Witness to Death (38 page)

“How do I know you are who you say you are?” she asked.

“Got a match?”

Duffy squinted and tightened her lips. If she didn’t know what he was talking about, he’d be surrounded by agents before he could blink.

“I use a lighter,” she said.

“Better still.”

“Until they go wrong.”

The same damn code that Weller used.

“You send people to Vernon? To the Lincoln Tunnel?” Callahan asked.

“They’re on their way.”

“Why are you guys working on this?” Callahan asked. “Shouldn’t this be an FBI thing?”

“Weller was one of ours,” Duffy said. “We deal with our own. You know that.”

Callahan simply nodded. There was something more, but he let it go.

“What happened to your face?” Duffy asked.

“The gunfight the other night. Jersey City. That was me.”

Duffy smiled as if he’d done good work. He wondered how much she knew about him. “I’m glad you’re here. Weller was good at keeping secrets.”

“I know,” Callahan said. “You knew very little about me, didn’t you?”

“How did he find you?”

“On leave. I was back from Afghanistan for two weeks.”

“Special forces?”

Callahan shook his head. “CIA.”

Duffy made a note in her clipboard.

“What did Weller have you working on?”

“A lot of different cases.”

She nodded, as if she knew what that case was. “How long have you been on this one?”

“A year or so.”

Duffy nodded

“And what was your last contact with Weller?”

“He wanted me to find Omar Thabata. Said something was going down that I should look into. A lot of terrorist chatter.”

“What happened with that?”

Callahan pointed at his face. “The first time I found him I got beat up and shot at.”

“And did you check in?”

“With Candy once or twice. After Weller told me about the chatter, I’d tried to call in a few times and got no answer.”

She nodded again, made another mark on the clipboard. “I see.”

“What happened?”

Duffy took a deep breath and pointed around the room. There was an open suitcase on the bed with some of the clothes flung on to the bed, a vase smashed on the floor, and the TV remote was beneath a table near the window.

“There are no signs of the door being forced. Tough to do with those thick hotel doors anyway. Probably need a crow bar. So we think someone Weller knew knocked on the door. He answered, maybe went back to unpacking his bag. And then whoever was here came up behind him with a garrote. Strangled him. There was a hell of a struggle.”

“No one heard anything?”

Callahan looked into the suitcase without touching it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just clothes and toiletries. He looked at the shattered vase again, and then saw the marks in the carpet. It looked like the impressions made with a vacuum or chair leg, and then dragged along the floor as if Weller had dug his heels in and got pulled along.

“We’ve been questioning the other guests, but we don’t think so.” Duffy used her forefinger to push her glasses up on her face “A place like this? Everyone who stays here is either in a business meeting or commuting to the city during the day.”

Callahan nodded. “Why was he here? I thought he was supposed to be staying in New York.”

Duffy stepped around him and looked at the bed. She picked up a plastic bag with a little piece of yellow paper in it. Callahan realized he was the only one not wearing rubber gloves.

“We don’t know.”

Duffy shook her head, then leveled her stare at Callahan. “Whoever did this knew him or surprised him. There wasn’t a struggle until the wire went around his neck.”

“If he was coming to see me, I didn’t know about it. Like I said, I called him a few times. No answer.”

“And you didn’t check in with anyone else.” It wasn’t a question.

“Candy Balascio.” He said it sharply.

“I meant a superior.”

“You weren’t supposed to know about me. No one was.”

“Listen, you don’t know me,” she said. “But it strikes me you weren’t doing a lot of things by the book. You or Weller.”

“When Weller hired me, he told me to stay quiet, to stay in touch. Not talk to anyone else. He gave me a contact and an assignment. He was worried it would get dirty. And it looks like it has. How long’s he been dead?”

Duffy fixed her glasses again.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “Can you give us a moment?”

The agents all got up without a word and stepped out into the hallway. Once they’d disappeared, she said, “Not long, less than 24 hours.”

Callahan ran his good hand through his hair and took a deep breath. The air smelled stale and bitter, the residue of Weller’s passing still hanging there. It smelled like a basketball had been sliced open.

“What was this case about? What were your instructions?”

“The guy I’m investigating, Robert Sandler, is an arms dealer. They wanted me to make sure he wasn’t selling weapons to the wrong people.”

“And was he?”

He took another deep breath, let the air fill his lungs and relax his muscles. Truth was, Callahan hadn’t seen any evidence of Sandler dealing with terrorists or nations that didn’t like the US of A. But he’d found evidence of Sandler’s company building some weaponry that he was keeping from the government. Not being forthright. Callahan only had bits and pieces of information. Nothing concrete, if he discounted the threats and torture Sandler had directed toward Michelle and himself.

