Дэвид Балдаччи - The Sixth Man

“But still.”

“And I’m a private person.”

“Is that why you moved here?” asked Michelle.

“Partly.” She sipped her coffee.

“Hilary is dead, too,” said Sean suddenly. “Did you know that?”

FOR THE FIRST TIME Kelly Paul did not appear to be in control. She set the coffee cup down, raised a hand to her eyes, and then put it back down. “When?”

The tone was one of curiosity mixed with anger. Sean thought he might have also gleaned a hint of regret.

“Last night, outside of Bergin’s house.”

“How?”

Michelle glanced at Sean, who said, “She was set up and shot.” He leaned forward. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here, Ms. Paul?”

Paul wrested herself from whatever she was thinking. Clearing her throat, she said, “You need to understand that my brother didn’t kill those people. He was framed.”

“Why? By whom?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t need you. But I would say that whoever did it is particularly powerful and well connected.”

“Why would people like that be targeting your brother?”

“Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, now isn’t it?”

“And you’re saying you don’t even have an idea?”

“I’m not really saying anything. You’re the investigators.”

“So you knew Bergin had hired us?”

“I suggested it. He told me he knew you, Sean. I’d read about some of the work you’d done. I said we needed a pair like you on the job because it wouldn’t be simple.”

“When was the last time you saw or spoke to your brother?” asked Sean.

“You mean before he stopped talking at all?”

“How did you know that? That your brother had stopped talking?”

“Teddy told me. And the last time I spoke with my brother was by phone a week before he was arrested.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing of great importance. Certainly not that he suspected six bodies were buried at the family farm.”

“How long had the place been in your family?”

“My mother and stepfather bought it when they got married. After our mother died, she left it to both of us. I was living abroad and so I told Eddie to take it.”

“Even after he started working for the government he lived with his mother?”

“Yes. He was at the local IRS office in Charlottesville, although I know he had responsibilities that would take him to Washington fairly regularly. Edgar really had no ambition to move into his own place. He liked the farm. It was quiet, isolated.”

“And he obviously lived there alone after your mother died.”

“He had no alternative. I was out of the country.”

“Where were you living abroad?” asked Sean. “And what were you doing?”

Paul, who had been staring at a spot on the wall about a foot above Sean’s head, now swung her gaze directly in his direction. “I wasn’t aware that I was the subject of your investigation. And yet the truly personal inquiries seemed all aimed in my general vicinity.”

“I like to be thorough.”

“A grand attribute. Just point it in the direction of my brother’s case.”

Sean took this snub in stride. And he did note that her vocabulary and tone had subtly changed. “We’ve read the police file on the bodies discovered at the farm.”

“Six of them. All men. All white. All under the age of forty. And all as yet unidentified.”

“As I understand it nothing has come back on fingerprints or DNA.”

“Quite remarkable. On the TV police shows everyone’s in the database and it only takes a few seconds to find them.” Paul smiled and took a long sip of coffee.

“I could see one or two or maybe even three not being in the system. But all six?”

“I think you and Michelle need to go there and look around.”

“You’re officially retaining us?”

“I thought I already had.”

“With Bergin dead, it gets complicated. His associate, Megan Riley, is on the papers. She’s willing but really green. I’m not sure the court will allow her to continue in a solo capacity.”

“You’re a lawyer,” said Paul bluntly.

“You checked me out?”

“Of course I did. I’d be a fool if I hadn’t. You can cocounsel with Riley.”

“I’m not in practice anymore.”

“I think you might want to reconsider that. You can wear two hats. Detective and lawyer.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Sean. “Right now the FBI have Megan Riley holed up somewhere in Maine emptying out her brain cells.”

Paul appraised him with a shrewd look. “You think your green lawyer can hold up against the Bureau?”

“I don’t know,” said Sean, giving her a curious glance.

“Brandon Murdock?” said Paul.

“How do you know that?”

“Teddy told me he was trying to break through the wall of legal confidentiality to find out who the client was. Teddy said it would eventually have to come out, but he’d managed to hold the fellow off so far.”

“The FBI usually gets its way.”

“Not disputing it. But let’s make them work a little harder. I’m no lawyer but I’d say finding out who killed all those people and Teddy and now Hilary takes precedence over trying to discover who’s paying for Eddie’s defense.”

“So you’re assuming that all the deaths are connected?” said Michelle. “The six bodies and Bergin and his secretary. Killed by the same person?”

“Teddy Bergin didn’t have an enemy to his name. And why kill Hilary except for something she knew? And that right there proves Eddie is innocent. There was no way he got out of Cutter’s Rock to kill either one of them.”

Sean considered this. “That’s true. If they are connected.”

“The proof is out there. All you have to do is find it.”

“I’ll draw up a retainer agreement and have you sign it.”

“More than happy to.”

“Anything else we need to know?”

“I believe you’ve got plenty to think about.”

As they rose to go she added, “I doubt it would be smart to leave poor Megan with the FBI too long. You might want to make some noises about unlawful detainment or something like that, just to get the Bureau’s blood going. Mention something about calling up a TV station or newspaper reporter. They just love that stuff down at the Hoover building. Makes their butts get all tight and squirmy.”

Sean looked at her strangely. “You have a lot of experience with the FBI?”

“Oh, more than you’ll probably ever know, Mr. King.”

PETER BUNTING SAT in his office in Manhattan. He enjoyed living in New York. He had an office in downtown D.C. and his company had a facility in northern Virginia, but New York was unique. The energy here was visceral. As he walked to work each day from his Fifth Avenue brownstone he knew he was where he belonged.

He stretched out a kink in his neck and studied the file on his desk. It appeared on an electronic tablet. No paper was kept here. Everything of importance was locked in impenetrable server farms far away from here. Cloud computing was king in Peter Bunting’s world.

He had studied the career paths of Sean King and Michelle Maxwell and came away reasonably impressed. They both appeared to be hardworking, clever, and practical-minded. But he concluded that some of their success had also been due to luck coming along at just the right moment. And luck was not something one could count on happening all the time. How that might benefit or hurt him he wasn’t sure.

He thumbed a button and the screen changed along with the subject area.

Edgar Roy.

His main problem.

What to do about his E-Six was consuming an inordinate amount of his time. And yet the matter was of paramount importance to him. Even though he had set up some stopgap measures he was unacceptably behind schedule. And Secretary Foster was right: the quality of the analysis had diminished. The status quo could not be sustained. He could lose everything he’d worked for.