“You’ve lost me. Who’s everyone?”
“You’re familiar with your Canadian Security Intel ligence Service?”
Graham’s pulse quickened at Walker’s condescension.
“Of course.”
“I’m sure you’re aware that our security agencies talk to your security agencies.”
Walker continued but Graham didn’t like where he was going.
“Four American citizens from the district die on foreign soil, one of them being a former D.C. wire service reporter known to write about U.S. geopolitics and security issues. It’s a given we’d make a routine check into anything remotely untoward. You with me so far, buddy?”
Graham held his tongue as Walker went on.
“We’ve been advised that the deaths have been clas sified as accidental and the case is cleared. I don’t think we’ve got much to discuss.”
“Really?”
Walker put his files down. His dark eyes drilled into Graham.
“Over the years Ray Tarver would come to me,” Walker said. “He went to a lot of people in the intelli gence community. He’d call, he’d want to meet in some dive. He’d claim he had sources who’d fed him intel on grand conspiracies.
“He’d say, I think this is going to happen or that will take place. But when it came to providing a shred of cor roboration he had nothing. I would then attempt to confirm his so-called leads, which turned out to be ‘jackass theories.’
“In Washington, there’s no shortage of people like Ray Tarver. People who take a slender thread of hearsay and twist it into a full-blown conspiracy. You understand what I’m saying?”
Graham said nothing.
“Now, I am sorry for what happened to the family. It’s a tragedy. But in life, Ray Tarver lived in a fantasy world with other conspiracy nuts. The fact you’re here, convinced you’re onto something because of some note, is not only sad but a further waste of my time.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s part of my job to investi gate crackpots like Ray Tarver, so why don’t you leave it to the experts and head back home. In case you missed it, the pope’s arriving soon, and I’m kind of preoccu pied. Now, I’m sure you’ve got better things to do up there. Okay?”
Walker looked at his watch, then other files.
Maybe it was jet lag, or his grief, his self-doubt, or the fact Walker’s arrogance pissed him off, but Graham decided he’d swallowed enough.
“Agent Walker. Special Agent Walker, I don’t know where you’re getting your information about my case being cleared, but to use your term, it’s bullshit.”
Walker’s jaw pulsed.
“That a fact?”
“It is a fact,” Graham said. “It’s true, the deaths of Anita Tarver and her two children are believed to have been accidental. The fact is, and it is a fact, their deaths remain unclassified. How you, sir, are able to conclude the cause of Ray Tarver’s death as accidental right here in this very office, when we’ve yet to locate his body, is miraculous. I applaud your supernatural skill.” Graham nodded to Walker’s wall of glory. “Must be why you’re special and all these important people want to shake your hand.
“You must be aware then that Ray Tarver’s laptop appears to be the only item missing from his family’s inventory. And you must also be aware that in the hours before his family’s deaths were discovered, Tarver was seen in a local restaurant showing data on a laptop to an unidentified stranger.
“Now what amazes me, is the fact that it is about twenty-four, twenty-five hundred miles from the chair where your special ass is parked and the Faust River where I held Emily Tarver as she took her last breaths, where I felt her heart beating against mine. Yet you, sir, have all the answers. All of them. But what disturbs me, about this uncleared, unclassified case concerning the deaths of three U.S. citizens, possibly four, is that your name is among the last entries Ray Tarver made in his notebook. That would make you a person of interest, wouldn’t it?”
Walker’s eyes burned into Graham’s in a mounting standoff that was interrupted by Walker’s phone. He hit a button, activating the speaker.
“Blake, they’re waiting for you on the call with Seattle and Vatican security. Are you joining them in the big room or do you want the call code?”
Graham left.
“Tell them I’ll be there in two minutes.”
Graham was at the elevator when Walker caught up to him.
“Dan.” Walker ensured they were alone and lowered his voice. “I was a jerk back there. The stress of the papal visit, and we’ve got to advance a presidential visit to Canada next month, and my ex. You took the brunt of it. I was out of line. You know how things can get to you.”
Graham knew.
He considered Walker’s hand, then shook it.
“Dan, I’ll do what I can to help you, but I’m really jammed, and I’m late. What do you need?”
Graham considered the offer. “There’s one thing.”
“Shoot.”
“I’m not sure what this means. It’s one of the last entries in Tarver’s notebook.”
Walker looked at it. “Blue Rose Creek.” He shook his head. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Off the top, it means nothing. I’ll check it out-give me your contact numbers. I’ll get back to you.”
33
Washington, D.C.
Kate Morrow knew things about Ray Tarver. And she wanted to tell Graham but was uneasy about it.
Afraid, almost.
He’d sensed it as they talked at the Washington
Bureau of the World Press Alliance wire service where
Tarver had worked. Graham was there to see Tarver’s reporter friends, like Morrow, a lifestyles writer, who’d sat beside him.
“Ray loved Anita and those kids,” she said. “They were his world.”
“I understand.”
“Under his tough-guy skin, he was actually a teddy bear.” She smiled. “He used to give me gum every day.” “Gum?”
“Bubble gum. He’d give it to me around deadline.
Used to say chewing gum kept you focused. Ray was a gum-chewer.”
Morrow’s gaze shifted beyond their small glasswalled meeting room to the newsroom and the people working before computer terminals at desks heaped with outdated newspapers, reports, press releases and takeout coffee cups.
“The guys here had written Ray off as a conspiracy junkie, a kook,” she said.
“Is that what you think, too?”
“He was a good reporter.” She let a moment pass.
“When I heard what happened in the mountains, when the story moved on the wire, I was shattered. It was so sad because Ray had just slipped away from us. It left me with a lot of questions.”
“Such as?”
Morrow searched in vain for the answer. Something was eating her up. It was in her body language, how she avoided meeting Graham’s eyes, kept twisting her bracelet chain, adjusting her glasses and clearing her throat.
