Too True to Be Good

Joseph Bauer

Description

Homeland meets “24” in this fast-paced political thriller featuring the most entertaining K-9 hero since Rin Tin
Tin.
PRAISE BY AMAZON REVIEWERS FOR THE PATRIOT’S ANGELS BY JOSEPH BAUER
“I didn’t want to move while reading The Patriot’s Angels”
“Another gangbusters, can’t put it down book.”
“A true page turner.”
When aging DC police detective Jack Renfro first enters a room in the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and sees a body on the king-size bed, it initially appears the murder is a probable organized crime hit. But this time, his instincts tell him something doesn’t add up. After he secures the scene, he asks his young partner, Audrey Sanderson, to contact Homeland Security. Fearing possible terrorist involvement, Renfro has no idea that the victim looks eerily similar to an FBI agent. As a meticulous assassination plot begins to unfold, US President Del Winters and her father, Henry, are forced to go into lockdown at Camp David with Henry’s friend, Stanley Bigelow, and his German shepherd, Augie. Renfro partners with anti-terrorism chief, Admiral Tyler Brew and FBI agent, L.T. Kitt to understand the planned attack. But little do they know how much influence a K-9 hero will have in their efforts to take down an evil mastermind.

Sujets

• Veterans
• Thrillers
• Dog
• Veteran
• Terrorism
• Child
• Dogs
• Clancy
• Silva
• Suspense
• John Grisham
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 16 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665741026
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also by Joseph Bauer
The Accidental Pat riot
The Patriot’s An gels
TOO TRUE TO BE GOOD
 
 
JOSEPH BAUER
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 Joseph Bauer.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4123-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4103-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4102-6 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023905564
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/13/2023
In memory of Katie, dear big sister and first writing partner.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battal ions.
—William Shakespeare
CONTENTS
PART ONE
Chapter 1Murder at The Willard
Chapter 2Where is Evan Reese?
Chapter 3Human Error in Human Resources
Chapter 4A Terrorist Should Know Who He Hates
Chapter 5Identification
Chapter 6A Hurried Departure
Chapter 7Eyes are Special
Chapter 8Fifteen Minutes to Game Time
Chapter 9Audrey Sanderson Looks the Part
Chapter 10More Killing Near the White House
Chapter 11Third Inning Pandemonium
Chapter 12Too True to be Good
Chapter 13Enter Admiral Brew
Chapter 14Chameleon
Chapter 15Body Doubles
Chapter 16The Days of Brick and Mortar
Chapter 17Encounter at Grand Central
PART TWO
Chapter 18Cover Intact
Chapter 19Splicing Time
Chapter 20Even a Rich Terrorist Can’t Buy Happiness
Chapter 21White House Manners
Chapter 22A Dead End. Literally
Chapter 23The Altoona Curve
Chapter 24Hope Often Makes a Fool
Chapter 25A Patriot’s Instinct
Chapter 26Contrition
Chapter 27Ends and Means
Chapter 28The Temperament of Terrorists
Chapter 29Remember the Wife
Chapter 30Augie is Unsettled
Chapter 31Mutual Intuition
Chapter 32A Dog’s Heaven
Chapter 33The Center Field Camera
Chapter 34It Could Have Been Worse
Chapter 35Even a Paranoiac is Sometimes Optimistic
Chapter 36Another Fifty-Seven Minutes
Chapter 37A Grim Historical Fact
Chapter 38Mysteries of Camp David
Chapter 39Life is too Long to Suffer Shoddy Things
Chapter 40How it Came Down in Brooklyn
PART THREE
Chapter 41It Beat Greenland, They Said
Chapter 42The First Rule of Holes
Chapter 43Dead Man Walking
Chapter 44Ukrainian Hospitality
Chapter 45GPS Doesn’t Lie. But You Can Lie About GPS
Chapter 46When Evil Succeeds
Chapter 47Teamwork in Rockville
Chapter 48The Tailor was Thanked
Chapter 49A Playpen for Evil
Chapter 50Taxis, Taxis, Everywhere Taxis
Chapter 51Eighteen Hours and Nothing to Show for It
Chapter 52Clue from an Unlikely Source
Chapter 53The Dots Connected at Last
Chapter 54An Immediate Decision
Chapter 55Golf at Camp David, Abbreviated
Chapter 56The Brave Citizen and the Mistake
Chapter 57Luck is Earned
Chapter 58Frenzy at Camp David
Chapter 59The Scientist Didn’t Sugarcoat It
Chapter 60Death at Thirty-Second Intervals
Chapter 61All as Planned
Chapter 62He Had Told Hiram the Truth. After a Fashion
Chapter 63Comedic Relief at the Motel 6
Chapter 64Don’t Be Rude, Balish
Chapter 65Admirals and Generals Should not be Overruled
Chapter 66Rendition in Tehran
Chapter 67Summons to Camp David
Chapter 68Two Presidents Speak
Chapter 69Another Day, Another Murder
Chapter 70An Undetected Assassin. Mostly
Chapter 71Thirty-Three Minutes to Detonation
Chapter 72Augie is Aroused
Chapter 73The Run of Evan Reese
Chapter 74She Wanted to Say One Thing. She Said Another
Chapter 75Today it Wasn’t
Afterword
About the Author

