High Crimes

“I got a package for Claire Chapman. I just need to see some kind of ID.”

“Hold on,” Claire said. She closed the door, retrieved her purse from the hall table, and removed her driver’s license from her wallet.

She opened the door again and handed him the license.

The kid inspected it, comparing the picture to her face. He nodded. “I gotta ask for your Harvard faculty card, too.”

“Who’s the package from?”

“I dunno.” He looked at it. “Something Lenahan.”

Claire was immediately flooded with relief, then excitement. “Here,” she said, handing him her faculty ID card.

He looked at it, once again comparing the photos. “Okay,” he said warily. “Sign here.”

She signed, took the package — a flat, rigid cardboard envelope about nine by twelve inches — tipped him, and closed the door.

“Who’s it from?” Jackie asked.

Claire smiled and didn’t answer. Tom knew the phones were tapped, which meant that voice mail and the fax machine weren’t safe. He knew they’d be monitoring the mail. The sudden appearance of a courier might work just once, but without a court order they couldn’t intercept the package.

Inside was a handwritten letter, which brought tears to her eyes — and a plan, which for the first time brought her hope.

11

A full moon. A warm night. The watchers at their stations in their government-issue sedans lulled by the tedium. It was barely half an hour later. The doorbell rang, and Claire answered it. She wasn’t at all surprised to see the two FBI agents, Howard Massie and John Crawford, standing there in almost identical trench coats. No doubt they’d been summoned by the watchers and had rushed over.

Massie spoke first as they entered. “Where’s the envelope?” he demanded. He was a large man, larger than she’d remembered from the nightmarish scene at the mall and the “conversation” that followed.

“First we talk,” Claire said, leading them into the sitting area just off the foyer, a sofa and a couple of comfortable upholstered chairs on a sisal carpet, around a tufted, tapestry-covered ottoman neatly stacked with old New Yorkers. It was a part of the house they rarely used, and it looked that way, sterile, like a display in a furniture store.

Crawford began, menacingly: “If you plan on hiding something from us—”

Massie interrupted, “We need your cooperation, and if your husband has tried to arrange a meeting—”

“How can you prove to me the man you’re looking for, this Ronald Kubik, really is the same man as my husband, Tom Chapman?” Claire said abruptly.

Massie looked at Crawford, who said: “It’s the prints, ma’am. The fingerprints don’t lie. We can show you photographs, but his face is different.”

Claire’s stomach felt as if it had flipped over. “What does that mean, his face is different?”

“There’s only a slight, passing resemblance between the photos we have of your husband and those of Ronald Kubik,” Massie explained. “Photo superimposition demonstrates beyond question that they’re the same person, but you’d never think they were the same person, not after the amount of plastic surgery he’s had. Sergeant Kubik’s an extremely bright man, extremely resourceful. If it weren’t for your burglary, and the thoroughness of the Cambridge police, running all the prints and all, he might never have been caught.”

“Sergeant?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Crawford said. “We’re only the contact agency. We’re really working on behalf of the U.S. Army CID. Criminal Investigation Division.” Massie watched her with heavy-lidded interest.

“What the hell is the army investigative service interested in Tom for?”

“I know you’re a professor of law at Harvard,” Massie said, “but I don’t know how much you know about the military. Your husband, Ronald Kubik, is facing a number of charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including Article 85, desertion, and Article 118, murder with premeditation.”

“Who’d he kill? Allegedly?”

“We don’t have that information,” Crawford replied quickly.

Claire looked at Massie, who shook his head, then said: “We know you’ve been contacted by your husband. We need to know his whereabouts. We’d like to examine the package.”

“That’s what I called you to discuss,” Claire said.

“I understand,” said Massie. His eyes were keen.

“You and I want two different things,” she said. “I only want what’s best for him. Now, whatever he’s done, I know it’s not going to be cleared up by running. Sooner or later the Department of Injustice will catch up with him.”

“We thought you’d see the light sooner or later,” Crawford said.

Claire gave him a look of withering contempt, then said: “I don’t want a perp walk. No showy arrests in a public place, no leading away in handcuffs, no guns drawn, no manacles or shackles.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Since he’s arranged to meet me at Logan Airport, the surrender will take place in the parking lot at Logan across the street from the terminal. I’ll make sure either he’s unarmed, or he throws away his weapon, and you’ll be able to confirm it.”

Massie nodded.