‘Sorry for your loss,’ he finally managed to croak out, feeling the empty formality of those by-rote words more fiercely than he ever had.
He walked back to his car, got in and quickly drove away before they reached the front porch where Lenny Munro had died.
He wanted them to see him go.
*
Pete LaBello’s retirement date seemed to be receding, rather than getting closer. Like some Hitchcockian vortex, he could see it spinning away from him, just out of reach of his grasping fingers. On days like today he thought he’d never get there, that his personal Hell was to remain on the brink of retirement while all the time his job became more and more complex; more and more surreal.
The thing with Tom Patrick had been bad enough; now here he was sipping red wine over dinner with what remained of the Go Team and Lenny Munro’s widow. To add to the weirdness, it was Gloria Munro who was holding them all together. No doubt it would hit her later: a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, she’d be pressing a cantaloupe at the grocery store and realize her husband Lenny – boring old Lenny who wore button-down shirts and kept pens in his top pocket – had been gunned down by men in a big black Jeep, like some rap star. But for now Gloria Munro was being mother to the stricken Jan Ryland, the silent, tight-jawed Mike Carling and Bryce Potts, as they took for ever over their salads so they wouldn’t have to speak to one another.
Pete sighed and took another sip of red wine. He didn’t even like red wine – it gave him a headache – but he needed something to stop him staring endlessly at the tablecloth as Gloria tried to draw them out of themselves, leading by example with a tender little story of how Lenny had screwed up on an early case and immediately mailed a letter of resignation. Gloria had chased after the mailman on her six-year-old daughter’s Barbie bicycle to beg for the letter back.
They all smiled, although Jan’s chin wobbled.
Pete knew he should be doing this. It was his job to keep them on track, to steer them carefully back to normality, to remind them there was work to be done. But it was hard. Gloria had lost Lenny Munro, sure, but in an abstract way from a thousand miles off; Jan and Mike and Bryce had watched him die at their feet. Mike and Bryce didn’t even have the macho comfort of having followed Tom Patrick’s brave – stupid – gesture in running after the killers and getting a face full of ricochet for his pains.
Pete’s heart seemed to have done nothing but sink steadily over the past year; it was nothing new to feel it drop again now as he realized his team was good for nothing on this investigation. He’d have to bring Jan back to DC and send Mike and Bryce home to Texas. Have them brief new agents. Start again. He would begin working on it in the morning. The press and the families would understand a short delay, but no more than that. He wished he could hand it to Tom Patrick but that brilliant sonofabitch had backed them both into the same corner and then jumped before Pete had been forced to push him.
Pete wanted nothing more than to throw down his napkin, push back his chair and get the hell out of there. But Gloria was still doing her best to help them all through the meal, and if she could stay through her grief, he could find no excuse to go.
Finally it was over. They all feigned fullness so they could skip dessert, and Gloria hugged each of them as if absolving them from the sin of still being alive.
Pete walked her to the first-floor room he’d had Kitty reserve. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked, at the door.
‘I’m sure I will be. You’ve been so kind.’
‘We all liked and respected Lenny very much.’ It wasn’t strictly true, but at a time like this, Pete almost felt it might have been. He pecked her on the cheek and she opened the door.
And screamed.
In the darkness a shadow skittered across the room.
Pete pushed past Gloria, yelling, ‘Go get help!’ and went after the man. He cracked his knee on the bed as he rounded it, swore, and stopped briefly at the sharp pain.
The man was behind the drapes now, half out of the window. Pete made a grab for him, missed, and the shadow dropped out of sight.
If it had been anyone’s room but Gloria Munro’s, Pete would have let him go and been relieved that he’d done his bit without having to confront anyone. But he owed Lenny Munro’s widow more than that. He clambered out of the window, snagging the leg of his pants on the catch, and fell heavily – onto something that grunted as he knocked the air out of its lungs.
‘Shit.’
The man shoved Pete off him, groaned and rolled unsteadily to his knees. ‘You nearly killed me!’
Pete lay on his back, winded, staring up at Tom Patrick.
Tom grimaced and held his ribs where Pete’s elbow had dug in. He got slowly to his feet. ‘Jesus! Aren’t you supposed to be retiring?’ He sucked in his breath and doubled over with his hands on his knees.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Pete squeezed out.
Still breathless, Tom slowly held up the bolt. ‘I don’t know,’ he said frankly, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the window they’d just come through. ‘I think I’m saving her life.’
The two men stared at each other in the darkness. Then the light went on in Gloria Munro’s room.
Tom turned and ran.
36
ONLY PETE LABELLO knew he had Lemon’s bolt. That was good: the fewer people who knew about it, the fewer people were in danger. So Tom felt a little guilty when he called Halo as soon as he landed at LAX, met him at the same coffee shop as before, and told him someone had tried to steal it.
Halo listened, then reduced it to its constituent parts like the organizer he was.
‘The Pride of Maine disc is gone. The South African disc is gone and the Oklahoma crash …?’
‘Too early to tell. But if they’d got the bolt we couldn’t have linked Oklahoma to either of the other two incidents. No pattern without the paperwork or the physical evidence.’
‘Could it be the bolt that’s fake?’
‘It’s not logical,’ said Tom. ‘Why take the same risks to fake a six-dollar bolt when you can fake a three-grand disc? And stealing the South African jet’s paperwork clinches it for me.’
Halo nodded slowly.
‘Don’t tell anyone else about the bolt,’ Tom warned.
‘Why not?’ said Halo. ‘It’s evidence. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
Tom had to tell him about Lenny Munro, which made Halo go all quiet and stare into the ridiculously frothy coffee Tom had bought for him while he’d waited for him to make his way up from his evening shift in Hangar Thirteen.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ agreed Halo.
