I take a breath.
“Trust me,” she says.
73
SO I tell her everything. With a flutter in my stomach, and against my better judgment, I tell Elizabeth Ashland everything I know, everything I suspect, about Darwin’s crimes and the Chicago bombing. There is something cathartic about it, about laying out everything and making my case, though it’s tempered by the unknown—whether she will believe me and, more important, whether I can trust her.
She could run right to Dwight Ross and tell him that I’m off on some harebrained quest again. I’d be packing my bags by the end of the day. I’d lose all of my resources. Darwin would get away scot-free.
But if she believes me…we could devote the full resources of the Bureau to catching Darwin.
As always, Elizabeth remains blank-faced and noncommittal as I go through everything. She doesn’t take notes. She sits with her chin perched on her fists, still as a statue.
When I’m done, she pinches the bridge of her nose. “So, this guy you’re calling Darwin,” she says. “Every one of his victims were homeless or sick or poor or some kind of advocate for the homeless or sick or poor. All died seemingly of accidental or natural causes, but you couldn’t convince the local authorities to do autopsies.”
“Right.”
“And all of them had puncture wounds on their torsos.”
“Two wounds. Spread the approximate distance of Taser darts.”
“But nobody thought they were from a Taser.”
“They didn’t look like Taser wounds, Elizab—um, Assistant Dir—”
“Elizabeth is fine,” she says. “They didn’t look like Taser wounds because they were too narrow and clean.”
“Right. There was no barb, no hook. And no electrical burn surrounding the wound.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Her eyes drift upward. “So then he switches up. He decides to piggyback on Citizen David’s work. No more one-off killings. Now he can kill the same kind of people but get a few hundred of them at a time. And blame it on David.”
“Yes.”
“To do that, he had to know the details of David’s work. Stuff that hasn’t been made public. Like the Garfield the Cat watch.”
“Yes.”
“And to do that, he hacked into your home computers.”
“Yes. So my first thought was to trace it back and find him.”
She shakes her head. “No. If he’s any good—and he seems to be—it wouldn’t be directly traceable. He’d run it over a series of anonymous servers. We’d end up kicking in a door in Buenos Aires or Melbourne, Australia. But here’s the bigger problem: He’d know. If he’s proficient, he booby-trapped it with alarms. Once he knows we’re looking for him, he’ll disappear and start over with a new identity.”
That, more or less, is exactly what Pully told me. I didn’t expect Elizabeth Ashland to have the same level of cybersecurity knowledge as my computer-geek friend.
The look on my face must betray my thoughts. She puts her hand on her chest. “I came from Financial Crimes. We deal with this stuff all the time.”
“Sure.”
She drums her perfectly manicured nails on her desk, working this over in her mind. “And you think he’s in a wheelchair, and he’s local, and he has some kind of moon tattoo or scar on his face.”
“I do. We’re trying to narrow it down right now.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Still drumming her nails. “Okay, Emmy,” she says. “Follow the lead and let me know what I can do to help.”
I release the breath I’ve been holding. Just like that? I’m good? “And Assistant Director Ross…”
“Don’t worry about Dwight. I’m giving you the green light. I want constant updates.”
“Absolutely. Of course.”
She gets out of her chair. “I don’t know if this is a real lead,” she says. “If it is, you’ve done great work. If it isn’t—well, I can hear Dwight now: ‘Emmy’s wasted our time with some inane theory that a guy in a wheelchair is a serial killer.’”
“Understood.” But it’s the break we’ve needed. It narrows down our field immensely.
“You’re out on a limb,” Elizabeth says. “But I guess now I am too. Go find your wheelchair killer.”
74
RABBIT, PULLY, and I spend the day poring over the data that Rabbit spent most of the night compiling and converting into a usable format. There are over twenty thousand drivers with disability licenses in the multistate region we’ve targeted. The process of reviewing and cross-referencing isn’t as easy as it looks on TV, when some geek-chic computer diva types in a couple of words, hits a few buttons, and announces the name of the villain. This could take some time.
We call out progress reports, crack jokes in the heat of the adrenaline. But by five o’clock, the jokes have disappeared, and the comments have become weak, almost robotic updates.
By seven o’clock, the air seems to have completely gone out of my overworked, sleep-deprived team.
“Emmy.”
I spin around in my chair to see Elizabeth Ashland standing there with that same implacable professional expression she always displays, the one that seems to put a barrier between her and everyone else. But maybe Elizabeth and I have reached a détente. We may even be developing a friendship, or at least a kinship as women in this male-dominated place. Yes, she initially came at me with her claws out, but since then, she’s stood up for me more than once. Who knows, maybe someday—
Well, I’ll settle for a détente.
“Sorry to startle you,” she says.
“No, no.” I wave a hand. “We’re working the data. Give us the rest of the night and we’ll have it. If it’s in there, we’ll have it.”
“You guys should go home, get some sleep,” she says to the three of us. “You’re more effective with rest.”
“We’re close, though,” I say. “I think we have the winning formula here. But then going through it all…”
“Going through it all will take time too. And you’ll want to be alert. You don’t want to miss something.”
