The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen

by Steven James

  He waited for the nurse to exit his room, then rolled into the bathroom, pulled out the cell phone, went online, accessed JWICS, and through the Trojan horses he’d placed there while still in the employ of the NSA, began to transfer the data that his algorithm would be needing later in the day, once Cassandra and her team had entered the base.

  Valkyrie thought about the ELF station, the payment, the deadline.

  Everything would tear apart at the seams if anyone found out about the involvement of Abdul Razzaq Muhammad.

  Especially if that person were Alexei Chekov.

  Or Special Agent Patrick Bowers.

  Today it was vitally important for Valkyrie to remain undeterred.

  Focused.

  Careful.

  Tonight everything would come together. Alexei would be out of the picture and the money would be transferred to the account that only two people in the world had access to.

  Tessa stared at the ceiling, then glanced at the clock beside her bed.

  Already after 11:00. The last time she’d checked, it was just before 6:00 a.m., so somehow she’d slept for over five hours, amazing, since she hadn’t even had any pills at all last night.

  She rubbed her eyes and heard Sean in the kitchen. Smelled sausage frying.

  What is the deal up here? Do they eat anything other than meat?

  She threw on some clothes and carefully avoided the living room and the dead deer and fish on her way to the kitchen to grab some fruit and toast.

  “Morning,” Sean said as she stepped into the room.

  “Morning.”

  He slid the frying pan from the stove and dumped a stack of sausages onto a plate. “Made you some breakfast—well, brunch.”

  Oh man.

  “Um, I was just gonna grab some toast or maybe a banana.”

  “I make a mean plate of venison sausage.”

  Tell him, or he’s gonna keep trying to feed you meat.

  “Actually, the thing is, I don’t really eat meat or anything.”

  He hesitated. “You don’t eat meat?”

  “No. Or eat eggs or cheese. Or drink milk. I’m a vegan.”

  “A vegan.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll grab something on my own.”

  “No.” He seemed to be repressing his true feelings about her admission. “I’ll get you something.” He opened the fridge. “I think we’ve got some apples in here. And maybe . . .” He paused. “Looks like some leftover spaghetti. I can take out the meatballs.”

  Oh, yuck.

  The meat sauce’ll still be—

  Tessa felt bad that Sean had cooked brunch for her and she had to pass on it—even though it was something she’d never have been able to stomach. “Sure, okay.” She was forcing herself to say it. “That’ll be good.”

  As she waited for him to scavenge her some other food, she turned toward the window and stared at the wind ravaging the nearby woodshed and the field bordering the house.

  It didn’t take Natasha, Jake, Lien-hua, and I long to search all the rooms of the Moonbeam Motel, but we found nothing suspicious. No sign of Alexei or Kayla Tatum or any other women in distress.

  When we reconvened outside the front doors, Lien-hua said, somewhat irritated, “Pat, you still haven’t told us why you thought Chekov might be here. Does it have to do with the call you got at the end of the meeting?”

  Alexei’s words flashed in my mind: Don’t tell your team we’ve spoken. I’ll know if you do.

  If Kayla’s life really was in danger, I couldn’t take the chance of sharing too much information with my friends.

  “Nothing’s as effective as hiding in plain sight,” I said vaguely.

  They all waited for me to go on.

  “Who was on the phone?” Lien-hua asked.

  “Listen.” I lowered my voice. “Something’s going down, and I need to play this close to the chest. That’s all I can say right now.”

  “If you know something, don’t keep it from us,” Jake challenged me. “We’re a team here and we’ve got a job to do.”

  Think this through, Pat. Be careful.

  “We can’t talk here,” I said. “Grab your things, meet in my room in ten minutes.”

  It wasn’t a lot of time, but at least it gave me a small window of opportunity to try to think of something honest to tell them that wouldn’t end up endangering Kayla’s life.

  I turned to the thing I knew best, geospatial analysis.

  51

  As Tessa waited for Sean to heat up the spaghetti, she walked into the living room to get away from the sausage smell.

  Last night all she’d really noticed were the deer and muskie, but now she took in the room. A quilt lay on the back of the couch, and paintings of loons and sunsets over northern lakes hung on the walls. A Brett Favre–signed football sat in a glass case near the window, from back in the day when he was still a Packer, before he retired, unretired, and the Packers fans turned rabidly against him.

  Sean didn’t have any photos of himself, just of his family: his parents, his son in Phoenix, Amber, Patrick, and two pictures of their younger sister who’d died when Patrick was eight. A staph infection that went systemic took Emily’s life when she was only five. Over the last couple years, Tessa had noticed that talking about Emily’s death was hard for Patrick, so she almost never brought it up.

  One painting near the window particularly caught her attention. It showed a rippling lake with a sailboat leaning elegantly into the wind. The horizon was marked with a string of golden clouds hiding a twilight sun.

  The picture invited her in, made it feel like she was a part of it, as if she were watching from a small island as the sailor rode the waves that reflected the dusky sky.

  She knew that over the years, tons of stories had been written about people who magically entered or left paintings.

  Someone steps into paradise.

