David Baldacci - The Innocent

“I can show you how to pick a lock,” he said.

She smiled. “That might come in handy, actually. I’m always forgetting my keys.”

Another thirty minutes passed and Robie said, “Well, I guess we should call it a night.” He looked at his watch. “And you might as well shower and get ready for work. I guess you don’t need much sleep.”

“Look who’s talking.”

He walked her back to her apartment. She turned and said, “I really enjoyed this.”

“So did I.”

“I haven’t met many people since I’ve been here.”

“It’ll happen. Just takes time.”

“I meant that I’m really glad I met you.”

She kissed him on the lips, letting her fingers linger against his chest.

“Good night,” she said.

After she went inside Robie stood there. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Well, maybe he only hadn’t felt it in a really long time.

Finally, he turned and walked off, more confused and unsure of himself than ever.

Robie got back to the other building a few minutes later. Part of him wanted to look at Lambert through the telescope, to see what her reaction had been to tonight. Although her kiss probably told him all he needed to know. He imagined her showering and getting ready for work. But maybe she would think about him today too as she went about the important work of the country.

And after that thought Robie refocused on what lay ahead for him. It was time for him to go back to work too.

He checked on Julie and found her sound asleep.

He showered, dressed, and left, setting the alarm.

He drove through the empty streets. His wandering was not aimless. He had places to go, more things to think through.

He passed an MPD cop car going the opposite way, its rack lights blasting blue streaks into the dark. Someone was in trouble. Or dead.

Robie’s first stop was Julie’s home.

He parked a block away and approached the house from the rear. A minute later he was in the duplex. He navigated with a penlight through the dark interior. He knew what he wanted to look at.

Two people being murdered here had set Julie’s flight in motion. The bodies had been removed and the place sterilized. To what degree precisely was the reason Robie was here tonight. At some point the Gettys’ disappearance would prompt calls to the police. They would come here and find the place empty. They would connect that Julie was or at least had been in foster care. They would try to find her. They would fail. They would assume that the Gettys had gone off together for some reason-perhaps to escape accumulated debt or unpaid dealers who wanted payment for the drugs the Gettys were known to have used.

The police would put some time in, but not a lot. Without any evidence of a violent end to the lives of the Gettys, the investigation would be put on the back burner. Big-city police departments did not have the luxury of expending time and resources on cases like this one.

Robie stooped and studied the mark on the wall. Blood, to his eye, but the police might not even notice it. Even if they noticed it they wouldn’t test it. That meant paperwork, tech hours, and lab time. And for what?

But that little smudge was telling Robie something.

Blood spatter. They got all of it except this spot. This spot is not hidden. It’s in plain view. They should’ve cleaned it off, or painted over it like they did on the other section.

Robie straightened. That mark was a message.

The Gettys were dead. He had never doubted that.

But who was the message meant for?

They knew that Julie was aware her parents were dead. She had seen it happen.

Was it for one of the Gettys’ friends? Who might want to talk to the police, but wouldn’t if they knew they’d been killed?

That was a stretch, thought Robie. The friend might never see this mark or know what it was if they did spot it.

But I would find it. I would know what it is.

He searched the rest of the house, ending in Julie’s bedroom. He shined his tiny light around. He saw a stuffed bear in a corner lying on its side. He picked it up, put it in the knapsack he’d brought with him. There was a photo of Julie and her parents next to her bed. He put that in the knapsack too.

He’d give them to Julie when he saw her again.

His next stop was Rick Wind’s. Not his place of business where someone cut his tongue out and then stuck it down his throat. He was heading to Rick Wind’s house in Maryland.

But he would not get there. At least not tonight.

His phone buzzed.

It was Blue Man.

“We found your handler. You can come and see what’s left of him.”

There was no stench. A burned body doesn’t give off much odor. The flesh and bodily gases, the twin engines of forensic malodor, had been burned off. Charred remains carried a scent, but it was not a disagreeable one. Anyone walking into a fast-food burger place or the aftermath of an inferno had experienced it.

Robie looked down at the mass of blackened bone and then stared two feet over at Blue Man. His white shirt was crisply starched, his tie point dropped right at six o’clock. He smelled of Kiehl’s facial fuel. It was a little after five o’clock in the morning and he looked ready to make a presentation to a Fortune 500 board.

Blue Man was staring down at the black husk that used to be a man. A man who had ordered Robie to kill a woman and her child.

“Hard to feel sorry about it, I know,” said Blue Man, seemingly reading Robie’s thoughts.

“Sorry doesn’t really enter the equation, does it?” said Robie. “What do we know?”

“His name, position, and employment history. We do not know his recent whereabouts, why he was turned, or who killed him.”

They were standing in the middle of a park in Fairfax County, Virginia. To Robie’s left was a Little League baseball diamond. To his right, tennis courts.

“I’m assuming he was toasted and left here recently,” Robie said.

“Since no parents reported seeing this pile of detritus while attending their kid’s baseball game last evening, I think we can assume that,” replied Blue Man.

“How’d you find out?”

“We received an anonymous phone call with explicit information.”

“We sure it’s the guy? You can’t get DNA off charred bone, can you?”

Blue Man indicated the left pinky of the body, or at least where the pinky had once been. “They very helpfully covered that finger with fire-retardant material. We removed the finger and made the match off that, both prints and DNA. It’s him.”

“Phone call, pink pinky. That was very helpful of them.”

“I thought so.”

“You said you don’t know why he switched sides?”

“We’re checking all the obvious ones: secret bank accounts, threats to family members, a change in political philosophy. Nothing definitive yet. The truth is we may never know.”

“They’re taking care of loose ends,” said Robie. “You think this guy would have understood his chances of survival were basically zero.”

“All traitors should ultimately recognize that, and yet they do it anyway.”

“Did you come up with any thoughts on Leo Broome?”

“Not yet.”

Blue Man pointed to an SUV parked at the curb. “I think it’s time for that briefing.”

“I don’t have much to tell you.”

“I’m awake. There’s fresh coffee in there. Whatever you can tell me will be more than I know right now.”

As they walked to the vehicle Robie said, “You ever think about retiring or doing something else for a living?”

“Every day.”

“And yet you’re still here.”

Blue Man opened the door of the SUV. “I’m still here. And so are you.”