Gibb signaled for him to hide behind the door. Gibb stepped into the dining alcove, which kept him partially hidden while affording him a view of the front door. Both men's eyes were on the doorknob as Ricki Sue inserted her key.
"Hey, Red!"
The shout came from the street.
At this unexpected turn, Matt looked to Gibb for further instruction. Gibb was peeping between the slats of the blinds, trying to see who had distracted Ricki Sue.
"Hey, what?" She left her key in the lock and turned from the door to see who had shouted at her.
"We're looking for Sunset Street. Do you know where it's at?"
"Maybe I do, and maybe I don't," she answered saucily.
"Care to come over here and discuss it with us?"
Gibb's features turned rigid with outrage. He jabbed the air with his index finger, indicating that Matt should look outside. An old Camaro was parked at the curb. Inside it were Henry and Luther Crook.
"What are they doing here?" Gibb whispered.
Ricki Sue had sauntered over to the car and was leaning into the driver's window to give directions to Sunset Street.
She was flirting, and the twins were obviously dazzled by her abundant figure.
"They must be doing the same thing we are," Gibb said after a moment. "They're trying to locate Kendall because of Billy Joe. They blame her for his unfortunate accident." He snickered.
"They want vengeance, so they've got to find her before the authorities do." He looked at Matt. "The same as us, son.
Except they don't have the Higher Power on their side like we do. It was probably them who walked into that FBI trap at her grandmother's house. The newspapers have speculated that it was us. As though we'd be that stupid."
Matt listened, continually nodding in agreement.
Ricki Sue was gesturing broadly, telling the twins how to reach their destination.
Gibb moved behind Matt and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Let's go. Obviously the Lord changed his mind. The time isn't right. When it is, he'll let us know. Bring the box."
Gibb headed for the bedroom and the back window through which they had let themselves in. Wordlessly, Matt followed.
Chapter 33
The Sheridan policeman stepped into Pepperdyne's temporary office. "somebody wants to speak to you, sir. She refused to talk to anyone else. Line three."
"She"? Burnwood? With a surge of hope, Pepperdyne snatched up the telephone receiver and depressed the blinking button. "Pepperdyne speaking."
"You son of a bitch
"Pardon?"
"You heard me. you're a scum-sucking son of a bitch! And that's just for starters When I run out of the all the dirty names I know in English, I'm going to start on foreign languages until you get the general idea of how loathsome I think you are."
Pepperdyne sighed. "I get the general idea, His. Robb.
Want to tell me what prompted this obscene call?"
"You know why I'm calling, you lowlife prick!"
Her shout was so loud that other agents in the room could hear her through the receiver. They stopped what they were doing and looked at Pepperdyne. Most of them probably wished they had Ricki Sue Robb's nerve.
"Those lousy bastards tore up my house," she yelled.
"What lousy bastards?"
" Your lousy bastards. They pawed through my drawers. And I mean that literally. My undies are scattered all over the floor"
"Wait a minute." Pepperdyne sprang forward in the reclining chair.
"Your house has been ransacked?"
"No shit, Sherlock."
"And you think my men did it?"
"Don't play dumb with me. They"
"I'm on my way." He hung up on her. Barking orders for two of his men to come with him, he yanked his suit jacket from the coat tree and jogged to the nearest exit.
Five minutes later, he was facing Ricki Sue at her front door. She was trembling with indignation so intense that her hair sculpture was beginning to crack.
"The FBI needs to give you a crash course in manners, Special Agent Pepperdyne. First you send a couple of perverts over here to trash my place, then you hang up on me. I'm not paying another red cent in taxes if this is the best the fucking federal"
"My 'perverts' didn't trash your place." He moved her aside, went in, and began firing questions. "Is this exactly the way you found it? What time did you discover the break-in? Have you noticed anything missing? Have you touched anything?"
