“You mean at Fenster?”
Grove nodded. “Scumbags, wiseguys, and such.”
“We’re already compiling a list: cowboys, meth heads, independent contractors. Anybody you might hire for some wet work.”
“Bill Menner out of St. Louis would be a good guy to do the Q&A.”
“Yeah, well. Prisons aren’t the only ones with funding cutbacks.”
Another sigh from Grove. “Lemme guess, you got Menner pullin’ OT already.”
“He’s into golden time, Uly. I got sixteen field offices in the central Midwest working a grand total of thirty-four active cases. And that’s just the central Midwest.”
They walked in brisk silence for a moment.
Grove gazed up at the steeples of white pine and hickory overhead, the early morning sunlight slicing down through the leafy netting of branches and cobwebs, but Grove was hardly able to focus on it. His midsection burned with anger, his gut squeezing and turning. The break in the Ripper case that he was waiting for finally presents itself and all Geisel can do is talk budgetary cutbacks? It was baffling, and yet there was another layer to it, a deeper vein of outrage, cured in an autoclave of fear: harm was seeking his family now. Just as Vida had prophesied. His wife, his little baby. His son. The thought of it ignited a column of flame up his gorge, so hot and intense that he felt dizzy, nauseous. The footpath wavered in his vision for a moment.
“You okay?”
Grove snapped out of his momentary daze. “Yeah, sorry…I’m good.”
Geisel said something else but Grove didn’t register it. He was considering something important now, something that had been in the back of his mind since they had embarked on their little walk a half hour ago. This was war now. No holds barred. He had to protect his family with any means necessary—including any fancy African hoodoo he might be able to drum up.
This made him think of one of the most interesting case studies he had run across in his recent, obsessive research—a reference that would forever be etched in his memory. It was a twelfth-century volume complete with startling woodcuts called Locus Pugnae by a monk who called himself Brother Gueriana. Loosely translated as The Battlefield, the book told of an invisible, apocalyptic struggle between two fallen angels. The illustrations depicted lurid figures locked in mortal combat in the wilderness, in wastelands of razed villages, on mountains of burned corpses. The text and pictures had haunted Grove to the point that he had started dreaming of these eternal combatants—seeing them, of course, only through his blind eye.
“You okay with that?” Geisel’s voice broke the spell.
“Okay with what?”
“The safe house. WITSEC. We’re all set.” Geisel gave Grove a sidelong glance. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
WITSEC was the federal witness protection program which the Bureau used for informants, families of suspects, and witnesses in ongoing investigations who were under the threat of retaliation. At-risk families were whisked away to secret locations across the country and given new identities. Sometimes they stayed in the program until the perceived threat was neutralized. Sometimes for the rest of their lives. Grove had used the program on several occasions for his own witnesses and snitches. But he had never dreamed he would be a participant himself.
Grove looked at his boss. “WITSEC is a good idea, Tom. For Maura and Aaron…and Mom, too, maybe.”
Geisel seemed relieved. “Great, great. You can rest assured, Uly, we’ll get this guy. You’ll be back home in a matter of months.”
“I don’t think you heard me, Tom. I said ‘For Maura and Aaron.’”
“What are you talking about?”
Grove stopped walking. Geisel stopped as well. The two men looked at each other.
Grove managed a humorless smile. “I know you want me to go in, too…but I’ve got a better idea.”
FIFTEEN
A thousand miles to the west, the gaunt, sallow-skinned man known to his acquaintances only as the Hillbilly stood in an airless chamber lined with moldy cardboard, trying to ignore the voices in his head.
(Kill ’em all!)
“Shut up,” he murmured to the voice, and continued preparing his hit kit, sorting through the various rusty blades and duct-taped handguns with nicotine-stained fingers. The instruments of death were spread out in front of him on a length of black canvas beneath a narrow slab of cracked, dirty mirror.
