She said the name slowly, drawing out the two syllables of the last name. “Doug Denby.” Ritter’s chief of staff. Joan’s notes said that after Ritter’s death, Denby’s life had actually taken a turn for the better with his inheriting land and money in Mississippi. Because of that, Joan had concluded he couldn’t be their man. But Michelle wasn’t that confident. Were some phone calls and general background information undertaken by Joan’s people enough? Joan hadn’t gone down to Mississippi to see for herself. She’d never laid eyes on Doug Denby. Was he really in Mississippi playing the country squire? Might he be instead around here somewhere, waiting to kill or kidnap his next victim? King said that Denby had been thoroughly upstaged by Sidney Morse on the Ritter campaign and come to resent him deeply. Maybe Denby had come to hate Clyde Ritter as well. What connection might he have had to Arnold Ramsey, if any? Or Kate Ramsey? Had he used his wealth to orchestrate some sort of revenge-filled campaign? So far Joan’s inquiries hadn’t answered those
questions.
Michelle took a pen and wrote Denby’s name under the one Joan had scratched out. She pondered whether to call King and ask him what he remembered about the man. Maybe she should take these notes over there and force him to sit down and work through them with her. She sighed. Maybe she just wanted to be around him. She was pouring another cup of tea and looking out the window, where it was clouding over and looking like rain, when her phone rang.
It was Parks reporting in. “I’m still in Tennessee,” he said. He didn’t sound happy.
“Anything new?”
“We’ve talked to some folks who have homes nearby, but they were no help. Didn’t know Bob Scott, never seen him, that sort of thing. Hell, I think half these people are felons on the lam themselves. The place did belong to Bob Scott. He bought it from the estate of an old fellow who lived there about five years but, according to this fellow’s family, didn’t even know the bunker was there. And the place was wiped clean. No clues other than that earring you two found.”
“Sean found it, not me.” She hesitated and then said, “Look, he found something else.” She told him about the name of the village in Vietnam that had been scratched on the wall of the other prison cell.
Parks was furious. “Why the hell didn’t he tell me that while he was down here?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, then thought about King’s withdrawal from her. “Maybe he’s not into trusting anyone right now.”
“So you’ve confirmed Scott was a POW there during Nam?”
“Yes, I talked to an agent who knew the whole story.”
“Are you telling me somebody came down here, took it over and made him a prisoner in his own home?”
“Sean said it might have been a trick, to throw us off.”
“Where is our brilliant detective?”
“At his house. He’s following up some other lines of inquiry. He’s not really communicative right now. Apparently he wants to be alone.”
Parks shouted, “Who cares what he wants? He might have cracked this whole case by now but isn’t telling us squat!”
“Look, Jefferson, he’s doing his best to find out the truth. He just has his own way of doing it.”
“Well, his way of doing it is really starting to piss me off.”
“I’ll talk to him. Maybe we can meet later.”
“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be down here. Probably won’t be done until tomorrow. You just talk to King and make him see the error of holding out on us. I don’t want to find out he’s got some other evidence I don’t know about. If he does, I’m going to slap him in a cell that looks a lot like the ones you two saw today. You understand?”
“Perfectly.”
Michelle clicked off and pulled the phone line from her laptop out of the wall, winding it back up and putting it in her case. She stood and went over to the other side of the room to get something from her knapsack. So preoccupied was she that she didn’t see it until it was too late. She tripped and fell. Rising back up, she looked at the oar with an angry expression. It was half under the bed, along with all the other junk from her truck. So stuffed was the underside of the bed that her possessions kept falling out, turning her bedroom into an obstacle course. This was the third time she’d tripped over something. She decided to do something about it.
As Michelle waged war against her junk, she didn’t know that her entire conversation with Jefferson Parks had been captured by a tiny mass of circuits and wires. Inside the housing for her phone lines lurked another device very recently added and of which the owners of the inn were unaware. It was a state-of-the-art wireless surveillance device, so extraordinarily sensitive that it could capture not only conversations in the room or while Michelle was on the phone but anything spoken by the other party to the phone conversation.
A half mile away from the inn a paneled van was parked along the side of the road. Inside, Buick Man listened to the conversation for the third time and then shut off the tape. He picked up his phone and made the call, talking for some minutes and then ending with, “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”
These words sent a chill down the spine of the person to whom he was speaking.
“Do it,” he said. “Do it tonight.”
He hung up and looked in the direction of the inn. Michelle Maxwell had finally made it to the top of his list. He quietly congratulated her.
CHAPTER
64
WITH EVERYTHING ELSE GOING ON, King had somehow found the time to set up an appointment with a security company based in Lynchburg. He watched from the front window as the van emblazoned with “A-1 Security” pulled up.