro said, excitement in his voice.

“How many cars on him?” Macimer asked.

“Three on him and six more in reserve. We’ve got a close tail, a backup and one out front.” The bracketing technique enabled the cars in a moving surveillance to keep contact with the subject even if he made an abrupt turn or darted down a parkway off ramp at the last second in a maneuver designed to expose a tail. The surveillance vehicles could also change positions so that the subject did not always see the same car behind him.

The number of men and vehicles being deployed would not have been necessary if agents had been able to plant a beeper on Molter’s car, a sleek Toyota Celica coupe. But it was parked each night in a locked garage at Molter’s security apartment complex, and during the day it was left in the ERDA garage in a section that happened to be within sight of the security guards at the entrance. Macimer had been unwilling to risk drawing Molter’s attention by breaking into the apartment garage or involving the security guards. It was up to the surveillance team not to let Molter get away this time.

“Where is he heading?” Macimer asked.

“Looks like Arlington Memorial Bridge. Which means he’s going down the Washington Parkway again if he sticks to his pattern.”

“Keep me posted.”

Macimer went to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of coffee and retreated to his den. While he waited his thoughts turned once more to Aileen Hebert and her chance revelation.

Macimer was not an expert in electronic surveillance, but he had had basic FBI training in the use and detection of bugs. In many cases clandestine surveillance was the only practical investigative approach available to law enforcement. The method of accidental reception over a neighbor’s FM radio suggested a wireless bug. Most of them had a short range, from a few feet to perhaps a half mile. One of the simplest ways to pick up a signal from such a bug was on an ordinary FM receiver, tuned to an empty space in the commercial FM band. All you had to do was tune the transmitter to that frequency, set your radio to the same frequency and listen in—either directly, the eavesdropper in a car parked nearby, or by means of a voice-actuated tape recorder hidden within range.

The method was simple and effective, but it had a clear risk that made it unappealing to most professionals:
anyone
could receive the same signal if an FM receiver happened to be tuned to the right frequency.

Immediately after leaving Aileen Hebert, Macimer had made a quick search of his house, checking each phone, the wall boxes where the telephone lines entered a room, picture frames, lamps, chair seats and other obvious places to plant a bug. He discovered the first one inside the wall thermostat in the upstairs hallway. It was mounted just outside the master bedroom, the transmitter drawing its power from the wires serving the thermostat. Its tiny microphone would have been able to pick up anything said in the bedroom. A hole no larger than a pinprick penetrated the bedroom wall. A wire antenna about fifteen inches long dangled inside the wall between the studs.