Дэвид Балдаччи - Hell's Corner

“But why would he do it? He’s not Russian. He’s from Mexico.”

“Mary, where was all the evidence we found pointing to the Russians?”

“The gun and the funny language being spoken. And—” She stopped. “It was all fabricated. To make it look like the Russians were involved.”

“Yes.”

“But he blew himself up. Why? What reason would he have? You said it yourself. They penetrated the most guarded space on earth, for no reason.”

“No, they did it for a reason. A very good one. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To see Carmen Escalante. And let’s get there before they kill her too.”

No one answered the knocks at Carmen Escalante’s home. Chapman backed away from the front door and eyed the windows. “Do you think she’s gone for good? Or someone’s taken her?”

Stone peered through the window on the left side of the door. “The place still looks lived in. She might have just gone somewhere.”

“So Padilla blew himself up. Why?”

“That’s why I’m here. To ask Carmen if she might know why.”

“So you think she’s in on it?”

Stone didn’t answer right away, principally because he didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t think so, but there’s no guarantee.”

“But if she’s not in on it she won’t be able to help us.”

“Not necessarily.”

Stone moved around to the rear of the house and Chapman followed.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Now we know or at least strongly suspect Padilla was the bomber. We can ask her questions we couldn’t before. If she’s involved, we’ll know pretty quickly. Then we can take her into custody and question her officially. If she’s not involved she may be able to tell us something helpful. Something her uncle mentioned. Something she overheard. Visitors he might have had here.”

Stone tried the back door but it was locked.

Chapman put her face to the rear window and looked inside. “Nothing. But she could be lying dead and out of sight. Do we break in?”

Stone already had two slender instruments out of his pocket. “It’s a deadbolt. It’ll take a little time.”

Chapman put her elbow through the glass, reached through the broken pane and turned the lock. “My way’s quicker.”

Stone slowly put away his lock-pick tools. “You break and enter a lot in your line of work?”

“Only when I’m bored.”

They passed through the door and into the small kitchen.

“Food in the fridge and dirty plates in the sink,” said Chapman as she looked around.

Stone looked at the dried food. “Breakfast, probably from today.”

Guns out, they moved into the hall and quickly searched the main level.

“Okay, no bodies on this floor,” said Chapman. “Let’s try upstairs.”

A two-minute search there turned up nothing.

Chapman flicked through the clothes in the young woman’s closet. “Some nice things in here. Maybe she got paid off. That story about donations might have been bullshit.”

Stone pointed to the set of braces in the corner. “How can she walk without those?”

Chapman examined them. “These are her old ones. Remember she said she was getting a new pair?”

Stone looked around the room. “Okay, Padilla was involved. We have the Latinos in Pennsylvania involved.”

“And they’re dead too. Whoever their employer is, he’s not too loyal.”

“Or he simply demands the ultimate sacrifice from his people,” replied Stone.

They went back downstairs.

“Do we wait for her to come back?” asked Chapman.

Stone shook his head. “I’ve got a feeling this place is being watched. So they know we’re interested in her again.”

“So you’re saying we might have just signed her death warrant, you mean?”

“If we could only find out where she’s gone.”

They went out the back door and walked around to the front. Stone looked up and down the street.

Chapman said, “It seems this might be a neighborhood where some nice old lady might be peering out her window to see what’s going on.”

“Good idea. You take this side of the street and I’ll take the other.”

At the fourth house Chapman tried, a tiny black woman in her seventies with white hair answered the door.

“Saw you poking around. About to call the police but then it struck me you might be the police,” she said matter-of-factly. “Not too many folks look like you wandering around here.”

Chapman showed her badge and called Stone over.

“This is my partner,” she told the older woman. “We’re trying to find out where Carmen Escalante is. She’s the woman with the braces whose uncle—”

The woman cut her off. “I watch the news. I’ve seen Carmen around. But she’s not home now.”

“Any idea where she might be?” asked Stone.

“Left around nine this morning,” said the woman. “They come for her in the big black truck.”

Stone and Chapman exchanged glances. “Who came for her?” asked Chapman.

“Government folks. You know, in suits and such. With sunglasses. She’s got some memorial service to go to today.” She paused and eyed them suspiciously. “Don’t you two watch the news?”

Stone said, “Do you know where the memorial service is being held?”

“You don’t know that, maybe you ain’t the police.”

“We are the police,” insisted Stone. “Do you know where the memorial service is being held?” he asked again, in a more urgent tone.

“Why don’t you just call into headquarters or some such and find out?”

She closed the door in their faces.

Stone pulled out his phone as they hustled back to the car.

“Oliver, what is going on?”

“We talked about how the bomb going off would cause events to be moved elsewhere, away from the park.”

“Right, but that got us nowhere.”

“That’s because it’s not an event that was scheduled that they’re going to hit.”

Chapman sucked in a breath and said, “They created the event that they’re going to hit. The bombing led to the memorial service.”

“With the U.S. president and the president of Mexico in attendance.”

As Chapman drove Stone called everyone he could think of.

“No one’s answering.”

“Caller ID. They know it’s you and aren’t picking up. Should we just call the police?”

“And tell them what? ‘I’m Oliver Stone. I used to work for the government before I got sacked for screwing up’? ‘There’s a bomb at the memorial service. Go get it’? They’ll hang up on me before I even finish.”

They stopped at a traffic light and Chapman glanced to her left. “Look,” she exclaimed.

They were next to a bar. Through the window there was visible a TV hanging from the ceiling. It was turned to a news channel. And on the screen was the memorial service being broadcast live. Stone read the scroll line at the bottom.

“It’s at Arlington National Cemetery.”

“Point the way.”

“Wait a minute!” Stone snapped. He was staring at the TV screen as the camera panned the area.

“That’s Alex,” he exclaimed.

Chapman turned to look. Sure enough, there was Alex Ford at the ceremony, obviously on protection duty for the president.

“Hold on,” said Chapman. “Even if you get through to him, you don’t know where the bomb is located.”

“I think I do know.”

Chapman punched the gas while Stone fingered in the number, praying that his friend would answer.

Alex Ford stoically surveyed the surroundings even as he felt the buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it. No calls or emails on protection duty. They set the ringer to vibrate when around the president. And the texting function had been taken away from their phones altogether. He should have just turned his phone off. He eyed the guests coming through the magnetometer. But before they got there they had to pass through a series of checkpoints and bomb-scanning machines. His gaze swiveled to the bomb detection canines that were examining every person coming to the event. After the explosion in Lafayette Park, the dogs were everywhere and constituted their best line of defense because they were mobile.