Page 24 of Distant Thunder

Stone checked the photographs of the corpse. Fingernails intact and clean. He hadn’t tried to scratch or claw anybody. Left-hand knuckles bruised. A straight left to somebody’s nose, maybe. Right knuckles unbruised. A right to the belly or solar plexus? Bruises on both arms, just above the elbows. Somebody pinned his arms back? Maybe while pouring the vodka into him? None of this would count in a court of law, but it gave him a picture, albeit a fuzzy one.

He called Vanessa Morgan.

“Hi, there.”

“Hi. Did the Agency send you or give you a package or a bag of the contents of John’s pockets?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Could you bring it with you to dinner tonight?”

“Okay.”

“Six-thirty here?”

“Sure.”

“See you then.” They both hung up.

14

Vanessa appeared ontime and Stone led her to his study, where he exchanged a drink for a ziplock plastic bag. “Do you mind if I look through these things now?” he asked her.

“Go right ahead.”

Stone emptied the bag onto the coffee table. “Have you been through this?” he asked her.

“Nope, they look just like the stuff he laid on the dresser top every night he was home.”

Stone poked through the contents. “There should be a wallet with his CIA ID,” he said.

“The guy who delivered the bag said they never found it.”

“Right.” Stone found a tiny cardholder with John’s Agency business cards; he kept one. There was a thick wallet, and Stone counted eight hundred and ten dollars. He handed it to Vanessa. “Here, go spend that.”

“Consider it done,” she said, dropping it into her handbag.

“Did he often carry that much cash?”

“It’s not unusual, for him.”

Stone took an assortment of credit cards from the wallet and spread them on the table: Amex, Visa, ATM card, and one that was blank except for a ten-digit number.

“That blank card is for a bank, isn’t it?” Vanessa asked.

“Could be. Did John do any banking outside the country?”

“Like where?”

“Like Macao, the Cayman Islands, Malta, Cyprus?”

“We went to the Caymans once. St. George’s, for three days.”

“Did John ever leave you alone when you were there? A couple of hours, maybe?”

“Yes, we were lying on a beach, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, he was gone, and he didn’t come back for another hour or more. I asked him where he’d been, and he said, ‘Just taking a stroll.’ ”

“When you went to the beach, did he take any sort of luggage with him?”

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