All the Devils

by Barry Eisler

  Little used his laptop in the air to query ViCAP again, this time with the proper inputs. But he found no entries for rapes with a signature song, and the number of rapes without the song was far too large to associate with Boomer and Snake.

  Fortunately, there was another way. Boomer and Snake had disappeared girls all over the country. But those crimes had all been associated with stateside military training and deployments. As far as Livia could tell, the first time they’d raped together after Snake was released from Leavenworth, and while Boomer was a congressman, had been Hannah Cuero in Campo. Campo, which was barely thirty miles from Boomer’s home in Alpine. It was only a hunch and certainly a long shot, but Livia and Little had drawn on a map a circle with a fifty-mile radius that had Alpine at its center, and had then begun calling every local police department within the circle. As far west as San Diego. As far north as Carlsbad and Escondido. All the tiny towns along the Mexican border. Anything about a teenaged girl, probably black, brown, or Native American, abducted and with a report about her rapists making her listen to a certain song.

  Again and again, they got nothing. It was maddening: there was no time for in-depth conversations about who am I talking to, how long have you been on the force, who would be most familiar with the relevant records. Every negative might have been false. They had to just ask their questions as carefully as they could, ask if there was anyone else there who might have relevant case knowledge, and move on.

  They landed. Rented a Jeep—the rental-car place seemed to specialize in four-wheel-drive vehicles. Stopped to buy ammunition at a gun shop, because after Kanab they were both getting low. Parked themselves at a place called Vintage Coffee House near Coachella and kept at it. Nothing. Nothing again. Nothing.

  Livia was close to despair when they finally got a hit: an elder with the Mesa Grande tribal government named Gray Eagle Sanchez. Eight years earlier, Sanchez explained, a girl named Eva was abducted, though she never saw by whom. She’d been hooded. Driven an hour, maybe two. Raped repeatedly. She thought by white men, from their voices.

  And the whole time, the men had played a song.

  “What song?” Livia asked, gripping the phone hard. “Did Eva recognize it?”

  “Yes. It was a famous song. ‘Good Times Roll.’”

  Livia nodded at Little fiercely. She said, “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything Eva remembered, anything you think could help?”

  “Yes. The hood they put her in. It stank of rotten eggs.”

  “Rotten eggs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  “No. Maybe they had used it for garbage. Maybe to worsen her ordeal. Who can say why men do such evil things?”

  “May I ask, sir, how you know all this?”

  There was a pause. Then, “Eva is my daughter.”

  Livia needed a pause of her own. She said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Eva can’t hear that song anymore, or songs like it. Or endure strong smells. There are a lot of things she can’t do now.”

  “I know,” Livia said, her voice not much more than a whisper.

  “Are you going to catch these men?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “I wish you could bring them to me.”

  She looked at Little. “I don’t think I’ll have to.”

  A pause. “Will you tell me, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise.”

  She thought of Hope Jordan’s sister, Grace, who had asked the same thing. Gray Eagle Sanchez deserved the same response. So did Eva.

  “I swear,” she said.

  They drew another circle on the map, this one with its center at Mesa Grande. And because the surrounding area was so sparsely populated, they made the circle a hundred miles instead of just fifty.

  More negatives. And more. Outside, it had long since grown dark. Boomer is still at his fundraiser, Livia thought. And Snake couldn’t have made it yet. There’s time. There’s still time.

  They got another hit: Palm Desert, just a twenty-minute drive west from where they were sitting. Seven years earlier. Another girl, Linda Haywood, this one black. The song again. And again the garbage-reeking hood.

  They looked at the map. They were likely missing far more data than they had gathered. The results could easily be skewed. Still, the locus seemed to be east of Alpine. But what did it mean?

  “Joshua Tree?” she said, thinking aloud. “The San Bernardino National Forest? What’s out here that makes the area good hunting grounds? Are they just being careful not to make Alpine the center of the circle?”

  Even as she said it, it didn’t feel right. There was something else. But what?

  Little was looking at the map intently. “The Salton Sea,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “The drone man. The body I had to get rid of in Seattle. I looked for a reservoir. A place to sink it. Faster, easier, and safer than digging a hole. Maybe . . . if something goes wrong, and they have to go with their Plan B, they have the water right there. And . . . wait a minute.”

  He worked the keyboard of his laptop for a moment. “I remember reading something about it. It’s not really a sea, it’s a lake. The largest in California, I think. Caused a long time ago by a flood or something. And evaporating, dying, ever since. So . . .”

  He stared for a long moment at his screen, nodding. Then spun it around so Livia could see it.

  He had Googled Salton Sea smell. There were over eighty thousand hits. All about hydrogen sulfide.

  Livia looked at Little. “Rotten eggs,” she said.

  He nodded. “The kind of smell a victim would notice. And remember.”

  Livia’s heart was pounding. “They like taking them there. And why not? Reeking like that, it’s probably deserted. If something goes wrong, they dispose of the girl in the water. But if nothing goes wrong . . .”

  “Then the hood. That’s all the victim smells, from the moment they put it on her.”

