Hovanek’s cell phone rang before he could say anything, and Bonham found himself staring at the thick layers of cloth on the table, which alternated between white and mauve. The host soon returned with Hovanek’s martini; Bonham asked for a Glenfiddich. Hovanek was still on the phone when a young waiter appeared with a dish of pickled sprouts.
“Cash flow problems,” said Hovanek, his voice shaded toward an apology after he snapped the phone closed. He pointed to the sprouts.
The waiter appeared with a plate of noodles slathered in sesame sauce and topped by a row of shrimp and cucumbers.
“This is to get us in the mood,” said Hovanek. He took his chopsticks and sampled the food. “Excellent.”
“I want to talk about the FBI agent, Fisher,” said Bonham.
“Why?”
The host appeared with the Scotch. Hovanek told the man to go ahead and feed them with whatever the chef decided they should have.
“You worry too much, General,” said Hovanek. “Everything is fine. You yourself are doing well. I heard your name mentioned for assistant defense secretary the other day.”
“Fisher wants them to watch the tests for a laser,” said Bonham.
“Is that a fact?” Hovanek was neither surprised nor, from what Bonham could see, concerned in the least.
“All right,” said Bonham. He pushed his seat away from the table. “Make sure everyone knows. My way or no way.”
“General, you haven’t eaten. You really should.” Hovanek smiled up at him. “Mr. Young will think you don’t like his food.”
Bonham drove around for a while, trying to seperate his distaste for Hovanek from what the lackey had said. He hadn’t actually said anything meaningful, Bonham finally decided, but whether that meant Segrest really was up to something or not, he couldn’t tell. Exhausted and finally hungry, Bonham pulled off at a McDonald’s around three to get something to eat. It was the last place anyone would look for him, but as soon as he stepped through the doors and approached the overlit front counter, he felt comfortable, a teenager again slipping away from high school to grab a burger after school.
Bonham ordered a Big Mac Meal, declined the super-size option, and walked with his tray to the back. He started to grab for a newspaper along the way, then thought better of it. He needed a break from everything for at least a few minutes more. He was getting too paranoid to function.
A young father was fussing over his four-year-old son in the next booth, dabbing his chin with a napkin. Bonham gave the guy a smile, watching the pair as he ate. The kid was reasonably cute, and the father was attentive; they would have made a decent commercial as they walked out the door hand in hand.
It was a bit pathetic that a grown man had to play baby-sitter in the middle of the day, Bonham thought. But what the hell.
The food put him in a better mood. Bonham listened to an old Johnny Cash CD on the way back to his office. Once there, he whipped through some paperwork BS and returned a few phone calls, including a backgrounder for a
Chapter 9
Fisher hated murder scenes, not because he didn’t like looking at dead bodies, but because the forensics people went ape shit if you disturbed something, which in their eyes you did simply by breathing in the air. Poke your head inside wearing anything less than a hermetically sealed body bootie, and they ran out to their vans to plunge pins into their voodoo dolls.
Fisher put little stock in voodoo, and cared even less who he pissed off, but he did nonetheless strain to put himself on his best behavior, since getting a report without the usual red tape depended on it. The crime scene guys — state police, though he wouldn’t hold that against them — working Bonham’s condo were relatively low key, once he put out his cigarette. Still, they said flat out they wouldn’t let him in the bathroom where Bonham had died until they finished their work there; at the rate they were going, that seemed likely to happen sometime next winter.
Fisher contented himself with booting the general’s computer in the den, examining its browser and E-mail programs for anything of note.
The history folder was completely clean, and Fisher couldn’t find anything in the trash folder, either. Bonham obviously had an industrial-strength scrubber program loaded. Fisher looked over the program list; there were two different baseball games, but otherwise nothing that didn’t come stock on the machine, a relatively new Dell.
“What are you doing?” demanded one of the investigators as she walked in behind him.
“What the FBI always does,” said Fisher, keying up the hidden directories. “Screwing up the crime scene.”
“Well, I’m glad you admit it.”
“Got a scrubber program in here I can’t find. Probably want to send it over to our lab.” Fisher leaned away from the machine, pointing to the screen.
“Who exactly are you?” asked the woman detective.
“Andy Fisher, FBI.”
“Why are you here?”
“Oh.” Fisher leaned back from his chair. “One of the uniform guys figured out who Bonham was and called us, and for some inexplicable reason the person who got the call actually knew how to follow the right procedure and tell me about it. Lightning has to strike somewhere, as improbable as it sounds.”
“You’re a wiseass.”
“Yeah, actually, the guys in the field office are usually pretty sharp. It’s when you get to headquarters that you get the lobotomy.”
“I’m Susan Doar,” said the woman, holding her hand out to him. She was in her mid-thirties, with just enough of a cynical smile to hint that this wasn’t her first murder case, nor the first time she’d dealt with the FBI.
“Andy Fisher. Mind if I smoke?”
“You can’t smoke in here.”
“Everybody says that.” Fisher got up. “Seriously, we want the computer. If you send it to the Secret Service or, God forbid, the NSA, you’ll never find out what’s on it. Those guys are close to unbribable.”
“Someone from the Defense Department is on his way over,” said Doar.
“They’re not so bad,” said Fisher. “Except they tend to lose stuff. I think they actually end up using it for target practice.”
“I’ll use my own lab, thanks,” said Doar.
“You got a time of death?”
“Autopsy hasn’t been done.”
“I never trusted those doctor types.”
“Neighbor heard the TV blaring last night about eleven, called over to complain, banged on the door, got worried,” said Doar.
“Nosy-neighbor type?”
“I think he was pissed off because he couldn’t get to sleep,” said Doar. “Left a nasty message. Then maybe
