Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

“Negative. The manager said no one lived there, so I issued orders from the plane. Do not approach under any circumstances. Didn’t want to risk the UNSUB seeing or hearing anything.”

  “Check it now. But for God’s sake be careful.”

  “You heard him,” says Payne.

  We wait in a distinctly uncomfortable silence. Lenz stands sipping his Evian water about five feet from the crowd. When he notices me watching, he gives me a mock salute.

  “Goddamn it!” says a voice over the speaker. “There’s another phone over here! By the wall adjoining the target apartment. The thing’s blasted to hell, but it’s a phone. There’s a modem too, and some other kind of gray box. Looks homemade.”

  “I will have someone’s ass,” says Baxter. “Where’s the manager of the complex?”

  “Outside, Alpha,” says a different voice.

  “Put that son of a bitch on camera.”

  A command is barked. Then two Dallas SWAT officers pull a middle-aged man with dark skin and black hair into view. He looks like an Arab.

  “Arrest and Mirandize him,” says Baxter.

  I stare as a Dallas police officer arrests the terrified apartment manager and reads his Miranda rights.

  “Put a headset on him,” Baxter orders. When this is done, he asks, “What’s your name?”

  The man swallows and says, “Patel. Mohandas Patel.”

  I close my eyes in disbelief. An Indian.

  “You manage these apartments, Mr. Patel?”

  “I own them. With my brother, resident of Houston.”

  “One of the murders was in Houston,” says one of the nerds.

  Baxter asks, “Why did you tell the police that apartment was empty, Mr. Patel?”

  “I did not say that. I said no one lived there.”

  “There’s a telephone inside that apartment, sir. Someone must have put it there. Someone who rented the apartment.”

  Patel’s eyes brighten. “Ah, yes, apartment was rented. But no one ever moved in. They pay the rent, I don’t ask questions. Police ask who lives in that unit, I tell them no one. I tell them correctly, yes?”

  Baxter expels air, trying to suppress a fury I can only guess at. “Who rented that apartment, Mr. Patel?”

  “Nice lady,” he says. “A lady from my own country.”

  “An Indian woman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A sigh of satisfaction from Dr. Lenz’s direction.

  “How old was she?” asks Baxter.

  Patel rocks his head from left to right, estimating from memory. “Between forty and fifty. Hard to tell these days. Well-spoken lady. Very lovely.”

  “Who rented the other apartment?”

  “Mr. Strobekker. Almost a year ago.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I already described him for the police.”

  “Describe him again.”

  Patel hesitates, then looks at each of the officers holding his arms. Both are at least a foot taller than he is. “I believe I would like to call my brother,” he says in a shaky voice.

  “At least he didn’t ask for a lawyer,” murmurs a voice behind me.

  “My brother is an attorney,” adds Patel, driving the final nail into Baxter’s interrogation.

  “Alpha, this is Bravo Leader,” says Payne, his voice cool and professional again. “Dallas police advise they do a lot of business at this complex. High-dollar call girls, drug busts, you name it. The rent is high but it buys privacy.”

  “Damn,” Baxter mutters.

  Someone pulls the headset off Patel. “What you want us to do with him?” asks a heavy Texas accent. The voice of a cowboy.

  “Book him,” says Baxter. “Let him call his brother, then sweat them both. Threaten them with RICO, terrorism, whatever it takes. I’ll send my regional profiler over to consult. We’ve got a hostage out there somewhere. Copy that?”

  “Yessir,” says the cowboy. “Let’s take this one back to the barn, boys.”

  “This is Bravo, Dan,” says Payne, off camera. “You want us back in Kansas City?”

  Baxter thinks for a few seconds. “No. Get your wounded squared away, then get back here ASAP. Sorry, buddy.”

  “No problem. We may doze, but we never close. Mount up, girls.”

  The video screens wink out.

  “Why didn’t we trace through to that second phone?” Baxter asks, turning toward the techs.

  “He could have blocked it,” one answers. “With the right equipment. Some kind of relay. Probably that gray box.”

