Split Second skamm-1 Read online

  King and Michelle watched as the Suburban stopped in front of the cabin and the driver got out. There were no other vehicles visible; no smoke curled from the cabin’s chimney, and not even a dog, cat or chicken graced the dirt front yard. Inside the truck the heavily armed federal agents were invisible behind the tinted glass. Well, King thought, the Trojan horse tactic had worked for thousands of years, and he hoped it continued its win streak here. As he sat there visualizing the agents lying in wait, another thought dimly took shape in his head: Trojan horse? He pushed it away for now and refocused on the coming siege.

  The cabin was surrounded by the other agents, who lay in the dirt and grass and behind rock outcropping on all sides, their rifles pointed at precise locations along the target: the doors, windows and other prime kill zones. King thought whoever was in the cabin would need to be a magician to escape this net. And yet the underground bunker was problematic. He and Parks had discussed this. The blueprints the marshal had been able to obtain were missing one critical element: the location of the bunker’s exterior doors and/or air vents, which it had to have. To guard against escape through these exits, Parks had posted men at points where it seemed logical the bunker would have outside access.

  One of the agents walked up to the front door as another emerged from the truck and pulled out a surveyor’s tripod. County public works insignia had been hung on the sides of the door. Underneath the men’s bulky jackets was body armor, and their pistols rode on belt clips, ready to be pulled. The other men in the truck had enough firepower to take on an army regiment.

  King and Michelle held their breaths as the agent knocked on the door. Thirty seconds went by and then a minute. He knocked again, called out. Another minute went by. He walked around the side of the cabin and reappeared on the other end about a minute later. As he walked back to the truck, he seemed to be talking to himself. He was, King knew, getting authority from Parks to hit the target. That authority must have been granted, because the doors to the Suburban burst open and the men piled out and flew toward the door that was blown open by a shotgun blast wielded by the point man. Seven men burst through this opening and disappeared inside. King and Michelle watched as men emerged from the woods on all sides of the cabin and moved toward it, rifles pointed and ready to fire.

  All were waiting tensely for gunfire to signal that the enemy was there and prepared to go down in glorious flames. Yet all they heard was the breeze rustling the leaves and the occasional bird chirping. Thirty minutes later the all-clear was sounded, and Michelle and King drove down and joined Parks and the other hunters.

  The cabin was small and contained only a few pieces of rustic furniture, an empty fireplace, stale food in the cabinets and a mostly empty fridge. They had found the entrance to the bunker through a door in the basement.

  The bunker was many times the size of the cabin. It was well lighted and clean and had been used very recently. There were storage rooms with shelves that were empty, but the dust patterns showed that things had been stacked there not long ago. There was a shooting range that, from the smell, had also seen activity. When they came to the prison cells, Parks nodded at King and Michelle, and they followed him down the corridor to one of the cells where the door was ajar. Parks used his foot to shove it fully open.

  It was empty.

  “They’re all empty,” grumbled Parks. “This was one big strikeout. But the place was occupied recently, and we’ll go over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

  He stalked off to arrange for tech teams to scour the place. King stared at the inside of the cell and then shone his light into each crevice, flinching when something glinted back at him. He went inside, looked under the small cot and then said to Michelle, “Do you have a handkerchief?”

  She handed him one, and he used it to pull the shiny object out. It was an earring.

  Michelle examined it. “It’s one of Joan’s.”

  King looked at her skeptically. “How do you know that? It looks like any earring.”

  “To a man, yes. Women notice clothes, hair, jewelry, nails and shoes, just about anything another woman has on her body. Men only notice boobs and butts, usually in that order, and sometimes hair color. It’s Joan’s; she had it on the last time I saw her.”

  “So she was here.”

  “But she’s not now, which means the odds are good she’s still alive,” commented Michelle.

  “She might have dropped it on purpose,” said King.

  “Right. To let us know she was here.”

  While Michelle went to give the earring to Parks, King went into the next cell and shone his light around. He went grid by grid but saw nothing of any relevance. He checked under the bed and bumped his head as he was sliding back out. He stood, rubbed his noggin and noticed that he’d dislodged the small mattress. He bent over to set it straight before he was slapped on the hand for disturbing a crime scene.

  That’s when he saw it. The inscription was right at the edge of the wall where the mattress had covered it. He stooped and directed his light there. It must have been tough going, etching this into the concrete, probably using a fingernail.

  As he read it, something clicked in his head, and he cast his mind back to the truck rolling down toward the cabin. Something Kate had told them was finally beginning to make sense. If it was true, how wrong they’d all been.

  “What are you doing?”

  He whirled around and saw Michelle standing there staring at him.

  “Pretending I’m Sherlock Holmes and failing,” he said with a sheepish look. He glanced over her shoulder. “How’s it going out there?”

  “The tech teams are gearing up to come in. I don’t think they’ll appreciate our presence.”

