The man from Washington checked his watch. “He’ll be waiting with the Finns when we land.”
“Only if you’re sure Dale doesn’t know what you’ve got planned for him.”
Gold!
The AD’s composure had been fractured, and Kronewald knew he was on to something. In the past hour, Harry Mars had racked up four failed attempts to make a cell-phone connection, and the Chicago detective did not buy the story that this bureaucrat was calling his wife. So Mars had lost contact with his people on the ground.
The plane touched down on the runway with a bump and then another in a not-so-smooth landing.
An omen?
Joe Finn was waiting
by the door to the ladies’ room when Nahlman emerged hand-in-hand with Dodie. The boxer had only been parted from his daughter because neither child could wait. Now he scooped Dodie up in his arms and carried her off to the aisle of chewing gum, a staple of every child’s road-trip diet.
A state trooper had been watching Nahlman’s back during the potty detail, and now the man faced the convenience store window. “That boss of yours is a real piece of work.”
She followed the track of the officer’s e yes. Dale Berman was outside in the parking lot, casually leaning back against his show-and-tell exhibit, a car missing paint on the side where she had forced an agent to drive it into a concrete barrier.
The state trooper stood beside her, and his voice was low, confidential. “Just for the record, ma’am, that was a real fine piece of driving tonight. I’d b ail out of this detail, too, if I could.” He nodded toward the window on the parking lot and her boss. “You should talk to that asshole about using the radio.” Before she could ask what he meant by that, the trooper turned smartly on his heel, saying over one shoulder, “While you take care of that, I’ll get these folks back to the car.” He walked toward the small family standing by the cash register.
When Nahlman stepped out of the convenience store, Berman pointed to the damaged area of the other agent’s vehicle, saying to her so calmly, “Nobody has to pee that bad.”
Agent Allen had a worried look about him as he hovered at the edge of this conversation. Nahlman smiled. She could not trust her partner; he was Berman’s creature now, but she could appreciate Barry Allen’s concern for her. She turned her eyes to Special Agent Berman, saying, “If we don’t turn around right now and head back to the airport road, we’ll miss the plane to Chicago.”
“We’re not going to Albuquerque International. Our destination is an airport on the other side of Gallup.”
This seemed to reassure her partner, but not Nahlman. “That’s an air force base.”
“And a more secure location,” said Special Agent Berman. “Excuse me if I don’t s hare every damn detail with you. Your only job tonight was to follow the car ahead of you, and you botched that. Oh, and don’t let me catch you using a cell phone one more time.” He turned around to glare at Agent Allen. “Got that, son?”
“Yes, sir.” Barry Allen stood at attention, holding up his phone to show his boss that it was not turned on.
“Now yours,” said Berman.
Nahlman pulled out her cell phone and depressed the button to turn it off.
Dale Berman turned to Barry Allen, saying, “Thanks to your partner, I’m missing two cars that couldn’t make that hairpin turn. That’s four agents, four guns.” Whipping around to face Nahlman, he said, “If anything goes wrong tonight, it’s on your head.” He walked to the nearby state police cruiser. The trooper was keeping his eye on the Finns when the agent in charge leaned down to his window, pointed at the radio and asked, “You mind?”
The trooper nodded and passed the radio handset to Berman, stringing its cord through the window. The officer then turned his eyes to Nahlman and gave her a shrug that said,
I told you so.
Dale Berman had made contact with his lost agents, and now he was directing them to fuel up their cars at the nearest gas station. “Then pull over and wait. Our next rendezvous has no gas pumps. It’s a few hours down the road, a highway rest stop just past Exit 96.”
Nahlman shook her head, incredulous, but kept the edge out of her voice. She was long accustomed to Berman’s style of baiting. Normally, she was not inclined to state the obvious; she said this for her partner’s b e ne-fit. “So all the other car radios are tuned to the trooper’s frequency?”
“Well, we’ve got a trooper in the party, don’t we?” Berman thanked the officer and returned the handset.
