Eileen Reed - Ground Zero Part 23

"Don't thank me," Eileen said. "This was another lead that I've followed down to the proverbial blank wall. Should something break on this case, however, that points your direction, all the huevos in the world won't keep you out of jail."

"Yes, ma'am," Procell said, his voice light and dizzy with relief. "You won't. I mean, it won't. I promise. I swear it."

"I'm going to have to be going," Eileen said. She balled up her napkin and tossed it on the table. "I really appreciate the breakfast. If you think of anything-"

"I'll call," Procell said eagerly.

"Don't try anything, all right?" Eileen said sternly. "If your conspiracy group Y isn't out there, you know we have Mr. X. Or Miss X. Whoever it was, they killed Art."

"Yes, ma'am," Procell said, trying to look sober but failing. He was euphoric. Eileen felt chilled again as she walked to the door. Procell looked like a victim. The Gamers looked as if they were all marked for death.

22.

The Pentagon.

"What's going on?" Lucy asked Mills. They were in one of the briefing rooms at the Pentagon, the one that was set up like a small movie theater. They'd been escorted there by a Navy lieutenant and asked to wait. That was an hour before. Lucy itched to be back at her computer, finding out more about Muallah.

"I don't know. The Chief told me I had to come over here, and bring you. He said he'd be with us but he's got something too hot to leave. I hope I'm not in trouble."

Lucy smiled wryly. What a total a.s.shole Mills was.

"You want some cookies? I have to eat or I'm going to be sick again."

"No," Mills said nervously. Then he glanced over at her as she opened a package of chocolate-chip cookies. "Well, maybe one," he said.

The cookies made them both feel better, but the sugar increased Mills's nervousness. Lucy stretched out in the comfortable chair and closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to look at him.

"This has to do with the Missile Defense homicides, I'm sure of it," he said.

"You've been pushing me pretty hard on it," Lucy said, her eyes still closed. "Did you know Fouad Muallah has a master's degree?"

"The guy you think killed Tabor in Paris?"

"Yes," Lucy said, pressing her lips together to keep back a sigh. "He did his thesis on an eighth-century Islamic poet, who was supposed to be some sort of Arab Nostradamus or something."

"I wonder why they wanted to see us here at the Pentagon," Mills said worriedly.

"So this terrorist was interested in the Missile Defense system," Lucy continued, wishing she were talking to anyone but Mills. "Why? Why would anyone at less than a governmental level want access to that information? Missile defense isn't a terrorist kind of thing. You can't use it to bomb someone, or threaten someone. So why was he so interested?"

"I haven't done anything wrong," Mills said.

"I'm sure you haven't," Lucy said soothingly, suppressing another sigh.

"I decided to give you the homicide project," Mills said thoughtfully, his knees bouncing to the nervous tapping of his feet. "The DDCIA wanted me to give it to Felix, but I thought you'd be a better man-er, a.n.a.lyst for the job."

"Thanks," Lucy said, and looked over at him in surprise. Felix was only slightly younger than her retired fellow a.n.a.lyst, Bob. "So did you tell the DDCIA you gave the file to me instead of Felix?"

"I did yesterday. He didn't like it, and I don't know why."

"Maybe that's what we're about to find out," Lucy said. Mills stilled his feet with an obvious effort when the door opened.

"Admiral Kane," Mills said, leaping to his feet. "Steven Mills. This is Lucy Giometti."

"h.e.l.lo," the Admiral said. There were lines in his face that were sagging with weariness, but the uniform was sharply creased. "This is my aide, Lieutenant Jefferson." Lucy and Mills nodded at Jefferson, whose face was impa.s.sive above the white of his uniform.

"So you're the girl who has the BMD homicide file," the Admiral said with a charming, grandfatherly smile.

Lucy, who was looking at his eyes, was not fooled by the smile.

"Yes, sir," she said politely.

"Any new developments on the case?"

"Not so far," Steven Mills said as Lucy opened her mouth. She looked over at Mills in amazement. Mills gave her a warning glance, as though to tell her to keep quiet and let him do the talking. Did he think she would suddenly turn into his little fifties mouse now?

"Except for the Fouad Muallah connection," she said smoothly, watching Mills's face flush out of the corner of her eye. "We believe he is the contact for Tabor's information, and probably his murderer."

"But we don't have proof for that, yet," Mills broke in quickly.