Like Pavlov’s dog responding to the bell, I suddenly feel the weight of sleep deprivation overtake me. I stretch my arms. I look over at my team. Rabbit’s eyes are heavy and bloodshot. Pully looks like a cranky little boy who needs a nap.
“Emmy, walk with me to the elevator, would you?” Elizabeth says.
As we get some distance from the cubicles, she says to me, “I spoke with Assistant Director Ross about this. I briefed the task force.”
“And?”
“And I told them that I directed you to continue investigating this lead. Dwight didn’t like it, and some of the others were skeptical, but they backed me up. So now it’s my problem, not yours. You’re covered. You can say you were following orders.”
We stop at the elevator. She punches a button.
“Wow,” I say. “Thank you.”
She steps into the elevator. “Thank me by finding him,” she says. “See you in the morning.”
75
ELIZABETH ASHLAND leaves the Hoover Building just after seven o’clock. He knew she’d work late. She always does; Books has seen her attendance records from the card swipes entering and exiting the building. It’s consistent with everything he knows about her—her discipline, her adherence to routine. She arrives at 7:00 a.m. and leaves at 7:00 p.m. every day, Monday through Friday.
He raises his camera and gets her in focus. She is walking north, as he expected she would. He is set up at the corner, well north of her, which gives him plenty of time to snap photos of her as she walks toward him, unaware.
She walks briskly with an efficient, confident stride. She removes a phone from her purse and looks at it as she walks. He zooms in on the phone itself. She is texting something, slowing down as she does so. He doesn’t have the authority to tap that phone. He wishes he did. He may have to get that authority.
From the decisive movement of her thumb and the fact that she stopped typing, he takes it
that she just sent a text. Then she drops that phone into her purse and pulls out another phone.
So she has at least two phones. That’s not unusual for an agent. There’s the government-issued phone and a personal phone. No big deal. Maybe.
She puts this second phone to her ear, her expression serious, her head nodding as she walks. Books lowers his camera and jogs north to stay ahead of her; he reaches the next corner and turns to shoot her again.
She ends the call, puts the second phone into her purse, and pulls out the first phone again. She does a thumb-swipe and reads something—presumably a response to that message she sent.
Then she crosses the street. There was a chance she would turn and head toward her condominium a few blocks away. But she doesn’t turn. Books didn’t really expect her to. He’s seen her credit card receipts, after all.
Elizabeth Ashland isn’t going home just yet.
76
NEAR MIDNIGHT, he’s in the comfort of his van, seated in his wheelchair. The vehicle idles at the curb, air-conditioning blowing hard on his face, some classical music playing low. The man who sometimes calls himself Charlie checks his GPS monitor for the movements of Emmy’s vehicle.
In his hands, a piece of paper, the corner bending slightly from the blast of cool air: a printout of an e-mail sent to Emmy’s work e-mail address but also copied to her personal e-mail account. Pully is a genius (but we already knew that) reads the subject line. Pully is presumably the sender, Eric Pullman, one of the analysts who works with Emmy at the FBI. A genius, maybe, but Pully shouldn’t have copied Emmy’s personal account on the e-mail, allowing Charlie to read it. Old habit, he presumes, from the time when Emmy was working from home so often; probably an automatic prompt on his computer. Bad luck for Emmy, good for Charlie.
The black-and-white photo, digitally enhanced, of the arm of a wheelchair, zoomed in to show the American-flag decal on the left armrest. The very wheelchair in which he currently sits.
He crumples the paper into a ball in his hands and squeezes it as if to pulverize it, his whole body quaking with anger.
“I should take you violently,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “I should hold you down by the throat, use my knife to slice you open, and make you watch me all the while, knowing you’ve been defeated, knowing that I defeated you. I should watch your pain, hear your cries and pleas.”
He nods. Yes.
“And only after it’s over would I decapitate you. I would place your head on a spike and drive it into the frontage of the Hoover Building, displaying the slain warrior for all to see, for all to salute.”
He smiles.
“I should violate you first,” he says. “Violate you, let you feel me inside you, doing whatever I please, before I rip your body open. Let you know that I’ve defeated you in every conceivable way.”
He checks the GPS. Emmy’s vehicle is close, only a few blocks from here; she’s on her way home. She’s been spending long nights at the Hoover Building, a change for her recently. She used to stay home to the point of reclusiveness, but now it’s day and night at the office. Why? Did something happen at the office? Did someone tell her she could no longer work from home?
It doesn’t matter anymore.
A car comes toward him down the street, make and model uncertain from the front, the headlights on. The GPS tells him who it is. The vehicle turns into the parking lot next to the apartment building. Emmy is getting home just before midnight, a modern-day Cinderella.
He watches her rush from her car to the front of her apartment building, compensating for the slight hitch in her stride from her injuries, looking about nervously.
She has struggled physically and emotionally. That much was chronicled in that PBS documentary they did on Emmy and the serial killer Graham. Also her recovery from the horrific injuries. The pain meds. The rush to the emergency room—and the corresponding question, asked only a year ago: Did Emmy Dockery try to kill herself?
