20

Pretty clever of me, Grayson thought. He had cruised down Rock Creek Parkway and pulled into the area around George Washington University. College kids are always up. Surely, there’d be some coffee shop with free wireless open around the GW campus, he’d reasoned.

And there was. What’s more, he fit right in, with his jeans and fake ponytail. All the way down to D.C., he’d rehearsed what he would write. But he felt anxious. Would Grable still be up? Would he be watching the board?

Someone would, he presumed, and that someone would get Grable. He had to count on it. The Feds were in it now, so he just had to assume they’d be there. No matter. He’d set up the deal. It would be up to Grable to complete it.

He had it all figured out. Once the money had been transferred to his new Cayman Islands account, he would drop Sandy and Zoe off at a park in Fairfax. He would tell Sandy to leave the little girl in the play area and then walk back out. He would pick her up on the other side. Only of course, he wouldn’t. No way would he share his two million with that broad. What had she done to earn it?

Grayson sipped his macchiato. Two coeds were talking about some guy, discussing his body. Women these days were just as coarse as men, he thought. They deserved whatever they got.

He booted up his laptop, smiling inwardly. He had signed on now from an entirely different location. Even if the Bureau traced his messages, they’d still never catch up to him.

Satisfied, he turned his attention to the High Stakes message board. He went back to his last message, read it and the responses, and then picked up the thread. The time on his computer read 11:37.

Kenzie raced into the dining room, her head still focused on her conversation with Crow. She looked over Alicia’s shoulder at the computer.

Jackson had written, Lost power for a while. Back now. I’m headed back to the chat room.

Quickly, Alicia made the switch.

“Have there been thunderstorms? Find out where the power has been out,” Kenzie said.

“Got it,” Scott responded.

Jackson423’s message sprawled across the board: What I was saying was that if CISU confirmed the message through Joie’s father, then they would know the mastermind of the plot was on the up and up. It shouldn’t be any problem for them to collect $2 million. CISU seems to throw money around like crazy. But how would they deliver it? It would be wired to the Out Islands Bank in the Cayman Islands, to a numbered account. Maybe her name in code. Once the transaction was made, then Joie would be safe. She is, in fact, her father’s life.

“Look at that!” Alicia exclaimed. “ ‘Life’. That’s ‘Zoe’ in Greek!”

“Good job,” Kenzie responded.

“What’s the rest of it mean?”

Kenzie focused. She didn’t like to do a snap analysis. But she had to, because she had to respond. “The question is how would they deliver it? How would CISU deliver the ransom money?” she told Alicia. “The answer is, they would wire it to the Out Islands Bank in the Cayman Islands. And there’s a key to the account number in the name.”

“So, like a code,” Alicia responded.

“That’s right.”

“Maybe just the simple number code . . . A is one, B is two, and so on.”

Crow came in. Kenzie glanced at him, and he met her eyes. Her heart skipped a beat. She refocused on the computer screen.

“Look at this,” Alicia said, pointing to the message. “Any idea how we could decode it?”

Crow reached for a notepad. “Let me try.”

Kenzie took a deep breath. She had a decision to make. “Do you all think Big Dog should respond right away?”

“If we do, he’ll know we’re monitoring it,” Alicia said.

“But he would anyway, right? I mean, it would only be logical.”

“Do it,” Crow said. “Only wait five minutes or so, so it’s as if we had to go get Grable.”

“All right,” Kenzie said.

“How many numbers in a Cayman Islands bank account?” Crow asked.

Kenzie had no idea. And the banks, of course, would be closed.

“Hey, we had a fraud case involving an offshore bank,” Alicia said. “I could check the case file.”

“Downtown?”

“Out at Tysons.” Alicia flipped open her phone. “I’ll call my old partner. He’s still at that office.” She punched in a number and put the phone to her ear. “He’s going to love me calling him this late.” After a short conversation, she said, “He’s going to check the case file and call me back.”

“Good.” Kenzie stared at her computer. “It’s been seven minutes. I’m going to answer him.”

“Go for it,” Crow said.

