“Who would kill you?” she ventured.
“Glad you asked,” he said.
“Why?”
“It tells me you don’t know, which is more than ample compensation for having to give up this suite. Thanks to your late attorney, we need to relocate.” He pointed at one of the two large duffel bags on the trolley. “I need you to curl up in here and be as quiet as its current contents.”
He leaned over and unzipped the duffel bag, stuffed with white hotel towels — to make the bag appear full on the way up to the room, she surmised. And now he’d replace the towels with bodies.
“I won’t do it,” she said.
“What makes you think you have a choice?” He kneeled to remove the towels, not a simple job.
This was her chance.
She reached back with the hand that had been cupping the deadbolt cylinder, then threw a fastball. It struck him in the temple with a clonk that must have been heard all the way down in the lobby. Eyes going white, he toppled toward the trolley, landing in a seated position, his spine cracking against one of the thick brass stanchions. Still he was able to raise his pistol and snap the trigger. Something pierced her right thigh. A rocket, it felt like, boring through bone and tissue before bursting into flames. She hadn’t imagined that a bullet could be so painful. Or that anything could be.
50
Thornton turned Langlind’s Ford Expedition onto Independence Avenue. The ultramodern Hirshhorn Museum loomed ahead like a spacecraft touching down on the National Mall. If the basis for choosing the art museum were smaller crowds, it was a poor choice, he thought, taking in the line snaking from the entrance. His mind played a feverish montage of other “big man” candidates — the twenty-foot-tall statue of Jefferson, its neighbor the thirty-foot Martin Luther King, the bronze FDR.
If worse came to worst, he thought, he could use Langlind’s phone to text Mr. X requesting a new location 2 b on safe side.
He checked the phone. As he’d feared, the local police scanner site’s live audio feed now included an Alexandria PD dispatcher’s request for units to respond to a 911 call at the address he’d just left. A code 36: murder.
Further complicating matters, he had just ten minutes until the meeting time. Still he drove another five blocks before pulling into a parking spot across from a McDonald’s on 4th Street Southwest. The police dispatched to the Alexandria house would almost certainly figure out that Langlind’s Expedition was missing. Thornton had to assume that the SUV was equipped with a LoJack or comparable system. The precise location of a stolen-vehicle recovery system within a vehicle was known only to the company that installed it. Parking too close to the Hirshhorn could electronically clue the authorities to his whereabouts. As would his safety net, Langlind’s cell phone. He exited the Expedition, crossed 4th Street, and tossed the phone into an open side of the truck delivering Coca-Cola to the McDonald’s.
As he continued toward the Mall, he spotted a Capitol PD cruiser in an intersection two blocks up Independence. He was thankful he’d worn a disguise to keep Mr. X from recognizing him. It would help with police, too. He hoped. From the cedar-lined his-and-hers closets in the master bedroom in Selena Seldridge’s house in Alexandria, he’d taken one of Langlind’s custom-made business suits. Several sizes too big, the suit made him look bulkier, an effect augmented by two of Langlind’s cashmere sweaters, which he wore underneath. Hair extensions from Seldridge’s closet hung down the back of his neck, like a mullet. He’d topped them with a traditional Stetson. Incredibly misguided, all of this, an inner voice warned.
Just as he stepped onto Independence, the Capitol PD cruiser slid to a stop fifty feet ahead. Two policemen bounded onto the curb in front of him, causing his stomach to plummet. The cops blew past him, weaving through the crowd of pedestrians before turning down 4th Street. Toward Langlind’s SUV? Thornton suspected that a seasoned operator would abort the meeting rather than risk capture, or risk that Mr. X had gotten wind of Langlind’s demise. But taking these risks was Thornton’s only option.
Approaching the museum entrance, he added a swagger befitting his appearance, which he thought of as “oilman with a rockabilly side.” He joined the line for the metal detector. None of the fifty seniors descending the tour bus gave him a second look.
Inside, a security guard beckoned him through the metal detection portal. He hoped that the clips holding the hair extensions in place were plastic. His four layers of clothing, two too many for the mild afternoon, caused him to sweat enough as it was. While passing through the portal, he mopped his brow with the outermost of his four left sleeves. The guard waved him ahead. Thornton tipped his cap, intending to appear polite; his true intent was concealment. Why give the security camera a free shot?
The building was shaped like a doughnut, the exhibits within a ring that surrounded an outdoor sculpture garden. Other than exchanging a smile with a young woman strolling a happy toddler, Thornton had no interaction with any of the patrons. At the sign for the Mueck installation, he turned down a long corridor that ended at the untitled sculpture, a photorealistic portrayal of a middle-aged bald man sitting in a corner, naked, head in hands, the agony in his eyes unmistakable even thirty yards away. Three times the size of life, Thornton judged, based on the man in a trench coat standing beside the sculpture. Mr. X? If so, alone, unless he had associates elsewhere — Thornton took note of the men’s and women’s rooms at the corridor’s midpoint. No one else was in the corridor, whose bare white walls emphasized the sculpture.
Apparently sensing Thornton’s arrival, the man in the trench coat glanced over his shoulder. Taking in Thornton without recognition, he turned back to the sculpture. Which gave Thornton a fairly good idea of why and on whose orders Catherine Peretti had been murdered. The man in front of him was her husband, Richard Hoagland.
51
Thornton said, “I want to help,” by which he meant he wanted to learn why Peretti had been killed, so he could help the prosecution in the coming murder trial.
Hoagland’s blank stare flickered to recognition, then to shock. “Russ, what are you doing here?”
“Exactly what you encouraged me to do: investigating.” It now seemed likely to Thornton that by making the suggestion, Hoagland had really meant to discourage him. “And I have a question for you: Is the secret to your hedge fund’s success the information that you collect using eavesdropping devices implanted in people’s heads?”
Hoagland chuckled. “Have you been talking to one of our competitors?”
“Look, I get it. In your business, the only crime is being on the wrong side of a deal. Littlebird wasn’t just the chance of a lifetime, but one for which you would risk the wrath of God. If someone threatened to expose the operation, even a family member, your bosses wouldn’t hesitate—”
“Russ?”
Thornton waited.
“I actually have to run to a meeting.” Hoagland turned to go. “Call next time you’re in town, and let’s get together.”
“Hang on.” On the chance that Hoagland was afraid to talk, rather than just unwilling, Thornton grabbed him by the elbow. This drew strange looks from the young couple wandering down the corridor. Thornton released Hoagland with a laugh, as if the move had been horseplay, but added under his breath, “My Littlebird was removed. If there’s one in your head, it’s out of commission.”
“How could that be?” Hoagland was transfixed. Or a hell of an actor.
“Haven’t you heard that the listening post in Bridgetown is a pile of rubble?”