After tonight, in the days and weeks to come, that documentary will receive thousands, if not millions, of hits online as people ask that question again.
“It’s not fair to either of us,” he says. “You deserve a grander, violent death. And with all you’ve put me through, I deserve to inflict it on you.” He sighs. “But no, Emmy, that won’t do. You’ll have to go out with a whimper. With an overdose, deemed accidental or suicidal. Fading away instead of standing and fighting.”
He reaches down from his wheelchair, picks up the bag, unzips it.
Taser. Plastic bag. Hairpins. The Repressor Ultimate, the handheld UHF transmitter to suppress her security alarm.
“It doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun first,” he says.
77
I REACH into my bag and remove the Glock, a firearm I once swore I would never carry. I drop my work bag quietly on the hallway floor outside my apartment. Put my ear against my apartment door and listen. I hear nothing save for the thumping of my pulse in my temples.
I unlock the door and push it open, stepping back, gun trained inside. The alarm lets out its shrill call. I flip on the nearby lights, then rush over to the kitchen and switch on those lights too, bathing the entire front of my apartment in full-wattage illumination—my heart pounds, but I’m seeing nothing, hearing nothing but that alarm’s cry. Then I flip on the lights in the hallway, poke my head into my bedroom, turn on those lights, rush to my office, flip that switch too, then do the same for the bathroom—
I return to the alarm pad by the door and disable it just before the thirty seconds have expired, just before it would have turned into a full-blaring siren and led to a call from the security company.
I bend over and take a breath. This is my life now—I’m scared to enter my own apartment, and I leave the alarm on until I’ve turned on every light in the place. My own apartment, once my sanctuary, the principal place I did my work, the only place I felt safe, has been stolen from me, first by Dwight Ross, who insisted I show up at the office every day, and later by Darwin, who entered this apartment and discovered everything about me.
I grab my bag from the hallway and bring it inside, then I close the door, lock it, and turn the dead bolt. Push the couch up against the door. Place the large jar of marbles near the edge of the couch’s cushion.
I don’t want to be here. I wanted to stay at the office, all night if necessary, and finish the job. But Elizabeth Ashland was right. My team, me included, is dog-tired. We need sleep. Even I need a few hours.
The couch wouldn’t stop Darwin from entering if he managed to get past the locks. But it would slow him down, hopefully long enough to prevent him from reaching the alarm before it turned to a full blare and alerted the police. And he’d knock the jar of marbles to the floor, which should wake me up if the shrill alarm did not.
Who am I kidding? He got past the alarm before, somehow, with some technology you could probably buy online. He wouldn’t care about the alarm. And he’s in a wheelchair. He’s not going to break into my apartment in the middle of the night.
He’ll come here when I’m gone and wait for me.
My head whips toward the hallway. All the lights are on. But I didn’t have time to check everywhere—I had only thirty seconds. He could be here. He could be here.
And I’ve just blocked the only exit with a couch.
I grip the weapon in both hands. I did some light training with it, but I don’t really know how to use it. That adage that a gun can make you less safe if you don’t know how to use it—that was never truer than with me.
I take a step toward the hallway. Then a second step, lumbering, painful, heavier. My legs start to quiver, then buckle, and I struggle to stay upright, taking one hand off the gun to reach the wall for balance.
My chest about to explode, scorching lava filling me, sucking for air but finding none, my hand missing the wall—
—my shoulder, my head hitting the carpet with a loud, crackling boom—
He’s coming. He’s coming out of my
bedroom, he’s going to come, any second now, I can feel it—
Buzz-buzz-buzz…buzz-buzz-buzz…
Can’t…breathe…
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
He’s coming…any second now…I can’t stop him…
Behind me, the turn of the lock. The click of the dead bolt.
The scraping of the couch’s leg on the tile entryway.
The crashing of glass falling off the couch, marbles bouncing everywhere.
Trying to raise up the gun, but my arm won’t move, my body on fire, trembling—
Behind me. I can’t see him, my head and body turned toward the interior hallway.
But he’s here. I hear him approaching.
His hand touching my face, his body over me, blocking the light, his tone calm but his words unintelligible through the white noise playing a morbid symphony in my head.
The gun taken from my hand without any resistance. The bag over my face.
A rushing sound…no…
“Shh…shh.”
No…
“Shhh…”
And then, as blackness takes my vision, as every thought leaves me, these words power through the haze:
“It’ll be over soon, Emmy.”
78
I OPEN my eyes with a start and lunge forward, a brown paper bag clutched in my hand.
“You’re okay,” Books says. He’s sitting on his knees next to me, his hand gently rubbing my arm. “Everything’s fine.” He looks at the blinking alarm pad on the wall. “You want to give me the pass code for that?”
I give it to him, and he puts it in, then returns and moves the couch from the door of my apartment back to its rightful place in the living room, or close enough.
“You had a panic attack,” he says, helping me onto the couch. “You hyperventilated and passed out for a few seconds. Everything’s fine now.” He holds up a bottle of water. “Drink.”
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