“Couldn’t remember. All she knew was his first name was Richard and he was flying to Minneapolis. So, you know, maybe that helps.”
“Sure does. We can use it.”
“Good. I’ll keep you posted on Cody’s computer. And his bank statements, when they come in.”
“Thanks, Donna.” Stevens ended the call. Sat in the Cherokee, staring out the front windshield. Richard something, he thought, out of Minneapolis.
38
The pretty girl wasn’t working at the Delta counter when Lind checked in for his flight on Friday morning. The man behind the desk smiled and handed Lind his ticket—“Enjoy your flight, Richard”—and Lind walked away, relieved.
He passed through security and sat in the lounge beside a Japanese family, a father, a mother, and two very young girls. They smiled at Lind when he sat down beside them. Lind smiled stiffly back and then looked away.
The oldest girl must have been three or four. She rolled a little toy truck along the carpet toward Lind. Reached his boot and paused. Looked up at Lind, a mischievous smile on her face. Then she rolled the truck over his boot.
Lind stiffened. He had to stifle every urge in his body to keep from kicking out at the girl. He gripped the armrest beside him. Planted his boots on the floor. The little girl giggled and drove the truck over his foot again.
“Yumi.” The girl’s mother smiled at Lind. “I’m so sorry.”
Lind steadied his breathing and forced another smile. “It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay.”
The woman’s smile faded as she studied Lind’s face. She snapped her fingers and said something in Japanese to her daughter, who giggled and ran to her mother, steadying herself on Lind’s knee as she passed. The woman gathered up her daughters and said something fast and sharp to her husband, who glanced at Lind and nodded and reached for his suitcase.
Lind watched the family relocate a couple of rows down. Pretended not to notice the little girl’s parents stealing concerned glances in his direction. The little girl playing happily on the carpet. He stared straight ahead and tried not to think about them, tried to ignore everything around him and relax.
THE FLIGHT TO MIAMI took just over two hours. Lind sat in his seat and drank coffee. The visions had returned last night, just before the phone rang. Showtime again, and Hang Ten, the strangled man and the chained-up young soldier. The visions had been worse than before, visceral, almost real. Lind had fought against them. Fought to wake up. He’d thought he might die if he stayed under any longer.
He woke up sweaty, a scream on his lips. The phone was ringing. It was the man, his seductive words promising relief. Salvation. He had another job for Lind. Another task to accomplish. Just a few more little errands, he said, and then he’d make the visions disappear.
Lind touched down in Miami and rented a little Chevy from the Liberty desk in the rental car terminal. He took a map from the counter and studied it in the parking lot, and then drove east through the city and across the MacArthur Causeway into Miami Beach. He checked in to a Marriott overlooking the ocean, turned on every light in his room, blasted the air-conditioning, and pumped the volume on the TV set. Then he brewed a big pot of coffee and sat on the edge of the bed, watching music videos and reality TV, anything to stave off the fatigue.
Around six in the evening, there was a knock at the door. Lind answered and found a bellman in the hallway. He held a package about the size of a cake box. “You’re Richard O’Brien, right?” he said. “This came for you this morning. Overnight express.”
Lind took the package back into his room and opened it on the bed. There was a picture inside, and a rifle, slick steel, in component parts.
Lind studied the picture until he’d memorized the face. Then he burned the papers in the wastebasket in the bathroom. Sat back on the bed and drank more coffee and watched more TV, assembling and disassembling the rifle and waiting for the hours to pass.
39
Richard O’Brien.” Windermere looked up from her computer. “That’s our guy.”
Stevens peered over her shoulder. Mathers hurried over from his own cubicle. “O’Brien,” said Stevens. “How do you figure?”
Windermere gestured to her screen. “Delta flies from Duluth to Minneapolis four times a day,” she said. “Assuming the Liberty computer isn’t totally screwed, our shooter brought his rental back just after four o’clock Monday afternoon. That puts him on the last Minneapolis flight of the day, the 5:20 departure.”
“Sure,” said Stevens. “Makes sense.”
