Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fix

“But he got to work at the hospice,” pointed out Jamison. “They had to do some background checking there.”

“Not as much as you might think,” replied Milligan. “The pay’s not great and they have a hard time finding employees. I think they let things slide on the checking-out phase. But like Berkshire, it could have all been falsified anyway. I can tell you that nothing has come back on this guy yet.”

Jamison looked at Bogart. “So we’ve got nothing , then?”

“What we have is a mess,” said Bogart.

Decker answered, “We have far more than nothing, even if it is messy right now. If we can just piece it all together.” He eyed Bogart. “Someone had a key to Cecilia Randall’s home. No forced entry. She was asleep when the killer struck. She didn’t let anyone in at that hour.”

“The killer could have gotten a key any number of ways.”

“Possibly. And we’ll need to check them all out.”

“You spoke with Natalie,” said Milligan. “And she told you the story about the ambulance ride her father recently brought up before everything happened. What do you think that meant?”

“He was trying to tell her something. He couldn’t do so directly without implicating her.”

“Implicating her?” said Jamison. “How so?”

“He stole secrets to pay her gambling debts, or which he thought were his son-in-law’s gambling debts. I doubt he told her how he was acquiring the money. But he knew it was paid, because she was alive. And she told him everything was good on that. But in the course of getting the money to pay off that debt, Dabney ran into Berkshire, somehow, some way. I think in fact that Berkshire was in this from the beginning. I think she knew about the debts — hell, maybe she and her cohorts encouraged Natalie’s addiction and thus got her to run up these massive debts, knowing she’d have to turn to her father for help.”

“Wait a minute, if that’s the case, then Berkshire must have been targeting Dabney for a while. Yet we can show no connection between them.”

“Doesn’t matter. For argument’s sake, let’s assume there was a connection. Dabney goes to Berkshire with the secrets. He sets his price. She agrees to it, knowing that it won’t cost ten million to resolve the debt. The secrets are passed, the money goes out, some of it goes to pay off the debt. Hell, for all we know, whoever Berkshire was working for might have bought out the debt from the original source, so the payee and the payer might well be the same. So money-wise it’s a wash for them.”

Jamison said, “So if the transaction was successfully completed between them, why would Dabney murder Berkshire?”

“Because while she had the upper hand on him vis-à-vis the truth about the gambling debts, he knew something that she didn’t.” He paused. “He knew he was dying.”

Bogart said, “So he killed her because he knew he would never be tried for the crime? He intended to kill himself instead of letting the cancer kill him?”

“Yes and no.”

“Jesus, Decker, this is getting more complicated than an algorithm,” exclaimed Milligan.

“I think it’s actually quite linear. Yes that he wanted vengeance because she was a spy that he had sold secrets to and he couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t get the secrets back, but he could stop her from ever spying on this country again.”

Bogart interjected, “Okay, that’s the ‘yes’ part. What’s the ‘no’ part?”

“The ‘no’ part is how he did it. He lured her somehow to the FBI building and shot her on the spot.”

“Why did he do that?”

“He wanted to send a message to someone. A clear message that enough was enough. He wasn’t going to do this anymore and they had better back off.”

Bogart sat up straight. “Wait, you’re saying they were going to make him spy for them again?”

“Of course. Once they had him do it the first time, they had him for good. If he didn’t cooperate they would release incriminating information and evidence that would bury him. Berkshire would be long gone by then, so she wouldn’t suffer. But Dabney would. And his family.”

Bogart nodded. “So he decided to take the bull by the horns and cut off this possibility. Berkshire dead and him dead. And this was made possible because they didn’t know he was already dying?”

“Yes. I’d love to know the answer to two questions right now.”

“What’s that?” asked Bogart.

“What was Dabney trying to communicate to his daughter with the ambulance story, and why didn’t he just tell her straight out?”

“And the second question?”

“Who was the damn clown?”

“You look miserable,” said Jamison.

She was driving and looking over at Decker, who was scrunched in the passenger seat.

“I’m not miserable, just in pain. I’m going to help you buy a new car, Alex. I can’t take too much more of this. I think I’m getting blood clots in my legs.”

“Remember when you used to take the seat out and just sit in the back?”

“Not really practical since it takes four tools and an hour to do that.”

“What kind of car?” she said animatedly.

“I don’t care so long as it’s at least twice the size of this one, with decent legroom.”

The rain was pestering them again, snarling traffic and making gloomy thoughts seem even gloomier. Decker closed his eyes.

“So you said Melvin got to meet Joey Scott?”

Decker opened his eyes and nodded. “When I told him that Melvin nearly won the Heisman and would have been in the Hall of Fame, I thought Joey was going to burst with excitement.”

“I’m sure. That makes it even more awful that Berkshire would have used Joey like that. I mean, it would be heartless with any terminally ill patient, but Joey was the only kid in the whole place. And she sat and read to him just so she could use that book to communicate stolen classified information.”

Decker’s response to this was extraordinary: “Alex, turn the car around. We’re heading to Virginia.”

“Virginia? Where?”

“The hospice.”

Sally Palmer was still in her office. She explained that with the disappearance of Alvin Jenkins, she was having to work longer hours until he could be replaced.

“I can’t imagine why he ran off like that. And the police won’t tell me anything,” she said crossly as she sat across from them in her office. “I suppose you can’t either,” she added.

“You would suppose right,” said Decker. “Alvin Jenkins, when did he start working here?”

“Alvin, um, only about two months ago.”

“And when did Anne Berkshire start volunteering here?”

Palmer thought about this. “Around the same time, actually.”

“And when did Joey Scott come here as a patient?”

For this Palmer had to consult her computer. “That’s funny.”

“What?” asked Decker sharply.

“Well, Joey came here nine weeks ago. That means all three of them around the same time. What a coincidence.”

“I don’t think it was a coincidence,” said Decker.

Palmer looked at him strangely, but Decker ignored this and plunged on. “When we first met, you said that Joey was going to be adopted but the couple pulled out when he got sick.”

“That’s right. Disgusting.”

“How did you come by that information?”

“Come by it?”

“Who told you?”

“Oh. It was the caseworker that came with Joey when he was admitted here. She told me. She was as upset by it as I was.”

“So the story is that Joey was going to be adopted but then the adoptive parents found out he was terminal and decided against adopting him.”

“That’s right.”