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Rapp shook his head. “Loaded him in the hangar right there at Teterboro.”
“The pilots?” Hurley asked.
“Cockpit door was closed the whole time.”
Hurley mumbled something under his breath and then said, “Why didn’t you just drive him down?”
Hurley’s words were less a question than a criticism, and Rapp did not do well with either. If it were anyone other than his old instructor, Rapp would have asked him why he hadn’t gotten his lazy ass out of bed and handled the job himself, but it was Hurley, so he gave him a pass. “Stan, these pilots have flown me all over the world. They’ve seen a lot of shit.”
“And if they’re asked at some point who was on that plane . . . ?”
“They’ll say they deadheaded it down to Richmond because they had an early hop the next morning.”
“And when the feds want to talk to the exec who chartered the plane?”
Rapp glanced at his watch. It was 6:58 A.M. “The plane is on its way to Mobile as we speak. And the man on board has no idea I even exist.”
“I still don’t like it,” Hurley grumbled as he began digging for a pack of cigarettes.
Rapp almost said, tough shit, but didn’t, because he knew this was harder on Hurley than he’d ever admit. He had been best friends with Adams’s father. Had served all over the world with him. Wanting to get off the subject, Rapp asked, “Did you listen to the audio from last night?”
“Yeah.” Hurley exhaled a fresh cloud of smoke.
“And?”
Hurley stepped behind the desk and looked at the flat-screen monitor on the left. It showed Adams sitting in the next room talking to a fiftyish man with curly blond hair. His name was Thomas Lewis, and he was a clinical psychologist. Hurley wasn’t sure who he was more upset with, himself or the little turd sitting in the other room. “He’s a fucking traitor . . . an embarrassment to his family name.”
Rapp didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut, and since Maslick wasn’t much for conversation the three of them stood there in silence watching the screen. Across the room, though, the man napping on the couch decided to make himself heard. From under his baseball cap he announced, “Embarrassing the family name is no reason to kill a man.”
Rapp wasn’t surprised by the comment, but it still pissed him off. He’d been arguing with Mike Nash about this entire mess for the last few hours.
“How about committing treason, boy genius?” Hurley asked.
“Definitely a capital offense, but then again it doesn’t exactly fall under our jurisdiction.”
Hurley’s eyes scanned the surface of the desk, his hands beginning to tremble with rage. He skipped the stapler, grabbed a ceramic coffee mug, and whipped it across the room. The mug hit the concrete wall just above the leather couch and shattered into a thousand pieces, shards raining down on Nash.
Nash jumped off the couch shouting, “What the hell?”
“You wanna argue with me, sport, you do me the courtesy of getting off your ass and looking me in the eye!” Hurley turned to Rapp and snarled, “What kinda shit show are you running? If I wanted personal opinions I’d join a fucking book club.” Hurley set out across the room, growling and cursing under his breath. When he reached the steel door he banged on it several times with his cane and then punched in the code to release the lock.
Rapp looked at Nash and mouthed the words, What in the hell is wrong with you?
Nash didn’t bother to reply. He was too steamed at Hurley to deal with Rapp.
A moment later Dr. Lewis joined them and the door to the interrogation room was closed and locked. No one took a seat. Rapp and Hurley faced Lewis while Maslick stayed behind the desk to keep an eye on the monitors and Nash stayed on the other side of the room, still stewing about his rebuke.
“Give it to me straight,” Hurley said to the shrink.
Lewis started to speak and then paused as if deciding where to begin. He ran a hand through his curly blond hair and said, “Classic narcissistic personality disorder.”
“That’s it?”
“No, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that.” Lewis hesitated and then asked, “You knew his parents?”
“Yep.”
“Dad not around much?”