Jeffery Deaver - Edge

He fell silent. I’d rarely seen anyone looking more miserable.

Tears running again. “Please,” he begged. “Call the FBI. Tell them Jimmy’s not dangerous!”

Then I heard duBois’s voice: “Corte. It checks out. They gave Amnesty International thirty-one thousand.”

“Okay.” Then I said to her, “Tell the troops to stand down.”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“I’ll call you in a minute.” I cut off the com device.

Under other circumstances I might have let Stu spin in the wind a little but I couldn’t forget Graham’s arrogance and his insulting duBois. I said, “I don’t think we need to pursue this any further. I’ll hold off the investigation for now, provided there’s no recurrence.”

“No, sir. No! I promise.”

I rose and started for the door. I turned back. “Next year, your dad could get more money. Or he could get a loan for your tuition. I’m just curious. What’re you going to do then?”

The young man turned his red eyes toward me. His jaw was set. “I’m going to tell him to go to hell.”

I believed him. I couldn’t help but respond, “Good.”

I left the coffee shop.

Well, I had the answer about one of Ryan Kessler’s cases. I called duBois.

“You were right,” she said.

The theory had presented itself in Eric Graham’s den, when I’d looked over the decor and photographs and had studied his reaction when duBois had laid out our theory as to why Loving had been hired. I’d decided he was telling the partial truth-nobody was blackmailing him. DuBois’s computer analysis of his expressions and body language bore this out. On the wall were pictures of the young man I’d deduced was his son, along with a man about the same age of Asian extraction, who closely resembled the suspect on the security video, involved in the forgery scam. Backed up by the ORC computer analysis, she’d run credit cards, DMV information, face recognition analysis, blog and social networking site postings, school records, insurance claims, phone records, dozens of other databases.

The slim Caucasian was in fact Stuart Graham. The Asian was James Sun. No record, active in gay rights, a grad student at George Washington, a resident of DuPont Circle.

I’d learned that Stu had a part-time job at the Music Gallery, also in DuPont Circle.

When I saw that the arrogant Eric Graham had turned his den into a shrine to Princeton University, I figured there could be a major gulf between father and son, and that the young man might be behind the theft. But I needed to confirm my theory, which my visit here had.

“So, can I ask?” DuBois’s voice had an inquisitive lilt to it. “You were threatening with your warrant but I was bluffing with mine.”

Good, I thought. My protégée was feeling her oats.

I explained. “My fake warrant was supposedly in Jimmy’s name. He wasn’t at the coffee shop to call my bluff. Yours would have been in Graham’s . If he’d asked for it, what would you have done?”

“Oh… Paper covers rock.”

Though I keep much of my private life secret, even from her, duBois has heard about my fondness for games. “That was clever,” I told her and I meant it.

“So we’re back to the Pamuk case being the likely reason Ryan was targeted.”

“That’s right.”

“I was-wait.” Her voice had taken on urgency. “I’ve just got an email… a lead to somebody who could treat Loving.”

“Go on.”

“I’m reading… It’s his cousin.”

After Loving killed Abe Fallow, we’d fleshed out his bio and tried to track down family. He’d been born in Virginia, we knew, but had no relatives within a few hundred miles of the capital. His parents were dead. Of siblings he had one sister and he’d kept up some contact with her but she’d died in an accident a few years ago.

I knew of the cousin. “He was the one who went to medical school in New York, right?”

“Right. But he got his ticket here and moved to Falls Church about two years ago. He’s a doctor at Arlington Hospital.” DuBois continued, “I’m looking at phone records now… About a half hour after Loving was wounded at Bill Carter’s place, the cousin got a call on his landline from a blocked number. It lasted three minutes.”

“What’s the story on him?”

“Single, thirty-two. No record, other than a few traffic stops. Name’s Frank Loving. ER background and now he does internal medicine. He had good grades in medical school-he went to SUNY.”

She gave me the address.

I thanked her and fired up the Honda and punched the address into GPS, then pulled into traffic. I called Freddy and told him that I’d eliminated Graham’s forgery as a lead to the primary. But more important I had a lead to where Loving might’ve gotten medical treatment.

“He still there, you think?”

“He’d get in and out as fast as he could. But let’s assume he is. Move in slow and quiet, with a couple of small tactical teams.”

“I’ll put it together.”

“And Freddy…”

The agent filled in, “Don’t tell Westerfield.”

I said, “Exactly.”

“No problemo. Man can be a dick, I’ll give you that. On the other hand, that assistant of his is hot.”

“If you like pearls,” I said.

“That was good, son.” Freddy gave one of his chuckles. “This job’s bringing out a whole ’nother side of you.”

FRANK LOVING LOOKED younger than the age duBois had recited. He was crewcut, tall and in the fit shape that most medicos of his age seem to be.

He was also very nervous. Understandable, considering his murderous cousin had just paid him a visit-and a half dozen armed FBI agents had just searched every nook of his residence.

He lived in a luxury town house in Arlington, one of those four-thousand-square-foot places with columns and arches and rococo trim, all of it prefabricated and bolted into place efficiently over the course of a busy few weeks. The walls, where you’d expect prints-on-canvas of shot pheasants or Venice or medieval still lifes, were incongruously covered with sports posters. The Redskins mostly; what else?

Glancing into the kitchen, I could see bloody towels and discarded white and orange sterile packets from dressings or disposable instruments and syringes. A bottle of Betadine sat on the counter, an orange ring from the disinfectant staining the pale marble. Frank had been trying to scrub it away.

“I don’t know where he is, really,” Frank said. “Honestly.”

Freddy’s tactical team had cleared the house and was outside, talking to neighbors who might have seen Loving or his car.

I asked the doctor to join me in the sparse den and held his eye as I said, “Let me tell you something, Doctor, an hour or so ago, your cousin was about ten minutes away from kidnapping and torturing a sixteen-year-old girl to force her father to give him some information.”

Eyes widening, he seemed genuinely horrified at this. He whispered, “We knew he was a fugitive. I mean, I was mostly shocked to see him alive. I should have called somebody as soon as he left but… I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“He scares me.”

I said, “Doctor…” Respecting the title goes a long way if it’s an M.D. you’re talking to, I’d learned from protecting a few of them. “Doctor, we really need some help here.”

The man grimaced and played with his watch. “Honestly, I don’t know where he is. Please. You have to believe me.”

“A sixteen-year-old girl,” I said slowly. And stared into his evasive eyes.

He slumped. “What can I tell you?”

“First, how badly was he hurt?”

“Bullet wound to his abdomen, six inches above the left hip bone. In and out. I cauterized some small veins, cleaned and stitched. Oh, also a small splinter of rock was lodged in his thigh. I removed it, cauterized the vessels and stitched that too. Did you shoot him?”