“Yeah, Hendricks, that yesterday. I’m taking four agents with me to the seventh floor. The rest of you?” He holds up three fingers. “Three ways to exit that building. One is the front door. One is the rear door. The third is through the underground parking garage. We station two agents at each of them. I don’t think he could make it to the underground parking, because we’re going to kill the elevator service. So we should station agents there who are less experienced or just general pussies. Hendricks, you’d make sense.”
Like he never left.
“No fooling around, boys,” he says. “This man is wanted for blowing up that building in Chicago and killing two hundred innocents. We like him for over a dozen other murders around the country. He’s capable of anything, so we have to be ready for anything. Okay?”
Nods all around the room, nervous energy and performance adrenaline so thick you can almost smell it.
“Let’s go catch a bad guy,” he says.
121
“BE CAREFUL,” I say to Books over the phone.
“I will. I’m not alone this time. I’m working with pros. If you find anything on Petty, either through the fingerprint search or at the rehab facility, let me know right away, okay?”
“Of course. And you keep me updated.”
“Will do.”
I end the phone call before I say something mushy or touchy-feely to Books. It’s not what he needs right now. He’s in performance mode.
“I’m heading to the rehab facility,” I say to Rabbit and Pully. “I’m going to show Tom Miller the video footage of Petty.”
“Right,” says Pully.
Rabbit glances at me but says nothing.
“That was good work, guys, getting that address so fast.”
“Thanks,” says Pully.
Rabbit looks away, remaining silent.
I check the clock. It’s now two thirty. “It won’t take me long,” I say. “I should be back no later than…four. See you guys then?”
“Of course you’ll see us,” says Pully. “Where the hell else would we go?”
But I wasn’t really addressing that comment to Pully, and the third member of our team knows it. “Rabbit,” I say, “I’ll see you around four.”
This time, I say it not as a question but a command. Rabbit clenches her jaw but doesn’t respond. Pully senses something between us but isn’t sure what, and he’s not the type to ask. He probably chalks it up to some older-women thing.
“Four o’clock, Rabbit,” I say, and I head out, not even bothering to wait for a response.
122
MICHELLE FONTAINE paces the hotel room, checking her watch, holding her cell phone, a phone whose number only a handful of people know. She calls her landline voice mail again, listening to the message for the third time.
“Michelle, it’s Tom Miller. Hey, listen, I was sorry to hear that you’re leaving. I hope you’re doing okay. But the reason—I think Louise called yesterday and told you the FBI is investigating Lew? I think it’s about the Chicago bombing, but they never actually said that. Has to be, right? How crazy is that? Anyway, one of the people at the FBI is coming to the clinic today at three o’clock. She’s going to show us a photo array. They’re looking for some guy they call Sergeant Petty. They must think he’s a…I don’t know, a coconspirator or something. We’re right in the middle of some crime story! So, can you make it at three o’clock today? I hope so. Or if not—well, I hope you’re doing okay, kiddo.”
She puts down the phone. Checks the time again: 2:37 p.m.
She grabs her keys and heads for the door.
123
I DRIVE my car to A New Day. The parking lot is nearly empty now, just after three o’clock on a Friday afternoon. No one is at the reception desk, and the door to the main hallway has been propped open. I walk in and call out, “Hello?”
“Oh, hi.” Tom Miller comes out of an office. “Sorry, the physical-therapy clinic at this facility is basically closed now. Nobody schedules late-afternoon appointments on Fridays.”
“I hope I didn’t keep you here,” I say.
“No, you’re good. Being part of an FBI investigation is more exciting than anything else I had on my social calendar. Actually, I don’t even have a social calendar.”
“I know the feeling,” I say. “So…should we get to the video footage?”
“Sure.” He looks past me. “I called Michelle. I was hoping she might be here.”
“You still haven’t heard from her?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. I don’t know her cell number. The clinic only has her landline. I left a voice mail there, hoping she’d pick it up.”
“I suppose we could wait a bit,” I say. It’s only a few minutes past three.
We sit in the reception area. Tom’s dressed pretty much as he was yesterday, which is how I suppose you’d expect a physical therapist to dress, in a T-shirt and sweats.
“So you like Michelle,” I say.
“Michelle? Sure. She’s a nice person. I didn’t get to know her all that well.”
“But you strike me as someone who gets to know people well.”
He blushes. “Well, I try to get along. I knew Michelle only a couple of weeks. Some people open up more than others, I guess.”
“Michelle didn’t open up?”
“Oh…” He tilts his head. “She didn’t seem very interested in talking about her past. Y’know, she’d change the subject or whatever. So I just minded my own business.”
“Give me examples,” I say. “I mean, we’re just killing some time here.”
He takes a breath. “Well, I asked her where she was from, and she said she was from the Midwest. I said, ‘Yeah? Whereabouts?’ And she didn’t—she changed the subject.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was from?”
“No. Or, like, I remember asking her what brought her to Virginia? Y’know, I thought she’d say something like family or a boyfriend or school or something.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she needed a change of scenery. And then she kinda started talking about something else. So I didn’t push it.” He raises a hand. “She’s a great therapist, though, and, really, she’s a very sweet lady.”
