Find Me

by Carol O'Connell

  Mallory showed no signs of trust, but neither did she shoot out the tires to prevent the FBI agents from carrying the small family away.

  Riker appeared behind Mallory, tapping her shoulder. “What was that business about her kid?”

  “Her daughter was shot to death,” said Mallory. “The shooter was a neighbor’s boy the same age, six years old. They were playing with Nahlman’s gun. That’s when she started drinking alone—and drinking a lot. She’s been in therapy for years.”

  “You got that from her personnel file?”

  “No,” she said, “I got that off Dale Berman’s personal computer. It was a memo he sent to every agent on this detail—except her. Berman was explaining to the troops why they had to make allowances for Nahlman’s little episodes. I’m guessing he meant the times when she stood up to him. Maybe she challenged his orders.” Mallory was staring at the group of young agents surrounding Christine Nahlman. “They won’t want to work with her again. They don’t trust her now. But I do.”

  Agent Nahlman had just ended a call when Riker reached through the open car window. He took her hand, the one with the cell phone.

  “I’m not making a pass at you,” he said.

  She was still holding the cell phone as the detective pressed the buttons to enter his own number into her electronic address book.

  “In case you haven’t got it memorized,” he said. “You can never have enough backup.” Done with this little chore, he did not release her hand. “Now listen carefully, Nahlman, ’cause this happens to be one of my favorite song lyrics, okay?” He gently closed her fingers over the cell phone. “Just call, and I’ll be there.”

  He whistled the tune that went with those words as he moseyed away from the car. And, though she understood that he only wanted to keep her alive, it was her most romantic moment since that old song was new.

  19

  State troopers had displaced the remaining FBI agents. By foot and flashlight, they patrolled the perimeter of the caravan city, and, courtesy of a local appliance store, three hundred civilians were watching small television sets powered by batteries, car chargers and mobile home outlets.

  The camping experience had begun to wear on Charles Butler. There was no escape from the constant din of changing channels, and the glow of TV screens outshone the firelights and lanterns. The parents watched the New Mexico manhunt play out across the state as if this were not their own story but someone else’s drama—possibly because so much of it was fiction. The news broadcasters aimed to entertain, undeterred by an absence of facts. The caravan’s field reporters had long since departed, following the night’s big story, and the two detectives from New York City sat before an open fire and finished the last of their reports to the local authorities.

  Charles was somewhat leery of Riker’s latest experiment, though he approved the use of an old-fashioned pot. After mingling the water and the grounds, the detective brought the whole mess to a boil and then added coldwater.

  “It settles the coffee grounds,” said Riker, handing a steaming cup to their guest from the state police. “It’s called cowboy coffee. Ever tasted it?”

  “You bet I have. Finest kind,” said the New Mexico investigator with a smile of appreciation for this campfire brew. The two of them alternately sipped hot liquid and picked coffee grounds from their teeth. Charles and Mallory abstained.

  And now their guest informed them that Paul Magritte had never regained consciousness after surgery. “Sorry, folks. He’s dead,” said the local man. “But it was good of the doctor to mark that bastard for us.” He turned to Mallory as he traced a line on his neck. “That’s how the old man described the cut?”

  “Yeah,” said Riker, answering for his partner.

  Mallory was distracted and perhaps tired of repeating herself in interviews with state and local police. Her face was lifted to the sky. Charles doubted that she was stargazing, for heaven could not compete with the surrounding illumination of fires and flashlights, lanterns and scores of glowing television screens. Their own campfire was bright enough to light up Magritte’s blood on Mallory’s blue jeans and her shoes, but more alarming than that, one of the laces on her running shoes had come undone and gone unnoticed. And there were other breaks with her compulsive neatness. She was wearing yesterday’s clothes, and some of her fingernails were broken and ragged.

  For a short time, Charles had forgotten that he loved her, and he saw her with a clinical eye. She caught him in the act of taking mental notes, and he turned his eyes elsewhere to keep her from reading his every thought—his fears. He stared at her untied shoelace.