The mirror was framed in a cheap particleboard frame, and hung off a bent nail. The Hillbilly had found the mirror a little over a year ago in a Dumpster behind the storage facility, and had brought it down to his lair on a whim. He didn’t much like looking at himself. He had a harelip from a congenital defect. And his thinning hair, recently dyed black, looked ridiculous. In the unflattering light of that single bare forty-watt bulb, which hung to his right, he looked freakish.
That’s exactly what you are—a freak!
“Shut up!”
He shook his head violently as though shaking off a cloud of killer bees.
But the voice was right. It was always right. He had felt like some kind of freak for most of his life, ever since he was a teenager and grew to the freakish height of six feet, nine inches. All the high school kids back in Arkansas had started calling him names at that point: Stretch, Stick Man, Beanpole, Freak. It didn’t matter though; he had never cared about schooling.
His size certainly came in handy years later in the joint. The brothers left him alone, and the Aryan Nation welcomed him with open arms. They needed a guy like him, a guy who could take a life with his bare hands without hesitation, a guy who was an equal-opportunity killer. Men, women, children—it didn’t matter—the Hillbilly was good at one thing, and that thing paid well.
Now he was about to take off on his biggest target yet—a goddamn G-man—and the risks were much bigger, the job more complicated. But what the hell did the Hillbilly care? The payoff was a lot bigger as well. He was going to make a wagonload of bread for this job, and that’s all he cared about.
Kill the fed! Spread his brains on toast and eat him!
He carefully rolled the weapons up in the black cloth, and tied them securely: an old switchblade, three bowie knives for up-close situations, a cheap .38 Smith & Wesson for point-blank head shots, and an old Army .45 with a homemade suppressor for making sure the son of a bitch was dead. He shoved the weapons in a tattered duffel bag, along with a change of clothes, then turned off the light, and ambled out of the locker toward the elevator.
A gangly tattooed freak in a cowboy hat can raise a few suspicious glances from passersby. That’s why the Hillbilly usually only came out of the warehouse after dark, when it was easier to blend in with the weirdos and whores and street scum that came out from under their rocks every night. But right now, he was emerging into the hard, pale sunlight of a Missouri morning, and it made him blink and squint just to see his hand in front of his face.
He crossed the adjacent bean field on foot, the sun beating down on his neck, the wind smelling of cow shit, hot tar, and garbage. He reached the nearest train station in less than half an hour. Located just north of Pickman Creek bridge, the Amtrak depot was a lonely brick outpost with a single bench and a public restroom.
Sitting there, waiting for the 11:15 to arrive, the Hillbilly thought he heard a strange noise around the corner of the building. Like whispers, and maybe the scuff of a shoe. Could somebody be following him? He went over to the northeast corner of the depot, and he peered around the edge of the building and saw nothing but weeds and trash and a few discarded tires. Could it be that idiot Splet?
Not now—Not yet!
The Amtrak train bellowed into the station a few minutes later, and the Hillbilly climbed on board with his duffel bag slung over his back and his flask of whiskey sloshing in his pocket. People stared as he searched for a seat. He finally found one in the rear of the last car and settled in as the train barreled eastward on its clattering course.
Eastward toward Virginia.
/>
“I understand about the safe house, I do…I understand all that, Uly.” Maura was sitting on a blackened stump at the edge of the front yard where the lawn service had been wrestling with a stubborn tree that had died the previous summer of Dutch elm disease. The afternoon had turned blustery and overcast. She wore dark sunglasses and a denim jacket, and compulsively dragged on a Camel Light between sentences. “I just want to hear from you why you’re not coming with us.”
Grove, garbed in his FBI jacket and beret, paced across the grass in front of her, hands in his pockets, as Behavioral Science Unit task force members went in and out of the front of the house. Most of the operatives wore standard-issue Bureau wind-breakers, and most carried computer equipment and roadcases filled with Tactical gear. “I’m not going to lie to you,” Grove said at last. “It’s all a long shot but I’m staying for a reason.”
