have the energy? Before the Alzheimer’s sets in?”
“I’ve thought about private practice,” I said to Devine. “I’m a psychologist. I still do some pro bono work in the projects.”
“But you love The Job too much to leave it?” Mike Devine grinned and squinted into late afternoon sunlight coming off the water. Gray seabirds with white chests flew right by the terrace. Nice. Everything about the layout was nice.
“Listen, Mike, I wanted to go over, once more, those last couple of days before the kidnapping,” I said to him.
“You are goddamn hooked, Alex. I’ve been over every square inch of that territory myself. Believe me, there’s nothing there. It’s fallow ground. Nothing grows. I’ve tried and tried, and finally I gave up the ghost.”
“I believe you. But I’m still curious about a late-model sedan that might have been seen out in Potomac. Possibly a Dodge,” I said. It was the car that Nina Cerisier remembered parked on Langley Terrace. “You ever notice a blue or black sedan parked on Sorrell Avenue? Or anywhere around the Day School?”
“Like I said, I’ve been over and over all of our daily logs. There wasn’t any mystery car. You can look at the logs yourself.”
“I have,” I told him and laughed at the seeming hopelessness of my case.
Mike Devine and I talked for a while more. He couldn’t come up with anything new. In the end, I listened to him praise the beach life, bonefishing on the Keys, “hitting the little white ball.” His new life was just starting. He’d gotten over the Dunne-Goldberg kidnapping a lot better than I had.
Something still bothered me, though. The whole “accomplice” thing. Or “the watcher” thing. More than that, I had a gut feeling about Devine and his partner. A bad feeling. Something told me they knew more than they were willing to tell anybody.
While I was still as hot as a ten-dollar pistol, I decided to contact Devine’s ex-partner, Charles Chakely, later that same night. After his dismissal, Chakely and his family had settled in Tempe, Arizona.
It was midnight my time; ten o’clock in Tempe. Not too late, I figured. “Charles Chakely? This is Detective Alex Cross calling from Washington,” I said when he got on the phone.
There was a pause, an uncomfortable silence, before he answered. Then Chakely got hostile—real strange, it seemed to me. His reaction only served to fuel my instincts about him and his partner.
“What the hell do you want?” he bristled. “Why are you calling me here? I’m retired from the Service now. I’m trying to put what happened behind me. Leave me the hell alone. Stay away from me and my family.”
“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you—” I started to apologize.
He cut me off. “Then don’t. That’s an easy fix, Cross. Butt out of my life.”
I could just about picture Charles Chakely as I spoke to him. I remembered him from the days right after the kidnapping. He was only fifty-one, but he looked over sixty. Beer belly. Most of his hair gone. Sad, kind of withdrawn eyes. Chakely was physical evidence of the harm The Job could do to you, if you let it.
“Unfortunately, I’m still assigned to a couple of murders,” I said to him, hoping he’d understand. “They involved Gary Soneji/Murphy, too. He came back to kill one of the teachers at the school. Vivian Kim?”
“I thought you didn’t want to bother me. Why don’t you pretend you never called, huh? Then I’ll pretend I never picked up the phone. I’m getting good at playing ‘let’s pretend’ out here on the painted desert.”
“Listen, I could get a subpoena. You know I can do that. We could have this conversation in Washington. Or I could fly out there and come over to your house in Tempe. Show up for a barbecue some night.”
“Hey, what the fuck’s the matter with you? What’s with you, Cross? The goddamn case is over. Leave it alone, and leave me the fuck alone.”
There was something very strange in Chakely’s tone. He sounded ready to explode.
“I talked to your partner tonight,” I said. That kept him on the line.
“So. You talked to Mickey Devine. I talk to him myself now and then.”
“I’m happy for both of you. I’ll even get out of your hair in a minute. Just answer a question or two.”
“One question. That’s it,” Chakely finally said.
“Do you remember seeing a dark late-model sedan parked on Sorrell Avenue? Anywhere around the Goldberg or Dunne house? Maybe a week or so prior to the