PART ONE
1 MURDER AT THE WILLARD
J ack Renfro, the graying homicide detective from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police, knew it from so much experience it seemed almost boring when he stepped into the room and saw the scene before him. Mob killings in hotel rooms usually involved a quickly subdued male victim who knew his executioners, with little or no signs of struggle. And yes, a pillow with a bullet hole through it.
And those were Renfro’s first thoughts when he entered the room in the ever-elegant Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and saw the body on the king-size bed. Housekeeping, delivering afternoon bathroom supplies, had discovered the body only thirty-six minutes earlier. If there had been nothing else, Renfro promptly would have sized up the murder as a probable organized crime hit, the elimination of a member who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, or maybe his pants buckled around the boss’s wife.
But this time something didn’t rhyme.
On the body, a scribbled note was left, to which four one-thousand-dollar bills were paper clipped. To Jack Renfro, that changed everything.
Burial money for the family was all it said.
It was not entirely unheard of; Jack had seen it himself once before in an Italian mob hit thirty years ago. A sort of morbid death benefit for a mostly well-meaning minion gone astray, emblematic of the perverse magnanimity of a delusional don just human enough to require some balm for his conscience. Oh, the painful decisions we must make in this business. May he rest in peace. A little something for his family. We aren’t completely evil. We have sympathy too.
But in this room, and from the looks of this victim, Renfro thought the five-word message struck a decidedly discordant note. He adjudged the dead man, facedown and bound at hands and ankles, to be midthirties. Wiry and fit. He was well dressed, to say the least, with polished European shoes and longish black hair, expensively coiffed. He looked nothing like a man destined for a pauper’s grave.
The fact that he was bound with plastic strip ties meant there were at least two perpetrators, the detective knew. A lone assailant could never have incapacitated a strong victim like this without obvious signs of struggle.
After taking three dozen photos with his smartphone camera, he lifted the pillow lying atop the back of the murdered man’s head. The blood visible on the bed all had flowed to the victim’s right side, and a single burned hole appeared in the pillow. Jack surmised initially a single gunshot. Trained killers normally fired only once in a hotel. Two or more shots, even muffled, were exponentially more likely to be heard by someone than a single burst. But when he lifted the pillow, he saw clearly that two shots had been fired into the back of the man’s head—one about even with the top of his ears and another lower, nearly at the neckline.
“Odd,” Renfro said to his young partner, Audrey Sanderson. “And stupid.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The killer fired two shots and through the same hole in the pillow.”
“Why is that stupid?”
“For one thing, the only reason to shoot through a pillow in the first place is to keep the sound down,” Renfro said. “That and … well …”
“Back spatter,” Sanderson filled in the blank.
“Yeah. And you lose some of that—a lot more than you’d think—when you fire again through the same place. Someone might notice it, hear it.”
“Maybe he had a suppressor and wasn’t worried,” Audrey said.
“Possible,” Renfro said. “But it’s pretty foolish to put a firearm that’s been discharged against a pillow, even with a suppressor. Especially with a suppressor. That weapon was hot for the second shot. He could have started a fire. He was lucky he didn’t.”
“What’s a little fire after you’ve committed murder?” Audrey said.
“On the twelfth floor of the Willard? It would set off the fire alarms almost immediately. That would shut down the elevators. You’d have firefighters and security people climbing every stairwell. And this place is so close to the White House.”
Indeed, the stately landmark nearly abutted the Old Executive Office Building that was literally connected to the White House, where many executive branch department chiefs were located. As such, it was a preferred hotel for government dignitaries and political events. “Police and Secret Service are always crawling around here,” he said.
“What are you getting at?” asked Audrey.
“I doubt these were experienced hit men,” said Jack Renfro. “At least not American style.” He reached into the dead man’s left hip pocket, removed his wallet, and held up the New York driver’s license he found in it. He paused, squinting to read the lettering against the hologram. “And I doubt that Mr. David Kahn here—if that’s his real name—was too experienced either. Probably a messenger or courier who knew something he couldn’t keep knowing.”
“Maybe he had no idea what he was involved w