“That’s not a bad idea,” Teddy said. “Maybe we could fly down there next weekend, if the weather cooperates, and take a look at it.”
“That would make me feel as if we’re doing something,” Lauren said, “not just waiting for something terrible to happen.”
“Nothing terrif we’re ble is going to happen,” Teddy said. “Not if we go on being careful.”
“I just can’t get over the feeling that we’re living too close to the Agency, that sooner or later we’re going to bump into someone from your past that we’d rather not see.”
“I know, baby,” Teddy said, patting her on the knee. He pulled into the little Vineyard airport. They parked the car in a rental slot and left the contract and the keys with the rental car agency. They stowed their luggage in the airplane, and Teddy did his usual careful preflight inspection of the airplane.
They took off to the south, headed back to Clinton Field, in D.C., and their comfortable hideout hangar. Teddy figured to be on the ground there before dark.
Todd Bacon landed at Clinton Field in the Agency’s Bonanza, usually kept at Manassas Airport, in Virginia, and taxied to the FBO, where he ordered fuel. There were two airplanes ahead of him, waiting for the fuel truck. The delay would give him time to have a look around.
Late on a Sunday afternoon, students were still doing touch-and-goes, and pilots based at the field were coming back from weekends away. Todd strolled nonchalantly over to the rows of hangars, where airplanes were being put away.
His number two had been fuzzy on which hangar he suspected of being Teddy’s, so as he walked, he mentally eliminated the ones where he could see the owners taking care of their airplanes.
Todd wore a baseball cap and sunglasses; he didn’t want to be noticed among the locals, especially by Teddy himself. He had not been able to keep the couple out of his thoughts, and he knew that coming here was against the clear instructions that Holly Barker had given him to think of Teddy as dead. He wasn’t even sure what he would do if he came face-to-face with the old man. He was armed, sure, but Teddy would be, too, and he couldn’t get into a gunfight in a place like this.
As he came to the end of a row of hangars he looked up and saw, silhouetted against the setting sun, a Cessna 182 RG on final for the runway. Same airplane as Teddy’s, but of course it was a different color. This one was two tones of blue, with red stripes, not a factory-issue paint scheme.
He watched it touch down, then brake and turn off the runway, and in the moment of that turn, the setting sun illuminated the pilot. He wasn’t young, and, like Todd, he was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses. Todd couldn’t say he recognized him, since he had never seen Teddy up close, but there was a younger woman seated next to him, and he had seen her before, he thought, in San Diego.
Todd stood at the corner of the row of hangars and watched the airplane turn again and taxi toward him. Now the sun was reflecting off the windshield of the Cessna, and Todd couldn’t make out either of the people inside. He stepped back behind a corner of the corrugated metal building next to him and waited for the airplane to pass him, when he could get a better view of its occupants.
Then, from his position at the corner of the hangar opposite, he saw the door across from him go up. Apparently, the owner used a garage-door remote control to operate the big bifold door. The airplane slowed, and he caught sight of a wingtip as it turned away from him. Now he could look around the corner and see the whole airplane, but as it entered its hangar, the engine died, the airplane came to a stop, and the bifold door came rattling down. He had seen nothing of the occupants.
That was smoothly done, Todd sun was rthought. The owner could have stopped, fussed with his airplane, then affixed a tow bar and pushed it backward into the hangar, but instead, he had simply driven it inside. Of course, when he departed the hangar again he would have to push the airplane out, but Todd had no way of knowing when that would be.
There was probably a car inside the hangar, too, so the owner could drive, instead of fly, away. Todd walked from his hiding place toward the hangar, then walked around to the rear corner, looking for a window or an opening that would allow him to see inside, but the place was sealed.
He stepped out from the hangar, and he had to admire the way it was built. There was a bifold door at the rear, as well as in front: the owner could get into his airplane, start the engine, then depart through the rear door, again without exposing himself to people on the ground.
As Todd stood there, a light went on over his head. There was a security spotlight at each corner, and as he looked up, he saw a window on a second story.
He couldn’t get far enough away to see who was inside without bumping into another hangar. Todd walked back to the front of the building and looked toward where his Bonanza was parked. The fuel truck was just pulling away from it.
If Teddy Fay was upstairs, Todd hoped he didn’t have surveillance cameras, as well as security lighting. He started back toward the FBO to pay his bill and fly back to Manassas.
Upstairs, Teddy was staring at a flat-screen TV, which had been divided into four parts, each assigned to an outside camera.
“What is it?” Lauren asked, walking up behind him and looking at the screens.
“There was a man outside,” Teddy said, “but he’s gone now.”
“There are all sorts of people around here,” Lauren said, “especially at this hour on a Sunday.”
“You’re right,” Teddy said, returning the screen to one large one, with CNN on it. “I won’t worry about it.” He went to his reclining chair to watch the news. “What’s for dinner?”
48
Dino sat in the living room of the suite and pored over a list of names of White House women, and their assignments and locations, that Tim Coleman, Will Lee’s chief of staff, had faxed over from the White House.
“Who did we miss?” Stone asked.
“Everybody, apparently. There are a couple hundred names on this list.”
“Is there anybody, anybody at all who seems likely?”
“Not to me there isn’t,” Dino replied. He handed the list to Stone. “You take a look at it.”
“Of course, Charlotte Kirby didn’t look likely to us, until we interviewed her.”
“She didn’t seem likely until she was dead,” Dino reminded him.
“I don’t have a clue where to start,” Stone said.
“Neither do I.”
“You know, if the March Hare hadn’t killed Charlotte Kirby, we’d be happily back in New York, and the Lees would have put this whole thing out of their minds.”
“Yeah, and the March Hare would be safe. Charlotte was a murder too far. a murdes r div
“Why was Charlotte a danger to her?” Stone asked.
“Because she was talking to us,” Dino said.
“Yes, but she was through talking to us. The newspaper articles put an end to that. She would never have spoken to us again.”
“I guess the March Hare didn’t know that. The same was true of Milly Hart and Mrs. Brandon. They had told us everything they knew, too, but still Ms. Hare felt she had to kill them.”
Stone put down the list of White House women. “So she didn’t know enough about our investigation to see that we were getting nowhere.”
“Either that, or she just likes killing other women.”
“Dino, can you remember a case of a woman who was a serial killer killing other women?”
Dino thought about it. “Now that you mention it, no. Men who are serial killers kill mostly women, and women serial killers always seem to kill men.”
“Can you remember a case where a serial killer, male or female, killed this many people for this reason-the elimination of witnesses?”
“Well,” Dino said, “maybe that’s happened with the Mafia at some point in the past. They sometimes had a tendency to wipe out a list of people they considered threats.”