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“Don’t get carried away. I just mess around to keep busy. People here play bridge endlessly. I hate card games.”
She looked around. “You also have no ego wall. Diplomas, commendations, awards, photos of you shaking hands with presidents. Nothing to show what you used to do. And I know you have all of those things to show off because I researched you before coming here. You have every award the FBI gives out, plus a slew of other ones from the federal government in general, and five other countries with which you worked on complex multijurisdictional investigations. France and the UK made you an honorary member of the DGSE and MI6, respectively. You’re on the Wall of Fame at Interpol. Four presidents called you to the White House to take a picture for a job well done. But you choose not to display any of that. Now, that doesn’t strike me as a man in retirement looking to the past. It smacks of a person still very much engaged and looking ahead, despite some age-related infirmities.”
He sat back, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “How much time do you have?”
“All the timeyouneed, Mr. Trask.”
CHAPTER34
THE SIGHT OUT OF THEUnited Airlines jet window was a beautiful, soothing landscape with clusters of homes, some quite large in scope and ambition, but most were small, dulled jewels in a less luxurious chain. And then there were the farms situated along the legendary rolling Virginia hills. There seemed a peace and serenity to all of it.
Clarisse imagined real estate companies would use a drone to film it all and then put these images in their brochures to sell a dream that was only just a dream.
She turned away because the sight—and not the turbulence they were encountering—was making her sick to her stomach.
Dulles International Airport loomed in front of them and the jet touched down and finally slowed. She retrieved her suitcase from baggage claim, confident in her new identity pack: driver’s license, passport, and credit cards; she even had Global Entry based on an interview that had never happened, but a computer only spit out what was put into it. All professionally done and paid for. Easy if you knew where to get such things.
She rented a car, a neat little white convertible, and headed out. She had researched The Plains. It was rural and equal parts poor and chic. But not too many inhabitants. She would be noticed. She did not want to be noticed, at least not right now. But she had no choice.
There was money in the surrounding countryside, some of which she had seen from the air. She had read that Jacqueline Mars, of the Mars candy company, lived in The Plains. She was worth about $40 billion, she had heard, all from making people fat, diabetic, and dead prematurely.
But the town itself was strictly working-class. In May well over fifty thousand people came out to attend the Gold Cup steeplechase here. She imagined the local businessesprospered greatly during that time. Some of the outside dollars would stick here for a bit, like slick leaves on cracked pavement.
She drove slowly past the small pile ofclapboard and shingles that Daryl Oxblood called home. It was a cracker box with a failing foundation, an adjacent lean-to where a dirty tan Ford F-150 sat, and a picket fence that was no longer white and no longer all standing up. Except for the truck, the place looked deserted. There was no smoke coming from the brick chimney, though the day was cold and windy. No lights on that she could see. The fenced-in paddock was empty.
As she gazed around she noted there were four homes on this short dead-end street, one next to Oxblood’s and two across the narrow, disintegrating macadam. Smoke was curling up from the chimney top of one of them while the other sat silent and dark. The home next to Oxblood’s had a Range Rover from the 1980s parked out front and a muddy ATV parked next to a tree. A horse whinnied from behind the structure. A crow flapped its wings and lifted off from the branches of a sprawling southern magnolia set in the front yard and taking up far too much space.
Clarisse parked her car and got out. She was dressed casually in jeans and low boots and a fleece-lined jacket. Her bag was slung over her shoulder. Inside the bag was a cylinder of potent pepper spray that she’d had in her checked bag. She never went anywhere without it. Because you just never knew who you might run into who would require an eyeful of it.
From her bag she pulled out an iPad. An element of cover but also a useful tool if need be. She slipped on fur-lined leather gloves. She stood next to her car and checked out the four houses: Oxblood’s and the other three.
She headed up to Oxblood’s place, approaching from the rear. She knocked but there was no answer. She peered in one of the windows and saw a dingy interior with furnishings that looked like carryovers from several generations back. She knocked on the front door and got the same result. There was a decrepit John Deere tractor parked right behind the house. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in years.
She headed to the house next door. There was permanence there, she concluded, not a trap.
I hope.
CHAPTER35
THE WOMAN WHO ANSWERED HERknock was in her late sixties and looked like she had spent most of her life outdoors doing things that required a lot of physical labor and determination. Her frame was blocky and strong. She had on faded jeans encasing thick legs, dirty muck boots, and a light blue cotton sweater with several holes in it. A pair of leather work gloves stuck out of her front jeans pocket. Her white hair was pulled back in a tight knot. Her face was lined and absent of any artificial coloring.
“Yes?” the woman said, her voice as husky as she appeared.
Clarisse held up her iPad. “Hello, I’m here taking surveys of certain people for my company. My information tells me that Daryl Oxblood lives in the house next door. We were supposed to meet today, right now in fact, but I knocked and no one answered.”
“What company?”
“Online marketing.”
“I doubt Daryl owns a computer. It’s not really his thing.”
Without missing a beat Clarisse said, “That’s why I was sent out, to meet with people like that. They have no online presence and that’s in line with the audience we want to survey.” She glanced over the woman’s shoulder and saw the desktop unit on a farm table in the small kitchen visible from where she was standing. “I take it you don’t suffer from that affliction.”
The woman said, “I suffer fromanaffliction. It’s called having to spend too much damn time on my computer. Whatever happened to a phone call or meeting someone for real?”
“I sympathize. I’ve been trying to get my own screen time down from a ridiculously high level. But Mr. Oxblood doesn’t indulge, which is why we so wanted to talk to him.”
The woman now looked overhershoulder at Oxblood’s place. “His truck is there, which means he should be, too. It’s the only vehicle he has.”