She typed: That’s a good plot line. I’m sure CISU would respond to that. But just out of curiosity, how long would you expect it to take them to come up with $2 million?

These things can’t drag on, Jackson423 wrote. That’s one thing about High Stakes. The shows move right along. So I’d say, forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours would be the limit.

Starting the day the instructions were given?

Yes.

“Oh, gosh,” she said, pushing back from the table. “This guy’s playing hardball. Two days!”

“Considering Zoe’s diabetes, it may be all we have anyway,” Crow said.

“What do you have there?” she asked him.

“Here’s the number if the guy is using the straight alpha-numeric system: twenty-six. That’s for the ‘Z.’ then fifteen for the ‘O,’ five for the ‘E,’ and then seven, eighteen, one, two, twelve, five. Zoe Grable. That number sequence seems long, though, for an account number. I’ll have to wait for the proper length. And maybe he’s using Zoe’s name backwards. Or just her last name.”

“Why would he make it hard?”

“To tweak Grable. He’s enjoying the game. I mean, what we’ll have to do is call the bank and give them some possibilities and see if anything matches.”

“But wait. These are anonymous accounts. How will we know we have the right one? That we didn’t accidentally get another account?”

Crow nodded toward the computer. “Ask him.”

She did, typing her question into the message board. Several minutes later, the response came.

The account would have a code word associated with it: Curtis.

Kenzie looked at Crow. “Curtis. Do you get that? Is it from the show?”

Crow shook his head. He looked at his watch. “I’ll call the kid Scott has watching those shows.”

Kenzie responded to Jackson423: Smart.

The minutes ticked by. Kenzie kept the chat up between her two characters, but Jackson423 remained quiet. She was acutely aware of Crow’s presence, his breathing, the faint smell of his shampoo, the fact that he was watching her intently. Just a few hours ago, she’d been angry. So had he. Now, they’d moved to a different place. She could feel it.

Finally, Kenzie decided Jackson423 had finished for the night. Crow had given up a while ago. He lay on the floor, sound asleep.

Her neck and shoulders were tight and she rotated them to loosen them up and slouched down in the chair. Kenzie closed her eyes, and her mind began to drift. Suddenly, she found herself praying. Maybe it was the fatigue. Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was just sheer emotion. But she prayed. God, make this work. Please, make this work. Help us find Zoe. And God, please help me sort all this out. My relationship with Crow, my relationship with you . . . help me. I’m tired of fighting you. I want to let go of my anger. I want to love someone. Please help me. She shivered and opened her eyes.

Kenzie was standing in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee and thinking, when Scott walked in.

“Did you get some sleep?” he asked.

Kenzie shook her head. She wanted to tell him about her conversation with Crow. Scott would help her. He would put it in perspective for her. But she knew she had to stay on task. Over Scott’s shoulder, she saw the senator walking toward them.

“Senator, I’d like to get into your Capitol Hill office,” she said.

“You can go now, if you want,” he said. He was dressed in navy blue sweats and he looked worn and tired. He rubbed his hand through his hair. “I couldn’t sleep. If you want, I’ll give you the keys to my office, and the key to my filing cabinet, and the password to my computer, and you can go through anything you want.”

Kenzie raised her eyebrows.

“Please. Anything to move this along.”

“Scott?” Kenzie asked.

“It’s two o’clock in the morning. Don’t you need some rest?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“OK, then. Fine by me.”

The senator handed her the keys. “I don’t care,” he said, “if I go to jail for the rest of my life. I want Zoe back. Anything you find, anything at all, is fair game.”

“Your lawyer . . .”

“I don’t care.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Zoe is all that matters. Do whatever you need to do to find her.”

“You want someone to go with you?” Scott asked. “I can wake up Crow.”

“Let him sleep. I’ll be fine.”

The streets of Washington were still shiny wet from the storm that had passed through a couple of hours before. Kenzie eased her Bucar out of the senator’s clogged neighborhood and found her way to M Street. At two-thirty in the morning, there were still a surprising number of vehicles on the road in Georgetown. But then, the bars had just let out.

