by Chris Culver
Frank described Cecil, Indiana, the town he drove the girls to, as a rinky-dink town off I-64 near Louisville, Kentucky. Ash zoomed the satellite image as far as it would go so he could see the different buildings and streets. According to the town’s Wikipedia page, Cecil had just over a hundred residents and had been founded in the late nineteenth century by a farmer named Dublin Cecil. Ash didn’t generally consider Wikipedia to be a reliable source—the world had better fact-checkers than high school kids with computers—but nothing he saw on the map or in pictures conflicted with the information. A town that small almost certainly didn’t have its own police force, making it quite a good place to hide out.
Ash switched the map to a street view. In addition to its database of satellite imagery, Google had sent cars with panoramic cameras attached to their roofs throughout the country. Those cameras had created a database of still images that allowed a computer user to see the countryside as if he had driven through it himself and taken pictures. Frank navigated via landmarks rather than street names, so the directions he had given Ash consisted of vague directional indications and descriptions of various buildings. Even that didn’t make things very difficult, though; the town only had three streets.
Ash guided the map past the town’s only gas station and a small community bank before coming to Cecil’s only four-way stop. He hung a left as Frank said and then he took the third right past a white, clapboard bungalow proudly hanging a pair of confederate flags out front. Had Ash actually seen that in person, he probably would have started whistling “Dueling Banjos.”
Frank’s instructions became even more vague at that point. He hadn’t known the address of the farm, but he said it lay just past a large curve in the road and overlooked a creek. Ash followed the map for perhaps a mile up the road and found two locations that could have matched that description. One looked like a simple house with a red barn in the yard. It fit the description Frank had given him well. The other spot looked similar from the road. Ash could see the gray asphalt roof of the farmhouse through the trees and a white barn to its left. He couldn’t say with any certainty if Frank had been talking about either one, which meant he couldn’t get a warrant based on that information alone. They needed to find something else.
Ash logged out of the computer and called Captain Bowers on his cell phone.
“Mike. I’ve got a possible location on Alistair Hines and the girls taken from the hospital last night.”
“Where?”
“Southern Indiana,” said Ash. “A little town about ten miles north of the Ohio River.”
Bowers took a breath. “How sure are you about this?”
“I can’t say. The guy I picked up from the house in Avon told me he drove the girls there yesterday.”
“It’s out of our jurisdiction. We’ll have to bring in the state police and the Bureau on this. He tell you anything else?”
“Nothing pertinent.”
Bowers paused for another second. “Okay. We’ll follow up. On its own, I doubt the word of a convict will be enough for a warrant. We might be able to convince a judge to sign one anyway if we tell him about the girls, though.”
Ash coughed, clearing his throat. “Even if I was certain about this place, I may have stretched some rules getting the location. It’s not going to hold up in court.”
Bowers muttered something inaudible. “You didn’t do anything to your suspect that’s going to get the department sued, did you?”
“I dangled some novel motivation in his face to get him to speak. Nothing illegal, I just don’t think a judge would appreciate it.”
Bowers seemed to consider for a moment before speaking. “Havelock called me about half an hour ago to set up a meeting,” he said. “We’ll tell him about the house and see how he wants to handle it. Maybe he can claim Hines is a domestic terrorist or something and get a warrant based on that.”
“You really think that’ll fly?”
“No, but we don’t have a lot of options.”
Unfortunately, Ash couldn’t come up with a better idea.
“When’s Havelock want to meet?”
“In about twenty minutes, so get your stuff together and meet me out front. I’ll drive.”
“See you in a few.”
Ash hung up the phone. He didn’t have anything to get together, so he went by the bathroom and threw some water on his face to wake himself up. He also got a drink, breaking the fast early. With everything else going on, he had enough to worry about and didn’t need to add dehydration to the list. Ash met Bowers’s Honda Accord in front of the building about two minutes later, and they sped off.
The FBI had a new, state-of-the-art emergency operations center in Castleton on the city’s northeast side. Ash had only been to the facility at its dedication about a year ago, but he had left feeling impressed by the federal government’s ability to spend money on frivolous things. Marble floors in the entryway and expansive, manicured lawns may not have reduced the crime rate or decreased terrorism, but they sure looked nice. Of course, after spending forty million dollars, the government better get something that looked nice.
Bowers took the interstate for most of the trip and got off about a mile from their destination. The FBI field office had been built in a large section of an ever-expanding office park. A tall, black fence surrounded the complex, clearly separating it from the surrounding buildings. Bowers hung a right on a nondescript road and stopped at a brick guardhouse with smoked glass windows. Thick, steel pedestals protruded four feet or so from the roadway, blocking the entrance and guaranteeing that not even a Humvee could pass without the guard’s say.
“We’re here to see Kevin Havelock,” said Bowers, thrusting his badge out the window. The guard, a fit, middle-aged man in a navy blue uniform, nodded and then went back into his guardhouse, but he didn’t retract the pedestals.
After about five minutes, Ash crossed his arms. “Think he’s forgotten we’re here?”
