The Sixth Man Page 26

  “No. One more thing. Would you like to see where Peter Bunting lives?”

  Sean looked at her in surprise. “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  CHAPTER

  44

  EDGAR ROY HAD KNOWN something was wrong because the routine at Cutter’s Rock had changed. Every morning since he’d been here Carla Dukes had made her rounds. Cutter’s Rock could hold two hundred and fourteen prisoners, but currently only fifty inmates were being held here. Roy knew this by observation and deduction. He knew it by listening to the sounds of meal trays being delivered to cells. He knew it by hearing and distinguishing between forty-nine voices emanating from those cells. He knew it by overhearing the bed check calls from the guards.

  And Carla Dukes had made a point of walking past each of these cells at precisely four minutes past eight each morning and four minutes past four each afternoon. It was now six p.m. and Roy had not seen the woman at all today.

  Yet he had heard a lot. Whispers among guards. Carla Dukes was dead. She’d been shot in her home. No one knew who had done it.

  Roy was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Dukes’s murder had interrupted the chronology of each memory he’d ever had. He wished ill of no one, really, and at some level he was sorry she had been killed. She had been brought here to keep an eye on him. She didn’t want to be here. And thus she blamed him for her dilemma.

  He sensed the presence near his cell door. He didn’t look. He smelled the air. Edgar Roy didn’t simply have a nearly unique level of intellectual ability. He had senses heightened to an astonishing degree. It was all a case of special hardwiring in his brain.

  It wasn’t a guard. He had processed and organized the smells and sounds of all the guards. There were a few support personnel who were allowed in the cell area, but it was none of them either. He had smelled this person before. He had also logged in his rhythm of breathing and his singular way of walking.

  It was Agent Murdock of the FBI.

  “Hello, Edgar,” he said.

  Roy remained on his bed, even as he heard another man approach. A guard this time. It was the short one: wide hips, burly chest, thick neck. Name tag said Tarkington. He smoked and drank. Roy didn’t need heightened senses to know that. Too may breath mints, far too much mouthwash.

  The electronically controlled door slid back. Footsteps.

  Murdock said, “Look at me, Edgar. I know you can if you want to.”

  Roy remained where he was. He closed his eyes and let the darkness in his head settle him into a place this man could not reach. Another sound. The rub of shoe soles on cement. Murdock’s bottom settled into the chair bolted to the floor.

  “Okay, Edgar. You don’t have to look at me. I’ll talk and you listen.”

  Murdock paused and then when he heard the next sound, Roy realized why. The guard walked away. Murdock wanted privacy. Then there was a nearly imperceptible cessation of powered machinery. Roy knew what it was. The video camera built into the wall had just been turned off. He expected the audio feed had as well.

  Murdock said, “We can finally have a private conversation. I think it’s time.”

  Roy didn’t move. He kept his eyes closed, forcing himself to sink into memories. His parents were fighting. They often did. For university professors existing in worlds of genteel theoretical tinkering they were unusually combative. And his father drank. And when he was in the bottle he was no longer genteel.

  His next image was of his sister coming into the room. Already tall and strong, she had gotten between the two and separated them, forcing them into at least a temporary truce. Then she had picked Roy up and taken him to his room. Read books to him. Soothed him, because his parents fighting like that had always terrified him. His sister had understood his predicament. She knew what he was enduring, both in the outside world and, more subtly, within the complex confines of his mind.

  “Edgar. We really need to end this,” said Murdock in a low, comforting tone. “Time is running out. I know it. You know it.”

  Roy moved up to age five in his chronology. His birthday. No guests—his parents didn’t do such things. His sister, now sixteen, had already grown to her full height. She towered over her stepfather.

  Roy was already five feet tall and weighed over a hundred pounds. Some mornings he would lie in bed and could actually feel his bones, tendons, and ligaments lengthening.

  There was a small cake, five candles, and another argument. This one had turned violent, with a kitchen knife involved. His mother had been cut. And then Roy had watched in amazement as his sister had disarmed her stepfather, placed him in a hammerlock, and forced him out of the house. She had wanted to call the police, but their mother had begged her not to do it.

  Roy tensed a bit as he heard the squeak of feet against the cement. Murdock was on the move. He was standing over him. A subtle prod in the back.

  “Edgar, I need your full and undivided attention.”

  Roy didn’t move.

