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And find him discreetly, too. We were told by the Secret Service that in no way could we use the media in our manhunt. It would make Buckland look weak. As if dead looked strong.
No bones about it, even with the spy agency’s help, the case was still in bang-your-head-against-the-wall mode. We’d reinterviewed all the MetLife Building people. Did another forensic sweep through the blind and the MetLife Building’s roof. I’d even put out feelers to every former cop and detective I knew in Jersey and upstate New York and Long Island for anything, any oddball incidents that might give us a lead, especially incidents involving people with British accents.
After another minute of brooding, I sat back up straight and picked up my clipboard and dialed the number for the next gun dealer, a store called Benny’s Gun Coliseum, located in an upstate town with the unlikely name of Butternuts, New York.
“Yeah, hi. Do you sell Barretts?” I said.
Chapter 61
“Look, everyone. It’s five o’clock, also known as vitamin C time,” said Paul Ernenwein as he came over with two red Solo cups of water and those little orange-flavored packets.
I don’t know if it was due to his FBI training, but Paul, I had learned, was very particular in his workday habits. Coffee precisely at nine and then eleven. Lunch at one. Another coffee at three. Vitamin C packet time at five. In a red Solo cup. We had been spending a lot of time together.
“Paul, tell me. How does the CIA even know it’s the Brit?” I said, flicking at the terribly vague photo stuck to the whiteboard beside our desks. “And don’t say you can tell me but then you’d have to kill me, because at this point, I’d say okay, just to figure out anything at all about what’s going on with all this puzzle palace stuff.”
“I don’t know, Mike,” Paul said. “We just have to trust them, remember?”
“Trust them. Sure,” I said. “But they’re leaving something out.”
“A lot of somethings, more likely,” said Paul as he ripped open and then poured out his packet into his cup. “But think about it. These spooks have been asked to do some real questionable stuff since nine eleven. Stuff that might make a new administration go ‘Egads! What’s this?’ and start looking for goats to scape.”
“So they’re covering their ass?” I said.
Paul nodded as he lifted his Solo cup. “They pretty much have to,” he said as my personal phone rang.
“Hey, Mike. Sorry to bother you,” Mary Catherine said.
“No bother, Mary Catherine. What is it?”
“It’s Brian, Mike. He said he was heading to the library, but he didn’t come back. I texted him and tried to Find My Friends him, but his phone is off or something.”
“Do any of the kids know where he is?”
“Eddie seems to know something. He seems nervous. I’ll keep working on him. Do you think you could swing by? I’m actually getting a little nervous myself. Also, Marvin hasn’t come home yet, either.”
“Same old story, huh?” I said, shaking my head.
More mysteries, I thought. When it rained, it poured.
“On my way,” I said.
Chapter 62
A cold wind blew in Brian Bennett’s face as he sat on a stone wall in the now dark Riverside Park, near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.
He was facing west, and down through the leafless trees, he watched the streaming red lights on the West Side Highway. There were some blinking red lights out on the black plain of the Hudson itself, he noticed. Some big ship, a tanker or something, looming out there on all that water, just chilling.
Chilling was the word, he thought, tightening the drawstrings on his hoodie before thrusting his hands back into his coat pockets. He checked his phone again. Nothing. What was up with this joker? he thought. He had said to be there in twenty a whole hour ago.
Brian sighed as he noticed he had 7 percent battery left. “Just great,” he mumbled as he glanced over his shoulder, up the empty stairs toward the monument.
After finding the gun, he’d walked around in a panic, trying for the life of him to figure out what to do. He wanted to tell his dad, of course, but what would happen then? Would Dad have to arrest Marvin?
All the while thinking that any second, a cop would notice the suspicious look on his face and ask to search his backpack. Then, as he was about to head into the Starbucks on Broadway to warm up, it dawned on him.
How to end this whole crazy thing once and for all.
“Hey,” said a voice from behind him.