  “Equipment notwithstanding,” says a calm voice on the periphery, “I believe Mr. Strobekker’s ruse worked on a deeper level.” It’s Lenz, of course. “He led us through a dozen states, overseas, then through that little burg in Wyoming—which we assumed was his pièce de résistance—and finally to the Dallas apartment. That was the first actual residence we tracked him to, so we assumed it was where he lived. I’ll bet the technicians didn’t even try to look beyond it.”

  I think I see a couple of sheepish faces among the techs.

  “The question,” says Baxter, “is can we trace the call now that it’s been terminated?”

  “There’ll definitely be a record,” a tech says brightly.

  “I don’t want to rain on your parade, guys,” I chime in, “but I think you’re going to find that telephone simply dialed an Internet on-ramp, and from there sent a message to some anonymous bulletin board a thousand miles away. Strobekker dropping off-line during the raid was probably coincidence. He wouldn’t risk a direct link to his physical location. If you get the phone records, you can find out where that computer sent its warning message to, but if it’s a big BBS, thousands of people will log on over the next few days and see it. And you’ll never be able to track them all.”

  Baxter’s face tightens with frustration. “We have access to some excellent cryptanalysts. If we could find the message, we might be able to break it down.”

  “That’s not the point. We already know what it says. It might be only one character. It might be a ‘test’ message, of which there are thousands. It might even say, ‘Dear Daddy, somebody just blew me up.’ ”

  “Goddamn it!” curses Baxter, his anger like a kerosene heater in the room.

  “You need Miles Turner,” I say bluntly. “He can nail this bastard for you.”

  “Turner may be this bastard,” says Lenz, stepping through the tech desks.

  “Bullshit, Doctor.”

  Baxter is studying me intently. “Is Turner that good?”

  “He is truly scary, Mr. Baxter.”

  “I’ll hire him as a consultant. Plenty of precedent.”

  “Not Turner,” Lenz says firmly.

  Baxter waves his hand and the crowd of techs scatter like leaves. When they are sufficiently dispersed, he says on a low voice, “We’ve taken casualties, Arthur. We’ve got a hostage out there. Hopefully alive. You’ve got a proactive plan, but it’s a long game. We’ve got to get this SOB before he kills Rosalind May or anybody else.”

  “Using Turner would be a mistake, Daniel. If you want an electronics wizard, call the NSA. If you want Strobekker, give me Cole.”

  Baxter considers this long enough for me to get edgy. Then he says, “The Bureau was slow to get on the computer crime bandwagon, Arthur, and I’m not ready to say we’ve caught up. Cole came close to saving a life today, and he says Turner’s better than he is.”

  “Daniel,” Lenz says evenly, “if my past work means anything to you, trust me now.”

  Baxter bites his bottom lip and probes Lenz’s eyes. A silent conversation is taking place based on years of professional association, and maybe more than that. It might as well be in Farsi. Lenz is the first to speak aloud.

  “How’s my alter ego coming?”

  Baxter does not respond. Then, almost grudgingly, he says, “Another hour should do it. It’s tough to get access to some of those offices after hours.”

  While I have Baxter close, I take a chance.
“Mr. Baxter, I’m ready and willing to assist Dr. Lenz, but I’d like to do as much of it as I can from home. There’s no reason we can’t work together that way. And quite frankly, I promised my wife I’d be back by morning.”

  Baxter’s mind is miles away. “How long do you need Cole to get you started, Arthur?”

  “Impossible to say.” Lenz glares at me. “He won’t make a commercial flight anyway. Not back to Mississippi.”

  Baxter checks his watch, then looks at Lenz. “I’d prefer not to use the regional SWAT teams for this. At oh-one hundred hours I’m deploying a second Hostage Rescue unit from Quantico to a more southern-lying city. Jan Krislov offered us the use of her corporate jet, and I took her up on it. Cole, you get Dr. Lenz set up and running in three hours, you can hitch with HRT. I’ll have the pilot set you down in Jackson. Good enough?”

  “That’s where my truck is. I appreciate it, sir.”

