Primary Valor by Jack Mars (booksvooks TXT) 📗

to know a little bit about it. First and foremost, it’sclassified. As such, our investigation has to stop here until we get guidancefrom above. Hopefully, we haven’t stepped on the existing investigation toobadly.”

He shook his head. “We hit thathouse. I knew we shouldn’t have done that. Two guys are dead. And this guy…” Hegestured back toward the interrogation room. He shook his head again andsighed. The air seemed to go out of his body, like a car tire that had justbeen sliced with a hunting knife.

“Who else is involved?” Luke said.

Bowles gave him the drop deadlook. “That’s classified, too. This is a national security issue, if you haven’tguessed yet.”

He started to walk again. Lukegrabbed him by the arm.

“Stone…”

“Who else is involved?”

Bowles smiled. “I’d tell you, butthen I’d have to kill you.”

“Who is the man on Jupiter Island?”

“I’m sure you guys can figure thatout on your own. You shouldn’t bother, but you probably will anyway.”

Bowles shook free of Luke’s arm,then walked briskly toward the doors. He stopped just before he reached them,and turned around.

“The case stops here, guys. Youdon’t have the clearance to move forward, and neither do I. You might as welljust go back to whatever else you were doing before you came down.”

With that, he pushed the door openand went out into the night.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

10:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

Cape Fear Memorial Bridge

Wilmington, North Carolina

 

 

“I knew it would come to this.”

Jeff Zorn didn’t even know he hadspoken.

He had just pulled his beloved BMWZ3 to a stop in the right lane near the Wilmington side of the bridge. The topwas down, so he put the hazard lights on, stood on his seat, and stepped out ofthe car across the passenger seat.

He climbed over the horizontaliron bars and onto a small walkway between the road and the vertical tower ofthe bridge. It was a vertical lift bridge, with a tower on either side thatserved as an elevator. The elevator lifted the roadway for large containerships to pass underneath.

It was also an old bridge, rustyfrom the salt in the sea air. He reached the base of the bridge tower, andfound that he could easily climb the diagonal supports. He had spotted thesediagonal supports weeks ago, and had been thinking of them ever since.

He moved along the iron rungs likea monkey. The rungs were more like mini-stairs, wide enough to accommodate aperson’s feet. They were caked with rust, and the paint on the silo around themwas peeling. Bird droppings were everywhere.

Below him and to his right,probably ten feet down now, a car pulled up behind his. The car was yourtypical unmarked cop sedan, no style at all, hard to tell what color in thislight. Blue, black, green, could be anything. Suddenly, the car was flashingbright lights, in the back, in the front, on the dashboard. A black man in asports jacket got out of the car and dashed toward the tower.

Of course he did. The man had beenfollowing him. They’d been following Jeff for at least the past hour. Could bethey’d been following him for days, and he just picked up on it. Sure. Theywere probably watching him the whole time.

“Hey, man!” the guy shouted. “Hey,Jeff!”

Jeff started moving faster. Heclimbed lightly upward, racing, moving so fast he quickly became dizzy and outof breath. His pace slowed, and then it changed. He crawled up the rungs, handsgripping each new metal railing, pulling himself along. He was moving at asnail’s pace. The structure seemed to go on forever.

He looked down. The cop orwhatever he was, agent, secret policeman, was following him.

“Don’t come up here!” Jeffshouted. “Leave me alone.”

“Jeff! Wait a minute! Let’s talk.”

Jeff reached the top of thesupport. He was on a small metal platform now. Above his head was a metaltrapdoor, hanging down. Through that hole a ladder, bolted into the verticalsupport, went straight up to the top of the bridge.

The man climbed the diagonalsupports behind him, zigzagging his way. He was coming along, moving slow. Whyrush? They knew they had him. There was nowhere for Jeff to run.

He started up the ladder andclimbed through the hole. It went up and up. The ladder was rusted and sharp,and ancient paint flaked from it. It was cocooned by a tunnel of sorts, whichprotected him from the wind. But he knew where it was going. All the way to thetop of the bridge, high above the water… totally exposed.

He used to look at bridges andwonder who would ever do these jobs. He hated heights, and yet, tonight it didn’tbother him. It didn’t matter now. He had been out driving around, trying tothink, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

Joy was in shock over the loss ofher daughter, practically catatonic. She had taken a leave of absence fromwork. She wasn’t eating. She could barely get out of bed. It was terrible, andto be expected. And yet, somehow he hadn’t expected it.

There was something wrong withhim. He knew that. There had always been something wrong with him. It was likehe had never become an adult. He couldn’t think things out ahead of time. Hecouldn’t imagine consequences for anything he did.

He’d had money problems. He camefrom a rich family, his dad was the Jeffrey Zorn, but Jeff wanted more. Hewanted to add his own pile. And he liked risk, too much risk. He had anappetite for it.

Gambling. It didn’t matter what. Sports.Boxing, football, basketball. Penny stocks. Casinos. Business investments. Hewas a light touch for friends who were opening bars or restaurants. He hadbacked a friend’s independent rap music label. Those were his bigshot Manhattandays. What was wrong with him? He had squandered a fortune from his father’sside, then another, smaller one from his mother’s side. He was so deep in, itwas unspeakable. He felt dirty all the time.

He was sick. He had a sickness.

Darwin King had carried him a longtime. How had it started? A little bit here, a little bit there. The guy was abillionaire, or so people said. After a while, Jeff realized he didn’t have anymoney of his own. It was all gone. The only