The Big Bad Wolf ак-9

by James Patterson

  The big man cleared his throat. ‘Something else I wanted to tell you, talk to you about. Real reason I came over tonight,’ he said.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. What’s that?’

  His eyes avoided mine. ‘Kind of difficult for me, Alex.’

  I leaned forward. He had me hooked.

  Then Sampson grinned, and I knew it was good, whatever he was about to share.

  ‘Billie’s got herself pregnant,’ he said and laughed his deepest, richest laugh. Then Sampson jumped up and bear-hugged me half to death. ‘I’m going to be a father!’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Here we go again, my darling Zoya,’ said Slava in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘You look very prosperous, by the way. Just perfect for today.’

  The Couple looked like all the other suburban types wandering around the crowded King of Prussia Mall, the ‘second largest in America’, according to promotional signs at all the entrances. There was good reason for the mall’s popularity. Greedy shoppers traveled here from the surrounding states because Pennsylvania had no tax on clothing.

  ‘These people all look so wealthy. They have their shit together,’ said Slava. ‘Don’t you think? You know the expression I’m using – “having your shit together”? It’s American. Slang.’

  Zoya snorted out a nasty laugh. ‘We’ll see how together their shit is in an hour or so. After we’ve done our business here. Their fear lies about a quarter of an inch below the surface. Just like everybody else in this spoiled rotten country. They’re afraid of their own shadows. But especially pain, or even a little discomfort. Can’t you see that on their faces, Slava? They’re afraid of us. They just don’t know it yet.’

  Slava looked around the main plaza, which was dominated by Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. There were signs up everywhere for Teen People magazine’s ‘Rock and Shop Tour.’ Meanwhile, their target had just bought a fifty-dollar box of cookies at Neiman’s. Amazing! Then she bought something equally absurd called a ‘Red, White, and Blue Dog Journal’, which was prohibitively expensive as well.

  Stupid, stupid people. Keeping notebooks for a dog, Slava thought. Then he spotted the target again. She was coming out of Skechers with her small children in tow.

  Actually, the target looked a little apprehensive to them at the moment. Why was that? Maybe she was afraid that she would be recognized, and have to sign an autograph, or make small talk with her fans. Price of fame, eh? She moved quickly now, guiding the precious little ones into Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill, presumably for lunch, but maybe just to escape the crowds.

  ‘Dick Clark came from Philadelphia near here,’ Slava said. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Who the hell cares about Dick Clark, Dick Tracy, or dickless,’ said Zoya, and hammered Slava’s bicep with her fist. ‘Stop this stupid trivia game. It gives me a headache. Excedrin headache number one trillion since I met you.’

  The target certainly fit the description they had been given by their controller: tall, blond, ice queen, full of herself. But also tasty down to the last detail, thought Slava. It made sense, he supposed. She had been purchased by a client who called himself the Art Director.

  The Couple waited about fifty minutes. A middle school choir from Broomall, Pennsylvania, was performing in the atrium. Then the target and her two kids emerged from the Dick Clark restaurant.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ said Slava. ‘This should be interesting, no? The kids make it a challenge.’

  ‘No,’ Zoya said. ‘The kids make it insane. Wait until the Wolf hears about this. He’ll have puppies. That’s American slang, by the way.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The name of the woman who’d been purchased was Audrey Meek. She was a celebrity and had founded a highly successful line of women’s fashions and accessories called Meek. It was her mother’s maiden name, and the one she still used herself.

  The Couple watched her closely, tailed her into the parking garage without creating suspicion. They finally jumped her as she was putting her Neiman Marcus and Hermès and other shopping bags into a shiny black Lexus SUV with New Jersey plates.

  ‘Children, run! Run away!’ Audrey Meek struggled fiercely as Zoya tried to stuff an acrid-smelling gauzy cloth over her nose and mouth. Soon she saw circles, stars and bright colors for a couple of dramatic seconds. Then she finally passed out in Slava’s powerful arms.