  Lenz looks like he might argue, but Baxter doesn’t give him the chance. With a curt nod he is away and reaching for a telephone.

  Lenz motions me toward the door of the command post. Keeping my arms close to my body, I move carefully down the narrow aisle between the shelves of humming equipment, past Baxter, past the short-sleeve poly-cotton shirts glowing in the pixel light. Someone rises to let me out of the trailer, and when my feet hit the pavement I expel the conditioned air from my lungs and drink in the cool forest breeze.

  Hearing the scrape of a shoe behind me, I turn and find the square-jawed face of Special Agent Schmidt staring from the darkness.

  “Why don’t you wait in the car?” he suggests, opening the door of Lenz’s Mercedes.

  Two minutes after Schmidt closes me inside, Lenz slides into the driver’s seat, holding a fresh Tab in one hand and an Evian in the other. He sets both in a plastic drink caddy, then cranks the engine and closes the door. While I wipe the top of the Tab can on my shirt, he lights a cigarette, then exhales into the Virginia night.

  “Very smooth,” he says. “Very smooth indeed.”

  Chapter 19

  Dear Father,

  The barbarians are at the gate.

  It was inevitable, of course. And I have no fear that they will locate me. But I shall have to exercise greater caution when procuring patients. I must assume that the Justice Department will shut down EROS, or that the company will shut itself down for legal reasons. Of course the list makes that academic. I must remember to thank Turner properly.

  Or will they shut it down? Perhaps Jan Krislov will resist. It could become quite a cause célèbre. Another battle in her crusade for electronic privacy. Someday I’ll have to show her just how private her little universe really is.

  My God, such noise from the basement. I should never have let Levy catch sight of the O.R. He should quiet himself, or I’ll be forced to send Kali down to quiet him.

  But first things first. I need new patients, and I suppose my next move depends on the FBI. Will they enter the digital forests of the night? Or will they simply try to fence me out?

  No matter.

  I shall burn all the brighter now.

  Chapter 20

  Lenz’s Mercedes shunts us through the night like spores on a wind. He says we’re headed back to McLean, Virginia, to an FBI safe house from which his digital decoy operation will be run. In the Delta I can drive for miles at night and see no light but moon and stars, but tonight I’m thankful for the busy interstate. The glaring lights and motion help me to suppress the image of the exploding PC and the screams of wounded men in the Dallas apartment.

  “Are we somewhere near the Manassas battlefield?” I ask, recalling a golden summer years ago when my father and I climbed Henry Hill in the chill morning mist to see the spot where Stonewall Jackson earned his nom de guerre.

  “Ten or fifteen miles to the west,” Lenz replies.

  “Is it a Disney World now?”

  “No, they finally killed that, thank God.”

  The first uplifting news of a very long day. “Back there,” I say hesitantly. “At the trailer. I was thinking that Strobekker, or whoever he is, didn’t really mean to kill anybody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the explosion was pretty much confined to the computer. He could have flattened that whole building if he’d wanted to.”

  Lenz ponders this for a few seconds. “That helps with the profile, but in the larger scheme it doesn’t make a bit of difference. When he killed that Hostage Rescue man, he practically signed his own death warrant. If he doesn’t surrender the instant we locate him, he’s a corpse.”

  Lenz lights a fresh cigarette. “Why don’t we talk about it?”

  “The case?”

  “No. This thing that’s eating you.”

  “Jesus, don’t you ever let up?”

  “Believe it or not, Cole, I’m trying to help you. You fear my knowing anything about you. Having leverage over you. But if you’d really listened to me earlier, you’d know this case means life to me. It’s my personal resurrection. Don’t you see the leverage that gives you? One anonymous e-mail message to Strobekker and he knows ‘Anne Bridges’ is me. I’d never be able to prove you did it.”

  “But I’d never do that.”

  “And I’d never betray a confidence from you.” He cracks his window slightly and blows a stream of smoke at the opening. “I respect you, Cole. You risked civil prosecution—maybe financial ruin—to come forward with the names of these women. Turner didn’t. Krislov didn’t. I don’t know that they ever would have, so long as they weren’t staring the corpses in the face.”

