David Baldacci: Divine Justice

Knox looked off into the distance, tracing in his mind the trajectory of the lethal round. None of the protection detail had seen any sign of a shooter, so he had to cast the potential flight path out farther where the optic and muzzle signatures would be nearly invisible to the naked eye.

Thousand yards? Fifteen hundred? To a target inside a vehicle revealed only through a barely two-by-two-foot opening in the dark and drizzle. And planted the bullet right in the brain.

Remarkable shot any way you look at it. No luck there. A pro.

Revealing again.

He rose and nodded at one of the uniforms. Knox wore his ID badge on a lanyard around his neck. When everyone had seen what his official ties were they had been deferential and also given him a wide berth, like he had an incurable and contagious disease.

And maybe I do.

The cop opened the door of the Escalade and Knox peered inside. The shot had hit dead center of the right temple. There was no exit wound. The round was still in the brain. The postmortem would dig it out. Not that he needed the autopsy report to tell him what had killed the man. Blood and bits of flesh and skull had embedded in parts of the SUV's interior. Knox doubted the government would be reusing this ride. It would probably go the way of JFK's limo. It was bad luck, bad karma, call it what you would, but no other VIP would want to rest his butt in the dead man's seat, sterilized or not.

Gray didn't appear as though he were sleeping. He simply looked dead. No one had bothered to close the man's eyes. His glasses had been blown off on impact from the kinetically energized round. The result had Gray perpetually staring at whoever looked back at him.

Knox lifted one of his gloved hands and shut the eyelids. It was out of respect. He'd known Gray well. He hadn't always agreed with the man or his methods, but he'd respected him. If their positions were reversed, he hoped Gray would've done the same for him.

The briefing papers Gray had been reading had been collected already by the CIA. National security trumped even homicide. Knox highly doubted that whatever the CIA chief had been reading at the moment of his death would be connected to his murder, but one never knew.

Yet if they could have read the man's mind in his last moments of life? When he stared out at that grave marker and that flag?

Knox's gut was telling him that Gray knew exactly who had killed him. And maybe others at the Agency did too. If so, they were letting him go through the motions on his own. He wondered why for a second and then stopped. It was tricky business trying to figure out what the hell went on behind closed doors at Langley. The only thing you could count on as the real truth was as convoluted as anything you'd find in popular fiction.

He left the corpse and mentally processed the facts as he stared off toward the Atlantic.

Gray's home had been blown up over six months ago, the man barely escaping with his life. Knox had been briefed via secure phone on the drive over. Any suspects involved in that matter were not to be considered to be involved in Gray's murder, he'd been told. This directive had come from the highest levels and he had no choice but to defer to it. Yet, still, he filed that away in the back of his head. For him the truth should not come with qualifiers or conditions, if for no other reason than that he might need it as ammo to cover his own ass at some point.

He drove to Gray's home, made a brief inspection of the interior, found nothing of interest there, and then walked toward the cliff at the rear of the property. He stared down at the thrashing water of the bay below before glancing out at the fully formed storm front that was not making the nearby murder investigation any easier. Knox eyed the fringe of woods that ran by the right side of the house. He walked through the trees and quickly calculated that a path through here would take one up to the gravel road that Gray's motorcade had used.

He looked back at the cliffs.

And wondered if it was possible.

With the right man there was only one answer to that question.

Yes.

He climbed back in his Rover and headed to the second murder scene.

Roger Simpson.

The great state of Alabama was suddenly one senator short.

And without even seeing the circumstances of Simpson's death, Knox instinctively knew he was looking for only one killer.

Just one.

AS SOON AS ANNABELLE stepped on the front porch she saw it. Alex Ford did too. They'd just gotten back from dinner at Nathan's in Georgetown. It had become a favorite haunt of theirs.

She pulled the knife free, unfolded the letter and then glanced around, as though she expected the person who'd delivered it to still be nearby.

She and Alex sat in front of the empty fireplace while she read it. She finished and passed it across to him, waiting in silence while he read it through.

"He says for you to pack up and move. That people would be coming to ask questions. You can stay at my place, if you want."

"I guess we knew it was him, didn't we?" she added.

Alex looked at the letter. "'I've had many regrets in my life,'" he said, reading from it. "'And I've lived with them all. But Milton 's death was my fault alone. I did what I had to do. To punish those who needed to be. But I will never be able to punish myself enough. At least John Carr is finally dead. And good riddance.'" He looked up. "Sounds like a man who did what he believed needed to be done."

"He asked us to tell Reuben and Caleb."

"I'll do it."

"They deserved it, you know. From all that Finn told us that happened that night."

"Nothing gives someone the right to murder someone, Annabelle," he said firmly. "That's vigilantism. That's wrong."

"Under any circumstances?"

"One exception destroys that rule for good."

"So you say."

"Burn the letter, Annabelle," Alex said suddenly.

"What?"

"Burn it now, before I change my mind."

"Why?"

"It's not a confession but it's still evidence. And I can't believe I'm saying this. Burn it. Now!"

She grabbed a match, lit the paper and tossed it into the fireplace. They watched the letter curl and blacken.

"Oliver saved my life, more than once," he said. "He was the most decent, reliable person I've ever met."

"I wish he'd stayed to talk to us."

"I'm glad he didn't."

"Why?" Annabelle said brusquely.

"Because I might have had to arrest him."

"You're kidding. You just said he was the most decent person you'd ever met."

"I'm a lawman, Annabelle. I swore an oath, friend or not."

"But you knew he killed people before. And you didn't seem to have a problem with it then."

"Right, but he did that on orders from the U.S. government."

"So that makes it okay in your eyes? Because some politician said it was?"

"Oliver was a soldier. He was trained to follow orders."

"But even he felt guilt for that. Because some of the people he was 'ordered' to kill were innocent. You saw how that crushed him."

"I respect his morals. But that wasn't his call."

Annabelle rose and looked down at him.

"So he kills two people who did deserve it, but because he didn't have 'government authorization' you're suddenly prepared to arrest him?"

"It's not that simple, Annabelle."

She flicked her long hair out of her face. "Sure it is," she snapped.

"Look-"

She walked over to the door and opened it. "Let's call it a night before we say something we'll regret. Or at least I do. Besides, I have to pack."

"Where are you going to go?"

"I'll let you know," she said in a tone that left much doubt whether she meant it.

Alex started to say something but instead rose and walked out, his features clouded and his lips set in an uncompromising line.