Nothing official to report. Yet.

“No. Not that, just the NYC thing.”

Duffy’s eyes went dark. She didn’t respond.

Callahan put his good hand in his pocket, and Duffy’s gaze shot down at it. He immediately took them out and showed her his palms. His hands were empty. Duffy stared at—but didn’t comment on—the bad one.

He thought about Tony Verderese standing there, ordering Christine to taser Michelle. Why was Verderese there? Something was obviously going on, but Callahan wasn’t sure what yet. Ameritech had something to do with. The press had something to do with it too.

And Weller was apparently a traitor.

“Did you see the paper today?” Duffy asked.

She held it out and he saw the article that Sandler had shown him earlier. Ameritech had gone public.

“This is going to be a shitstorm,” she said. “None of this is legal.”

“Why? The stocks on that company are going to skyrocket.”

“Are you kidding me? A company working with our black ops? We didn’t tell the American people about the funds. Nothing the press loves more than to find out we had clandestine arrangements with defense firms. Do you think Sandler had anything to do with this story appearing in the papers?”

“He’s going to blow up something in New York using Ameritech’s weaponary. He hired a guy to acquire it and he hired Omar to use it. Suicide bomb. Jihad, all that. When Ameritech’s ‘involvement’ is outted, his company’s going to fill the Defense Department void.”

Duffy stared through Callahan, as if she was looking at the wall behind him.

Finally, she said, “We’re taking care of it.”

Callahan shifted his feet and felt the carpet sag.

“I’ve sent my best men. They’ll be there. They’ll stop this.”

“They’d better.

“Go home, get some sleep. You did good work”

“Call me when it’s done. First thing.”

“You got it.”

“You sure you don’t need my help anymore?” Callahan asked. “I’ve put away guys you’ve never even heard of. And if you had heard of them, it probably would have been the last thing New Yorkers heard about too. I’ve kidnapped more terrorists with duct tape and a van than most people have read about in Tom Clancy thrillers. And I’ve heard more plots to kill civilians than I ever wanted to.”

Duffy looked at her clipboard, then back up at him. She straightened out her glasses.

“Your throat is bleeding. Are you okay?”

Callahan raised his hand to where Christine had pulled the garrotte.

“Cut myself shaving,” he said.

“You shave your hand too?”

He shrugged. “I’m clumsy.”

Duffy nodded. “Go home.”

He turned on his heel, the tension in his neck easing. He was surprised how smoothly that went. Any time he’d ever asked Weller about her, all Weller would tell him was what a cold bitch she was.

The sun was nearly all the way up now, burning off a fog that had risen from the melted snow. He’d driven the stolen pick-up back to the alleyway and walked through town and found a road that seemed to lead up the mountain. He would have taken the truck the whole way, but didn’t want the headlights to blow Duffy’s troops’ cover. Callahan felt his calves tighten as he walked. The past two days had been the most stressful, most exhausting of his life. He wondered how John had kept going.

He couldn’t believe the guy had come all the way to try and save them. He came for Michelle. He was still in love with her. Callahan blinked the thought away. There’d be time for jealously later.

Assuming they all survived.

Under his feet the asphalt slowly turned to gravel, jagged rocks poking through the rubber soles of his shoes. His body felt heavy and slow. If he had to run right now, he imagined it as a slow trot, like a horse winding down after a race.

Callahan turned to the side of the road and threw up in a bush. His stomach cramped, and he gagged some, the sour taste of bile at the back of his throat and tongue. One more gag, his stomach muscles contracting so hard, he doubled over. His ribs were aching. He hadn’t been hurt this badly in a long time.

He reached a curve in the road, one he remembered while riding with Christine.

After rounding the curve, he got a good look at the hangar. He stepped off to the side of the road and crouched behind a clutch of bare bushes.

He could see a line of three SUVs. Tony Verderese and Michelle stood near the hangar. She had her arms crossed in front of her, and her head dropped as if she was staring at the ground. Two guys in trenchcoats stood behind her. Callahan’s stomach warmed when he saw her. She was alive.

Christine stood across from John near the first SUV. He had his arms stuck out, making a T-shape. He wore a thick gray vest. It wasn’t thick from padding. The warmth in Callahan’s stomach went away. Christine zipped John’s vest up and opened the front door of the first SUV.

Michelle, and Tony got into the second. The two trenchcoats stood near the last one.

Callahan breathed hard through his nose and stared at the ground.