Ali shoved the bile-soaked rag back into Brockman's mouth and pulled the levers on the machine faster than before, causing Brockman's legs and arms to jerk upward and forward with greater force, the weight against them threatening to tear sinews and ligaments and pop sockets.
Brockman's vision turned gray. Again, Ali removed the rag from Brockman's mouth, letting bile spew out.
“Talk to me, Gerald. Tell me about Carl Duran.”
15
Even when viewed from a wooded hilltop a half mile away, the farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings were obviously in disrepair. As the sun rose, Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Rutherford lay on cold ground behind red-leaved bushes, using binoculars to peer down past the stubble of a cornfield. In the mid-distance, a dirt road went from right to left. Beyond was a field of wild grasses that belonged to one of the few cherished places in Cavanaugh's memory of his youth, the farm where he had spent so many wonderful Sundays. At least, the Sundays had once seemed wonderful. Not because of what he had learned about making knives. The knives hadn't been as important to him as the time he'd spent with the person he once considered—and believed would always be—his closest friend.
With the sun behind them, they didn't need to worry about light reflecting off their binoculars, signaling their location. Even so, Cavanaugh took care that his were shielded.
“The place looks deserted,” Jamie said. “Porch needs paint. Roof needs new shingles. The barn's listing.”
“When Carl and I visited there, the old man kept it in perfect shape. He never let age slow him down.”
“Sounds like someone I'd like to have known,” Jamie said.
“I doubt John here would have. Not the way Lance was always cussing.”
Rutherford looked amused. “Well, there's cussing, and then there's cussing.”
“This was the latter.”
“According to the local FBI office, after the old man died, an English professor from the university in Iowa City bought the place,” Rutherford said. “Gentleman farmer sort of thing. Sold some of the land to the neighbors. Leased out the rest.”
“Yeah. I remember. When I was a teenager.” Cavanaugh felt hollow. So much had happened in the meanwhile. Except for Jamie, so much of it had been painful.
“Four years ago, the professor retired and moved to Arizona.” Lying on his stomach, Rutherford scooped up black dirt and studied it. “That's when Bob Loveless bought the place.”
“Seems like Duran had a yen for the good old days,” Jamie said.
Rutherford kept examining the dirt in his hand. “Awfully rich soil. Excellent loam. Breaks apart easily.”
“Since when do you know about soil?” Cavanaugh asked.
“My dad was a farmer in Arkansas. I grew up, helping him plow and plant. What he wouldn't have given for soil like this.”
“You've got all kinds of secrets, John.”
“None like yours, Aaron.”
“How strange it feels to be called that.”
“Did the local FBI office talk to the neighbors?” Jamie asked. “Is there any indication that Duran actually lived there?”
“Someone matching Duran's description lived there off and on four years ago. A few of the neighbors dropped by to welcome him. They remember he was polite but that he didn't encourage socializing. When he smiled, it was sort of distant.”
“Yeah, that's Carl,” Cavanaugh said.
“As near as they could tell—tire tracks in snow, that sort of thing—he seemed to be there only a week or two at a time.”
“So this is where he went between assignments,” Jamie said to Cavanaugh, “the same as you went to Jackson Hole. This was his home.”
“Close to Iowa City and Hafor Drive, where his real home was when he was a kid.” Three houses up the street from mine, Cavanaugh thought. He remembered the two-story homes along the street. Most were painted an idealized white. Big front windows. Thick bushes. Luxuriant flower beds. Lush lawns. Again, he felt hollow.
“Then three years ago, according to the neighbors, he pretty much stopped coming,” Rutherford told them. “That's when the place started looking worn down.”
“Three years ago.” Cavanaugh nodded. “After Carl got fired and wound up working for that drug lord in Colombia.”
“The postman who drives this route says Bob Loveless gets magazines and bills. Renewal forms. Advertisements. Things like that.”
“And tax forms,” Cavanaugh said. “He needs to keep paying his property taxes, or else the county will take the farm. We need to assume someone comes here to check if there's mail and to forward it. Maybe the same person who pays his taxes.”
“Someone we'd like to talk to,” Rutherford concluded. “The mail gets delivered late in the afternoon. Yesterday, when you told us this was the address we wanted, the local FBI office had just enough time to intercept the postman and arrange for him to leave some advertisements in the box. Agents have been watching the place since then. So far, there's been no sign of activity in the house and nobody's picked up the mail. We don't dare go in there until someone stops at the mailbox. Otherwise, we might scare the courier away. We'll just need to lie here and wait.”
“Maybe not as long as you think.” Jamie pointed.
To the right, a dust cloud appeared, moving steadily to the left along the dirt road. Through his binoculars, Cavanaugh saw a gray SUV approaching the mailbox.
Rutherford spoke into a walkie-talkie. “Everybody stay in place until we see what we've got.”
The SUV drove closer, continuing from right to left. Cavanaugh's pulse increased, although he was oddly conscious of the emptiness between heartbeats.
“Steady,” Rutherford said into the walkie-talkie.
