Chapter Ten
Sam went through the kitchen to her father’s room in what used to be the dining room.
Skip was in his recliner with the football game on TV.
It had been a while since Sam had seen him anywhere other than in his wheelchair or bed, but since the surgery to remove the bullet in his spine, he’d been spending more time in the specially outfitted recliner, which was a sign of progress, albeit limited progress.
“Hey, there,” she said.
His face lit up with pleasure at the sight of her. “Hey, baby girl. How’s it going over in the infirmary?”
“Much better today.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Sam bent to kiss his forehead. “How’s the game?” she asked, though she already knew the Washington team was losing.
She sat in the other recliner. “Different week, same story. What’re you up to?”
“So the situation with Hamilton’s son has gotten complicated.”
“How so?”
“Hamilton started calling Josh every fifteen minutes this morning, which is apparently more than he’s called his son in the last five years combined. That freaked out Josh, and he bolted from custody. We’re looking for him.”
“I was going to call you because I saw an alert on the crawler that the director has issued a statement saying his son is mentally ill and off his medication, and the family is looking for him.”
Sam felt lightheaded all of a sudden. “He said what? Josh isn’t mentally ill. He’s terrified his father is going to find him and kill him.”
“He should be,” Malone said as he came into the room looking flustered. “There’s a world of difference between Hamilton’s public image and his true self. The guy’s a ruthlessly ambitious son of a bitch, and I wouldn’t put it past him to kill his own son if it suited his agenda.”
Shocked by Malone’s unusually forceful statement, she said, “Is he capable of kidnapping someone else’s child and raising him as his own?”
“I spent a month shadowing him, and I wouldn’t put anything past that guy.”
“How is it possible that I’ve never heard anything but praise and adulation where he’s concerned?”
“Because that’s what he wants you to hear. Troy Hamilton’s public image is a carefully crafted work of fiction.”
“Jake’s right,” Skip said. “I remember when you shadowed him and came back with stories about the only thing bigger than his arrogance was his ego.”
“Exactly.”
“We need to rip his life apart,” Sam said. “Dig into his past. I want to know where he was thirty years ago this week when Taylor went missing.”
Malone frowned at her. “I hate to remind you that you’re suspended—”
Sam waved him off. “I’ll do it on my own time and my own dime.” Her phone rang and she removed it from her pocket to check the caller ID. “It’s Hill.”
“Take the call and get him over here,” Malone said.
“Hi, Avery.”
“You want to tell me why you people are looking for my director’s son?”
“Come over to my dad’s, and I’ll tell you why.”
Unprepared for her easy capitulation, Hill said, “Oh, um… Okay. I’ll be there in ten.”
Sam slapped the phone closed. “He’s on his way.”
“Is this going to blow up in our faces, Jake?” Skip asked, speaking of the department—as he always did—as if he were still an active member.
“It all depends on how quickly we can locate Josh and what Hamilton does when he finds out we’ve got him in custody.”
“He took off without his wallet or any of his stuff,” Sam said. “He does have his phone, though.”
“Then he won’t get far,” Malone said. “We need to figure out who his friends are and who he might go to for help.”
“From what he told us, he’s not close to his family at all,” Sam said.
“How about colleagues?”
“He worked for VA. I can try to find out where and see if I can talk to some of the people he worked with.”
“On your own time, of course,” Malone said.
“Of course. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything on the department’s time while serving out my suspension.”
Malone grunted out a laugh. “Sure you wouldn’t.”
“Is he insulting me?” Sam asked her father. “I think he’s insulting me.”
“He’s speaking the truth, baby girl.”
Sam scowled playfully at her father. “I expect better from you than that.”
“A few more hours in the woodshed might’ve been time well spent with this one, Skip,” Malone said, using his thumb to point at Sam.
“She came out this way. I did what I could with her.”
Sam was saved the bother of coming up with a witty retort to that when Avery Hill came into the room, looking pissed off.
“That was quick.” Though she had absolutely no interest in him whatsoever, she was struck nonetheless by how incredibly good-looking the agent was, especially when wearing well-faded denim, a navy-blue sweater and black ski jacket.
His golden brown hair was windblown and his face red from the cold.
“I was at Eastern Market with Shelby when I got a text from one of my people saying you guys issued an APB for the director’s son. You want to tell me what that’s about?”
