The Buck Stops Here (39 page)

“Thank you. Mr. Bennett? It’s Brett Devlin. How are you, sir? Good. Bravo six niner alpha bravo. Yes, sir.”

He passed the phone to the other agent.

“Chester LaForest here. Thank you, sir. Yes.” He smiled. “It was a girl. Eight pounds, nine ounces. Thank you. Charlie zero zero bravo delta. Thank you.”

He handed me the phone. I took it and spoke hesitantly into the receiver.

“Tom?”

“Hey, Callie. It’s me. You’re there with Agents Devlin and LaForest.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“They’re good guys. You can talk with them and tell them anything they need to know.”

I turned away from the two agents and lowered my voice. “This isn’t exactly easy for me, Tom. As you and I have discussed, there are things I’ve done in this investigation I’m not exactly proud of.”

He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I know, and they know that too. I’ve already given them a brief overview of the situation. Just remember that there are far more important things going on than a few misdemeanors and bad choices. Because of that inhaler, this has literally become a matter of life-and-death.”

“Do you think they will arrest me? After all, I did steal a delivery from someone’s front porch. I’m not sure if that’s a misdemeanor or not, but—”

“I assure you, Callie, that right now they have much bigger fish to fry. I requested these two specifically. They understand what’s important here—and what isn’t.”

I nodded, suddenly understanding what he
wasn’t
saying.

“Callie,” he added, his voice suddenly husky, “I promise you that you can trust me on this.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I know I can.”

Opening my eyes and glancing at the two men who waited nearby, I found myself wishing our conversation didn’t have to end here. I wanted to say more. I wanted so badly to blurt out,
Tom, it’s okay. I forgive you!
But the situation wasn’t right. We said goodbye, and I handed the phone back to Agent Devlin, who concluded the call and hung up.

“Would you like to come in?” I asked, gesturing toward my room.

“Actually, we need to go for a ride. First stop is a storage facility, I believe, and then we’d like to head over to our branch office.”

“Of course,” I said. “Can you wait a minute while I change? You can come in.”

“We’ll wait out here, thank you.”

They sat back down in their chairs as I let myself into my room. While they waited, I quickly freshened up and changed into black slacks and a cream-colored shirt. I gathered my things—briefcase, computer, key to the storage unit. Then I rejoined them outside and locked the door.

“Okay, gentlemen, I’m all yours.”

And gentlemen they were. They held the door for me at their car, spoke politely to me on the drive, and treated me with an air of respect throughout the whole process of retrieving the inhaler and driving to their office. Besides the fact that they were nice guys, I had a feeling they had been told to handle me with kid gloves because of my relationship with Tom.

The NSA facility was not labeled as such. It was just a nondescript building in the Central Business District, quiet on the outside but bustling with activity on the inside. After going past several clearance points, I was taken to an interrogation room lined with one-way mirrors. They brought me coffee and tried to make things as comfortable as possible, but I knew I was being recorded, observed, and no telling what else. For all I knew, the chair I was in was collecting my body temperature and heart rate.

The two men sat down across from me and asked me to recount for them, as thoroughly as I could, all that I had done and discovered in the last week with regard to James Sparks. Though I left out a few key points (the fact that Tom wanted me to investigate and the phone he had slipped me), I was generally honest.

I described for them my visit to Virginia, where I found all sorts of discrepancies between the “facts” of the matter and the truth. I told them about locating Sparks and then going to the prison and talking with him, and the odd way he seemed to be using me to get some response out of the guard. My face red, I told them about going to the guard’s house and stealing from his carport the FedEx envelope. Much to my relief, it didn’t seem as though anything official would come of that crime because Les Watts hadn’t reported the theft to the police, and it was doubtful that he would press charges against me once he was in custody. Considering what had been inside that envelope, he would more than likely deny that something like that might even have been intended for him at all.

The fact that I had broken the chain of evidence was fairly significant, but I reminded them that at least by doing so I had probably saved a man’s life. In a way, I realized, I had saved two lives because the theft had also prevented Les Watts from committing murder and probably ending up with a death sentence—or, at the very least, life in prison.

I wouldn’t give up the name or location of the person who analyzed the substance for me, and they weren’t happy about that. But I had my limits, and one of them was that I never, ever gave up a source to whom I had promised confidentiality. Of course, Hydro’s fingerprints were probably all over the envelope and the inhaler, but as long as the kid had no past history of a crime, his name wouldn’t pop up in any database when they ran those prints.

We ended by going over, in detail, my conversation with Sparks on the phone yesterday. In that situation I hadn’t promised him confidentiality at all, but merely a trade—my information in exchange for his—and so I felt free to recount the entire conversation, almost word for word. These agents seemed particularly interested in the whole “going to make a phone call” element of the day Bryan was killed. From what I could gather, no one at the NSA had ever understood why Sparks had been trying to escape that day. The explanation of the changed code and the need for some outside communication by him to this nameless, faceless contact seemed to make a lot of sense.

But it also left the door wide open for speculation. Who was the person he was working with on the outside? We went through each of the Cipher Five, and on the one hand, they each seemed culpable, and on the other hand, none of them seemed like a logical suspect. As we talked I realized that the real culprit could have been
none
of the Cipher Five but instead some member of al-Sharif, the terrorist group. It was confusing, to say the least. Regardless, the NSA had the resources and personnel to take things far beyond where I had been able to go, and I wished them well.

