“Well, this is a spot to be in, eh?” Donner said with a faint smile. His hard blue eyes pushed to a squint. “I am fortunate of course, that Cook returned from his errand when he did. But then, had he found what he was looking for, this would all be over now.”
“I take it Joan’s on her way to warn Mark at last?” Hannibal said. “You should have sent Cook with her. In her ex-husband’s mind, she’s betrayed him. She won’t be able to stop him.”
Donner smiled, his chin pushing down into the rolls of skin and fat below it. “I think her position is stronger than yours. Policemen will soon be here, yes? And they will find an elite soldier, a ranger, and a veteran visiting from Germany who have been attacked in their hotel room.”
“They know your hostage is involved in a murder investigation,” Hannibal said, working to stay calm. “And they know that you, Donner, are a part of that investigation.”
“Will that justify the private detective pulling a gun on us in our own hotel room without any hard evidence that we were involved in any wrongdoing? Even a policeman would not have been able to walk in here uninvited without a warrant and point a loaded gun at me. Tell me, who are they more likely to believe? You or me?”
From the hall a voice said, “Won’t matter what you say.”
Hannibal’s head spun. First his eyes fixed again on his gun. Then he looked past it to Ray standing in the doorway. The gun began to swing away as Cook’s face turned toward Ray. This idiot would kill his friend without a second thought. Hannibal hooked his right foot behind Cook’s. Then with a grunt he stamped out with his left. His heel smacked into the side of Cook’s knee. There was a subtle snapping sound like a small twig stepped on in the woods.
Cook’s mouth dropped open and he made a gasping noise as he went down. Ray hopped forward to stamp down on Cook’s wrist, holding the gun down. He reached down to recover the weapon.
Donner leaped from his chair and swung a booted foot forward. Hannibal’s legs were tangled up with Cook’s, limiting his movement. He barely avoided the main thrust of the kick. The heel grazed his head, but despite the flash of pain, he grasped the heel flying past and pushed hard. Caught off balance, Donner fell backward into the round table. Spurred by his rising anger, Hannibal managed to get to his feet just about when Donner did. The older man cocked back a fist, but then seemed to reconsider.
“Please,” Hannibal said, leaning back against the low chest of drawers. “Please try.”
Donner looked past Hannibal to Ray, who lowered the gun to his side and shrugged his shoulders. Donner looked away, as if he were planning to sit. Then without warning he whipped his fist up, leaning with all his power into a right cross aimed at Hannibal’s jaw.
Hannibal’s left hand slapped the punch inward. Donner may have even seen Hannibal smile as his gloved right fist slammed up and forward into Donner’s midsection. His fist seemed to sink to its wrist in that soft belly, and the air burst out of Donner like the cork from a champagne bottle.
Donner crumpled forward. Hannibal seized his jacket lapels with both hands and swung him around, trying to sit him on the low chest of drawers, but Donner’s knees were rubber bands now and he slumped on to the floor.
In that one brief instant, Hannibal had a gut-wrenching picture of the present superimposed against the past. Just behind and to the right of Donner’s face was his West Point class photo.
Hannibal recognized Donner in his sharp, crisp uniform primarily by his eyes, the same hard deep blue marbles in the live face beside the photo. But the old picture showed a hard body and a Spartan face with deep cleft cheekbones and a dimple in the chin. Nothing like the sagging cheeks and double chin Hannibal faced in present day real life. What a waste, he thought. Then his eyes were drawn to the man standing beside Donner in the photo. Hannibal’s jaw dropped an inch as he matched the photograph to a verbal description he had heard not long ago. This man was taller than Donner, handsome and on the slim side. But beneath that military jacket one could see he was muscular. Dark brown hair and eyes. High cheekbones. Well tanned.
“I’ll be damned,” Hannibal said. “You went to the academy with him, didn’t you?”
Hannibal dropped Donner and grabbed up the photo, searching the lettering beneath the photo for the name.
Seated on the floor, the dazed Donner mumbled, “You won’t stop the General. He’s too much for you, too much for any man.”
“The general?” Hannibal asked. “I get it. The man was your commander I bet, as well as your classmate. But would that cause a man to share his wife and even cover up her murder?” Then Hannibal glanced at those hard blue eyes for a moment, eyes that were beginning to go misty. “Yes, I suppose you would. You’d do anything to protect this man you revered, this general…”
Hannibal hesitated as he searched the names at the bottom of the photo, but when he found Al Brooks he was a short, pale, blond-haired blue eyed man. The photo matching the description of Joan’s husband went with a different name.
“Oh Jesus,” Hannibal said, sucking in a sharp breath. “It’s Langford Kitteridge.”
33
When Hannibal turned to rush out of the room he stepped into a cloud of blue uniforms. The police had finally arrived and their first act was to relieve Ray of the pistol he was holding. The incoming wave of police momentarily pressed Hannibal back into the room, until he spotted a familiar face at the back of the crowd.
“Thompson,” Hannibal called. “Let me out of here. I need to talk to you now, to prevent another killing.”
Stan Thompson waved and the uniformed officers parted to let Hannibal through. In the hall he looked into Thompson’s impassive face and realized he had way too much to say and not nearly enough time to say it.
“Look, I’m glad you’re here,” Hannibal said. “I know what happened now, and I know why. You can get almost the whole story out of the older man in there, Gil Donner. His wife was our killer’s first victim, even before Grant Edwards. But right now, he’s on his way to scratch vic number four. I need a police escort to get to the scene with lights and sirens or else we’ll be too late.”
Thompson maintained his bored expression. “You’ll have to give me a hell of a lot more than that before I send a car off with you to parts unknown, Jones.”
“You don’t understand,” Hannibal said. “There’s no time. We may already be too late. And I can’t stand here and debate it with you. You don’t want to send a car, fine. Then tell them to watch out for the Volvo doing a hundred miles an hour toward Falls Church.”
Behind him, Hannibal heard Thompson shout “Halt!” but the sound faded quickly as he dived into the stairwell. Seconds later he burst into the lobby at a dead run. Sprinting across the floor he almost crashed into Kate Andrews at the door. Instead he grabbed her arm and continued out. Despite the surprise on her face, Kate ran with him as best she could.
“Get in my car if you want the whole story,” Hannibal told her, panting as he ran. “The police might be after us, but if they don’t stop us, you’ll get the full story you started on with Dean Edwards at the end of this ride, one way or the other.”
Hannibal rammed the White Tornado into gear and pulled away from the curb before Kate quite had her seat belt on. He drove south on Route One as fast as the traffic would allow. He knew Mark Norton’s place was not far away, but this could well be the longest five miles of his life. Hannibal’s senses were turned up to maximum sensitivity and his passenger had the good sense to sit quietly and grit her teeth. He swung right onto Glebe road dodging from one lane to another to gain every possible second’s advantage. He raced through one red light a second after it turned, before cross traffic could fill the intersection. Finally he roared with squealing tires up the ramp onto I-395 where he could really open up his engine.
“Are we rushing to capture the murderer?” Kate asked.
“That and prevent another killing,” Hannibal said. “What were you doing at the Courtyard, anyway?”
“When I heard on the scanner that you called the police I figured it might have to do with my story.”
“If we’re in time, this will be the end of it,” Hannibal said, swerving to pass a slow moving SUV on the right. “Oscar Peters was this murderer’s third victim, and all of the killings revolve around Joan Kitteridge. She’ll be there when we get there I think.”
“Well then, let me call a camera crew,” Kate said, pulling out her cell phone. “Maybe we can get some arrest
