He checked over his shoulder as he dug the keys from his pocket. Seeing no one, he popped the trunk open. His cargo stirred in the sudden burst of light. He was hog-tied, hands and feet bound behind his back. Silver duct tape covered his mouth. The syringe and bottle of ketamine, an animal tranquilizer that Hannon had used to render him unconscious, were lying at his feet. Rollins was staring right up at him, still groggy, still wearing his black rubber wet suit. His eyes squinted painfully in the daylight. The smell of urine filled the air.
“You stink like hell,” he said with a snarl. “Keep it up, and you’ll have the hounds after us.” He opened the cardboard box, smiling deviously with his eyes. “This should throw them off the trail.”
He pitched the box like a bucket, and something furry flew out. Rollins squirmed and let out a muffled cry as one landed on his chest and the other scampered down his leg.
Hannon laughed to himself, looking down with 222
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disdain. “They’re just rodents. Harmless, little white lab rats.” His black eyes narrowed, showing utter contempt.
“Think of them as family, Curt.”
He slammed the trunk closed, then got behind the wheel and quickly drove away.
223
t
he winding mountain road reached a dead end at a thick stand of birch and bare elm trees. In summer the foliage blocked the view of the lake in the valley below, but in February the leaves were a soggy, decaying carpet on the forest floor. Sunset was less than an hour away, and the overcast sky was as dreary and gray as the rounded granite peaks of the Shenandoah Mountains bulging above the evergreens.
Frank Hannon steered left into the muddy entrance drive, following the signs to the Merry Moose Inn and Cottages. The Volvo rocked like a dune buggy as it splashed from puddle to pothole. The access road was nothing more than an extrawide footpath twisting through the forest. He chuckled to himself, imagining Rollins and his furry companions bouncing around in the trunk. At the clearing in front of the inn he killed the engine and stepped out of the car.
The inn was an old mountain home with a stone facade, high-pitched roof and screened-in porch. The 224
James Grippando
rushing sound of a nearby brook filled the chilly air. There wasn’t a car in sight, just a fishing boat on a trailer beneath a canvas tarp.
The screen door squeaked as Hannon stepped through onto the porch. He peered through the diamond-shaped window on the door, seeing nothing. He knocked once, then again, giving it a good pounding. Just as he’d hoped: closed for the winter.
He got back in the car and drove farther down the road, past the main inn toward one of the more secluded cottages closer to the stream. The road twisted and grew more bumpy. He stopped at the fourth cottage, which was surrounded by evergreens. Even his car would be hidden from the inn and other cottages.
It was a small, wood-frame cottage with shutters on the windows. The door was padlocked, but it had plenty of play. Hannon put his shoulder into it, and with two powerful shoves the lock ripped from the doorframe. He brushed the cobwebs aside and stepped inside. There was one main room with a rustic wood floor and an old wood-burning potbelly stove. In back was a separate kitchen area and bathroom. The bed frame on the other side of the room had no box spring or mattress. A wood table and chairs were stacked neatly in the corner for storage.
He flipped the switch, but the electricity was off.
He went back to the car and took a duffel bag from the floor in the backseat. From under the front seat he pulled a revolver. He checked the chamber, making sure he had six bullets. Then he went around the back and opened the trunk.
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A foul odor escaped, forcing him to step back. One of the rats squeaked as it scurried beneath the spare tire.
Rollins lay still, bound and gagged. He looked up pathetically, squinting at the sudden burst of daylight.
He whimpered through the tape over his mouth as Hannon pressed the barrel of the gun against his temple.
“Shut up,” said Hannon. He reached down with his free hand and untied the rope around his ankles. “Get out.”
Timidly, Rollins threw one leg over the back of the car, then the other, sliding out of the trunk. His legs wobbled, and he couldn’t seem to stand up straight. Hannon put the gun to the back of his head and gave a quick shove from behind, toward the cottage.
“Inside,” he ordered.
