Yet it didn’t really matter one way or another to Robie. He kept telling himself that as he prepared to finish what he had started.
His mind had not changed on one thing. This was about him. Despite their detour down to the squad Curtis Getty had been in.
This is about me. And it’s also about something bigger.
Now he had to find out what that was.
This was once more a chess match. The other side had just made a move.
Robie had to decide if it was a legitimate move or something else.
He gunned up and set out to do just that.
CHAPTER
88
THE FIRST STOP was the bank. Robie talked to the employees, but they had no helpful information. Gabriel Siegel had left his briefcase behind but it contained nothing helpful. Yet its presence did tell Robie that Siegel’s hasty exit had been unplanned and not related to the business of the bank. He was pretty certain of that already, but in his mind it was now confirmed.
As Alice Siegel had indicated her husband’s car was still in the parking lot. It was a decade-old Honda Civic. Robie picked the lock and searched it but found nothing useful. He drove off in his car, wondering what had prompted Siegel to simply leave his place of business.
Next stop was the hospice. He had forgotten something when he was there before.
The guestbook.
The receptionist let him look at it. While she was attending to other business he took photos of the pages for the last month or so. Then he walked down the hall to Elizabeth Van Beuren’s room.
Nothing much had changed. She was still lying in the bed with a big pipe stuck down her throat. The sun was still coming in the windows. There were flowers. The photo of the family.
And she was still dying. Hanging on to life, probably because she was a soldier and it was just part of her psyche. And the ventilator didn’t hurt. At some point the family would have to make a decision about that.
Like the nurse had said, this place wasn’t designed to cure or even prolong life. It was to let folks die with dignity, in comfort, in peace.
As he stared at Van Beuren, Robie decided she didn’t look too peaceful.
They should just let her go. Just let her pass to a place better than this one.
He picked up the photo and stared at it. A nice family. Alexandra Van Beuren was pretty, with soft brunette hair, a playful smile. Robie liked how the camera had captured the energy in her eyes, the life there. The dad looked rugged, but weary and haunted, as though he might have predicted the fate that would befall his wife in the not too distant future.
At some point in his life Robie had supposed he could have had a family like this. He was long past that, of course. But sometimes he still thought about it. Right at that instant, Annie Lambert’s face appeared in his thoughts. He shook his head clear. He just didn’t see how something like that was possible.
He walked back out into the fading sunshine and set off for Arlington.
To the bar that Jerome Cassidy had built.
He made good time and pulled to a stop in front of the bar at around five o’clock.
He walked in, ordered a beer, and asked for Cassidy. The man came out a few minutes later and approached Robie, an uncertain look on his face. He eyed the beer like it was a stick of TNT about to go off.
“Like to talk to you,” said Robie.
“What about?”
“Julie.”
“What about her?”
“You planning on telling her you’re her father?”
“Let’s go sit.”
Cassidy led him over to a booth in a corner. There were about fifteen customers in the place.
They settled in their seats and Cassidy said, “Early drinking crowd comes in around five-thirty. Place will be full by seven. Standing room only by eight. Empties out around eleven-thirty. D.C. plays hard and works hard. Folks get up early. Especially the ones in uniform.”
Robie cradled his beer but didn’t drink it. He waited for Cassidy to pull the trigger on answering his question.
The man finally sat back, slid his palms along the top of the table, and looked at Robie.
“First, how the hell did you know?”
“Guys don’t write bundles of letters to ‘friends.’ Especially guy friends. You don’t spend time and money tracking them down. And I saw how your face lit up when Julie walked in. You hadn’t seen her since she was a