  They brought up a Wikipedia entry, and then news articles and images. The place was all decaying structures and toxic dust. Weird algae blooms and avian die-offs. Beaches made of the pulverized skeletons of millions of long-dead fish.

  Little blew out a long breath as though trying to calm his own excitement. He looked at Livia. “The song is a signature,” he said. “The hood is an MO. Because they can’t risk the girl identifying the place by its smell.”

  “You’re partly right. The hood is an MO, but also an artifact of another signature.”

  Little nodded, his expression grimly determined. “That’s right. That’s a better way to put it. Because Boomer and Snake like the Salton Sea. That hellscape is their home.”

  39

  Livia called Kanezaki. She told him the transmitter had been a bust. But that there was another breakthrough, if he could help her just one more time.

  “How?” he said, his tone decidedly neutral.

  “That program you have. The one you used to help me catch the park rapist. Guardian Angel.”

  “Livia, you’re not even supposed to know about that program.” He paused and added, “Assuming it even exists.”

  “I don’t need much,” she said. “I might not even need anything at all. I’m pretty sure I know where Boomer is going to meet his partner, Snake. The man who abducted Sherrie Dobbs. But I don’t know when. And I don’t know exactly where.”

  “You’re asking me to track the cellphone of a sitting US congressman?”

  “No. All I’m asking is that you locate a burner. It’s a burner, who can say who it belongs to?”

  There was a pause, and she thought he might be smiling. She hoped so.

  “Tell me more,” he said.

  She briefed him. When she was done, she added, “I can give you the dates and places where Eva Sanchez and Linda Haywood were abducted. I’m pretty sure they were then taken to the Salton Sea. If you can access cellphone-company records, can’t you pick out whatever p
hones took those routes on those dates and at those times? Especially because the phones in question will almost certainly have been activated not long before, and will almost certainly not have been used to call any other phone but each other.”

  “In theory, yes, I have the access. But do you really think men like Boomer and Snake are going to use the same burner twice?”

  “I doubt it. But if they used burners for the other crimes, it’s a safe bet they’re using them now. Snake wouldn’t have turned on a phone in Utah. But he might have turned it on briefly somewhere on the way to the Salton Sea. If he did, whatever number he called is going to be Boomer’s burner. But even if Snake hasn’t called yet this time, if they used burners to coordinate before, they’ll use them again.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Tom, what the fuck do you think I do for a living? Do you know how to recruit an asset? Well, I know the freaks. Better than anyone would ever want to. And I’m telling you, when these guys find something that works, they just keep doing it. Okay?”

  There was a long pause. He said, “I’ll call you back.”

  Little had heard only her side of the conversation, so she filled him in on the rest. Then they waited, studying maps and images of the Salton Sea, trying to figure out where specifically Boomer and Snake might meet. Probably the northwest side, because it was closer to Boomer. But if they were wrong, they were looking at a circumference of about a hundred miles. They might still find Sherrie Dobbs, even without Kanezaki to help pinpoint the timing and location. But doing so would take an uncomfortable amount of luck.

  Between the attempted drone attack and Kane’s men in Kanab, Livia had been afraid to turn on her cellphone, so she couldn’t know for sure—but she guessed by now there must be dozens of calls and texts waiting for her. The Kanab police would have gotten in touch with SPD and informed them that one of their detectives had been in an officer-involved and had then more or less fled the scene. Lieutenant Strangeland would be flipping out, and probably Chief Best was assembling a firing squad, figurative or literal. Livia didn’t want to know the specifics. All she wanted was to save Sherrie Dobbs. But the thought of Donna twisting in the wind was too much. She called her from the satellite phone.

  Strangeland picked up instantly. “Hello?”

  Her voice was worried. The sat-phone number was blocked, but she must have been hoping it was Livia.

  “LT. It’s me.”

  “Livia. Jesus God almighty, are you all right?”

  If only Strangeland had berated her. But the woman was primarily concerned about her welfare. Livia had to swallow before saying, “I’m okay. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

  “Where are you? What are you doing? SPD got a call from the police in Kanab, Utah. Are you with Little? Is what they’re saying true?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Honey, this is bad. Chief Best is out-of-her-mind pissed. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard phrases like fugitive and rogue cop and Office of Police Accountability today. And that’s not the half of it.”

  Livia looked at the smiling customers at the register, ordering their vanilla-bean lattes and almond roka mochas. She felt the tears coming and this time didn’t try to stop them.

  “I’m sorry, Donna. You’ve been so good to me, and I don’t want to create a problem for you. But if the Kanab cops told you about Sherrie Dobbs—”

  “They did.”

  “Well, I’ve got some leads, and . . .” She stopped, unable to explain, maybe not even to herself. “I just have to try. I know Best is going to crucify me. I don’t care about that. I just don’t want her to crucify you.”

  “Don’t you worry about me. What are these leads? Where are you?”

  “LT, the man who abducted Sherrie Dobbs, and the man he’s taking her to . . . if you go up against them, you’re going to wind up as fucked as I am.”

  “You let me worry about that. Now you tell me what’s going on.”

  Livia thought for a moment. Little had said they would get no help from HSI or the FBI. But what about . . .