“Doubtful,” said Bowers, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Last time I was here, the guard just waved me through. This is planned.”
“And were you informed of this plan?”
“No,” said Bowers, waving him off as the guard emerged from his house. He pointed up the road from which they had just turned.
“Agent Havelock is getting a cup of coffee at Hardee’s right now,” said the guard. “He asked me to tell you guys to meet him there.”
Bowers stared at the guard for a moment. “Hardee’s?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. You passed it on your way in.”
Bowers paused for a moment. “Can you open the gate so I can turn around in your lot?”
“No, sir. Please back up. If you’d like, I can direct you.”
Ash started to say something about Havelock’s professionalism, but Bowers held up a hand, shushing him.
“No need for your help,” said Bowers. “Do I need to sign anything to say I was here?”
The guard shook his head. “No, sir.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Bowers. He closed his window and slipped his car into reverse.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” said Ash.
Bowers shook his head. “If we went in, we’d have to sign in as guests. Havelock doesn’t want our visit on the record.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to meet us on the record?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“At Hardee’s.”
“Yeah, at Hardee’s.”
Ash paused for a moment. “Does Hardee’s even have coffee?”
“Does it matter?”
Ash shrugged. “I’m just saying. It seems like there are better places to go for coffee. If I wanted a two-pound cheeseburger with enough bacon on it to give a horse a coronary, sure I’d go to Hardee’s. Coffee, though? I think I’d probably go elsewhere.”
Bowers reversed the vehicle until arriving at the main road outside the FBI’s complex.
“Are you done?” he
asked.
“I think so.”
They drove the rest of the way to the restaurant in silence. Unlike the FBI’s building, Hardee’s sat at the intersection of two major roads, both of which had cars backed up from one stoplight to the next, oftentimes blocking the intersections. Horns honked intermittently, and the stink of exhaust hung heavily in the air. Bowers parked on the edge of the restaurant’s lot beside a black Chevy Suburban with dark tinted windows. As soon as their car pulled to a stop, Havelock stepped out of the SUV and motioned for Ash to roll down his window.
“Sorry about all the cloak-and-dagger,” said Havelock. “We needed to talk off campus.”
“Somehow, I get the feeling you say that often,” said Ash. “Admit it. You use that line to pick up women.”
He glanced at Ash. “I’m happily married, Detective,” he said. “More to the point, I’ve got news on Alistair Hines and Lukas Fleischer.”
“And for some reason, you couldn’t share this in your office?” asked Bowers.
“Correct,” said Havelock. He turned toward his car and grabbed a manila envelope before nodding toward a pair of empty tables outside the restaurant. “Let’s have a seat.”
Ash reluctantly opened his door and stepped out of the vehicle. Cracks striated the asphalt parking lot, and the sound of car engines, horns, and the occasional stereo reverberated against the nearby building. Before sitting down at the plastic outdoor table in front of the restaurant, Ash brushed grass off the seat so it wouldn’t stain his pants. Havelock did likewise.
“What have you got?” asked Bowers.
“We’ll start with Fleischer,” said Havelock, opening his folder. He handed Ash and Bowers two photocopied rap sheets, most of the information on which had been written in French. Havelock or someone else at the Bureau had stamped INTERPOL—CONFIDENTIAL at the top of each page. The mug shot in the upper right corner drew Ash’s eyes. Fleischer was probably in his fifties and had hair like steel wool and a nose that screamed for attention. No facial hair, but Ash could see a tattoo on his neck.
“Do you have an English translation?” he asked.
“Afraid not,” said Havelock. “And I’m going to need these back, so don’t get too attached to them.”
“Can you give us the gist?” asked Bowers, dropping his copy on the table. Havelock tapped Fleischer’s picture on Bowers’s now discarded paper.
“Lukas Heinrich Fleischer. Born in Berlin, 1958. His father was a physician, his mother a seamstress. Normal childhood for the area, joined the National People’s Army at seventeen and served five years as a logistics officer. Interpol had little information about his military service, leading them to believe he had an unimpressive career. Post-military service, things get a little murky. He disappeared for a while, and to this day no one knows where he went. He showed up again in 1982 selling Soviet arms to two different groups fighting in Lebanon’s civil war.”
“How’d he end up in the U.S.?” asked Ash.
“He kept friendly ties with a number of influential people. After the Berlin Wall fell in late eighty-nine, his friends helped him immigrate.”
Ash nodded. “And I assume he didn’t mention he was an arms dealer on his visa application.”
Havelock didn’t even crack a smile. “Without having seen his application, I’d say that’s a fair guess.”
“Let’s fast-forward some,” said Bowers. “How’d he go from arms dealer in Lebanon to trafficker in Indiana?”
Havelock took a deep breath. “Interpol thinks he had supply problems. He lacked the personal connections to arms manufacturers or military quartermasters that would have allowed him to become a major player, so when he couldn’t supply what his clients needed, they went elsewhere. Trafficking young women across a border isn’t that much different than smuggling illegal weapons. He went where he could make money.”
