“Fondren going to pay a ransom?”
“This is not about money.”
“Revenge?”
Again, Alexa shook her head. “How much do you know about Hunter Bryce?”
“Ex-Army colonel. Charged with killing an undercover ATF agent. Something about a weapons deal.” Winter remembered something. “Hailey Fondren’s been trying Bryce on the murder charge.”
“Bryce was a Special Forces honcho, connected at the hip to Military Intelligence. He has powerful friends in the intelligence community, and he knows secrets about powerful people who don’t want him talking about them. His military records are mostly officially authored lies. He ended his career as a field functionary for M.I. in Afghanistan. Something happened there that should have ended in a court-martial and a life term for him and a couple of his men. Instead, Bryce was allowed to retire honorably.”
“I’m not a big fan of shadowy men with powerful friends. I’ve never found it smart to trust any intelligence agency, and that’s based on near-death experience.”
“Judge Fondren knows enough about Bryce to understand that his intelligence friendships extend into the Bureau, so he can’t risk any official FBI involvement in the kidnappings. Patrick Taylor, the ATF agent that Colonel Bryce killed, was a deep undercover agent who was known only to ATF personnel with top-level security clearances. Somehow Bryce found out about him.”
Winter had seen the headlines about the high-profile trial. He despised the political nature of the intelligence organizations and the fact that their concern for people’s lives and safety often ran second to what was best for the advancement of an individual agent’s career. And he knew far too much about the human vipers that thrived in the intelligence community den.
“Winter, the physical evidence against Bryce is overwhelming. His saliva was on Taylor’s face, his knife had Taylor’s blood under the handle, his boot prints were at the murder scene. Bryce declined any deals and waived a jury trial,” Alexa said. “I think he knew with one man to make the call, instead of twelve, exerting influence on that man was possible. So happens, he drew a judge whose soft underbelly is his family. Judge Fondren lost his wife and son-in-law in a car wreck a year back. Two days ago he got a call in the middle of the night telling him that his daughter and grandson had been taken. The caller told him that, unless he finds Bryce not guilty, Lucy and Elijah will be killed.”
“If it was my family, I’d cut Bryce loose.”
“If I can’t find them before Monday morning, he’ll set Bryce free. But. .”
“But what?”
“They’ll kill them anyway,” she told him.
“How do you figure that?”
“The people who did this for Bryce have nothing to gain by setting them free, and everything to lose. Hailey changes his mind, or Lucy Dockery says she and her son were kidnapped to make sure Bryce got a walk, and the decision to release him gets reversed. If the people who took the Dockerys have kept them alive, they’ll only keep them that way until Bryce is free on Monday. They might keep her alive in case they need to get her to speak to the judge before he goes into that courtroom.”
“The judge will raise hell when he doesn’t get his family back,” Winter said. “So either way, the kidnappers lose.”
“These people aren’t amateurs. They’ll make sure Judge Fondren never gets a chance to do anything.”
“They’ll kill him, too?”
“I’m certain of it. And the world is left with a mystery surrounding a disappeared daughter of a dead judge and her missing child.”
“But they’ll keep them alive until after court Monday.” Winter was thinking aloud.
“Odds fifty-fifty. They may keep the child alive to control Lucy. A mother will do anything to save her child. Lucy’s smart, but she’s been diagnosed as chronically depressed since her husband’s death, and she’s in the hands of violent people. She isn’t going to know how to outrun this kind of situation.”
“Sounds like you have it figured. Who’s your second choice for a partner?”
She shrugged. “I lied, Massey. There is nobody else. I can’t turn to anyone in the Bureau. This one is strictly off the books. The judge says he’ll make anything I have to do kosher after the fact.”
“You know I want to help you.”
“I know what I’m asking,” she said. “This is life-or-death, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“I have to think about my family.”
“Will you at least talk it over with Sean?”
“Talk what over with me?” Sean said. She had come into the room soundlessly, holding the pot of coffee.
“Alexa wants me to help her find a woman and a baby who’ve been kidnapped.”
Sean said nothing. She waited for one of them to go on.
“They’ll be killed unless I can locate them,” Alexa said.
“Lex is off the books,” Winter told his wife.
“Off what books?”
“Means no official involvement or support,” Winter explained.
“I can’t do it alone,” Alexa said. “If I could, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Will it be dangerous?” Sean asked. Her eyes were on Winter.
“We’re dealing with people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill us if we get close,” Alexa answered. “People who know how and don’t mind doing it.”
Winter said, “Alexa is sure they’ll kill the family if she doesn’t find them.”
“Damn it,” Sean said. She shook her head slowly. “Alexa asked you to help her, Winter?”
“I hated to ask, Sean,” Alexa interposed. “But I had to try.”
“Isn’t there anyone else you can ask?”
“There’s nobody like Winter, Sean. And there isn’t time to look for anybody else.”
Sean’s features were like stone. Then she leaned down and kissed her husband on the cheek. “Well, if that’s the case, you two guys better get moving.”
7
Ferny Ernest Smoot, who was supposed to keep tabs on the old judge’s comings and goings, hated his name, so he answered only to “Click.” Click had followed Judge Fondren from his big house in Meyers Park to the Westin Hotel in downtown Charlotte. There the judge met a light-skin black woman and the pair sat down at a table in the hotel restaurant. Click took a seat at a table across the room.
Click’s father, Peanut Smoot, would want to know if the lady was a cop, but since she wasn’t in uniform, that wouldn’t be easy to figure out unless Click was to ask her, which of course he couldn’t. She could have been a businesswoman, a lawyer, another judge, the judge’s secretary, or even a mistress. She was old, but not half as old as the judge was. She was pretty good looking, but she didn’t have breasts that amounted to much, and she was more short than tall.
Click knew the woman was staying at the hotel because she signed the bill that the waitress put on the table. What was odd was, after she signed the ticket, she leaned over close and said something to the judge, who turned to glance at a bearded man seated by himself across the restaurant. The woman leaned back and also looked over at the man. The bearded man they looked at didn’t notice them looking at him. So Click studied them all without acting like he was doing anything but eating-somebody who didn’t have any reason not to be minding his own business.
The bearded man was narrow-shouldered, pudgy, and looked to Click like a college professor whose mother still dressed him. He seemed to be reading a newspaper, but his eyes didn’t shift around on the page. He was either the world’s slowest reader, or he wasn’t reading at all. Then Click saw that the man was actually looking at the window beside him, using its reflection like a mirror to keep an eye on the woman and the judge.
Click wondered if the man had noticed him, too.
The judge got up all the sudden, said his good-bye to the pretty woman, and walked out of the restaurant. Click was only half done eating his nine-dollar hamburger-for which he didn’t even have a bill yet-couldn’t very well get up and take off after the old man without attracting attention. What he did was sit tight, eat the rest of his meal, and watch the woman, who waited a few minutes before she too walked out. That happened just as Click was forking up the last of his french fries.