They’d be haunted by something they had no control over for the rest of their lives.
Ball got to his knees, still holding the garrote. Amanda Rauci’s lifeless body followed, her head bobbing to the side.
The wire had gone deep into her neck, and in fact had cut into his own hands; their blood mixed together on her shirt.
Blood.
There wasn’t much of it, but there was more than he wanted. The floor would be easy to clean, but he’d have to move quickly.
The chief’s fingers trembled as he unwound the wire.
Damn bitch. What’d she make him kill her for? Why the hell didn’t she just mind her own business? Why didn’t they all mind their own business?
It was Gordon’s fault. He’d set Forester on Ball. The funny thing was, he had convinced Forester that eve ning when he stopped him on the road in the car. Ball knew he had. He could tell by the Secret Service agent’s face.
“I wasn’t even in that unit,” Ball had told him. “I knew who McSweeney was, but he wasn’t my CO. Just dig up my military record. Come by tomorrow and I’ll help if you want.”
And Forester had nodded. Then he’d gone off and killed himself.
Jerk.
Ball got to his feet. There was too much to be done now to waste time cursing his rotten luck.
91
It didn’t take nearly as long as Gallo had feared for the information about Amanda Rauci’s request to be forwarded to the NSA. It turned out that the credit-checking company staffed its computer center around the clock. Gallo talked directly to a tech there, explaining that they were trying to figure out whether a Secret Service guy had killed himself or not; the tech cut through the red tape and gave him the details he wanted.
In the meantime, he’d done a search and discovered that Christopher Ball was the police chief in Pine Plains — one town over from the library where Amanda Rauci had used the computer.
“Why would she be checking out the police chief?” Gallo asked Rubens when he found him in the Art Room a short while later.
“A very good question, Mr. Gallo. Let us see if Ms. DeFrancesca can supply an answer.”
rubens was just about to talk to Lia when one of the Art Room communications specialists told him that National Security Advisor Donna Bing was calling for him. Rubens told Marie Telach to brief Lia on what Gallo had found, then went to the empty stations toward the back of the Art Room to talk to Bing.
He glanced at the clock on the console as he sat down. It was five past nine. Bing didn’t skimp on her hours.
Unfortunately.
Rubens pressed the connect button on the communications control clipped to his belt. The unit connected to his headset via an encrypted very short-range frequency (E-VSRF).
“This is Bill.”
“Billy, how are we doing on Vietnam?”
“I’m about to roll up the operation there. As I told you earlier, we’re confident that there is no connection.”
“And I told you to work harder. You’re obviously missing key information.”
Rubens considered how to respond. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser vices had already been briefed on Thao Duong’s organization; Tommy Karr had installed permanent listening devices in Thao Duong’s house and the digital records would be forwarded to the Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI for their use. There was simply nothing else for Deep Black to do in Vietnam. Even if the President wanted them to continue investigating the attack on Senator McSweeney — as the National Security finding directed them to do — it was senseless and expensive to keep Karr and Dean in Vietnam.
“Are you still there, Billy?”
“I am still here,” said Rubens. “And personally, I prefer to be called Bill.”
“Have you proved that Vietnam was not behind the attempted assassination of Senator McSweeney?” said Bing, ignoring Rubens’s remark about his name.
“It will be hard to prove a negative.”
“Why do you always give me such a hard time? Is it because I beat you out for this job?”
“I am not giving you a hard time, Madam Advisor.”
“Have a full report on the situation to me by noon tomorrow,” said Bing, hanging up.
92
“This time of night, where you’re going to find the chief is in bed,” said the Pine Plains assessor, who was the only one in the village hall when Lia got there. “He hits the hay around nine, nine thirty. Doesn’t like to be bothered, either. Comes in at five, though. Sometimes earlier.” The assessor smiled and raised the cup of coffee to his lips. His small office was in the front of the building; the police department was in the back.
“How come you work so late?” Lia asked.
“First of all, job’s part-time. I have a real job in Poughkeepsie nine to five. Second of all, gets me out of the house.” He smiled, then glanced at the clock. “I usually leave by midnight, though. Another half hour.”
“I have something to talk to him about that’s pretty important,” said Lia. “Where does he live?”
“You’re going to wake him up?”
“Why not?”
The assessor smirked.
“The chief lives right around from the station, on Church Street. Number Eleven. It’s just the next block over — right at the end here, then another right. Third house on the right. Do me a favor though, OK? Don’t tell him I told you.”
93
“The body, much as you expect,” Dr. Vuong told Dean, recalling the state of Sergeant Tolong’s body when he’d been exhumed. “Bones. Much decay. You can see by the photos.” Dean nodded but didn’t bother reopening the file on his lap. The sergeant had been reduced to cloth and bones by the time he was dug up.
Dr. Vuong spoke decent English, far better than Dean had expected. Roughly sixty, the doctor was ethnic Chinese and had lived in the north during the war. He was short and ener-getic, and the whole room seemed to move as he spoke.
“So, the commission take control of the body. I examine.
We do the paperwork. Many forms to complete.” The doctor’s tone sounded almost triumphant. “The commission stay several days, then return.”
The doctor did not remember whether bullets had been recovered with the body, but there were chips and breaks on the ribcage — multiple gunshots, he thought, the sign of death from an automatic weapon. The locals had lacked the facilities for a complete autopsy under the circumstances, and in any event were more concerned with “preserving dignity of corpse,” as Dr. Vuong put it.
“How difficult was it to locate the body?” Dean asked.