She looked up at him. “Let me guess.”
“Maura—”
“You’re the bait again.”
“Mo—”
“Here we go.”
Grove stopped pacing and looked at her. “I’m going to be surrounded by the—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” She waved his words away like a noxious breeze in her face. “I don’t want to hear how safe it is, and how you’re going to be in the rear and out of the line of fire, and all that bullshit.”
A moment of strained silence, then Grove nodded. “Okay, straight talk.”
“Go on.”
“I need you to go to the safe house right away because we are putting out the welcome mat for this guy.”
“So I was right.”
Grove swallowed his nerves. “Yeah…we’re thinking maybe he’ll try to put the tag on me here, and we can track him back to the source.”
Maura smoked and thought about it for a second. Grove noticed her hands were shaking. Finally she said, “You have a child now, Ulysses.”
“I’m aware of that fact.”
“I just want you to remember that.”
Grove sighed. “And his father works for the FBI, and people are going to die no matter what we do, and tax time is going to roll around again next year.”
Maura gave him a hard look. “Thank you, Farmer’s Almanac.”
“Baby—”
“Look, I know it doesn’t matter what I say, I’ve played this record before.”
“It does matter what you say.”
“Let me talk.”
Another sigh from Grove. “Sorry…go ahead.”
She dropped her smoke to the dirt, ground it out with the toe of her Converse All-Star. Then she looked up into her husband’s eyes. “I saw the wire photos of those Memphis murders, and the Davenport scene. The way he tortured those two poor nurses. I saw it. I’m a journalist, Ulysses, in case you forgot. I was there in New Orleans. In Alaska.”
He gave her a deferential little bow. “And thank God you were.”
Maura took a deep breath. “I saw what this monster did to those girls in St. Louis. I want you to get him more than anybody. I don’t give a shit what I have to do—take the baby, hide in a hole in the ground, whatever.”
A pause here, Grove cocking his head at her, a little nonplussed. “Okay, now I’m kind of confused. What are you saying exactly?”
She rose and went over to him. She touched his cheek, then she hugged him, tightly, longingly. She uttered softly in his ear, “What I’m saying is I’m proud of what you do, and I want you to catch this guy by any means necessary, just don’t lie to me about it.”
He held her in his arms for a long, nourishing moment. “Copy that.”
“Catch this guy, Ulysses,” she whispered. “Then come back to us in one piece.”
Around two o’clock that afternoon—after Grove had cradled his son in his arms for endless minutes, planting kisses on his downy head, nuzzling his little plump caramel cheeks and whispering tender good-byes—Maura and the baby unceremoniously departed with a Federal Marshal for an undisclosed city in the Midwest. By that point the Grove house had transformed into a giant Trojan horse. Surveillance cameras had been installed. Trip wires along the edge of the property. Wireless bugs at strategic points. Sensors. Infrared. Inside the house, Tactical specialists were positioned in rooms on every floor like pawns on an elaborate game board. When it was all up and running and operational, Geisel toured the various rooms with Grove and ran down all the contingencies. “Of course, he may never show up,” Geisel was saying as he paused near the front door. “And I’ll have to justify all this to the director at the oversight meeting next month.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we burn it.” Grove glanced over his shoulder at the winding staircase. “Have you seen my mom?”
“She’s upstairs packing her bags. Great lady.”
“Yeah, she has her moments.”
“We’re going to escort her back to Chicago, put a uniform on her house for the duration.”
“Sounds good.” Grove wiped his mouth. His stomach tightened a little. He needed to negotiate a tricky subject with his mother before she left. “Excuse me for a minute, I’m going to go say good-bye.”
Grove went upstairs and found Vida in the guest room, zipping her worn leather satchel, preparing to leave. The creases around her brown eyes looked as though they had deepened overnight. Her salt-and-pepper braids were drawn up on her head like coils of rope. “There is my brave boy,” she said with a wink.
“Ready to roll, Mom?”