  “I hear you. Why don’t you go tell Parks we’re going to drive back to Wrightsburg? He can meet us back at my house.”

  Michelle looked around. “I was really hoping that today would answer all our questions. Now we just have more.”

  After Michelle left, King turned back to the wall and again read over what was there, memorizing it. He debated whether to tell the others, but decided to let them find it on their own, if they did. If he was right, this changed everything.

  62

  On the drive back to Wrightsburg King was moodily silent. So much so that Michelle finally gave up any attempt to rouse him from his funk. She dropped him at his house.

  “I’m going to head back to the inn for a while,” she said, “and check out a few things. I guess I should call into the Service. I’m still employed there, after all.”

  “Fine, good idea,” King said absently, averting his gaze.

  “If you don’t want to give me your thoughts for a penny, I’ll go as high as a nickel.” She smiled and touched him lightly on the arm. “Come on, Sean, give it up.”

  “I’m not sure my thoughts right now are even worth a nickel.”

  “You saw something back there, didn’t you?”

  “Not now, Michelle. I need to think some things through.”

  “Okay, but I thought we were partners,” she said, obviously hurt he wasn’t interested in her assistance.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “There is something you can do for me. You still have access to the Secret Service database?”

  “I think so. I had a friend of mine slow-walk my admin leave papers. Actually, after they let me take my vacation time, I’m not sure what my status is. But I can find out quickly enough. I have my laptop back at the inn; I’ll log on and check it out. What do you need to know?” When he told her, she looked very surprised. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Maybe nothing, but maybe everything.”

  “Well, I’m doubtful that’ll be on the Service’s database.”

  “Then find it somewhere else. You’re a pretty good detective.”

  “I’m not sure you really believe that,” she said. “So far all my grand theories haven’t really held up.”

  “If you find out that answer for me, there
will be no doubt left in my mind.”

  She climbed into the truck. “By the way, do you have a gun?”

  He shook his head. “They never gave it back to me.”

  She pulled her pistol out of its holster and handed it to him. “Here. If I were you, I’d sleep with it.”

  “What about you?”

  “Secret Service agents always keep a spare. You know that.”

  Twenty minutes after Michelle left, King climbed into his Lexus and drove to his law office. He’d gone there at least five days a week for years until Howard Jennings had been found dead on the carpet. Now it seemed like a foreign land he was entering for the very first time. The place was cold and dark. He turned on lights and cranked up the heat and looked around at the familiar surroundings. They were a measure of how far he’d pulled himself out of the abyss created by the Ritter assassination. And yet as he admired a tasteful oil painting on the wall, ran his hand along the fine mahogany paneling, looked at the order and calm of the place which reflected that of his beautiful home, he didn’t feel the usual sense of accomplishment and peace. Rather, he felt a kind of emptiness. What had Michelle said? That his home was cold, even a sham? Had he changed that much? Well, he told himself, he’d been forced to. You took the curves life threw, and you either adapted or got left by the side of the road, a self-pitying wreck.

  He trudged to the small room in the lower level housing his law library. Though most research materials were now available on CD, King still liked to see the actual books on the shelves. He went to his Martindale Hubbell directory, which listed every licensed attorney in the country, separated by state. He pulled the volume for California, which, unfortunately, had the largest bar membership in the country. He didn’t find what he was looking for but suddenly realized why. His edition of Martindale was the most recent. Maybe the name he was seeking would be listed in one of the older editions. He had a particular date in mind, but where could he find this listing? In an instant he had answered his own question.

  Thirty-five minutes later he was pulling into a visitor’s parking space at the University of Virginia’s very impressive School of Law, situated on the north campus. He went directly to the law library and found the librarian he’d worked with in the past when he needed resource materials that were beyond the space and monetary limits of a small law practice. When he told her what he needed, she nodded. “Oh, yes, they’re all on disk, but now we subscribe to the on-line service they offer. Let me sign you on. I can just bill it to your account here if that’s all right, Sean.”

  “That’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  She led him to a small room off the main library floor. They passed students sitting at small tables with laptops in front of them dutifully learning that the law can be equal parts exhilarating and stupefying.

  “Sometimes I wish I were a student here again,” King said.

  “You’re not the first to say that. If being a law student paid anything, we’d have lots of permanent ones.”

  The librarian logged him on the system and departed. King settled in front of the PC terminal and went to work. The speed of the computer and ease of the on-line service made his search much easier than the manual one at his office, and it wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for: the name of a certain lawyer in California. After several false hits he was almost sure he’d found the one he was looking for. The lawyer was now deceased. That was why he hadn’t been listed in King’s current directory. But in the 1974 edition the man was front and center.