  Zoya peered around the parking garage. It was nothing much to look at – cement walls with number/letter marks. Nobody anywhere near them. Nobody noticing anything wrong, even though the children were yelling and starting to cry.

  ‘Leave my mommy alone!’ Andrew Meek shouted and threw punches at Slava, who only smiled at the boy.

  ‘Good little fellow,’ he applauded. ‘Protect your mama. She would be proud of you. I am proud of you.’

  ‘Let’s go, stupid!’ shouted Zoya. As always, she was the one who took care of all the important business. It had been that way since she was growing up in the Moskovskaya oblast outside Moscow, and Zoya had decided she couldn’t bear to be either a factory worker or a prostitute.

  ‘What about the kids? We can’t leave them here,’ said Slava.

  ‘Leave them. That’s what we’re supposed to do, you idiot. We want witnesses. That’s the plan. Can’t you keep anything straight?’

  ‘In the garage? Leave them here?’

  ‘They’ll be fine. Or not. Who the hell cares. C’mon. We must go. Now!’

  They drove off in the Lexus wagon with the target, Audrey Meek, unconscious on the backseat, and her two children wailing uncontrollably in the parking garage. Zoya drove at a moderate speed around the mall’s plaza, then turned on to the Dekalb Pike.

  They traveled only a few minutes to the Valley Forge Station Park, where they switched cars.

  Then another eight miles to a remote parking area where they changed vehicles yet again.

  Then off to New Hope in the Bucks County area of Pennsylvania. Soon, Mrs Meek would meet the Art Director, who was madly in love with her. He must have been – he had paid $250,000 for the pleasure of her company, whatever that might be.

  And there had been witnesses to the abduction – a screw-up – on purpose.

  Part Two

  Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  No one had been able to figure out the Wolf yet. According to information from Interpol and also the Russian police, he was a no-nonsense, hands-on operator, but one who had originally been trained as a policeman. Like many Russians, he was able to think in very fluid, commonsense terms. That native ability was sometimes given as the reason the Mir space station was able to stay in space so long. The Russian cosmonauts were simply better than the Americans at figuring out everyday problems. If something unexpected went wrong in the spacecraft, they fixed it.

  And so did the Wolf.

  On that sunny afternoon, he drove a black Cadillac Escalade to the northern section of Miami. He needed to see a man named Yeggy Titov about some security matters. Yeggy liked to think of himself as a world-class website designer and cutting-edge engineer. He had a doctorate from Cal-Berkeley and never let anyone forget it. But Yeggy was just another pervert and creep with delusions of grandeur and an ‘attitude’; a really bad attitude.

  The Wolf banged on the metal door of Yeggy’s apartment in a high-riser overlooking Biscayne Bay. He was wearing a skullcap and a Miami Heat windbreaker, just in case anyone saw him visiting.

  ‘All right, all right, hold your urine!’ Yeggy shouted from inside. It took him another couple of minutes to finally open up. He had on blue jean shorts and a tattered, faded-black novelty-store sweatshirt with Einstein’s grinning face on it. Quite the kidder, that Yeggy.

  ‘I told you not to make me come and see you,’ the Wolf said, but he was smiling broadly, as if he were making a big joke. So Yeggy smiled too. They had been business associates for about a year – which was a long time for anyone to put up with Yeggy.

  ‘
Your timing is perfect,’ he said.

  ‘How lucky for me,’ said the Wolf as he strolled into the living room and immediately wanted to hold his nose. The apartment was an incredible dump – littered with fast-food wrappers and pizza boxes, empty milk cartons, and dozens, maybe a hundred, old copies of Novoye Russkoye Slovo, the largest Russian-language newspaper in the United States.

  The odor of filth and decaying food was bad enough, but even worse was Yeggy himself, who always smelled like week-old sausages. The science-man led him into a bedroom off the living-room area – only it turned out not to be a bedroom at all. It was the lab of a very disorganized person. Ugly brown carpeting, three beige CPU boxes on the floor, parts in a corner – discarded heatsinks, circuit boards, hard drives.