  Someone slips into the abyss.

  Fiction.

  Fact.

  Only a brushstroke away.

  The water looked so alive, and the wind seemed to whisper from the painting and glance against her face, but she knew, of course, that this was all an illusion. Of course the water was still. Of course the soft breeze was only in her imagination. No one can step into a painting or sail free from one. No one can step from one eternity to another. We’re locked in here, on this side of the canvas.

  On this side of the glass with the dead wasps.

  And the deer and—

  “Ready,” Sean called from the kitchen.

  After one more lingering glance at the painting, she went to the table. “Amber here?”

  He was pouring a glass of grape juice. “She ended up staying at the motel in Woodborough. It was a good thing Patrick reserved a room for you because I can’t imagine there would’ve been any left last night after the roads were closed down.”

  He slid a plate with two cut-up apples, a steaming plate of spaghetti, and a thick piece of toast covered with a generous layer of strawberry jam in front of her, then took a seat beside her. “So are you a vegan for health reasons or philosophical ones?”

  She let her gaze drift through the doorway to the living room, toward the muskie hanging on the wall. “I don’t believe in senselessly killing animals.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “All native cultures hunted, fished, lived off the land.”

  She almost said it, almost did: Yeah, but they respected the natural world, they didn’t just shoot things or snag hooks in their mouths to get trophies, but she caught herself. She didn’t even want to be having this conversation with him, not since he’d been so nice to her.

  “I’m all for living in harmony with the natural world,” she said vaguely. “And of course I know that for one thing to live another must die.” She had more to say but left it at that.

  Death.

  Why did they have to be talking about death again?

  You’re a killer yourself, Tessa.

  You too
k a man’s life.

  Senselessly killing animals.

  No, but it wasn’t senseless, he was—

  Sean saw her look toward the other room again. “It’s not such a simple issue, dealing with the deer,” he said. “The whitetail population.”

  She quietly ate her spaghetti.

  “You probably already know this, but since wolves, the natural predators for whitetail, are so scarce these days—”

  “Only because of human encroachment and habitat destruction. There aren’t enough undeveloped woodlands left for pack displacement and repopulation.”

  Easy, Tessa. You don’t need to be arguing with him.

  Sean didn’t seem surprised by her words. “Yes, but now, as things stand, without hunters, the deer herd in this state would get too large, and eventually disease would ravage their numbers. Is it more compassionate to let thousands of deer die slow and lingering deaths than to put some of them down quickly, preserving as much meat as possible for food?”

  Despite her desire to bow out of the debate, she felt herself getting riled up. “Okay, but you don’t have to mount their heads; celebrate their death.”

  “I celebrate their beauty, their majesty.”

  “Do me a favor and don’t celebrate my beauty when I die.”

  Oh, that was just brilliant, Tessa. Way to go!

  Sean was quiet for a long time.

  At last he pointed to a framed photo that she hadn’t seen before, propped on the countertop by the stove. It was a picture of her at her mom’s wedding. She was laughing, free and easy, and it was hard for her to even remember what that felt like—to be lighthearted, to smile and mean it, to let something beautiful sweep her away.

  “Amber and I already do,” he said.

  His words stunned her. She’d never even met her stepaunt, but the woman cared about her, celebrated her.

  Sean walked to the stove, took the plateful of sausage he’d cooked, and tipped it into a Tupperware container. “This is venison sausage from a doe that ran in front of my truck last month. I didn’t want her life to be wasted.” His voice wasn’t sharp, just authoritative. “Senselessly.”

  Tessa kept quiet. She’d said enough.

  He gestured toward her plate. “Hey, be sure to get plenty to eat. It’ll help keep you warm.”

  “Warm?”

  “We’re going snowmobiling.”

  “Where?”

  “I know you wanted to see Pat. I’m going to make that happen.”

  52

  Cassandra joined her team in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn.

  Becker, Ted, and Millicent were there, along with the seven team members she’d kept hidden from Chekov.

  “As you know,” she began, “the facility has three levels, all underground . . .”

  It was possible that Lien-hua’s phone had been compromised, so after making sure the room phone wasn’t bugged, I called Sheriff Tait, brought him up to speed concerning the team’s 9:00 briefing. Then, I phoned Callaway, and right after he answered, Jake showed up at my door. I let him in, and he took a seat near the window.

  Callaway hadn’t been able to locate anyone in the area by the name of Kayla Tatum. “I did find out that a Kayla Tatum who lives in Eau Claire didn’t come in for work at the hair salon this morning,” he told me. “Her boss said Miss Tatum didn’t call in sick, just never showed.”

  A deep sinking feeling. “Thanks.”

  Momentarily after I hung up, Lien-hua and Natasha arrived, and I asked Lien-hua if I could hang on to her phone for the time being. “Just until I get mine back from Sean.”

  And until I hear back from Alexei Chekov about a meeting time.

  She looked at me oddly. “Sure.”

  “All right.” I set her phone on the desk beside me. “What do we know?”

  “You were going to tell us why we were searching the motel for Alexei Chekov,” Jake said pointedly.

