R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘You were listening across the hall?’ Hartmann asked.

‘I was,’ Woodroffe said. ‘I know what Perez said, this thing about the son being pissed off because he wouldn’t kill the girl’s father, but I still feel there’s something else. I’m gonna go inside and call Quantico… get them to run this Emilie Devereau through the database. If we can find her, we might be a step closer to finding where Victor Perez has been while his father has been with us.’

‘You still think he was involved, don’t you?’ Hartmann turned and looked at Woodroffe. Truth was he didn’t care what Woodroffe thought; he didn’t care what anyone thought in that moment. His mind was on Carol and Jess, how he would go right back into the Royal Sonesta and call them, tell them he was coming home, that he would meet them any time they wanted, any place they chose, and there were so many things he wanted to say.

‘I think someone was involved,’ Woodroffe said. ‘The report said what it said… that it was improbable that one man would have been physically capable of lifting Gerard McCahill’s body from the back of the car and into the trunk that night on Gravier.’

‘Go for it,’ Hartmann said.

Woodroffe turned and started back towards the hotel. He stopped and turned before he reached the door. ‘You didn’t wanna go down and get the girl from the motel?’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘I want to call my wife. That’s all I want to do right now.’

Woodroffe nodded. ‘I’ll come tell you when they pick the girl up, okay?’

‘Sure… sure thing,’ Hartmann said, and then he watched as Bill Woodroffe turned and entered the hotel.

It was a good five minutes before Hartmann sat before a phone in the foyer of the Royal Sonesta. One of the Feds had hooked up an outside line bypassing the main switchboard. Hartmann dialed his own home number, the number that would take his call right across the East River into a two-bedroomed apartment in a three-story walk-up in Stuyvesant Town. He could picture where the phone sat, right there on a small table in the front hallway. What time was it? Hartmann glanced at his watch: a little after two p.m. Carol would be home now; it would be another hour or so before she left to collect Jess from school. The sound of the line hummed in his ear, and then connection was made and he listened as the phone rang. He could almost hear Carol’s footsteps as she made her way from the bedroom or the bathroom. Twice, three times, four times… where the hell was she? Why wasn’t she picking up? Was she in the bath? Perhaps she was in the kitchen with the TV on and she couldn’t hear it.

Hartmann willed his wife to pick up the goddamned phone. How many times had it rung now? Eight? Ten? He felt a tension in his lower gut. He was afraid, afraid that she’d had second thoughts, the very worst thoughts of all; afraid that she’d decided that his failure to arrive for their Tompkins Square Park appointment four days before was the little flag that told her nothing had changed. Ray had broken another agreement. Whatever the reason, whatever the rationale back of it, the truth of the matter was that Ray Hartmann had added another broken promise to the vast catalog of broken promises he had already accumulated.

Perhaps Hartmann would have hung on; perhaps he would have let the phone ring for another hour, would have sat right there with the patience of Job until Carol finally heard the phone, or Jess returned from school and picked it up… perhaps he would have done, but his plans were interrupted suddenly, abruptly, as three or four federal agents came rushing into the foyer of the hotel and began shouting.

Pandemonium broke out. It spread like wildfire through the lower floor of the building, and it seemed like minutes before Bill Woodroffe – the senior man amongst them – appeared in the entranceway, his face white and drawn, his expression one of complete shock and confusion.

‘They got him,’ he was shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Oh my God, they’ve got him!’

Hartmann stood up suddenly. His chair tumbled over behind him and he almost fell across it as he started across the foyer towards Woodroffe.

‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What’s happened?’

‘They shot him… for God’s sake, they shot him!’ Woodroffe screamed.

‘Who?’ Hartmann yelled back. ‘They shot who ?’

‘Ducane!’ Woodroffe said. ‘Someone just shot Charles Ducane!’

And in the confusion no-one saw the radio light blinking at the main desk. No-one – amidst the sudden rush of confusion and panic that swept through the Royal Sonesta – saw the light blinking or stopped to pick up the radio headset.

Had they done, they would have heard the Recovery Unit Chief’s voice telling them to call Schaeffer in the transporter and get Ernesto Perez back to the hotel.

During the subsequent fifteen minutes or so, the few details they could gather regarding the shooting of Governor Charles Ducane came through to Bill Woodroffe. Simultaneously, the Recovery Unit was making its way back to the Sonesta, and out in Virginia, the FBI Identification Database was searching for the names of Emilie Devereau and David Carlyle.

A man had been arrested as he fled through a crowd gathered in Shreveport, Ducane’s home city. Ducane had been speaking publicly, opening a new arts center in a local suburb, when a man had stepped from the crowd and shot him three times in the chest. Even as details were coming through, Ducane was being rushed by the emergency services to the nearest hospital. He was still alive but in a grave condition. It was believed one of the bullets had grazed his heart. The arrested man had already been identified as the eldest son of Antoine Feraud, and even as Hartmann picked up the few details of what was happening, FBI Director Dohring was organizing a task force to raid Feraud’s property and take him in.

Perhaps because of all of these things together or the fact that no single man was directly assigned to cover unexpected eventualities, the Royal Sonesta became the eye of the hurricane and Ray Hartmann had no further opportunity to reach Carol.

The return of the Recovery Unit outside the building sparked a further wave of confusion.

Hartmann was out there to see them skid to a dead stop against the curb, and when the Recovery Chief stepped from the vehicle with nothing more than a bundle of clothes in his hands, Hartmann knew that something that could have been no worse had suddenly deteriorated into a nightmare.

Woodroffe appeared, and when he realized that Catherine Ducane had not been located, he ran back into the hotel to radio the transporter. Hartmann was there beside him as he tried in vain to raise a signal.

‘Disconnected,’ Woodroffe kept saying. ‘They’ve disconnected the goddamned radio for fuck’s sake!’ and it was some time before Hartmann managed to get him to understand that the transporter radio had been disconnected intentionally.

‘Oh Jesus Christ… Schaeffer!’ he said, and then his name was being called and an agent was standing at the side of the stairwell waving his arms above his head to attract his attention.

Woodroffe forced himself through the crowd and reached the man.

‘Quantico,’ the man was saying. ‘I’ve got Quantico on the line. They’ve got an answer on your ID request.’

Woodroffe pushed past him and hurried up the stairs to the second-floor room where Kubis had established a bank of computers with a direct and secure line to Quantico.

Hartmann followed at a run, all the while shouting above the noise from below.

‘Schaeffer! What the fuck are you gonna do about Schaeffer and Perez?’

Woodroffe reached the second-floor landing and started down the hallway towards the room.