Read Online Honor Code by Cathy Perkins - Free Book Online

a different scenario on what these guys are up to? ‘Cause no, I don’t have a fuckin’ clue where they are.”
    Jordan placed his briefcase—a new, leather-sided one he was proud of—on his desk. “I was thinking about the Center, up in Greenville. Maybe the picture—picking it up the way Beason did—was another message. Remember you said him mentioning his wife was some kind of a signal. Hayes is a thief. Maybe Beason was trying to tell us Hayes intends to steal something.”
    “Steal what? The director said they don’t keep a permanent collection.”
    “Would Hayes or Beason know that? It sure sounded like Beason told Hayes there were cylinder seals up there. Maybe that’s what he was looking to steal.” Jordan dropped into his desk chair and unloaded a sheaf of paper from his briefcase.
    Robbins shook his head. “If you’re going to steal something, you rob a bank or grab stuff you know you can convert to cash in a hurry. What are two black guys going to do with a bunch of antique things? Sell ‘em on eBay?”
    “Then why were they asking about the seals?”
    “Who knows? Step back a minute. Run the time-line for the scenarios. The first one is real short. Washington found Hayes somehow while he was in the brig and hired him to do something to her father. Scare the crap out of him. Kidnap him. Kill him. Take your pick.”
    “Revenge, anger—good motive. Uses the facts we have. Washington at the prison. Beason’s house invaded. The two men at the Center. But if Hayes was supposed to kill Beason, why did he drag him up to Greenville?”
    “Which brings us to scenario two.” Robbins wished he had a cigarette and settled from drumming his fingers. “Which could include scenario one if Hayes has his own agenda. Hayes stole something while he was in the army. It would help to know what, but we don’t.”
    “Remember that army clerk who supposedly shipped home a Jeep, one piece at a time? I always wondered if that actually happened. If Tyrell…” Jordan’s words trailed off. He dropped his head and messed with the stack of papers.
    “You finished with your detour into LaLa-land?”
    “Yeah.”
    Damn, the kid blushed. Robbins shook his head. “Anyway, Hayes got caught—maybe the first time he did it, maybe after he’d been stealing for a while—was court-martialed and incarcerated for reasons unknown. He talked to Gloria Washington while he was inside. Then when Hayes gets out, he shows up at Gloria’s father’s house, tears it apart, and ends up in Greenville looking for antique cylinder seals. So the seals mean something, either themselves or because they lead to something else.”
    “Could Washington have known about the seals? Told Hayes her father had some or knew where to find them?”
    “Wait a minute.” The idea hit Robbins like a baseball bat. “You said Iraq. Where in Iraq was Hayes assigned?”
    Jordan sorted through his notes. “He was in Baghdad when the MPs arrested him.”
    Robbins opened the Internet browser, pulled up his history and clicked a site he’d visited earlier that day when he researched cylinder seals. “During 2003, our troops were in Baghdad, hunting down Saddam Hussein. The Iraq Museum got looted in April of 2003, during the early part of the invasion. First the army got blamed for the looting, then blamed for not stopping it.”
    “I kinda remember hearing about it.”
    “I don’t know that anybody outside the art or history world cared. They should, but…” Robbins shrugged. “Mostly it was the usual ‘America sucks’ crap. A Marine colonel was the one who put a plan in place to get the stuff back. Anyway, turns out it was an inside job, most items found, blah, blah, blah but a bunch of these cylinder seals are still missing. What if Hayes stole some of them before he was caught and court-martialed?”
    “Maybe he got caught with some of them and that’s why he was court-martialed.” Jordan slid the photo-copied pages from the brig across the