"And we're not sure why," Lucy said. "I'm working on some information right now, but that's as far as I've gotten."

"What about the local murders, then?" the Admiral asked.

"The local detective hasn't made any breaks in the case," Lucy admitted. "I don't have any information other than the police and autopsy reports."

"I hear you're quite an arrogant a.n.a.lyst," the Admiral said pleasantly, and for a moment Lucy thought she must have heard him incorrectly. Then she saw the glitter of his eyes.

"You hear right, I suppose," she said, and kept her face pleasant and inquiring. It took an effort. Behind Admiral Kane's shoulder she could see Jefferson, standing quietly. Her heart felt as if someone had just dumped a gallon of adrenaline into her system. She felt the beginnings of a completely unexpected attack.

"You're arrogant, opinionated, and I question your commitment to your job. You leave early, you always take lunch, and you never come in on the weekends."

"And I always get my work done," Lucy said, still calmly.

"I find that astonishing, considering the amount of hours you put in on the job."

"I find it astonishing that some people stretch an eight-hour day into a twelve-hour day without getting anything done," Lucy said. But she could feel her face flushing with emotion. She was itching to track down Muallah and figure out what he was doing, and her time was being wasted with this?

"Did you bring me all the way over here to chew me out? Don't tell me about commitment to a job, Mr. Admiral, sir." She tried to keep from spitting out the words, noticing Mills's white and desperate face and ignoring it. "Commitment doesn't mean spending time at work or brownnosing the boss. Commitment means applying your mind to your work, which I do. I can get my job done in forty hours, and I do. I love my job. But you can't destroy my life just because I love my job. You can't ransom my brain and my skills. You don't like my work, tell Steve to fire me. It won't even disturb my sleep." There was a silence in the tiny room. Lucy could see Jefferson's broad and delighted grin behind the shoulder of his boss. She tried to calm her racing heart. She sat down without permission and crossed her legs deliberately. She'd learned in a thousand family arguments that the most infuriating position to take was one of calm superiority. It worked on her brothers, anyway.

"You question my commitment?" she said, and closed her eyes as though she were bored with the conversation. She clenched her hands against the armrests of her chair to keep them from trembling. "You're the Missile Defense commander in chief and you've got fourteen dead scientists. Now you've got a dead spy. What are you doing about that? The same nothing you've been doing for years?"

The Admiral laughed aloud.

"Just checking, Mrs. Giometti," he said. "You're about to become one of a few dozen people in the world to know this particular part of history, and I wanted to make sure you were up to the task."

Lucy opened her eyes and saw the changed face of the Admiral smiling tiredly at her. He looked grandfatherly and kindly. Mills, at her other side, was still pale and shocked.

"What the h.e.l.l?" she started, and Admiral Kane held up a hand.

"Let me explain. Steve Mills here is CIA to the core. He'll never leave. You might. You might walk out the door tomorrow, as you put it so succinctly. That's why we wanted Felix to have this file. You ended up with it." The Admiral threw a steely glance at Mills, who paled even further, although it didn't seem possible. "But what's done is done.

"I wanted to see what you were made of, Lucy," Kane said. "You aren't going to like what I'm going to say. You could damage national security by knowing this information, but you could damage national security by not knowing this information. So I had to decide."

He grinned at her, and she felt a reluctant and helpless liking for him.

"That's why they put me in this getup, to make these decisions. I'm going to show you something, and let you make your own decision."

"About what?" Lucy asked evenly.

"I've sent word to an Air Force captain named Stillwell. Alan Stillwell. He's the OSI officer that should have taken on this Schriever investigation. He'll be at Schriever tomorrow night, and he's going to take over the investigation from the civilian detective."

The Admiral looked calmly at Lucy. "He will be told to cover up the entire incident. No more waves. No news. He'll bury it as deep as every other homicide on this case. As of tomorrow night, the Schriever incident will be closed."

Colorado Springs.

"Mrs. Bailey?" Eileen asked.

"No, I'm Susan. I'm her neighbor. Who are you?"

"Detective Eileen Reed, ma'am, Colorado Springs Police. I'm investigating the murder of Terry Guzman and Arthur Bailey." She held up her badge.

The one eye she could see through the chain on the door regarded her doubtfully. The eye looked at her badge, back at her face, then crinkled in what could be a smile or a grimace of worry.

"Come on in, then, Detective. Meg is here, and I think she's up. I fixed her some soup an hour or so ago, and she ate some of it."

