Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (5 page)

He retrieved the suitcase from the closet and laid it on the bed. There were no luggage tags, either personal or airline-issued. He unzipped the suitcase. It was empty. Jack ran his fingertips around the nylon fabric inner lining. Again, no luck. Jack returned the suitcase to the closet.

This room was special-operator tidy. A place for everything and everything in its place. Functional, efficient, anonymous. It gave him nothing.

“Maybe . . .” Jack murmured.

He picked up the phone and dialed the main desk.

“Motel Six, how may I help you?”

“Hi, I’m in room 142,” Jack said. “Can you get me a copy of my charges up to this point? My office manager needs it.”

“Certainly, sir. I can e-mail it—”

“Hard copy would be better, actually. Just slip it under the door. I’m going to jump in the shower.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“One more thing,” Jack replied. “When do you show me checking out?”

“Uh . . . hang on . . . Day after tomorrow, sir.”

Jack thanked him and hung up.

The desk clerk was as good as his word. A few minutes later a lone sheet of paper wormed its way beneath the door. He waited for the footsteps to fade back down the hallway, then retrieved the bill. In the occupant information section, there was no address. How did his attacker manage that? Jack wondered. The vast majority of hotels wouldn’t book a reservation without an address. There were ways around this, but they took finesse.

In the payment section, all but the last four digits of the credit card were X’d out.

But there was a name.

Eric Weber.

—

E
ven assuming the name was real, Weber was common, as was Eric, and without an address Jack had no way of narrowing his search. He put a pin in it and turned to his next task.

He left the room, and to kill some time he browsed through a couple used-book stores. After nightfall, he headed west toward Telegraph Road and turned off. He found a BP gas station across the road from the Supermercado and parked on the side of the building.

From his rucksack he took a gray hoodie and baseball cap. He donned both, then locked his car and walked to Lenore, then west across Telegraph to the grocery store. The parking lot was half full of cars, with shoppers, mostly Latinos and some whites, coming and going through the automatic doors. The sound of rickety shopping cart wheels echoed across the pavement. The automatic doors hissed open and shut.

It was seven forty-five, fifteen minutes before the store’s shift change.

Jack couldn’t help but glance at the guardrail on the far side of the parking lot. No cars were parked there. He stood in the near-darkness for a few moments and scanned the front of the store for surveillance cameras. Though there were plenty of them inside, little mirrored bubbles jutting from the ceiling, out here he saw none.

Jack pulled the cap down close to his eyebrows, then walked to the entrance and posted himself beside it. To each passerby he gave his rehearsed and, he hoped, well-acted spiel: He was looking for his homeless brother, someone said they’d seen him around here, followed by a description of
his attacker. Most walked past him, either without responding or with some muttered excuse or a flat “No.” Occasionally a shopper would stop, listen for a moment, then sadly shake his or her head and wish him luck.

At 7:55, a familiar face appeared, one of the regular cashiers, a short early-twenties woman with large black eyes. She’d checked him out a few times but was shy and rarely looked him in the eye.

“Hi, excuse me,” Jack said. “I’m looking for my brother. He’s missing.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, stepping around Jack and heading for the door. “I need to—”

“Tall, skinny, maybe wearing a dark hoodie. He’s homeless. We’re worried about him. Please.”

The cashier slowed, then stopped and turned. She backed farther into the light coming through the front windows, putting some distance between them. A local, he guessed. She gave no sign she recognized him.

“How tall?” she asked.

“Six-five or so.”

The woman hesitated, then said, “Wait. There was a guy. I seen him a few times in the last week. He was panhandling, asking for change. I gave him a few dollars but felt kinda stupid, you know.”

“Why?”

“I came in early for my shift last night, about seven-thirty,
and I saw him get dropped off, right down there.” She pointed toward the far end of the building.

Seven-thirty,
Jack thought. A half hour before he arrived. Good timing. Here was another habit he’d let slip—that of varying his daily routine to make himself a harder target for both surveillance and ambush.

She said, “It was a real nice car, not a beater or anything. I figured if he had a car like that or had a friend with a car like that, he shouldn’t be creeping for money.”

Jack frowned. “I’m sorry he did that. He’s got problems, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“What’d the car look like?” he asked.

“White, newer, like a Nissan or Toyota. Midsize, I think.”

“Did you see the driver?”

She shook her head. “Wait a second. There was something on the news . . . Wasn’t some guy hit on Kings Highway last night?”

“Really?” Jack replied. “Did they describe him? Did he have ID?”

“No, I don’t know. Sorry. You could call the police. I hope it’s not him, but maybe . . .” She let the words trail off, tilting her head in sympathy. “I gotta go.”

“Thanks,” Jack said as she disappeared through the doors.

White midsize car.
Did the headlights silhouetting his mystery man the previous night belong to this car?

—

J
ack drove home, parked in the garage, then took the elevator up to his floor. The doors parted, revealing the vestibule. Sitting on the leather bench against the far wall was Doug Butler.

Jack stepped out. “Hey, Detective,” he said tentatively.

Butler stood up. “We gotta
talk.”

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

H
ow did he get back on Butler’s radar? He’d already given the detective a statement over the phone, one that seemed to satisfy the cop. Jack went through the possibilities: He’d contradicted his earlier statement; a witness had come forward; they’d found trace evidence on the scene that put him there. Inwardly, Jack winced. He was thinking like a criminal. He didn’t like the feeling.

He unlocked his door and stepped inside, with Butler following. Jack flipped switches on the wall, illuminating the kitchen and living room. He stepped into the kitchen. “I was about to ask how you got up,” Jack said, “but you’ve got a hell of a hall pass, I guess.”

