Justice (5 page)

“You know
,
Bones
, You acted like a teenager with a crush on Lieutenant Sterling,” Maddock said softly as they traversed the dark street. Up ahead, an old, gothic-style house loomed against a cloudy sky. It was their destination, and a foreboding one.

Bones frowned at Maddock. “Dude, you know me better than that. Don’t I hit on pretty much every hot chick?”

“I don’t think she’s the sort you need to be messing with. She seems clever enough to get you to let your guard down.”

Bones’ brow crinkled. “Come on. Did I tell her anything that would compromise us?” Maddock opened his mouth, but Bones continued. “No, I didn’t. Sandra Sterling is one hot babe and I was slipping her the old Bonebrake charm. You need to worry about yourself instead of micromanaging me.”

Maddock wanted to argue, but he realized his friend was right. He knew the danger to Melissa was messing with his head and he wasn’t reacting the way he normally did.

“Sorry, Bones, I guess you have a point. You think you could at least lay off the charm some? It can get awfully thick.”

“I don’t know, Maddock, that’s asking a lot. Mostly it just comes naturally. I just ooze it.”

“Like pus?”

Bones winced. “That’s cold. Anyway, since we’re sort of working for her now, I guess I’ll try to rein it in.” He paused. “I guess we’re not exactly working
for
her. We just agreed to do a little investigating and let her know what we find out.”

“We agreed because she’s holding the threat of charges over our head like a Sword of Damocles.”

Bones grimaced. “How about you quit trying to act smart and let’s focus?”

Maddock and Bones stood in the shadows watching a gate set into a stone wall which surrounded a residence on the outskirts of Baltimore. After catching a few hours of daytime sleep and then making sure Sarah Abrams and Melissa were doing fine, he and Bones had driven north into Maryland. The house behind the fence belonged to Edmonia Jennings Wright.

He hadn’t lied to Sterling when he said they knew about Wright but hadn’t bothered to pursue her.  However, he had committed a sin of omission by not telling her another key fact: he and Bones had recognized the face on the video from Mount Vernon.

The face belonged to a man he had last seen in a Philadelphia cemetery while recovering a lost document penned by Ben Franklin. At the time, the man had pointed a gun at Maddock while Edmonia Jennings Wright snatched the document for the Sons of the Republic. Maddock had thought that only Wright escaped during the ensuing firefight, but apparently so had this man.

When they had left the park police building early that morning, Maddock had figured finding the man would be their best route to getting more information on what the Sons were up to. But their normal source for information, a reporter named Jimmy Letson who had rung out of SEAL training, had apparently met a girl and was on a cruise in the Caribbean. They were on their own for a few more days at least.

Which meant taking a more direct route. Bones hadn’t been far off in calling her grandma ninja, and as much as Maddock wanted payback for how she had taken him down so quickly, he knew better than to rush in without any planning.

“It’s just surveillance for now, Bones, no breaking and entering. Figure out if she has any patterns we can exploit.”

“You’re no fun. Whatever happened to the man who said if a cop tried to stop us for speeding, we’d ignore him?”

“I can deal with a public servant. Edmonia Jennings Wright requires an entirely different level of caution.”

Bones shifted his right shoulder, which leaned against one of several spruce trees combining with the darkness to give them cover. “For now, I’m with you. It sure seems weird that she doesn’t have any lights on out here by the street. We could walk right up to the fence and no one would see us. Then again, this place looks like Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost might hang out in the attic. Not sure I’m exactly dying to check it out.”

Maddock handed their night vision goggles to his partner. They had acquired this pair on one of several recent classified missions, from an enemy who no longer numbered among the living.

“Look through here, Bones. Tell me what you see.”

Bones took a long look. “Two cameras on the gate and a couple more on the wall itself. Looks like one of those combo infrared and regular jobs. Those things are not cheap.”

“That tells me that Wright would rather not advertise her vigilance by lighting things up, but if anyone tried to breach she’d be all over them.”

“How about we just follow that car that’s pulling up to the gate?”

A vehicle with only basic running lights pulled up to the gate, which opened as if on command. The car wasn’t anything special, just some sort of small sedan. The gate began to close before the car was even all the way through.

“Too late now, Bones. Prepare to do some waiting.”

An hour went by, with nothing to do but take turns looking through the goggles. They speculated about what the Sons might be after, but neither of them really had any idea. The monotony was broken by the same car pulling back out through the gate. Maddock and Bones didn’t even have to communicate the decision to set out for their rental car at a near run. They hopped in and pulled out from the curb before the sedan disappeared around the first corner in the street.

As they eased into a position a hundred feet behind the sedan, Bones asked, “How are we going to play it?”

“Seems like the best play is to follow him until he stops somewhere. A lot of things could go wrong if we try to take him in a place we’re not familiar with while he’s still in the car.”

“I love a good carjacking, but you’re right.”

Maddock knew that following someone rarely turned out like it did the movies. Unless the person being followed had some reason to worry about surveillance or was trained to automatically check for it, following someone via car was easy. The ten-minute drive before their target pulled into a driveway next to a small house did nothing to prove otherwise.

Bones and Maddock stepped out of their rental as a man emerged from the car and walked up the steps of a porch illuminated by a single exterior floodlight. They were parked about fifty feet beyond the house, in a neighborhood with tiny houses and almost non-existent yards. Maddock gave silent thanks that the streetlight in front of the house the man had entered was burned out, allowing him and Bones to remain in the shadows as they approached.

