“On a pair of wings in minutes. All the way from Boston. They got here so fast I’m thinking chopper instead of a plane. Pretty high priority tag on Edgar Roy.”
“And I’m wondering why.”
As they were getting back in their car after being processed by a pair of field techs the lieutenant sidled over to them. “My guy told me he was the source for you about the FBI. Appreciate you covering for him,” he said. “That could’ve really dinged his career.”
“No problem,” said Michelle. “What’s your name?”
“Eric Dobkin.”
“Well, Eric,” said Sean, “it looks like the FBI is throwing its typical eight-hundred-pound-gorilla act, so the rest of us have to help each other out.”
“Help how?”
“We find out stuff we bring it to you.”
“You think that’s wise? I mean they are the FBI.”
“I think it’s wise until it turns out not to be.”
Michelle said, “But it’s a two-way street. We help you, you help us.”
“But it’s a federal investigation now, ma’am.”
“So the Maine State Police just turns tail and runs. Is that your motto?”
He stiffened. “No, ma’am. Our motto is–”
“Semper Aequus. Always Just.” She added, “I looked it up.”
“Also Integrity, Fairness, Compassion, and Excellence,” Dobkin said. “That’s our set of core values. I don’t know how it works in D.C., but we stick to them up here.”
“All the more reason for us to work together.”
“But what’s there to work on? You were retained by a guy who’s now dead.”
“And now we have to find out who killed him.”
“Why?”
“He was a friend of mine.” Sean leaned in closer to the officer. “And I don’t how you do things in Maine. But where I’m from, we don’t abandon our friends because someone killed them.”
Dobkin took a step back. “No sir.”
Michelle smiled. “Then I’m sure we’ll be seeing you. In the meantime.” She handed him one of their business cards. “Enough phone numbers on there to find us,” she added.
Michelle started the car and punched the gas, and the Ford hurtled off.
CHAPTER 5
THEY BOTH SLEPT.
In separate rooms.
The proprietress was a seventy-three-year-old woman named Mrs. Burke who possessed an old-fashioned idea about sleeping arrangements, in which a wedding band was required for cohabitation on the premises.
Michelle slept heavily. Sean did not. After only two fitful hours tossing in the sack, he rose and stared out the window. To the north and even closer to the coast sat Eastport. The sun’s rays would be tickling the town shortly, the first city in the United States to receive the morning light each day. He showered and dressed. An hour later he met a sleepy-eyed Michelle for breakfast.
Martha’s Inn turned out to be cozy and quaint, and close enough to the water to walk down to the shoreline in five minutes. Meals were served in a small, pine-paneled room off the kitchen. Sean and Michelle sat in ladder-back chairs with woven straw seats and had two cups of coffee each, eggs, bacon, and piping hot biscuits pre-slathered in butter by the cook.
“Okay, I’ll have to run like ten miles to burn this goop off,” said Michelle, as she poured a third cup of coffee.
He looked at her empty plate. “Nobody said you had to eat it.”
“Nobody had to. It was delicious.” She noted the local paper in his hands. “Nothing on Bergin, right? Happened too late.”
He lay the paper aside. “Right.” He tugged his sport coat closer around him. “Pretty nippy this morning. I should’ve brought warmer clothes.”
“Didn’t you check the latitude, sailor? This is Maine. It can be cold anytime.”
“No messages from our friend Dobkin?”
“None on my cell. Probably too early yet. So what’s the plan? Not hang around here?”
“We have an appointment to meet with Edgar Roy this morning. I plan on keeping it.”
“Will they let us in without Bergin?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“You really want to do this? I mean, how well did you know Bergin?”
Sean folded his napkin and set it down on the table. He looked around the room; there was only one other occupant. A man in his forties, dressed all in tweeds, was drinking a hot cup of tea with his pinky extended at a perfectly elegant angle.
“When I resigned from the Service, I’d hit rock bottom. Bergin was the first guy who thought I had something left in the tank.”
“Did you know him before? And did he know what had happened?”
“No to both questions. I just ran into him at Greenberry’s, a coffee shop in Charlottesville. We started talking. He was the one who encouraged me to apply to law school. He’s one of the main reasons I got my life back.” He paused. “I owe him, Michelle.”
“Then I guess I owe him too.”
The initial approach to Cutter’s Rock took them on a circuitous path toward the ocean. It was high tide, and they could see the swells slamming against the outcrops of slimy rock as they drove along. They made one hard right, then doglegged left. Another hundred feet carried them around a rise of land, and they saw the warning sign on a six-foot-wide piece of sheet metal set on long poles sunk deep into the rocky earth. It basically said that one was approaching a maximum security federal facility, and if one didn’t have legitimate business there, this was the last and only chance for one to turn around and get the hell out.
Michelle pressed the gas pedal harder, hurtling them faster at their destination. Sean looked over at her. “Having fun?”
“Just working off some butterflies.”
“Butterflies? What butterflies can you–” He caught himself, realizing that not that long ago Michelle had checked herself into a psych facility to work out some personal issues.
“Okay,” he said, and returned his gaze ahead.
A man-made causeway consisting of asphalt bracketed by built-up and graded-solid Maine stone led them out to the federal facility. The entry gate was steel and motorized and looked strong enough to withstand a charge by a herd of Abrams tanks. The guard hut held four armed men who looked like they had never smiled in their lives. Their utility belts each contained a Glock sidearm, cuffs, telescopic head-crushing baton, Taser, pepper spray, stun grenades.
And a whistle.
Michelle looked at Sean as two guards approached them. “Bet me ten bucks that I won’t ask the bigger one if he’s ever blown his whistle to stop a rampaging psycho from escaping.”
“If you make even one joke to those gorillas I will find a gun and shoot you.”
“But if I did ask they’d be mad at me, not you,” she said with a smile.
“No. They always beat up the guy. The girl never gets the speeding ticket. And thanks.”
“For what?”
“Now I have butterflies.”
The perimeter wall was locally quarried stone, twelve feet tall with a six-foot-high stainless steel cylinder riding on top. It would be impossible to get a grip on, much less climb over.
“Seen that equipment on some supermax prisons,” noted Sean. “Latest whiz-bang technology in keeping the bad guys inside.”
“What about suction cups?” asked Michelle, as they both stared at the metal wall topper.
“It rotates like a hamster wheel. Suction cups won’t help you there. Still fall on your ass. And it’s probably loaded with motion sensors.”
Their car was analyzed by an AVIAN, or Advanced Vehicle Interrogation and Notification System, which used seismic sensors placed on their car to capture shock waves produced by a beating heart. An advanced signal-processing algorithm concluded in just under three seconds that there was no living person concealed in their Ford. The car was then subjected to a mobile trace handheld unit that screened for explosives and drugs. The portable unit was then run over them, and Sean and Michelle were personally searched the old-fashioned way, questioned by the guards, and had their names checked against a list. Michelle had instinctively started to explain to them about her weapon before realizing the police still had it. Then they were turned loose on a rigidly narrow path bracketed by high fences to continue their ride. Michelle let her gaze wander over the perimeter.