David Baldacci - Simple Genius

Hayes whipped out his cell phone and made the call while Sean continued to poke around.

After the sheriff finished his call he smiled at Sean. “I left a message. I gotta say, my decision to partner up with you is really starting to look smart.”

“Don’t get too excited. Knowing that a man was murdered and finding out who killed him is, to borrow a line from Mark Twain, the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. Now we need to really canvass the place and find out if anyone saw someone leaving Rivest’s last night. There’s security all over the place. Someone had to see something. Especially if my theory is correct and the person was leaving with a bunch of wet towels and a plunger.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

Sean held an internal debate and said, “I was down at the banks of the York this morning, around six-thirty or so. I wanted to have a look at the boathouse and take a recon of the area. Somebody took a couple shots at me with a high-powered rifle. That’s what I was coming to tell Len.”

Hayes gaped at him. “Where’d the shots come from?”

“Maybe from across the river.”

“Camp Peary?” Sean nodded. “And Monk Turing was found dead on Camp Peary property,” Hayes said slowly.

Sean could easily read the man’s mind. Did the rural sheriff want to get mixed up in something that involved the CIA. Yet if Monk Turing and Len Rivest had been killed by the folks across the river the question was why. And Sean King had to admit, it was a very intriguing question. The only thing, was he willing to risk his life to get the answer?

“And I can’t be sure of it, but I think it’s possible that I saw Champ Pollion returning to his cottage around two this morning.”

“But you can’t be sure?”

Sean shook his head. “I couldn’t testify to it. It was too dark. But it’s still something we need to check out when we do our alibi canvass. Oh, one more thing. I understand that Monk traveled outside the country about eight or nine months ago. We need to find out where he went.”

“The Bureau has his passport and personal effects.”

“You’re the sheriff down here. Ask for copies.”

“You think it could be important?”

“Right now everything is important.”

Sean walked back out into the bright sunshine and wondered when, if ever, his life would come close to being normal.He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around.

Alicia Chadwick was standing there looking very upset. “We need to talk.

Now!”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then I’ll take off my metal leg and beat you to death with it.”

“I wouldn’t want you to have that on your conscience. Let’s go.”

BARRY WALKED DOWN THE HALLWAY carrying a cardboard box. Lurking ten paces behind him was Michelle. The drop-off for mail and overnight parcels was right outside the front door.

Barry unlocked the front door with his key and headed outside. Michelle picked up her pace, reached the unoccupied foyer and ducked down behind a large potted tree.

When Barry unlocked the door and came back in, Michelle tensed. This would be tight because she didn’t have a key. With one eye on Barry and one eye on the slowly closing door, she darted out. He was less than three feet from her and never turned around, a testament to how silently she could move. As Barry disappeared around the corner, Michelle stabbed her foot inside the door to prevent it from closing. Removing her shoe she wedged it between the door and the jamb and hurried out.

It only took her a few seconds to find Barry’s package in the pile outside the building next to the mailbox. Michelle whipped out a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down the address where the box was going. She also glanced at the sender’s name and wasn’t terribly surprised to find it wasn’t Barry’s.

“Lola Martin,” she said, reading off the sender’s name. She ducked back inside the building, grabbed her shoe and jogged back to her section of the building. She managed to distract a nurse long enough to take a peek at the patient records at the nurse’s station. Lola Martin was comfortably ensconced in the Cuckoo’s Nest, the psychotic residents of which were not known to post many packages. She ducked into the patient services center and used a telephone there to make a phone call to a buddy of hers with the Fairfax police. After she’d filled him in, he said, “How’d you score this info, Maxwell?”

“I’m, uh, working undercover.”

An hour later, Michelle went into Sandy’s empty room. The flowers were still there, but the dirt had been cleaned up off the floor. Michelle assumed that Sandy’s hands were by now spick-and-span clean too, even under the manicured nails. Michelle had never had that problem for the simple fact that she’d never had a manicure. She didn’t want anyone messing with her trigger finger.

Five minutes later, her mission accomplished, Michelle headed back to her room. That afternoon she attended a group session. She was so pleased with the progress she’d made on nailing Barry that she actually stood up and talked about herself. “I’m Michelle and I want to get better,” she said.

“In fact, I think I am better.” She’d smiled at the others in the circle as they nodded approvingly. Some lightly clapped their hands while others whispered words of encouragement. A few others sat there sulking or else looking at her in disbelief.

If it occurred to Michelle that the only reason she thought she was better was because she’d made herself too busy to think about her own problems, the woman showed no sign of such an internal dilemma. She essentially lived for the adrenaline and not for the often calamitous revelations of self-examination. True to that personality trait, all she could think about was Barry and Sandy. After that she just wanted to get the hell out of here before they finally figured out she might belong in the Cuckoo’s Nest after all.

SEAN SAT ACROSS FROM ALICIA in her office in Hut Number One. She’d whisked him through the main area so fast that he’d only been able to see a large open area with lots of small desks and what was doubtless a genius at every one of them. He could almost smell the mental power of the folks working there along with the hum of multiple servers.

He motioned to Alicia’s right leg and said in a joking tone, “You try and club me with that thing I’m going to lay you out.”

She didn’t even crack a smile. “How did Len Rivest die? And don’t tell me it was a suicide.”

He noticed that her eyes were red. “I don’t know how he died.”

“How could you not know?”

“Only the killer knows for sure. And considering that I didn’t kill him, I can only speculate as to the cause of death.”

“All right, go ahead and speculate.”

“I can’t do that. It’s an ongoing police investigation.”

She snapped, “I can’t believe you’re falling back on that pathetic line.”

“I used to be a cop and I know how leaks can screw up an investigation. The police are treating it as a suspicious death.”

“But that could mean he was murdered or died accidentally?”

He smiled. “Or it might be determined that he actually died from natural causes.”

“You said someone killed him.”

“And I could be wrong.”

“Oh thank you for being such a big help,” she said.

Sean leaned forward, his features no longer jocular. “The fact is I just met you and don’t know you from Eve. For all I know you could be the murderer.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I never met a murderer who said otherwise. That’s why we have defense lawyers.”