Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, Shaw was at the dinette, on which sat a thick file folder he’d labeled Ashton Shaw Material. The map of the San Francisco Bay Area that sat on the top was wrinkled and stained. Shaw was looking over the eighteen X ’s, most of them in the north — Marin County and on up into wine country. Napa, Sonoma.

The map included here indicates the locations in the city that might contain — or lead to — the evidence Gahl hid.

He was sipping a fine Honduran coffee, which was laced with just the right amount of milk. That was always a question: too little was fixable, too much not.

There was a rapping on the door.

“Mr. Shaw? It’s Sue Bascomb.”

Shaw slipped the map into the file and opened the door. The camper sagged slightly as she climbed in. The stocky woman was wearing a dark green, long-sleeved dress and black cardigan sweater.

He offered her coffee, which she declined, and they sat at the small table. She asked questions she’d prepared. He answered into a recording app on her phone, and she took notes as well. Shaw declined to give any personal information and, of course, said nothing about Victoria.

He did report in detail on the beating of the reporter Klein and the horrific murder of John. He said nothing specific about Abby, though he described sexual assaults in general. These details seemed to interest her the most.

After a half hour, she said, “That’s very good, Mr. Shaw.”

“‘Colter’ is fine.”

“Helpful. Quite helpful.” She then flipped through her notes and seemed about to ask another question, a follow-up perhaps, when they heard a shout from the parking lot.

They both rose to their feet quickly. “There’s a fire, a car,” she said, peering through the shade. Shaw grabbed one of the extinguishers he kept near the driver’s seat and pushed outside.

An SUV nearby was engulfed in flames, smoke spiraling skyward like a black tornado. It took him back immediately to John’s horrific death, which he’d just been recounting.

People were running from the store and their own cars to see what was happening.

“There’s somebody inside! Look!”

“Call nine-one-one.”

“Stand back! It could blow up!”

Shaw hurried to the vehicle and let fly a stream of extinguisher foam. It didn’t do much, though it did suppress a portion of the flames long enough to make it clear that the SUV was unoccupied. What someone had taken for a human was just a stack of packages.

There were several loud pops.

“Those’re bullets!” a man cried, and people fled.

Shaw didn’t bother to tell them that, no, that’s not what burning bullets sound like. What they’d heard was probably food jars exploding.

In the distance he heard sirens.

He set the spent canister in the grassy divider and returned to the camper. Stepping inside, he climbed to the floor and stopped. The woman had left.

She wasn’t the only thing that was gone.

The file labeled Ashton Shaw Material was missing too.

Outside the camper, there was no sign of the car she’d arrived in.

He might have caught a glimpse but her associate had ignited a vehicle that was upwind of the Winnebago, so that the choking smoke obscured the view of the getaway.

Smart.

Shaw returned inside and did a fast inventory. The bedroom was still locked and she wouldn’t have had time to pick the elaborate locks. Still, he needed to check.

Yes, everything was accounted for. His own go-bag (called by survivalists GTHO, as in “Get the Hell Out,” or in an R-rated version, GTFO). Then weapons: for handguns the .357 Colt Python and a .40 Glock. His favorite long gun too, a Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk2. The British bolt-action rifle was sixty years old and battered and scuffed but reliable as an iron-block V-8 and devilishly accurate. There was plenty of ammunition too, cleaning gear and his best Nikon telescopic sight.

Would he need the firepower? No idea.

Yet he recalled his father’s letter.

Never assume you’re safe...

His phone hummed with a text. It was from Victoria.

A rare smile crossed his lips as he read.

He thought for a moment and then sent a reply.

Then, time for work.

He texted Mack McKenzie, who was ready and waiting in Washington, D.C.

Sending picture via email.

Her reply:

K.

Shaw then went to the kitchen counter and lifted the Sony digital camera from where he’d hidden it behind a stack of coffee bags and cups. He removed the SD card and, on his computer, found a good, full-face image of the woman who had been sitting eight feet from the camera ten minutes ago.

This he sent in an encrypted email to Mack.

A moment later his phone dinged.

Searching now.

Mack’s internet expert would use facial recognition to find matches everywhere it could online and begin assembling a dossier on Shaw’s visitor.

Who was not Sue Bascomb, an Apprentice at the Osiris Foundation camp — that name was just a cover. Shaw was sure that the woman was Irena Braxton, the BlackBridge operative who had devoted years to finding the damning evidence that Ashton and his colleagues were looking for — and eliminating them in the process.

He had not originally suspected her. When she’d come up to him at the camp, proposing a book about Eli and the dangers of the Foundation, he’d believed she was legitimate.

But during her phone call to him later she’d alluded to the fact she was a journalist. That certainly would have been a good cover to get close to Shaw. Except for one detail she didn’t know: Eli would never let a reporter into the camp as a Companion. She was lying.

He recalled too what his father had written about Braxton:

She may look like somebody’s grandmother but she’s utterly ruthless...

Shaw tried to figure out how they’d orchestrated the theft.

He supposed Braxton and Droon — who was probably the SUV arsonist — could have followed Shaw to the camp or intercepted his phone calls and texts and learned what he had planned. He changed phones frequently and used burners but as his FBI friend, Tom Pepper, said, “If they wanta listen to you they’re gonna listen.”

From the hills above the camp, the two could have observed what the Foundation was about. After Shaw’s speech exposing Eli, which they would have heard, Braxton saw an opportunity to get close to him. When the authorities arrived, she could have just strolled into the chaotic camp, put a discarded amulet around her neck and walked up to Shaw with the story about writing of her experience.

Her goal, of course, was to find out whatever information he had about Ashton’s search for Amos Gahl’s evidence.

Shaw had to plan countermeasures carefully. At the meeting with her this afternoon, they might try to strong-arm and torture him. He was prepared for that; he now wore body armor under the sweats, and his .380 Glock was in his back waistband. Also, he had an open phone line with Mack, throughout the conversation with “Bascomb.” The PI would call the local police if it turned violent.

But why not avoid a fight? Shaw made it easy for them: He left out, in plain sight, the A.S. file

Which was, of course, fake.

Shaw had photographed the real file and uploaded the material, encrypted, to both his and Mack’s secure servers, then hidden it in a secret compartment in the floorboards of the Winnebago.

On the map in the fake file, Shaw had marked areas of the San Francisco region that were in the opposite direction of those of the actual map, which were places where Amos Gahl had hidden the evidence that could bring down BlackBridge and its clients.

The rest of the material in the mock file was meaningless — and misleading — downloads from years ago, at the time when Ashton and his colleagues were actively looking for the incriminating evidence.