As my interrogation was primarily a one-way conversation, they didn’t tell me much about how they were going to solve these riddles. But I knew enough to understand that Les Watts was the key to everything. I had a feeling the poor man was now under total surveillance—and that the moment he attempted to communicate with anyone regarding Sparks, the walls of justice would slam down around him like a cage. Of course, if the person who had sent the inhaler was smart, he or she would know the feds were onto them now, and they would lay low for a while, not saying or doing a thing.

Then there was Sparks himself. Soon the pressure would be on him to reveal the name of the person he was blackmailing. I could only imagine what sort of “deal” he might wrangle with the NSA this time in exchange for that information.

I did wonder why, after all of this time, the attempt on Sparks’ life had just happened to come this past week. Then, in a flash, it hit me: It was because of
me
that it happened when it did. When I showed up at the prison last Thursday—exactly one week ago today—Sparks had been dumbfounded to see me. But by the next day, when I returned to the prison at his invitation, his whole demeanor had changed. I told the NSA agents that Sparks must have gotten a message to his outside people as soon as I left the first time, telling them about me and turning up the heat on whatever ongoing blackmail relationship they had. They must have resisted, because when he and I met the next day, he had really pushed the envelope on giving me pertinent facts before the guard stepped in and halted the conversation. Sparks had thought he could use me as leverage, but whoever was on the outside was willing to kill him now rather than risk what a loose cannon like Sparks might say or do.

They had acted quickly, too, sending out the ricin-enhanced inhaler the very day they got his communication. That led me to believe that killing Sparks was something they had at least been prepared to do all along. His conversation with me was probably the final straw that forced them to try and make that idea a reality.

It was late afternoon by the time the agents finally finished my interrogation. They thanked me for my help and delivered me back to my hotel. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to take a nap. But I had a dinner appointment with Irene Bennett, and nothing was going to make me miss that. I tried calling Tom but got only his voice mail. I didn’t leave a message.

I had a few minutes to spare, so after I was completely ready to go, I simply laid down on the bed with a cool washcloth over my eyes and blanked out my swirling mind. It didn’t do a lot for my mascara, but at least I felt a little refreshed by the time I got up. I touched up my makeup and then left, strolling to a nearby gift shop before claiming my car. I bought a box of pecan pralines for Beth and Irene, and two cute little dolls for the girls. Then I took my car out of the hotel parking and once again made the drive that put me onto the Causeway out over the lake. As I drove, I tried to think of what I hoped to accomplish tonight.

My Family HEARTS investigation was sort of on hold, not to mention possibly irrelevant once we got to the bottom of who was being blackmailed by Sparks. If someone involved with the charity was the culprit, I couldn’t see the grant going through at all. Still, that had never been my real reason for meeting with Irene in the first place. No, I was coming there to get to know my potential mother-in-law. Now that I had unearthed all the facts on Tom and knew I could forgive him, the vague possibility had become a legitimate reality.

Forty-Seven

Once I reached the North Shore of Lake Ponchartrain, I drove to Beth’s suburban home, surprised to find that she lived in a well-to-do neighborhood. I drove past opulent houses and wide, expansive lawns until I reached the one I was looking for.

Leah met me at the door, and she squealed over the dolls I had brought for her and Maddie. Irene also came to greet me, warmly thanking me for the box of pralines. Beth waved to me from the dining room, where she was setting the table. A light orange cat darted out from under a chair and ran up the stairs.

“Mrs. Webber, you wanna come see our Barbies?” Leah asked enthusiastically, taking my hand.

I glanced at Irene, feeling a bit nervous as I didn’t know whether Beth had told her about me and Tom or not.

“Go ahead, Callie,” Irene said, “if you don’t mind. We’ll eat in about fifteen minutes.”

I let Leah lead me upstairs, past several bedrooms to a large playroom at the end of the hall. Maddie was there, sprawled on the floor and surrounded by enough Barbies and Barbie furniture to fill an entire Toys-R-Us. She smiled when she saw me, but she also looked very tired, and I remembered that fatigue was one of the effects of her disorder.

“Wow,” I said, coming into the room, “what is this, a toy store?”

“Uncle Tommy gave most of them to us. Every time he comes, he brings us more stuff.”

Suddenly the little dolls I had picked up for them paled by comparison. You wouldn’t have known it, though, by the way they quickly incorporated them into the game. As Leah showed me the various clothes, furniture, and houses that they already owned, Maddie thought up a scenario that would introduce the new dolls to the story they had going.

I sat on the floor with them, and soon the three of us were playing Barbies, the cat watching us from his perch on the windowsill. It had been a while since I had hung out with eight-year-old girls, but they were delightful, and the story they came up with about a secret princess hidden in the dungeon of a mighty castle was a familiar one. We were just introducing a dragon slayer into the mix when Beth appeared in the doorway.

“Okay,” she said. “Dinner’s ready.”

Reluctantly, we put away our toys and joined the grown-ups downstairs.

Dinner was as pleasant as it had been the other day at the restaurant, though I couldn’t help feeling as though the tables had turned a bit. Now, instead of me being there to check them out, it felt as though they were checking out me. Had they known the extent of my relationship with Tom or the turn it was about to take as soon as I could speak with him from my heart, they might have been even more curious. As it was, they asked an awful lot about me, my life, and my past. I said that I had been married before but that I was a widow now, and I had no children of my own. I wondered how they would feel if they knew the whole truth. The situation was complicated, and I didn’t think it was my place to enlighten them.

After a delicious Southern dinner of fried catfish, green beans, grits, and cornbread, Irene and I moved into the living room as Beth and the girls said their goodnights. I was touched by the way both children asked for a hug from me before going up.