  The state’s investigator was leafing through his notebook, and now he found a page he liked. “We got the make of the vehicle from the tire treads at the crime scene. So you can leave the rest to us. We’ll get him.” He looked out over the great circle of television screens. “At least he won’t be picking off any more of these folks.”

  “Don’t count on him keeping that jeep for long,” said Riker, surprising the man who had not shared the vehicle model. “He’s an experienced car thief.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.” And it was clear by the tone of voice that this investigator did not care to hear any more helpful tips from the New York contingent of the law. “Our boy made a real good choice for off-road driving, so I expect he’ll keep it awhile, and we won’t find him on the interstate. You should get some rest tonight. A manhunt’s best left to people who know the terrain.”

  The two detectives, man hunters extraordinaire, appeared to be too tired to find any humor in this.

  Done with his coffee, the New Mexico man bid a hasty good night and left them.

  A cell phone beeped, and Riker said, “It’s not mine.”

  “It’s Magritte’s.” Mallory went digging in her knapsack.

  Charles could not recall any mention of her pocketing the doctor’s cell phone, not while the state investigator was making note of all her other details. Until this moment, he had no idea that Paul Magritte had owned one of these devices.

  Mallory pulled out a phone that was so large, even Charles could recognize it as an antique by the standards of modern technology. “Analog,” she said with distaste. Extending an antenna, more proof of antiquity, she said, “Hello?” After listening for a moment, she lowered the antenna. “Another hang up.”

  “No caller ID?” asked Riker.

  “Nothing that fancy.” She turned the phone over in her hand, examining it as if it were an interesting artifact from an old-world culture. “No voice mail either. I’m surprised it works at all.”

  Charles stared at her chipped red nail polish, regarding each fingernail as an independent wound. “The calls might be from Dr. Magritte’s patients. They hear a woman’s voice and think it’s a wrong number.”

  “May be.” Mallory returned the phone to her knapsack. “I’ve got Kronewald’s people working the cell-phone records.” She picked up her knapsack, rose to her feet and walked away from them.

  “Wait!” Charles called out to her, making long strides to catch up with her, because Mallory waited for nobody. Circling round the young detective, he blocked her way and held her by the shoulders, forcing her to stand still. And now he released her to kneel down in the dirt at her feet. He tied her loose shoelace, so afraid that she might trip and fall. It was the sort of service one did for a child, yet she allowed it.

  He was still kneeling there, head bowed, when she moved on.

  “Very classy.” Riker appeared at his side, leaning to down to offer a hand up. “I got a remember that move.”

  On his feet again, Charles watched Mallory drive away. “Where could she be going at this hour?”

  “My guess? A five-star hotel,” said the detective. “Camping really isn’t her style.”

  Nearby, the few remaining FBI agents and the two disgraced moles were seated around a single portable television set. They were all so young.

  “So who’s in charge here?”

 
Riker clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder, saying, “Me and thee.”

  Agent Christine Nahlman passed the first sign for the Albuquerque International Airport. Before she could use the turn signal, another agent’s car swung into the lane alongside her, matching her speed. She was going to miss the exit for the airport road. Hand signals were useless, and the agent in the other car would not respond to her horn. Mannequinlike, he stared at the road ahead. And now they rolled past the exit and continued west on Interstate 40.

  What in hell was going on?

  Calling the SAC for an explanation was not an option. Dale Berman had forbidden cell-phone contact, no incoming or outgoing calls. And that troubled her, too. She could think of no scenario where that made any sense, but she had long ago ceased to hunt for logic in command decisions.

  She turned to her partner. Barry Allen’s face was placid, though he must have seen her boxed into this lane; the boy was green but not blind. Damn him. He had known that they would miss the airport road. That was the plan. Her partner, a good little soldier, had yet to question a single order from Dale Berman. However, this was hardly a good time to accuse Agent Allen of conspiring against her.

