The Good Guy with a Gun (Jim McGill series Book 6) Page 30

  Even at a place like Danbury, far from the worst federal lockup, some of the inmates had no use for snitches. The possibility that a prisoner there might try to kill Erna for her betrayal was real. Under the possible threat of death, Erna had been studying under the guidance of volunteer faculty from Northwestern Theological Seminary to earn her doctorate of divinity.

  If she achieved that goal, she would be allowed to preach to women throughout the federal prison system by means of streaming video and podcasts.

  “I’ll leave for Danbury in the next half-hour,” Galia told the president.

  “Has Joan Renshaw been transferred from Hazelton yet?”

  The United States Penitentiary in Hazelton, West Virginia was the only maximum security federal prison for women in the country. Erna Godfrey had been incarcerated there before her cooperation with the government had earned her a step-down to less harsh confinement.

  Galia nodded. “She should be arriving later today.”

  “She’ll be sharing a cell with Erna?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Both women have been told their housing is a matter of cost efficiency.”

  “How is Erna doing with her scholastic efforts?”

  “Very well. The report I read calls her an extraordinary student, not only dedicated to her studies but able to challenge her professors in their thinking, as well as learning from them.”

  “Well, good for her.”

  “Two questions have crossed my mind about this visit, Madam President.”

  “Yes?”

  “Erna Godfrey has already snitched for us once, what if she doesn’t want to do it again? And what if she wants to speak with you?”

  The president said, “If either situation arises, Erna and I will have a chat.”

  Chapter 22

  30,000 feet above South Carolina

  The G150 was a relatively modest private jet compared to its Gulfstream siblings. It carried only six passengers in its executive layout. But it could haul ass. Normal cruising speed was 610 miles per hour, and it could jack that number up a bit if you were in a real hurry. The plane’s ceiling was 45,000 feet but the flight north from Miami to Washington, DC was smooth as glass right where the pilot, Arturo Gonzales, had it.

  Gonzales was on the sunset side of sixty, but he was lean and fit, had stopped smoking decades ago upon fleeing Cuba, drank only moderately and by his own assertion had sex only with señoritas who gave him a good aerobic workout.

  He’d been trained to fly the F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber by the U.S. Navy, in cooperation with the CIA. For one giddy month or so the Calle Ocho exiles thought they’d have their own squadron of F-4s to take out any defenses Castro might have to stop an invasion from Miami. Then the Cuban missile crisis and the escalation of the war in Vietnam put an end to that plan.

  A product of the 1960s, the F-4 had a cruising speed a bit slower that the modern G150, but the fighter-bomber’s top end had been 1,473 miles per hour or what Gonzales called “fast enough to get away from your mistress’s husband and your wife’s divorce lawyer, both.” For him, the Gulfstream’s cruising speed was like idling your car looking for a parking space.

  “You good back there, Jerry?” Gonzales called through the intercom.

  Jerry Nerón said, “The ride’s so smooth I could be making you a new suit.”

  Gonzales laughed. “I don’t doubt it.”

  Jerry had made the tuxedo the pilot had worn at his daughter’s wedding. He’d confided to Jerry that he’d told his new son-in-law that he still had access to an armed F-4, and he’d be happy to drop napalm on the young man if he ever made Arturo’s daughter cry.

  Making marital fidelity a concern for some men more than others.

  While Jerry had never thought of using napalm to make a hit, he could have brought any kind of gun he wanted aboard the private aircraft. He decided not to do that. He’d used two firearms last time: his own and that goddamn thing he’d taken from the SOB who’d used it to shoot all those poor kids. He should have know that using Abel Mays’ weapon would bring bad luck. Stephen King would have figured that shit out right away.

  In any case, he chose to go with edged weapons this time.

  Throw a little confusion the cops’ way.

  Hide his killing tools in plain sight.

  Not one person in a million would guess what he had in mind.

  Well, maybe one, but no more than that.

  “Be on the ground in less than an hour, Jerry,” Gonzales called. “Weather isn’t as warm as Miami. Remember to button up.”

  “Roger that,” Jerry said.

  He and Gonzales both laughed.

  Jerry had never been a pilot.

  But Gonzales had been one of the men who’d carried off the remains of Galtero Blanco.

  He knew Jerry had what it took to engage in mortal combat.

  C&O Canal National Historical Park

  Dr. Hasna Kalil had agreed to meet with Byron DeWitt, but she wanted to go back to Billy Goat Trail A. She was wearing the same beret, trench coat, black slacks and rubber soled shoes as before. Her face, if anything, looked harder than ever.

  Detective Tara Lang of the Park Police kept the random passersby at a distance.

  “You’ve heard the DNA results?” she asked. She and DeWitt were standing next to the crevasse where the remains of Hasna Kalil’s brother had been found. “There is no question this is where Bahir’s body was dumped.”

  “I heard. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Are you?”

  “Well, assuming you and your brother were on good terms, I am. In any case, I regret it when anyone is murdered.”

