David Baldacci - The Last Mile

“No, it’ll go faster with two.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but let’s do it,” said Mars.

They climbed out of the car and swiftly moved across the gravel road and around to the back of the house. Decker flashed his light at the lock. “Just a single tumbler. I won’t need the heavy guns. Hang on.”

He inserted a pick tool into the lock, made a few manipulations, and the door swung open.

They moved inside and Decker closed the door behind them.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Mars asked.

“There was a picture missing from McClellan’s office.”

“Okay.”

“That’s what we’re looking for.”

“But what will that prove?”

“It’ll prove that there really was a swap.”

“But what does that mean ?”

Decker looked at him strangely. “Let’s just find it first and then we can talk about it later.”

“But why would it be here?”

“McClellan is cagey. The guy has his plan. When he learned we were in town, I’m certain he took the picture down, because his strategy was to invite us in and have a ‘chat.’ After we left he wouldn’t put the photo back up.”

“Why? Would he think we’d break into the police station and try to steal it? That’s nuts.”

“No, because the son of a bitch is paranoid. He’s not even going to trust his own people. And he wouldn’t destroy it either. To him, that would be defeat. He’s going to bring that sucker home.”

They searched the lower level of the two-story house.

“Damn,” said Mars as they finished going through the books on a shelf. “The dude is definitely living in the past. All these books are about the supremacy of the white race, suppression of people like me, arming whites to take back their country.”

“I wasn’t aware that we’d lost it,” said Decker.

“Funny.”

“It’s actually not. A lot of these books were written in the last five years. So apparently there’s still a readership for folks hankering for the ‘old days.’”

Mars shook his head. “Are we ever going to get past this?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I just want the photo. Let’s head upstairs.”

There were only three rooms on the second floor. One was a bathroom, one was a bedroom, and the last was McClellan’s home office. It was about fifteen feet square. There was a computer on an old knotty pine desk. The shelves were full of books and magazines, and a black journal lay next to the computer. A globe was perched on one side of the desk. There was a landline phone next to it, and old-fashioned pens housed in a glass showcase box. An ink blotter and silver letter opener completed the items on top.

Decker studied the computer while Mars paged through the journal.

“Anything helpful?” asked Decker.

“Do you mean is there a signed confession in here? No. It’s mostly just crap. Mostly depraved crap. His thoughts on what the world should look like. And guess what? Folks my color don’t really have a place in it.” He put the journal down and started searching the desk drawers.

Decker sat down in front of the computer and hit some keys. “It’s password-protected. Understandable.”

He typed in some possible passwords. None worked.

Decker sat back and thought about this for a few moments while Mars started going through the contents of the shelf.

“Go page by page, Melvin, like we did downstairs. He might have taken it out of the frame and stuck it in a magazine.”

Decker kept trying passwords. “Got it,” he said finally.

Mars came to look over his shoulder. “What was it?”

“The segregation king, ‘George Wallace,’ all caps.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Let’s see what our fine police chief is into online.”

Decker opened a Web browser and looked over the man’s search histories.

“Well, he’s into white supremacy groups, vigilantism, and all sites that are basically not really into diversity of any kind.”

“What a shocker.”

“Now let’s look at emails.”

Decker came away disappointed. “Okay, the guy’s either really smart or just old-fashioned. No emails. I can’t even find an account.”

“Anything else?”

“Pretty clean hard drive. Not very much on it. He must use this principally to troll for crap from his bigoted buddies.”

Decker closed out of the computer and helped Mars go through the books and magazines on the shelf. An hour later they had gone through every page and had come up with zip.

Mars said, “I hope we didn’t waste a breaking and entering on nothing. Because if they catch us, I’m going back to prison. And you’ll be heading there too.”

“If McClellan catches us, going to prison would be a cakewalk compared to what he’d do to us.”

“Right.”

Decker looked around the room. “We searched everywhere.”

“Well, it might not be here. He might have another hiding place he uses.”

Decker said, “Maybe, but something tells me this guy likes to keep things close to home.”

“We’ve looked at everything that could hold a picture.”

Decker shot him a glance. “You know, you can’t hide something three-dimensional in something flat. But the reverse is not true.”

“What are you talking about?”

Decker put his hand on the globe.

“I’m not following.”

“McClellan doesn’t strike me as a worldly guy. Too much diversity around the globe, so why this thing sitting right on his desk within easy reach? So he can check out where the other half lives? Don’t think so.”

Decker bent lower and examined the globe’s surface. He ran a finger along the equator, pushing and probing with his nails. Then he started at the Arctic Circle and headed south. His finger stopped at one spot near the bottom of Greenland.

“Give me that letter opener.”

Mars handed it to him.

Decker carefully inserted one end into a small crevice in the globe. He very gently worked it back and forth.

“The damn thing’s coming apart,” exclaimed Mars.

The globe did indeed open into two metal halves, with a lip from one half inserting under the other.

And inside the space was a rolled-up photo.

Decker slid it out. “I noticed the edges didn’t line up exactly. It had been opened before. We’ll take a picture of it and then put it back and jigger the globe back together. I don’t want him to know we’ve discovered it.”

Mars was staring at the rolled-up photo like it was a rattler about to strike.

“Decker, do you know who’s in the picture?”

“I think I know.”

He slowly unrolled it and looked at the image.

“Were you right?” asked Mars.

Decker slowly turned the photo toward him. “Yes.”

When Mars saw the people in the photo his knees buckled. Decker had to grab him with his free hand to keep him upright.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe it,” exclaimed Mars as he held on to the side of the desk.

“Pretty much sums it up,” replied Decker.

“What the hell does this mean?”

“This means we finally have a chance.”

Six people sat inside a conference room at the FBI’s Washington Field Office: Decker, Mars, Bogart, Milligan, Jamison, and Oliver.

Bogart said, “As you know, we’ve been called off the case to work on, well, other matters. But we haven’t given up on finding Lisa Davenport. We’re working nonstop on that.”

“Are there any leads?” asked Jamison.

Milligan spoke up. “A couple, but they ultimately led to nothing. No ransom demands. No communications of any kind. It’s bizarre.”

Mars looked at Oliver. “How’s the court stuff coming in Texas?”

“Good and bad news,” she said. “The good news is it doesn’t seem like Texas is going to try to put you back in prison, as I said before.”