“Suspects come, suspects go,” Sean said with a sigh.
They next walked down to the boathouse. Michelle ran an expert’s eye over the watercraft. “Nothing too exceptional, mostly recreational,” she pronounced. She motioned to a twenty-six-foot Formula Bowrider up on a boat lift in one of the slips. “One of the owners of this place must be a New Yorker.”
Sean looked at the name stenciled on the stern transom: “The Big Apple.” He pointed across the river. “How long to row across? Not for someone like you, I mean an ordinary mortal.”
She considered this. “Not knowing the current, I’d say at least forty-five minutes or so. It always looks closer on land. When you’re sloughing through the water, it’s a lot farther.”
“So there and back we’re talking over two hours, considering you’d probably be rowing slower on the way back.”
“That’s right.”
He led her through the woods to the spot where Camp Peary could be seen. Michelle pulled a pair of binoculars from her backpack and focused them.
The sun was glancing off the shiny fence surrounding the CIA’s property.
“Heck of a shot at you,” she said, studying the distance and trajectory.
“Yeah, well let’s be happy it wasn’t a helluva shot or I wouldn’t be here.”
She pointed to her left at the break in the tree line. “Runway?”
“Yep.”
She looked at the large cranes farther down the river. “Navy?” Sean nodded. “Where’d they find his body?”
“As best I can figure out, right about there.” He pointed to a wooded spot about five hundred yards down from the runway.
“So the thing is, if Monk went over there voluntarily and not just to kill himself, then he either went to meet someone, or to spy on the place and someone got the jump on him,” she said.
“Right, but if he went to spy on the place the CIA had every right to shoot him. So why cover it up to make it look like suicide?”
“Well, maybe it was suicide after all,” Michelle said.
“But what about Rivest? He was most definitely murdered.”
“Unconnected to Monk’s death,” she said simply.
Sean didn’t look as confident. “Maybe.”
As they walked back Sean abruptly said, “Look, I should’ve given you a heads-up that Horatio was coming down. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”
“Forget it,” she replied. But she said it in a way that Sean knew she would never forget it.
CHAPTER
46
AS SOON AS THEY CLIMBED in Michelle’s truck, Sean rolled down the window and took a deep breath. “I recall you once cleaned out your truck for me so I could breathe without the aid of machinery.”
“That was back when I used to like you,” she said, slipping the truck into gear. “Okay, where to now?”
They drove along the river. Every half-mile or so they passed a ruined mansion or plantation; the only thing left standing in most of them were multiple brick chimney stacks.
“The third little pig was right, build it out of brick and it’ll last,” Michelle commented.
They finally stopped at one property and got out. Sean walked up the overgrown drive and Michelle followed. On the tilting stone entrance column was the name “Farleygate” written in weathered bronze script.
Sean said, “There was a book on local history at Babbage Town that I read through. Farleygate was owned by the son of some famous inventor.”