  ‘You are a pig,’ the Wolf said, then laughed again.

  ‘But a very smart pig.’

  In the center of the room was a modular desk. Three flat screen displays formed a semicircle around a well-worn rumble chair. Behind the display screens was a fire hazard of intertwined cables. There was only one outside window, the blind permanently drawn.

  ‘Your site is very secure now,’ Yeggy said. ‘Primo. One hundred per cent. No possible screw-ups. The way you like it.’

  ‘I thought it was already secure,’ the Wolf replied.

  ‘Well now it’s more secure. You can’t be too careful these days. Tell you what else – I finished the latest brochure. It’s a classic, instant classic.’

  ‘Yes, and only three weeks late.’

  Yeggy shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘So what – wait’ll you see my work. It’s genius. Can you recognize genius when you see it? This is genius.’

  The Wolf examined the pages before he said anything to the science-man. The brochure was printed on 8½- by 11-inch glossy paper, bound in a clear report cover with a red spine. Yeggy had cranked it out on his HP color laser printer. The colors were electric. The cover looked perfect. The elegance was weird, actually, as if the Wolf were looking at a Tiffany’s catalog. It sure didn’t look like the work of a man who lived in this shithole.

  ‘I told you that girls number seven and seventeen were no longer with us. Dead, actually.’ The Wolf finally spoke. ‘Our boy genius is forgetful, no?’

  ‘Details, details,’ said Yeggy. ‘Speaking of which, you owe me fifteen thousand cash on delivery. This would be considered delivery.’

  The Wolf reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a Sig Sauer 210. He shot Yeggy twice between the eyes. Then, for laughs, he shot Albert Einstein between the eyes too.

  ‘Looks like you are no longer with us either, Mr Titov. Details, details.’

  The Wolf sat at a laptop computer and fixed the sales catalog himself. Then he burned a CD and took it with him. Also several copies of the Russian newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo that he had missed. He would send a crew to dispose of the body and burn this shithole later. Details, details.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I skipped a class with a topic on ‘Arrest Techniques’ that morning. I figured I probably knew more on the subject than the teacher. I called Monnie Donnelley instead, and told her I needed whatever she had on the white slave trade, particularly recent activity in the US, that might relate to the White Girl case.

  Most of the Bureau’s crime analysts were housed ten miles away at the Criminal Incident Response Group (CIRG), but Monnie had an office at Quantico. Less than an hour later, she was at the doorway of my no-frills cubicle. She held out two disks, and looked proud of herself.

  ‘This should keep you busy for a while. I concentrated on white women only. Attractive. Recent abductions. I also have a lot on the crime scene in Atlanta. I expanded the circle to get a read on the mall, owner, employees, the neighborhood in Buckhead. I have copies for you of the police and the Bureau’s investigative reports. All the things you asked for. You do your homework, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m a student of the game. I prepare as best I can. Is that so unusual? Here at Quantico?’

  ‘Actually, it is for agents who come to us from police departments or the armed forces. They seem to like to work out in the field.’

  ‘I like field work too,’ I admitted to Monnie, ‘but not until I’ve narrowed it some. Thank you for this, all of this.’

  ‘Do you know what they say about you, Dr Cross?’

  ‘No. What do they say?’

  ‘That you’re close to psychic. Very imaginative. Maybe gifted. You can think like a killer. That’s why they put you on White Girl right away.’ She remained in the doorway. ‘Listen. Some unasked-for advice if I may. You shouldn’t piss off Gordo Nooney. He takes his little orientation games seriously. He’s also basically a bad guy. And, he’s connected.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  I nodded. ‘So there are good guys too?’

  ‘Absolutely. You’ll see that most of the agents are real solid. Good people, the best. All right, well, happy hunting,’ Monnie said. Then she left me to my reading, lots and lots of reading. Too much.

