He switched off the phone, glanced into the adjacent room, and saw that the big girl on the bed had not been disturbed. He knew she came home tired and needed her rest. She lay in a tangle of sheets, one long leg exposed above the bedclothes. Near the foot of the bed, an antique dresser with chipped veneer was cluttered with makeup, clothes, and musical instruments, including a small squeezebox and a well-worn Gibson without a case.
As Francis continued to stroke the crow, his fingers encountered the small plastic bridle and the camera mounted on it. “Where did you get this, Richard?” Clearly surprised, he glanced to where the girl slept and slowly closed the door so as not to wake her. He switched on the light. “At ease, Richard,” he said. The bird stopped his shuffling and rubbed its head on Francis’ yellow shirt.
Francis gently lifted him and studied the camera. It was one that he and Lewis had redesigned. Only a couple of people knew about the camera. Why had they put it on? Did they want Richard to film something, or were they sending Francis a message, or possibly both?
Francis checked the camera apparatus as much by feel as by sight. He pressed the catch on a tiny door and felt a memory chip eject partway. He pulled it out and looked at it and then at a laptop on the table. The computer belonged to his host. He had left his own phone and computer behind. He knew the phone had a GPS function, which would allow its location to be tracked, and he had to assume the same was true of the computer. He placed Richard on the table, sat, opened the laptop, and took a few minutes to locate the video processing program. He inserted the memory chip. After a few clicks, he pulled up an image.
As usual with the bird cam, the image was disorienting at first. It took a moment for Francis to figure out that Richard had been perched atop the Creatures 2.0 lab building when the video started. It was dim, and the night vision function of the camera had self-selected, as it was programmed to. The figure of a man approached the backside of the lab. Richard and the camera were focused almost straight down on him when he opened the door and entered. Francis could not make out the man’s face, but the mass of his shoulders and the way he moved seemed familiar. The door closed slowly, as though the man was a burglar, trying to be quiet.
Richard panned around after the man disappeared. Then the image was jumbled as he glided down to the lawn. Several moments passed. Then Francis could see dim light coming from the windows and the French doors leading to one of the rooms. This room, Francis knew, was the main lab he himself had used and the one Lewis would now be using. Two quick flashes followed, flashes that showed through other windows as well. A moment later, the back door opened and the man came out. He moved quickly but with no suggestion of panic. He turned to close the door, but before he could do so his head jerked up as if he had heard something. After that, he moved into the shadows and the trees behind the building, where his dark clothes made him disappear from sight. But in that instant when he turned to close the door, his face had been visible.
The image bounced again. Richard must have been hopping to the open door. There was a blinding light while the camera made its transition from night vision to normal light. Francis watched as Richard hopped through the lab. It was an odd perspective of a familiar room, the vantage being about eight inches off the floor. The camera panned up to an open drawer in the lab bench, then switched quickly to the open door leading to the reception area. Beside the desk, he could just make out something on the floor. The scene advanced toward the door as Richard hopped up to a lab bench. From this vantage, the reception area was clearly visible. Francis recoiled. It was Gloria lying in a pool of blood, and there was absolutely no doubt she was dead. His jaw dropped in shock. The video came to an end. The bird by some instinct or circumstance had chosen to advance no closer to the body of the beautiful young woman.
For more than a minute, Francis sat there. He shut his eyes, but that did not prevent the tears from flowing. At length, he drew a sleeve across his eyes. He studied the computer, then studied Richard, still standing on the table. He placed his fingers on the keyboard, typed in some commands, and then, leaning in toward the screen, used the mouse to back up the video to when the mystery man left through the back door. Frame by frame, he zeroed in on the exact moment he turned his face into the light. He squinted at the image, then used the editing controls at the bottom of the screen. He pulled up the cropping tool, put a frame around the man’s face, and enlarged it.
A gasp escaped his throat. He knew the man, although not by his real name. The last time he had seen him was in Afghanistan. He had not liked him in Afghanistan, and the thought of him—this killer—being here in Asheville made Francis’s blood run cold. He sat there thinking about what the man had done, thinking about what he himself was going to do.
He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Mattie, who had awakened in the next room and silently joined him and Richard. She leaned in to see the screen, too.
“The last time I saw a face like that, I was reading a Dick Tracy comic book,” she said.
“Believe me, there is nothing comical about this guy,” Francis said. “If you ever see him, let me know right away. And never under any circumstances talk to him or let him know you noticed him.”
“So, he’s as bad as he looks?”
“Worse. You have no idea.” He struggled to find words. “Most of the guys I met overseas were the salt of the earth. They were regular guys with the best of intentions, there to do a difficult job to protect the rest of us. I loved them. But this guy and a few others like him were different. Fortunately, only a few. They thrived on the worst of the stuff going on over there.” Francis stopped. “There are lots of people, maybe even a majority of people, who think we need guys like this. They think this is the kind of guy we need to unleash on our enemies to protect ourselves. Well, I’ve met these guys, and I can tell you they’re not protecting anyone. This is not the good guy with a gun people like to talk about.”