“Word on the street is that people call him the Butcher,” said Ash. “I assume he’s never smuggled bacon.”
Havelock furrowed his brow.
“I…I don’t think so. We don’t have anything on nicknames,” said Havelock. “Who told you that?”
“A friend of a friend. You know how that is.”
Havelock opened his mouth to say something, but Bowers interrupted him.
“What sort of assets does he have? Tactical and political, I mean.”
“Limited. This isn’t a James Bond film.”
Bowers smiled but allowed little humor into his face. “If we pick him up, will a politician in Washington call your boss and tell you to let him go? That’s what I want to know.”
Havelock hesitated for a moment. “We consider him a relatively minor player, but he does have connections. There’s a fair chance that the Department of Justice will want to deal with him.” Bowers and Ash both started to protest, but Havelock spoke over them. “He will see the interior of a prison. You have my guarantee.”
Ash crossed his arms. “That fills me with confidence.”
“Like it or not, that’s how things are done in the real world, Detective,” said Havelock. “Sometimes you’ve got to give a little to get a lot.”
“I’m not so sure the girls he kidnapped and brought to brothels in the U.S. would appreciate that.”
Havelock narrowed his eyes, forcing them to become as sharp as serpent’s teeth. “You want to put Fleischer in the ground. I get that. He deserves it. In a perfect world, I’d loan you a shovel. In our world, though, he’ll get a deal so we can prevent more people from being hurt. I don’t like it any more than you do, so can you please tone down your self-righteousness, Detective?”
“This isn’t self-righteousness. It’s common sense,” said Ash. “You let someone like Fleischer go, you’re just going to arrest him in another five years for committing the same offense. The whole cycle repeats. You want a better world, grow a pair and put him in jail for the rest of his life.”
Havelock crossed his arms. “And what would you do about his accomplices? Let them go? We make deals so we can build cases.”
“If you were better at your job, that wouldn’t be a problem.”
Havelock took a deep breath and started to say something, but Bowers coughed loudly, interrupting him.
“I didn’t come here to hear you two bicker,” he said. “Truce, all right? You two can throw down later if you want, but right now, let’s focus on the job.” He looked at Havelock and then at Ash. Both men nodded, and Bowers returned his attention to Havelock. “Do you know where Fleischer lives?”
Havelock took another couple of breaths before looking at Bowers. “He’s got an apartment in Miami and a house in Chicago. I put both under surveillance, but we haven’t seen him yet.”
“So you’ll pick him up when you can,” said Bowers. Havelock nodded. “How about Alistair Hines?”
Havelock laced his fingers together over his folder and leaned forward. “We need to talk about Hines. He could be a problem for us.”
“What kind of problem?” asked Bowers, crossing his arms.
“The kind I might need to bring Washington in on.”
“Who is he?” asked Bowers.
“First of all, I should note that Marvin Spencer didn’t lie to you,” said Havelock, producing two images from the folder. “Hines is involved with the case.”
The FBI agent slid the images toward Ash and Bowers. The first image depicted a young man with a thin, angular face and brown hair. He stared straight at the camera, nary a smile on his lips. He wore a beige beret with an eagle crossed by a sword. Clearly, Hines was a military man, or had been at one point. The second photo showed the same man but older. His brown hair had streaks of gray, and the angles on his face had rounded somewhat with age. In the second photo, he wore a suit and tie. Ash recognized the hallway the picture had been taken from immediately, having walked in it to talk to Amina.
“Who is he?” asked Ash.
“Alistair Hines is his real name,” said Havelock. “Born in the East Midlands, just outside of
Leicester, England, in seventy-one. Joined the British Army at nineteen and then became a Special Air Service operator at twenty-three. He left the military at thirty-two with a wife and two daughters. A drunk driver killed the wife and daughters in 2004, after which Hines joined an American private security company with contracts in Iraq. While there, his unit came under fire from insurgents hiding under cover near a mosque. His unit returned fire, killing the gunmen as well as eight civilians. As the unit commander, his company blamed him for the incident and fired him. He went freelance after that.”
Ash looked up from the pictures. “You’ve got better information on Hines than Fleischer.”
Havelock nodded. “The records are better kept.”
“He doesn’t sound like a murderer, much less a rapist,” said Bowers.
“People change,” said Havelock.
“How’d he get mixed up with Fleischer?” asked Ash.
“I presume the same way he gets other clients. He has a reputation to live up to.”
“And what is that reputation?” asked Bowers.
“He finds people and brings them home.”
“In this case, he murdered at least three people,” said Ash. “I’d say he’s failing to live up to his reputation.”
Havelock shook his head. “I think he’s living up to it well. Think back to the Elliots’ Mercedes. We found blood and gunshot residue on the backseat. Our lab has since matched that blood to a sample provided to us by the British Army. I think Fleischer hired Hines to bring him Kara and Daniel. While doing that, Daniel Elliot shot Hines, and in response, Hines shot them both.”
Ash had thought something similar earlier, but didn’t say anything.
“So in your scenario, Hines abducted Rebecca because he needed a driver?” asked Bowers.