  I started off with a couple of abductions – both in Texas – that I thought could be related to those in Atlanta. Just reading the accounts got my blood boiling again, though. Marianne Norman, twenty, had disappeared in Houston on 6 August, 2001. She’d been staying with her college sweetheart in a condo owned by his grandparents. Marianne and Dennis Turcos were going to be seniors at Texas Christian that fall and planned to be married in the spring of ’02. Everybody said they were the nicest kids in the world. Marianne was never seen or heard from after that night in August. On 30 December of that year, Dennis Turcos put a revolver to his head and killed himself. He said he couldn’t live without Marianne, that his life ended when she disappeared.

  The second case involved a fifteen-year-old runaway from Childress, Texas. Adrianne Tuletti had been snatched from an apartment in San Antonio where three girls involved in prostitution were said to live. Neighbors in the complex reported having seen two suspicious-looking people, a male and a female, entering the building on the day that Adrianne disappeared. One neighbor thought it might be the girls’ parents who had come to bring their daughter home, since the fifteen-year-old was never seen or heard from again.

  I looked at her picture for a long moment – she was a pretty blonde and looked as if she could have been one of Elizabeth Connelly’s daughters. Her parents were elementary school teachers back in Childress.

  Around one o’clock that afternoon, I got more bad news. The worst kind. A fashion designer named Audrey Meek had been abducted from the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. Her two young children had witnessed the kidnapping. That piece of information stunned me. The children had told the police that the abductors were a man and a woman.

  I started to get ready to travel to Pennsylvania. I called Nana and she was supportive for a change. Then I got a message from Nooney’s office. I wasn’t going to Pennsylvania. I was expected at my classes that afternoon.

  The decision had obviously come from the top, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.

  Maybe all of this was a test?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘Do you know what they say about you, Dr Cross? That you’re close to psychic. Very imaginative. Maybe even gifted. You can think like a killer.’ Those were Monnie Donnelley’s words to me that very morning. If that was true, why had I been taken off the case?

  I went to my classes in the afternoon but I was distracted, maybe angry. I suffered a little angst: what was I doing in the FBI? What was I becoming? I didn’t want to fight the system in Quantico, but I’d been put in an impossible position. The next morning I had to be ready for my classes again: Law; White Collar Crime; Civil Rights Violations; Firearms Practice and a practical exercise.

  I was sure that I’d find the subject ‘Civil Rights Violations’ interesting, but a couple of missing women named Elizabeth Connelly and Audrey Meek were out there somewhere. Maybe one or both of them were still alive. Maybe I could help f
ind them – if I was so goddamn gifted.

  I was finishing breakfast with Nana and Rosie the cat at the kitchen table when I heard the morning paper plop on the front porch.

  ‘Sit. You eat. I’ll get it,’ I told Nana as I pushed my chair away from the table.

  ‘No argument from this corner,’ Nana said and sipped her tea with great little-old-lady aplomb. ‘I have to conserve myself, you know.’

  ‘Right.’

  Nana was still cleaning every square inch of the house, inside and out, and cooking most of the meals. A couple of weeks ago I’d caught her hanging on to an extension ladder, cleaning out the gutters on the roof. ‘It’s not a problem,’ she hollered down to me. ‘My balance is excellent and I’m light as a parachute.’ Come again?

  The Washington Post hadn’t actually reached the porch. It lay open halfway up the sidewalk. I didn’t even have to stoop down to read the front page.

  ‘Awhh hell,’ I said. ‘Damn it.’

  This wasn’t good. It was awful, actually. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  The headline was a shocker: ABDUCTIONS OF TWO WOMEN MAY BE CONNECTED. Worst of all, the rest of the story contained very specific details that only a few people in the FBI knew. Unfortunately, I was one of them.

  The story told about a couple – a man and woman – who had been seen at the most recent kidnapping in Pennsylvania was key. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. The eyewitness account given by Audrey Meek’s children was information that we didn’t want released to the press.

  Somebody had leaked the story to the Post; somebody had also connected the dots for them. Other than maybe Bob Woodward, nobody at the newspaper could find it out by themselves. They weren’t that smart.

  Who had leaked information to the Post?