“I’ll get going in a minute,” she said. “I just need a little more coffee.”
“Do you want to talk about last night?”
She shrugged, tried to keep it casual, but her body stiffened as if he’d brought up a taboo subject. “Is there something to talk about?”
“Not really. Nothing happened. I just don’t want it to be awkward.”
“It won’t be,” she said. “I know how to behave professionally. Last night. . We were both vulnerable, but nothing happened.”
Her tone was surprisingly distant and cool. There was no vulnerability today. Last night she’d been inviting. This morning there was a wall around her. A brick wall. He suddenly felt like a teenager, unsure of himself and off balance. The phone rang, letting him escape from his discomfort.
“Yeah,” Justin said into the receiver.
“It’s Ben,” the voice on the other end said. “Gary’s brother.”
“You got anything for me, Ben?”
“Do I really get my iPod?”
“It’s practically in the mail.”
“Okay, I got everything you wanted. You have a fax in your house?”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “Do you?”
“No. But I can fax it straight from my computer. I’ll do it right now ’cause I gotta get to school. My mom’s already ready to kill me.”
“Tell her I’ll write you the world’s greatest letter of recommendation when you’re ready for college. That’ll calm her down.”
“I don’t think anything can calm my mom down when she’s like this. What’s your fax number?”
Justin gave it to him and a few seconds later his fax machine rang. Moments after that, Justin was holding a sheet of paper with a well-
designed layout of La Cucina restaurant, not dissimilar from the table layout of Harper’s in Chuck Billings’s notebook. A second piece of paper had the names of everyone who had a lunch reservation from the day before, the day of the bombing, and the tables where they were to be seated.
Justin checked the list of names first. Martin Heffernan had a reservation. For two people. The restaurant had put him at table seventeen.
Justin went back to the page with the table layout. Table seventeen was to the left of the room after you came in. It was in the exact area to which Muaffak Abbas made a beeline with his bomb.
Justin Westwood forgot that Reggie Bokkenheuser was even in the room. He raced back to the phone, dialed a number in Providence.
“Wanda,” he said, when the FBI agent answered her phone. “Don’t say my name out loud.” There was silence from the other end. “Do you know who this is?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you call me back on a secure line? I’m at home.”
“You do know you’re starting to piss me off,” she said.
“Secure line. As fast as you can.” And he hung up.
“Well, I must say.” Reggie was looking at him now, her legs once again tucked under her. “You’ve piqued my curiosity.”
“I’ll explain later,” he said. “I think you’d better get out of here. Get to the station.”
She saw the look on his face, decided to skip any further banter. Reggie just got up and went upstairs to put her clothes on. The phone rang before she came down.
“Okay,” Wanda Chinkle said. “Now what?”
“Do you have any vacation time coming?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Listen,” Justin said. “These bombings. Harper’s and La Cucina. They’re not what they appear to be.”
“More of your paranoia?”
“No.” He told her about Martin Heffernan and the location of Abbas’s bomb. He told her about Bradford Collins and the location of Bashar Shabaan’s explosive.
“You got all this just since you were up here?”
“These weren’t random terrorist bombs, Wanda. We’re talking about victim-specific attacks here.”
“It’s a stretch, Jay. It’s a huge stretch.”
“I don’t think so. Chuck was onto something. He said that Shabaan’s bomb wasn’t a suicide device. That it was set off from somewhere else. By someone else. And he told somebody. I’m pretty sure that same somebody killed him. Or got him killed. And I’m also pretty sure that the somebody works for the goddamn FBI.”
“Jay-”
“Listen to the rest of it. Heffernan knew that plane crash wasn’t an accident. My guess is he’s the guy who rigged the manifold. But at some point, he also must have known it was tied into the Harper’s bombing. He probably figured it out on his own. And maybe he opened his mouth. He had a big one. So they had to kill him, too.”
“Jay, you’re starting to sound-”
“Yeah, I know how I sound. But guess what, Wanda? The FBI are the only ones, other than me, who knew Chuck had started to figure out something was wrong. They probably knew Heffernan’s role, too. And they’re both dead.”
“What does this have to do with my taking a vacation?”
“They know about you. You were asking about the pilot’s fingerprints. And you had an appointment with Chuck. Knowing you, your date was on the record, right there in your appointment book.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re connected to both of them. So it won’t take long for somebody to figure it out. Disappear, Wanda. Take a paid vacation starting now. Or just get the hell out of there. But disappear.”
“Jay, I just can’t leave-”
“They’ve killed a lot of people already. Two people are dead, Chuck and this guy Heffernan, just because they knew something about the Harper’s bombing and the plane crash.”
“Okay, Jay, let’s look at this logically. Who killed them?”
“I don’t know. Have you ever run across an FBI agent named Hubbell Schrader?”
“He’s the head of the New York bureau. . For God’s sake, Jay! You’re not saying he’s responsible for-”
“No. I’m not. I said I don’t know. But I just met Schrader and I didn’t like him.”
“You don’t like anyone.”
“Well, I particularly didn’t like him.”
“All right. Well, what about the other two guys? Collins and Cooke. Who killed them? Or better yet, why were they killed?”
“I don’t know that either. I just know that the four of them are dead. Don’t be the fifth.”
“I-”
“You’re what? You want me to tell you what you are? You’re the only other person they can connect to those two things.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t think they can tie me to it. Not for sure. I was just doing my job at the beginning, trying to get the pilot’s fingerprints. They don’t know what I have or don’t have. You gave me Cooke’s name and they don’t know that. Or do they?”
“No,” she said. “At least they don’t know it from me.”
“Well, Schrader was asking. I protected the both of us, at least the best I could. I don’t think they’ve got anything other than circumstance to connect me to Billings. There was no reason for him to mention me. I wasn’t talking to him about anything official. I told that to Schrader, too, and he seemed to buy it.”
“Let me think about it, Jay.”
“Wanda. .”
“I said I’ll think about it. I’m not ignoring what you’re saying. I just need to decide what to do about it.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“My neighbor’s. The apartment next door. She’s making me a nice hot cup of tea, which I’m going to drink and figure out whether you’re crazy or not.”
“Well, when you figure it out, lemme know.”
He hung up the phone just as Reggie came back downstairs. She was back in her jeans and boots.
“I’ll go get changed,” she said. “I can be at the station in about twenty minutes.” He didn’t respond to her, his mouth had opened a bit and his eyes were closed. “Is that okay?”
“Shit,” he said. And now his head was thrown back. “Shit shit shit shit!” He opened his eyes and, as she backed her way toward the front door, he snapped his fingers at her. “Hold on. Don’t go anywhere.” Justin grabbed for the phone again and dialed. “Gary,” he barked into the mouthpiece. “Call Thomas and Dennis. Tell them to find out where the hell Ray Lockhardt lives and tell them to get over there as fast as they can.”