  Nahlman watched Joe Finn’s reflection in her rearview mirror. Apparently, the boxer had seen nothing amiss. He was wholly concentrated on his children—reading to them from a book of fairy tales that they were much too old for. Yet they listened to his every word, loving this attention from him. Dodie seemed like any normal child, like Peter, enraptured by the sound of her father’s voice, eyes on the big man’s face, unable to get enough of him.

  The construction zone ahead was a divided highway. Opposing traffic was separated by high retaining walls. Two lanes of westbound vehicles moved through the narrow canyon of concrete, and Nahlman was reminded of a cattle chute in a slaughterhouse. It went on for miles before she could see ahead to a break in the wall. And then she heard the words that she had been waiting for, counting on.

  “I have to pee,” said the little boy in the back seat. “Dodie does, too. See? She’s squirmy. Can we stop?”

  “Yes, we can,” said Nahlman. The timing was perfect. She had already spotted the sign for the next gas station, and it carried a warning: the turnoff beyond the construction zone would be a sharp one.

  “Call in the toilet stop.”

  “We’re not supposed to use the cells,” Agent Allen reminded her. “Dale said—”

  “Agent—Barry, you know you can’t use the car radio. Too many private police scanners on the road. So use your cell phone and blame it on me.” Her eyes were on the car driving alongside her, herding her, locking her into a lane with no turns. The exit sign was in view when she leaned toward her partner and raised her voice. “That’s an order!”

  A cell phone was quickly pressed to Barry Allen’s ear. “No answer,” he said. “Dale’s going to be pissed off about—What’re you doing?”

  Nahlman moved into the occupied lane, forcing the other vehicle into the retaining wall. The other agent’s car was dropping back as sparks went flying in the scrape of metal on concrete. And now the lane was hers alone.

  Agent Allen’s mouth hung open and his eyes bugged out.

  Nahlman glanced at the rearview mirror. The boxer was still reading, turning pages of the storybook, but young Peter, eyes on the passenger window, whispered, “Cool.”

  Mallory was a hundred miles short of Gallup, New Mexico. The top was down, the night was fine, and I-40 was light on traffic. The construction zone was like an arcade game, zinging through curves bound by concrete barriers. On the other side of the zone, out on the open road again, there was no sign of the Finns’ FBI escort.

  Good.

  Evidently Dale Berman had ceased to play the fool long enough to find his way to the airport road.

  She drove faster until the speedometer’s needle could be pushed no farther, and she was pleasantly surprised. Back in Kansas, Ray Adler had given her more than a roll bar. He must have tweaked the factory settings on her Porsche engine. The hump of the Volkswagen ragtop had previously cut her speed to one-eighty, but now she was doing two hundred and ten miles an hour.

  Thank you, Ray.

  This was truly a race, for she was bone tired. Before sleep could overtake her, there was one more landmark to see, and, once there, she could close her eyes to doze and dream, though dreams exhausted her.

  Waking or sleeping she was always driving this road.

  The Chicago detective’s traveling companion was high on the FBI food chain, the Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations, and the airplane seats were first class—courtesy of taxpayers everywhere. Between the Illinois airport and their current holding pattern over New Mexico, the only useful information Kronewald had obtained from this man was a telling protest.

  “I haven’t memorized the name of every damned field agent,” said Harry Mars. “Sorry, I can’t recall an Agent Cadwaller.”

  Detective Kronewald took this denial as confirmation that Cadwaller was Washington’s spy in Dale Berman’s field office. “Well, the guy’s supposed to have a background in profiling. Does that help any?”

  In a further evasion, Harry Mars launched into another Lou Markowitz story that began with “That wonderful old bastard” and ended with “So what do you think of Lou’s kid?”

  “Ah, Mallory.” Kronewald forced a smile. His irritation was growing. He knew that Mallory must have done some dirty backroom deal with the fed beside him. But something big was definitely going down—that much was clear. The Bureau’s assistant directors did not run errands; Harry Mars was here to take over and run his own game.

