by Steven James
“Angela found Aria Petic,” I told her.
“Where?”
“Not where, who,” Angela said. “It’s Patricia E.” She explained the connection but was eyeing Mollie’s laptop computer uneasily the whole time. “Listen, if this is a bomb I don’t want it anywhere near Lacey.”
She had a good point. If the laptop was an explosive device, it didn’t make sense to leave it in the building. “I’ll take it to the parking lot,” I said.
“No, Pat. Just leave it,” Lien-hua objected. “The bomb squad will be here any minute.”
“Angela already checked the laptop this morning,” I said. “There’s no indication that it’s a bomb; all we have is this timer. Besides, it’s been shuffled around all day and there’s still over forty minutes before the countdown ends. I’ll be fine.”
I donned latex gloves to avoid leaving yet another set of prints on the laptop. “Call Cassidy and Farraday,” I told Lien-hua, “and find out where they are. It might be good to… touch base.”
She was quiet, then pulled out her phone. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Please don’t blow yourself up.”
“I won’t.”
Day folded in on itself across the bottom of the sky. A sliver of sunlight fingered out from beneath the clouds and then it was gone.
And then it was night.
Brad was surprised that Detective Warren was here; he’d expected Tessa to be alone, but really, it was perfect. He couldn’t have planned a more fitting ending to the game.
He knelt beside the rear bumper of Cheyenne’s car, unscrewed the plates.
He could see the two of them through a slit in the living room curtains and was tempted to smile, to gloat, but held back, stayed attentive. What he had in mind was so elegant, so devastating, no one would see it coming.
The rematch he’d challenged Bowers to.
Eight months in the making.
And now Detective Cheyenne Warren would play one of the most important roles.
He finished with the plates, returned to the woods. Pulled out his Walther P99.
And sent the final text message to the next victim.
101
34 minutes left…
8:55 p.m.
While I waited for the bomb squad, I phoned the command post and told them to check for a bomb in the handicapped-accessible van, the Honda Accord that had been left in front of police headquarters, all related crime scenes, the congressman’s home, and to notify every agency working even peripherally on the task force to put them on alert.
Despite all of these steps, however, considering the way these killers worked, if they truly had left a bomb somewhere, I didn’t expect it to be someplace obvious.
No.
Misdirection all the way.
I thought of what I’d told Annette on Wednesday morning about the fourth premise of environmental criminology-progression.
With each additional crime, offenders become more efficient, learn from their mistakes, develop preferences for specific activities and behavior Endgame: 31 minutes 9 seconds
The bomb squad arrived, and after I’d passed off Mollie’s laptop I jogged inside to find out if Lien-hua had been able to locate Agents Cassidy and Farraday.
Tessa and Detective Warren faced each other, the chessboard between them
“You’re playing better tonight,” Detective Warren said.
“I’m trying to think like you.”
“Aha.”
Tessa took her time evaluating the position of the pieces on the board. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Sure. What’s that?”
Tessa moved her queen. “You’re Catholic, right?”
Detective Warren scrutinized the board. “I am.”
“And Catholics believe people are born evil, don’t they?”
“It’s not that simple, but-”
“Well, in sin, or whatever. Original sin.”
Detective Warren looked up from the chessboard. “We believe that people are born with a fallen nature, that all of us are in need of a Savior.” She didn’t sound defensive or preachy, but she did seem surprised by the direction the conversation was taking. “Just watch the news for ten minutes and you can see how true that is.”
Tessa was silent. Patrick’s words from last night came to mind: “ Fractures… I don’t think we can seal them… I don’t think anyone ever has…”
Detective Warren gave her attention back to the chess pieces. Slid one of her rooks to block the square Tessa had been eyeing for her queen.
“A fallen nature,” Tessa said.
“Yes.”
“So is that the difference, then, between us and other animals? That we’re fallen and they’re not? That we need a Savior and they don’t?”
Detective Warren eyed Tessa somewhat suspiciously. “This conversation isn’t some kind of ploy to make me lose my concentration on the game, is it?”
“Maybe.”
“Aha. Well… That’s one thing that makes us different, yes.” She seemed like she was going to say more, but held back.
Human beings, being human.
Following their hearts.
Tessa made her move.
Detective Warren countered.
“What about you, Tessa? What do you think makes us different?” Her thoughts cycled back to her recent reading and research. “Did you ever read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson?”
“I’ve heard of it, of course, but no, I don’t believe I’ve ever read it.”
“Well, it’s not like Dr. Jekyll is the mad scientist or something, like he’s usually portrayed. He wasn’t trying to create a monster but to isolate one.”
“To isolate one?”
“He wanted to separate his good nature from his bad. But it didn’t go so well.”
“The bad took over?”
“Pretty much. And after it got loose there was no stopping it.” Tessa moved one of her pawns. “Anyway, last night Patrick and I got talking about being true to your heart and about these guys-like the ones the Bureau is tracking this week-how, when they do these things, they’re being true to their hearts.”