  “LT, I know where they’re taking Sherrie Dobbs. At least to within a hundred miles. And I should know the time, too—could be in as little as two hours from now. But if the information I’m hoping for doesn’t get more precise, Little and I, just the two of us . . . we might not be able to cover the ground that needs to be covered. We can’t get help from the feds. But what about the California Highway Patrol? I’ll tell you, I could really use a SWAT team.”

  “You’re in California?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. Strangeland said, “I could try making some calls. But no one’s going to send out a California SWAT team on the say-so of an SPD lieutenant. At a minimum, someone’s going to insist on talking to the chief. And at this point, you get her in the mix, that SWAT team is probably coming for you.”

  “Okay,” Livia said, not really surprised. Suddenly she felt strangely calm. Even clear. “It’s okay. Little and I will do it ourselves.”

  “Do what? Livia, talk to me.”

  “I can’t now. We don’t have much time. Look, I’ll send you an email, okay? To your personal account, not through the department. So you’ll at least know what this was all about.”

  “Honey, you’re scaring me now. I want you to tell me, right fucking now, what the fuck this is about so I can help you. Do you understand me?”

  “I can’t, LT. You can’t help me now. And I can only hurt you. Which I never wanted to do. You’ve always had my back, and it’s meant a lot to me. I’m sorry I turned out to be such a shitty friend in return.”

  “Livia—”

  “I’ll send you the email.”

  She clicked off, feeling strangely numb. It didn’t mean the feelings weren’t there. It just meant she was anesthetized. She knew that. Just like she knew that later, the anesthesia would wear off.

  If there was a later.

  She briefed Little on why they wouldn’t be getting any help, then composed the email to Strangeland. She set it up so that it would send automatically the following day. Were the lieutenant to receive it now, in her current state, there was no telling what she might do, and Livia couldn’t risk Chief Best getting involved. As soon as the email was taken care of, Livia felt calmer. Another just in case.

  Kanezaki called back. “Okay,” he said. “I concede. You do know the freaks.”

  And the anesthesia was suddenly receding, forced back by excitement. “Tell me.”

  “Both the abductions you mentioned were associated with burners. Two for each abduction, the units purchased shortly before the abductions and shut off and presumably destroyed immediately after. Each used only several times, and only to call the other.”

  She nodded at Little. Her heart was pounding. “What about now?”

  “You were right about that, too. Three hours ago, a unit was switched on in the Coconino National Forest. I’m guessing there’s not much signal in there, but it’s on one of the routes from Kanab, and Snake must have found a spot that gave him a few bars.”

  She relayed the information to Little, who started working his laptop. She said to Kanezaki, “Has it been turned on again?”

  “No. But the unit it was used to call is on.”

  “That’s Boomer. He must be waiting for another update. Where is he?”

  “We don’t know that it’s Boomer’s. Remember, I’m just tracking a burner.”

  Little said, “Coconino National Forest three hours ago . . . I’d estimate ETA at two hours from now.”

  Livia nodded and said to Kanezaki, “Right, right. Where is the second burner?”

  “The Avalon Hotel in Palm Springs.” Kanezaki paused, then added, “It seems Boomer is holding a fundraiser there tonight.”

  “What a coincidence.”

  Livia repeated the information to Little, then said to Kanezaki, “Can you tell us when the Avalon burner is moving? Little and I have been learning everything we c
an about the terrain around the Salton Sea. Our guess is that the meeting will be on the northwest shore, because it’s closer—less than an hour from the Avalon. Maybe on Salton Sea Beach. But it could be on the northeast shore—maybe Bombay Beach. That much ground we might be able to cover. But if it’s somewhere else, we’re talking about a hundred miles’ worth of beach, and as much as we’ve narrowed things down, we’re unlikely to have narrowed them down enough.”

  “If it gets left on,” Kanezaki said, “I can tell you when the Avalon burner is moving. But from what I know, a lot of what surrounds the Salton Sea is wasteland. More iguanas than people. When it comes to cellular service, I’m guessing there are going to be a lot of dark patches. Your sat phone will work fine, so I should be able to reach you. But whatever burner I’m tracking—again, assuming it gets left on at all—is probably going to go dark.”

  “Good point. Still, the closer you can get us, the better. Judging from where he used his burner to make the call, we estimate Snake is a good two hours away now, probably more. Little and I are going to be in a Jeep near the town of Mecca. That’s just northwest of the Salton Sea, and it’s where Boomer—sorry, the guy coming from the Avalon—will have to break due south on Route 86 if they’re meeting on the west shore, or southeast on Route 111 if they’re meeting on the east shore. We’ll follow from a distance for as long as you have a signal. Okay?”

  Kanezaki sighed. “What if Boomer turns off the burner before he leaves the hotel? Or somewhere on the way?”

  Livia had already thought of that. Well, at least they’d dropped the dumb word games. “Then it’s going to be a long shot,” she said. “Little and I will try to pick him up on whatever route is our best guess at that point, and follow him. And Sherrie Dobbs will probably die horribly.”

  There was a long pause. Kanezaki said, “It seems I’m not the only one around here who knows something about recruiting an asset.”