While the two other agents milled around, assessing the extent of the damage without disturbing anything that might later become evidence, Ricki Sue took root in the middle of her living room, her fists planted solidly on her wide hips.
"Are you jerking me around, Pepperdyne?"
"No," he replied. "For an authorized search, you would have been served a warrant. We're playing strictly by the book on this one, just in case a judge with more compassion than brains, or ethics, chooses to dismiss the case later on a technicality.
Anyway, I assure you that whoever did this isn't from my office, the U.S. Marshal's office, or the Sheridan police."
"Then who the hell was it?"
"I don't know. But I intend to find out," he added tersely.
"Is anything missing?"
"I haven't noticed anything, but I haven't really looked. I came in, saw the mess, and was so angry I didn't take inventory before calling you."
"Check around."
She did as he asked while his men got on the phone and requested that a crime lab unit be dispatched immediately.
Ricki Sue stood by and watched helplessly as her house was pillaged for the second time that day, this time by professionals looking for clues as to who might have initially vandalized it.
"Look, this isn't an ordinary Beef," Pepperdyne said when her vocal protests turned vituperative. "We're working on a federal case, and because of your close personal relationship with Mrs. Burnwood, you've become an important element in this case."
"This was probably a random burglary and had nothing to do with that."
"You don't believe that any more than I do," he said, guessing that her angry outbursts were bluffs to hide her increasing apprehension. Her complaints had lost some of their previous bluster, which was good. If he couldn't bully her into helping them locate her friend, maybe fear would motivate her to reveal a few secrets.
"Whoever did this wasn't out to steal," he explained. "He didn't take the normal stuff, TVs, cameras, stereos. He was looking for something altogether different."
"Like what?"
"Like a clue into Mrs. Burnwood's whereabouts."
"Then they're S.O.L.shit out of luck."
Pepperdyne ignored the vulgarity as he picked up on some thing else.
"I'm betting that one man didn't do all this.
Subconsciously, so are you. Every reference you've made to the burglars has been plural."
"Don't get all excited, Pepperdyne. I only said what popped into my head."
"It popped into your head for a reason, Ricki Sue. You have someone in mind, don't you? Just as I do."'
Suddenly nervous, she wet her lips. "You mean, maybe it was Matt Burnwood and his father?"
"It's a possibility."
"Oh, shit!" She groaned. "I want nothing to do with those goons."
"When I arrived, you referred to the burglars as 'perverts."
Why?" Pepperdyne asked. "Beyond the obvious. They emptied your lingerie d rawers, but that's common for thieves looking for treasure troves."
"It wasn't that." She took his arm and bragged him across the living room to the coffee table. "Look at these magazines."
A naked, muscle-bound hunk smiled enticingly at Pepper dyne from the centerfold of a Playgirl. "Quite a schlong. So what?"
"Quite a schlong is right. So why would I grind my heel against it and ruin it?"
In the center of the photo, the paper was; pleated, the folds radiating from a central point in a whorl. It did appear that someone had ground his heel on it. "Could Have been unintentional."
Ricki Sue shook her collapsing monument of hair. "I don't think so, because there's another one over here. This really pisses me off, too. I paid fifty bucks for this book. It was the one souvenir I brought back from San' Francisco when I vacationed there two summers ago."
She directed him around the sofa. Books and videos had been swept from the shelves and left where they'd fallen.
Pepperdyne knelt to take a closer look at The book to which she referred. The volume of erotica was opened to a full page color photograph of a couple engaged in a sexual act. Across the photograph were scuff marks, as though someone had cleaned his shoes on it.
"Not exactly the missionary position," Pepperdyne re marked.
"That's why this was the ultimate turn-on picture in the whole book. Jack-be-nimble, the man of my dreams. This pic alone was worth the fifty bucks."
"I'll buy you another copy," Pepperdyne said as he came to his feet. "I'll buy you a whole goddamn library of dirty books if you'll tell me where Mrs. Burnwood is."
