The Widow File (19 page)

On his list of tasks for the evening was making the anonymous tip regarding Dani’s involvement in the Rasmund explosion. Despite what he had messaged Dani, he’d held off on misleading the authorities. Everything about this job had been off from the start and Booker had decided to play a tight game. There was no rush to put Dani on the hot seat. He knew where she was. Once the law got involved, it probably wouldn’t take them long to find her either. They’d start canvassing her neighborhood and the inn wasn’t far outside her known whereabouts. And as cute as Booker thought Dani looked bundled up in her flannel, he doubted she blended in with the stately inn’s usual crowd. Why had she gone there? The tingle of being temporarily outwitted shivered up his spine. He loved it and hated it at the same time.

The news anchors laughed about the sports headlines as Booker sidled up closer to the screen. Local news came next. He was surprised to see the
lead story focused on a bank scandal, followed by a charity event put on by local teenagers. Maybe he’d missed the Rasmund story; maybe it had run before the sports report, although this late in the year it seemed every American news report started with football. Shrugging his overcoat on, Booker bent to pick up his briefcase and froze. The news show cut to commercial but not before running a banner with the upcoming stories, among them a gas explosion in Falls Church.

Gas explosion?

He scanned the lobby to see if anyone had noticed him. Another white fortysomething man with a tie and briefcase didn’t exactly stand out, but Booker liked to make a point of remaining in motion. Just standing still made him feel vulnerable but he stood there, hands down by his side, attaché forgotten. Stillness settled over his muscles, his expression neutral, as his brain kicked into an unfamiliar gear. He felt nervous. He didn’t know why he felt it but Booker had learned early in life to trust that reaction.

The commercials finished and the news anchors returned with aerial footage of smoke billowing out over the late fall foliage of Virginia. A close-up shot of fire trucks and state trooper cars circling the scene framed a young reporter huddled in a fleece jacket trying to shout over the chaos behind her. Without realizing it, Booker leaned forward toward the screen, listening with his entire body. When he stood almost on the balls of his feet, he felt a sensation he had not felt in over a decade. He felt a rivulet of sweat trickling down his back.

“Want to go over the materials again?”

“Sure.” Choo-Choo packed the sandwich ingredients back into the bag. “It’s not like I’m going to sleep tonight. Or ever again.”

Dani hauled the heavy pouch onto her lap, pulling out the papers first, then the odds and ends. Choo-Choo took the pages, sorting them by type while she lined up the rest. She made a point of placing the cupcake wrapper in front of him and he shook his head. Beside that went the drug company’s stress ball keychain, a champagne cork still in its wire cage, two
valet parking stubs from two different lots, an empty box of cough drops, an expired Metro Pass, an origami swan, and a wrapper from a grape Tootsie Pop.

“Hey look,” Dani pointed to the wrapper. “It’s got an Indian on it. That’s good luck.”

Choo-Choo looked at the purple waxy paper and saw the silhouette of the boy in a headdress shooting an arrow. “Didn’t really seem to pay off for Marcher, did it?” He continued sorting the white papers into categories: receipts, statements, and scattered notes. Below the three piles closest to the edge of the table, he removed the folded pictures that Hickman had taken from various angles throughout Marcher’s work area. He had to move the TV remote to make room for the last two shots.

“Is the news still on?” Dani asked.

“It’s probably almost over. We can try.”

She hesitated before nodding. “I kind of hope we missed it.”

They hadn’t. Choo-Choo muted the set as a group of kids held up signs and posters on a busy sidewalk that looked like the Capitol Hill area. Dani turned back to the materials that looked even less meaningful now than they had when Hickman had brought them to her. Her brain couldn’t kick into an analytical frame and she rested her chin in her palms. Choo-Choo elbowed her hard enough to make her teeth clack when he lunged once again for the remote.

He unmuted the screen, catching the reporter in midsentence. “… a natural gas explosion. Fortunately, the historic research facility is closed on Saturdays and the building was empty at the time. Authorities say that preliminary reports show there are no signs of foul play and there have been no injuries reported.” The reporter looked almost sorry to relay that last bit of information. Her face looked grave as she peered into the camera. “Had this explosion occurred just twenty-four hours earlier, Steve, authorities say the news would be a good deal grimmer. I’m Natalie Harding reporting. Back to you, Steve.”

The shot cut back to the two anchors straightening out papers and nodding in agreement before the weatherman cut in with promises of a chilly day for the Redskins game. Dani had to press down on Choo-Choo’s thumb, where it rested forgotten on the remote, to turn off the set.

“I don’t understand,” she said in a whisper.

“There had to be at least a dozen bodies in there.” He whispered too.

“How did they…” She couldn’t begin to phrase the question. When a phone beeped to announce a text message, she and Choo-Choo turned to the floor where her corduroy jacket sat in a heap, his phone chirping within. It took her more than a few seconds to put together the actions needed. When she reached down for the jacket, she only held it up, begging Choo-Choo with her eyes to reach in and pull the phone out.

