Dead Man Running

by Steve Hamilton

He tied these ropes to her ankles, drawing her whole body back into an arch, as if he were stringing a bow. Her face was already turning a deeper shade of red. Tears streamed down her face.

  Livermore stood up and watched her for a long time, watched her struggling against the basic horrible truth of her situation, as the slightest movement of her body drew the ropes even tighter. She had to actively work against it, to keep her back arched and her ankles raised as high as they could go. To relax would mean strangling herself.

  He knelt down on the floor next to her, watching the color in her face change from red to purple. Her eyelids fluttered as her body began to go slack.

  When he loosened the knot linking her ankles to her neck, the color in her face lightened and she opened her eyes again. He kept watching her, watching the life come back to her, then leaving again, then coming back.

  Until it didn’t.

  That was when he got undressed.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN HE WAS DONE with her, he sat with his back against the couch. He took the laptop from his bag and checked his email.

  She told me she lived here alone, he said to himself. But he knew that didn’t make this a safe place. Not for long. A friend could come over, or a nosy neighbor, or even a boyfriend she had neglected to tell him about. He would have to find another place to move her to.

  It was a familiar routine to him by now. A ritual.

  And yet another part of the ritual, he finished with his email and went out onto the Internet. Looking up traces from another part of his life, from a memory that would come back to him whenever he spent a night like this one. It had been amazing to him how much social media had exploded in America while he’d been in Japan, how a person could splash their entire life all over the Internet for anyone in the world to see. But not everyone did that, as Livermore soon learned. He would never do it himself, so he understood. But this time, as he once again went through every website he could think of . . .

  He found something.

  One image, a single flash in time from how many years ago, and yet here it was recollected in the pixels that glowed on his laptop screen. He scanned one face, then another, then another. Until he settled on the face of a man. Composed, self-assured, athletic.

  This man.

  He felt a surge of electricity flowing through his body, a wave of heat and energy that he could barely contain.

  What am I going to do about this man?

  He worked it over in his head for an hour, coming back to the same face, over and over again.

  That was when the idea finally came to him. How he would test himself against this man. How he could prove himself.

  He thought about it for a second hour, working out every detail in his mind. Until it was finally time to wrap up Liana in a sheet and, after checking to make sure nobody was in the parking lot, take her to his vehicle.

  All of the preparations, the designs, the planning . . . It would all come together on this night, every star in the universe collecting around this one perfect idea, and all of it leading to this one man. This ex-cop living in a little town called Paradise.

  Six months after the night the idea was born, everything was in motion now.

  For Martin T. Livermore.

  For Alex McKnight.

  And it had only just begun.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THIS IS ALEX MCKNIGHT,” Agent Madison said to a roomful of men and women who all were staring a hole right through me. It was the next morning, after a sleepless night. “He is the lone survivor from yesterday’s events.”

  A hell of a way to put it, I thought. We were in the same conference room where Madison had originally questioned me, but now there were a dozen other agents all sitting around the table. Ten men and two women, all dressed in dark suits. There was a special phone for conference calls on the table. I had no idea how many more people were listening in on that.

  “Mr. McKnight was a police officer in Detroit. He’s been retired for a number of years.”

  “What is his connection to Livermore?” one of the agents in the back of the room asked. Because five minutes had passed without someone asking that question.

  “At this point, we don’t know.”

  I could sense everyone in the room exchanging looks with one another, then returning their focus to me.

  “Mr. McKnight has been a person of interest in this case since Livermore first mentioned his name,” Madison said. “He will continue to cooperate with us.”

  That didn’t seem to satisfy anyone in the room. Not that I could blame them. Two agents they had worked with every day were dead. I was alive.

  Madison moved on to credit cards, bank accounts, vehicle information—anything a person could use that would leave a trail. All of the markers that someone would leave if they were actively moving, because a person who’s moving needs to sleep somewhere, needs to eat, needs to refuel his vehicle. Or whatever Livermore was now driving, anyway. His vehicle of record was the black Mercedes found in the parking lot at the Sonoran Preserve the night he was arrested.

  Ten thousand dollars in cash had been taken out of his account a week before, but no further activity had been seen since then. This man had apparently designed this part of his plan just as well as the escape itself. He was staying completely off the grid.

  He’s invisible, I thought. But as every fugitive hunter knows, a man can’t stay invisible forever.

  Madison then led the team through everything else that had happened in the past eighteen hours, from the coordination with every local police department, as well as the state police in every neighboring state, to the interface with the media. He put up the FBI website on the screen. Somewhere out there was a man named Jason Derek Brown, who was wanted for first-degree murder, armed robbery, and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He’d been number one on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list the week before, with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to his arrest. Now Brown was number two behind Martin T. Livermore, a man whose capture was worth an even two million dollars.

