The First 48 Read online

  “But she’s gone,” Tom said. “Who can I talk to about Gleason? When I spoke to the lieutenant on the way down here, he said he was sending someone over there.”

  “Sir, why don’t we go inside,” Peters said. “You can look around like you asked, and then I can take you back to the station or to a hotel where you can get some rest.”

  “Son,” Tom said, holding up his Ironman watch and illuminating the digital face. “Do you see that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you mind telling me what it says?”

  “24:14:11?”

  “That’s right,” Tom said. “And I got a call last night at twelve twenty-three that may have been my daughter in trouble. That means we’ve got twenty-four hours fourteen minutes and eleven seconds before the first forty-eight is by the boards. They still teach you about that these days, right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So of course I’ll be joining you at the station after this,” Tom said, mounting the stairs.

  Mike fell in behind him, and Peters behind him.

  “Any of the neighbors see or hear anything?” Tom asked.

  “No sir,” Peters said. His hands were in his pockets. “I talked to them all.”

  Tom pushed open the front door. Mike did a quick check of the lock, feeling it, then putting his nose right up to it.

  Tom walked down the hallway to the apartment in the back. Three bands of yellow tape were stretched across Jane’s door. Tom yanked them down and went in. The sight hit him in the gut.

  In the kitchen, glasses, bowls, plates, and platters lay smashed in a jumble on the granite floor. The coffeemaker had been dumped too, and its used-up grounds were splattered over the broken dishware like bird crap. The heavy scent of Starbucks was in the air.

  The living room was worse. Cushions had been torn open. The computer monitor on the desk lay crooked and smashed. Its broken glass was scrambled on the floor with the tipped-out contents of Jane’s potted plants; the musk of raw earth filled his nose. Tom picked through the rubble on the desktop and found nothing.

  He looked back into the kitchen to see Mike remove a photo from beneath a magnet on the refrigerator and slip it into his pocket.

  “I looked real close,” Peters said. Glass crunched under his feet. “So did the patrolman who responded. Guy named Forbes. Good cop. We’re both thinking maybe they were looking for jewelry.”

  “Like a leather bracelet?” Tom said.

  He moved about the room. He picked up an inlaid wooden box. A gift from Ellen. He lifted the lid and sniffed at the potpourri inside. On the coffee table was an Ace Atkins book. Dirty South. On the floor was The History of Art. But no papers. No notes. Nothing to suggest the story she had been working on. Mike checked the sliding glass door. He stepped out onto the wrought-iron terrace that led down to the alleyway in back of the building.

  Tom crept into the bedroom. The sheets and pillows on the bed had been dumped over with the mattress. Clothes spilled from the open drawers. Framed prints of paintings hung crooked on the textured plaster walls. Monet. Seurat. Turner. Renoir. Tom felt a pang. Jane’s hair glistening in the sunshine outside the Met. The broad stone stairs. Fall leaves rattling along the sidewalk. Her smile.

  In the bathroom, vials and tubes and jars of every imaginable thing were spilled out onto the floor. A broken bottle of Aromatics filled the air. Jane’s favorite. The scent so powerful that Tom screwed up his nose. His stomach suddenly shifted, and he leaned toward the toilet. Mike appeared in the doorway, inhaling deeply.

  “She wouldn’t have left it unlocked, right?” Mike said.

  Tom straightened and shook his head.

  “Well,” Mike said, “the place is a mess, but there’s no sign of a struggle. It’s just dumped. I think this guy may be right.”

  “No,” Tom said. “He’s not. ‘Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.’”

  “Sun Tzu?”

  “Churchill.”

  Peters was in the living room, examining a broken picture frame. Jane and her best friend from college hugging in front of the Louvre. He put it down quickly and turned around.

  “All set?”

  “Who talked with Gleason?”

  “The lieutenant sent Filbert and Swain out,” Peters said. “They’re with the dignitary protection unit, so they’re used to dealing with senators and such.”

  “Where are they?”

  Peters shrugged. He looked at his watch and yawned.

  “Station, maybe.”

  Tom put the big white truck kitty-corner in a handicap spot. Peters walked up shaking his head.