The SUV appeared to go slower as it neared the mailbox. Despite the dust the car raised, the sun reflected off the driver's window. Braced on his elbows, Cavanaugh concentrated so much that he leaned forward, trying to get closer to the car.
It passed the mailbox and continued down the road.
No one spoke for a moment.
“If that was the courier, maybe he or she sensed something was wrong and kept going,” Jamie wondered.
“Maybe,” Rutherford said. “Or maybe it's just someone driving into town.”
Another cloud appeared on the road, this one caused by a red pickup truck that drove from left to right. It sped past the mailbox, almost obscuring it with dust. The faint drone of the engine drifted away.
A minute later, it was a blue sedan that came from right to left.
Cavanaugh felt an increased sense of being stuck in time while the world sped toward disaster. He thought of Brockman, who should have been in New Orleans by now, organizing Global Protective Services agents. Several times the previous night, Cavanaugh had tried to contact him on his cell phone. No response. He'd tried Brockman's home phone. Again, no response. Rutherford had called the FBI office in New Orleans to see if Brockman had checked in. No sign of him.
Once more, Cavanaugh pulled out his cell phone, but this time, instead of trying to call Brockman, he pressed the numbers for Global Protective Services, intending to send an agent to Brockman's apartment, only to cancel the call when he stared toward the road beyond the field and saw the blue car stop at the mailbox.
16
The dust cloud hovered. All Cavanaugh could see was a vague figure leaning out the far window of the car, opening the mailbox.
“Steady,” Rutherford said into the walkie-talkie. “This could be somebody putting an advertisement or something into the box.”
A young woman—jeans, leather jacket, blond ponytail—stepped from the car. She walked to the gate, unhooked its chain, and swung the gate inward. Then she got back into the car and drove up the lane toward the house, the sound of her engine receding.
“Not yet,” Rutherford said to the walkie-talkie. “Wait until we see what happens.”
The car reached the house. Through his binoculars, Cavanaugh watched the woman get out. She stepped onto the porch an
d tried the front door but found it locked. She looked through the windows. She proceeded around to the back, out of view.
Listening to an earbud linked to the walkie-talkie, Rutherford reported what the other watchers were seeing. “She's trying the back door. It's locked, also.”
Now the slender woman came back into view. She tried to get into the barn, tried to get into a shed, then gave up, returned to her car, and drove back toward the road.
“Go! Go! Go!” Rutherford shouted into his walkie-talkie.
Abruptly, the countryside was in motion. Camouflaged men with rifles rose from tall weeds near the house. Vehicles that had been hidden on a nearby farm sped from that property and raced along the road, hurrying to block the lane. A faint drone became the growing rumble of two enlarging specks on the horizon: helicopters speeding toward the farm.
The woman's startled face was visible through the windshield. Shocked by the sudden appearance of the camouflaged men, she urged the car forward.
Armed men blocked the lane. The woman swerved into a field, desperate to veer around them. But now a dark van arrived, blocking the open gate. As the men with rifles converged on her, the car's wheels got stuck in the field. Tires spun. Dirt flew. Through his binoculars, Cavanaugh saw that the woman had her hands to the sides of her head. She was screaming.
“Hell of a start to the day,” Jamie said.
Standing, they brushed dirt from their outdoor clothes. From lying on the cold ground, Cavanaugh's knees felt stiff. A long time since I was with Delta Force, he thought.
“You take the car, John.” He pointed toward the back of the hill, where their vehicle was parked. “I need some exercise.”
“So do I,” Jamie said.
Rutherford considered them for a moment, then nodded.
Descending through stiff, brown grass, Jamie told Cavanaugh, “And maybe you need a little more time to get used to coming back to this farm.”
“That too.”
The crunch of his footsteps seemed to come from a distance as Cavanaugh gazed ahead: past the cars at the entrance to the property, past the blue car and the men searching the distraught driver, toward the house, the barn, and especially the building next to the barn. He remembered being in the passenger seat as his mother drove him and Carl up that lane for their weekly lessons. Then Cavanaugh's memory was shattered by the roar of the helicopters landing where his mother had always stopped near the barn. Instead of two boys getting out of a car, men with rifles leapt from the choppers and scurried among the buildings.
Wordless, he and Jamie reached the lane at the same time Rutherford arrived with the car. They stepped aside for a van that sped past them toward the house. Squinting in the cold stark morning sunlight, Cavanaugh watched the van stop next to a leafless oak tree, men hurrying out with dogs.
Cavanaugh pointed toward the woman. She was outside the car now, slumped against a fender. “Jamie . . .”
There were no other females on the team.
“Yes, I'll talk to her,” Jamie said.
Taking the opportunity to postpone going up the lane, Cavanaugh watched Jamie speak to the armed men. When they stepped back, she went over and leaned against the car, mirroring the woman's slumped posture. The woman wiped away tears. Jamie approximated that gesture by pushing a few strands of hair behind her ears, using imitative body language to establish rapport.
