Sweepers (33 page)

Gutter ran around sofffe more, even going partway out into one of the fields. The horses were visible at the other end of the field. Three of them, so she wasn’t out for a ride.

Damn. He called in the dog and went back to the house, stopping to get his notebook out of the car. He got Mcnair’s phone number and called it from the car phone. Mcnair was not available. He left a message with the Homicide Section’s secretary that Commander Lawrence might have been abducted and that a police unit was inbound. He hung up and heard the phone in the house ringing. He ran to beat the voice mail and just made it. It 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.

“Those gizmos on her phone in there make me worry and wonder,” Mcnair said. “And they also make me want to pay attention to political advice coming from on high.”

“That’s not your job,” the lieutenant said, surprising Train again.

“That’s my job. Look, von Rensel, as far as the Homicide Section is concerned, we are still investigating two unexplained deaths. We don’t have any suspects-yet.”

Mcnair opened his mouth as if to say something, but he thought better of it when he saw that Bettino was not finished. “We appreciate your filling us in on the military aspects of this case. The two dead people so far have been close to this Admiral Sherman. I’m very concerned that Miss, uh, Commander Lawrence is now missing. Any ideas?”

At that moment, the crime-scene tech from the kitchen stuck his head out the front door and saved Train from having to answer.

“Mcnair? There was voice mail. Someone named Sally called and asked Miss. Lawrence to feed the horses. That was early this morning. Then -a couple of messages from a guy called-what was it, Train? Yeah. Those were between nine and ten this morning.”

The lieutenant stood up. “Thanks, Jerry. Okay, let’s go play Farmer Brown.” He looked over across the yard. “I’m a city boy. That’s a barn, right?”

Captain Mccarty knocked once and went into Admiral Carpenter’s office.

His face was grim, causing the admiral to put down a briefing folder and say, “Now what?”

“Von Rensel left me a message via his mobile voice mail.

Karen Lawrence has gone missing.”

“Missing? What the hell’s that mean?”

“That’s all I have. He said he went out there this morning after she failed to show up for work. Said he left one of his Dobermans with her, and that the dog was in the house and she wasn’t. Her cars are there; cops are there.”

“Goddamn it,” Carpenter said softly, turning in his chair to get up. He walked over to one of the windows and stared at nothing.

“I made a call,,, Mccarty said- “To Sherman’s office.

To see if he might know something.”

“And he wasn’t there, was he?, I Mccarty, surprised, looked up. “They said he was on leave. Have they made a decision? Is that what’s happened?”

Carpenter turned around. “Sort of. He’s chairing a selection board.

Short notice. The deputy in OP-32 has been made ‘acting.’ “I see,”

Mccarty said, the obvious question lingering in the air between them.

“Okay, it was my idea,” Carpenter said. “Reduces his profile while our guys and the cops work the problem. Von Rensel’s on it, presumably with the cops and not in spite of them. That’s as good a resource as we can have in the game right now. Put a call into Bupers. Talk to Sherman and see if he knows where Karen is. I’m going to call the DNI.”

Mccarty did not understand. “The DNI?”

“Yeah. I need him to drop a message down a certain hole.

Say that there had better not be any spook fingerprints on what’s happened to Karen Lawrence. Because if there are, I’ll go to the Washington Post and give them the interview of the year.”

Mccarty closed his notebook. “Does von Rensel know that this Galantz individual may have connections to those people?”

“Not from me. But I would guess he has his own sources on the matter.

Make sure he checks in when he has something. Get in touch with Sherman.

See what he knows, if anything. I think I may have been wrong about what’s going on here… “

Mccarty hesitated, as if waiting for the admiral to explain that last comment. When nothing was forthcoming, he simply said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and left the room. When he had gone, Carpenter sat down at his desk and thought about this new development. He hadn’t been quite honest with Mccarty just then. On the other hand, he’d been hoping von Rensel might find or at least localize this Galantz individual, which would go a long way to solving his other problem.

He decided not to call the DNI. He picked up the phone to call Kensington instead. He dreaded doing it. The DNI’s description of what a sweeper did was sticking in his throat like a bone.

Karen awoke with a start. She hadn’t realized that she’d gone to sleep.

Her throat was very dry, and her right knee hurt where there was excess weight on the bag. The bag.

She felt a flare of terror and immediately stifled it. She tried to swallow, but it hurt. She tried her voice, managing only a croak. She wondered what time it was and how long she had been buried. Bad word, that. Tied up. That was better.

The image of being buried alive was more than she could cope with. He’ll be back, she assured herself. This was done for a reason. He’ll be back.

She wondered where Train was.

She concentrated on controlling her breathing, and on listening. But all she could hear was the thudding of her own heart.

The lieutenant, Mcnair, three of the ‘patrol officers, and Train searched the entire Lawrence property, including the barn, the yard, and the surrounding paddocks before deciding that she wasn’t there. One of the patrol cops rode horses, and he showed them that someone had done the morning feeding and then cleaned up. The horses were all sticking to the far ends of the fields because of all the strange humans. It was nearly 5:30 when they gave it up and gathered on the path leading up toward the house. “Somebody just snatched her up,” opined one of the patrol cops. “Up by the house. Probably when she came back from the barn.