CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
How do they do this?” Irene moaned,
resting her head in her hands. “They just evaporate. Like they were
never here.” Not counting the fitful forty-five minutes on the
plane where she forced herself to sit with her eyes closed, she’d
been without sleep for nearly thirty hours. The last time she
remembered feeling this bad was when she’d graduated high school
and spent seven days in a beach house playing drinking games. “What
are we missing, Paul?”
Paul Boersky, looking remarkably natty
by comparison, stared out the window of the state police barracks
and considered his response. Built in the early fifties, the
barracks was even dumpier than the squad room in Phoenix. By the
look of the place, little had been updated since the first day of
occupancy. The yellow cinderblock walls had been rendered even
yellower by decades of nicotine, and while the floors appeared to
have been recently waxed, the janitor would have been well advised
to spend his time in a more fruitful endeavor, given the number of
missing tiles.
“What are we missing?” Paul restated.
“Not a thing except the Donovans.” He turned away from the window
and helped himself to a folding chair.
Irene lowered her forehead onto the
Formica tabletop. “Very funny,” she growled.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” he
defended himself. “I’m serious as a heart attack. I think we know
everything that’s out there to know. Problem is, we can’t read
their minds.”
“We’re the FBI,” she reminded him.
“Mind reading is in the job description.”
He drained his Styrofoam cup, then
leaned forward, forearms on the table. “Look, we know these two are
getting help from Harry Sinclair.”
Her head came up. “We do? We
know that?”
He shrugged. “Okay, we don’t have
evidence to indict, but what the hell? I mean, they have their kid
call him, and then he scrambles the call and disappears. That’s
quite a coincidence.”
She weighed the logic. “So they’re
that much more likely to disappear for another fourteen years.
Wonderful. Is this old man their only family?”
Paul replied through a giant yawn.
“The only family they could turn to. Jake’s parents are both
dead—the mother just a couple of years ago and the father when he
was just a kid. In fact, when Mama kicked the bucket, the
Philadelphia office flooded the church and cemetery with undercover
agents, just in case Jake showed up to pay his respects. On the
other side, Carolyn’s dad disappeared when she was little—you knew
that. But her mom’s in a home now, blowing spit bubbles and picking
imaginary bugs off her blankets.”
Irene winced at the imagery.
“Sensitive as always. Okay, so we’re not missing anything. Let me
rephrase the question: How are we going to find them and get them
back?”
Paul took a deep breath through his
nose and let it go. “Well, as things stand now, we have to wait for
them to make a mistake—something they seem unwilling to do. If we
get a good solid connect between Sinclair and the Donovans,
though—something better than a bloodline and a telephone call—we
can get a warrant to dig deeper into Sinclair’s contacts, to see
who he’s using to help them disappear.”
She shook her head. Every argument
became a circle all of a sudden. “Never happen,” she sighed. “The
Bureau’s launched too many fishing trips against him over the
years. The U.S. Attorney for the Chicago District is too
intimidated by Sinclair’s juice to go back to the well with
anything short of a smoking gun.”
She straightened in her seat and
arched her spine over the chair back to stretch the weary muscles.
“They’re just so damned calculating,” she said. “I keep thinking
back to the moment I first arrested him.” Before I brought all this crap down on
myself. “He was so cool—arrogant, even. So pissed off
that I would suspect him of using drugs.” She chuckled. “As opposed
to mass murder, for God’s sake. What must he have been thinking? He
had to be shitting bricks, but he never showed a thing. What does
that say about a man?”
Paul answered without hesitation. “It
says he’s had a lot of time to practice. He’s been preparing for
this moment for over a decade.”
No, there was more to it than that.
What would breed that kind of complacency, that kind of
self-awareness? Her mind replayed the details of the raid on Marcus
Ford, and she saw Donovan standing there, revolver in hand. She
remembered that hesitation that no one else wanted to talk about.
Was he prepared to shoot? Was he planning to shoot? Why else would
he be armed, but to effect his escape? He said it was for defense,
but was that believable? Didn’t everyone who took up arms do so
with a notion to attack? Of course they did.
So why didn’t he attack, then? Because
he never stood a chance? Maybe . . .
An opening door interrupted her
thoughts as a trooper who looked to be fourteen poked his head into
the tiny classroom office. “Excuse me, Agent Rivers,” the trooper
said. “The sergeant thought you’d like to know that your boss is on
CNN.”
Eyebrows raised all around, and Irene
and Paul shared a look before following the trooper out to the tiny
lunchroom, where an ancient television sat wedged into a corner of
the counter. From the looks of things, Peter Frankel was holding
court with his fans in the press, standing behind a lectern bearing
the seal of the FBI. A tangle of microphones obscured most of his
chest. Irene had to hand it to him. Here was a man born to be on
television. His white smile, blue eyes, and quick wit were
everything J. Edgar could have hoped for.
“I don’t think that’s relevant at this
point, Gail,” the deputy director said in response to an unheard
question. “What’s relevant is justice. Senator Albricht is first
and foremost a citizen of the United States, and as such, he is
innocent until proven guilty . . .”
“What’s he talking about?” Irene asked
the young trooper.
The trooper laughed. “Apparently, the
senator from the great state of Illinois has a thing for diddling
kids.”
Irene turned to Paul. “Was this on
television this morning? Something about magazine subscriptions and
club memberships?”
Paul shrugged. “Got me. I spent the
morning sleeping.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the trooper interjected.
“That’s how he got discovered. Somebody leaked it to the
press.”
Irene turned her attention back to the
television. Sooner or later, she figured, the Donovans would come
up.
“Given his staunch opposition to your
nomination as FBI director,” a reporter asked from off-camera,
“some have suggested that perhaps you leaked this information,
sir.”
Frankel’s face turned sour as he
regarded the reporter with a look of utter contempt. “I find that
question offensive, Brett,” he said, struggling for control. “You
just tell those people that they’re wrong.” He pointed to another
unseen reporter, and then, before the question could be asked, he
turned back to Brett. “I’m the deputy director of the FBI, for
God’s sake. How dare you even imply such a thing.” He paused for a
long moment, silently daring the reporter to ask a follow-up. When
Brett failed to do so, Frankel shifted his eyes again. “I’m sorry,
Helen, it was your turn.”
“Mr. Frankel, some fifteen years ago,
the perpetrators of the Newark, Arkansas, hazardous waste incident
got away on your watch. You yourself have called it the most
embarrassing moment in your career. Now here we are again: Jake and
Carolyn Donovan were in custody, and your agency lost them yet
another time. Any comments, sir?”
As the question was presented, Frankel
looked first pained, then a little saddened, and, finally, the tiny
edge of a smirk appeared on his lips. “Have I told you how lovely
you look today, Helen?” he quipped. Laughter burst among the
reporters. When the noise subsided, he was all business again,
talking around a boyish grimace of embarrassment. “What can I say?
Yes and yes. We have our finest people working on the Donovan case,
but as things stand, they’re still at large, and we can use any
help that the public is willing to offer to get them back in
custody.”
Irene laughed in spite of her hatred
for the man. “God, he’s good.”