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“It’s the only way, Michelle. I messed up and left Viggie unprotected. I can’t sit by and not do anything. I have to try and save her.”
“Okay, when do you want to go?”
“You’re not going.”
“Then neither are you.”
“Michelle, I can’t let you do it. Hell, I could be wrong about the whole thing. I
can’t let you throw your whole life away.”
“What life, Sean? I don’t even know who I am some days. The only life I care about right now is Viggie Turing’s. So if you’re going over that damn fence, so am I.”
He stared at her, partly with pride over her refusal to abandon him. And partly with fear as Joan’s and Horatio’s warnings came back to him.
“Sean,” she said, “the CIA flight will be coming in tomorrow night. Do you think they may try and get Viggie out that way? Maybe they’ll keep her alive until then.”
He didn’t answer. Sean looked out at the river. Did he really want to mix it up with the likes of Ian Whitfield? Did he really want to take it to this guy? The answer was no. And, of course, yes.
An idea suddenly interrupted these thoughts. He jumped up. “Come on!”
CHAPTER
76
TOBY RUCKER CALLED HORATIO back while he was packing up. He’d been successful, he’d told the psychologist.
“Around the time you’re talking about, a car was found abandoned about an hour’s drive from here, up in the Smoky Mountains. I was just a freelance reporter at the time, but after reading the story from the archives I remember it fairly well.”
“Who was the car registered to?”
“A William Joyner, sergeant in the Army. He was assigned to the recruitment office they used to have down here. This was back in the late Seventies.”
“And what happened to him?”
“Nobody knows,” Rucker said. “They found the car, but not him. Local police investigated, and the Army sent its people down, but they never did uncover anything.”
“Was Joyner married?”
“Nope. He was in his late twenties. Joined the Army at eighteen. Fought in Vietnam, stayed in the military and had been back in the States about six years when he disappeared.”
Horatio said hesitantly, “Any romantic involvement? Girlfriend?”
“Nothing in the archives about that. Why, you know different?”
“No,” Horatio said quickly.
“Can I ask what your interest in this is? South didn’t fill me in on that.”
“Just call me a curious soul. So the investigation simply hit a dead end?”
“It often does when you can’t turn up a body. Maybe Joyner got tired of the Army and found a better opportunity somewhere else and went AWOL. It happens.”
Horatio thanked the man and clicked off. It looked like William Joyner had had an affair with Frank Maxwell’s wife and then disappeared. His body, assuming he was dead, had never been found. What had Michelle seen all those years ago that had damaged her so badly? Horatio knew the only place he would get those answers was from Michelle herself. Even if her conscious mind had long since buried the memory, he also knew her subconscious would never forget it.
Sean and Michelle pinched some tools from the garage and hid them in a bag. They walked up to the mansion and explained to the guard there that they had come for Horatio. “We’re clearing out, like Champ said to.”
The guard let them through and Michelle and Sean raced up the stairs to the top floor and down the hall toward the room that Sean had first stayed in. Going inside the room, they stopped in front of the wall where Viggie had calculated the secret room, if it existed, would be located.