  “I don’t think—”

  Tom held up his watch and pushed the light.

  “23:14:42, son.”

  Peters put his hands in his pockets and led them inside. The halls were quiet. A uniform went by. Two suits. Peters nodded to them. The heels of his shoes clicked off the linoleum. Mike’s sneakers squeaked.

  Filbert and Swain were at their desks in the nearly empty squad room. Peters pointed them out. They wore nice suits. Short hair. Silk ties. Filbert, gaunt and pale, was on the phone. He smiled at them and held up one finger. Swain, black and handsome, was typing and never looked up. A fan stood in the corner, pushing dead air.

  Tom listened for about ten seconds to Filbert’s conversation with his bookie before he pushed the receiver button down, disconnecting the phone.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Tom Redmon. I’m here to find my daughter. You two spoke to Senator Gleason?”

  “Who the fuck is this guy?” Filbert said to Peters. He looked over at Swain, who had stopped typing.

  “He’s the dad. He used to be a cop,” Peters said.

  “Oh,” Filbert said.

  “We talked to him,” Swain said, “but he didn’t talk to us.”

  “He what?” Mike said.

  “He will,” Filbert said. “Tomorrow.”

  “With his lawyer,” Swain said. “We’ve got a meeting at his office at four.”

  Mike made a grunting noise and said, “Doesn’t that mean—”

  Tom held up his hand, and Mike stopped.

  “Thank you,” Tom said. “I’m sorry about your phone call. It’s just that I’m upset about my daughter.”

  “That’s okay,” Filbert said, his finger stabbing at the phone’s number pad. “She’s probably fine, you know.”

  “I sometimes overreact,” Tom said. He took Mike by the arm and started to move him toward the door of the squad room. He thanked Peters and exchanged cards with cell phone numbers.

  “You should get some sleep,” Peters said, his own eyes red from rubbing. “She’ll probably turn up tomorrow . . .”

  Mike followed him into the parking lot.

  “I don’t understand it, Tom,” he said, his hands in the air. “You heard those jerk-offs. He asked for his friggin’ lawyer.”

  “‘When frying small fish, disrupt them little.’” Tom said.

  “Confucius,” Mike said.

  “Excellent.”

  “So what are we doing?” Mike asked.

  “We’re going to talk to that son of a bitch Gleason ourselves,” Tom said. “The only problem is that we don’t know where he lives.”

  “No, that’s easy,” Mike said. “That’s where I earn my keep.”

  CHAPTER 17

  They sat in a little cove at a Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue. Open twenty-four seven. The place was next to this McDonald’s where Clinton used to get his Big Macs, or so they were told by the espresso guy. They just wanted a couple of black coffees with no hazelnut or vanilla, just the caffeine. And a place for Tubbs to plug in his Dell.

  Mike removed the thin laptop from his briefcase. He sat down on the couch, made some room on the coffee table, and plugged the ISDN line into his computer. On the top of the case he’d pasted a Lord of the Rings sticker with the dwarf warrior holding an ax.

  “
What’s Gleason’s middle name, do you know?” he asked after logging on to the Internet.

  “No,” Tom said. “Why?”

  “Not a problem,” Mike said. “I’ll find him. AutoTrak. Just like a deadbeat dad. It’s just that without the middle name it’ll probably spit out a couple hundred Michael Gleasons at you. The Senate will have it on their Web site—hang on. . . . The phone line takes so damn long.

  “There it is. Sherman.”

  Mike began typing again, his stubby fingers running the keys like a prodigy.

  “Only three of those,” he said after a few minutes. “A nineteen-year-old in Chevy Chase. A sixty-eight-year-old in Arlington . . . Is he that old?”

  “No,” Tom said, “in his fifties.”

  “Here it is,” Mike said. “Massachusetts Avenue. Let’s check. The vice president lives somewhere there. It’s called the Naval Observatory or something.”

  Mike tapped and moved his fingers. Tom leaned over his shoulder and watched the maps change, zooming in, then out, then in again.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, “this number isn’t far from that. Come on.”

