Stafford wondered what age she considered old. She sounded as if she was in her twenties, tops.
“Now, one for you,” she said. “Is whatever you’re working likely to surface a reason for someone to blow up this house deliberately?”
“No, or at least not yet. Look, I appreciate the courtesy of your talking to me, but J don’t really even have anything going here yet. I talked to one Corey Dillard, here at the DRMO yesterday. He was sort of speaking in tongues, and I’m damned if I know what it was all about. My cover is that I’m supposed to be an auditor for the DLA. Anyway, he mentioned Lambry’s name, said I ought to find Lambry. That’s all I’ve got, which is to say, nothing. If there’s a connection between my case and any of that, it’s not visible yet.”
“Well, if you make a connection, we’d appreciate knowing. We’re going to have to go out there to Fort Gillem eventually to do some interviews.”
“Fine. I’ll generate some notes. Just remember, I’m supposed to be an auditor with the Defense Logistics Agency, not a DCIS guy. Only the manager here, a guy named Carson, knows I’m with DCIS.”
“That’s okay with us. We’ll give you any further info if and when we have it, Mr. Stafford.”
He thanked her and they hung up. Stafford wondered what to do next. He had told the arson investigator, the truth: He didn’t really have anything of substance going here at this DRMO, other than the small mystery of what
Dillard had really wanted to tell him, and then the bizarre coincidence of what had happened to Lambry’s house. But he couldn’t just go around here making a big deal about Lambry; everyone in the DRMO would wonder what the hell he was doing, including Carson. And right now, Carson was becoming more interesting than Lambry.
12
Brig. Gen. Lee Carrothers hung up the secure phone gingerly, as if afraid it would explode in his hand. He had just spoken with Colonel Fuller at Fort Dietriek, and now his headache was back with a vengeance.
Surprisingly, Colonel Fuller had not had much to say about the specific substances in the missing weapon, but he” had been very clear about one thing: “If you guys’ve lost a can of Wet Eye, that’s worth a Soviet-style ‘lock up all the participants in a mental asylum for life, stonewall until the end of time’ cover-up, General. Tell Myer Waddell I said that.”
“That’s really peachy, Colonel. Please remember that all the general wanted you to do was think about it, okay?”
“Trust me, General Carrothers: I’ll be thinking of nothing else. Please call me later and tell me this is an exercise. Soon, okay?”
Carrothers rubbed his eyes and buzzed for more coffee. Colonels didn’t normally talk like that to generals, but, what the hell, this guy was an Army vet. And he’d used General Waddell’s first name. Carrothers had placed a call to General Waddell in Germany after talking to Fuller, and he was waiting for a call back. In the meantime, he called the commanding officer of the Tooele Army Depot in Utah to see how the sight inventory was coming. The CO told him they were conducting a destruction inventory match audit.
Carrothers exploded. That’s what Anniston had done. What the situation needed now was a sight inventory, not another damned paper drill. “We know the paperwork is screwed up. What we need to know now is what you did actually receive in that shipment.
Anniston doesn’t have the shit anymore; you do. So go do the fucking sight inventory right fucking now. And I don’t care if your people have to suit up in the rucking noonday sun. Do it, and do it now!” The CO, properly chastened, would order a sight inventory immediately.
Carrothers slammed down the phone. His clerk buzzed him on the intercom.
General Waddell was on the secure line. This day gets better and better, he thought miserably as he reached for the phone.
Carson watched through the Venetian blinds as the forklifts brought some more flea-market stuff into the warehouse. He had gotten home at nearly four in the morning, but his wife, her face draped in a sleep mask over some kind of cold cream, had not even budged. What sleep he, did get was fitful, and he was pretty sure he’d been visited by the dream again. He shivered.
He was surprised that he felt absolutely nothing about what he had done the night before. Not guilt, not concern for the old man next door, not fear of being caught, nothing at all. It was as if he had stepped over some psychological threshold back there when Lambry went into the demil machine. His fear in the airport, his apprehension about actually making this sale and getting his money— both were all gone. He didn’t feel invincible exactly — that damn dream was kind of scary — but he felt stronger than he had felt before last night. Doing Lambry’s house had been smart: The blast had reduced any traces of Lambry’s previous life to flinders. He saw his reflection in the glass: Wendell Carson, master criminal. Well, if that’s what it took to grab a million bucks, that’s what it took.
Stafford could still be a problem, of course, but with Lambry truly out of the picture now, Stafford would be on a very cold trail. All Wendell Carson had to do now was tie off the loose ends of Lambry’s quitting: a final paycheck, closing the personnel folder, and rearranging the work assignments. There would be local cops sniffing around, no doubt, after that explosion, but, surprisingly, Carson found he just wasn’t worried about any of that. He needed to focus now on the physical turnover of the cylinder for the money, and on how to make sure he got the money with his skin intact.
He thought about the cylinder, sitting right here in his office. Maybe he needed a better place for it. He lived southwest of Atlanta, on five acres in a semirural area. Take it out there? If someone suspected him and came looking, either the Army or, for that matter, Tangent, they would certainly search his office and his home. So it really should be better hidden, maybe somewhere out there in the DRMO warehouse complex.
He almost wished he had one of those environmental containers — what did the army guys call them? Coffins? But they had all gone through demil.
He Checked his door and then pushed the books apart to make sure the cylinder was still there. It looked even more lethal now without its protective plastic container. He sat back down and thought about where else to hide it. What was the old rule? When you really want to hide something, the best place is “often right out in the open. ‘One of the warehouses, he decided. He sat back down at his desk and doodled idly on his desk blotter. He saw the name Graniteville circled on the blotter.
Another loose end there? Despite all his newfound confidence, the memory of that little episode in the airport was still able to tickle his hackles. Why had that girl looked at him that way? And why in the hell had he fainted?
He looked at his watch. A good time to take a walk through the warehouses, see what struck his fancy as a better hiding place. He took a deep breath. He was safer than he had been twenty-four hours ago. What had happened to Bud had really been an accident; hadn’t he tried every way to stop the belt? But what was done was done.
A million dollars. No more shitty little civil service job. No more sullen employees. No more skulking around for chump change with the auction scam. No more coming home to a crazy old woman whose nighttime mud packs would stroke out a vampire; A new life. Very soon. With that kind of money, well dell Carson could go anywhere, do anything. After everything that had happened, he had no other options: He had to complete the deal.
Stafford was about to go to lunch when Ray Sparks called him. “Got a message from the Washington office,” Sparks reported. “Apparently some woman from Georgia called your number up there; said she needed to talk to you. Got a writing stick?”