The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel (37 page)

Tom hung up and saw the captain stand to attention in front of the cabin door. The angry voice of United States Senator Charles Lake barreled down the hallway.

“Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing in my room?”

Tom stepped out, next to Captain McBride. “Hello, Chuck. I think we need to talk.”

Charles Lake brushed past Tom into the cabin and looked around. His eyes settled on his briefcase, which lay unopened on the small desk near the balcony door. He started to move toward it.

“Please don’t, Senator,” Tom said.

“Don’t what?” Lake paused. “This is my cabin and I’ll do as I damn well please.”

“I just want to talk for a moment.” Tom tried the friendly route. “Sit on the bed for me, would you?”

Lake didn’t move but Tom saw a tiredness in his face he’d not noticed before, a weariness that showed in wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a slump in his shoulders. On the left side of his neck, a dark red streak about three inches long hid behind his collar. “Who are you? I mean, who do you work for?”

“All kinds of people. CIA, FBI, the Mormon Church . . .” Tom shrugged.

Lake’s eyes narrowed. “The Mormon—”

“I’m joking. About the last one, anyway.” Tom checked over his shoulder and saw Captain McBride standing in the doorway, seemingly entranced. “Seriously, sit down. Let’s talk.”

Lake sank on to the bed, his eyes on Tom and still wary. “About what?”

“Alexandra Tourville.”

Lake’s eyes flicked toward the desk again, then back to Tom. “So talk.”

“She’s dead.” Lake didn’t respond, so Tom went on. “Our mutual friend Hugo thinks she killed the old lady at the Bassin place, then her own friend Natalia, and then my friend Raul Garcia.”

“The policeman.”

“That’s the one.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Well, that may be the case.” Tom nodded slowly. He turned and looked at Captain McBride. “Would you give us a moment?”

The captain started. “A moment? You mean . . . is that proper?”

“Ah, you English.” Tom smiled. “Yes, it’s proper. Two people having a chat in a cabin. It’s just that part of the chat needs to be in private.”

“But if he’s a suspect in some kind of crime, shouldn’t any interview be witnessed? I mean, that’s how we do things in England and I assume—”

“We’re not in England, captain. This is two Americans having a nice talk in international waters. We’re in international waters by now, aren’t we?”

“Even so, this is my ship and I’m not comfortable with—”

“With what? We’re not going to fight, for fuck’s sake. We’re going to talk, and if it makes you feel better,” Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, flicking at the screen and showing it to McBride, “there you go, I’ll record our conversation, how’s that? I’m even recording me telling you I’ll record it.”

The captain took a step back, then hesitated. “I’m going to head upstairs, make a few phone calls. If someone up the chain of command tells me this is improper, I’ll be back down. And probably not alone.”

“Perfect,” Tom said. “I don’t want anyone getting in trouble with the chain of command.”

“That makes two of us,” McBride said. He stepped out of the cabin and pulled the door closed behind him.

For the first time in years, Tom was unsure what to do. According to Hugo, he was alone in a room with a killer. He was also alone in a room with a US Senator, and a man who had realistic ambitions for even higher office. There was no script for this situation, no training exercise welling up from his CIA or FBI days telling him what to do next. His experience in the field, undercover and in the uniform black suit and sunglasses of those agencies, had left him unprepared. Tom was old-fashioned in that he liked his bad guys obvious and identifiable, he liked a clear red line between them and him, and the idea that Hugo could be wrong tugged at him like an invisible specter.

Tom held up his phone to reassure, or maybe remind, the senator that their conversation would be recorded, and moved to the desk. He laid the phone beside the briefcase, careful not to touch it. Then, not having a plan or even a full grasp of the facts, Tom resorted to doing what he did best. He talked.

“Beautiful ship. You know, I’ve never been on a cruise before. Though is this a cruise or a journey? Seems like cruises are for old couples in flowery shirts who drink too much and like to island-hop in the Caribbean.” Tom paused but Lake just stared at the carpet between them. “Anyway, I was hoping you’d want to tell me what’s been going on.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“No? How’d you get that scratch on your neck?”

“No idea.” His tone was flat, final.

“Then let’s move on to the sudden disappearances in Paris. Or if you prefer, why you’re here on this ship.”

“I don’t like flying. No sin in that.”

“Yeah, true, but it was a bit of a rush to get here, wasn’t it?”

“I decided last-minute, after the talks fell through. Seemed like it’d be a relaxing way to get home, even if it meant hurrying to get here.”

“I’m sure it is. Don’t like flying, myself, not much.” Tom looked around the cabin. “I can see how this’d be preferable. Although we both had to fly to get here, which is kinda weird.”

“Please,” Lake said. “It’s late and I’m tired. Just tell me what you want and go.”

“Sure.” Tom leaned casually against the wall, his pose matching his tone. “We can be honest with each other, right?”

Lake nodded but said nothing.

“See, you know Hugo Marston. He’s a smart guy. Super smart. Pisses me off sometimes and he has this really fucking annoying habit of not telling me stuff, making me guess and wallow around in the dark like a blind pig in mud. He does that a lot, and it’s only when he’s absolutely sure of something that he tells me. Like I said, it’s annoying, but there is an upside.”

“Oh?” Lake seemed like he was paying attention now but struggling to follow along.

“Right. The upside is, when he tells me something, the odds are he’s right. Which kinda makes sense, when you think about it. I mean, if he made me wait and was wrong every time, that’d be pretty dumb. Anyway, he made me wallow around on this case, right up until a few minutes ago.”