I understand. I also understand that she’s apparently not accepting Tom’s invitation to join us. I look at the clock. It’s now twenty past three. I want to get back soon. This wasn’t supposed to take more than a few minutes. I show the video, people either recognize him or not, and we move on.
I’m anxious to hear from Books, but it will take him some time to reach the apartment building in Huntington, get everyone in strike formation, and then execute the search of Mary Ann Stoddard’s apartment.
I ask Tom, “Have you had a chance to think about whether you might have seen Sergeant Petty?”
“Yeah, I mean—well, the video will be good to see. But I told you some of the people who’d listen to Lew in the courtyard weren’t patients?”
“Right. You said others would come. Other veterans.”
“Yeah. I mean, a guy who’s bald and in his forties—I wouldn’t say he was one of the regulars. But there was a guy who came around sometimes, and he might be the guy you’re talking about. He was very serious. Like, this was all just guys sitting around talking politics, y’know? Lew was definitely doing most of the talking, but it was, like, banter. But this guy, he seemed like he was concentrating more, if that makes sense. Like it was super-serious to him. And he didn’t really seem like he was part of the group, I guess you’d say. Like he was this outsider who’d come around and listen really closely and leave.”
This could be helpful. I need to get this video footage in front of Tom.
“Is there a DVD player around here?” I ask. “Maybe we’d hear Michelle come in.”
“Yeah, there’s one here in Louise’s office.”
Tom leads me into one of the administrative offices, a spacious one, neatly arranged, the walls lined with photos of family
and diplomas and certificates. In the corner is a television and a DVD player. “I’ve never used this, but how hard can it be?” he says.
I hand him the DVD of the surveillance footage, and he puts it in. The TV screen goes from black to…fuzz.
“Hang on.” Tom tries buttons on the DVD player. He picks up one remote, points it, and pushes buttons. He changes channels. He changes the source. He puts down the remote and tries another one. “This will do it, I think.” But no, it doesn’t.
I sigh. “Is there another DVD player around?”
Tom thinks for a moment. “Maybe the assistant director’s office.” We try that. The door’s locked, so Tom has to retrieve the master keys and open it. No TV inside, no DVD player.
Ultimately, he tries every administrative office, including Payroll and HR. No functioning DVD player, at least not one we can make work.
It’s now three forty. We are way beyond the time I wanted to leave. I need to go. “Tom, wasn’t there a DVD player in that conference room up on the second floor where I was talking yesterday?”
“Oh yeah, there is,” he says. “And I’ve used that one. I can use that one. C’mon.” We pass through the administrative offices and go back to reception.
Tom looks out the front door. “Still no Michelle,” he says. “I just…don’t know where she’d be.”
124
BOOKS MEETS with the bomb squad and SWAT team a block from the location in downtown Huntington. The SWAT team is dispatched to the rooftops of the adjacent buildings. The bomb squad will keep its distance but stand ready to respond on Books’s command.
The agents fan out around the Meredith Court and Gardens. Books enters the lobby with several agents. Two of them will secure the area and make sure the elevator service is cut after Books reaches the seventh floor. Two others will secure the underground parking garage. The rest will go with him.
They show the lobby clerk their badges and explain the situation. The man, young and wet behind the ears, nods his head in compliance and can barely speak. The assistant manager comes into the lobby. After more conversation, he hands Books a key that will open unit 719 and probably all the others too.
Books and four agents—one of them Hendricks—take the elevator up to the seventh floor. “We’re here,” Books says into the collar of his coat. “Bring the elevator down to the ground floor and kill it.”
“Roger that,” he hears through his earpiece.
The agents hold their weapons out but low as they jog along the tattered carpeting and past the gray walls toward the southeast corner, unit 719.
They spread out, two to a side, flanking the door. Books pushes the buzzer and waits. The agents have their weapons up now, stern expressions, masses of bundled energy.
Books pushes the buzzer again. “Mary Ann Stoddard!” he calls out. He pushes it again. “Mary Ann Stoddard! This is the FBI! Open up!”
Nothing.
Books nods at one of the agents, who takes the key, places it firmly in the lock, and turns it. The door opens but is caught by a chain.
The agents look at one another, catching the significance. You couldn’t put the chain on the door from the outside.
Someone’s inside that apartment.
“Mary Ann Stoddard!” Books calls out again, this time through a partially opened door.
He waits, trying to hear inside over the pounding of his pulse.
Finally he steps back and kicks the door, popping the chain. The agents swarm inside, weapons aimed at the various corners of vulnerability, sweeping the front room.
Nothing. A dingy open room with old furniture and a large window facing east. A kitchenette with coffee cups in the sink and the smell of something fried in the air.
Next to it, a closed door—must be the single bedroom.
“Mary Ann Stoddard!” Books calls out.
He hears something inside the room, glass breaking.
“South,” Books says quietly into his collar, speaking to the SWAT sniper on the roof to the south of the building, “do you have a visual?”
“Negative. Blinds are pulled.”
“East, a visual?”
“Negative, Books. Blinds are pulled on this side too.”