The woman fumbled with the chain for a moment. The door swung open and a slender, lovely girl looked at her. Eileen blinked in surprise, then looked at the eyes again. The woman was in her forties around her eyes, and in her twenties everywhere else, from the boyish curve of hips to the curly black hair.

"I'm Susan Lazecki. I've been taking care of Meg since we found out. Come on in."

Eileen followed the girl-woman, she corrected herself-down a dark hallway and into another sunny family area. This one was scattered with toys and papers and magazines in an untidy mess. A huge gray cat was sleeping on a pile of laundry in a basket. Eileen looked at the clean clothes in the basket and got an uncomfortable image of Meg Bailey, worried, getting ready to fold laundry, setting down the basket to answer the phone call that would destroy her life.

Susan Lazecki turned around in the family room and regarded Eileen nervously.

"Please don't treat her badly."

"I just want to ask her some questions. I knew Art Bailey, Mrs. Lazecki. I was working on the murder of Terry Guzman when this happened."

That was the wrong thing to say. The young face with the old eyes sparkled with tears.

"Why couldn't you stop it?"

"I've been asking myself that question since last night at eleven-thirty, Mrs. Lazecki. I haven't had any sleep since the news came in. I still haven't caught the murderer." Eileen didn't like the taste of the words in her own mouth. She was tired and upset. She wanted to be Harben, seemingly capable of dismissing emotion when it interfered with her thought process. She sighed, and held out her hand.

Mrs. Lazecki regarded it, and her, and then shook Eileen's hand. Her hand was small, but her handshake was very firm.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just-please don't hurt her. She didn't want to cry, and didn't want to cry, and then she let it go all at once. I haven't slept either, Miss-er-"

"Eileen Reed. Call me Eileen."

"Eileen. She got up an hour or so ago, and I fixed her lunch. And I-"

"Susan tries to protect me, I think," said a soft voice from the stairs. Eileen and Susan Lazecki turned to look. Meg Bailey stood at the foot of the stairs, dressed in dark sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Meg had brown hair and soft brown eyes and fair skin that was gray and lined with grief. She would be pretty, perhaps, with love and happiness in her face.

"I'll be okay to talk for a little while," she said, and let go of the banister to walk to the dining-room table. It looked like an effort. She sat down and gazed at Eileen. "I'll just sit here, is that all right?"

"Will you be okay?" Susan said.

"I'll be okay. Art talked about you, Miss Reed. He said you were working very hard on solving Terry's murder."

"Did he tell you why he went out to Schriever last night?" Eileen asked, taking a seat at the table. Meg's hands clenched on the tabletop.

"No, he didn't. He's the kind of man who gets up in the middle of the night when he thinks-thought-of something, and then off he'd go to work. He'd catch up on his sleep later. He-" Here Meg's voice scaled down to a harsh whisper. "We were reading, we'd put the kids to bed, and he stopped reading and looked at the wall. Then he got up and got dressed and kissed me good-bye, and then he went. That was it. Your other officer, Detective Rosen, he asked me this too."

"I'm sorry I'm covering the same ground," Eileen said. "I don't want to waste your time, but I wanted to speak to you personally. Also, I wanted to look at Art's office, if he has one."

Meg was already shaking her head.

"We don't have one. What could he bring home? We have the kitchen organizer, that's where we sit and do bills. Would you like to look through that?"

"I'd like to, please," Eileen said. "Detective Rosen already looked, though, didn't he?"

Both women nodded their heads at the same time. Eileen sighed. Well, she had expected that.

"Detective Rosen was just a.s.signed to the case," Eileen explained. "He's good, and he'll give me a thorough report, but he might have missed something. At least, that's what I'm hoping."

"What are you looking for, Detective?" Meg asked.

"Something to tell me why he went out there. Can you remember anything different about what he did last night? Did he make a phone call, or did anyone call here? Someone had to know he went out there."

"He did make a call," Meg said, and scrubbed her hands across her face. She started crying but didn't seem to realize it. "I told the policeman that too. He made it from the kitchen. Sometimes he calls Nelson to tell him he'll be going in. Sometimes he calls Joe, if he needs Joe to meet him there."

"Joe wasn't home," Susan said quickly.

"You know him?"

"He's a friend of the family," Meg answered for Susan. "Don't get defensive, Joe's been cleared. That's what the other detective said. Isn't that right?"