“This guy is in the military?” Mattie asked.
Francis shook his head. “Private contractor.”
Mattie gave him a hug.
He figured partly in sympathy for his plight, and partly because his speech was beginning to convey the enormity of the evil he was talking about. He shivered.
“And you think this guy is in Asheville now?” she asked.
Francis nodded.
“Then I know what you need to do with this picture,” she said.
CHAPTER 22
Montford Avenue
Dinah was deep in dreamland. She felt herself flying, overlooking where she lived on Montford Avenue in a house built in 1921 and most recently renovated in the neighborhood’s 1990s renaissance. She lived there with two other women. Montford was a mixture of large estate houses, modest cottages, and a few stately apartment buildings, all put together by the same artisans who had created the Biltmore Estate. The predominant aesthetic was Arts and Crafts.
The house Dinah lived in was no exception to this. She had the attic floor, where, as she swooped down in her dream, she caught a glimpse through the dormer window, observing a pleasant room under the slanting planes of the roof.
The room had, to be generous, a lived-in look. The shades on the other windows were drawn most of the way, creating a subdued light. On the small stand beside the bed, Dinah’s iPhone was inserted into a speaker/charger. On the floor beside the bed were the crumpled clothes she had peeled off and dropped the night before—or, more accurately, when she had arrived earlier that morning. She had been exhausted and needed her sleep and needed more of it now. Flying was fun. She spread her arms and the air hit her face and she felt refreshed and not as exhausted as she’d been the day before.
That morning, Richard the crow was, in fact, standing on the roof and looking in through the dormer window. The crow saw the girl lying on the bed, covered by a light flannel sheet pulled up to her neck. Her bare arms were exposed, one beside her body, one running under the pillow, where the wild abundance of hair spread out.
&nb
sp; After checking the roof, Richard tapped on the window. He tapped three times, paused, and then tapped three more.
She raised her head with apparent difficulty after the second triad of taps. The crow cocked his head at the window, then tapped three more times. This time, she came awake with a start, looking around for the source of the tapping. She flipped around under the covers, opened the drawer of her bedside stand, and took out her gun, all in one smooth motion. She scanned the room with eyes and gun in a methodical sweep. The crow watched her with one cocked eye, then tapped twice more on the pane.
Dinah heard the taps and saw movement at the window and sprang out of bed, holding the sheet against her body. As her head cleared, she approached with caution. The crow tapped again, and she looked at him before putting the gun on the bookcase beneath the window, undoing the lock, and opening the sash. The crow did a little hopping dance for her, opening and closing his beak.
“Richard?” she said.
The crow bobbed his head in an exaggerated motion and gave out caws that certainly sounded like a positive response, even to Dinah’s untrained ear. Unsure what to do next, she took another step forward and slowly extended her hands, palms up toward him, simply because it felt like the least threatening move she could make.
Richard responded by leaning in and rubbing the side of his head against her palms. Dinah smiled and petted the bird, stroking gently along his head and down his back. She noticed he no longer wore his camera, but he did have something attached to his right leg.
She bent to get a better look. Richard stood still, allowing her to examine it, first with her eyes, then with her fingers. It was a small black plastic capsule attached with a couple of elastic straps. When she gently unclipped the straps and removed the object, Richard hopped around as if happy to be relieved of it.
She studied the capsule a second and removed the lid. She shook the contents out into her palm. It was a tiny computer memory chip. She started toward her computer but realized this card was much smaller than any she had seen, so she had no idea how to read what was on it. She thought for a moment and realized she would need help. She would have to go out. She looked at Richard, still waiting outside her window. She went to the bedside table and took a notebook and pen from the drawer. She ripped out a small piece of a page and wrote, “Message received.” This she folded, rolled, and inserted into the capsule before fitting its cap on. She turned toward the crow, unsure how he would feel about her putting the capsule on his leg.
“Here, Richard,” she said in a cooing voice.
He tilted his head, giving her that quizzical expression. She tried the move with the open palms again, and it worked. Richard hopped toward her and allowed himself to be petted. When she gently grasped his leg, he made no move to escape. She got the capsule rig attached with a minimum of fuss and stood upright, pleased with herself and with the bird. Now, she wondered how to tell him to take the message back to the sender.
“Fly home,” she said.
Head tilted; Richard stared.
His eyes are so clear and brown. “Fly home now, Richard.”
This time, he did a sideways hop, raised his wing, and made a motion with his beak, rubbing it against the wing. He did this twice, then looked at her as if expecting something.
It looked familiar. Dinah remembered her first meeting with Richard and Lewis at Creatures 2.0. “You want something to eat!” she said.
The bird bobbed his beak.
Dinah did a one-eighty scan around the room. On the table was a plate with the crust of a day-old sandwich. “You like peanut butter and jelly?” she asked as she retrieved the plate and broke off a small piece.
Richard did. He ate that piece and another and another until the crust was gone.
