Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The muted sound of a TV grew louder when a door opened behind them and a blond-haired woman emerged. She blinked. “I thought I heard voices.” She gazed expectantly at Travers.
“Honey, this is Gary Mitchell and Dan Porter. I work with them.”
She frowned for a second; then her forehead smoothed out. “Gary. Didn’t you come here last year for our Labor Day barbecue? Your face is familiar.”
Gary smiled. “Yes, ma’am. Me and a whole lot of detectives. You’ve got a good memory.”
She returned his smile. “Can I get you something to eat or drink? There’s meatloaf. I could make you some sandwiches.”
“Thank you,” Gary replied, “but we’re fine.”
“I’m taking them down to the basement,” Travers informed her. “I’ve got beer and sodas in the fridge.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Don’t you mean ‘the den’?” She gave a nod toward Gary and Dan. “Happy to meet you again, Gary, and welcome to our home, Dan.”
“We’re just going to talk. I won’t be long.” Travers gave her a peck on the cheek. “Go watch the movie.”
She retreated into the room and closed the door.
“Den.” Travers chuckled. “Personally I think it’s a basement with delusions of grandeur, but hey—” He glanced at them. “—you both look like you could use a drink.”
“Only if it’s something soft,” Gary told him. He didn’t think his head could cope with alcohol, not after the day they’d had. Besides, he still had to drive them home.
Travers opened the door under the stairs, but Gary stopped him with a hand to his arm.
“Sir, before we go any further…. What we have to tell you? It’s unofficial.”
Travers didn’t appear fazed by Gary’s announcement. “What you mean is, I can’t tell the chief. Or anyone else for that matter.”
Gary blinked. “Well, yes.”
Travers nodded. “That’s what my caller intimated too.”
“Would that be Nathan Chambers?”
He arched his thinning eyebrows. “It would.” He reached inside the door to turn the light on. “Step this way. Close the door behind you, please.”
They followed him down a narrow staircase that emerged into a brightly lit space furnished with a couple of couches, a recliner, a large-screen TV, an ancient stereo system that looked like one Gary’s parents still had, and a thick rug.
A small fridge sat in one corner, and Travers went over to it. He paused.
“I’ve got a bottle of bourbon around here someplace, if you want something a little stronger. You can change your mind on the soda.”
“Soda will be just fine,” Gary told him as they took a seat on the couch. It was the kind of sofa that sucked you in, old but comfortable.
Travers reached into the fridge, removed two bottles of soda and a beer. He popped the caps on all three, then handed them the sodas. He sat in the recliner, raised his feet, and took a drink from his bottle, regarding them with a thoughtful gaze.
“Okay, questions. What’s important enough to have you come to my home on a Thursday night?
Why couldn’t we discuss this at the precinct in the morning?
And what does it have to do with the Department of Homeland Security?
” He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose.
“That last one especially. What have you two gotten yourselves into? And how come I had to hear it first from some intel guy on the phone?”
“A lot has happened since we gave you our last update,” Gary began.
Travers’s eyebrows shot up again. “That has to be the understatement of the year.” He frowned. “Wait a minute. Nathan Chambers. He’s been to the precinct a couple of times, hasn’t he? I saw his name on the visitors list.”
Despite his roiling stomach, Gary couldn’t help but smile.
“Nothing gets past you, sir.” He drank from his bottle and then brought Travers up to date with all they’d learned that day, Dan adding details here and there.
When they got to the part about Sam being alive, Travers gaped. Then his brow furrowed.
“But I don’t understand how they managed to put one over on Del Maddox. He identified the body, for God’s sake.”
A question Gary had already asked himself.
“So who was driving the car?”
“One of Nathan’s team. The chase was staged, of course. Sam was nowhere near the crash site. Once the car couldn’t be seen from the road, they triggered the explosives, and kaboom.”
Travers managed a chuckle. “Is that a technical term, Detective?” All signs of mirth vanished, however, when they recounted what Sam had discovered in the secret lab. “She’s sure about this?”
“Yes, but I think she’d rather be totally wrong.” Gary shared Nathan’s theories, not holding back. Travers needed to hear everything in the light of what Gary was about to ask him.
“Nathan doesn’t know if the professor is working alone or as part of a small group,” Dan told Travers.
Travers frowned. “I’m not sure it matters which of those scenarios is the right one. They’re both horrific. What bothers me is… what would they hope to gain from this?”
Gary wished he’d asked for a glass of bourbon right then.
“Nathan gave us an idea about that.” He tried to relax, but his body felt like a tightly coiled spring. “Let’s say a virus wipes out a huge chunk of a country’s population. What happens next?”
Dan took up the tale. “There’d be a massive international effort to ‘help’ the remaining people, right?
” Then his face darkened. “But make no mistake, there would be nothing altruistic about this effort. We’re not talking about public donations or improving a village by bringing in clean water so kids don’t have to walk five miles to get it. Not the same thing at all.”
Gary nodded. “NGOs would go in to start building up the infrastructure, except what that really means is, they’d go in and do what they weren’t able to do before—build power plants, water plants, introduce better sanitation, create more industry.
” He shrugged. “Call it what it is—a new form of colonization.”
Travers became so still. “You’re telling me if there was a massive genocide—organized or not—it would be a huge opportunity for the rest of the world?”
