She took a breath. “It started when I was ten. My mother was dying. I was scared all the time. I hated coming home from school. My mother would be in bed, and my father would be shut up in his den. I ate dinner with the cook.” She raised sad eyes to Stone.
“But one night was different. Daddy came home with a bottle of champagne. He poured glasses for everyone, including me. He was so excited I thought they must have found a cure for cancer.” The memory of a happier time flickered on her face. “He said he’d gotten a piece of land, and he was going to build houses on it. He said they’d sell like hotcakes— there was so much demand. He was right; it was the go-go Seventies. He told Mother she had to get strong so he could take her out to see the lots. She’d be so proud.” Her voice cracked. “But she never did.”
For the first time Stone sensed he was dealing with the essence of Ricki Feldman. The layers had been peeled back, her imperious pretense stripped away, revealing a sad, lonely little girl. His voice softened. “What about afterwards? When the suits started flying?”
“I was in college,” she went on. “But I remember when it ended. It was in ‘Eighty-eight or nine. Mother had been gone for a while. Daddy called to say the judge dismissed us from the case. ‘It’s finally over,’ he said. ‘We’re clean.’“
Interesting choice of words. “What about the families of the children?”
She looked puzzled. “What about them? They suffered. I know what that’s like. But my father didn’t cause their suffering. He cleaned it up.” She straightened up, as if her memory of the case was now fueling her with confidence. “If you’re looking for a villain, blame the utility. Or the company that botched the clean up.”
“But they didn’t botch it. The state gave you a thumbs up. That’s why they let your father go ahead with Meadow City.”
“Exactly. My father did nothing wrong. He was not a polluter.”
Stone flexed his fingers. They weren’t communicating. “Ricki, bottom line, whether he was or wasn’t doesn’t matter. The poison was still in the ground. Houses went up on that ground. Children died. And no one was held accountable.”
“That wasn’t our responsibility. My father was dismissed from the case. He was the only one who was, you know.”
“Granted special dispensation, was he?”
Matt jerked his head up.
Ricki narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting at?”
“Your father pulled strings and was excused from the case. He—”
“I resent your implication, Detective.”
Stone raised his palm, choosing his words carefully. “All right. Let’s just say that he aggressively used the system to clear his name. But that didn’t mitigate the tragedy.”
“I still don’t get it. What are you trying to say?”
Stone couldn’t decide whether she really believed what she was saying or was just meeting her filial obligation to defend her father. “Let me lay it out for you. Six months ago, the man who headed the clean-up operation at Meadow City was killed. They found his body at the edge of a waste dump near Peoria. He worked for a company called Prairie State. Two weeks after that, the son of Prairie State’s owner was found dead. At the same waste dump.”
Dismay swept across Matt’s face. “The LEADs. From downstate.”
Stone barreled on. “A few weeks ago, the bookkeeper for the Meadow City property turned up dead in a dumpster. Two weeks after that, it was one of Meadow City’s biggest investors, and two weeks after that, the architect.”
Matt squeezed his eyes shut.
“Our killer doesn’t grant special dispensation, Ricki. They’re cutting down the people they think caused those children’s deaths. But—and this is the key— whoever it is isn’t going after the principals. First they’re killing the front line workers.” He aimed a finger at her. “And then, they’re killing their children.”
Ricki’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“We believe our killer works in two week intervals, and it’s been two weeks since Landon’s death. He’s already killed the son of Prairie State’s owner. If the key to this is the children, who do you think is next on his list?”
Chapter Forty-one
Two Years Earlier
The idea evolved from hypothetical to possible, from possible to desirable, from desirable to essential. Maggie had spent years trying to pass the test of life, but it had been a test with no rules, no answer sheet, no number two pencil. Now it was her turn to proctor. If the courts wouldn’t fashion a remedy, she would. It would be a long process; she was unprepared and needed to educate herself. But, like the poison that had slowly, inexorably choked the life out of her baby, she had the advantage of time. It was the ultimate leveler. She would wreak justice if it took the rest of her life.
The first thing she did was dump the house. Like most of her Meadow City neighbors, she’d moved out when the litigation began. After the trial, some company she’d never heard of made an offer, saying they intended to raze the houses and start over.
Dust to dust.
She unloaded the house, knowing she’d lost a bundle. Still, she sent half the proceeds to a post office box in Texas. Greg had suffered too; he should get something out of the deal.
Next she sold her furniture. She didn’t need it. The good life had trapped her on the dark side of the American dream. From now on she would focus on important things. She moved to a two-room furnished apartment in Joliet.
During the litigation she’d been promoted to night manager at Al’s. That turned out to be a stroke of luck. It gave her plenty of time during the day to make plans. Her first task was to learn to handle a gun. It wasn’t simple. There were classes, hunt clubs, even NRA programs. But she knew not to leave a paper trail. And she didn’t want to answer the inevitable questions they’d ask: did she have a license, why did she want to learn, what kind of firearm did she want. She needed discretion. Someone who would keep their mouth shut.
