Brian’s face stared up at her, still and white.
All the breath seemed to leave her as she stood there rooted to the floor. Stepping closer, she touched his face with her fingertips. His skin felt cool and smooth, like old silk. Though he hadn’t lived up to her expectations, she couldn’t bear to see him like this. Standing there beside his body, she felt tears slipping down her cheeks.
“It’s him,” she said, unable to speak above a whisper. “It is Brian.” Finally the chaplain took her arm and eased her away from the table.
Shivering, she hugged her wool coat around herself. Though still inside the building, she felt cold, so terribly cold. Would she ever be warm again?
Not until she was in the car with Major Savage and Colonel Ratigan, headed back to the base, did she think to ask who fired the shot that killed him.
“Do the police know what happened?”
“They’ve already identified a person of interest,” Major Savage announced, glancing at her beside him in the front seat. “A taxi driver described a bald, middle-aged man who was in that area about the same time your husband got there.”
“An eyewitness?” Her mind was still too full of the horror of Brian’s cold, pallid face to digest the importance of what she was hearing. “Do the police know who he is?” She heard herself ask the question, but it was as if she were on autopilot and her intelligence training had kicked in.
“No, but they’re trying to track him down. It’s been only a couple of hours since…” He glanced at Susan. She stared rigidly ahead, willing herself not to break down.
She forced the stark image of Brian’s dead face out of her mind. “Do the police have a motive for the eyewitness?”
Major Savage didn’t answer right away. When he did, his words were halting. “Nothing was stolen. So maybe this terrible tragedy is tied into that murder last year of the major I replaced as squadron commander.”
In the back seat, the chaplain cleared his throat. “I don’t think this is a good time to talk about that.”
Susan jerked bolt upright on the seat. “What was his name? That air force captain who was convicted of the murder?”
“Don Albright,” Major Savage supplied.
Mulling over the case in her mind, she reached into her memory for bits of information. “Wasn’t there some doubt about his suicide?”
“There’s been speculation that he faked the leap from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge so he could jump bail and escape.” The major’s voice was cold and exact.
Susan clenched her hands together so tightly the knuckles cracked. “If Don Albright’s alive, he must be the one who killed Brian.” Anger released some of her grief, and she didn’t try to fight it. “I’ll see he pays if it’s the last thing I do.”
San Francisco
SEATED AT THE TABLE in his cramped room, Archer stared in disbelief at the picture on the front page of the Spokane Daily Chronicle. Though the focus was a little hazy, he easily recognized the man facing the camera.
It was himself, in the disguise he’d worn in Spokane. Stiff with shock, he read the news item under the picture.
Have you seen this man? the caption read. Eyewitness wanted for questioning in the Wade killing. The article went on to say that the picture was taken by a tourist visiting the cathedral. He’d sent the photo to the paper anonymously because he didn’t want to get involved.
Though only the back of the other man in the photograph was visible, the newspaper identified him as Air Force Captain Brian Wade, the officer who’d been murdered two weeks ago.
Archer crumpled the newspaper in his sweaty fists. Were the police trying to find the eyewitness because they thought he was the murderer? Lord knows, he’d dreamed of strangling Wade with his bare hands.
But the police couldn’t possibly suspect the man in the picture. With the sophisticated techniques available today, they had to know the bullet was fired from the street, not a foot away. But maybe they thought he’d moved from his photographed position and then committed the murder.
He turned his attention back to the picture. Where had it come from? Not from “a tourist who wanted to remain anonymous.” Archer was certain of that. Somebody wanted Glenn Dillon to be charged—either that, or to tell what he’d seen.
What had he seen? he asked himself. In the traumatic moment of Wade’s death, he hadn’t focused on anything but the body toppling toward him. Fuzzy images of a white, late-model sedan with a blond woman at the wheel appeared as indistinct figures in his memory.
He eyed his burgeoning file on Susan Wade. She was a blonde. Could she have been the woman he saw? She certainly had a motive. According to the information he’d collected, Wade’s death had made her rich. From her service decorations, Archer knew Susan was an expert marksman on the rifle range, and she could have fired the gun that killed her husband.
By the time a month had passed, Archer knew he’d have to risk another trip to Spokane to meet her and fill in the blanks about her character and objectives. In the automobile garage where he worked, he plotted his every move as he changed oil and replaced worn-out fan belts.
By night, hunched over a flimsy table in his cramped basement room, he examined the newspapers he bought every day and added more information to his growing files. On days off, he compiled the forms he’d need, had them printed and finalized the background information for his cover as an insurance agent.
Two weeks later he was ready.
Spokane
SUSAN YANKED UP the kitchen blind and peered across her deck through the predawn grayness. After the luscious green foliage of Hawaii’s Big Island where she’d spent the past month, the bare trees and yellowed grass behind her condo looked as bleak as a graveyard. Disturbed by the sight, she released the cord and let the blind drop with a noisy rattle.
On Major Savage’s orders, she’d taken leave in Hawaii shortly after Brian’s funeral. Now she’d been home almost a week, and her spacious condo still seemed filled with his presence. Glancing from the kitchen into the contemporary living room, she could almost see him sitting on his leather recliner.
Why hadn’t she told him the truth about her assignment to Fairchild? Maybe if she’d trusted him more, their marriage would have been better. She’d wanted to tell him she was here on a covert mission so secret no one knew about it except key officers at the Pentagon Intelligence Agency. But her sense of duty always held her back.
Now Susan was left with the piercing guilt that she was somehow responsible for Brian’s death. Brushing her hair off her forehead, she told herself Don Albright was the killer. But she couldn’t help wondering if Brian’s death was somehow tied in to her covert mission—if he might still be alive if he hadn’t married her.
Brian had also left her a lot of money. The authorities had been delicate in their questioning, but there was no doubt they thought she had a motive for killing him.
Worse, she had no alibi for that awful afternoon. Absently, she placed the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher as she remembered what had happened. A telephone call—allegedly from the wife of one of her