His heart races. He reaches his hand out for the door. Nods to the other agents, who gather behind him. Turns the knob. It isn’t locked.
He pushes the door open, rushes in, weapon up—
A woman in a hospital bed is struggling to sit up; a glass has shattered on the floor next to the nightstand. Her head is wrapped in a bandanna; her skin is pale, her eyes sunken. She looks frail, and her movements are shaky. The rest of the room’s empty. The other agents confirm the bathroom is unoccupied.
“FBI, ma’am,” says Books. “Mary Ann Stoddard?”
“Yes. I…heard you. I was…sleeping.”
“Where is he, ma’am?”
She squints at him. “Are you Agent…Bookman? Books?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman’s head falls back against the pillow.
“Agent Bookman,” she says, “do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
125
TOM MILLER and I climb the stairs to the conference room on the second floor. We enter the room, which is the same as yesterday, with the nice table and AV equipment surrounded by drop cloths, roller pans, and paint cans, partially painted walls, and the pack of water bottles, minus one bottle I took yesterday. The heat here is just as oppressive as it was yesterday, the sunlight blazing through the windows.
“Okay, this shouldn’t take long,” says Tom. “This machine, I know how to use.”
He pops in the DVD and waits for everything to boot up.
I pull out my phone. This is the one part of the building where I can get some reception.
My phone is lit up with voice-mail messages from Rabbit—one from twenty-eight minutes ago, one from twenty-one minutes ago, one from twelve minutes ago.
All while I was downstairs, unable to receive them.
The TV screen comes to life and starts playing the DVD, showing the alley outside Books’s store in grainy black-and-white.
I access my voice mail and lift the phone to my ear as the image of Sergeant Petty ambling down the alley with the duffel bag over his shoulder appears on the screen.
“Emmy, we just got the prints back,” I hear Rabbit say, her voice higher-pitched than usual, urgent.
“My God, I’ve seen that guy,” says Tom, pointing at the TV screen. Rabbit’s voice, in my ear, keeps going, rapid-fire.
“…real name is Todd Crisman. He was in Special Forces, later recruited by the CIA. You know how these people talk, but I could read between the lines. He was an assassin. He did special-ops assassinations around the world.”
A fire erupts in my chest and cascades down my arms and legs. My phone slips from my hand and falls to the drop cloth at my feet. I can’t breathe. I try to draw in oxygen but can’t.
No, please, no, not now—
The fire runs through me as the room starts to spin, everything at an angle, the pounding of my heart throbbing in my ears—
“Emmy, that’s him, that’s the—are you okay?”
I stagger back, grab the radiator for support as my legs threaten to give out.
“Hey, what’s happening? Are you having a heart attack?”
“No. No,” I whisper breathlessly, shaking my head furiously.
“A panic attack?”
He reaches for me, but with my free hand, I swat him away.
He draws back, startled, alarmed, his head cocked. He looks down at the phone at my feet and then back at me as I struggle for air, any tiny bit of oxygen.
Tom picks up the phone and pushes a button, putting the voice mail on speakerphone, then starts the message again. We listen together to Bonita Sexton’s urgent voice.
“Emmy, we just got the prints back. From your water bottle, I mean. It somehow ended up in Michelle’s evidence bag. His name isn’t Tom Miller. His real name i
s Todd Crisman. He was in Special Forces, later recruited by the CIA. You know how these people talk, but I could read between the lines. He was an assassin. He did special-ops assassinations around the world. His mother was a prostitute who would stay in homeless shelters and SROs. She was murdered, apparently, by two homeless men when Tom was twelve. He’s our guy. It’s Tom Miller. His psych profile says that he—”
Tom punches off my phone and holds it at his side. “Well, Emmy, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in myself.” He looks over at the pack of bottles on the floor. “When you asked for a bottle of water yesterday? You tricked me there.”
He takes a single step toward me.
“That must have been before you got so excited about this other guy, Petty, whoever the hell he is.”
He walks right up to me as I struggle to stay upright, as I pray that oxygen will come, that I won’t lose consciousness—
“But you still have no proof,” he whispers to me, putting his hand on my cheek. “Whatever I did in the military doesn’t make me a killer now. Any proof you come up with is proof that points to Lieutenant Wagner. Who has fled, by the way, which doesn’t exactly make him look innocent.”
“We…we…found his body,” I say, black spots flashing before my eyes.
His expression changes, the confidence disappearing, but only for a moment. “No, you didn’t,” he says. “That’s a lie.”
“People…know I’m here,” I say.
He grips my hair in his hand, jerks my head. “But then you left here,” he whispers, “and I have no idea where you went. Must be that this Petty character killed you. Or maybe Lieutenant Wagner. Oh, the list of suspects.”
“Petty is…Petty…”
“Petty is what?” He jerks my head again. “Hmm? Petty is what, Emmy?”
“…in…cust—custody…”
“You already have Petty in custody?” Tom releases my hair, scrolls through the messages on my phone. “Well, Emmy, here’s a text from your beloved Agent Bookman from nine minutes ago that says ‘We missed him.’ That must be Petty…not in custody. All these lies.”
Unsolved Page 31
