Bombshell

“Yes, that’s right, but what has that to do with drugs? Rafael plays the classical guitar, for heaven’s sake. He doesn’t peddle drugs on street corners.” Both Anna and Griffin saw the lie in his eyes, the pain and grief of betrayal confirmed.

Griffin said, “You suspected he was involved with drugs, though, didn’t you, Dr. Hayman? And you knew, of course, he spent many summers in El Salvador with the Lozano family.”

“I have no intention of answering your ridiculous questions, Agent Hammersmith. Why should I?”

Griffin knew he had to push harder to see the truth. “Because you are also a member of the Lozano family. It is a short step to you from your brother, to you from the family business in El Salvador—drugs, extortion, prostitution, guns—and now to the Lozano organization expanding to the United States. The reality is that your brother came to Stanislaus to a position that would put him above suspicion. He arranged to purchase the land around Winkel’s Cave and coordinated the distribution of cocaine, marijuana, and guns with a violent gang with ties to El Salvador called MS-13. Perhaps you’ve heard of this gang?”

They both saw the horror on his face, heard it in his voice. “Mara Salvatrucha.” He raised blind eyes to their faces. “My brother was working with those animals? This is a fabrication. Why are you blackening my brother’s name, my mother’s name?”

If Anna hadn’t been certain Dr. Hayman was not involved in any of this, she was certain now. But he’d guessed what his mother’s family was involved in and hated it; his disgust was honest and gut-felt. But how could a man accept that his twin brother was one of the monsters? She said, “Professor Salazar was with them in the cave, sir. We believe he had them trash his house so he could claim they had abducted him. When he offered to confess it all to us, one of the gang members shot him.”

Dr. Hayman looked pale, the confident, self-assured academic gone as well as his rage, leaving him looking pinched and confused. “I know nothing of this, nothing.”

He began pacing, still in his lovely gray cashmere winter coat. He looked like someone had punched him in the face. “So they’ve managed to ruin me at last, ruin me utterly, my brother and Maria Rosa, who took him away to Spain with her when we were children and left me here with my drunken criminal of a father. She wanted to save herself from being beaten to death. She did not care that she was leaving me in his care, damn her to hell.

“Of course, she couldn’t leave me out of it. There were hints, I’m not stupid, but I chose to ignore them as I did not tell her my father never struck me as he had her, that indeed, he was proud of me.

“Yes, I chose to think we were all civilized. When Maria Rosa mentioned Rafael would very much like to come to Stanislaus as a visiting professor for a year, I did not suspect there was anything more to it, none of this drug business, surely not those violent gangs from El Salvador.” He paused, stared blindly at nothing in particular, and said more to himself than to them, “Of course I cannot keep my directorship at Stanislaus; I will not even be able to teach anywhere. The government will hound me, try to implicate me in all this, even though I am innocent.” He focused on Anna now. “You know I am innocent, don’t you?”

“I imagine you are.” Anna also wanted to say, But you knew, you had to know he was here for another purpose, you had to, but she only stood quietly, watching him. It was out of her hands now.

“Ah, but what kind of man am I, worrying about myself while Rafael may be dying? I must call Maria Rosa in Spain and tell her what has happened. She will blame me, of course. It is like her. Will she admit to me what she has done? Will she admit she told Rafael to get himself kidnapped to cause confusion and distraction until she could rescue him? She never tells me anything, so why should she begin now?”

He walked back to the elevator, not looking back.

Ward Place, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

Tuesday afternoon

The falling snow helped mask the lousy upkeep at Melissa Ivy’s red-brick apartment building. They walked past the triple row of black mailboxes up to the third floor and down the battered wooden hallway to apartment 3B.

Melissa opened the door immediately, since Savich had called her ten minutes before.

She’d changed since the morning into more comfortable clothes, her midriff and navel not on display, perhaps in deference to Peter’s death. Instead she was decked out in loose dark blue sweats, her pink UGGs back on her small feet. Her hair in a single thick braid that fell over her shoulder.

“I’ve already looked for videos that aren’t mine, but I haven’t found any.”