The Girl in the Moon

by Terry Goodkind

  “Can you enlarge the words, please?” Jack asked.

  “Sure,” the man said as he clicked keys and the image got bigger until they could all read what it said.

  I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON.

  Dvora twirled a lock of her curly black hair around a finger as she stared at the big monitor. “That’s pretty damn weird.”

  “It sure is,” Jack agreed. “But I don’t see how it has anything to do with either of the Constantine women and certainly not Cassiel. He doesn’t torture and kill men. Any idea who Carrie Stratton is?”

  “She was a nurse in Milford Falls,” the man who had put up the image said. “She was abducted and murdered. The writing on the dead guy’s back led authorities to her body. DNA analysis of the semen and material under her fingernails confirmed that he was indeed the man who had killed her.”

  “Damn strange involuntary confession,” Dvora said.

  Jack had to agree. “What do you have on the Constantine women?”

  “The mother is a longtime drug addict,” Dvora said as she scanned a series of police reports on her monitor. “Methamphetamine is her drug of choice. She has a long history of arrests. They all look to be drug related, nothing violent. Most of the time the charges were dropped for a variety of reasons. She does have a string of drug convictions, though. Looks like she always got off with time served, probation, or drug rehab. She appears to be a user, not a dealer. From the sequence of arrests, it’s obvious that rehab never worked.

  “A good many people have been arrested in raids at her residence on other charges. Drunk and disorderly, possession with intent to sell, possession of firearms by a felon, and some fights—a few with serious injuries.”

  “What about the daughter?” Jack asked as he leaned back in his chair, twirling a pen around his fingers as he listened.

  “Angela …” Dvora murmured as she went through several pages. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” She finally stopped on a page.

  “Well this is interesting.”

  Jack looked up. “What is it?”

  “She was recently hospitalized.”

  “For what?”

  Dvora leaned in as she read the report on her screen. “She was raped by four Hispanic undocumented aliens. They beat her nearly to death, then hanged her by her neck with a rope and left her to strangle to death. She managed to escape and get to a hospital. Looks like she was in bad shape. Cuts and abrasions, some damage to her spleen, things like that.”

  “How did she escape the hanging?” Ehud asked.

  “Doesn’t say. She identified the men and they were arrested but released.”

  “Released. Why?” Jack asked.

  “It just says that the charges were dropped by the assistant district attorney,” Dvora told him. “Doesn’t say why.”

  Jack tapped his pen on the counter. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Charges are often dropped for a variety of reasons,” Ehud said from behind Jack.

  “Maybe, but something about it doesn’t sound right. She was seriously injured, she identified the men, they were arrested. Seems pretty cut-and-dried. How do they not at least get tried? Do you have an address on her?”

  “Sally has an address in a trailer park, but Angela’s address is listed as a box at something called ‘Mike’s Mail Service.’ ”

  “That’s kind of odd.” Jack sat up and rested an elbow on the counter beside Dvora. “Let me see what her social media looks like. We should be able to get good information from that. Let’s see her Facebook page, first.”

  Dvora typed, looked at the screen, typed some more, clicked on a few places, looked some more.

  “Nothing.” Dvora shook her head. “She doesn’t have a Facebook page.”

  Jack was now fully focused. “What about other social media?”

  Dvora did brief searches, reporting after each one. “No Instagram account. No Twitter account. No Google Plus. No LinkedIn.” She typed and clicked some more. “She doesn’t have a YouTube account. Nothing on Pinterest. No Tumblr. She doesn’t use Reddit. No Snapchat. Nothing on Swarm or Flickr or Kik. No WhatsApp account. Nothing on Quora, Vine, or Periscope. She doesn’t visit Digg.”

  “Maybe she’s using something more obscure,” Jack said, “some smaller site.”

  Dvora looked over at him. “I’m using our proprietary scanning tools. If I can’t find her by using these tools, then there’s nothing to find.”

  “Maybe she uses another name online,” Ehud suggested.

  Dvora shook her head. “Our tools would have found a link to an alias or fake name. There is none. There are no photos of her online—dressed or nude. I can’t even find so much as an online review posted by her. She has zero footprint online.”

  The hair at the back of Jack’s neck was standing on end.

  This was a marker of an unusual type of person. The kind of person he tried very hard to find.

  If her relatives were killed by Cassiel, that strongly suggested that she had that kind of vision that got her relatives—both in Milford Falls and those back in Italy—killed, the same kind of vision that got Uziel killed. People who had that kind of vision tended not to be social creatures.

  Jack gestured at the screen. “Let me see her driver’s license.”

  Dvora pulled it up. Jack looked back at a young woman staring out at him.

  “Angela, Angela, Angela,” he murmured as he stared at the stunningly attractive young woman. “What do you see with those eyes of yours?”

  Dvora moved the photo to one of the big monitors on the wall ahead and then started looking for more information.

  “Tax records show that she’s employed as a bartender at a bar called Barry’s Place. She makes really good tips—and reports them, believe or not. She also has a courier business—Angela’s Messenger Service. It does well, too.”

