Linda Fairstein - The Kills

Somewhere in the northeast corridor, the airline had come up with a DC-3 to lug us home. It rolled to a stop outside the terminal, looking as if it had just come over the hump from Burma in a World War II flick. We boarded quickly, climbing up the sloping aisle to get into our seats. The normally short flight took almost ninety minutes, and it was close to 8P.M. when I walked out of the New York terminal to hail a taxi.

Hot running water. I stripped down and turned on the shower full force. Mud was still caked between my toes and under each nail. I must have been a sight to all of the evening's air travelers. My matted hair looked several shades darker than before the storm, and I scrubbed for minutes until I could even get a lather going.

Dried off and snug in a long nightshirt, I sat on the bed and played back the eleven messages on the machine, hoping to hear one voice. I deleted Nina's news about her son's admission to a Beverly Hills pre-k; my mother's concern about the damage caused by the hurricane; three routine messages from Mike, who wasn't really sure where to find me; an assortment of nonurgent friendly calls; and found Jake on the ninth try.

"Hey, guess you decided to stay on after all." His voice sounded cool and clipped, and I had missed him by less than half an hour. "I'm off for supper with a friend. Be home for the weekend." Too much silence. "We need to talk, Alex."

The one thing I needed less than root canal was to talk. Whatever happened to action?

Good old action. Talk was going to expose every layer of difference between us, every nitpicking reason we weren't good for each other. His walking in the door and taking me in his arms and making me feel sexy and safe and adored was what I wanted more than anything at this very moment. Talk was as overrated as renewing marriage vows on top of a Hawaiian volcano to assuage a cheating husband's guilt.

No answer at Mike's place. I put on some music and sat at my desk, rereading the case files on Paige Vallis-the rape and the homicide-to see whether I could make sense of the directions things had taken in her life. No sense, no nothing. I moved to the mountain of bills growing beside me and took out my checkbook.

I crawled into bed before ten, hit with the exhaustion that follows shock and stress. Sleep helped, and I was up by 8A.M. on Saturday, ready for a better day.

The first call was from Mercer Wallace. "Any trouble getting back into town?"

"The only easy thing that's happened in days. Look, I've got to-"

He and I were speaking over each other. I heard him say "I have news for-" but he stopped and asked me to finish what I had started.

"I've got to tell you what happened to me during the storm." I described the way my predator had circled the house trying to get in, and how I had escaped him. Unlike Chip Streeter, Mercer understood that this was no amateur, no coincidence, no joke.

"I'll get on the Spike Logan angle. Check out his car, his uncle. Make sure Hoyt was really in Nantucket on the boat. Speak to the troopers and see what they came up with."

"I'm sorry I jumped in over you. You had something to tell me?" I asked.

"Plate came back yesterday on that car you thought you saw Robelon driving when you chased the guy with the gun out of Federal Plaza. It's a rental."

"To Robelon?"

"Nope. Ever heard of a Lionel Webster?"

"No. Who is he?"

"I think he's the guy who's pretending to be Harry Strait. My lieutenant ran Webster last night and there's all kinds of info flooding back in this morning. He's ordered us to work overtime on it all weekend. Best I can tell, Webster is some kind of soldier of fortune. A mercenary. Services go to the highest bidder. Knows the caves of Tora Bora as well as he does Paris."

"Armed services?" I thought of Andrew Tripping and his fascination with all things military.

"West Point grad. Taught there for a while until he was kicked out. Stripped of his commission-"

"For?"

"You're thinking faster than I can read. I'm not sure it gives a reason in these papers. We'll get him checked out ASAP."

"Can you fax over a picture?"

"Hold your horses, Ms. Cooper. You might have to make an ID, you know. You're not getting any advance look at my mug shots."

"The buzz cut fits with the military background, Mercer. I wish we knew if the U.S. armed services had anything to do with King Farouk." The pieces of the puzzle were twisting in my mind.

"Only thing I know about is the Agency and its involvement in Cairo. Not the army. Although that lovely lady at Treasury we met with before you went to the country called me back with a nice little nugget of information."

"Lori Alvino? Don't hold out on me, Mercer."

"I don't know whether our military had anything to do with Farouk, but it did touch the wings of the Double Eagle."

"The coin? Are you talking about the coin?" Mercer knew his mention of new information was a teaser.

"Yes, ma'am, I am. That bird is mighty lucky she didn't have her wings clipped."

"What do you know?"

"Alvino had gotten us all as far as the Secret Service intercepting Farouk's coin when it was brought back into the U.S. in ninety-six."

"I was with you in her office. I heard that."

"She has tracked down its whereabouts after the ninety-six arrival here, and before the auction in 2002. Wanted to confirm it for us."

"Nice. And?"

"It was actually stored and safeguarded in the Treasury Department vaults during the legal battles about who owned it."

"You mean Fort Knox?"

"Closer to home. For five years, the Double Eagle lived in a vault in the basement of the World Trade Center. Seven World Trade Center, to be exact."

I thought again of how often I had looked out my office window at those towers before September 11. So many lives lost in an instant of evil. The property losses mattered to me not at all.

Mercer went on. "A few months before the attacks, the coin was moved. Just a coincidence."

"To?"

"The bullion depository of the United States Mint."

"Where's that?"

"It's up at West Point, Ms. Cooper. You can't get any more militarily connected than that. The Double Eagle wound up quartered at the Point, in its bullion depository, overlooking the Hudson River."

"You put that upstate tour on the agenda for this week?"

"Mike wants to wait till the Army-Navy game next month to make that trip," he joked. "Anyway, he's going to pick you up in half an hour, if that's okay with you. I'm meeting you both at Peter Robelon's office. I reached him at home just now and told him it was urgent we see him this morning. We'll try to confront him about that encounter you had with Harry Strait."

"See you later."

The phone rang again as soon as I hung up. "Hello, Alex? You make it back all right?"

It was Chip Streeter, the Vineyard cop, checking on me. "Just fine. I appreciate all the time you gave me. Not to mention a dry place to sleep. I've got to run, but thanks for calling."

"I actually need your help for a minute. You know a guy on the island named Logan? Spike Logan?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I know who he is." Strange that Streeter should be asking about him.

"Was he up your way the other day?"

"No. But-why?"

"Found his car pulled off the road down by the Stonewall Bridge, coming from the direction of your house to Beetlebung Corner. Looks like it flooded out during the storm. Kinda abandoned."

"Anything in it? Any weapons, any-"

"Just a pair of boots, Alex. Fit the imprints in the mud around your house. Same size, same tread design, same maker logo. State troopers confirmed that for me."

"And Logan? Have you looked for him?" I asked more frantically than I meant to. "Have you been to the house he stays in? Have you asked-?"

"Made a lot of calls and visits last evening and stopped by again this morning. Just wanted to know whether he was an acquaintance of yours," Chip said. "Just wanted you to know that he's out there somewhere. Pretty sure he's gone off-island."