She wanted some coffee, so she swung by an all-night coffee shop near George Washington University, parked, and went in. The place seemed deserted except for a couple of young women browsing a fashion magazine in the corner.

Kenzie ordered a tall Sumatra, room for cream, fixed it, and left. She shot down to Pennsylvania Avenue and raced past the White House, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian museums, and FBI headquarters. While she drove, she tried to work out a game plan in her head. Her mind, however, kept skipping back to Crow.

The buildings she passed shimmered in the night, each beautiful in its own way. For most people, they were the perfect postcard images of the nation’s capital; for Kenzie they represented home. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Not far away lay the street on which her father had had his office. Just a few blocks beyond that, her grandfather had owned a shop. Her great-grandfather had installed the windows at the top of the Washington Monument, another long-lost relative had done the gold-leaf work in the Supreme Court Building.

But now, the desert southwest seemed intriguing. Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon . . . maybe she’d like to go there sometime.

She swung the Bucar onto the road around the Capitol, rolled down her window and talked to a Capitol police officer, who inspected her creds and directed her to a special spot next to the Everett Dirksen Senate Office Building. She found it, parked, and went into the building.

Security was tight, as it had been since 9/11. She had to show credentials and then a Capitol police officer escorted her to the senator’s office. Kenzie used Grable’s keys to open the door, and then flipped on the lights. The officer dropped into a chair. Apparently, she had orders to stay.

Kenzie looked around. Grable’s office contained lots of wood, plush carpets, brass lamps, and a “me wall” full of grip-and-grin photos. The secretary’s desk looked neat and tidy, backed by bookcases full of papers and weighty tomes. Two offices for assistants were off to the left. Beyond the secretary’s desk lay the inner office. Kenzie walked back to where the senator’s desk sat and noted the photographs of Zoe on the credenza, the childish drawings pinned to the walls labeled “to Daddy,” and the toys in a crate on the lowest shelf of his bookcase.

She unlocked the filing cabinet and began pulling out files at random. There were hundreds marked with the numbers of bills, like S.632 and H.R.4994. She skipped those, and instead went to memos to others on Capitol Hill: Letters to senators and congressmen and women requests for data, press releases, notes to colleagues, and memos to staff. Intrigued, Kenzie sat down on the floor, put her coffee next to her, and went through the correspondence page by page. Gradually a picture of the senator’s work life began to form. He was a very busy man. A very powerful man. One who relied heavily on his staff. One whose advice was frequently sought by others.

How could he have engaged in criminal activity? She found it an amazing contradiction—the involved, effective senator and loving daddy, and the crook who had betrayed his office. Kenzie soon lost herself in the words of his work. She was vaguely aware the Capitol police officer had dozed off. She heard her snoring. Her mind, however, remained fixed on the papers in front of her.

By the time dawn began sending shafts of light through the windows, Kenzie’s brain was full. She had jotted notes and made some copies. She’d found some angry memos, and some letters from constituents frustrated with the federal government, demanding Senator Grable’s attention.

By six a.m., she was ready to go back.

Returning to the senator’s house, Kenzie’s cell phone rang. The female voice at the other end sounded vaguely familiar.

“Agent Graham?”

“Yes.”

“This is Laura Barstow. You interviewed me about Beth, remember?”

Ah, yes, the blonde woman with the silver toy poodle.

“I’m calling you because . . . well, because I’m concerned about Beth.”

Kenzie pulled over to the curb so she could listen better. “Why is that?”

“I saw her last night. We were at a party. And Ms. Graham, I have never seen her so low.”

“Describe that.”

“She’s the life of the party, usually, but last night she just sat on the couch, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, and blowing her nose. Her eyes looked so red. And her hair . . . I have never seen her so disheveled. It bothered me, and all I could think of to do was call you.”

“Did she threaten suicide or anything like that?”

“No, but I think that’s next. Except I don’t think she’ll threaten to do it. She’ll just do it. And we’ll all be sorry we didn’t see it coming.”