  Madison’s words faded into the background as I stared at Livermore’s face on the screen. It burned in my mind, even as the image was replaced by a map of the United States. Madison ran through Livermore’s background, highlighting each location on the map. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Attended Ohio State University, then Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Upstate New York. Worked for three different companies in the Northeast before he took a job with Seiko Epson in Long Beach, California. Transferred to the robotics center in Nagano, Japan. Lived there for nine years. Back in the States for three years.

  Long enough to kill six women. Possibly seven.

  Madison highlighted the two cities in California where his victims had last been seen. Then the cities in Utah and Nevada. Finally the two cities in Arizona: Flagstaff. Phoenix.

  “What were his movements in Japan?” one of the agents said. A woman, sitting close to me. “If he never killed anyone until he came back . . .”

  “We’re in contact with the NPA offices in Nagano,” Madison said. “So far his time there is one big blank. He went to work every day. Otherwise kept to himself.”

  “Does he have any family?”

  “No brothers or sisters. Father died when Livermore was seventeen years old. Mother two years ago. She lived in Columbus, in the same house Martin grew up in, although we don’t believe he’s been back there for several years. The house has been empty since the mother died. We’re processing it today, just in case.”

  “What about his current residence?”

  “His address of record is a single-bedroom apartment on Buckeye Road,” Madison said, “but we have reason to believe he used that only as a mail drop. The apartment is completely empty right now. There’s not even a bed.”

  “Are you saying that—”
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br />   “I’m saying that nobody in that building has ever seen him before. So finding his real primary residence is one of our first priorities today.”

  He was about to continue when another agent entered the room and waved Madison over. He excused himself and went out to the hallway to talk to him. I could feel every eye in the room on me again as we all waited.

  When Madison came back in, he asked me if I would excuse myself.

  “Are you going to tell me why?” I said.

  “We need to discuss some sensitive information. If you go with Agent Larkin, he’ll take care of you until we’re done.”

  So much for being part of the team, I thought. I got up and left the room with the young agent right behind me.

  “We’ll go to my office,” Larkin said. He was built solid, like an athlete, with a military buzz cut. “I have the case files if you want to look through them again.”

  I didn’t answer him.

  End of the day, I told myself. As long as I can get something useful out of these guys, I’ll stick around. But then I’m on my own.

  Because I am going to find Livermore, one way or the other.

  I saw the agent’s full name on his office door. Matt Larkin. He didn’t look like he’d seen his thirtieth birthday yet, and I knew he wasn’t the man I needed to be pissed off at. I tried to cool myself down a notch as I sat in his guest chair.

  End of the day.

  I spent the next hour going through the case files again, one by one, trying to put everything else out of my head. At one point, I took out the photographs of the six women Livermore had killed and put them in a line across the table. The same photos that Halliday and Cook had shown me on the flight out here.

  I looked at the faces, carefully moving from one to the next. The hair color went from blond to brunette to black to redhead, back to brunette, back to blond. Two of the women might have been a little overweight. Two wore glasses.

  “As far as we know,” Larkin said, “these women have nothing in common. No connections from school or from work. His victim selection appears to be completely random.”

  I knew that was an important term in the Bureau. His victim selection. But there was something here that didn’t look quite random to me. I knew there was something here. I just couldn’t see it yet.

  “How long would it have taken you guys to catch him?” I said. “If he hadn’t given himself away with that video?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “I’m sure there was a profile.”

  “You’re right, but—”

  “But profiles are bullshit.”

  He looked at me. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “What was the profile for the Beltway Sniper?” I said. “A white loner.”

  “At first . . .”

  “Until you caught him. Turned out to be a black man riding around with a kid. How many roadblocks did they slip through?”

  He didn’t bother answering.

  “Then the Unabomber,” I said. “I read you had two profiles at one point. One guy says he’s an academic, which turned out to be right, while the other guy says he’s an airplane mechanic. How many years was that case open?”

  Larkin shifted in his chair. “Seventeen.”

  “Biggest manhunt in history,” I said. “Every agency in the country. How many agents did they have working that case, full-time? And then how did they finally catch him?”

  “His brother.”

  “One person,” I said. “One connection. That’s what it takes.”

  “So for Livermore, that connection is apparently you.”

  He’s got me on that one, I said to myself. If I only knew what that connection was.

  I’d been keeping a lid on it all that morning, the raw anger that came up every time I thought about Livermore, every time I replayed any single moment from the past twenty-four hours.

  He’s out there right now, I thought. Somewhere. Wearing that same smile.

  “So what are they talking about in there?” I said, nodding toward the conference room.