“I think. Finally.”
“Mom, before you go…can we talk?”
“Ulysses, of course.”
“C’mon, I’ll walk you to the car.”
They went downstairs, and Vida said good-bye to Tom Geisel. Then Grove ushered his mom out into the gray daylight, her brittle bones creaking as she descended the porch steps. The wind tossed her braids, and Grove put his arm around her to steady her. The unmarked Bureau sedan was idling over by the massive weeping willow tree at the end of the driveway, waiting for her.
“Mom, um…something I want to ask you,” Grove said, pulling Vida to a gentle stop. They stood just out of ear shot of the middle-aged female field agent leaning against the unmarked sedan, reading a newspaper, about thirty feet away. “You remember when we talked about the summoning.”
A dark shade passed over Vida’s expression. “You are talking about Alaska?”
“That’s right.”
“How could I forget?”
“Yeah…yeah, anyway…” Grove wiped his mouth nervously. Two years ago, clinging to the side of that mountain in Alaska, locked in a mortal standoff with a psychotic killer, Grove had resorted to the same brand of African hoodoo his mother had been shoving down his throat all through his childhood. He had broken down and recited an ancient incantation, a litany summoning a monster out of a madman.
It worked.
The entity had been hooked and pulled out of its host like a parasite burned out of a gangrenous wound.
Today Grove had a new perspective on his mother’s spiritual tool kit. “I remember years ago, you talking about a different kind of summoning, a kind of…connection with a higher plane. Something like that? Something called a hirizi?”
She gave him a look. “You mean uzuri—a talisman?”
“Uzuri, right. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was.”
Vida frowned. “Ulysses—”
“Wait, hear me out, please. This is my family, Mom. I don’t know if this latest scheme is going to work, but I’m willing to try anything to protect them.”
A pause, Vida looking into his eyes. “You are a very special young man.”
“Mom, c’mon.”
She touched her spindly, brown fingers to his face. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure you grasp the power of this uganga yet.”
“Teach me, then.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. A man must discover these things on his own.”
Grove swallowed the urge to raise his voice. “I need something els
e, I need an edge.”
A long pause here. Vida looked into her son’s eyes. “A man finds his own way to this juju, Ulysses.”
“Show me, then. Gimme a map, gimme directions.”
She stroked his cheek with wrinkled, tea-colored fingers. “You have very special blood running through your veins, my baby boy.”
Grove let out a sigh. “You’re not going to help me. Are you…?”
Vida’s face darkened. “I cannot speed the process. You must connect with it your own way.”
“Okay, whatever. Message received.”
She smiled. “You’ll get there.”
They embraced then, the embrace of a mother hugging a soldier bound for war.
SIXTEEN
That night, Amtrak Zephyr 312 out of St. Louis, Missouri, thundered into Washington, D.C.’s Union Station. Cones of magnesium-blue vapor lights shone down on the rails as the train flickered and sparked into the switchyard, taking its place at the block-long berth along the southeastern edge of the depot. The cars jerked to a halt. Compressed air hissed. Doors rattled open, and a platoon of redcaps and porters emerged first with handcarts and portable steps.
At length, the passengers disembarked.
The last figure to emerge was a gentleman dressed all in black with a cowboy hat. His surly expression kept most of his nosier fellow travelers at arm’s length. He carried a heavy canvas duffel.
The Hillbilly took his time that evening. From the switchyard platform he proceeded across the echoing marble walkways of the station out into the sultry night and down the street. He had never been to D.C. but he felt very little anxiety. He found a small diner on H Street, went in, and took a seat at a window booth. He ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, toast, and coffee, and he sat there eating his dinner with his knives and guns securely tucked away in the duffel at his feet. He only heard the voices in his head once during his meal, something about tasting the blood of an African.
After supper he asked the waitress where he might catch a bus or cab into Virginia. She told him, and he thanked her with a cold smile and a 12 percent tip.
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