Amid the chaos around them, they spoke for several minutes. At first, the woman talked haltingly, but soon the full torrent of her distress poured out, Jamie listening sympathetically, guiding her with questions, nodding, at last pressing a hand on her shoulder.
She returned to Cavanaugh and Rutherford. “Her name's Debbie Collins. She's a nurse in a doctor's office in Iowa City. Lives here in West Liberty. The rent's cheaper. Every morning, she checks if Bob Loveless—actually she calls him: ‘Robert’—has any mail.”
“What was she doing with the doors and looking in the windows?” Rutherford asked.
“That's part of her routine. She makes sure nobody's broken in, that everything's secure. In winter, she uses a key and goes inside to check that the furnace keeps the interior at fifty-five degrees and that the pipes haven't frozen.”
“She does this every day?”
“For the past three years,” Jamie answered. “Except when she visits her parents in Des Moines or if she takes a vacation. But she's never away for long, and she always arranges for someone to substitute for her.”
“They must be lovers,” Cavanaugh said.
“No.”
“Then he pays her, right?”
“Sort of. A hundred dollars a month.”
“What? For doing this month in and month out for the past three years? That's hardly enough. You're sure they're not lovers?”
“The opposite. He never tried to touch her. She wonders if he might be gay.”
“Then I don't understand.”
“A little over three years ago, Debbie was in a bar in Iowa City. Saturday night. A few beers after seeing a movie with some girl friends. Early December. The group stayed until midnight, then split up to go home. It started to snow. Debbie was parked on a side street. She hurried to get to her car so she could drive home before the weather turned worse. One moment, she was fumbling in her purse to find her car key. The next moment, two guys grabbed her while a third pulled up in a van. She struggled. They punched her. They dragged her into the van, and before the first guy could close the side hatch, his buddy was already using a knife to cut off her clothes. The driver started to speed away when all of a sudden another guy lunged through the half-closed hatch. The stranger knocked the first attacker senseless. When the one with the knife attacked, the stranger pulled out a knife of his own. Debbie says she can still here the scream when the stranger slammed into the guy, did something with the knife, and threw the guy out into the snow. Meanwhile, the driver stopped the van, jumped out, and ran away before the stranger could get to him.”
“Duran,” Rutherford said.
“Who, as far as she knows, is named Robert Loveless,” Jamie continued. “The men reeked of whiskey. The knife they used makes her think they might have killed her after they raped her.”
“Then what happened?” Rutherford asked.
“The stranger managed to get her to calm down enough to tell him where her car was. Her overcoat was in shreds. Her clothes were half cut off, so he wrapped her in his own coat and carried her to her car. Her purse was in the snow by the driver's door. The key was where she'd dropped it. He unlocked the car, put her in the passenger seat, got the car started so she'd be warm, and then told her he was taking her to the hospital. ‘Not hurt,’ she told him. She was thinking about being brought into the emergency ward half-naked. ‘Then I'll drive you to the police,’ he told her. She didn't want that, either. She'd still be half-naked, people staring at her as she clutched his coat. She'd been drinking. The police would probably think she'd asked for it. Suddenly, an engine roared. While they were distracted, one of the attackers had come back and escaped with the van. The two other men had run off. So now there wasn't any way for the police to investigate the assault. ‘I want to go home,’ she managed to say between sobs. ‘All I want is to go home.’ The stranger told her he'd drive her, but she was suddenly afraid to be alone with him. She told him that where she lived was too far, that she didn't want him to go out of his way. She kept insisting she could drive, so finally he got out of the car, and despite the storm, she did manage to drive home to West Liberty. The next morning, she discovered how bruised she was and fully realized how close she'd come to possibly being killed. She also discovered that she still had the stranger's overcoat.”
“Then what?” Cavanaugh asked.
“Around noon, a car pulled into her driveway. A lean, lanky man got out and knocked on her door. The temperature was almost zero, but instead of a coat, he wore a sweater. Debbie was afraid to answer the door, but finally she couldn't bear watching him stand out there freezing, so she opened a
window to talk to him, and that's when she discovered he was the man who'd helped her the previous night. It turns out he was so worried about her that he got in his car and followed her home, making sure she didn't have an accident or slide into a ditch. If she didn't mind, he'd like his coat back. Well, of course, she had to invite him in and offer him some coffee. He kept a respectful distance, taking care not to make her feel nervous about having a stranger in the house. She thanked him for going out of his way. That made him smile, and when she asked him why, he said he was surprised to find that they were practically neighbors. He lived two miles down the road.”
“Imagine that,” Cavanaugh said.
“When he reached to take the coffee cup from her, Debbie noticed the fresh bandage on his wrist. The man with the knife had cut him.”
“Imagine that,” Rutherford said.
“So they became friends,” Jamie continued. “He kept treating her with respect, never making a romantic move, although she wished he would. Eventually, he told her he needed to leave the farm for a while. He was a construction worker, but because of the cold weather, he'd been unemployed for a while, and now he'd learned that his father, who lived in Miami, was sick with emphysema, so he was going to Florida to find work and take care of his dad.”
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