  “Even if I knew . . .” Larkin said, leaving the thought hanging. “But when they’re done with the meeting—”

  “We’ll be gone,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “Take me to the most recent crime scenes,” I said. “I want to see every place he’s been.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can.”

  He looked at his doorway as if hoping for some help.

  “Look,” I said. “Either I’m under arrest or I’m free to leave at any time. I just read the addresses of those crime scenes. Now I’m going to go out and look at them.”

  When I stood up and walked out, the only question was whether I’d hear his footsteps behind me.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS SOMETHING I’d learned as a cop in Detroit. You can’t capture a crime scene with words on paper, can’t capture it with photographs. You need to go there, stand in the middle of it. Feel the place, use all your senses at once. That’s your only chance of finding something that someone else might have missed.

  The first place Larkin took me was a little house over on the north side of town. This was the home of Carolyn Kline, the woman from the video. It was a small one-story house on a lot decorated with gravel and cactuses. I told Larkin to park on the street for a few minutes so I could watch the place. It was a busy street. In the middle of the day there was a steady stream of traffic.

  “We believe he walked in through the front door,” Larkin said. “There was no forced entry.”

  I nodded, trying to imagine it. Trying to put myself in his place, watching this house, waiting for the right moment. I wasn’t trying to figure out who, where, or when at that point. Those questions had already been answered before I got there. I was more interested in the how, and even the why if I could get to it.

  The why would put me closer to the mind of the man himself. Which would maybe help me understand why I was here in Phoenix, with bandages on my arm and knee, with the sounds of explosions still ringing in my ears.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  We got out and went to the front door. There was no crime scene tape, but a sign posted on the locked door warned against entry by anyone but authorized law enforcement. Larkin had brought along a key. He opened up the door and let me inside. I stopped dead in the front room and looked at a section of the floor that had been marked with red tape.

  “They found trace evidence right here,” Larkin said. “Hair. No semen this time.”

  That didn’t make sense to me. In all of the other cases, he’d had sexual contact with the body at the kill site, then again at the second location.

  “What about the rope fibers?” I said.

  “A few fibers, yes. But we found nothing in the bedroom.”

  I looked out the window at the busy street. Easy enough to close the curtains, but why not go to the quieter room?

  Because it wasn’t about physical gratification at all. Not this time.

  I bent down to look at a photograph of Carolyn Kline, making sure not to touch it. Even though the crime scene had already been processed, it just wouldn’t have felt right to me.

  I recognized the face from the file back at the FBI office, but here she was out in a boat, with sunglasses and a big smile. An older man was sitting next to her.

  Her father.

  A man who had to receive a visit from two police officers, just a few days ago. Because as a cop you always want your partner with you when you go deliver the news that will destroy a family.

  I took a quick look through the rest of the house. There was nothing else to see, except a back door that led to a small backyard. There were neighbors on both sides, anot
her in back, but if you left this place at night . . .

  “He pulls up his car and takes her out this door,” I said. “Then he takes her to the house in Scottsdale.”

  Where he suddenly remembers why he kills these women in the first place . . .

  It doesn’t fit.

  I didn’t want to see the Thompson house yet. I’d seen the video and already knew what had happened there. Standing in the same room would make it even more real. Take me even farther into the man’s mind. Farther than I was prepared to go.

  “Take me to Stephanie Hyatt’s place first,” I said. As we drove through the midday Phoenix traffic, I tried to stop the endless loop that was running in my head, what Livermore had done in that bedroom, until we finally crossed over into the town of Mesa and came to a trailer park. A long line of metal boxes, baking in the sun.

  “Taken just before Livermore was arrested,” Larkin said, driving to the trailer on the farther end of the road. “The case is still being developed.”

  This trailer looked out of place to me. Once again, I tried to imagine Livermore sitting here on this road, watching the woman who lived here.

  Why the hell would he come here?

  We got out. Another front door with another sign. We went inside, to a small, cluttered trailer that was at least one hundred degrees. The smell was a mixture of cigarette smoke and cheap fast food, with a certain unmistakable top note, the sweet tang of marijuana.

  “You found no trace evidence here,” I said. “Or if you did, there was so little you might have missed it if you didn’t know he was involved.”

  Larkin looked at me. “Yes.”

  I pictured Livermore standing in this room, in this exact spot, by the pile of dishes on the counter and the beer cans on the little dining room table. In that same first interview with Halliday, Livermore had told him that all of his first five victims were together somewhere. In a special place.

  “Wherever those other victims are,” I said, “this one won’t be with them. Stephanie Hyatt was the throwaway.”

  I felt bad standing in her trailer, calling her that. Like I was diminishing her value, even in death. But I knew it was the truth. I knew that’s how Livermore would have seen her.