Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [84]
“Got it.”
“Stay apart from each other,” was Kloss’s final word. “Always observe him from two different vantage points.”
“Okay,” Hall said.
“I don’t expect anything to come of this, but I want to cover all the bases. Our hands are tied until we hear from the kidnapper again.” Kloss suggested to Mary that she dress the next day in tourist clothing. He smiled and said to Matt, “You look like the studious type. Maybe you should play college student—you know, carry a couple of books and a knapsack. Mr. Rollins has a busy day on his calendar, including lunch with a congressional staffer. He’s keeping the appointment. They’re going to Primi Piatti, on I Street.” He consulted his notebook. “They’ve booked a twelve-thirty table in their sidewalk café. One of you get there earlier and grab a table. Maybe you should do that, Mary. Have lunch and read some tourist guides. Matt, there’s another outdoor spot across the street, just a couple of tables in front of a fast-food joint. You hang there. Everybody involved has your cell numbers. Keep ’em on and charged. Any questions?”
“Where do we hang out until lunch?” Jackson asked.
“A white van a half block from the restaurant. It’s got an electric company sign on the sides, Colonial Electric. There’ll be a command post set up in it. We’ll keep in touch with you there. Like I said, nothing may come of this, but without another call, we don’t have much of a choice.” He handed each of them an envelope. “Spending money,” he explained. “Lunch is on MPD.”
• • •
For the Rollinses, sleep that night was out of the question. They tried to divert their attention from the activity in the house, and the reason for it, by watching television in the bedroom—anything but the news—but everything on the screen was irrelevant, meaningless. Kloss or Garcia monitored news channels on a second set, in the den. The constant ringing of the telephone had lessened to some degree. Rollins handled the personal calls from friends and his professional colleagues, keeping them short to clear the line in the event Samantha’s abductors called. They didn’t.
“Damn!” Rollins exploded to Kloss at two o’clock Monday morning. “Why haven’t we heard anything?”
Kloss had nodded off in a chair. He snapped awake. “I don’t know,” he said, “but there’s nothing we can do but wait. Look, Mr. Rollins, go lie down. Try to sleep. I want you wide awake when you head downtown in the morning.”
“I hope you know how much my wife and I appreciate everything you and your people are doing. It’s just that—” Rollins collapsed in a chair and sobbed. He hadn’t cried since he was a child, and was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Nothing to be sorry about, sir,” Kloss said, extending his hand and touching Rollins’s shoulder.
“It’s just that to think of Samantha out there in the hands of these bastards is too much to bear.” He turned to Kloss. “She will be all right, won’t she?”
“We’ll do everything we possibly can to make sure that she is. Everything!”
Unstated was the reality that no matter what they did, no matter how many cops were on the case, no matter what elaborate plans were put into play, the Rollinses might never see their daughter again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rollins’s staff was already at work when he arrived on Monday.
“Good morning,” he said as he passed them on the way inside.
“Good morning, Jerry,” said his secretary, who followed him. “How are you doing?”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose. How was the birthday dinner?”
“It was fine, lots of fun.” How typical of him, she thought, to remember such a trivial thing in the midst of his personal travail. “Is there… is there anything new on… ?”
“On the kidnapping? No.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be here today, but Brian told me you were coming in, something about keeping a normal schedule.”
Rollins shook his head as he slipped out of his blue pin-striped suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.