“According to Delta’s passenger manifest, there were two men named Richard on the 5:20 flight, a Richard Michnek and a Richard O’Brien. Michnek’s a Duluth local. He flew home this morning. Not our guy.”
“And O’Brien?”
“Yeah,” said Windermere. “O’Brien flew from Minneapolis to Duluth Monday morning. Arrived at 2:07 and left at 5:20. Just enough time to murder Eli Cody.”
“So who is he?” said Mathers. “He’s a Twin Cities guy?”
Windermere punched a few keys. “Guess not,” she said. “Says he came all the way from Philadelphia that day. Long way to fly just to strangle a guy.”
Stevens leaned forward. “He flew a Philly-to-Duluth round-trip on Monday?” He peered at Windermere’s screen. “What about Saturday? We need to know this guy’s whereabouts when Spenser Pyatt was murdered.”
“My next move, Stevens.” Windermere grinned at him and reached for her phone. “I know a guy at the FAA. Let me make some calls.”
STEVENS AND MATHERS WAITED, lingering behind Windermere as she attempted to connect with her FAA pal. Mathers raised an eyebrow at Stevens. “Hope this works,” he said. “It’ll be a huge pain in the ass if we have to do things official.”
Stevens shrugged. “Worked before.”
“The Pender case?”
“Caught up with the guy’s girlfriend this way. Chased her out to Seattle.”
“No shit?” Mathers grinned at Stevens. “Must have been a blast, man.”
Stevens started to shake his head. Then he caught himself. “It was,” he said, matching the junior agent’s grin. “It really was.”
“Mathers. Stevens.”
The two men turned to find Windermere watching them, a funny smile on her face. “You boys want to reminisce on the good old days, or you want to do some police work?”
Stevens and Mathers hurried back to her cubicle. “You get something?”
“Richard O’Brien flew from Philadelphia to Minneapolis on Friday afternoon,” Windermere said. “He flew home on the evening flight Saturday night.”
“Hot damn.” Stevens started to pace, his insides electrified. “So he’s Philadelphia-based. Can we dig him up there?”
“We might not have to.” Windermere let it hang until Stevens stopped pacing and looked at her. “According to my FAA guy, Richard O’Brien flew into Miami this afternoon. He’s scheduled to fly home tomorrow.”
40
Parkerson shut down his computer, satisfied. The preparations were made. The asset had his instructions. All that remained was the kill itself. Still, something itched in his mind.
It wasn’t a problem, exactly. As kills went, Miami was a straightforward job. No, it wasn’t doubt, the niggle in Parkerson’s brain. It was instinct, some kind of sixth sense. And where Killswitch was concerned, Parkerson trusted his instincts.
He turned on his computer again. Opened an Internet browser and started a couple searches. The Pyatt shooting in Minneapolis. And the Cody kill in Duluth.
He found nothing new on Spenser Pyatt. The FBI was involved, sure, and that was unusual. They’d tracked down Allen Bryce Salazar, had probably released him by now, and Parkerson knew the Feds would keep looking for the asset. It was a misstep, but hardly fatal. He’d already decided he could live with it.
The Cody case, though. P
arkerson found an article on the Duluth News Tribune. A straightforward account of Cody’s murder. A quote from a Duluth PD spokeswoman. And then a throwaway line, at the end: “Duluth PD are cooperating with Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents as the investigation proceeds.”
Parkerson read the sentence again. The BCA was the state police force. As far as he knew, their jurisdiction didn’t cover homicides in centers as large as Duluth. Unless the Duluth PD had requested their involvement . . . or somebody up there suspected something bigger was at play.
There. There was the itch in Parkerson’s mind. The FBI on the Pyatt case. The BCA on Cody. Two irregularities on back-to-back kills. It could be completely normal, but it could also be a sign that the asset had really screwed up.
Parkerson checked his watch. A quarter past six on a Friday evening. Miami lay more than seven hundred miles to the south, and the kill was set for Saturday at noon. He sat in his chair and stared at his blank computer screen, mulling it over, running the calculations. Then, abruptly, he stood and walked out of his office, pulling the door closed behind him. He hurried through the near-empty building to the parking lot, where he found his car and sat behind the wheel.
