by Steven James
With the roads as bad as they were, no phone companies would be able to send crews out until tomorrow at the earliest. And by then it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Solstice felt her pocket, fondled the passport she was carrying for Ariose Heaton, another of her identities. Waiting out the storm wouldn’t be difficult. Flying out of the regional airport in Rhinelander, an airport without facial recognition software, would be no trouble. And then, in two days, she would be reunited with Terry in Mali, a country without extradition treaties with the US, and they would have enough money to hide away for the rest of their lives.
Unless, of course, they decided to engage in a little mischief now and then along the way.
That thought brought a smile.
“How long?” she asked into her mic.
“We’ve run into a few issues,” Eclipse replied. “Nothing serious. We should be done by three.”
Perfect.
“All right. We’ll meet you at the maintenance building at 3:30.”
Tessa wasn’t exactly into hanging out with Sean and Amber, but she’d never met her stepaunt before, and even though the circumstances were sort of awkward, she seemed nice enough and Tessa tried to concentrate on being here, talking with her, but she was still upset about her conversation with Patrick, and that was sort of swallowing up her attention.
She wasn’t mad at him, more shaken by hearing he’d almost drowned. More this weird kind of loneliness and longing to connect. She even found herself wanting to tell him about the shrink, about how terrible she still felt about killing the man last summer, about the prescription for the sleeping pills—just lay everything out in the open, let Patrick listen, offer whatever help he could, be the dad he obviously wanted to be.
Later, when he gets back.
Now, she was in Amber’s room—the one she would’ve had if she’d made it to the motel last night. Sean sat somewhat obtrusively in the corner and Amber was trying a little too hard to negotiate a conversation between the three of them, but with Sean being sorta quiet and Tessa being so distracted, it wasn’t going too well, and finally Amber suggested a bit too brightly that they see if there was anything on TV.
“Okay,” Tessa said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
Amber clicked on the remote, and their discussion, which had never really gotten off the ground in the first place, ended. A sports wrap-up show came on, and even though, as far as Tessa could tell, none of them really had any interest in it, they all sat quietly and stared at the screen.
I arrived at the hospital and parked the snowmobile beside the main entrance. Shed the helmet. Set it on the seat.
Seven minutes until my meeting with Alexei Chekov.
The road in front of the hospital had been plowed, and I figured that transportation to the only medical care facility for miles had to be one of the county’s top priorities. Maybe that’s why Alexei wanted to meet here—he knew it’d be the one place in the region that would have clear roads in front of it, guaranteed access.
It seemed like a good reason to me, one he would have thought of.
Before going inside I wanted as much information about Chekov as I could get, and as far as I knew, there was only one person alive in the area besides me who’d actually spoken with him: State Trooper Reggie Wayland, the man whose wrist bones Alexei had shattered yesterday afternoon.
I figured he’d be in the hospital himself, and though I could ask for him at the front desk, a dozen cars were parked in the windswept parking lot, so instead of walking in yet, I phoned the front desk and took the opportunity to walk the lot, memorizing the plates.
Surprisingly, the receptionist told me that Wayland had already checked out. When I called his home, his wife answered, and when I explained who I was, she told me that he still couldn’t grip anything but that, yes, yes of course, she would hold the phone for him.
“Talk me through what happened,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
Quickly and succinctly, Wayland detailed how Alexei had attacked him, even described the weapon he’d used. Wayland had a sharp memory, and I was glad.
We hung up and I tapped at my phone, going online to the Federal Digital Database. I entered the plate numbers for each of the cars in the parking lot, and seconds later found out that none of them were registered to Kayla Tatum.
Chekov might have switched vehicles again.
I returned to the hospital’s entrance.
It seemed obvious that Alexei had abducted Kayla, but as I’ve learned in the past, things are not always what they appear to be. Once again I was reminded of what my mentor, Dr. Calvin Werjonic, used to say: “Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident.” It was possible that Kayla wasn’t Alexei’s captive but his partner. He might not have killed the Pickrons, but I didn’t want to discount—as unlikely as it was—the possibility that she might have.
As the automatic doors whooshed open in front of me, sucking in a double curl of twirling snow, I pulled up Kayla’s DMV photo on Lien-hua’s cell. A middle-aged receptionist sitting at a small booth in the lobby looked over the top of her glasses at me as I entered.
“Some weather we’re havin’ out there,” she said with a strong Wisconsin accent.
“Yes. I’m looking for—”
“D’you drive?”
“Snowmobile.” I held up my credentials. “Listen, I’m looking for the lower level.”
She gave the ID only a cursory look. Her eyes jumped past me to the glass doors. “I hear the roads are gettin’ worse.”
“Please, the lower level?”
Finally, she gestured vaguely to her left. “Elevators are over there. By the bathrooms.”
Elevators announce your arrival, and people can be ready for you when the doors slide open, but if you use the stairs, you retain, at least for a few extra seconds, the element of surprise.
“I’m looking for the stairwell.”