He moved in the same slow motion she did, as if any faster and the last shreds of reality and understanding would disappear. His thumb slid across the screen and Dani leaned in to see.

“‘See the news?’” the message said. They read aloud the next line together. “‘Four, four, one, eight, six.’”

“Is that from Tom?” Dani asked. “What are those numbers?”

Choo-Choo stared at the phone. “That’s a Stringer code.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Did you… I thought…” Dani couldn’t put words in order. She didn’t know what she was asking or what she wanted to hear. Rasmund had exploded. Fay had been killed along with the Faces team. Mrs. O’Donnell had been kidnapped. Dani didn’t hold local law enforcement in low regard. She knew they were more than capable of understanding a crime scene much more subtle than Rasmund. Anyone would recognize the presence of bodies in the ashes.

“What should I say?” Choo-Choo looked as sideswiped as she felt.

“How about ‘Help!’ That seems kind of fitting.” When he still didn’t move, she squeezed his arm. “The Stringers, they’re hit men, right? I mean basically that’s what they are. Isn’t that what you said? We know the people that attacked Rasmund had hit men. Don’t you think it would be nice to have a hit man of our own? Someone on our side? Maybe he knows something.”

If it was possible for Choo-Choo’s fair skin to become any paler, it happened at that moment. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about. Maybe he does know something.”

“What?”

“What if we’re looking at this all wrong, Dani? What if Rasmund didn’t get hit but we did?” He stared into her eyes, waiting for her to catch on.

“But we did get hit. Rasmund got hit.”

“No,
we
got hit. You and me and Fay and the Faces. Who worked on the Swan job? You and Fay, me, Hickman and Evelyn, Phelps and Eddie. Everyone got hit but us because we escaped. Mrs. O’Donnell walked out.”

“Tied up with a hood on her head.”

“Because that’s so hard to fake?” He scowled at her. “That might have been for your benefit, did you ever think of that? The people who hit us knew someone was missing. They saw you come in and then they couldn’t find you. Maybe they knew you were watching. Maybe they were trying to draw you out. Dani, they got into Rasmund. They got the codes for the locks, the cameras, the phones, everything. That is not an easy place to get into. And to get into it without setting off any alarms? You know who gets in and out of Rasmund without being seen? Stringers.”

She shook her head. “No, whoever it was must have come in with the Swan liaison. They collected all the materials. This has got to be part of the Swan job.”

“We don’t know that.”

“The job was called!”

“Says who?” Choo-Choo asked. “Says Mrs. O’Donnell. She’s the one who called the job. There was absolutely no chatter about that beforehand. There was nothing in the audio I heard to suggest that the job was off track. And what was in the materials? Did you see anything? I had shit on audio. There was zero evidence of anything wrong at Swan.”

“But why would she… ? Who is… ? Tom said that the people who hired him think I have something. All I have are the Swan materials that Hickman gave me. What else could it be?”

“I don’t know.” He slumped back against the couch. “Whoever is working this, they have the power to affect the police investigation. That’s harder than you might think. It’s one thing to alter a police report. It’s another thing to convince a battalion of state troopers and firefighters to not see dead bodies in the wreckage of a blown-up building.”

“Could they have gotten the bodies out?”

He shook his head, uncertain. “Maybe? My sense of time was pretty warped when we ran but it doesn’t seem like there was a lot of time between us hitting that road and the building blowing up. Am I being paranoid?”

Dani laid her head back, her shoulder pressing into his. “I think we’d be crazy not to be.”

Booker cut through another busy intersection before he even realized he had left the hotel. His face burned hot, an unusual sensation for him. He knew his face got red when he exerted himself—he was still a functioning organism, but it had been years, decades even, since he had been aware of the occurrence. He didn’t hear the traffic around him. He heard nothing but a pounding in his ears and the steady huff of his breath.

No sign of foul play.

Booker had put nothing in motion to hide the bodies. The plan had been to create confusion. The discovery of corpses was supposed to kick off a gruesome discovery of murder and mayhem. The bullet holes in the skulls of the Rasmund employees would take a few hours but that evidence was supposed to open a trail of suspicion and misdirection. The unexplained presence of the dead team of mercenaries would only add to the cloud of fear and foreboding.

Who the hell was playing him?

Booker knew nobody had gotten out of that building alive except O’Donnell and Dani. Duncan and his crew had died screaming and cursing him. The real question was why would anyone tamper with this plan? Or more to the point, how did it affect him? Booker didn’t give a rat’s ass if the master plan kicked off the emergence of a new Third Reich so long as he got away free and untouched. What bothered him, on the ever growing list of things that bothered him about this job as a whole, was that nobody had given even an inkling of this wrinkle. The client, his assistant, the site of the big hit, nothing in Marcher’s background—nowhere had Booker found even a hint, a trace, or a suggestion that a bigger game was afoot. And Booker had an excellent eye for treachery.