Am I really doing this?
It was a dangerous play, Parkerson knew. If anyone saw him in Miami, connected him to the job, it would jeopardize the whole operation. Still, he had to be sure the asset wasn’t compromised. Killswitch was too lucrative to risk.
Parkerson turned the key in the ignition. The big engine fired up, and he idled the car out of the parking lot. Waved to the guard in the hut and pulled out to the street, hesitated a moment, and then aimed the car at Interstate 95.
He punched in a number on his cell phone as he drove. “Honey?” he said, when the other end picked up. “Something big came up at work, really sudden. Gotta duck out of town for the night.”
41
Stevens called Mickey Pyatt. “You have family in Miami? Anyone in Florida at all?”
“My aunt Margaret,” said Pyatt. “In Fort Lauderdale.”
“Get a hold of her,” Stevens told him. “And anyone else you can think of down there. Tell them to get out of their homes and checked into hotels somewhere safe until they hear back from you.”
“Okay,” said Pyatt. “But why?”
“Just a precaution,” said Stevens. “Your family’s probably not in any danger. We might have a lead on the shooter, though. Just trying to be safe.”
Pyatt hesitated. “I understand,” he said finally. “Thanks.”
Stevens hung up the phone and turned back to Windermere and Mathers, who were hunched over Windermere’s computer. Windermere hung up her own phone as Stevens approached. “Liberty says a Richard O’Brien rented a red Chevy Cruze from their desk at Miami International,” she said. “One-day rental.”
“He’s in the Liberty system,” said Stevens. “How do we know he’s not a phony?”
“We don’t,” Windermere said, “but he used the same name to book flights for the Pyatt and Cody murders. Maybe he’s just getting lazy.”
“Careless,” said Stevens. “Fair enough. So we have his car. Liberty has his plates. We know he’s flying out tomorrow afternoon.”
“Miami PD is looking for the car right now,” said Mathers. “We passed along his description, and they have his plates. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a patrol car will spot him. If not, they’ll pick him up at the airport tomorrow.”
Stevens and Windermere swapped glances. “Yeah, fine,” Windermere said. “Except some poor bastard will be dead by tomorrow.”
42
Parkerson drove through the night on Interstate 95, through South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, the traffic thinning out around him as darkness settled in. He played Bach at low volume on the CD player and kept the Cadillac humming at a steady southbound clip.
It was just after two in the morning by the time he reached Jacksonville, and he stopped for a cup of coffee and a bad hamburger at an all-night diner off the highway. The waitress was middle-aged. Rings under her eyes. The diner was mostly empty; a couple truck drivers played poker by the door.
Parkerson sipped his coffee and studied his reflection in the window. He looked as tired as the waitress and twice as unkempt. His suit was wrinkled. There was grease on his shirt. His hair was mussed, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was sick of driving. Sick of being awake. He wanted to crawl into a warm bed somewhere and sleep it off.
He thought about his own bed, his home, and wondered what his wife was thinking. If she’d bought his hurried excuse. Rachel didn’t ask many questions about his job, and he didn’t tell her much. He surely didn’t tell her about Killswitch.
Not that she had any right to be upset with him. He was simply a service provider, filling a vacuum in the market. Morality was an imperfection, a crutch for the weak. Money was the only absolute.
Parkerson looked out at the highway, a few cars speeding southbound, and he felt a little shiver run through him as he wondered what waited at the end of the road. He was nervous, he realized. It went with the territory.
There had been other close calls, with other assets. Murder was a natural attention-getter. Sometimes there were witnesses. It wasn’t normally a big deal. The alibis were sound. The escape routes were well planned. So far, nobody had managed to trace the assets.
Not yet, anyway.
Parkerson pushed back from the table. Downed the rest of his coffee and splashed cold water on his face in the bathroom. Dried up with a piece of rough paper towel and bought a Red Bull from the tired waitress as he settled his tab. Then he walked back to his car and idled out to the highway again. Miami lay waiting, 350 miles distant.
