The Tower: Part Two. Simon Toyne

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       13

      Shepherd drove. Franklin stared ahead, facing down the stormy night and saying nothing.

      Since voicing his suspicions about Shepherd’s missing two years he had barely spoken to him at all. Shepherd guessed he was sore at him for butting in on his interrogation of Merriweather too. The silence had become an almost tangible thing between them, taking on presence and weight.

      When he had applied to the FBI he had counted on the gap in his record not being a problem. He had not been arrested or done anything in those missing years to put him on any of the databases they checked when screening new candidates. As far as the standard computer searches were concerned he was clean. But Franklin was a duty-hardened agent with instincts honed by years of dealing with people in all their broken forms. He’d sniffed out the shadows in his story immediately. But trust worked both ways and he didn’t know nearly enough about Franklin to risk telling him the truth.

       Ahead – Turn left.

      The flat voice from the sat nav punctured the silence. Shepherd reached out and tapped the screen, broadening the scale of the map until the Space Center appeared directly North of them. Proximity to Goddard had obviously been way up on Dr Kinderman’s wish list and the usual status symbols of cars and big grand houses didn’t really matter to him. As Pierce had suggested, you could probably cut through the woods and walk to Presley Park faster than Shepherd had just driven it.

       Turn right in twenty metres, then you will have reached your destination.

      Shepherd turned into a narrower road and headlamps swept across a row of evenly spaced houses, slightly smaller than those on the main drag.

      ‘There!’ Franklin pointed at a one-storey, brick-built rambler set back a little from the road. Shepherd pulled into the empty drive next to it and cut the engine.

      The Kinderman residence was entirely unassuming. There was a small patch of grass in front, a tree planted in the centre and neat borders filled with utility plants that would pretty much look after themselves. There was nothing modern about it, no additions, no carport or garage. It still had the original steel and glass porch over the front door. Behind the low building a wall of tall trees surged and flowed in the wind. There were no lights on inside.

      ‘Let’s see if the good doctor is home.’ Franklin popped open his door and stepped into the rain. Shepherd killed the headlights and followed.

      The distance from the car to the house was barely ten metres but Shepherd was more or less soaked by the time he made it to the porch. Franklin was already leaning on the doorbell, listening to its chimes echoing inside the house through the loud drumming of rain on the glass overhead. He pressed it again and they listened out, standing uncomfortably close in the slender shelter of the porch as they waited for movement inside or a light to come on behind the pebbled glass surrounding the front door.

      ‘Nobody home,’ Franklin said after a suitable wait. ‘Watch the street.’

      He dropped down, stuck his Maglite between his teeth and started probing the lock with a pick he had taken from his pocket.

      ‘Shouldn’t we get a warrant first?’

      ‘And СКАЧАТЬ