“To the fallen nature. But-”
“To the fractures.”
“Fractures?”
“It’s Patrick’s thing. Anyway, if it’s true we evolved from primates, maybe we’re not different from animals at all-”
Detective Warren’s ringing cell phone interrupted her, so Tessa quickly finished her thought. “I mean, how can we not be true to who we are? How can anything act in a way that’s incongruent with its nature?”
“Incongruent with its nature.” Detective Warren tugged out her phone, looked at the screen. “Hold that thought. It’s your dad.”
102
25 minutes left…
9:04 p.m.
“Cheyenne.” I was on my way to Evidence Room 3a. “Something came up just a few minutes ago. We’re looking into the possibility that there might be a bomb set to explode at 9:29.”
“A bomb? Where?”
“We don’t know. Is everything all right there?”
“We’re just sitting around talking about good and evil, Jekyll and Hyde, original sin. Nothing heavy. Tell me about the bomb.”
Angela flagged me down. I stepped into her office and saw that Lacey had finished her analysis of the credit card charges at the Lincoln Towers Hotel on the night Hadron Brady tried to shoot the vice president.
No Patricia E.
No Aria Petic.
No one from the suspect list.
“Pat?” Cheyenne said.
“Sorry. Listen, there were traces of C-4 found in the van. We have a timer, a countdown that was emailed to Mollie’s laptop. That’s all.”
“Were they there when the van was first checked?”
“What?”
“The traces of C-4. I read the files, Pat. That van was processed on Wednesday. Maybe the ERT didn’t find
the traces the first time because they weren’t there. Then.”
Now there was an interesting thought.
Cassidy and Farraday cleared it, then rechecked it.
Plant the traces of explosives after the gas station explosion?
Another clue to a future crime?
I scribbled a note for Angela to look for the names Cassidy and Farraday in the credit card list. She stared at me incredulously but tapped at her keyboard.
Cheyenne said, “Is there anything I can do from here?”
“I’ll call you if there is, and I’ll get there as soon as I can, but things are a little up in the air right now.”
No one by the name of either Cassidy or Farraday had paid for a room at the hotel on either the night before the shooting or the day of it. I pointed to the printer to let Angela know I wanted her to print a copy of the names that she did have.
“Okay,” Cheyenne said. “Be careful.” The same thing Lien-hua had told me just minutes ago.
“I will. Keep a close eye on Tessa, all right? Tonight, I don’t know, everything feels off balance.”
“Don’t worry. She’s safe with me.” She hung up, the printout finished, and I grabbed the pages. Studied the names.
The As… Bs… Cs…
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for.
D… E… F…
Just a name I might recognize. Anyone.
G… H… I…
Anything out of the ordinary.
J… K… L I stopped.
Stared.
At the name: Lebreau, Renee.
103
The entire cave system I’d thought I was looking at collapsed.
Lebreau disappeared at 11:00 on Tuesday, that would’ve given her enough time to get to DC before Twana’s murder Tuesday night… Renee Lebreau had connections with Basque.
Lien-hua appeared at the door. I told her, “Professor Lebreau’s credit card was used to pay for a room at the Lincoln Towers on the day of the assassination attempt.”
“What?” She sounded stunned.
“I know. I’m not sure what it means. Were you able to reach Cassidy and Farraday?”
“I spoke with Natasha. They’d both already gone home for the night. I asked if she could come back in to evaluate some evidence with me. She’s on her way. So Lebreau was at the hotel?”
“At least her credit card was. What about Cassidy?”
“I couldn’t reach him. Natasha should be here in about fifteen minutes.”
I checked the time.
9:10.
Nineteen minutes before the endgame.
Whatever that was.
“We came here to review the evidence in the lab,” I said, heading for the hall. “Let’s go do it before she arrives.”
Brad positioned himself in the trees.
All right.
There were a number of ways things might play out tonight, but the result would be the same. He would make sure two people died and Bowers ended up scarred in the way that never heals.
There are many kinds of death. Physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological.
Yes.
And this would be the most fitting kind of all.
For both Agent Bowers.
And his stepdaughter.
Evidence Room 3a.
All of the evidence collected from the scenes lay before us, sealed and numbered in plastic evidence bags: straw from the primate center, the leather restraints the killers had used, the contents of Mollie Fischer’s purse, the cartridge case of the bullet that had gone through my arm, the two cryptic license plates. Beside them lay the blood-soaked suitcases, the wheelchair, carpeting from the van.
C’mon, Pat, what are you missing?
“We need to start at the beginning,” I told Lien-hua, but I knew we didn’t have time, and by the look on her face, she was thinking the same thing. Six lab techs worked quietly on the other side of the room, giving us some space.
“All right.” Lien-hua slid the bags with bloodied straw aside to focus our attention on them. “Tuesday: Twana Summie is abducted and murdered, but the killers make it look like it’s Mollie Fischer’s body.”
