“No, thanks,” David said. “I need to think. Someone took that money. It wasn’t me, and I believe it wasn’t Cassie. But we both might lose our jobs.”
Holt and Anne glanced at each other, quickly looked away. Yes, they needed to talk.
“Where’s your car?” Anne asked David.
“We drove over here in it,” Holt said. He was staring at Cassie, sizing up her shape and weight. He was a practical man.
“Good. We need to find her car.”
“Search,” Holt said briefly. Since it was possible Cassie was playing possum — though Anne didn’t think so — Anne stood a safe distance away with Holt’s gun aimed at the prone figure. Holt knelt to search her. In a practiced way, he rolled Cassie to one side, then the other. He pulled two sets of keys from her pockets and stood. “Rental,” he said, “and personal.”
“She’s got a cabin five miles from camp,” Anne said. “If she hasn’t moved.”
“She won’t stay out for much longer,” David said. “If I get stopped... I’m a black man. Just saying.” He was saying that not only might he get stopped no matter how carefully he kept to the speed limit, but also that he didn’t want to have to kill policemen. But it would be very, very awkward if he were arrested with a tied-up white woman who was screaming bloody murder.
“I have something to keep her out until you get there,” Anne said. “You sure you don’t want me to come? I could manage her. But I’d have to be back by Monday morning for school.”
“You have no idea how weird it is to hear you say that,” David said, smiling reluctantly. “I’ll take her solo, if she’s drugged. What do you have to keep her quiet?”
Anne ran up the stairs to her attic to open her carefully concealed stash of things she’d figured might prove handy. She was a “waste not, want not” kind of person.
“This should be two doses of thiopental,” Anne said when she returned. She handed the vials of freeze-dried powder to David, along with sterile water and two hypodermics.
“You keep that around? Geez, Anne. What else you got?” David withdrew 20cc of sterile water and injected it into the first vial of thiopental. He shook the solution vigorously and withdrew it into the syringe.
“Oh, this is a holdover from Camp East,” she said. “I picked it up in the infirmary after a trainee broke his leg. I thought it might come in handy someday. I stuck it in my go-kit and I didn’t clean it out... in the haste of my departure.” (In the middle of the night. With two armed and wary “escorts.” Not her favorite memory.)
“Thanks,” David said. He gave Cassie the first injection and prepared the next one, capping the syringe and pocketing it. “Is the other side of your garage free?”
“Yes, there’s a control button by the kitchen door. You can drive right in. Might as well leave the kitchen door open.”
In a few seconds — not long enough to have a conversation — Anne heard the garage door rumble up. She nodded to Holt, who squatted to take Cassie’s feet. Anne took her shoulders. Cassie’s body drooped between them like a hammock.
David had lowered the garage door and opened the trunk. “I’ve disabled the safety latch,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on the clock and stop to give her the second shot. Four hours?”
Anne and Holt laboriously dumped Cassie into the trunk. It was lucky she wasn’t tall.
“Four hours should be right,” Holt said. “Sure you can stay awake?”
“Or I make you a to-go cup of coffee,” Anne said helpfully. She predicted David’s reaction.
Sure enough, he stared at her with ill-concealed suspicion. He said, “No, thanks.”
“Let us know when you get there.” Holt clapped David on the shoulder.
“I hope they find out who took the money,” Anne said.
That was as much goodbye as any of them wanted.
As soon as David backed out, Anne closed the garage door. She and Holt stood in the chilly space.
He was waiting for her to say something first.
“When you were Greg, you had a real family,” Anne said. It was not a guess.
He nodded. “Mom, Dad, brother. My father had stomach cancer. He was having a lot of pain. The roads were icy, and my brother was out of state. So Mom took him to the emergency-care clinic at three in the morning because it was lots closer than the hospital. I drove from my hotel to meet them there. The doctor on duty was either incompetent or sleepy or both. He gave Dad the wrong drug. Dad died. He would have died soon anyway, I know. And he was suffering. But it wasn’t his time, just yet. Mom was sure she’d get to take him home.”
“So you took care of the doctor.”
“Waited three weeks and then went into his house at night.” He smiled. “Snatched him right out of bed and vanished him.”
“Did the police really have evidence against you?”
“I’d said a few things to him that night. So they had a lot of suspicion. When they checked into my background, they had even more. And a neighbor saw a car like my rental backing out of his driveway that night.”
“Nothing decisive.”
“No, but enough to haul me in for questioning. And David didn’t let that happen.”
Anne said, “You did the right thing. So did David. Not that you need me to tell you that.”
He nodded. “Was that really thiopental you gave Cassie?” he said.
“If I’d had something stronger I would have brought it down,” she admitted. “All I’d kept was the thiopental. Cassie might not survive the trip, anyway. She was out a lot longer than I’d thought she’d be, and I know she’s had more than one concussion over the years.”
Holt looked hopeful. “That would make things simpler.”
They went into the house. Anne opened a cabinet and brought out a whiskey bottle, raising it in silent query. Holt nodded. She poured and handed him a shot glass, filled one for herself. She leaned against the kitchen island on one side, while Holt sat on a stool on the other. They regarded each other.
“Cancer treatment is very expensive,” Anne said at last.
Holt regarded her steadily. “Dad had a long illness. That trip to the clinic was only one of many. The bills... you could hardly believe how much, and the insurance only covered a fraction of the cost. My mother and my brother were scared shitless. The debt would loom over them the rest of their lives. They think I have some hush-hush military job, and they know the military doesn’t pay well. They didn’t expect I could help much. They were really understanding about that. It burned me up inside.”
“So you siphoned off the money from the enemy fund.”
“Yeah. I did.”
So there it was.
“You did a good job covering your tracks. How’d you plan it?”
“It helped that David’s never been confident with numbers. He always sweated budget time, needed a lot of help from me. I remembered a genius accountant, a guy I’d roomed with in college,” Holt said. “Tom was doing the books for a lot of the wrong people. That was how I knew where he was. Tom was glad to help; he’s one of those people who loves to beat the system, any system.”
“Is Tom still around? Can they interrogate him?”
“He began doing bookkeeping for the wrong people. He disappeared a year ago.”
Anne eyed Holt narrowly. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Holt managed a small smile. “Nothing to do with me. But convenient.”
“So what now?”
Holt’s smile vanished. He looked very grim. “When David showed up today, I felt like the bottom had fallen out. I hated that he was suspected of something I’d done, when he’d done nothing but back me up. As people like us go, he’s a good man.”
Anne had thought of suggesting they follow David and run his car off the road. She was glad she hadn’t said that out loud.