“Yeah, I know. But I meant an older guy, maybe in his fifties.” He described Thornton Jorst but Sharon shook her head.

“I don’t think so. Although a couple of times I saw her get out of a car in front of the apartment building. I couldn’t see who was driving, but I think it was a guy. When I asked her about it, she became pretty evasive.”

“Can you describe the vehicle?”

“Mercedes, a big one.”

“So a rich guy. When was the first time you saw that?” Michelle said.

“Maybe about nine or ten months ago. I remember because Kate had recently started her postgraduate work here. She doesn’t have many friends. If she was meeting anyone, she didn’t do it here. But she’s hardly ever here.”

As they were talking, Michelle held the cleaning kit up to her ear and shook it. There was a small sound. She dug her fingers under the lining and pulled it out. Her fingers locked around a small key. She showed it to Sharon. “Any idea what this is to? Looks like maybe a storage locker.”

“There are some of those in the basement,” Sharon answered. “I didn’t know Kate had one.”

Michelle and King descended to the basement, found the storage closet, matched the number with the one on the key and opened it. King turned on a light, and they looked around at the stacks of boxes.

King drew a deep breath and said, “Okay, this will either be a bust or a gold mine.”

Four boxes later they had their answer: neatly organized scrapbooks detailing two separate things. One was the Ritter assassination. King and Michelle looked at dozens of articles and photos of the event, including several of King, two of a much younger Kate Ramsey looking sad and alone and even one of Regina Ramsey. The text on the pages was heavily underscored with pen. “Not so strange for her to have collected these,” said Michelle. “It was her father, after all.”

However, the other subject cataloged here was far more chilling. It was all about John Bruno, from his early days as a prosecutor to his presidential candidacy. King spotted two yellowed newspaper articles describing investigations into corruption in the D.C. United States Attorney’s Office. Bill Martin’s name was prominently mentioned, but Bruno’s wasn’t. However, Kate had written at the top of each page: “John Bruno.”

“Oh, shit,” said King. “Our little political activist is involved in some serious stuff here. And regardless of whether Bruno deserved it or not, she’s tagged him as a crooked prosecutor who ruined her father’s life.”

“What I don’t get,” said Michelle, “is that these stories were printed before Kate was even born. Where did she get them?”

“The man in the Mercedes. The guy making her hate Bruno for what he did to her father. Or didn’t do.” King added, “And maybe she blames Bruno for her father’s death, reasoning if he’d been at Harvard or Stanford, he would’ve been happy and his wife wouldn’t have left him and he never would have gone gunning for somebody like Ritter.”

“But all that for what purpose?”

“Revenge? For Kate, for somebody else.”

“How does that tie into Ritter and Loretta Baldwin and all the rest?”

King threw up his hands in frustration. “Damn it, I wish I knew. But I do know this: Kate is only the tip of the iceberg. And now something else makes sense.” She looked at him. “Kate wanted to meet so she could tell us about this suddenly new revelation about Thornton Jorst.”

“You think she was prompted to do that? To throw us off track?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she did it on her own, for another reason.”

“Or maybe she’s telling the truth,” offered Michelle.

“Are you kidding? Nobody has so far. Why should the rules change now?”

“Well, I have to say, Kate Ramsey is a world-class actress. I never pegged her being involved.”

“Well, her mother was supposed to be a superstar in that regard. Maybe she inherited those genes.” King looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “Get Parks on the horn and see what he’s come up with on Bob Scott. I’m suddenly very interested in my ex–detail leader.”

As it turned out, Parks had been very busy in the last several hours. He’d confirmed the address in Tennessee for Bob Scott and told Michelle that it had several intriguing attributes. It was a thirty-acre parcel in the mountainous rural eastern part of the state. The property had also been part of an army encampment during World War II and for twenty years thereafter, before it was sold to private owners. Since then it had changed hands several times.

Parks told Michelle, “When I found out it was once owned by the United States Army, I started wondering why Scott might want to own a spread like that. He’d been living in Montana for a while, real militia person, I guess, so why the move? Well, I’ve been poring over maps, blueprints and diagrams, and I found out the damn property has an underground bunker built into a hillside. The government and military had thousands of them constructed during the Cold War, from small and simple to the gargantuan one at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia to house the United States Congress in the event of nuclear war. The one Scott owns is pretty elaborate, with bunk rooms, a galley, bathrooms, shooting range, water and air filtration facilities. Hell, the army probably forgot it was even there when the property was sold. One other interesting thing: it has cells for housing prisoners of war, in case of invasion, I guess.”

“A prison,” said Michelle. “Pretty handy for holding kidnapped presidential candidates.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. And on top of that, this place in Tennessee is barely two hours by car from where both Ritter was killed and Bruno was kidnapped. Those three places roughly form a triangular shape.”

“And you’re sure it’s the same Bob Scott?” asked Michelle.

Tags: David Baldacci Sean King & Michelle Maxwell Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net