He signaled with his hand for Bones to head around to the back through a narrow passage next to the driveway. Bones nodded, and Maddock made his way onto the porch, stepping carefully to minimize any creaking. He eased the doorknob to the left and was surprised when it turned without any resistance. Stopping his motion, he glanced through the pane of glass to the left of the door.

A white sheer drape did little to hide the fact that the door opened into a small entry room. He saw no sign of anyone in the room, so he took a breath and stepped through the door. He kept his eyes peeled in front of him as he slowly shut the door behind him.

The entry room had a single doorway other than the one through which he had come, and he moved toward it. The next room appeared to be some kind of living room with a faded brown couch. On the other side of that room was a doorway to a kitchen. He could see the back of a man with his left hand on an open refrigerator door, peering inside.

Maddock moved at an angle through the living room until he stood just to the left of the door to the kitchen. He took a second to go over in his mind how he would move into the kitchen and confront the target. Without further pause, he lunged into the kitchen.

To stare straight up the barrel of a huge pistol.

He was close enough to read the words
Israel Military Industries
on the side of the barrel. He recognized the Desert Eagle fifty caliber gun as a popular choice among enthusiasts who secretly doubted their own adequacy. He had to admit that it was doing the job right about now. The gun was so close that he began to move his arm and body into a close quarters anti-firearm defense move, but the man holding it had already started to slide backward as Maddock entered the room. Maddock arrested the movement once he realized that his window of opportunity had passed.

“Smart move. Hands in the air now.” The voice was low and possibly even would have sounded pleasant had the circumstances been different. Maddock raised his hands.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” Maddock could see the face now, and while he didn’t recognize it, he did recognize the cold seriousness in the dark eyes.

“I was lost and I…”

The barrel dropped and a bullet tore through the unfinished wood an inch from Maddock’s feet. “You think I’m a moron? Don’t insult my intelligence. I saw you and your friend following me miles back. By now, he’s discovered that there is no back door to this place and his only other option is to come through the front into the line of fire. So try again.”

Maddock said the only thing he could think of. “Edmonia Jennings Wright.”

The man flinched at the mention of the name. “What about her?”

“I need to speak with her.”

He chuckled. “Make an appointment, like everyone else.”

Maddock shook his head. “I don’t think that would end well.”

“I got news for you. Breaking into my place is going to end even worse.”

Maddock thought about saying that he hadn’t broken in, but then a loud thump sounded from somewhere in the darkness. He saw the man’s fingers tighten around the Desert Eagle’s grip and his eyes darted from side to side.

That was all Maddock needed. He sprang forward and to the left, keeping his body outside the man’s line of fire and to his ‘gun side’ to slow his reaction time. He’d studied more than his fair share of martial arts, including Krav Maga. Given the right set of circumstances he could disarm a person with a handgun, and a distracted man was best. He grabbed the barrel of the Desert Eagle with his left hand, pushing it away, and drove his right fist into the surprised man’s chin. Before he could yank the pistol free, another fist flew out of the darkness, sending the man to the floor.

Bones stood there, grinning and rubbing his fist.

“What took you so long?”

“Just giving you a chance to handle it yourself. I know how you hate me making you look bad.”

Maddock shook his head as the big man maneuvered their captive face-first onto the couch, held in the position by a knee in the upper back. Bones allowed the man’s chin to extend just over the arm rest so that he could talk, which also meant that even relatively minor pressure exerted on the neck would result in excruciating pain.

The man remained defiant. “How the hell did you get in here?”

Bones said, “Through the bulkhead.”

“But that was protected by a padlock I know you couldn’t have cut through silently.”

“Yeah, but you morons skimped on the chain.”

Bones held up a rusted chain, with one of the links twisted out of position. A padlock connected two ends further down the chain. “Come to think of it, this is just what I need. You like necklaces?”

“What?”

“Or maybe they’d make good handcuffs.”

Bones jerked the man’s hands behind his back, eliciting a grunt of pain from his captive as he wrapped them around the man’s wrists. He adjusted his knee, which now held both the chained hands and the man’s upper back in place.

“What’s your name? And don’t take too long or I might get tired and have to rest my elbow on your neck.”

The man’s shoulders sagged and his eyes fell. “Dennis Guter.”

Bones nodded to Maddock, who picked up the questioning. “Tell us why the Sons of the Republic broke into Mount Vernon.”

Guter gaped, his eyes wide with surprise. He would have made a terrible poker player. When he spoke, even he didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying. “Mount Vernon? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bones open-handed him on the ear. “Sure you do. You just think good old Edmonia is scarier than we are.” He cracked his knuckles. “Let me know how badly we have to hurt you to change your mind and I’ll get started.”

Guter moved his neck half an inch to meet Maddock’s eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” Maddock said. “He may be the bad cop, but there’s no scenario where I’m the good cop.”

Guter sighed. “You’re killing my neck. Just let me up and I’ll tell you. I promise I won’t try anything.”

“No can do. I know how much to trust a white man’s promise. Tell us first and if you don’t piss me off too much, maybe we’ll let you up.”

“Okay, okay. The Sons broke into Mount Vernon to find something that belonged to George Washington.”

“And in other news, the sky is blue and disco sucks,” Bones said.

Maddock shook his head. “Tell us something we don’t know. It was Washington’s home. Of course it has to do with him. What were the Sons looking for?”

“I don’t think Jamison found exactly what Edmonia hoped for, but he did bring something back.”

Maddock stopped him. “Who’s Jamison?”