  The only problem now was to verify that it was indeed the man he was seeking, and such verification couldn’t be found on this database. Fortunately he thought he knew a way to get that confirmation. He called Donald Holmgren, the retired P.D. lawyer who’d initially handled Arnold Ramsey’s defense. When King mentioned the name of the firm and the lawyer, and the other man gasped, he wanted to let out a victorious scream.

  “I’m sure that was it,” said Holmgren. “That’s the man who handled Arnold Ramsey’s defense. He was the one who cut that great deal.”

  As King clicked off his cell phone, so many things began to make sense. And yet there were many places where he was still in the dark.

  If only Michelle would report back to him with the answer he’d been looking for. The answer that would match what had been scratched on the wall of that prison cell. If she did, he might actually find the truth in all this. And if he was right? The thought actually sent chills down his neck, because the logical conclusion to all this was that at some point they’d be coming for him.

  63

  When she got back to the inn where she was staying, Michelle eyed the box in the back of her truck. It contained the files on Bob Scott they’d retrieved from Joan’s room at the Cedars. She carried it up to her room thinking she might go through it again in case Joan had missed something. As she sorted through it, she discovered that Joan’s notes were in the box as well.

  The weather had seesawed back to chilly again, so she stacked pieces of wood and kindling in the fireplace and ignited them with matches and rolled-up newspaper. She ordered some hot tea and food from the inn’s kitchen. After what had happened to Joan, when the tray arrived, Michelle kept a sharp eye on the server and one hand on her pistol until the person left. The room was large and furnished in a graceful yet sumptuous style that would have made Thomas Jefferson smile. The cheery fire enhanced the serene atmosphere; all in all it was a cozy place. However, despite its amenities, the room’s steep cost would have forced her to check out by now had not the Service offered to pick up the tab for her meals and lodging at least for a few days. She was certain they expected a substantial quid pro quo—namely, a reasonable solution to this jagged and maddening case. And they were no doubt aware that she—along with King—had helped develop most of the promising leads so far. Yet she was not so naive that she didn’t realize that paying her lodging bills was a good way for the Service to keep tabs on her.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor, hooked up her computer to the very new-looking data phone line in the wall behind the reproduction eighteenth-century writing desk and went to work on King’s unusual request. As she’d predicted, the answer to his query wasn’t on the Secret Service’s database. She started making calls to Service colleagues. On the fifth try she found someone who could help. She gave the man the information King had given her.

  “Hell yes,” said the agent. “I know because my cousin was in the same damn prison camp, and he came out a skeleton.”

  Michelle thanked him and hung up. She immediately dialed King, who was home by this time.

  “Okay,” she said, barely containing her glee, “first you have to anoint me as the most brilliant detective since Jane Marple.”

  “Marple? I thought you’d say Holmes or Hercule Poirot,” he shot back.

  “They were all right, for men, but Jane stands alone.”

  “Okay, consider yourself so anointed, Miss Smart-ass. What do you have?”

  “You were right. The name you gave me was the name of the village in Vietnam where he was held prisoner and then escaped from. Now, can you tell me what’s going on? Where did you get that name from?”

  King hesitated but then said, “It was scratched on the wall of the prison cell in the Tennessee bunker.”

  “My God, Sean, does that mean what I think?”

  “There was also a Roman numeral two scratched in after the name. Sort of makes sense. It was his second POW camp; I guess that’s the way he was looking at it. First Vietnam, now Tennessee.”

  “So Bob Scott was the prisoner in that cell, and he left the inscription as a way to say so?”

  “Maybe. Don’t forget, Michelle, it could have been left as misdirection, a clue we were meant to find.”

  “But it’s such an obscure one.”

  “True. And there’s the other thing.”

  “What?” she said quickly.

  “The ‘Sir Kingman’ note that was pinned to Susan Whitehead’s body.”


  “You don’t think Scott could have written it? Why?”

  “A number of reasons, but I still can’t be sure.”

  “But assuming Scott isn’t involved, who the hell else is out there?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “I had some legal research to do at the UVA law library.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  “Care to fill me in?”

  “Not yet. I need to think about it some more. But thanks for verifying that info. I’ll talk to you soon… Miss Marple.” He clicked off and Michelle put down her phone, not very pleased with his declining yet again to take her into his confidence.

  “You help a guy out, and you think he’ll return the favor, but nooo!” she complained to the empty room.

  She threw some more wood on the fire and started rummaging through the box of files and Joan’s notes.

  It felt a little awkward reading over the woman’s personal comments on the case, considering she might be dead. Yet Michelle had to admit Joan kept meticulous notes. As she worked through them, she began to have a greater appreciation for the woman’s skill and professionalism as an investigator. Michelle thought about what King had told her about the note Joan received on the morning of Ritter’s murder. The guilt she must have carried all these years, though, seeing a man she cared for being destroyed while her own career rocketed onward and upward. And yet how much could she have really loved him if she chose not to speak up, in effect picking her career over her feelings for Sean King. And how must King have felt?