“Is that right?” Now, Tom thought, the senator was pretending not to care, but there was a tension in the man’s throat that suggested otherwise.

“Yeah, it is. Couple minutes ago he told me that you killed Alexandra Tourville. And I figured, you know, he made me wait, so it’s gotta be true.”

“Ridiculous.” Lake finally held Tom’s eye. “Why would I do that?”

“I’m not sure, not yet. Hugo said something about your ancestry. Marie Antoinette or some shit.” Tom waved a hand. “I didn’t get all the details, to be honest.”

“That’s insane.” But the firmness had gone from his voice, as if the discovery of a motive was more powerful than any piece of physical evidence, a reason for murder more revealing than his prints on a bloody knife or smoking gun. “I would never kill anyone, not . . . premeditated, not unless provoked.”

“Maybe.” Tom looked down and to his left, at the briefcase. “That locked?”

“Yes.” Lake looked up. “But please don’t. You need a warrant, right?”

“Not if you give me permission. It’s called a consent search, and I’m thinking there’s something pretty damning in there.”

“Damning? I’m already damned. You’re going to see to that, aren’t you?”

“I’m just trying to find the truth,” Tom said. He hesitated, but then said what he was thinking. “And part of the truth, Senator, is that if you killed Alexandra Tourville, and if Hugo’s right that she killed Raul Garcia, you deserve a fucking medal.”

Lake smiled thinly. “They don’t give medals to murderers,” he said.

“Sometimes they do. But yeah, probably not in your case.” Tom tapped the briefcase. “So I have your permission to look inside?”

“No. In fact, I think you need to leave and that I should speak to a lawyer before I talk to you or anyone else.”

Tom sighed. “OK then. That’s your right, of course, though fuck knows where we’ll find a lawyer in the middle of the ocean. I mean, there’s probably a stack of them on board, but in my experience the guys who do criminal defense don’t make too much money. They’re the ones crammed into coach class, assuming they can afford to fly at all. The attorneys on board this tub, I’m betting they can tell you a thing or two about oil and gas law or how to sue someone for trademark infringement, but not so much on criminal law.”

“I can wait until we get back to America.”

“America?” Tom amped up the surprise in his voice. “Oh, no, Senator. If you want to take a look outside, maybe look behind as best you can, you’re going to see a nice wake bubbling in the moonlight. Be all romantic if, you know, you hadn’t killed someone.”

Lake’s voice sharpened. “We’re turning?”

“Sure are, and we’re headed for Brest.” Tom smiled. “And not the good kind, no, the kind that has a harbor on the northwestern tip of France, where good Captain McBride will weigh anchor and the French police will send a boat out to pick us up and take you to a jail cell. That kind of Brest.”

Color drained from Lake’s face and his jaw dropped open. “No. No, not that.”

“Yeah, I can see why that’d suck for you. I mean, all those things you said about the French and now you’re going to be . . . I mean an American prison would be bad enough, but a French one?”

“No, please, we have to go back to America. Arrest me there, give me a chance to . . . if I have to go to jail at all, there. Please, be reasonable.”

“What do you expect? You killed a French chick on French soil.” Tom shrugged. “Also not my call. Look on the bright side, you’ve got to think the food will be better. Finally, a stereotype that might work in your favor.”

“But immunity. I have diplomatic immunity!”

“I thought so, too, but apparently your mission was over when you throttled dear Alexie to death, which means you were on your own time, as it were. Funny how these things work, isn’t it?”

The life went out of the senator and he folded almost in half, his head sinking to his knees and his hands wrapped in desperation around his head. “I can’t go to prison,” he whispered. “I can’t, I just can’t.”

Tom was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was gentle. “You know, there is one possibility. One other option we could discuss.”

Hugo and Lieutenant Lerens had made the drive back to Paris as part of a small convoy of cars that included the medical examiner’s van containing the body of Alexandra Tourville. Earlier, Lerens had requested Dr. Alain Joust attend, and the ME had set off from his apartment in the Fifteenth Arrondissement immediately, not minding being dragged out of bed to drive almost an hour down here.

“Even if it’s night, I do like to get out of the city occasionally,” he’d said as he hefted his bag of tools to the trunk of the little black car. “And so much more interesting than the usual gang stabbings and beatings.”

“Yep,” Lerens said, “this one’s classy all the way.”

“Well then, let’s have a look at her.”

Blunt force trauma and/or strangulation had been Dr. Joust’s initial opinion. “Usual disclaimers, of course, it could change once she’s on the table. But my best guess right now is that she made someone very, very angry.”

Joust had promised to get to work right away, so Hugo and Lerens waited in her office at the prefecture. He’d spoken to Tom on the way back into Paris, interrupted when Lake returned to his cabin, and Hugo now thought about calling him back. But he figured Tom would ring once he had something, or once he’d searched and found nothing.

In the meantime, he called his second-in-command at the RSO’s office, knowing he’d be home and wanting to help. Ryan Pierce had joined the Bureau of Diplomatic Security straight out of Tulane Law School, where he’d graduated at the top of his class. He was an athlete, too, the starting pitcher for Louisiana State University. He was from Bossier City, Louisiana, and had the southern accent to go with it, as well as a love for catfish and gambling. But he was also one of the nicest and brightest men Hugo had ever worked with. He answered his phone almost immediately, and in the background Hugo could hear children shouting.