  She stared at DeWitt. He accepted the pressure from her eyes without pushing back. He’d learned long ago that was the way to win a visual challenge. You let the other person do all the work. They’d get tired before you did, as happened right now.

  Dr. Kalil turned her gaze back to the gash in the earth.

  “I was close to Bahir. For most of our adult lives we lived far apart. But whenever the calendar brought us to a day with special meaning, we always talked to one another. I’ll never know that happiness again.”

  Having already expressed his feelings, DeWitt remained silent.

  Dr. Kalil looked back at him, without confrontation this time.

  “Have you learned what sort of object shattered my brother’s skull?”

  “We know the size, shape and approximate weight.”

  “You also measured the bone density of the areas adjacent to the fracture?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “Your brother was most likely killed with a lug wrench. From the angle and the dimensions of the fracture, we concluded he was bent forward at the waist and the blow was struck from behind.”

  “He was taken by surprise,” Dr. Kalil said, “but was it a matter of theft or betrayal?”

  “There’s no way to determine motive from the physical evidence. The state of decomposition of your brother’s remains indicates that he’d been left out here for a long time. Too long for any traces of blood or soft tissue to survive. We found no fragments of bone, but they might have been washed away by the rain or swept away by the wind. So we don’t know if he was killed nearby or somewhere else.”

  “Not here.”

  “No? Why not?” DeWitt asked.

  “Bahir was not an outdoorsman. He was a city person. Besides, he was about to come home. He might have stopped for a meal before going to the airport. He would not have come out to a wilderness area.”

  DeWitt nodded. “If he did dine out on his last night in Washington, do you have any idea of who might have joined him? Or did he keep to himself?”

  “Have you asked the Jordanian embassy if they might help you?”

  “I did. So did the Park Police. Your embassy expressed their regrets. They were unable to be of help. I had to conclude that they were trying to preserve your brother’s privacy as well as that of their king’s governmen
t. I’m sure you also must have asked the embassy for help. Did you do any better?”

  Dr. Kalil cranked up her stare again, but only for a moment.

  She was a quick learner. She stuck a hand in a pocket of her trench coat and pulled out a piece of folded paper. She gave it to DeWitt.

  He unfolded it, saw it was a photocopy of a list of names.

  Some of them he knew; others he didn’t. One jumped out. He kept a straight face, refolded the sheet of paper and put it in a pocket.

  “If we find the person who killed your brother,” DeWitt asked, “what would you like to see happen to him?”

  The veil of polish, education and even civilization fell from Hasna Kalil’s face.

  The visage that remained was primal and vengeful.

  “I don’t know exactly what I would do, but it would be something truly awful … gruesome down to the smallest detail.”

  That fit exactly with what the CIA suspected of Dr. Kalil, according to Oscar Rogers. He’d told DeWitt that she did wonderful humanitarian work for an internationally respected organization of concerned physicians. In her free time, though, she’d disappear from public view and use her surgical skills to inflict dimensions of pain on her victims that brutes wielding crude instruments could only envy.

  All in the name of establishing the global caliphate.

  So far, though, Hasna Kalil’s dark side was a matter of legend not proof.

  But Rogers had said if it were up to him, she’d be on the Agency’s date-with-a-drone list.

  And her reply to DeWitt made him think his CIA friend’s judgment was on the mark.

  She hadn’t said what she’d like to do; she’d implied what she would do.

  “Are you shocked, Mr. DeWitt?” Dr. Kalil asked.

  “Sure. Preserving the ability to be shocked is essential to being able to understand both yourself and the world around you. It’s when you get emotionally callused you can go off the deep end.”

  That seemed to disturb Hasna Kalil.

  The very idea that she might be mistaken about anything.

  “You will let me know if you make an arrest?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  Once we have the bastard safely locked up, he thought.

  Although threatening the killer with being delivered to Dr. Kalil might be a card to play, too, should there be an advantage to that. He hadn’t said so, but there were times when DeWitt could shock himself.

  Winstead School Football Field — Washington, DC

  “Damn, that was fast,” Ellie Booker said to her videocam operator.

  The cameraman nodded.

  McGill had called her immediately after his meeting with the president. Told her not to bother looking for a car thief; the Metro cops had already pinched the guy who’d boosted the car that interested him. Ellie’s response had been predictable.

  “Does that mean you don’t owe me the favor we talked about?”

  “It means I don’t want you to waste your time, and I have another favor I’m going to do for you.”

  Ellie couldn’t keep the suspicion out of her voice.

  She felt McGill was playing her like a fiddle.

  “What’re you going to do for me?”

  He told her to get over to the Winstead School with a camera. They were going to make some news over there. She’d get the exclusive. Go to the football field.

  Call him when she was done covering the story.

  So there they were and she had to admit it, there was a story here.

  Not fifty yards from where the school’s football players and coaches had died, opposite the scoreboard that tallied the school’s fortunes on the playing field was a new structure. At the moment, it was still draped, but the school’s headmaster, Geoffrey Cooper, had greeted them, told them Mr. McGill had called ahead to say they were coming.

