“Where’s Brian?” I ask. Pamela yawns and Tanya says, “I saw him out in the parking lot. Looks like he was making a phone call.”
Scotty says, “At three in the morning?”
Tanya says, “Maybe he was telling his mommy what he wants for breakfast.”
Pamela slightly smiles and then the door swings open, and the young male agent hustles in, saying, “Sorry, didn’t mean to be late.”
He sits next to me, and I say, “That’s all right. I haven’t started yet.”
And before I start, Pamela says, “Sally, I know I speak for Tanya and Brian by saying how sorry we were to hear about Ben. Is there … is there any news? About the investigation?”
“No,” I say.
Next to me, Brian says, “Do the local police have any leads?”
“None that I know of,” I say, and Tanya speaks up: “Sally, I can’t believe your daughter was there when—”
I hold up my hand once more and say, “No offense, guys, but shut your traps.”
Their faces flush or freeze. I’ve gotten their attention.
Good.
“There’s a lot going on and I don’t have much time,” I say. “Just tell me this to start: what have you been doing the past few hours?”
Scotty and the three other agents give quick glances to one another, as if they’re wondering if this senior Secret Service agent has finally gone off the rails, and one by one, the answers come.
“Having a beer, watching HBO.”
“Asleep.”
“In bed, trying to sleep.”
“I was sleeping, too.”
I say, “Any of you get any phone calls from the FBI?”
No verbal answers, just quick shakes of the head.
“I thought so,” I say.
I check, just to make sure we’re relatively alone in this large McDonald’s, and I say, “CANARY’s been kidnapped. About twelve hours ago a ransom message was delivered to the White House.”
Their faces show various stages of shock and disbelief, and CANARY’s lead agent is the first to respond.
Pamela says forcefully, “How do we know it’s not a fake? Ever since the news got leaked about her supposed drowning, every freak and nutcase has crawled out of their mom’s basement and started posting conspiracy theories on the internet. Maybe this note’s just part of it.”
“This note came with a severed finger joint,” I say. “The finger-print matches.”
Whispered obscenities and wide eyes, and Scotty says, “Boss … what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” I say. “That’s the problem. I was with Parker Hoyt when the ransom note and the finger arrived. He said he was going to contact the FBI and tell them what happened.”
Silence. Out in the kitchen, there’s some arguing going on in Spanish.
I say, “None of you have been contacted by the FBI, you … the shift working with CANARY when she disappeared. You should have been the first ones interviewed.”
Scotty says, “What did the ransom note say, boss?”
“A hundred-million-dollar payout by six o’clock this morning. At six p.m. today, the President goes on national television to apologize for his affair.”
Tanya Glenn’s eyes are moist but sharp, like knives coming out of a dishwasher. “What are you telling us, Sally?”
I say, “The money may be paid. But there’s no way the chief of staff is going to have that speech delivered.”
Out in the kitchen, there’s a loud noise as something crashes to the floor.
“Parker Hoyt wants CANARY dead,” I say. “And it’s up to us to stop him.”
CHAPTER 55
SAVE FOR SCOTTY, everybody else is looking at me with cold skepticism. The youngest agent, Brian Zahn, says, “With all due respect, Agent Grissom—”
His boss, Pamela, interrupts him. “Sally … you’ve been under a lot of stress, and God knows that—”
My turn.
“Parker Hoyt also told me that my role in looking for CANARY, along with this detail, was unauthorized and illegal, and violated the wishes and orders of the President. Which meant that according to the law, you were accomplices to me while we illegally searched for the First Lady.”
Tanya says, “The bastard …”
Scotty says, “Why does he want CANARY dead?”
I say, “Have you seen the news? CANAL’s poll numbers are collapsing like an avalanche. Something has to save him. And what’s that something? A dead First Lady, someone for the nation to mourn, so the voters can show their sympathy for CANAL when they go into the voting booth in a few weeks.”
“Ma’am,” Brian says, “that’s … cold.”
Pamela says, “That’s DC. So what are you thinking?”
All right, I think, this is where it’s going to get interesting.
“Folks … it’s time to face facts, as ugly as they are. All of us, our careers are destroyed. Ruined. Months or years from now, when this is finally settled, we’ll be very lucky if we can get hired as mall cops. That is, if we’re not serving time in prison.”
I let that sink in and say, “We can do one of two things. We can sit back, let Parker Hoyt do whatever he’s doing, and let CANARY get killed.”
Brian says, “We could go to the FBI.”
With a tight tone in his voice, Scotty says, “It’s three a.m. That means we’ll get a duty officer, who’ll have to contact her senior officer, and if you think she’s going to act on her own, no. It’ll have to go up the chain of command … that is, if anybody would believe us.”
Tanya says, “And what’s the other thing we can do?”
“Find her on our own,” I say.
Pamela says, “Boss, no offense—our track record right now sucks. We haven’t found a damn thing.”
“Which means we don’t have to retrace our steps. Pamela … tell us again what you found from the horse farm’s security force and its surveillance cameras.”
She says, “Surveillance cameras along the property fence line showed nothing unusual. Security personnel said the same thing. And no aircraft overhead—if somebody had an idea of swooping in with a helicopter to grab her. The gate cameras also showed us coming in with CANARY that morning … and nobody, I mean nobody, left the grounds until you and Scotty showed up.”
I say, “So we go back.”
“What?” Scotty says.
“We’ve trusted the horse farm staff to tell us that all was well. But that means the buildings weren’t searched intensively. Just a quick walk-through. But this time … we make it thorough.”
“Now?” Tanya says.
“No time to waste.”
“They won’t like being woken up,” Tanya says.
“I’ll order them breakfast when we’re done. Anything else?”
Brian speaks up. “There’s another—”
Pamela says, “Stow it, Brian. We’re going to follow Sally’s lead.”
She catches my look. “Back to the horse farm. Before we all get arrested.”