Gary nodded. “For that country too.”
“They’d call it an international relief effort,” Dan added. “Except a more accurate description would be an international economic opportunity.”
Travers’s face tightened. “So you’re saying someone could want this to play out because there’s money in it?”
Gary nodded, his stomach churning. “This is all Nathan’s guesswork, of course. What worries me is that it all makes sickening sense.” It still made him nauseated to think there were people out there who could even think in such terms.
Profiting from people’s misery and devastation.
“So who’s the money behind this? The driving force? Do you know?”
Gary shook his head. “No, sir, we don’t, and neither does Nathan.” Or if he did, he wasn’t sharing.
“And what about these two buddies of the professor’s? The ex-CIA guys. Are they involved?”
“Nathan thinks so, but Sam believes the professor is acting alone,” Dan told him. “She still can’t comprehend how he could do this.”
Travers pressed steepled fingers to his lips. “I think it’s fair to say this goes way beyond your original cold case.”
“But it’s all connected,” Dan remonstrated.
“We have a pretty good idea why Leo died—because he attempted to blackmail Robert Martin. So what does Leo’s death tell us?
The professor is somehow connected to Leo’s killer.
Maybe Professor Martin got scared, made a call to whoever is behind this, and bam, Leo is dead. ”
“Jonathon Wilmer was seen with Sam Phillips,” Gary continued.
“Maybe one of the professor’s buddies saw them, put two and two together, and suddenly there’s another death.
We asked the professor if he knew Jonathon.
He said not. More importantly, there was no reaction to Jonathon’s name, at least not that I could see. ”
“But that means nothing,” Dan remarked. “He sat there and waxed lyrical about Sam, their project, the benefits for mankind. And yet all the time he was planning this—and worse.”
“And Eddie Ray?”
“Collateral damage. But when we get to the bottom of this, I have a feeling we’re going to find out one person was responsible for all three deaths.”
Travers quirked one eyebrow. “Is that your gift speaking, or your instincts?”
“Instinct. I won’t know for sure until I get to meet a suspect.”
Travers’s face clouded over. “And if you do… be careful, please? Especially if you’re correct and that person does turn out to be the killer. I don’t want you ending up as one of their victims.”
“I’ll watch his back,” Gary declared. “And I’ll make sure Nathan and his team do the same.
” He leaned forward, hands clasped. “Sam asked Nathan to help her disappear for one reason. She hasn’t said it out loud, but we know she was scared when she connected Jonathon’s death to her.
Then when she knew Robert Martin would notice his notebooks were missing, she feared she was next.
” Gary stared at Travers. “You know what that implies, right? Robert discovering she’s onto him has put her life in jeopardy, except Sam can’t bring herself to say that the professor might want her dead.
She can’t accept that from the man she’s known all these years. ”
Travers frowned. “You want to pursue this, don’t you?”
Crunch time.
“We have three dead bodies, all killed in the same manner with the same hardware. We still need to know who pulled the trigger—if indeed the killer is linked to the professor. And yes, with regards to this test, Nathan thinks they’ll make a move soon, and yes, he wants us on board to join him and his team. ” He fell silent, his pulse racing.
“I already know what Mr. Chambers wants. That was the reason he called, to ask if I would okay it. Although I get the feeling that was merely him being polite. I don’t suppose for one minute he’d back off if I refused.” Travers cocked his head. “What is it you’re both not telling me?”
Gary inhaled deeply. “Whatever move Nathan makes, it might not be on US soil.”
Travers stiffened for a second or two, his eyes locked on Gary in an incredulous stare. Then his shoulders relaxed. “I see. Now I understand why this is unofficial.” He drank some more. “What response did you give Mr. Chambers?”
“I told him we’d think about it. I also told him we’d need permission.”
Travers said nothing for a moment, then got up and went over to the fridge. “I think I need another one.” He removed a bottle of beer, popped the cap, and returned to his recliner. He took a long drink from it, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
There were times Gary really wished he could read Travers.
“Okay.” Travers held the bottle by its neck, swinging it a little by the side of his chair. “I think you two need to take some vacation time. I’ll sign off on that.”
Gary froze. “What?”
“You want us to stop investigating the case?” Dan croaked.
“What I want is the two of you away from the precinct. I don’t need to ask if you’re owed any vacation time, Gary.
You never take vacations.” Travers drank some more.
“But you’re taking one now. And if you should receive a call to go off the radar…
someplace… I don’t want to know about it.
I don’t want to see any reports, okay? I just want to have you walk in and say you nailed the bad guys.
” He speared them with a look. “And make sure you do walk in.”
“And if the chief finds out?”
Travers gave a shrug. “If he finds out we helped the intel community, then he finds out. He’ll probably like that part anyway. But until then he doesn’t need to know. And you need to tell as few people about this as possible.”
“What if two weeks go by and we still haven’t heard from Nathan?” Dan asked. “And we’ve spent those two weeks sitting around twiddling our thumbs?”
“Then we’ll regroup, I’ll call him, and we’ll see how the land lies.”
“We might need to delay the start of our ‘vacation,’” Gary suggested.
“For what reason?”
“We need to pay someone a visit tomorrow—before we go ‘on leave.’”
Travers gave him an inquiring glance. “Oh? Who?”
“Someone who has some explaining to do.”