  Dvora paused, clicked a few places, and then started scanning down through a page of listings. She swiped the cursor back and forth over one in particular to highlight it.

  “Remember that woman who was murdered in Milford Falls? Carrie Stratton? Well, the hospital where she worked uses Angela’s Messenger Service.”

  “It sounds like a small city, so that may not mean anything,” Ehud said. “And maybe the young lady doesn’t have a social profile because she works so much.”

  Jack was seeing too many connections for it all to mean nothing. “I think she’s one of those with the vision to recognize killers,” he said, half to himself.

  Ehud frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s what I do, Ehud. I’m very good at it.” He looked up. “I need to get a plane ticket to the US. I’m starting to get the feeling that time is of the essence.”

  Ehud seemed perplexed. “What makes you think all this?”

  “Connections are part of what I do, part of why you pay me. There are starting to be too many suspicious connections.

  “I need to be able to look at this Angela Constantine in person to tell for sure if she is able to see killers for who they are. I will recognize it in her eyes if she has the ability. But I also need to go there for bigger reasons.”

  “Like what?” Dvora asked.

  “We captured that supposedly Mexican suicide bomber because he failed to complete his mission. He only spoke Spanish, and at some point he came in contact with plutonium. Had he completed his mission we wouldn’t know either of those two things that don’t make any sense. Had he detonated that suicide vest, we would have assumed he was just another terrorist.

  “He was being used as a diversion so that an assassin—Cassiel—could kill Uziel. The thing that disturbs me the most about this man pretending to be Mexican is that he had plutonium-239 stuck in his boot. That links Cassiel to nuclear material. Now, Cassiel just happens to be right there at the scene of a massive terrorist attack at Oeste Mesa. He is on his way into the US. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “What does the Mexican connection have to do with anything?” Ehud ask
ed.

  “Muslims in America might be noticed. They stand out. Mexicans, though, are largely invisible in America.”

  “That’s true …”

  “I think there might be something bigger behind the terrorist attack in the US, and it involves plutonium-239—nuclear material that can be used for a bomb.” Jack stood. “I presume you’re going to brief American intelligence agencies on what we’ve learned? An attempted suicide bomber posing as a Mexican who had plutonium-239 on his shoes and the rest of it?”

  Ehud pinched his bottom lip as he thought about it. “I will talk to people higher up, but no, I don’t think we would wish to do that.”

  Jack was surprised. “Why not?”

  “Because the American intelligence agencies would leak all of this to the press like juicy gossip. That would send people to ground and make it all the more difficult to find out what’s really going on.”

  “Leaks are an unfortunate fact of life these days,” Jack admitted with a sigh.

  “It’s been getting worse. American intelligence agencies have gradually become more dedicated to a political agenda than a security agenda. They increasingly view spying on Americans citizens and politicians—including members of Congress and the Senate—as their mandate and a legitimate objective.”

  “Legitimate objective? Where did they get that idea?”

  “Political operatives have increasingly swelled the ranks of the agencies. Their attitudes and agendas have gradually infected the intel community. Leaking top secret information is a tool and a weapon they use with increasing frequency.

  “It helps the Deep State grow in power all the time. Just look at this latest leak about the Russians being responsible for the cyber attack. Congress is calling for heavy sanctions and some even want a declaration of war because of that leak—and the information is almost certainly wrong. That leak was crafted to further a political agenda, increase the budgets of the agencies, and thus increase their power. It has nothing to do with protecting America against terrorism.

  “It is becoming more and more dangerous for us to share certain information with agencies that increasingly view Israel as an enemy. These days many in the US intel community would not be upset if Israel were to be wiped off the map. They actually think that would solve the problem of terrorism.”

  “Do you really believe the situation with American intelligence is getting that bad?”

  Ehud arched an eyebrow. “Why are you no longer working with them to find people who can recognize killers—the way you now do for us? Because it is politically incorrect, that’s why,” Ehud said, answering his own question. “They care more about being politically correct than protecting lives.”

  “In that case,” Jack finally said, “I think I better get to the US in a hurry and see if I can fit some of these pieces together.” Jack pointed up at the big monitor showing Angela Constantine’s face. “And she is one of those pieces of the puzzle. I don’t know where she fits in, but I think she does.”

  Ehud frowned suspiciously. “I thought you wanted to take a break from this never-ending war.”

  Jack gave him a look. “The war seems to want me back.”

  Ehud nodded. “We will send you on a diplomatic jet.”

  Jack clapped the man on the shoulder. “Thanks, Ehud. I better go pack a bag. I’ll stay in touch.”

  He gestured down at Dvora. “Stay by your phone.”

  “Always. And Jack, please come back in one piece this time?”

  THIRTY-NINE

  As she turned down the long hill out of Milford Falls, Angela spotted the police cars in the distance at Barry’s Place. Seeing police cars at the bar was not entirely out of the ordinary. Guys would frequently get belligerent, typically over a woman, and cause trouble.

  It could be anything—a word, a look, or the wrong gesture. Sometimes women helped instigate it. Some women got off on men being jealous over them. With some booze, men’s inhibitions tended to evaporate and they would decide to settle scores.