  He told them what would be unveiled shortly.

  Ellie’s expression said she didn’t believe him.

  Cooper had nodded: Believe it.

  Then he’d gone to talk with a group of parents and one guy who looked nervous.

  Ellie hadn’t been invited to join that little discussion group so she did the next best thing. She discreetly took a photo of them with her phone. She’d identify their faces later and see if there was a story she should pursue, what those people might be saying.

  Then she and her video guy set up to get a straight-on shot of the unveiling.

  The bleachers around them filled in with students, parents, faculty. All of the faculty and some of the parents and students looked like everyday middle-class people to Ellie. A majority of the parents and students, though, looked as if they’d never missed a ski season in Aspen much less a meal. More interesting than that were the expressions on their faces.

  These people were spoiling for a fight.

  And with their money, if not their knuckles, they could do some damage.

  The young man who stepped to the microphone on the field looked like he could do both. Ellie recognized Hal Walker, former quarterback from Winstead and Stanford, the expected number one choice overall in the upcoming NFL draft.

  Headmaster Cooper joined him, shook his hand and spoke first. “I’d like to thank everyone for coming out to join us today. This is as solemn an occasion as any I’ve known in my twenty-eight years in education, but it is also a time for everyone here to be strong and to share our strength with everyone we meet. I now have the privilege of introducing Hal Walker, Winstead class of 2010. Hal.”

  Walker embraced Cooper before stepping to the microphone.

  Before the young athlete said a word, tears rolled down his face.

  He made no move to wipe them away.

  “To the families, friends and colleagues of the players and coaches who died here at Winstead last Saturday, I can only say that my heart has been broken, too. When I first heard the news, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. Something that bad couldn’t happen at a place like Winstead. Only it did.

  “And if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. We can’t forget that. Even more important, we can’t let anyone else forget it either. If someone like the man who killed our sons, husbands, and brothers — my brothers — can do what he did here, it can happen an-y-where.

  “That’s why we decided this is the appropriate place to put up a memorial to all the wonderful boys and men who died here at Winstead.”

  Walker keyed a remote control and the draping fell from the new structure.

  It was a National Gun Death Counter. It was up and running. The number on the board went up by one the second it was visible.

  Hal Walker said, “I hate that thing. I hate that it’s necessary, but if it’s up to me, that’s right where it will stay. Until we don’t need it anymore. That’s when the people we lost will rest in peace. Then I’ll be the first one to take a sledgehammer to it, and we can put up something new and beautiful.”

  Walker sobbed and Cooper hugged him again.

  Then the headmaster stepped to the mike again.

  “I think everyone here should know that all six schools in the Tripartite Athletic Conference, of which Winstead is a member, have decided to put up their own counters, not necessarily on their playing fields, but in prominent public locations. Winstead has also contacted independent and public schools throughout the country asking them to join the effort.

  “Families here are raising funds to help schools that can’t afford to put up their own counters. We’ll also be spearheading other projects to help other schools avoid the type of tragedy that has so deeply afflicted the souls of everyone here. Thank you all for coming.”

  Ellie looked at the people around her. Just about everyone was crying. She couldn’t keep herself from feeling their pain and tears welled up in her eyes. The one thing that made her feel a little better was she could see that everyone was pissed off, too. These people, with all their resources, were going to kick some ass.

  Then the news pro in her reas
serted itself. Jeez, this was going to be a big story. For a long, long time, too.

  With that realization came a question.

  What was she going to owe McGill now?

  Chapter 23

  Federal Correctional Institution — Danbury, Connecticut

  The warden’s office looked to Galia like the typical space of someone two-thirds of the way up the federal bureaucratic ladder. The furnishings and lighting were comfortable and adequate respectively. But there were no homey touches at all. No family photographs, no plaques or awards from community organizations.

  There were the American and Connecticut flags flanking the warden’s desk.

  A photograph of the warden taken in dress uniform during her days as a colonel in the Connecticut State Police hung on the wall directly behind her desk chair. It was meant to convey a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude and it did. Even so, Jeanette Timkins had been nothing but gracious to Galia since her arrival, had met her at the main gate and walked her past all the security checkpoints where other visitors would have to prove they weren’t trying to smuggle weapons or contraband into the prison.

  Galia had decided the moment she set foot on the prison grounds that she would rather die than be incarcerated. Entering Danbury had also forced her to do a quick mental review of all the questionable campaign moves she’d made during her long career in politics. Some had skirted the edge of the law; a few might have tiptoed over the line ever so slightly.

  Thank God those indiscretions had happened when she was much younger. The statute of limitations had long since expired on them. Now, in her advancing years, one visit to a federal prison had scared her straight. There’d be no more cutting corners for her. Probably.

  Warden Timkins brought Galia a cup of coffee and sat with her at the office’s conference table. “This place makes you nervous, doesn’t it, Ms. Mindel?”