  I start to argue, but Lenz may be right.

  “Guilt is a funny thing,” he says. “A sense of guilt, I mean. It’s what separates you from Strobekker. Ironic, isn’t it? This cross you bear makes you a better man. I ask you to talk about it only because I know the pain of secrets so intimately. I’ve seen what it does to people. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t advocate unburdening yourself to your wife. That would make you feel better, but it would make her feel much worse. The noble thing is to bear the weight yourself. But that doesn’t mean you can’t share it a little. Even Christ did that.”

  I study Lenz’s face for any trace of cynicism, but he seems sincere. “I don’t think I could just tell you. You or anybody. The bare reality of it is . . . I don’t know . . . too simple.”

  “Just start talking. These things have their own rhythm. Anything else is just facts.”

  “You don’t want facts?”

  “Facts are for men like Daniel. I’m a truth man. And that’s altogether different.”

  After a slow breath, I push my hands back through my hair and say, “You know my wife is an OB-GYN.”

  “Yes.”

  “You probably don’t know we were high school sweethearts.”

  “You’ve been married that long?”

  “No. We were high school sweethearts who got married twelve years after high school. We’ve only been married three years.”

  “No other marriages before that?”

  “No.”

  I give Lenz a thumbnail sketch of Erin and Drewe’s family history, focusing on the opposite personalities of the sisters and the deceptions they used to hide them. The glow of Lenz’s cigarette bobs up and down as I try to describe Erin’s unique combination of beauty and sensuality, but I’m not sure he gets it. He seems more interested in Drewe.

  “She graduated first in her class at Tulane Medical School?”

  “Tied for first.”

  “No mean accomplishment. You never slept with her in high school?”

  “Plenty of times. A lot of making out, fooling around. But we only actually had intercourse once, and it was a disaster. I think she just wanted to get the whole virgin thing out of the way. It was a mistake.”

  “You didn’t have sex with other girls during this time?”

  “Too many.”

  “Did your wife know this?”

  “Eventually.”

  “And sh
e knew some of the girls.”

  “Like I said, small school.”

  “Was her sister one of these girls?”

  “No. Erin and I were enemies then. Almost like brother and sister.”

  “What life path did Erin take?”

  “Four days after she graduated, she left Mississippi for Manhattan and never looked back. A guy saw her in a restaurant and wham, she was a model. She went through the usual celebrity arc—Who’s Erin Anderson? Get me Erin Anderson. Get me someone like Erin Anderson. Who’s Erin Anderson?—but at ten times the usual speed. A year after she left home, she was drying out in a clinic in New Hampshire with a very wealthy ‘friend’ footing the bill.

  “For the next few years she kicked around New York and L.A. on the arms of various actors, artists, musicians. I actually ran into her a couple of times on the road. But we just played the roles we’d played since childhood.”

  Lenz stubs out his cigarette and lights another. “How so?”

  “Friendly but sarcastic. She made fun of Drewe, the saintly sister pursuing her medical degree with the commitment of a nun. She joked about my waiting for Drewe.”

  “Were you?”

  “I don’t know. I had affairs during those years. Long, badly ended relationships.”

  “Did you have sex with Erin then?”

  “Hell no. I told you.”

  “Yes, but it’s obvious that there’s always been a strong attraction between you and your wife’s sister.”

  “Any man who sees my wife’s sister feels a strong attraction to her, okay?”

  “But Erin doesn’t feel reciprocal attraction to these masses of other men, does she? Not the kind of attraction she felt for you.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time.”

  “Of course you did. Continue.”

  “No matter what relationships I was in during those years, I always stayed in contact with Drewe. Sometimes a year would go by without our seeing each other. Just a couple of late-night calls. But other times she’d call me in tears about something and I would drop whatever I was doing and drive ten or twelve hours to New Orleans to be with her.”

  “Still no sex between you?”

  “Not in the complete sense. She’s a different sort of girl. Very old-fashioned.”