“Police scanners are as common as dirt on-”
“Shut up, Nahlman.” The man’s back was turned on her partner, and he could not see the younger agent’s well-scrubbed face coming to terms with this advertisement of their position. Barry Allen’s perfect world was cracking, and Dale Berman’s great-guy status was now in some doubt.
A small win.
Berman grabbed the keys from her hand and tossed them to her partner. “Barry, you’ve got the wheel from now on.” He turned back to Nahlman, saying, oh so casually, “No more hysterics in front of your passengers, okay?”
The manager
of the El Rancho Hotel had never before been interrogated by a detective. It was difficult to take his eyes off the gun in her shoulder holster. And he still could not fathom his crime.
All the other guests
liked
their rooms.
“No,” he said in answer to her accusation about renovations, “it was a
restoration
. Quite a difference, you see. Everything is the same.” His sweeping gesture took in the spacious lobby with its elegant appointments and a southwest flavor of the nineteen forties. The upper gallery was lined with photographs of famous actors from a more glamorous era of black-and-white movies. Indeed, every day when he came to work, he felt as though he had stepped into just such a film, staring up at the grand staircase and waiting for the stars to come down. “And the autographs are authentic, too. They all stayed here while they were filming on location-”
“What about my
room
?” The young detective glared at him with strange green eyes that called him a liar. “The furniture is
new.
”
“Oh, the
rooms
were renovated. The furniture was replaced with-”
“It’s all different now.”
He gave up. “You’re right.” When a hotel guest carried a gun, this enhanced the meaning of his motto: The guest is always right. “Everything changes.” And, by that, he meant life, the universe-everything outside of his
restored
lobby. “Nothing stays the same.” He saw the disappointment flicker in her eyes and forgot to be afraid of her. “I’m so sorry.”
Riker stretched out
on Joe Finn’s abandoned sleeping bag. The fire was dying, and Charles Butler was keeping him awake-by thinking. “Okay, I give up. What’s bothering you?”
“It’s the cell phone,” said Charles. “I didn’t even know that Dr. Magritte had one until Mallory pulled it out of that knapsack. One thing the doctor and I had in common was an avid dislike for those things. He said it was like a sword hanging over your head. You can’t get away from the world if you carry a cell phone. But now it turns out that he actually owned one.”
“Well, the old man had patients calling him.”
“No, that’s not it. You said that phone was what? Six, seven years old? Dr. Magritte left his regular practice twelve years ago. His Internet groups meet online. The patients might have e-mailed him, but they never telephoned. Now, if he bought one just for the road trip, it would be a new phone, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe he borrowed it from a friend,” said Riker. “They do come in handy on the road.”
“Is there any way to verify that?”
“Sure thing.” The tired detective pulled out his own cell. “Kronewald should know everything about that damn phone by now.”
Click.
The camera flash had taken Pearl by surprise.
And the man with the camera had also looked damned surprised to see her step out of the tow truck.
Well, most of her customers had that same reaction. Pearl Walters was a robust woman and a first-rate mechanic. She had thirty years of experience in every automotive problem that could make a car break down on the road.
She did not offer to shake hands with the man. That put most people off. Though her hands were clean, her fingernails were not quite up to par. Grit and oil went deep where a cleaning rag could not follow. Pearl’s cover-alls were greasy and her boots were showing some fresh spots. Her bright orange vest was stained with years of motor-oil adventures under the carriage of one car or another, but it still came in handy on a dark night. Oncoming traffic could spot the reflective orange a mile away. Parking lots were her favorite place to do business. Yes, this was a good safe spot to work on a car without dodging damn fools asleep at the wheel.
Tonight’s customer was not a talkative man, but then his problem required no explanation. That front tire was just as flat as could be.
“No jack,” was all he said to her.
“No problem,” said Pearl, coming right back at him. “I’ll have you on the road in no time at all.” She knelt down to set up her jack and never felt the pain as a knife slid across her throat. It was more a feeling of wonder.
What the hell?
Hands from behind her pulled open the snaps of her orange vest before she could splatter it with her blood.
Click.
Dale Berman turned
to the young agent at the wheel. “See any likely comers yet?”
