seems to have taken the ultimate means of avoiding comment. Or was it forced upon her? Live from the Columbia campus, this is Rebecca Rostenkovsky. Now back to you, Arlen.”
She noticed that none of the news reports about the Rush case had actually mentioned Kovacs by name.
Megan smeared the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. Even if there was enough evidence to bring Kovacs to court, his pet lawyers could probably keep dancing around the issues for months. Certainly long enough to outlast the short attention span of the news. Maybe long enough to let him arrange another escape.
A more chilling consideration invaded Megan’s thinking. Tori Rush had been found out for her use of detectives, and had died before she could tell the world exactly which detectives she’d used. Arthur Wellman had stuck up his head — and had it blown off.
Who else might be a target from being involved in — or getting involved in — the affairs of Marcus Kovacs? Bodie Fuhrman? Leif? Matt Hunter?
Frowning, Megan switched the systems from entertainment mode to communication. She had a bunch of calls to make.
Matt Hunter walked up the quiet suburban block to James Winters’s house. He’d gotten the invitation to come over just after supper — and just after a near-lunatic message from Megan O’Malley.
At least it had seemed crazy at the time. Matt slowed down and really began scanning the street as Megan’s warning finally began sinking in. There was no doubt that Kovacs, or Steele, or whatever he was calling himself, was a cold-blooded character who didn’t hesitate to commit murder or create convenient “accidents.”
Matt suddenly had the image of ringing Winters’s doorbell and having the whole place blow up. He could almost see the headlines: STUDENT DIES IN MENTOR’S BOMB SUICIDE.
Who could necessarily prove that the bomb hadn’t been planted if that happened?
He stood for a long moment in front of the door before finally hitting the doorbell button. Even then, Matt couldn’t help blinking his eyes shut.
The door opened, and he found himself standing in front of Captain Winters. “Something blow into your eye, Matt?”
Embarrassed, Matt blinked a couple more times. “Yeah,” he lied. “But I think it’s out now.” He turned inquiring eyes to the captain.
“I’m glad you could come over.” Winters led the way to the living room. “Talking with you the other day seemed to help clear the fog out from between my ears.” The captain grinned back over his shoulder. “I’m hoping the same thing will happen this evening.” Winters indicated a seat on the sofa. “Sorry to drag you out here again. But until this is over, I can’t expect any Net links to be secure — up to and including connections to Net Force itself.” He hesitated. “Can I get you anything? A soda?”
Matt declined the offer, looking a little confused at the spectacle of James Winters edging around a subject.
Captain Winters sat down. “I wanted to talk to someone about the new twists in the case, and realized I didn’t have a wide range of people to choose from. My military friends only know what they hear on the news shows. And as for my Net Force associates, they’re tied up in other ways.”
“I’ll try to do my best, Captain,” he promised.
“So far, that’s been pretty good,” Winters said. “I’ve been banging heads with my lawyer since Tori Rush died, over whether to mention the name Marcus Kovacs in our press conferences, even though we don’t have proof of what he’s been up to — or who he is. Laird wants to build a case before making accusations. He feels it will make us more credible with the media.”
“And you?” Matt asked.
“Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes!” Winters admitted. “Shine a spotlight on Kovacs, and it will be difficult for him to do anything.” The captain grimaced. “Believe me, I know. I’ve lived through it.”
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “There was a lot of light shining around Tori Rush. And around Professor Wellman, if it comes to that. That didn’t stop what happened to them.”
Winters’s expression grew more grim. “We’re getting stuck in a losing game. Laird doesn’t want me to name Kovacs until we have proof. But Kovacs is eliminating anyone who can prove what he was doing.”
“Too bad we don’t have a solid piece of evidence, instead of people’s say-so,” Matt said.
Winters stared at the young Explorer. “A solid piece of evidence,” he repeated. “Something to prove that Kovacs has something he wants kept secret. Something that proves he’s actually Mike Steele!”
The captain bounded to his feet. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, crossing the room to a wall unit across from the picture window. Winters knelt, pulling open one of the drawers in the big wooden unit’s base.
Even from where he was sitting, Matt caught a faint musty smell. It was as if those drawers hadn’t been opened in — how long?
Winters gently searched through the contents of the drawer, shook his head, and closed up the unit again. He moved to the other side, to another drawer. Carefully he ran a hand along the rear of the drawer, rummaging for something.
“Got it!” he exclaimed, pushing the drawer shut and rising to his feet.
Dangling from his hand on a set of drawstrings was a suede pouch.
Captain Winters had an odd expression on his face as he returned to the couch. “Mike Steele was a confirmed bachelor,” he said, almost affectionately. “This was his idea of how to wrap a present. He took it out of the jeweler’s box and left it in the pouch. Luckily, it has the name of the jeweler on it.”
“I don’t think—” Matt began.
“This is the baby present Mike gave us.” With careful motions, Winters undid the knot in the drawstrings and pulled the bag open. A silver object in the shape of a ship’s anchor gleamed in the bottom of the bag.
“It’s one of a kind, ridiculously expensive. But Mike was a bachelor, and he loved boats.” Winters’s mood of gentle reminiscence faded. “This time it may sink him, though. The piece can be traced. The store where he got this still exists, and they’ll have records.”
“I still don’t—” Matt began.
Winters cut him off. “Fingerprints! I know how jewelers work. They shine up any piece before the customer gets it. At most, I expect there are four sets of prints on this thing. Mine, my wife’s, the jeweler’s sales clerk…and Mike Steele’s.”
“After four years?” Matt asked in disbelief.
“The rattle has sat undisturbed all that time,” Winters replied. “We tucked it in the back of a drawer—” He took a deep breath. “I haven’t looked at it since. But it kept well. No tarnish. And the FBI has the technology to bring up prints that have sat around on objects much longer. We may only be lucky enough to get a partial fingerprint. A baby rattle isn’t the biggest thing in the world, and we probably smudged each others’ prints looking at it.”
His eyes burned into Matt’s. “But even with a partial print from this, I bet we’ll be able to find a match with Marcus Kovacs’s prints on file for his investigator’s license.”
Winters smiled a deadly smile. “And why would our Hungarian friend be handling a supposedly dead Net Force agent’s baby gift?”
18