With a somewhat disgruntled look, she motioned in the other direction. “End of the hall, past the chapel, turn left. Stairs’ll be on your right.”
“Thank you.” I showed her the photo of Kayla Tatum. “Have you seen this woman come through here? Maybe with a man about six feet tall? A stocky guy, might have been wearing a blue parka?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Been here since 7:00.” Then, looking toward the doors again, she added, “On the news they’re saying more snow’s coming tonight, but it’s supposed to warm up and maybe hit ten degrees—a heat wave, y’know.”
I couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a joke or not.
“Thanks.” I turned to go.
“’Course with the windchill,” she said still contemplating the weather, “it’s gonna feel a lot colder.”
As I left, I noticed her eyes following me all the way across the lobby until I was past the vending machines.
At the end of the hall, I unholstered Lien-hua’s Glock, pressed open the door.
And entered the stairwell.
57
I descended the stairs.
My senses were dialed up the way I like it.
Sharp.
Focused.
At the base of the steps I slowly opened the door and saw a long, bone-white hallway stretching before me the length of the hospital where it ended in a T.
Nobody else in sight.
Gun ready, I eased the door shut behind me.
Alexei’s text had only told me to meet him in the lower level of the hospital. No room number. No details. Although this wasn’t a large facility I noted at least a dozen doors in this corridor.
Rather than call his name I decided to start searching for him in the rooms closest to me and systematically work my way to the far end of the hall.
The first door was to a radiology lab. I pressed it open, and as I was leaning to look inside, I heard a voice behind me in the hallway. “Patrick.”
I spun, Glock raised. Alexei stood beside a door fifteen meters down the hall.
“Hands where I c
an see them, Alexei.”
He lifted his hands, showed me they were empty.
“Where’s Kayla?”
“I’d rather not talk here in the hall. We might get interrupted.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s safe.”
Careful, Pat. This guy’s the real deal. He killed two people yesterday. “Stay where you are.” I approached him warily, scanning the hallway for other movement in case he wasn’t alone and this was some kind of trap, but the hall appeared to be empty. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Bryan Ellory and to Bobby Clarke.”
“The truck driver.”
“Yes.”
“I have no doubt.”
Just a few paces away now, I motioned for him to back up. “Into the room and don’t make any sudden moves. I’m not having the best week, and shooting you would probably be good therapy.” Not something I was planning to do, but he didn’t know that and, honestly, it felt a little therapeutic just to say it.
We entered the nondescript administrative office: a desk with a flat-screen monitor, an overstuffed bookshelf, a few chairs, a filing cabinet. I closed the door. “Turn around.”
He complied.
A common misconception among civilians, probably because of seeing too many cop movies and TV shows, is that you read someone his rights when you arrest him. That’s not true. You read him his rights before you question him back at the station.
Mirandizing could wait for the moment.
After talking with Trooper Wayland, I knew that Alexei had turned his back on him as requested, then attacked him. I wanted to see if Alexei would try the same thing on me. “Hands against the wall.”
He placed his hands against the paneling.
Attentive to the fact that he might go for my weapon, I holstered the Glock before frisking him. I found no knives, no guns, just a small handheld device that appeared to be a medical instrument, the very weapon Wayland had told me about.
As I was removing it from Chekov’s pocket, he spun, lightning quick, leading with his left elbow and bringing his right arm over my shoulder to reach for the device, but I was ready. I shoved him backward, brought my forearm up, pinning his neck against the wall—with my other hand I swung the device up, planted the tip against the bone just below his left eye socket. “What’s this, Alexei?”
It took him a moment to answer. “It’s a spring-loaded bone injection gun.” His Russian accent slipped into more of the sentence than usual, and I realized that might be his tell when he was under stress.
“Sounds like it might hurt.”
“It does.” He didn’t struggle. I thought I saw a flicker of admiration in his eyes. “You have quick reflexes, Agent Bowers.”
“Where’s Kayla, Alexei?”
“As I said, she’s safe.”
I held him in place, locked eyes with him, didn’t look away. “So where do we go from here?”
“You have the bone gun and a Glock, I have no weapons, so I suppose that’s up to you.”
That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, that he still couldn’t take you out.
“I’m tempted to bring you in right now,” I said.
“Would you risk a woman’s life just to get an arrest?”
I didn’t answer.
His gaze flicked to the bone gun, and I felt a sense of assurance that he wasn’t going to chance moving abruptly and allowing it to engage. “I needed to know,” he said. “That’s why I went for it.”
“The bone gun.”
“Yes.”
“You needed to know what?”
“If you were as good as my sources tell me.”
“What sources?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Of course you’re not.”
Somewhere down the hallway I heard footsteps approaching the room. I hoped we weren’t going to be interrupted.
After a moment, I released his neck and stepped back, still jacked on adrenaline and ready, ready, ready to respond if he made another move.
Slipping the bone gun into my jacket pocket and gesturing toward the Glock, I said, “I’ll drop you if you try anything like that again.”
The steps in the hallway came closer.