“No, sir,” said the rookie, glancing at his rearview mirror. “Nobody’s following us. You really think he’d try to kill that little girl with all these agents around?”
“You bet I do. I invited him to the party.” Berman lit a cigar, leaned back and smiled. “I’ll tell you how we usually catch these bastards. They get too damn cocky. After a while they do something really stupid.”
“But, sir, this killer’s been active for thirty or forty years.”
“Where’d you hear that? From Nahlman?” Her name was said with derision. He continued his monologue on the serial killer, a rare species he had never encountered in all his years with the Bureau. “This guy’s at the end of his run. His little rituals are falling apart. No more throat slashing. He’s running people down with a damn car. Panic kills. So all his careful detailing-that’s gone to hell. This is his last shot at the kid. He won’t come at us with a plan this time. He’ll just come running, and we’ll see him a mile off.”
The driver kept silent. Perhaps the boy had a contrary theory of his own, or maybe he objected to child-size bait.
In Dale Berman’s view, it was bad for morale when the kids did their own thinking. “Now, our guy was getting reckless even before I put the pressure on.” He had allowed all of his agents to assume that transporting the Finns tonight had been his own idea and not the direct order of Harry Mars. “The perp’s really frantic now.” As if Dodie Finn could ever give him away. Crazy Dodie. Dale closed his eyes, saying to his driver, “Wake me the second we pick up another car on our tail.”
Special Agent Berman feigned the sleep that angst would not allow. It was an all-or-nothing kind of night.
***
Assistant Director Harry Mars
had taken to making his futile phone calls outside of Kronewald’s hearing. And now he connected to yet another field agent’s voice mail. In his last hope for a rational explanation, he turned to the man beside him, the liaison from the New Mexico State Police. “Is there any chance that my people could be driving through a zone where their cells won’t work?”
“No, sir, not between the campsite and the airport. This ain’t the Bermuda Triangle.” The New Mexico man pulled out his own cell phone. “We got a trooper riding point. I can ask his barracks commander to raise him on the radio if you like. It’s your call, sir. Me, I wouldn’t w ant to broadcast anything covert on that frequency. To o public.”
A few yards away, the detective from Chicago was taking a call of his own, raising his voice to be heard above the static of airport traffic. “Riker!” yelled Kronewald. “My plane landed twenty minutes ago. Where’s the feds and the Finns?” Apparently, Riker’s answer was unsatisfactory. Kronewald jammed his phone in his coat pocket.
Harry Mars tried one more number and had no luck reaching Mallory, but then she never answered to anyone.
Christine Nahlman turned
her head to look at the passengers in the back seat. The children were sleeping in Joe Finn’s arms. The boxer’s e yes were also closed, but she had seen him go from deep sleep to full alert. Was he only dozing?
Ah, snoring, a sign that Joe Finn was finally beginning to trust her.
Agent Barry Allen drove with his eyes on the road, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. After the incident with the trooper’s radio, he was probably questioning everything he had ever been told from kindergarten on. When he did look her way, Nahlman saw the face of a puppy that had made a mess on the carpet.
Finally, she had won his soul back from Dale Berman.
Riker hunkered down
by the agents’ campfire. In the manner of a parent on a school night, he turned off their portable television set. Five pairs of very young eyes turned to him.
“I’m making a run to the airport.” The detective handed a slip of paper to the oldest agent, the only one who was sporting a day’s growth of beard. “That’s my cell. You got any trouble, call me right away.” “I can’t,” said the agent. “No cell-phone contact.” Riker smiled at the boy for a moment, not quite believing what he was hearing. “What? Are you nuts?”
“Dale Berman’s orders, sir. No incoming or outgoing calls.” Riker held out his hand, palm up. “Give me your cell phone.” The rookie agent, so accustomed to following orders without question, handed it over. The detective turned it on, then pressed the menu buttons and held the phone to his ear. After listening a moment, he said, “You’re stacking up voice mail from Assistant Director Harry Mars.” He returned the phone to the startled agent. “Does that make you nervous, kid? It should.” And now they were all turning on their phones. As he walked away from them, he heard the beeps of their incoming calls.