  If it looked like it was going to come to blows, and especially if it did, Barry would push such fights outside into the parking lot. If he thought it was serious enough, he would call the police. Angela wondered what sort of jealous nonsense it was this time.

  As she got closer, Angela spotted an ambulance backed up to the door at the rear of the building. Because the ambulance was at the back door, she became more alarmed, worrying that maybe Barry had been hurt in a robbery. As hard as he worked all the time, it could even be that he had a heart attack or something.

  There was a small crowd standing around in addition to at least a half dozen police. Some of the police, their pads and pens out, were questioning people in the crowd. A second ring of people stood farther back, out of the way of the police. They appeared to be curious onlookers. It was now obvious to her that whatever it was, it was serious.

  Angela rolled quietly into the parking lot and parked away from the crowd and the police. She recognized some of the gathered people as locals who frequented the bar.

  As she sat in her truck watching the police talking to several women who worked in the bar, the ambulance pulled away, its emergency lights strobing the scene. It turned on its siren as it pulled out of the parking lot and headed up the hill toward the hospital.

  As the ambulance went up the hill, a white crime-scene van pulled into the parking lot and parked by the rear of the building. Several people with equipment emerged and went inside.

  Angela needed to find out what was going on, so she carefully pulled out her gun, then the suppressor, and hid them under the floor mat where it went under the seat. She hated having to do it, but she also pulled her knife out of the sheath in her boot and slid that under the passenger floor mat.

  All she needed was to have an overzealous cop—like that bitch from the hospital, Officer Denton—spot the weapons and arrest her. Getting caught carrying a concealed weapon was trouble enough, but having a suppressor in her possession would be much bigger trouble. That prick John Babington would love to prosecute her for that.

  Angela spotted Tiffany, one of the girls who served drinks, all by herself some distance back from the crowd watching the police. She was in high heels with ankle straps and a skirt so short it barely covered the bottoms of her ass cheeks. Her heels and knees were pressed together as she hugged her bare midriff. Most of her hair was piled up on top, with some strands hanging down strategically, along with lots of stray wisps going everywhere. Tiffany always said that it gave her that just-fucked look that guys liked, which made her better tips.

  When Angela quietly approached her, Tiffany turned to see who it was. It wasn’t cold out, but she was shivering as she cried. Tears dragged long streaks of black mascara down her face.

  “Tiffany—what the hell is going on?”

  Tiffany swallowed. “It’s Barry. I don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

  Angela put a comforting hand on Tiffany’s back. “What happened? Did he have a heart attack or something?”

  She didn’t want to ask if he’d been shot in a robbery for fear of making it be true.

  Tiffany took a tissue when Angela offered it. She pressed it under her eyes.

  “No. Someone beat the shit out of him.”

  “Is that what the police said?”

  “No. I’m the one who found him when I came in to work just a little while ago.”

  “Do the police know who did it?”

  Tiffany shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  Angela gave Tiffany a suspicious look. “Do you?”

  Tiffany stared off at the gaggle of police and onlookers. “Yeah. When I found Barry on the floor, I rushed to help him. His face looked like raw hamburger. That white T-shirt he always wears was soaked red with blood. It had holes burned in it and he had burns, like from a cigarette. He had a rag stuffed in his mouth. They’d been torturing him. I pulled the rag out so he could breathe.”

  “Was he conscious?”

  “Bare
ly.” Tiffany sniffed back a sob. “I asked him what happened. All he was able to say was ‘Those Mexicans,’ then he lost consciousness.”

  Angela felt goose bumps race across the bare flesh of her legs and arms. She knew without a doubt what Mexicans he was talking about.

  “Did you tell the police?”

  Tiffany huffed her contempt. “Fuck the police.”

  “Well … who called them?”

  “I did.”

  “Didn’t they ask your name?”

  Tiffany gestured toward the simple block building. The beer sign in the window glowed its perpetual invitation.

  “I didn’t use my cell phone. I called from the phone behind the bar. That’s where Barry was laying. They asked what was the emergency. I told them that someone robbed Barry’s Place Bar, and that Barry was hurt real bad. Before they could ask anything else, I hung up. A stayed with Barry until I heard the sirens and then I got out before they saw me.”

  Angela frowned. “Why didn’t you want to tell the police what you knew?”

  With a finger, Tiffany carefully wiped the lipstick from each corner of her mouth. It was a long moment before she answered.

  “I never told you about it before, but I was arrested not long ago.”

  “You? For what?”

  “Prostitution.”

  Tiffany dressed like a slut, but Angela had always thought that was just to get better tips.

  “I didn’t know.”

  Tiffany’s expression drew down into a scowl. “I don’t hook. All right? This off-duty cop—Officer Palinski, a real mean motherfucker—was in here one night. He wanted me to come out to the parking lot and give him a blow job. I didn’t know he was a cop. I told him to fuck off. He came back in his blues later that night and arrested me for solicitation. Took me to jail and had me booked—said I had solicited him. My mother had to come down and bail me out.” Tiffany shook her head in anger at the memory.