It was after her shift late one Saturday night that she remembered Greg’s friends, the ones who visited from Milwaukee or Minneapolis or someplace up north. She recalled the stories they told late at night, their voices coarse from booze and cigarettes. At the time, she thought they’d made up the part about living in the woods for a week or more. She tagged them as wannabees in fatigues, spouting survival talk bullshit. She’d laughed when they griped about the government depriving them of basic liberties, wasting their hard-earned tax dollars on Niggers and Slants and Jews. But she remembered how they talked about target practice. How important it was to defend themselves, to get ready for the day of reckoning.
Of course, that was ten years ago. She had no idea what had happened to them since then. She wracked her brain all day Sunday, trying to remember their names. By Sunday night she had one. Lucky. Lucky Bill Drummond. She thought he owned a gas station.
Maggie went to the library Monday, found the yellow pages for Milwaukee and Minneapolis, and copied the listings of service stations. It took nearly three weeks of calling, but finally someone at a Minneapolis Shell station told her he’d bought the gas station from Lucky about a year before. Maggie asked if he knew where Lucky was, but the new owner didn’t have a forwarding address.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. All that work for nothing. She croaked her thanks, about to hang up when the voice told her that Lucky still dropped in from time to time. He’d tell him that she called.
Four months later she’d forgotten about Lucky. She’d been to a gun range once or twice and was considering asking the owner, a fiftyish ex-cop with a roving eye to give her lessons in return for a roll in the hay. She was just toweling off after a shower when her phone rang.
It was Lucky. She told him about TJ. He said he wanted to hear more. She asked if he wanted to visit. He said he’d be there the next weekend
Maggie made sure she looked great. She had her hair done, bought a new outfit, new make-up, too. Not bad, she thought, catching her reflection in the mirror. She coul
d still pull herself together when it mattered. When Lucky came, she fixed him a good meal, then took him to bed. She was surprised how easy it was.
Afterwards they lit cigarettes, and she told him about TJ. How he’d died at the hands of the utility, the clean up company, and the developer, who bribed his way out of trouble and covered it up. She told Lucky about the bookkeeper who made her feel dirty for not paying the mortgage when TJ was sick. How the woman had come on to her. About the arrogant couple whose money put them in harm’s way in the beginning. And the architect, who never listened to Greg’s ideas. These people had destroyed her family, while they were far away, living their clean, affluent lives.
They’d robbed her of everything, she told Lucky; her family, her dreams, her future. Now it was payback time, and she knew what to do. She’d go after their children. The owner of Prairie State had a son, she’d learned, and the developer had a daughter. Didn’t the Bible say an eye for an eye?
By the end of the weekend Lucky promised to help. But there was a catch. She had to move north. To his people. And she couldn’t tell anyone where she was going. She would have to disappear, no questions asked. He told her to bring Dusty, too. When she asked why, he said,
“Children are the future. You should know that.”
After Lucky left, Maggie debated it. She didn’t want to get involved with other people. Better to go it alone. But she lacked the required skills, and Lucky’s people had them. Then there was Dusty. Was it fair to ask him to sacrifice the life he was building? She knew he’d come if she asked. He was a good son. For weeks, she considered it, thinking deep into the night, falling into an exhausted sleep just before dawn.
Chapter Forty-two
At first they looked like specks of black pepper drifting down from a leaden sky. As they drew closer, though, they could have been a squadron of fly-by jets, the kind that dove and twisted and turned tricks at summer air shows. Finally, they turned into what they were: vultures, scavengers intent on foraging the field beneath them.
But it wasn’t summer, and the field was mostly barren. Tufts of overgrown weeds swayed in a quiet wind. The air was heavy with impending snow, and the soil, as lifeless as a nuclear winter, was cracked and hard. Without warning a bird swooped down to the ground. Then, just as quickly, the bird shot back up into the air, something glinting in its beak, a shred of brightly colored trash, perhaps, or a scrap of metal from an old tin can.
In a far corner of the field, a human watched and waited. Bundled up against the cold, the figure stared up at the predators. Sensing the presence of live prey, the vultures organized and circled above. The human watched the birds. The birds watched the human. Then the birds attacked. The human threw up both arms to fend off the attack, but the birds were too strong. They dove down from the sky, collided with the figure and knocked it to the ground. As one, they began to claw and scratch and tear at the human, jabbing their beaks into the recesses of the body, shredding coat, muffler, and shirt, undergarments too, until they hit hair, flesh, and bone. The human couldn’t fight them off, and the vultures consumed their prey in a silent bloody feast.
When the last bone was picked clean, and the figure was just a carcass draped in scraps of cloth, the vultures fluttered their wings and lifted off to scout their next victim. But one of them took the heart of the human in its talons, and it was still beating.
***
Maggie woke up, bathed in a cold sweat. It was the same dream, and like the other times, it was already producing shivers. But this time, something was different. Something had changed. Something had been taken away. It took her a while to figure it out, but when it finally came, she was surprised it had taken so long. Her fear. It had vanished along with the birds.
***
Maggie quit her job, left the apartment, and slipped out of society. Dusty came too, and they moved to a farmhouse in rural Minnesota. Over twenty people were already there, but when Maggie asked who they were, she was told she didn’t need to know. It was too dangerous. She should call them the Family. Maggie would be one of Lucky’s wives, Dusty his surrogate son.