“Now, fly home, Richard,” she said, and the bird gave one caw and took to the air.
Dinah propped her elbows on the wooden table in the doughnut shop.
“You got this how?” Segal asked.
She believed it a fate of cops that she was in a doughnut shop again. This time, it was the one called Hole, across the French Broad River from the River Arts District. Vortex Doughnuts was too close to the station, too likely to be populated by other cops. Dinah wanted to be alone with Segal, without distractions. He’s appearing a little worse for wear, she thought, still sporting a bandage over the cut by his eye. “Richard delivered it,” she said again.
“Richard?” Segal had taken a bite of a cardamom-honey doughnut and spoke the question awkwardly, his mouth mostly full.
“Richard the crow,” she said. “At least I think it was Richard. He answered to the name Richard, anyway.” She shoved a chocolate glaze into her mouth.
“So, he came knocking at your window like the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe? Tapping at your chamber door?”
“Exactly.” Dinah nodded and smiled, her cheeks full.
“So now, in the age of cell phones and the internet, we’re back to using carrier pigeons.”
She swallowed. “I’m pretty sure Richard would take a beak to your head for comparing him to a pigeon, but I get what you mean. That’s why I think it might be a communication from Francis Elah. Think about it. The guy has disappeared from a secret government project. We know from our friend with the brown shoes that they’re looking for him. With their technology, if he picks up a cell phone or signs on to the internet or uses a credit card, they’ll be all over him. That’s what they do best, track communications.”
That made sense to Segal, and it also meant the little girl, Suzie, might not have made up that story about seeing her father. Segal always did have trouble dismissing what the girl said, yet he was not easily swayed or gullible. Dinah as usual, remained neutral.
“If that’s right, he’s still taking a big chance sending something to us. It would have to be something important. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Segal said.
He looked at the memory card Dinah handed him. It seemed to be a standard camera card until Dinah pointed out that embedded in this card was a much smaller one, less than a quarter of an inch square. “That’s what the crow actually brought to me,” she said.
“How did you know what to do with this?” he asked. “I always feel like I’m one step behind on technology.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I took it over to Charlotte Street. Guy over there owed me a favor. I thought it would be better that way.” Ordinarily, Dinah would have taken this to one of the technical guys at the station, but she was less and less confident about who had access to their information and what was being done with it.
She whispered this to Segal and he nodded.
Dinah took a laptop out of her bag and put it on the wooden table in front of them. When she brought up the image from the card, the first thing they saw was a still photo of a man’s face and upper body lit from the side. The bottom of the frame bore a time and date stamp.
“That’s about the time we have for the murder at Creatures 2.0,” Dinah said.
“Yeah, we have a good fix on the time ’cause the cops saw the flashes when they were patrolling the neighborhood.”
“That could be the back door of the lab, but who is the guy?”
Segal shook his head. “No clue. Advance it to see if there’s more.”
There was: a video. It showed the back of the lab building, the man emerging and fading into the shadows, the camera moving into the lab and farther into the building until it discovered the body of Gloria, the receptionist. The video stopped. Dinah pressed a key to advance the file. What followed were a few more pictures of the man’s face turned at slightly different angles to the light. That was it.
They sat in silence until Segal held up three fingers to the cook behind the counter.
“You’re hitting the pastries pretty hard,” Dinah said.
“One for me, one for you, and one for Andrew Roche. We’re going back to the VA to see if he knows who this is.”
CHAPTER 23
Redeployed
Seg
al and Dinah walked slowly into Andrew Roche’s room in the VA hospital. Segal sensed the change immediately. Everything from the bare walls to the dust floating in the shafts of light in Andrew’s space proclaimed he was no longer there.
Outside in the hall, a male nurse pushed a cart, the top of which was dominated by a computer and a multi-compartment box for medications. He stopped at the door and asked if he could help them.
Segal flashed his badge and said, “We’re looking for a man who was in this room, Andrew Roche.”
“Sorry, I’m new on this ward,” he said, turning his attention to the computer. He punched the keyboard with rapid strokes and squinted at the screen. “Redeployed,” he said.
“Redeployed?” Dinah asked.
Segal moved forward to see the screen. Indeed, this was the one-word description under the status column. “Redeployed when? To where?” he asked.
The nurse hit a few keys. “All I can tell you is the record was updated early this morning.”
“Does it tell who gave the order, who updated the record?” Dinah asked.
The nurse frowned. “Those fields are blank. Not blank, exactly. I mean blacked out, redacted.”
The nurse indicated he had to go on with his rounds, and Segal nodded.
The pictures were gone. Segal checked the drawers of the desk, knowing they would be empty. He rummaged around, pushed his hand flat and felt along the inner drawer for anything solid. Empty. He wished they’d come sooner. He felt a reluctance to leave, felt there must be something more for them here. His mind searched for answers.
“I guess we could check at the administration office, see if there’s any forwarding information,” Dinah said.
Segal didn’t answer right away. He was catching on to the way all things federal were working out for them lately.
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