Chương 4
Keane’s face became unreadable.
“Vehicle?”
“Still in the lot.”
“Phone?”
“Found in his office.”
The room changed.
Not because Rusk was guilty.
Because one safe assumption had just disappeared.
Keane looked at me.
I looked at Bell’s battered insignia.
Then I looked at the photocopied maintenance record.
“Who told Rusk I was coming?” I asked.
No one answered.
That was an answer too.
Keane looked toward Ward.
Ward looked toward Vickers.
Vickers looked sick.
“I sent the visitor list to section heads yesterday,” he said.
“Why?” Keane asked.
“Standard coordination.”
“Names included?”
“Yes.”
“Purpose of visit?”
“No.”
I said, “Did Rusk know mine?”
Vickers rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“If he read the attachment.”
“Then assume he did.”
Ortega was already reaching for the door.
Keane stopped him.
“Master Chief.”
“We need to find him.”
“We do.”
“I know where he goes when he wants to disappear.”
Ward stood.
“Then security goes with you.”
Ortega gave her a flat look.
“You think I’m going to tackle him?”
“I think a man connected to a fatal investigation is missing.”
“Connected is doing a lot of work there.”
“And so is missing.”
Keane cut between them.
“Enough.”
He turned to Ortega.
“Where?”
“Old boat yard across from the maintenance annex.”
“That area is restricted.”
“Which is why nobody bothers him there.”
Keane stared at him.
“You knew he went there.”
“I knew he smoked there.”
“Rusk smokes?”
“Only when he thinks nobody can see him.”
That was the first useful description of the man anyone had given me.
Not rank.
Not access level.
Not duty history.
A bad habit hidden behind a building.
People tell you more truth in what they conceal than in what they submit on forms.
Keane told the lieutenant to notify base security and keep the search quiet.
Ward objected to the word quiet.
Keane told her he meant no alarms, no radios blaring Rusk’s name across half the installation, and no creating a fugitive before they knew whether they had one.
She accepted that.
Barely.
I stood.
Keane frowned.
“Where are you going?”
“With Ortega.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You are eighty-seven.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“This is not a field trip.”
“Then stop inviting old men to military investigations.”
Ortega looked at Keane with considerable interest.
Keane pinched the bridge of his nose.
“My father warned me about you.”
“Your father owed me fourteen dollars.”
“He said you cheated at cards.”
“He lost honestly.”
“According to him, that was the problem.”
For one second, Danny stood between us.
Then he was gone.
Keane’s face changed with the same small pain I felt.
“Stay here,” he said.
“No.”
“Mr. Mercer.”
“Thomas.”
He hated that.
I could tell because he became very still.
“I did not come here to sit in a conference room while younger men decide which facts I’m allowed to see.”
“You were brought in as a historical consultant.”
“No.”
Keane’s eyes narrowed.
“No?”
“Bell didn’t write, consult Mercer.”
Nobody said anything.
I pointed at the evidence sleeve.
“He wrote, find Mercer.”
Ortega looked away to hide something that might have been approval.
Keane finally said, “You stay behind security.”
“I walk behind people all the time now.”
“That was not a joke.”
“Neither was mine.”
We left the building six minutes later.
The afternoon light had sharpened, bouncing off concrete and windshields.
Two master-at-arms met us near the curb, both young enough that I suspected neither had been born when I retired from any form of useful employment.
One was a woman named Hernandez.
The other was Petty Officer Boone.
Hernandez did most of the talking.
That immediately made me trust her more.
She asked Ortega for the exact location.
He pointed across the service road toward a low row of corrugated structures behind a fenced maintenance yard.
“He cuts through the west gate.”
“Locked?”
“Supposed to be.”
“That means no.”
“That means Rusk has been here twenty-two years.”
Hernandez did not smile.
“People with twenty-two years can still use gates.”
Ortega nodded.
“Fair.”
We crossed slowly.
I hated making them slow down.
Nobody mentioned it.
Halfway across the road, a utility truck rolled by and its driver stared openly at Keane, then at me, trying to work out why a two-star admiral was walking beside an old civilian toward a maintenance yard.
I could almost hear the story beginning in his head.
By dinner, I would probably be a retired CIA assassin or Keane’s father-in-law.
Bases manufacture rumors more efficiently than ammunition.
At the west gate, Hernandez found the lock hanging open.
Not broken.
Open.
She lifted it with two fingers.
“Key access?”
Ortega nodded.
“Maintenance chiefs have one.”
“Anyone else?”
“About forty people.”
“Wonderful.”
Boone moved through first.
We waited.
I looked through the fence.
The yard was mostly dead equipment, storage containers, damaged rigid-hull boats, pallets covered in sun-bleached tarps, and a forklift parked with one fork several inches higher than the other.
Something about the place reminded me of naval yards everywhere.
Nothing was ever truly discarded.
It was simply moved somewhere less important until somebody needed to explain why it was still there.
Boone waved us in.
Keane told me to remain beside him.
I did, mostly because my knee had decided independence was no longer an admirable quality.
Ortega led us between two storage sheds.
The smell reached us first.
Cigarette smoke.
Fresh.
Hernandez raised one hand.
Everyone stopped.
Then came another smell.
Coffee.
Burned coffee.
Ortega whispered, “He keeps a thermos.”
Keane looked at him.
“You know a lot about his hiding place.”
“We’ve had arguments.”
“Here?”
“Some.”
“About Bell?”
Ortega did not answer.
That silence had weight.
Keane saw it.
So did Hernandez.
“Later,” she said.
We turned the corner.
Senior Chief Evan Rusk sat on an overturned plastic crate beside an old dive locker.
He was not running.
May you like
He was drinking coffee from a steel cup and smoking a cigarette down almost to the filter.
He looked about fifty, heavy through the shoulders, with sandy hair cut close and a face that might once have been handsome before squinting became permanent.