“Comes in handy,” Butler replied.

“You want something? A beer, coffee—”

“Yeah, a beer’d be good. So, what do you carry?”

Jack turned. Butler was standing in the archway, hands shoved in his pants pockets. “What?” asked Jack.

“In your hip holster.”

“Glock Twenty-six. I’ve got a permit.”

“I know you do. Were you carrying when we met at the Supermercado?” When Jack nodded, Butler gave a sad shake of his head. “Can’t believe I missed it. Getting old.”

“I paid extra for the Holster of Invisibility,” Jack replied with a grin.

Butler snorted—not quite a laugh, but as close as he got to one, Jack suspected. He grabbed a pair of Heinekens from the fridge and handed one to Butler, who unscrewed the cap and took a swig. He held up the cap. “Garbage?”

“Counter’s fine,” Jack replied, and took his own sip. “You want me to ditch the gun?”

“Nah. Just don’t draw on me. Might give me a heart attack. Nice place. You rich?”

“Everything’s relative.”

“You work at a financial company, right? Hendley something?”

“Hendley Associates. Yep. Arbitrage, analysis, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Everything’s relative,” Jack repeated. “I’m on a kind of
sabbatical, I guess you could say.” This was the first time he’d explained his situation to anyone outside of his family.

Sabbatical. Forced leave of absence. Each term was accurate enough in its own way, but in essence, Gerry Hendley had told him to go to his room and think about what he’d done.
Christ,
Jack thought. He realized, slightly stunned, that he was angry. He understood why Gerry had made the call, but that wasn’t the same as acceptance, was it? Had he been fooling himself? Had he come to peace with the suspension, or was that simply what he’d told himself he should feel? He didn’t know, and didn’t feel like thinking about it.

“Got any stock tips?” Butler asked.

“Depends on what you’re looking for. Legal or illegal?”

“Better give the first one.”

“Good. It’s the only kind I know.” Jack took another swig and thought about it. “Buy low, sell high.”

Butler grinned. “Dick.”

“I know a few good private investment managers, if you’re looking.”

“Yeah, maybe, thanks. Another eight and I’m out. Unless I win the lottery or become the next Wambaugh, I’m gonna need something.”

They stood there, sipping their beers and saying nothing for a bit. Jack wondered if Butler was using the silence as an interview tool.

“My grandfather was a cop,” Jack said.

“Yeah?”

“Baltimore Homicide.”

Butler nodded slowly. “Mine, too. Tulsa. Small world.”

“What got you into it?”

“I was military police in the Army. In May of ’03 I ended up in Baghdad. A month after I got there we got mortared and I took some shrapnel. Spent about six months at Walter Reed, then they cut me loose. Alexandria was hiring cops and I figured it would be an easy transition.”

“Was it?”

“Mostly. If I’d stayed in, probably not. I know guys that did tour after tour. Those are the ones that have trouble.”

The silence hung in the air.

“So . . .” Jack said, hoping to nudge Butler toward the point of his visit. It worked.

“So, are you in some kind of trouble, Jack?”

“You mean aside from last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Not that I know of,” Jack replied. “Why?”

“About a week ago a guy was killed on the 395, up near Holmes Run Trail.”

“I read about it. Carjacking went bad, wasn’t it?”

“Probably. The thing is, the guy lived in this building. He parked in the same garage as you do, drove a black sedan a
lot like your Chrysler. And he was a fair match for your description.”

Jack felt his belly tighten. “You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack. The tire on his car blew out. He pulled over to the side of the road to put the spare on. As far as we can figure it, somebody stopped, maybe offered to help him, then slit his throat and left.”

Jack didn’t reply.

“What I’m wondering now,” Butler said, “is if somebody did something to his tire, then followed along and waited until it blew.”

“What time was this?”

“About two in the morning. He was coming home from his girlfriend’s house—just like he did almost every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday for the past six months.”

Just as he’d done with the gym, Jack thought. “Shit,” he muttered. It was all he could think to say.

“That’s one word for it,” Butler replied. “You didn’t answer my question: Are you in trouble?”

Yes, I think I am
. They’d come at him twice and missed twice, leaving an innocent guy lying on the side of the road with his throat open. If he gave them a third chance they’d make damned sure he was dead. What was this about?

Jack had never put much stock in his status as First Son.
It was a shadow cast by his father, albeit an unintentional one. Plus, he didn’t like the exalted sound of it all. That aside, the truth remained: Somebody was doing their level best to kill the son of the President of the United States. That took a pair of jumbo balls. What could be that important?
Not just good old-fashioned revenge,
Jack thought. Yegor Morozov and the people in his circle were dispassionate and logical when it came to violence, ticking boxes and weighing pros and cons before ordering a trigger pulled.

“Maybe it’s gambling, or sex, that kind of thing,” Butler said.

“No, nothing like that.”

“I’m not looking to hassle you. Even if I was that guy, shaking you down would be more trouble than it’s worth, you know? If you’ve gotten into something over your head, maybe I can help. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like you’d be hurting for help if you needed it—CIA, FBI, Department of Agriculture. But if you wanna talk . . .”

“No, I appreciate it, Detective, but—”

“Doug. You sure?”

Jack nodded. “Did this guy have family?”

“Mark’s his name. Mother, father, and two sisters. They own a chain of specialty bread shops—Macloon’s. Anyway, Mark was the heir apparent. It’s somebody else’s case, so I don’t know if there’s anything shady on the business side.
Listen, Jack, this could be all coincidence. It happens more times than you’d think. Just keep an eye out, yeah?”

“I will.”

“Might as well keep that Glock handy, too.”