was the 911 operator, verifying his original call and asking him to remain on the scene until the first patrol units responded. He told them he would, then hung up.
He took the dog out on the front porch and paused to think. Cars. Check to see that the cars are here. Swearing at himself for not checking this first, he walked over to the garage, but both doors were down and he did not have a remote opener. He got down on his hands and knees and looked through the crack at the bottom of the doors. Both cars were in place.
Satisfied that he had done all he could for the moment, he went to sit in the Suburban, after putting Gutter into the back compartment.
The first police car arrived five minutes later, and two large cops got out. Train got out of his car, showed his NIS identification, and gave them a brief outline of the events of two nights ago, telling them that he had last seen Commander Lawrence the previous evening and that he had left his dog to protect her, having given her instructions not to go anywhere without the dog. She should have gone to work at the Pentagon this morning but had not shown up. Now she was missing, and both of her cars were in the garage.
He also told them that there was a homicide investigation in progress and that, Commander Lawrence’s disappearance might be related to that.
One cop asked for the name of the homicide investigator, then got on the radio.
A second patrol car showed up with a patrol supervisor, and Train went down to tell him the same story. The first cop came back and asked him if he had been in die house since returning from the Pentagon, and if so, where he had been and what he had touched. Train told him, and the cop took it all down in his notebook while the other officers stood around admiring Gutter through the windows of the Suburban. Gutter admired them back.
“If you’re pretty sure she’s not in the house, we’re going to wait for the CSU to come out,” the first cop told Train.
“I’ve put in a call to get Detective Mcnair out here’. Appreciate your waiting around until he shows up.”
“No problem,” Train replied, getting back into his car.
The cops spread out and started a careful walking tour of the immediate grounds. Train got on his car phone and called the office.
“Commander Laorence show up?” he asked the yeoman.
The answer was no. He asked if there were any messages.
Another no. He then called the JAG front office and asked for Captain Mccarty. The EA was in a meeting. He left a message for the EA to call Mr. von Rensel’s car phone voice mail for a memo, told the yeoman it was important, and left her a three-digit entry code. He hung up and then put a memo message into a mailbox of his mobile system about Karen being missing; then he assigned it the entry code he had left with Mccarty. He sat back to wait for Mcnair, but he got tired of that after about a minute and got out to join the cops.
The CSU showed up forty minutes later, and Mcnair drove in behind them in a department car. He checked in with the patrol cops, sent the CSU into the house, and then walked over to Train.
“So what’s this about a night visitor?” he asked, his tone implying that he should have been told about thus.
Train gave him a debrief, watching Mcnair’s face cloud as he did so. “We were going to call you guys this morning,” Train said lmnely. Now he didn’t dare tell Mcnair about their little meeting with Jack’ Sherman.
Mcnair was giving him the fish eye as he, made some notes. “And you left that big Doberman in the house last night before you took off9”
Train didn’t care for the term took off, but he understood that Mcnair was controlling his temper. “Yes,” he replied.
“I brought the dog out first thing yesterday morning, because she was going to stay home.’The dog was m the house when I got here, and there were no signs of a struggle or problem in the house. I’m guessing she went out of the house on her own steam and left the dog behind. I can’t explain why she didn’t take the dog with her.”
Mcnair nodded, then looked over at the barn, whose roof was visible over the hedge passage. “You check down fitwre?”
“Yes. I took Gutter, or, radwr, he took nw. No joy.
Again, no signs of trouble down dwe, either. Once I called nine-one-one, I considered the whole place a scene, so I got back in my car.”
Mcnair nodded again and scratched some more in his notebook. Train was restless just standing there, but he knew the cops would be woriang their standard procedures, and procedures always took Um. Then one of the cnm-scene techs came to the front door and called to Mcnair. Train followed along. They went mm the house, and the tech took them to the kitchen, where the telephone had been dismantled.
“This thing’s got a bug and a transceiver in it,” he announced.
“Meaning?” Mcnair said.
“Meaning someone could eavesdrop remotely, in and out, and also call in, probably make her phone ring, even talk to her, all without coming through the central office. Pretty slick toys.”
“Those are spook toys,” Train muttered under his breath.
Mcnair looked at him. “And which spooks might those be?”
Train shrugged, and Mcnair looked faintly disappointed.
“Now don’t go getting all federal on me, von Rensel,” he . “I know we’re all hicks in the sticks out here, but said.
we’re coming right along . in the technology department.
Most of us have running water and everything.”
“Sorry,” Train said. “I didn’t mean to patronize. I guess You and I need to talk. There’s a new dimension to this case, something I learned yesterday.”
“Yesterday. How timely,” Mcnair said. He told the tech to check out the rest of the phones and also to access the voice-mail system’s operator to see if Commander Lawrence had any messages that might explain her disappearance. A second tech reported no signs of violence or misplaced bodily fluids in the house after a first look. As Mcnair walked Train out to the front porch, another car -pulled into the driveway and Lieutenant Bettino, Mcnair’s boss, got out.
He joined them on the front porch, where they sat down in chairs. Mcnair gave his lieutenant a quick synopsis of where they stood. Bettino took it in, giving Train an occasional glance. “Mr. von Rensel here was just telling me that there’s a-what’d you call it?”A new dimension to this case.’ It
“A new dimension., That G-man talk?” Bettino said.
Train squirmed a little bit. The cops had every right to be upset.
Except that until Karen went missing, none of what he had learned Yesterday really involved the cops– especially the news, that Galantz might be a sweeper. He wasn’t even sure the local cops Ought to know that there were such things as sweepers. So he told them that the word in certain quarters was that Galantz was indeed real, and that he nfight have clandestine intelligence service connections; that there might be a larger problem than the two homicides; that the chances of laying hands on Galantz might be slim to none; and that, in a related development, Admiral Sherman might be training for Olympic-level plank walking.
“Might, might, might,” Mcnair chanted. “Tonto’s beginning to wonder if the Lone Ranger here might be blowing just a wee bit of smoke.” But surprisingly, Bettino waved Mcnair off. “Okay,” he said. “What you’re telling us computes, because we got a love note this morning, passed down through a political channel who shall remain nameless. But the message was that we might want to proceed very carefully and very slowly—emphasis on the slowly-with the investigation of the Walsh and Schmidt deaths.”
It was Train’s turn to be surprised. Bettino smiled knowingly. “So,”
Train asked, “are you still looking at Sherman for those?”
Bettino shook his head. “We Put Admiral Sherman with some of our audit people, who gave him what the IRS calls a ‘fiscal reality check.’ Basically, he’s clean. Absent any new connections being made with the murders, he’s off the list.”
Train thought about what young Jack Sherman had said yesterday. But they just said Sherman was off the list. So’ should he tell them? Karen had made a big deal about not filling in the cops until they, the Navy side, could make sense out of Jack’s cryptic remark. But now Karen was missing. He didn’t know what to do, so he just nodded.
