No Way Back: Part 3 of 3. Andrew Gross

story; he saw it in her eyes.

      Look what it has gotten you, Roxie … He put down his wife’s photo and looked away. All the “standing up” in the world. He put his hands over his eyes and felt like weeping.

      Look what it has gotten you.

      Was it such a crime, wanting to keep Jamie and Taylor safe? To keep this evil away from their already damaged lives? He wanted that more than anything. Except for maybe one thing … one thing that did burn deeply inside him. A flame he could not put out. And that was to see the person responsible for Roxie’s death brought to justice.

      Made to pay.

      To know he wasn’t out there, living in some lavish home. Basking in the rewards of his evil, gloating, never knowing the pain he’d caused and the beautiful life he’d extinguished.

      Both their deaths are tied together, Wendy Gould had said. Whether you accept it or not. And as much as he wanted to deny that, the throbbing in his soul told him she was right. They are connected.

      He looked at the phone. Why haven’t you made that call?

      Look them all up, she had said, the desperation clear in her eyes as the elevator door closed. They’re all connected.

       Connected to whom?

      Harold logged on to his computer. He went into Google and typed in the name she’d told him to look up, Hruseff. The agent she had shot.

      He paged through several articles, finally finding one that gave his personal bio. Growing up in Roanoke, Virginia. His two tours in Iraq. His short tenure at Homeland Security. Before that at ICE. There was a shooting incident the agent was involved in on the border, in which he was cleared of any guilt. “After earning his release from the army, Hruseff spent four years as an agent for the DEA …”

      Was that what Wendy Gould was referring to? Harold took note of the years: 2006–10. He read on:

      “… rising to the rank of Senior Field Agent, based out of the agency’s regional headquarters in El Paso, Texas.”

      That’s what stopped him. The dates. El Paso.

      Harold minimized his search on Hruseff and typed a new subject into the search box.

      Sabrina Stein.

      He dug up a government press release announcing her appointment to the DOJ, which also contained her past history. It credited her success in running the El Paso DEA office, and the Intelligence Center there, in what they called “Ground Zero in the government’s war against narco-terrorism …”

      Her tenure coincided with Hruseff’s. Hruseff worked for her.

      The killings of the DEA agents in Culiacán took place in 2009, when both of them were there.

      Harold felt the blood seep out of his face. He knew anyone who stepped into his room at this very moment would be facing a ghost.

      Look them all up. They’re all connected. Was this what she meant?

      He took another look back at his wife, then picked up his phone.

      But instead of calling 911, he paged his secretary. “Janice, I need a favor. See if Sabrina Stein can see me tomorrow in DC.”

       CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

      Joe Esterhaus pointed to the tree-shaded Tudor at the end of the cul-de-sac. “That’s the one.” Only three days out of the hospital, he still had his arm in a sling. “Pull up over there.”

      His daughter, Robin, drove the car over to the curb and turned it off. There was a double line of yellow police tape still blocking both entrances of the semicircular driveway. She stared at the pretty house, thinking that only a week before this was the scene of a creepy murder. “That tape’s up there for a reason, Dad. You sure you should be doing this?”

      “I’m just gonna walk around a little and see what gives. You just stay in the car.”

      He pulled himself out, grimacing at the pain that still stabbed at his shoulder. Besides the yellow tape, a crime lock barred the front door. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

      “I’d say, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’” Robin called after him, “but I know there’s not much chance of that.”

      “Not much chance at all.” Esterhaus laughed, ducking under the tape line leading to the bricked, half-circle driveway. He winced. He still had to wear the sling, at least for another week. Then came weeks and weeks of physio. All trying to get mobility back for a guy who for the past two years could no longer put peas into his mouth with a fork. What the hell was it all for anyway?

      He went down to the house and tried the front door. He knew it was a waste of time. He stared in through a frosted-glass window. The crime boys had already done their work. Been through the kitchen on their hands and knees. He had no clue what he would possibly find. Still, it was worth a look. Wendy needed anything that could drive a hole in their story.

      He waved to his daughter, who was watching him while on her cell phone. Then he headed around the back. Wendy’s lot was a wooded, three-quarter acre bordering a golf club. Through the gaps in the tall oaks and pines, he could see a fairway. There was a pool in the back that was covered up, and a hot tub a few steps away. Nice. He tried the French doors off the patio outside the living room. They wouldn’t budge. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get in after all.

      Continuing around, he followed the property’s slope down to the side of the house. Under what appeared to be the kitchen was a rear basement door. Eight glass panels, not too thick. Esterhaus had no idea if the place was alarmed.

      Only one way to find out.

      He bent his good arm and gave a short, hard thrust into the window, smashing through one of the panels. The glass cracked and fell back into the basement.

      Nothing sounded.

      So far so good. Reassured, he cleared the glass edges still remaining in the door, then reached his hand through and unlocked it from the inside. The door opened, leading to a darkened basement. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. There was a large TV on the wall, a bunch of sofas and chairs. A primo Brunswick pool table. He had always wanted one of those. He found the stairs, which led upstairs to a mudroom off the kitchen.

       Bingo.

      Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, right, doll? Esterhaus looked around. The kitchen had been redone. A polished marble island, a fancy farmhouse sink, antiqued wooden cabinets. There were beams above the island with a hanging iron rack with lots of copper pots.

      A ton of evidence tape all around.

      One taped area marked the outline where Dave’s body had been found. There were numbered flags that indicated shell casings, bloodstains, some marking the wooden stool above the body. He examined it closely, admiring the work the way a craftsman might admire a well-built table. Whoever had manufactured the scene had done a nice job. They’d even created their own spatter.

      Anyone would have bought into it. Why the hell not?

      A cooking pot was still on the floor, and a glass was still turned on its side. Wendy’s friend had already confirmed that Wendy and Dave had had a spat the night before. The gun that came from the hotel room where the government agent was shot. Everything seemed to back up what they were saying: that Dave was killed here. That maybe Wendy had told him what had happened in New York and he wasn’t so sympathetic. Then she panicked, shot him, and was about to flee when the lights went on behind her …

      Esterhaus knew this would be hard to overturn on the basis of the evidence, but he continued to look around. It was so elaborately laid out. He went back down the stairs and left by the same door he’d come in through.