  “I know that you know Carla Dukes is dead.”

  Another jab in the back, harder still.

  “We got the slug out. It’s the same gun that killed Tom Bergin. Same killer.”

  Age six. His beloved sister was preparing to go off to college. She was a tremendous athlete, basketball, volleyball, and crew. An academic star, she had given the valedictory address at commencement, a feat she would repeat in college. Roy was stunned by her ability, her absolute will to win, no matter the odds against her.

  He had waved at her from the door of the old farmhouse as she put her things away in the car she’d bought with her own money working odd jobs. She had come back and hugged him. He had taken in her scent, a smell he could conjure up perfectly right this minute lying in his prison cell.

  “Kel,” he had said. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll be back, Eddie. A lot,” she had told him. Then she had given him something. He had held it in his hand. It was a piece of metal on a chain.

  She had said, “That’s the medal of Saint Michael, the Archangel.”

  Roy had repeated this back to her, something he unconsciously did whenever someone gave him new information. It always made her smile. But this time she didn’t. Her look remained serious.

  “He’s the protector of children. He is the leader of good versus evil, Eddie. In Hebrew Michael means ‘Who is like God?’ And the answer to that is no one is like God. Saint Michael represents humility in the face of God. Okay?”

  He had repeated this back to her word for word, including her inflections. “Okay.”

  “He is an archangel. He is the supreme enemy of Satan and of all fallen angels.”

  She had said this last part while looking directly at her stepfather, who had glanced the other way, his face reddening.

  Then she was gone.

  A half hour passed and there was another argument and Roy had been at the center of it. It began with a slap. His father was drunk. The next blow was harder, knocking him out of his chair. His mother had tried to intervene, but this time his father would not be denied. She finally fell unconscious to the floor under his battering.

  His father had turned to him, made him pull down his pants. Six-year-old Eddie was crying. He didn’t want to do this, but he did because he was terrified. His trousers fell to the floor of the kitchen. His father’s voice was low, soft, a singsong tone in his inebriated stupor. Roy had felt the man’s hands on his privates. Smelled the alcohol on his cheek. The man—Roy could no longer refer to him as his father—pressed against him.

  Then he had been ripped backward off his son. There was a crash. Roy had pulled his pants back up and turned. He was knocked head over heels against the wall as the two struggled and slammed into him. His sister had come back. She was fighting her stepfather with the ferocity of a lioness. They crashed around the room. She was taller, younger, the same weight as her opponent, but he was still a man. He fought hard. She hit him in the face with her fist. He rose back up and she kicked him in the
stomach. He went back down but the alcohol and the fury at having been discovered doing vile things to his son seemed to energize him. He grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter, rushed at her. She pivoted.

  With all his prodigious mental skills, this was the one memory Roy had never been able to draw on at will.

  She pivoted.

  That was all he could recall about those few seconds of his life. Age six.

  She pivoted.

  And then it was a blank. The only memory gap he had ever had in his life.

  When the blank ended his father was lying on the floor, blood dripping from his chest. The knife stuck out from his body; his sister standing over the man and breathing hard. Roy had never seen anyone die until that moment. His father gave a little gurgle, his body stiffened and then relaxed, and his eyes grew completely still. They seemed to be staring solely at him.

  She had rushed to hold him, make sure he was okay. He had rubbed the medal, the medal of Saint Michael that was around his neck.

  Saint Michael, the protector of children. Satan’s nightmare. The soul of redemption.

  And then the memory faded. And then it was gone.

  “Edgar?” said Murdock sharply.

  They had taken his Saint Michael’s medal when he had come here. It was the first time he had been without it since that day years ago. Roy felt an enormous hole in his heart without it. He didn’t know if he would ever get it back.

  “Edgar? I know. I found out about the E-Program. We need to talk. This changes everything. There are people we need to go after. Something is really wrong.”

  But the FBI agent could not break through. Not now. Not ever. Eventually there was the squeak of shoe soles on cement. The door slid open and closed. The smells, the sounds of the man receded.

  Saint Michael protect us.

  CHAPTER

  45

  “THAT’S IT,” SAID KELLY PAUL.

  She and Sean were standing outside a block of four-story brownstones on Fifth Avenue up in the East Seventies.

  “Which one specifically?” he asked, as they stood there on the sidewalk opposite, a tree canopy shielding them from the rain.