“Where’s Shelby?”
“In the car.”
“Tell her to come in!” Sam said. “She can’t sit in the cold.”
“She’s fine. The heat’s on, and she’s talking to her sister on the phone.”
“Lieutenant,” Malone said, “you want to bring Agent Hill up to speed on why we’re looking for Josh Hamilton?”
Not really, Sam wanted to say, but instead she cleared her throat and forced herself to meet the golden gaze that had once looked at her with much more than collegial interest. Thankfully, he’d backed off on that bullshit since he got engaged to Shelby.
“Josh Hamilton came to HQ on Friday looking for me. He said he would only talk to me. As you and the rest of the world know, I was suspended. He waylaid me as I was leaving and told me he’d been surfing the net at work and stumbled upon an age-progressed photo of a missing child that was a dead ringer for him. ”
Other than his eyes widening ever so slightly, Avery’s expression didn’t change.
“Do you know Josh?”
“I’ve met him a couple of times.”
“Captain, may I borrow your phone?” Sam asked.
Malone rolled his eyes, mocking her refusal to upgrade from her trusty flip phone, and handed over his smart phone after punching in the code.
Sam went to the browser and found the link to the photo and showed it to Avery.
“Holy shit,” he said in a whisper.
“That’s what Josh said, too. He was totally freaked out and came right to me.”
“Why you?”
“Um, well, you might not have heard, but I have a bit of a reputation for being pretty good at my job.”
Avery groaned. “Christ, I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
“You asked.”
“Children,” Malone said sternly. “Get on with it.”
Sam told him everything that’d happened since she encountered Josh Hamilton on Friday, culminating with the news that he’d bolted from protective custody and was convinced his father was out to kill him.
“Seriously?” Avery said. “And you believe him?”
“Detective Cruz and I agreed that his concerns seemed legitimate.”
“Do you honestly believe that Troy Hamilton, one of the most revered and well-respected men in law enforcement, would be capable of kidnapping and murder?”
Sam chose her words carefully, knowing how difficult it had to be for him to hear this about his revered director. “I’m sorry to say, Agent Hill, that in my line of work, you quickly discover that about everyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances.”
“Troy Hamilton is not capable of murder. He’s spent his entire adult life working to apprehend criminals and to make this country safer for all of us. That you would even suggest such a thing is so far beyond egregious I don’t even have a word for it.”
“I understand how you feel—”
“Do you? Do you really? How could you possibly understand when you have no relationship with him, when you haven’t worked for him for more than a decade and seen him in action on a daily basis?
You have no earthly idea how I feel. How would you feel if I insinuated that your beloved Uncle Joe was capable of murder? ”
Touché. “Look, I hear what you’re saying, and what I meant to say is I know how difficult it is to hear this, but the fact remains that his son was scared shitless that his father was coming after him and was convinced that if Troy caught him, he’d kill him.
He told us Hamilton used him as a punching bag every chance he got when Josh was a kid. ”
“Hamilton said the kid is mentally ill and off his meds.”
“Yes, he said that.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I spent hours with him on Friday. Detective Cruz was with him Friday night through this afternoon, and not for one second in all of that time did we pick up on anything that smacked of mental illness. Cruz’s father is bipolar.
As he said, if the guy was mentally ill, he’d have picked up on it.
There were no indicators of that whatsoever. ”
“Having a bipolar father doesn’t make him an expert on mental illness.”
“Granted. But it does make him more acutely aware of certain behaviors that might indicate an underlying issue. The only underlying issue we detected from Josh Hamilton was abject fear.”
Avery ran a hand through his hair, as he processed what Sam was telling him. “If you accuse him of this, and you’re wrong, the nightmare you’ll bring down upon yourself and your department, not to mention the implications for your husband, will be epic. You know that, right?”
Sam had to admit she hadn’t given the first thought to how this situation might affect Nick, but he would tell her to do her job and not worry about him. “I get it. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m only passing along the facts as they’ve been presented to me.”
“Jesus,” Avery muttered. “I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”
“We’re waiting on DNA before we accuse anyone of anything. In the meantime, we’re looking for Josh because he was concerned for his welfare, not because we necessarily think Director Hamilton is going to have him killed.”
“This whole thing is nothing short of preposterous.”