"You don't listen very good, do you? Read my lips, asshole.
I don't know." She spread her arms wide to encompass the disarray inside the house. "Whoever came here and trashed my place searching for a 'clue' is barking up the same wrong tree as you."
"Sir, it was them all right. The prints match."
Pepperdyne thanked the officer who had brought him the report as soon as it was available, then he spun around and addressed the police captain.
"You heard him. Gibb and Matt Burnwood vandalized Miss. Robb's house this afternoon. They are in this town. Call in every man on your force. My men are at your disposal, and more are on the way. I want these bastards found. Tonight.
Now."
The policeman charged off to do Pepperdyne's bidding, but the FBI man called him back for one final word: "They're mean sons of bitches. Tell your men not to be deceived by their good looks and pleasant mannerisms. They're fanatics, believing that they're ordained to carry out a godly mission. They'll kill anyone who stands in their way. Tell your officers to proceed with extreme caution if they sight them."
"Yes, sir."
Pepperdyne flopped back in the desk chair and rubbed his tired eyes with the heels of his palms. Surrendering to his fatigue was a luxury he couldn't afford. Since John had been reported missing, he'd only napped now and then, catching a few minutes of sleep whenever he could. He wouldn't sleep through a whole night until his friend and Mrs. Burnwood were found and Matt and Gibb Burnwood were either dead or behind bars under armed guard.
What he had told that redheaded virago had been a personal confession he did feel responsible for getting John into this mess.
It had begun as a joke, albeit a rather cruel one. He had thought it would be therapeutic for John. Spending time with Mrs. Burnwood's baby might undo the damage done to his psyche in New Mexico.
This had been Pepperdyne's thinking when he entrusted them into John's care. Never in his wildest imagination had he thought his friend would wind up a key player in one of the most bizarre crimes of the decade.
The more the Bureau uncovered on the Brotherhood, the more Pepperdyne feared for John and Mrs. Burnwood. Ritualistic executions and disfigurements, chants and secret pass words, enough torture and bloodshed to make the Marquis de Sade seem an amateur these were the Brotherhood's stock in-trade.
Dejectedly, Pepperdyne rose to his feet and stretched his aching lower back. He walked to the window and gazed out over the town of Sheridan. Darkness had fallen. Nighttime would provide the Burnwoods more places to hide and more opportunities to avoid recapture. They were somewhere out there. But where?
Also somewhere out there were Mrs. Burnwood and his friend, John McGrath. No one, not even someone as clever as Mrs. Burnwood, could disappear completely. Somebody had noticed them. They were somewhere.
"But where, dammit?" Pepperdyne said out loud.
He didn't even know where to start looking for them.
The only thing Special Agent Jim Pepperdyne knew with absolute certainty was that if Matt Burnwood found his former wife before the authorities did, she wouldn't have to worry about being prosecuted for her crimes.
She would be dead.
Chapter 34
". . . and the Woman died before her case was brought to trial. She died from AIDS, without dignity and in pain. Yet all she cared about was saying goodbye to her children. A request that was denied _ "
Kendall was recounting for John the story she had told Matt and Gibb in that seemed like another lifetime. It had been another lifetime, far reproved from this small bedroom in her grand mother's farm in southeastern Tennessee.
"Every time I lose a case, I take it personally. It's as though I've let her dow again."
"So that's when you lose one of the toughest jobs available in your profession."
"I suppose."
"It was certainly an impelling incident, but I think there's more. I think you were achievement oriented long before you became a lawyer and got involved with this AIDS patient's case."
She raised her head from his shoulder and looked into his face. "Why do you want to talk about my personal history?
Is it important?" '
"I know nothing about you except what's happened since I regained consciousness. Yes, it's important to me."
Sighing, she returned her head to his shoulder. Actually, she wasn't as disinclined to talk as she pretended. His quiet manner inspired personal confessions, and she wanted him to remember her. Afterward.