State Of The Union

As he entered the master bedroom, the first thing he noticed was the neatly made bed. The sheets and blankets looked so perfectly tight that Harvath knew he could bounce a quarter off of them military style, just like his father had always done to him.

He ran his finger along the top of the dresser where there was only the slightest trace of dust. Socks, underwear, and handkerchiefs had been neatly pressed and folded and placed in separate drawers. A small brown leather box contained two watches, several pairs of cuff links, several tie clips, and a discarded wedding band.

In the closet, stacks of crisply starched shirts sat in a perfect row along the shelf, while a line of suits hung in gradation of color above a phalanx of perfectly polished wingtip shoes. As Scot marveled at the man’s penchant for organization, he noticed that something was slightly out of place.

All of the suits were enshrouded in clear plastic dry cleaner’s bags. One in particular, though, seemed to have been hastily hung. The bag was not covering the entire suit and it was bunched up where it had been slid between its two neighbors. Harvath noted that the suit was black and wondered if maybe Gary had thought about packing that one for the memorial service and at the last minute had changed his mind and shoved it back in his closet. Possible, but not likely. Not unless Gary was running behind and had been in a tremendous hurry. For all he knew, some careless FBI agent had pulled it out and shoved it back in place, but somehow he doubted it. They would have left things exactly as they had found them so on their return they could videotape everything the way Gary had left it.

Scot searched the bathroom. There was no deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush or razor evident, which made sense as Gary had been about to take a trip when this entire thing, whatever it was, went down. The toilet and sink were spotless, but the chrome wastebasket was filled with discarded tissues. Harvath pulled several of them out, only to discover that none had been used.That was strange. He kept digging only to find that the entire garbage can was filled with unused tissues.What was Gary hiding?

After emptying the can of tissues, Harvath could clearly make out the remnants of a small fire. There was a trace amount of ash and some melted plastic around the seam in the bottom of the can. A quick check of the shower confirmed Harvath’s suspicions. The ceiling above had been slightly browned as if by smoke. Some ash was still visible around the drain. Apparently, Gary had burned something in the shower and had tried to rinse the can out afterwards. When he couldn’t get ride of all of the evidence, he decided to fill the can with tissues. But why? What did he need to hide so badly that he had to burn it? For the first time, Scot’s confidence in the man was shaken.

As Harvath continued to search the bathroom, he flipped open the lid of the laundry hamper and was stunned by what he discovered. Inside were three days’ worth of clean, warm weather clothes-most still perfectly folded. The forecast in Southern California had called for temperatures in the mid-eighties. It was as if Gary had just dumped the clothes right out of his suitcase instead of taking the time to put them away back in the bedroom. A poorly hung suit was something Harvath could chalk up to a thoughtless Bureau investigator or packing in a hurry, but now signs were starting to point more toward a hurriedunpacking.

Even though Gary hadn’t bothered to call him, he might have phoned someone else. That someone might know what had happened to him. At the same time, Harvath knew that even while the Bureau waited for a FISA warrant, they would have already established a trap and trace on Gary ’s phone and would have been going through all of his incoming and outgoing phone logs.

Harvath also knew that if the Bureau had been in the house, which was almost a slam dunk considering the well being of its former deputy director was currently in question, that they would have most likely relied solely on the phone company to provide them with Gary ’s phone activity. That meant that the phones themselves might at least catch Harvath up on the most recent activity.

Leaving the master bedroom, Scot walked downstairs to the study where he picked up the phone and hit theredial button. There was a long pause and clicking noises before a series of ear splitting tones, which sounded like a fax machine at full volume, blasted on the other end.Must have been a wrong number, thought Harvath as he hung up. But why wouldn’t Gary have found the right number and tried again? None of this was making any sense.