  No matter how much Tom fretted over it, time bled away. Most of the residences in that section of Massachusetts Avenue weren’t numbered. Finally, after their third time past a large French Revival home, Mike spotted a barely discernible number on its massive gatepost. They counted backward from that and determined Gleason’s home to be a Federalist mansion. Red bricks. Surrounded by lush greenery. Towering blue spruce. Broad pin oaks and several sturdy elms.

  An aging brick wall guarded the property’s boundaries. Ornate wrought-iron gates gave them a brief view of the circular drive and a flower garden. Mike gazed at the wall.

  “They’ll have a gardener’s gate in the back or on the side,” he said. “If we can get close to the house we can either go right up to the door or maybe get him when he comes out to get in his car. Most of these guys have drivers.”

  “‘We must one-time the enemy,’” Tom said, gazing ahead. Eyes glassy. “‘Hit him quickly and directly as possible.’”

  “MacArthur?”

  “Musashi.”

  They parked the Suburban halfway down the nearest side street and walked back up the sidewalk toward the senator’s mansion. Tom looked at his watch. 20:02:29. Up over Massachusetts Avenue, the first hint of dawn, a smoky yellow glow, had crept into the eastern fringe of the sky. The air had cooled and cleared. Great charcoal smudges of cloud hung fixed beneath the purple ball of a moon, whose thin brilliant crescent was almost too bright to look at. The birds began to twitter. The air was fresh and felt cool beneath the towering trees. Other houses rose up like sleeping giants, staring down at them through the leaves and branches with bleary yellow eyes.

  “There,” Mike said, pointing to a narrow service road that ran between the hedgerows of two homes.

  They both scanned the area. There was no sign of anyone. They looked briefly at each other and then set off up the drive. Tom felt his heaviness melting away. Adrenaline began to flow through his veins, clear and keen. The image of crisp early morning police raids from so many years ago filled his mind. This was the best time of day to grab an unsuspecting criminal. The comparison left him feeling for the snub nose on his ankle. Mike had taken a big Taurus 454 Raging Bull out of his bag. A .45-caliber revolver with stopping power.

  Tom reminded himself that he didn’t even need his gun. He flexed his fingers, then balled his fists. He threw a Shuto chop into the air.

  They soon came to the brick wall that surrounded the senator’s mansion. There was a walk-through gate. It was rusted and unused and partially blocked by a thick tangle of forsythia. Mike dipped down without hesitation and barreled through the thinnest part of the foliage, snapping branches. He took a tool from his pocket—Tom couldn’t make out what it was in the dim light—and went to work on the lock.

  After a couple grinding squeaks, the gate swung open and they slipped inside the wall. They eased their way through a small stand of thick red pines and came to the edge of a broad carpet of grass. The scent of needles mixed with that of the cut grass. The lawn stretched for several acres. In its center was a white gazebo with a tall pointed roof and gingerbread trim.

  Although the corners of the grounds were still dark, the early dawn had begun to transform the blackness to dark blue. Only a few stars remained above them, and the occasional call of the birds had risen to a chattering. Beyond the lawn another garden bloomed. It was bordered by a fieldstone wall, which separated it from a large rectangular pool. Finally, the massive brick house loomed, with its fluted columns, white shutters, and slate roof.

  Tom heard something. He looked around for Ellen, but it was only her voice. He looked to see if Mike had heard, but he was silently studying the house and the grounds. Tom felt a sneer building up along the lines of his mouth.

  “This way,” Mike said in a low tone. He was moving to the right, keeping inside the fringe of trees and moving silently over the warm sweet-smelling carpet of needles. They reached the adjacent side of the brick wall and kept close to it, shielded from the house by a long wild hedge of lilacs. When they drew even with the pool, Mike thrust his meaty palm into Tom’s chest, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Shhh,” he said. His finger was jammed up against his lips. He stared at the house. His eyes narrowed.

  Tom strained to see through the web of lilacs. He saw movement. An icy coldness seized his insides. A light shone in the lower level of the house. Someone had opened a sliding door. A figure in a white robe was making his way toward the pool. It was Gleason.