  Detective Kronewald had grown weary of being sidetracked and handled. Leaning toward his window, he looked down on the landing lights of Albuquerque International and began the prelude to his best shot. “So, you think Dale Berman can do this one little thing without screwing it up?”

  The man from Washington checked his watch. “He’ll be waiting with the Finns when we land.”

  “Only if you’re sure Dale doesn’t know what you’ve got planned for him.”

  Gold!

  The AD’s composure had been fractured, and Kronewald knew he was on to something. In the past hour, Harry Mars had racked up four failed attempts to make a cell-phone connection, and the Chicago detective did not buy the story that this bureaucrat was calling his wife. So Mars had lost contact with his people on the ground.

  The plane touched down on the runway with a bump and then another in a not-so-smooth landing.

  An omen?

  Joe Finn was waiting by the door to the ladies’ room when Nahlman emerged hand-in-hand with Dodie. The boxer had only been parted from his daughter because neither child could wait. Now he scooped Dodie up in his arms and carried her off to the aisle of chewing gum, a staple of every child’s road-trip diet.

  A state trooper had been watching Nahlman’s back during the potty detail, and now the man faced the convenience store window. “That boss of yours is a real piece of work.”

  She followed the track of the officer’s eyes. Dale Berman was outside in the parking lot, casually leaning back against his show-and-tell exhibit, a car missing paint on the side where she had forced an agent to drive it into a concrete barrier.

  The state trooper stood beside her, and his voice was low, confidential. “Just for the record, ma’am, that was a real fine piece of driving tonight. I’d bail out of this detail, too, if I could.” He nodded toward the window on the parking lot and her boss. “You should talk to that asshole about using the radio.” Before she could ask what he meant by that, the trooper turned smartly on his heel, saying over one shoulder, “While you take care of that, I’ll get these folks back to the car.” He walked toward the small family standing by the cash register.

  When Nahlman stepped out of the convenience store, Berman pointed to the damaged area of the other agent’s vehicle, saying to her so calmly, “Nobody has to pee that bad.”

  Agent Allen had a worri
ed look about him as he hovered at the edge of this conversation. Nahlman smiled. She could not trust her partner; he was Berman’s creature now, but she could appreciate Barry Allen’s concern for her. She turned her eyes to Special Agent Berman, saying, “If we don’t turn around right now and head back to the airport road, we’ll miss the plane to Chicago.”

  “We’re not going to Albuquerque International. Our destination is an airport on the other side of Gallup.”

  This seemed to reassure her partner, but not Nahlman. “That’s an air force base.”

  “And a more secure location,” said Special Agent Berman. “Excuse me if I don’t share every damn detail with you. Your only job tonight was to follow the car ahead of you, and you botched that. Oh, and don’t let me catch you using a cell phone one more time.” He turned around to glare at Agent Allen. “Got that, son?”

  “Yes, sir.” Barry Allen stood at attention, holding up his phone to show his boss that it was not turned on.

  “Now yours,” said Berman.

  Nahlman pulled out her cell phone and depressed the button to turn it off.

  Dale Berman turned to Barry Allen, saying, “Thanks to your partner, I’m missing two cars that couldn’t make that hairpin turn. That’s four agents, four guns.” Whipping around to face Nahlman, he said, “If anything goes wrong tonight, it’s on your head.” He walked to the nearby state police cruiser. The trooper was keeping his eye on the Finns when the agent in charge leaned down to his window, pointed at the radio and asked, “You mind?”

  The trooper nodded and passed the radio handset to Berman, stringing its cord through the window. The officer then turned his eyes to Nahlman and gave her a shrug that said, I told you so.

  Dale Berman had made contact with his lost agents, and now he was directing them to fuel up their cars at the nearest gas station. “Then pull over and wait. Our next rendezvous has no gas pumps. It’s a few hours down the road, a highway rest stop just past Exit 96.”