43
Stevens lay awake through the night, staring at the ceiling and wrestling with the covers. By three in the morning, Nancy had had enough. “Go away,” she said, groaning, kicking at him under the sheet. “Some of us actually want to be here.”
Stevens rubbed her back until he heard her breathing slow again. Then he slipped out from the covers and crept downstairs to the basement—his man cave, Nancy called it—sat in his favorite chair, and watched basketball highlights on mute. Triceratops followed him down, lay at his feet, and fell promptly asleep. He whimpered and growled, chasing imaginary prey in his dreams.
Hope he’s catching something, Stevens thought. Even if I’m not.
He’d left Windermere and Mathers in the FBI office once it became clear that Drew Harris, SAC of Criminal Investigations, wasn’t about to authorize a flight to Miami, not after Salazar and Kent had come up blanks.
“We’ll get Miami on it,” he told Windermere, winking. “We didn’t poach all of their best agents.”
“Just the Supercop,” said Mathers, and Windermere groaned and swung a fist at him.
“Just the Supercop,” said Harris. “Brief the Miami office and let them know what to look for. You have Miami PD involved also, I expect.”
Windermere nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Should be a piece of cake, then.” Harris gave her a smile. “You can fly down when they catch him. We’ll make sure it’s your picture that gets in the papers.”
“I don’t care about pictures,” said Windermere, but her boss’s decision was final. She and Mathers hung around on the phone to Miami, and Stevens made plans to rejoin them in the morning.
Now, though, Stevens stared unseeing at the TV screen and wished desperately he and Windermere were on scene. It was torture sitting and waiting while someone else worked the case, and what if the guy got away? Defeat would be a lot easier to swallow if he himself screwed up. Not so much if he was forced to watch a failed takedown from thousands of miles away.
But Harris had spoken, and there was probably no way Tim Lesley would have approved Stevens’s flight to Miami anyway. Unless Aunt Margaret really was in danger . . .
The Pyatt angle. Stevens couldn
’t figure it. Donna McNaughton had called from Duluth that evening with news about Eli Cody. “Got our geeks into Cody’s old computer,” she said. “What a fossil. Guy was still using Internet Explorer, for Christ’s sake.”
“A dead end, then?”
“Not on your life. They found a bunch of old text files. Get this, Kirk: half-written suicide notes. Blah, blah, blah, my life’s so crummy, the usual. But a lot of ‘Fuck you, Spenser Pyatt’ and ‘I love you, Paige Sinisalo’ in there, too.”
“Jesus. Really?”
“Oh, yeah. You know he dated her once? Nineteen sixty-two. Fifty years ago, Kirk. And still carrying the goddamn torch.”
“Pyatt’s son told me about it,” Stevens said. “I heard it ended badly.”
“Not for Spenser Pyatt.” McNaughton chuckled, grim. “At least not right away.”
Suicide notes. Unrequited love, fifty years strong. Two dead octogenarians and a jet-setting killer on his way to Miami. Stevens shifted his weight. Settled back in his chair and tried to focus on basketball. On sleep. On anything but Richard O’Brien. It was an impossible task. Stevens sat in his basement until dawn, replaying his fears again and again as the sun rose over Saint Paul—and Miami.
44
Parkerson arrived in Miami a little before nine, his head buzzing and his eyelids drooping. He drove through the city and across Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach, parked the Cadillac a block from the Atlantic, and closed his eyes for a while.
An hour passed. Parkerson woke with the sound of the surf in the distance. He walked down Ocean Drive until he found a coffee shop, bought the biggest coffee he could find, and retreated outside to drink it.
He sat at a table on the patio and took out his laptop and broke into the Liberty rental car reservation software through the coffee shop’s WiFi. Then he brought up an FAA manifest for the day and chose a name at random. Swapped out Lind’s information for the patsy’s and couldn’t help smiling. Somebody named Peter Cook was about to have a hell of a bad day.
Kill Fee Page 9