  Without hesitation, the senator mounted the diving board and let the robe fall away. A volcano of purple flesh bulged from where his appendix had once been. Although his arms were tan and lean, the slats of his ribs shone through his skin and his pale chest drooped. He plunged into the water and began a slow steady stroke in the half-light. The curtains inside the open sliding door wafted gently in the light breeze, but otherwise there was no movement to be seen in the house.

  Tom followed Mike slowly to the end of the hedge. The space opened onto a side yard dominated by old hardwoods and a thin blanket of wispy grass. From that spot, they could see the driveway that encircled the colorful garden in front. Mike was right: A black Town Car sat there, idling. Tom could see the driver in his dark suit, illuminated by the dome light. He was reading the paper, ready and waiting to take the senator into his offices.

  Tom stepped from behind the hedge and started toward the pool.

  “Tom,” Mike said in an urgent hiss.

  “‘Opportunities multiply as they are seized,’” Tom said, looking straight ahead.

  “Sun Tzu,” Mike said, whispering.

  Tom nodded and mounted the cobblestone steps up onto the terrace surrounding the pool. He wove his way through half a dozen wrought-iron tables and their chairs to the edge of the deep end near the board. He sensed Mike’s heavy breathing right behind him.

  The senator was oblivious. He swam their way with smooth steady strokes. When he reached the wall to turn, Tom squatted down and grabbed him by the arm. He was surprised at the ease with which he was able to snatch Gleason out of the water. The senator twisted and writhed in a panic, splashing like a speared fish. A cry, strangled by a mouthful of water, escaped his throat.

  “Senator Gleason,” Tom said through gritted teeth. “You and I have to talk.”

  “Who the hell are you!” Gleason said. As he struggled to free himself water cascaded off him and all over Tom’s pants. “Let go of me, you son of a bitch!”

  “Where’s Jane?” Tom said. He tightened his grip on Gleason’s arm. “I want to know. Right now. She interviewed you about things you’d done. Things that would get you in trouble.

  “Don’t fight me,” Tom said. He felt his face contorting. There was a dull throb in his brain. His ears were filled with an intensifying hollow echo. “I’d just as soon rip your arm right out of its fucking socket or make you eat your ow
n ear.”

  Gleason stopped struggling and swallowed. His eyes flickered toward the house, but no one came.

  “I’m Jane’s father,” Tom said. He yanked Gleason’s arm, then pushed him back. Tom was shaking.

  Gleason’s reaction was like a smashing blow. Instead of crying out in protest, or flooding with concern, the senator’s face glowed briefly with relief and what looked almost like delight, as if he had feared something worse than the father of a missing girl.

  Tom felt his knees go weak. The knowing smirk faded slowly from Gleason’s face. His eyebrows arched and drew to a point above his nose. His nostrils flared, and his face began to redden.

  She was dead.

  Gleason snatched his arm free. He began backing carefully away from them, his dark eyes blazing. “You’re insane.”

  He turned and bolted toward the house. Mike Tubbs sprang forward so quickly that it made Tom blink. The big .45 was out in his hand and he whipped it down on the back of Gleason’s head with a sharp crack.

  The senator crumpled to the stone in a lifeless heap.

  “The Fire Book,” Tubbs said, citing Musashi’s martial arts classic. “Isn’t it essential to crush your enemy all at once if you consider him weak?”

  Tom nodded, eyebrows raised.

  “Come on,” Mike said, stuffing the gun underneath his shirt and into the waist of his pants. He bent over and scooped up Gleason like a bag of trash, tossing the inert body over his shoulder.

  “Mike?” Tom said. As he hurried after the enormous younger man, he stole a glance at the house. Other than the gentle wave of the curtain, there was nothing.

  Mike retraced the steps they’d taken on their way in, keeping behind the cover of the lilacs and deep inside the stand of red pines. He took short sharp steps, with his legs perpetually bent. At the gate, he tossed Gleason down on the ground and stood with his hands on his knees, straining for air.

  “This bastard knows,” Mike said between gasps. “You go get the truck. Bring it up here. Hurry.”

  “He knows the story,” Tom said.

  “He is the story,” he said. “An open book.”

  Tom backed through the gate, then turned and stumbled down the path, moving faster with each step until he was in a full sprint.