Rollins stumbled forward. Hannon followed right behind with the gun in one hand and the duffel bag over his shoulder. He shoved Rollins to the floor as they crossed the threshold. He fell against a vertical support beam in the middle of the room. He sat on the floor with his back against the post. Hannon tied him tightly to the post with a rope from the duffel bag. Then he pulled a kitchen chair from the stack of furniture in the corner and sat facing Rollins with his back to the wall. He leaned forward and in one quick motion ripped the duct tape from Rollins’s mouth.
Rollins grunted at the sound of whiskers ripping from his face, then stretched his mouth open like a man trying to yawn.
“Hungry?” asked Hannon. He took a pack of Fig 226
James Grippando
Newtons from his bag and shoved one in Rollins’s mouth.
The prisoner gobbled it up, so he fed him a few more.
They went through half the pack before Rollins finally spoke.
“What are you gonna do with me?” he said as he chewed his last mouthful.
He stuffed the rest of the Fig Newtons back in his bag and opened a bottle of Pepsi. “Thirsty?” he said.
Rollins tilted his head back as Hannon poured. Some of it spilled down his chin, but he chugged down most of it. He looked up warily at Hannon and swallowed hard.
“Can I use the bathroom?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d rather have you pissing in your pants than walking around the room. Think of it as a control thing.”
Their eyes locked, then Rollins looked away. “I want to know. What are you gonna do with me?”
He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms smugly, saying nothing.
Rollins licked a drop of Pepsi from his lip. “Don’t kill me, okay. Please don’t kill me.”
“Funny,” he said with a confident smirk. “In thirty seconds I could have you begging me to kill you.”
Rollins’s eye twitched, and he answered in a nervous, shaky voice. “You don’t want to do that, man. I’ve been thinking while I was in the trunk, you know. You and me. We could be partners in this thing. Split the money, you know, fifty-fifty.”
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“Partners?” he said with amusement.
“Yeah. I got a quarter million out of those suckers at the
Miami Tribune
already. We can keep this up forever.
You’re smart. You’ll never get caught.”
“That’s real interesting. The problem, though, is that two people have to trust each other to be partners. There has to be honesty, openness.”
“I could have turned you in a long time ago. I didn’t.
Why would I turn you in now? You can trust me, man.”
Hannon sighed and shook his head. “I can’t really trust you or anything you say. Only one thing can change that.”
“What’s that?”
He reached inside his bag, past the Fig Newtons and empty Pepsi bottle. Slowly, he pulled out a long shiny diving knife with a serrated edge.
“Pain,” he said, brandishing the knife before Rollins’s eyes. The steel blade flickered in the last remaining daylight. “Pain is an
amazing
truth serum.”
Rollins squirmed. “Come on, man. What you want to do this for? Really, you can trust me. I’ve always been your friend, always respected you. Even when we were in school I never even teased you, not like the other kids did.”
Hannon shot a quick, piercing glance. “Remember what they used to call me?”
“Sure. Kids can be cruel, man.”
“All because I grew thirteen inches in eleven months.
Fucking old man made me wear that back brace. Made me walk like a monster. Frank-Hannon-tein,” he said bitterly. “That was me.”
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“Look at you now. You look like a stud.”
“That’s not what you told Mike Posten,” he said sharply.
“Your profile said I was impotent.”
He smiled awkwardly. “Okay, I said that. But that’s the beauty of this scheme. I keep feeding them enough correct details about the murders so they keep on paying me, but I give them totally wrong information about
the murderer,
so you’ll never get caught. I been throwin’ ’em off the trail from the very beginning, when I called that yokel in Georgia and pretended like
I
was the killer. It’s like I said, man: We can keep this up forever.”
“Or until you rat on me.”
“I won’t.”
“You ratted on me before.”
“We were just kids. Nine years old. I learned my lesson after you…well, you know.”
Hannon’s eyes suddenly lit up. “That’s how you knew it was me, isn’t it. The threat. I told you I’d cut out your tongue.”
Rollins’s mouth curled into a clever smile. “I heard about the murders on TV—and, yeah, it rang a bell. So I checked up on you, found out you’d just gotten out of prison, right about the time these tongue murders started.
Tracked you down and started following you. That’s when I got the brainstorm. I figured I’d scope out your next, uh, target in advance—and sell the story to some news creep.”
