The Innocent (Will Robie 1)

“Well, let’s assume you are the best person. What would you advise?”

“She loved her parents. She wanted their lives to be better than they were. She wants to find out why they were killed. She wants to avenge them.”

“So you’re saying not to tell her?”

“I’m sayin

g my answer might be different tomorrow than it is today. But you’re the only one who can really make the call.”

Robie stood and eyed the beer. “You’re going to make it.”

Cassidy stared up at him. “Why?”

“You turn down a perfectly good beer under these circumstances, you can turn it down under any circumstances. I’ll be in touch.”

CHAPTER

89

ROBIE DIDN’T KNOW why he had come back here.

It was the apartment across the street. He opened the door, turned off the alarm, and stood looking around. He had this place. He had his apartment across the street and the farmhouse. Each place was supposed to be safe, secure, and yet they weren’t. So Robie felt homeless. He half expected someone to walk down the hall and ask him what he was doing here.

He looked at his watch. It was almost seven o’clock.

He’d called Vance but it had gone straight to voice mail. She was probably enduring some difficult times with her boss for going off grid. He doubted she would be getting back to him anytime soon. And he was actually relieved about that. He’d texted Julie and received a terse response. She no doubt was furious that she’d been snookered into going into protective custody again. At least she would get to grow up, do something wonderful with that big brain of hers.

After leaving Cassidy he had driven around. He’d ridden to the scene of the bus explosion, then over to Donnelly’s, which was still closed. Indeed, Robie doubted it would ever reopen. Who would want to grab a drink or have a meal in a place where so many people had lost their lives?

Now he was here and he wasn’t sure why.

He looked at the telescope, drew closer to it, and finally bent over slightly and gazed through it. His condo building immediately came into focus. He shifted the viewing angle slightly and looked at the line of windows representing his space. It was dark. It was supposed to be. He moved the telescope to the left and his gaze flitted over the lighted hallway running past all the apartments on that floor.

His gaze shifted, as he knew it would, to Annie Lambert’s place. Her windows were also dark. She was probably still at work. He wondered if her day off had gone well. He hoped it had. She deserved it.

As he watched he saw her come down the street on her bike. He continued to watch as she walked her bike into the building. Counting off the seconds in his head, he positioned the telescope so that it was right on the elevator bank on his floor. The doors opened a few seconds later and Lambert got off, rolling her bike next to her. She unlocked the door to her apartment and went inside.

Robie moved the telescope and watched as she parked her bike against the wall, took off her jacket and tennis shoes, and padded down the hall in her socks. She made a stop at the bathroom. When she came back out she continued down the hall. Robie lost her but picked her back up again about a minute later. She’d taken her blouse off and replaced it with a sweatshirt. Part of him wanted to go over and see her. Then he saw her lift up a long black dress on a hanger with a sheet of plastic over it. It had been draped over a chair. She took the plastic off and held the dress up to her. It was a strapless gown, Robie could see. She lifted up another garment. It was a matching jacket. The last items she picked up were three-inch black heels.

Annie Lambert was going out on the town tonight, it seemed. And why shouldn’t she? thought Robie. Part of him felt jealous, though. It was an odd emotion for him. It didn’t sit well.

He sat down, put his feet up on a leather ottoman, and gazed at the ceiling. He was so tired, couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly slept. He drifted off and awoke with a start some time later. From the foggy recesses of his mind he remembered something and drew out his phone. He brought up the photos he’d taken of the guest register at the hospice.

He scrolled from screen to screen, not expecting to find much of interest. And he didn’t. The only name he recognized was Gabriel Siegel from about a month ago. That made sense because Siegel had admitted he’d last visited Van Beuren at that time.

He scrolled to another page. There was nothing.

He hit another page. Nothing again.

But then something caught his eye.

It wasn’t a name.

It was a date.

There was an entire day missing in the guestbook. He enlarged the screen as big as he could. He looked at it closely. Down in the far left corner of the frame he spied it.

A triangle of paper. It would have gone unnoticed by anyone looking at the guestbook itself. It was too small. But with the pixels swollen to an unnatural size on his phone, Robie knew what it was. The remains of the page that had been ripped out of the book. Probably while the front desk had been unoccupied.

Why would someone have taken a page from a hospice guestbook?

There could only be one answer. They wanted to cover up whoever’s name had been written in there. They wanted to wipe away the record of someone who had visited Elizabeth Van Beuren.

Was it Broome? Getty? Wind? Two of them? All three?

Siegel had told him that he hadn’t seen Broome for ten years and hadn’t seen Wind or Getty since Gulf One. Cassidy had said he hadn’t seen any of them since the war except for Getty.

But what if Broome or Getty or Wind had found out that Van Beuren was here and had come to visit her while she was still lucid? Siegel had said she was in and out of it. And had she let something slip? Something that had led to all three of them having to be silenced? It seemed a bizarre notion, but it was no more strange than any of the other theories that had floated through Robie’s mind lately.

Robie looked at the date before and after the missing page. Eight days ago. That would fit with the timeline. Siegel hadn’t been targeted since he’d stopped coming a month ago. Rick Wind had been the first to die. Counting back, it seemed that Wind might have been killed shortly after he had possibly visited Van Beuren. And if Curtis Getty hadn’t come to the hospice, that would explain the heated discussion that the waitress at the diner, Cheryl Kosmann, had witnessed. Broome had told Getty. He then might’ve told Wind. Or it could have been the other way around. Robie couldn’t know for sure without seeing which of them had visited the woman. Getty didn’t have a car, so it was doubtful he’d driven all the way out to Manassas.

No chance could be taken. Husbands, wives, and an ex-wife, who was also a potentially dangerous government lawyer, had to be killed.

The Broomes had managed to escape. For a time. But with Robie’s involuntary help they had managed to get them too.

Robie’s mind next drew to the timing of the insertion of the ventilator.

It kept a terminally ill woman alive.

But it also did something else.

It prevented her from saying anything during her lucid moments.

From saying anything else!

They had put the tube in her to shut the poor woman up.

But whatever she had told one or more of her former squad members had been the reason they had been killed.

Robie raced out of his apartment and took the elevator down.

He had a hospice visit to make.

CHAPTER

90

VISITING HOURS WERE OVER. But Robie’s repeated raps on the glass front door brought an attendant. He flashed his badge and was allowed in.

“I need to see Elizabeth Van Beuren,” he said. “And I need to see her