  “In a sec.” Although earlier, while I’d been speaking on the phone with Alexei and then typing up the conversation, there hadn’t been much time for them to work, I said, “Quick update. Tell me what you found.” Being evasive like this wasn’t characteristic of me, and by the looks on their faces I could tell they were surprised, but for the time being they didn’t challenge me.

  Natasha went first. “There hasn’t been any chatter regarding terrorist threats concerning our nuclear subs. The DoD is working on the deployment route analysis.”

  Jake spoke up. “The profile on Reiser and Basque doesn’t overlap with what we know about Chekov. Lien-hua concurs. Two completely different behavioral and psychological makeups.”

  Admittedly the connection had been a long shot.

  “We took another look at Reiser’s background, though,” Lien-hua said. “His work history, the locations of the victim residences.” I already knew Reiser had lived in La Crosse, Oshkosh, Superior, and South Chicago before moving to Merrill; some of those locations were near where victims had lived, some were not. She went on, “One of the videos found at his trailer contained news coverage of the murder of Aleste Norkum from WKOW in Madison. But Reiser was living in La Crosse at the time.”

  “And we have newspaper clippings from the Rockford Register Star and the Business Courier,” Jake added.

  Hmm.

  We discussed Reiser briefly, then, switching gears, Lien-hua asked, “Did you set up a visit to the ELF site?”

  “Still a few details to nail down.”

  “So what about the motel search, Pat?” Natasha cut in. “C’mon. What’s going on?”

  It’s time. Let’s see how this goes . . .

  “Okay. I analyzed the topography and road layout of the area, taking into account the known locations relative to Alexei’s movements: the snowmobile trails he chose on the way to the Chippewa River, the roads that led from the bridge where he killed the truck driver to the parking lot where he left the semi, and—”

  “It showed you his familiarity with the region,” Natasha observed.

  I nodded. “And it gives me an idea of the way he forms cognitive maps of his surroundings. I was also able to use the location on Highway K where State Trooper Wayland pulled him over.”

  All of this was true. However, the data I was working from was by no means comprehensive, and when I’d run the numbers I’d gotten a bimodal result of two likely hot spots. The motel was actually on the fringe of the northeastern one.

  The only real hiccup here was that I’d done the data analysis after, not before, our motel search.

  “Using the same journey-to-crime models I use when I’m tracking serial offenders, I worked backward to identify the most likely places Alexei might be using as his home base while he’s in the region—”

  “And this was one of them,” Jake finished my thought.

  “Yes, and—”

  “Wait a minute, Pat.” It was Lien-hua. “You mentioned a moment ago that Alexei killed the truck driver. That hasn’t been established yet.”

  “I . . .” Don’t lie, but be careful with the truth. “I was assuming he did.”

  “No,” Jake said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t assume. Not during an investigation.”

  Lien-hua studied me with her dark, knowing eyes.

  “Call it a working hypothesis,” I said.

  No one looked particularly satisfied with my answer.

  I felt conflicted.

  Of course I wanted to tell them about the phone call from Alexei, but I honestly believed that Kayla Tatum’s life was on the line. Somehow Alexei was monitoring us, and I didn’t feel I could take the chance that he would find out I’d told them and then kill her.

  On the other hand, even though I wanted to buy time until I heard from Alexei about a meeting place, I couldn’t risk progress on the investigation solely on the word of an internationally wanted assassin.

  There was one option that would both give me a little time to see if he’d contact me again and also
move the investigation forward.

  “There’s only so much we can do from here,” I said. “We need to get out there to get eyes on the ground at the old ELF site.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Jake asked me. “We don’t have any snowmobiles, the roads are still closed, and I can guarantee the national forest service access roads haven’t even been plowed out yet.”

  “When I was at the sawmill I noticed a snowmobile trail groomer. Those things are beasts and can plow through almost anything. There’s probably only room in the cab for two or three of us, but it’s a start. It’ll get us to the site no matter how much snow has drifted across the roads and trails.”

  Nods around the room. “Good idea,” Lien-hua said.

  Natasha flagged my attention. “I still have plenty of work to do processing the physical evidence from the Pickron house and a lot to follow up on with the Lab. If there’s only room for a couple people, I’ll stay here.”

  “Perfect.”

  While it was true that the trail groomer was probably our best bet, it would likely take a while for Windwalker or one of his crew to deliver it here, especially if no one was at the sawmill today, and in this weather, I thought that was a real possibility.

  Hopefully you’ll hear from Alexei by then.

  I looked at my watch. “It’s close to noon. Get whatever you can round up to eat, it might be a long day—Lien-hua, I saw you had some granola bars, maybe we can dive into your supply.”

  “No problem. I brought plenty.”

  None of the people stuck here at the motel had access to food either, and the roads still weren’t open to civilians. “Natasha,” I said, “why don’t you see if you can reach Tait, have him get a snowplow up here to deliver some food to the motel guests. Or at least someone on a snowmobile with a few bags of groceries.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.” I stood. “Jake, call the sawmill, get the foreman on the line. Just ask for Windwalker. If the place is closed—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”