While Justice Sleeps(76)
With cautious steps and only moonlight to guide him, he approached the front door. Despite his attempts at stealth, the rotted boards of the steps creaked beneath his feet. Moving quickly, he leaped up to the landing and alighted with a soft thud. This close to the door, he could hear the chatter of wildlife joined by the burble of water and the scratching of mice. Castillo cupped his flashlight and circled the porch, which wound around the abandoned structure. Cobwebs clung to his skin, and the debris of neglected maintenance caked to his boots. But he was alone.
He returned to the front door and knelt. In hurried motions, he picked the lock, scraping away rust from inside the mechanism. The lock gave way. Rising, he turned the knob, prepared to enter the code he’d been given: 3-1-0-7-7-4. But the interior of the cabin didn’t boast electricity, let alone an alarm.
Knowing his instructions, he activated the sat phone and placed the Bluetooth in his ear. Phillips acknowledged the call.
“No alarm code,” he said in a low, hushed voice. The bud in his ear easily picked up the message and transmitted along the open cell line. “Initiating search.”
In DC, Phillips ordered, “Look for a safe or a lockbox. Whatever he left is probably in there.”
“Copy.” Castillo quartered the open main room, searching every surface and cubbyhole, to no avail. Long-forgotten board games rested beneath layers of dust. The ancient television held no secret compartments, and the drawers in the table beneath it opened easily under his hand. “Nothing here.” He swept the bathroom and found nothing of note.
“Bedroom.” He moved into the second room, which was half as large as the living room. The once-cozy space had been left too long without airing. A full-sized bed sat next to a chest of drawers and opposite a closet. After fifteen minutes of fruitless exploration, he reported, “Moving into the kitchen.”
In there, he checked the stove, finding only a nest of mice annoyed by the disturbance. The refrigerator held no secret safe, nor did any of the cabinets in the tiny galley. “Negative,” he reported. “Checking the loft.”
Upstairs, a narrow loft had been converted into a boy’s bedroom. A single, heavy oak bed had been decorated with dark sheets and little else. A constellation of stars had been sketched above in blue and white paint. The floorboards failed to reveal any hidden spaces, and the area beneath the bed was empty. No box, no safe, nothing.
“House is clean.”
Phillips ordered, “Check it again. The code must open something. Do another circuit and then reconnoiter outside.”
“Copy.” Castillo retraced his steps but stumbled over nothing new. Outside, the porch had been littered by fallen branches and mulching leaves. He spent another twenty minutes outside, including an investigation of the crawl space beneath the rotting cabin.
Grimy and damp, he scooted out from beneath the house. “I’ve checked everywhere, sir. There’s nothing here.”
Phillips exhaled slowly. Justice Wynn was sending Avery and Jared to Georgia for a reason, and Vance would expect them to find it first. “We’re missing something. Return to Atlanta and track them to the cabin in the morning. They’re booked on the six a.m. flight.”
“Yes, sir.” Castillo bounded up the porch and jammed the lock so it would appear frozen with disuse. He then circled to the rear door and did the same. The next visitors would have to expose what they knew about the cabin to get inside. “Orders?”
“Secure whatever they locate and make sure they never return to DC.”
“Will do.”
THIRTY
Thursday, June 22
Gravel snaked up the rutted road, and the rented SUV bounced accommodatingly with each pitted groove of the unpaved stretch. Wisps of clouds hung low in the early-morning light, gauzy pale with dawn. While Jared drove, Avery used her tablet to sprinkle breadcrumbs across the Internet. Downloading every chess app she could find, she logged in as WHTW5730 and issued an invitation to play to TigrisLost. Coupled with Jared’s efforts, smoking out their missing link should not take too long. If he wanted to be found.
Soon, the truck crested a rise, and a simple A-frame log cabin waited. Red flecks of dust spurted beneath the wheels as Jared maneuvered down the lane to the wooden structure. Vivian’s Georgia Cabin, which to Avery’s eyes resembled a dump more than a retreat, boasted a sagging wraparound porch sturdied by thick wooden beams at regular intervals. Slabs of window had been tended by nests of spiders, cobwebs shrouding the dust-caked glass. Jared brought the truck to a stop in a barren patch of hardened clay.
As the engine idled, Avery waited in silence. Jared had barely spoken once they’d landed in Atlanta and picked up their rental. His grunted responses to her attempts at conversation had dwindled into a tense stillness. His hands clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. Gingerly, she reached out and touched the back of his hand.
“You ready?”
He stared out the windshield at the decaying cottage. “I haven’t been here since Mom died. Not once.” Shifting, he draped his arms across the steering wheel. “I was never closer to the judge than when we came down here. A few weeks every summer when he would stop being stern and distant. He taught me how to bait a hook. How to track. Here, he wasn’t the judge.” Jared gave a rueful chuckle. “I only called him Dad when we were here. When we were happy. Here.”