“No, let’s go back before that, to the note.”
“The note?”
“Calvin’s note that mentioned Patricia E., the anagram for Aria Petic. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. He died last month. How did Calvin find that out?”
“Or, on the flip side, how did the killers find out about the note?”
“Exactly.”
“How many people know about that note?”
“I’m not sure. Angela. Ralph. Me. A few other people. Cheyenne. I haven’t exactly advertised it.”
“And how’d you find it again?”
“Calvin started to suspect that Giovanni was responsible for the murders Basque was on trial for. He was looking into it when he was attacked. Then while he was in the coma, I found the note in his things.”
“And we have no idea how he discovered the information?”
I scanned the piles of evidence and had a thought. Maybe he didn’t.
H814b Patricia E.
Yes.
Of course!
“What if this clue about Patricia,” I said, “has nothing to do with Giovanni or Basque?”
“But because of the name Aria Petic, the mention of Patricia E. is clearly related to this case.”
“No, no, listen.” I jotted the clue down on a slip of paper, pointed at the name: Patricia E. “Since the killers left an anagram for Patricia E. at the primate center, we have a connection with the second part of the note. And here. H814b. They killed Mollie in room 814, to connect the hotel to Hadron Brady-”
She hit the table. “His initials-H.B.”
“Which means that somehow the killers put all this together last month.”
But why write an anagram? Why a code?
“No. Hang on.” I shook my head. “Calvin was a man of science. To him, everything was about clarity, specificity. Why isn’t the b capitalized? And why add another layer of obscurity to a case by creating this cipher-”
“Unless he didn’t discover it; unless it was given to him.”
My head was spinning. “In either case, the genesis of everything seems to be that assassination attempt. Lebreau was there, Brady was there. Vice President Fischer and…”
I waited, unsure I wanted to say his name.
“Paul Lansing,” she said.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Exactly.”
I looked at her, let my silence speak for me.
“Pat, that’s insane,” Lien-hua said incredulously. “There’s no way he had anything to do with this.”
I didn’t know Lansing’s phone number, but I figured Lacey could find it for me. “I need to talk to Angela.”
As I hurried toward her office, Lien-hua kept up with me. “Pat, you don’t actually think Lansing is involved?”
“No.”
“But then-”
“Just a sec.” I was at Angela’s door. “Can you pull up all the phone numbers for any Paul Remmer Lansing from Wyoming?” I asked her.
She typed. “Nope. Nothing.”
His lawyers will have the number.
“Get me the number for Keegan Wilby in DC.”
“Pat, this is crazy,” Lien-hua said.
“I know.”
Angela found Wilby’s cell number, I called, he didn’t answer. Come on!
I left him a message to call me as soon as he could with Lansing’s number.
The scars.
Endgame.
The plates left on Larrote’s car were registered in Denver, where you live.
Lien-hua put a hand on my shoulder. “Pat. What are you thinking?”
“Tessa. I need to check on her. You stay here, wait for Natasha.”
“Call me.”
“I will.”
Then I remembered that Paul had emailed Tessa on Wednesday, asked her to call him.
She’ll hav
e his number.
I speed-dialed my stepdaughter as I burst out the door and raced to my car.
104
10 minutes left…
9:19 p.m.
“Do you know your father’s number?” I was pulling out of my parking spot. “His phone number?”
“No.”
“How could you not-”
“He never gave it to me. Patrick, what’s going on?” Her voice had a crack of fear inside it. “Is there a bomb somewhere?” She must have overheard me talking with Cheyenne a little while ago.
“I don’t know. Listen, if Paul contacts you, emails you, anything, I want you to call me immediately. Stay in the house, make sure the doors are locked.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“No, don’t be scared, just stay with Detective Warren. I’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“Did Paul do something?”
“No. But he might know who did. Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be there by 9:30.”
End call. I punched the gas and left the Academy.
Margaret Wellington was deep in thought about Rodale’s connection with Lebreau as she entered her house, set down her purse, and dropped her keys into the dish on the counter, but even as she did those things, a small uncomfortable chill began to crawl through her.
Her dog had not run up to greet her. “C’mere, Lewis.” Her voice sounded lonely, muted by the empty house.
Nothing.
“Come here, boy.”
He didn’t come.
“Lewis?”
Stillness.
A vacant, silent house.
He would have come if he could.
Margaret kicked off her shoes so that she could move through the house without making a sound.
Unholstered her weapon.
And started down the hallway.
Eight minutes from home.
Who could have found out about Lansing’s past? Someone in law enforcement? The NSA? Who would know about the congressman’s financial records and his connection with the Gunderson Foundation?
Who was Aria Petic?
It would need to be a woman who knew inside information about the Gunderson facility as well as the assassination attempt against the vice president, someone who’d been at every crime scene, who’d built her mental map of DC from her workplace, who had almost unlimited resources for research at her fingertips, who would know the response time of the ERT Oh yes.