“Posten certainly fills the bill,” Hannon said dryly.
Rollins recognized dangerous territory. He decided to steer past the remark. “I figured you’d kind of be tickled by what I was doing, actually. You know, seeing 229
THE INFORMANT
as how the whole thing added to the publicity the killings were getting.”
“Looking after my best interests, were you?” Hannon said. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t fool me. Once that well ran dry, you’d turn me in—for the big reward.”
“No. I was never going to rat on you.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because…” He swallowed hard, racking his brain for an answer. “Because there were lots of other times I didn’t rat on you, when I had the chance.”
“When?”
“Back in school. I was onto you, Frank. You may have got good grades, and maybe you even had your old lady fooled into thinking you wanted to grow up to be a vet, like her. But I knew it wasn’t a future career in medicine that made you wanna—you know, do those things. Like, remember in eighth grade, when somebody broke into the biology lab and cut off all those snakes’ tongues?
Principal never found out who did it. I knew it was you.
But I didn’t tell.”
Hannon ran his finger lightly along the sharp blade.
“Snakes,” he said with a bemused smile. “Did you know that if you cut out a snake’s tongue, it can’t smell a thing?
Even the most dangerous snakes get completely disoriented, can’t find their prey. A snake couldn’t hurt a flea without its tongue.” His eyes turned cold as he looked right at him. “Kind of like a snitch.”
“Listen to me, man,”—Rollins’s voice shook—“I’m not a snitch. I hate snitches. I went to fucking jail as a cop for selling the names of government informants to 230
James Grippando
the cocaine cowboys. I was never gonna turn you in. This is about money, pure and simple. It’s business, that’s all.”
Hannon scooted to the edge of the chair and leaned forward, bringing the tip of the knife to Rollins’s chin.
He turned the blade slowly, drawing tiny drops of blood as it nicked a quivering lower lip.
“Please,” Rollins whimpered.
“Business, huh,” he said in a low, steady voice. “If that’s all it is, I’d say you’re about outta business—permanently.
Unless you tell me exactly where that money is.”
231
i
t took several hours for the Fairfax County Sheriff to request assistance from the FBI, but by midafternoon Victoria finally got her orders. She drove right from her office in Quantico to the busy crime scene in McLean.
Overcast skies darkened the brown winter landscape in the day’s waning moments. Two county sheriff cars were parked across the street from the redbrick house with the brown shingle roof. A deputy with a flashlight was directing traffic, both cars and pedestrians, keeping the rubber-neckers moving along. A van marked FAIRFAX COUNTY
CORONER’S OFFICE was blocking the driveway. Victoria parked her Oldsmobile at the curb, just on the other side of the bright fluorescent police tape that marked off the front lawn. She flashed her credentials to the deputy on the street. He directed her to the sheriff, who was standing by the coroner’s van. Victoria buttoned her coat and approached him directly, but cordially.
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“Victoria Santos,” she said, extending her hand. “FBI.”
“Sheriff Woodson,” he said brusquely, “busy as hell.”
The baritone voice matched his heavyset frame. He had a clean-shaven, clean-cut look, right down to his polished shoes, pressed pants. Victoria guessed he was ex-military, probably a Vietnam vet. He turned away, returning his focus to the crime scene diagram on his clipboard.
She moved closer, glancing over his shoulder. “You’ve marked off a fairly large crime scene for a homicide that took place inside the house. Was the victim abducted outside and brought inside?”
His nose stayed in his clipboard. “Maybe.”
She smiled to herself.
Another local sheriff who isn’t
about to be overrun by the FBI.
“I hear there may be a witness,” she said.
He flipped the page and scribbled in the margin.
“Maybe. The victim was Pamela Barnes, a thirty-three-year-old divorced mother who lived with her eleven-year-old-son, Alex. The boy wasn’t hurt. The killer locked him in the closet, drugged him.”
“What kind of drug?”
“Blood test showed ketamine. Special K is what they call it on the street.”
“I know. It’s an animal tranquilizer. I’m beginning to think our killer may have some veterinary training, or at least some connection with animals. That’s the second time we’ve seen that same drug.”