The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [75]
Including Dustin Gyrich.
It doesn’t make sense. The guard saw him come here. For him to move that fast… It’s like he knew we were coming. But the only ones who knew that were—
“Who’s calling you?” Tot asks.
I spin around to see Tot standing next to Clementine. In her hand, her phone is vibrating.
She looks down to check the number. “It’s my job—they probably want to know if I’m coming in tomorrow,” she explains. “Why?”
“Why aren’t you picking it up?” Tot pushes.
“Why’re you using that tone with me?”
“Why aren’t you picking it up?”
Clearly annoyed, and looking paler than ever, Clementine flips open her phone and holds it to her ear. She listens for a few seconds and then says, “I’ll call you back, okay?” Reading Tot’s reaction, she asks, “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Tot challenges, making sure she hears that challenge in his voice.
“Just say it,” she pushes back.
He shakes his head.
“So now you don’t believe me?” she asks, holding out the phone to him. “You wanna speak to them? Here—speak to them.”
“Listen, everyone’s had a long day,” I jump in.
“And don’t give me that evil eye stare you give everyone else,” she says, still locked on Tot. He walks over to the main check-in desk. She follows right behind him. “Beecher’s been in my life long before he’s been in yours. I’ve been helping him since the moment this started—and what?—now you think I’m tipping off Gyrich or something?”
“Those are your words, not mine,” Tot says.
“But they can just as easily be applied to you,” Clementine shoots back. “Oh that’s right—I almost forgot you got that magic phone call three minutes ago that sent us racing up here. What a perfect time for Gyrich to check in and say, ‘All’s clear.’ I’m telling you now, you hurt my friend, and I’ll make sure the world knows who you are.”
I wait for Tot to explode, but instead, he stares down at a red three-ring binder that sits open on the main desk.
Of course. The binder…
“Beecher…” Tot says.
I fly to the desk.
“What?” Clementine asks. “What is it?”
Ignoring her, Tot flips back one page, then flips forward to the current one.
“Every day, this room is staffed by us—by archivists,” I explain. “We’re on call for an hour or two each day so when visitors come in, we can help them with their research. But more important, the supervisor who runs this room marks down the exact time each of us gets here, just so she knows who’s staffing the room at any particular moment.”
“And of the fifty archivists in this building, look who was the very last one who was in here today—according to this log, barely ten minutes ago,” Tot says, stabbing his crooked finger at the last name on the sheet.
4:52 p.m.—Dallas Gentry.
My coworker. And officemate. And along with Rina, the one other person staffing President Wallace yesterday when he was arriving in the SCIF.
45
Six minutes ago
When he was cutting hair, Andre Laurent put no premium on speed.
His focus was accuracy. Precision. Giving the client exactly what he wanted. Or at the very least, convincing the client that whatever he gave them was exactly what they wanted.
But this was different.
As he entered the mint green Finding Aids room on the first floor of the Archives, Laurent didn’t waste a single second.
Without question, today was very much about speed. Most of the time, the goal was to move slowly—to go to the upstairs research room, pull a cart full of documents and pamphlets and half a dozen other records, and then hide what they needed right in plain sight.
But if what it said in A Problem from Hell was true… if someone else had grabbed the dictionary…
He didn’t even want to think about it.
A quick scan of the room told him he at least picked the right time. God bless government employees. This close to five, nearly all the staff was gone.
“Can we help you?” an older employee called out as she wheeled a rolling cart filled with small boxes toward the microfilm reading room on their far left.
“I’m actually okay,” Laurent said, waving his thanks, but not moving until she was