  She pointed to the largest one that had moldings and pediments and columns handcrafted by skilled workmen from over a century ago. “Nine thousand square feet. A lovely treetop view of the park from the front windows. And the inside is as splendid as the outside.”

  “Have you been inside it?”

  “Once.”

  “How?”

  “I never reveal my sources.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe him.”

  “I can do better.” She pulled out a photo and showed it to him.

  “He looks arrogant.”

  “He is. But no more so than others in his position. He’s also paranoid, which makes him careful. Sometimes too careful, which can be exploited.”

  “Why did you bring me here, really?”

  “For this.”

  She took his arm and drew him further back into the shadows.

  A few minutes later five people came out of the brownstone; all were carrying large, open umbrellas. Bunting, his wife, and their three children: two girls and a boy. The kids wore two-hundred-dollar sweaters and equally expensive shoes. Their heads had never seen the inside of a barbershop, only a salon. The wife was beautiful, refined, tall, slender, and exquisitely dressed, her hair and makeup at the level of a black-tie event. Bunting had on a tweed jacket, pressed jeans, thousand dollar Crocs boots, and a swagger.

  They were the epitome of the American Dream, displayed on the illustrious cement of New York’s high-dollar area.

  “The family?”

  Paul nodded. “And their guards.”

  Sean turned his head to see the two men appear from the shadows and trail the Buntings.

  “One is a former SEAL. The other is ex-DEA. Both are contractors working for a sub of BIC. He has two other men in his security detail. Sometimes they run four on, particularly when traveling abroad. Other times they rotate two on and off. Like now.”

  “How did you know they would be coming out tonight?”

  “They do this four times a week at roughly the same time. I believe the wife insists. Bunting doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like routines as a general rule, but he likes to keep the peace at home, too. He actually loves his wife and family very much.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Sources again, Sean.”

  As they watched, Bunting reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to receive a call. He stopped walking and motioned to his wife that he would catch up. Sean noted that one guard stayed with Bunting.

  Paul said, “He seems to have gotten an interesting call just now.”

  They watched as Bunting walked in a tight circle while his guard stood by patiently. He was gesticulating and obviously not happy. He clicked off and immediately made another call. This took less than five minutes. Then he put the phone away and jogged onward to catch up with his family.

  “So where do they go on these jaunts?” asked Sean.

  “They’ll go ten blocks, enter the park, make their way back, exit in the Sixties, turn north, and head back here. They talk, the kids can be kids, normal.”

  “Because they’re not? Normal?”

  “Bunting certainly isn’t. He exists in this world, but he doesn’t really live in it. If he had his preference he’d live only in his world. But of course he can’t, so he makes certain concessions. But I can tell you that even though he’s out now with his family and talking about school and grades and the next charity event Mrs. Bunting has planned, his mind is really working on what to do about my brother.”

  “How much does his wife know about what he does?”

  “Let’s just say she is not intellectually curious about that. She plays the good wife. She’s smart, ambitious to a certain degree, good with the kids. Exactly how her husband generates the money necessary to keep the brownstone and vacation house, private school tuition and all the rest going, she doesn’t really care.”

  “You’ve really done an exacting study of the Buntings.”

  “Once I knew my brother would be working for him, I thought it was my duty.”

  “Did you want him to work there?”

  “I thought I did. I was wrong, of course. Eddie was just fine right where he was. But I just wouldn’t let myself see it. Misguided loyalty. Putting country over family. It’s not a mistake I would repeat.”

  “You feel guilt for this, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Sean stared at her, obviously more than a little surprised. It was a frank admission for someone who so clearly gave little away. He had just assumed that she would do what she often did, answer a question with a question. Sensing she might be receptive to opening up more now he said, “Can I ask something?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Are we going to follow them?”

  “They are being followed. Just not by us.”

  “You have help?”

  “I have acquaintances that assist me from time to time,” she answered.

  “Another question?”

  She started walking in the direction opposite the Buntings and he followed, rolling his travel bag behind him.

  He took her silence as acquiescence. “You talked about the E-Program before, but what is the recruitment like?”

  “You never even get asked to come in unless you’re the best of the best based on your track record. A lot of preliminary testing that all ordinary people would fail, but that all potential E applicants pass with flying colors. Then the testing becomes more and more rigorous. People