Alexei rubbed his neck. “I believe you.”
“Where are these people, the ones you say killed Ardis and—”
But before I could finish my sentence, the door behind me flew open and Jake Vanderveld burst into the room with his weapon drawn. “Don’t move!” he shouted at Alexei. “Or you’re a dead man!”
58
“Jake,” I yelled, “lower your gun!”
He ignored me, hollered to Chekov, “Hands away from your body!”
“Easy, Jake,” I said. “He’s unarmed. Lower your weapon.”
But Jake just leveled his gun at Alexei’s chest. “Hands up!” He was wound way too tight. “Now!”
“Jake, stop.” I stepped between him and Alexei so that now his gun was pointed at me. “Listen to me. He’s got a woman. A hostage.”
“What are you . . . ?” My words finally registered. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Now lower your weapon.”
Jake finally lowered his gun and yelled past me, at Alexei, “Where is she, you scumbag?”
More footsteps in the hall. Hurried.
“Who’s that?” I asked him.
A small grin. “Backup.”
No, no, no!
Two state troopers muscled their way through the doorway, guns drawn. “Step back!” the larger man yelled at me.
“I’m Agent Bowers. FBI!”
“He’s with me,” Jake said.
They accepted that and strode toward Alexei.
Jake spoke to me, “Who’s this woman, Pat? Who are you talking about?”
I made the mistake of looking his direction. “Her name is Kayla Tat—”
But the two troopers must have recognized Alexei from the APB as the person who’d killed Deputy Ellory—a local man they undoubtably knew—because as soon as my back was turned, I heard the sound of someone being thrown to the floor. I spun and saw the two of them, expandable batons out, leaning over Alexei.
“No!” I rushed to stop them but they still managed to land half a dozen brutal blows and kick him twice in the face and abdomen before I was able to pull them off.
At last they both stood angrily by my side. Tense. Glowering.
“He was resisting arrest,” the larger officer said to me. His badge read: H. Burlman. “You saw that, right?”
“You touch him again and your career is over.” I turned to his partner. “Both of you. You understand?”
The air in the room went wire-tight.
Jake said nothing.
Alexei lay at my feet, his face bloodied, studying the two officers. He hadn’t grunted or cried out in pain at all, and I imagined he was calculating what he might need to do to escape.
Yesterday by the riverbank I’d seen him single-handedly support Bryan Ellory’s weight, and I guessed that if he’d wanted to, he could’ve made things a lot harder for these two state troopers just now.
Burlman pulled out his steel handcuffs, and I realized that at this point there was no defusing the situation without bringing Alexei in.
“I’ll get him.” I took the cuffs, then knelt beside Alexei and drew his hands back to restrain him. I whispered to him, “I didn’t tell them. I came alone.”
“I believe you,” he said quietly.
“Alexei, where is Kayla?”
“Safe.”
“And the people who killed Lizzie and Ardis?”
“Later.”
“Is Donnie Pickron still alive?”
“I don’t know.”
And that was all.
Then the two troopers came forward and manhandled Alexei to his feet.
“Easy.” I made it clear that I was not kidding around.
As they led him into the hall, I glared at Jake, then smacked the paneling. “W
hat are you doing here? There’s a woman’s life at stake, and we might have had a lead on where the Pickron family killers are!”
“I didn’t know that. You were keeping us in the dark. That’s not right.”
“In this case I didn’t have a choice.” I wanted to ask him how he’d found me, but I could deal with that later. “Alexei threatened to kill her if I told the team, and since he already murdered two people yesterday, I believed him.”
Jake was quiet for a moment. “Is that how you knew Alexei’d killed the truck driver yesterday?”
“Yes, it’s—”
Suddenly I realized something: Alexei didn’t fight back when the troopers attacked him.
He tested you.
He tested you.
Maybe he was testing them.
I stepped away from Jake and caught up with the troopers in the hall, pulled aside Burlman, whose insignia told me he was a trooper first class, in this case the senior officer. “You need to really watch him.”
“We got him.” He didn’t even look at me, and I could tell he was not attending to my words like he needed to.
I snapped my fingers in front of his face, directed his eyes toward me. “Listen to me. This man is dangerous like you’ve never seen. If you turn your back on him, he will not think twice about killing you.”
“We got him,” he said again.
“I’m not sure you’re hearing what I’m saying.”
“Like I said,” Burlman replied, spittle hanging from his lip, “we got him.”
The troopers waited impatiently for me to wave them on, and finally I did. They headed toward the elevator.
But almost immediately I began to have second thoughts.
Right now Alexei was our only link to finding Kayla Tatum and our best bet for tracking down the Pickron family killers.
She’s safe; he told you she was safe.
Angela confirmed that Alexei doesn’t kill women or children.
According to what he’d said, Alexei had been planning to search for the Pickron family killers with me, so if he was telling the truth that Kayla was safe and that he’d been willing to let her go, it seemed likely that he would’ve left her in a secure location where she could safely remain until he returned to free her or lead me to her.