Maggie and Dusty learned how to shoot a M-16. It was light with virtually no kick. They also practiced with revolvers and pistols. She learned how to make other weapons too, all of them assembled from ordinary ingredients: Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, even homemade grenades.
Within a month she discovered an even more powerful weapon. Poison. A silent, invisible killer, it was as lethal as a deep swimming shark. On the surface, death appeared peaceful, even sleep-like. It was only when you plumbed the depths of blood, bone, and tissue that you could see the utter devastation it wrought.
She experimented with cyanide, strychnine, and potassium chloride, when they could rip it off. And something new the Family was excited about: a substance extracted from castor beans. A tiny amount of it could kill thousands of people. It was effective. Cheap. Versatile. And best of all, available. You could get the beans at your local nursery.
Maggie saw the possibilities. Using glass and plastic bottles and tubes she stashed in a tool shed, she learned how to mash and cook and strain the beans into one of the most lethal toxins ever known. And with every batch she made, she siphoned off a tiny amount for herself.
She was diluting a batch with acetone one crisp fall day when a sheriff’s car pulled up to the house. She quickly covered the lab with a canvas tarp and set about sweeping the floor of the shed. The cops didn’t come near her, but after they left, she complained to the Family elders. They could have been busted, she said, everything in jeopardy. Not to worry, they assured her. Even if the cops found her lab, they’d think she was processing meth.
But weapons and poisons were only part of her education. She learned how to stage political assassinations—the Family never called them murders. They would be necessary to cleanse the system and establish the new order. She also learned how to break and enter, how to make a clean getaway, and how to wipe down a scene so there were no prints. She learned how to wear hairnets and special clothes to minimize trace, learned how to extract scrapings from victims’ fingernails.
When she wasn’t learning new skills, she listened. The Family helped her see it wasn’t just the utility or the developer who were responsible for her suffering, though, frankly, what did you expect from a Jew? The entire system was rotten, and the culprit was the State. They took the developer’s money and sanctioned Meadow City, knowing it was contaminated. The state had corrupted the system; they would be dealt with accordingly. The Book of Revelations said it best: war was coming. It was inevitable.
Maggie wasn’t much interested in the macro perspective. She wanted revenge on the people who had destroyed her life. That was understandable, the Family said. Vengeance was the first step toward consciousness. In time she would mature. That’s why Prairie State would be her first mission. It was downstate, away from the big cities. There would be fewer complications. If she succeeded, she could move on to the Jew. Once that was done, the Family would help her launch an attack on the utility and the state.
They started her on dry runs. Seven-Elevens, Mom and Pop stores. She broke in, took food and supplies, plus what she found in the till. But she didn’t kill anyone. There was no reason to, at least not yet, and the Family needed the money.
She turned out to have a flair for it. With Dusty as her partner, they made a good team. Fast. Thorough. Meticulous. They graduated to bigger places, even hitting a small county bank one summer afternoon. Meanwhile, she kept up on her poisons, studying information on the Internet and experimenting until she knew how to process some materials as well as a pharmacologist.
Chapter Forty-three
Amy Yablonski and TJ Champlain were the kids who died at Meadow City, Brewster told Stone. Another child, Molly Stewart, had been stricken. All three families had moved into Meadow City when the development was new.
They used the Internet to track down the Stewarts. The family lived in the western suburbs, but there was no ans
wer at their home. Stone sent Brewster and Nelson to pay a visit. The Yablonskis had moved to Northern California. Punching in their number, he broke off a chunk of chocolate from a candy bar letting the rich, velvety taste linger on his tongue. It was the only nice sensation he’d had all day.
“It was hell,” Frannie Yablonski said when she came on the line. “From the time Amy got sick until the verdict came in, we were living through a nightmare.”
“I’m sorry to dredge it up for you, Mrs. Yablonski. But I hope you can help us.” He explained about the three deaths, their connection to Meadow City, and the Prairie State deaths.
The woman sighed. “You’d think Amy and TJ’s deaths would have been enough.”
“Excuse me?”
“It wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was happening. Joan’s cousin —our lawyer —told us not to expect much.”
“Because Feldman was dismissed?”
“Yes.”
“I’m confused. Illinois Edison was the company with the deep pockets. Why did the case collapse after Feldman was released? You still had a viable action.”
“I think the judge wanted it to go away.”
“Why?”
“Because of the witness.”
“The witness? “
“Art dug up a witness who claimed the developer knew the place was contaminated but bought his way out of it. Nobody could prove it, of course, because it happened years before the houses went up. The witness was going to testify, but right before the trial began, she died in a car accident.”
A chill edged up Stone’s spine. “She was killed?”
“That’s how Feldman got dismissed from the case. After that, everything just sort of fell apart.”
Stone sat forward. “Let me see if I understand. Stuart Feldman allegedly bribes someone to get out of cleaning up a toxic spill. The only person who can corroborate it mysteriously dies. Then the judge dismisses him from the case?”
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