State Of The Union

Making more than one pass down the practically deserted road at three in the morning was out of the question, as it would only draw undue attention, especially if the FBI was sitting on Leighton’s house. Though many people often got lost on the country lanes that dead-ended at water up and down the Eastern Shore, the last thing Harvath needed was to attract notice.

He found a secluded spot at the end of the road and after parking the TrailBlazer, grabbed his gear and walked back along the shoreline toward his target.

He had tried calling Leighton’s house three times from his encrypted cell phone on the drive down, but no one had answered. If there was a trap and trace on Leighton’s line, the FBI were going to have a very difficult time deciphering where Harvath’s calls were coming from.

After surveying the rear of the property with his night vision goggles and not seeing anything, Harvath tried calling the house again. No one answered, so he decided to make his move.

Using a thick line of trees for cover, he made his way along the southern edge of the property until he was parallel with the rear of the house. He waited for several minutes crouched among the trees and scanned the area once more before darting across the snow-covered lawn toward the back door. With his lock pick gun in hand, he had the door open in a matter of seconds and was creeping quietly down a short hallway.

The house was cold and it was not just “somebody had turned down the heat for the night cold,” but rather “somebody had not been in the house for a while and had not needed the heat” kind of cold.

Harvath passed a small bathroom and an empty guestroom. As he neared the end of the hallway, he noticed a digital thermostat mounted on the wall. Flipping up the cover and using the filtered beam from his flashlight, Harvath cycled through the daily settings. The system had been set to maintain a constant, bare minimum temperature for every day of the week. Harvath was getting the feeling that whomever Frank Leighton was, he didn’t plan on being home for a while.

The house was tidy, but not overly so. After checking the rest of the bedrooms and finding them empty, Harvath entered the kitchen and did a quick scan. Upon opening the refrigerator, he saw that though it contained at least six different kinds of salad dressings, both of the vegetable crisper drawers were empty and there were no salad fixings. When he looked underneath the sink, he found a metal garbage can with a clean liner. Somebody had not only set the temperature down before leaving, but had also removed all of the perishables from the fridge and taken out the trash. Out of curiosity, Harvath removed the garbage pail liner and was surprised at what he found beneath. The can was blackened from having something burned in it and showed trace remnants of ash-just like the garbage can at Gary Lawlor’s.

Had Leighton and Lawlor burned the same thing? If so, what was it? What connected these two besides ownership of metal wastebaskets and a penchant for burning things in them? Was Leighton somehow part of the mystery surrounding Gary’s disappearance? What the hell was this all about?

Quietly, Harvath moved past a butler’s pantry into the laundry and storage room that doubled as Frank Leighton’s home office. He looked at the pictures pinned to the corkboard near the desk while he pushed the power button on the computer and waited for it to boot up. There was a photo of a woman with two children and he wondered if maybe she was Leighton’s ex. There had been no women’s clothes in the closets, nor had there been any woman’s touch in the house to suggest that he was currently married or living with someone.

A quick perusal of the contents in the sole desk drawer produced the usual bank and mortgage statements, all in Leighton’s name, as well as a recentto do list. While several of the items had been checked off, other items such aspick up dry cleaning andhaircut were devoid of check marks. Several unpaid bills also lay in the drawer, their due dates drawing nigh. It all contributed to the picture of yet another very hasty departure.

As Harvath sat down to examine the computer, which had finally completed its startup, something on a shelf across from the desk caught his eye. An ornately painted beer stein held a handful of pens and colored pencils. He rolled the chair over to the bookshelf and removed the mug. The front featured a detailed relief of “Checkpoint Charlie”-the former border control checkpoint between East and West Berlin with the phrase, “You are now leaving the American sector,” in English, Russian, French, and German. Oddly enough, at the very bottom of the mug where it flared out, was wrapped a piece of barbed wire. What was even more interesting, was that as odd a drinking vessel as it was, Harvath had seen one just like it before in Gary’s kitchen.