When Kenzie walked into the Grables’, the senator sat slouched in a chair with his eyes closed, and Alicia was nowhere to be seen. Scott had fallen asleep in front of the computer. Kenzie quietly walked over to it, reactivated the screen, and checked the message board. There were no new postings. Scott stirred. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “Nothing’s happening.”

Grable heard her. He got up, and followed her out to the kitchen, where they found Crow making coffee. The Navajo worked quickly, precisely, as he measured the coffee, filled the carafe, and poured the water into the reservoir. He glanced up, saw Kenzie, and his eyes softened.

Bruce Grable spoke up. “Find anything?” he asked Kenzie.

“Some.” She thought just a moment about telling him about Laura Barstow’s phone call, but she decided not to. “I’d like to go back when the secretary is there.”

“Louise?” Grable responded. “She’ll be in at seven-thirty sharp. She always is.”

“Has she worked for you for a long time?”

“Twenty years. She’s wonderful. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Your files are well kept.”

“That’s Louise.”

“I found a lot of correspondence from angry constituents,” Kenzie said.

“Yes, we get that all the time. Always threatening to do something if their VA checks aren’t straightened out. Or their Social Security. Money. It all has to do with money.”

“Do you report these to someone?” Crow asked, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. That’s when Kenzie noticed the ragged, five-inch scar on his left forearm. She hadn’t seen it before, and she wondered where he’d gotten it.

“No. We try to help them with their claims, but reporting all those threats would keep a lot of people employed full-time.”

“Do I smell coffee?”

All three of them looked up to see a disheveled Scott standing in the doorway.

“Nothing like a good night’s sleep,” he said, yawning. “And believe me, it was nothing like a good night’s sleep.”

Even the senator smiled.

“What’s happening?”

Kenzie told him about her visit to the senator’s office, and what she’d found. “Senator, I did have some questions,” she said, turning to Grable. “I found a lot of correspondence from Senator Morrison. He seemed angry.”

Grable grimaced. “He’s an old foe. We’ve grappled for years. He’s about to lose his reelection, and he’s ticked off.”

“Do you consider him a threat?”

“Morrison? A personal threat? No, he’s just blustering.”

Kenzie nodded. “Back in some older files, I saw this name, ‘Grayson Chambers.’ Who’s he?”

The senator’s face brightened. “Grayson Chambers? My old legislative aide. Great guy! Wonderful! A whiz when it comes to politics. Hardworking. Resourceful. I called him the best butt-kicker on the Hill.”

“But he’s no longer working for you?”

“Left a while back. He’s teaching at a college in California, small town, up the coast from LA. Santa Barbara maybe.”

“You keep up with him?”

Grable look chagrined. “No. I should, but to be honest, I don’t have much time. Haven’t heard from him in a while. Christmas, maybe. Yes, I think we got a Christmas card from him.”

Kenzie tried to absorb all he said. Grayson Chambers. Of all the memos she’d read, and all the briefing papers, his were the best written.

“Grayson was my right-hand man for fifteen or sixteen years. Great guy. Loyal as a hound dog. Smart as a whip. And ugly as a toad.” He chuckled. “I always told him he’d scare the feathers off a hen.” He looked over at the coffeepot on the counter. “Hey, coffee’s done.”

While Grable pulled mugs from the cabinet and Crow retrieved the cream from the refrigerator, Kenzie mulled over the senator’s words. Ugly as a toad. Just what was wrong with Grayson Chambers?

Scott’s cell phone rang. He listened, responded in monosyllables, and clicked it off. “The surveillance squad reports your wife just got pulled over by D.C. police. They’re taking her in on suspicion of DUI.”

The senator groaned. “Beth? What next?” He sighed with resignation. “I’ll call my lawyer.”

“Hold on. I want to talk to her,” Kenzie said suddenly.

Scott looked at her parentally. “You’ve been out all night.”

“This is my chance! I’m fine! I want to see her.” She raised her eyebrows. “Crow can come and babysit if you’re concerned.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Navajo smile.