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He led her into a small book-lined study. On one shelf sat a large elaborately decorated blue beer stein. He handed it to her.
“This is it. Pretty nice, although I’m not really a beer drinker.”
Michelle examined the stein closely. It had a hinged pewter top with famous venues from major German cities painted on the side in raised relief. She turned it over and looked at the bottom. “It doesn’t say where it’s from. Just that it was made in Germany.”
“Right. I guess it could have come from anywhere.”
“Can I hold on to this?” she asked.
“Be my guest, if it’ll get us closer to the truth. I wish I could help somehow.”
“There is something you can do,” she said. He looked expectant. “You can let Horatio Barnes stay at Babbage Town.”
Champ looked taken aback by this and Michelle added quickly, “Just room and board. It would mean a lot to me.”
“Well, I guess it can’t hurt,” he said slowly.
“Thanks, Champ, I appreciate it. By the way I saw the martial arts outfit on the door of your office. Which one are you into?”
“Tae Kwon Do. Black belt. You?”
“No,” she lied.
As they walked outside into the sunshine, Champ said, “I can pick you up day after tomorrow around nine if the weather holds.” He adjusted his glasses. “Uh, on the way back I know a nice little restaurant that actually has a pretty decent menu.”
Michelle eyed the man’s tall, lanky frame. He would certainly have had the physical strength to kill Rivest by using a plunger to hold the drunken man underwater until he drowned. But as Sean had said, Champ had an alibi for the time of the murder.
Or did he?
CHAPTER
59
YOU SEEM TO BE the resident expert on Camp Peary around here,” Horatio said. He was seated across from South Freeman in the latter’s office.
“Yeah, but these days nobody wants to listen,” South said bitterly. “Let the CIA do whatever the hell it wants to. I just keep my head down now before it gets blown off.”
“Well, most Americans want to be safe by any means possible.”
“Yeah? Don’t get me going on that logic; it won’t be pretty.”
Horatio went over briefly what Sean had filled him in on when he and Michelle had visited South Freeman. “Now he wants to know what other history there is about the place that might not be widely known.”
“That fellow’s interested in Monk Turing’s death, right?” Horatio nodded. “Well, I am too. And if anything I tell you helps break that case, I want an exclusive. And I mean exclusive. Put my weekly rag back on the map, man, I’m telling you.”
“I’m not sure I can speak for Sean on that.”
Freeman immediately scowled. “Then you can get the hell out of here. I don’t hand out favors for nothing; goes against all my principles.”
Horatio hesitated only for an instant. “Okay, I’m making an executive decision. We break the case using something you gave us, you get the story first. I can put it in writing if you want.”
“Writing doesn’t mean shit with slick lawyers hovering around.” South held out his hand for Horatio to shake. “I like to look a man in the eye and press the flesh on it. You screw me later I’ll come and kick your ass.”
“What a sweet-talker you are.”
South said, “So what are you really interested in?”
“Well, why don’t you go through it chronologically? I know some about the CIA and Camp Peary, but what about before that? I understand the Navy trained Seabees there for World War II but was there anything else going on?”
