Rage Against the Dying

by Becky Masterman

  I wanted to tell Tony to make Kate shut the fuck up, but we had to keep the volume up in case Jessica’s voice came through.

  A semi rumbled by, rocking the van with its air and sound. Then nothing again. We got out with our flashlights, no longer trying to disguise ourselves. We brought our weapons, too, though I imagine I was the only one who actually knew how to use one with any skill. Those guys were techies through and through.

  Tony ran across the road to see what he could find over there while Yves and I searched off the right shoulder. I think we all knew pretty well what was going on, but none of us wanted to be the first one to say it.

  A shout from Tony. We looked up, couldn’t see anything but the glare of his torch, not only across the road, but far off the road, and lower as if he was coming out of a gully. His light bobbed across the road to us. He had Jessica’s backpack. I wanted to shoot myself right there, but then I would have been even more useless than I already was.

  When he reached us, he pushed the clothes around a bit and dug out the GPS device at the bottom of the bag. I drained out of myself. The device must have been found shortly after Jessica was picked up, the bag thrown from the eastbound lane. If it happened that easily it was either a woman with a gun or a man disguised as a woman who caught Jessica off-guard. If this was the killer that Sig profiled, he’d be smart, he’d know Jessica was a plant even if she didn’t admit it, and he’d head in the opposite direction from the one she was walking in. At least that assumption was better than fifty-fifty. “Let’s go,” I said.

  We jumped back in the van. “Which way?” Yves asked, only too happy to follow my lead. I gave my chin a shove in the direction we were facing and he took off. I had Tony get radio contact with all law enforcement jurisdictions.

  “APB. FBI agent Jessica Robertson kidnapped and heading west on Route 66 or feeder roads. Vehicle unknown. No verbal contact, Robertson undercover, probably immobilized.” Not dead. Not dead. “Unsub either a woman or posing as a woman, probably male.”

  We heard the crackle on the radio, all points jumping into the fray, mobilizing for the hunt. After asking us about the likely perimeter of the scene we heard roadblocks ordered allowing a twenty-mile radius. A lot of territory, and bigger by the moment. Ten minutes down the road we caught sight of a high beam up above and saw two search helicopters illuminating the desert around us.

  “Sign up ahead, side road,” Yves said, jerking his head to the right. “Says Dahlia.”

  I thought of the old case with that name, but didn’t know if those guys would have heard about it; nobody commented. “Go straight.” The killer would want to put on as many miles as fast as possible and wouldn’t chance getting caught on a small road … unless he had studied this stretch far better than we had, but there was no time to think about that.

  Kate Smith was belting “To dre-e-eam the impossible dre-e-eam…” when the radio connected to the New Mexico Highway Patrol reported, “We have a vehicle.”

  “Location,” Tony barked.

  “Just off U.S. 285 about a mile before you get to a small town called Clines Corner.”

  “North or south, for Christ’s sake?”

  “North. North.”

  “That’s just a little further up the road,” Tony said, and gave me a grim smile. “You chose the right direction.”

  We pulled up to six cop cars with flashing lights surrounding a black SUV pulled off on a narrow shoulder.

  “Ran the plate. Rented,” said a patrolman without wasting time identifying himself.

  “Thanks,” I said. He was de facto in charge. “Anyone in there?”

  “We didn’t look inside yet. Seems to be abandoned.”

  “How close are the techs?”

  “They’re on their way.”

  “How about you string some tape to stop all your guys from fucking up any footprints or tire tread in the area?” I said.

  He looked chagrined, but something told him this was no time to buck the Bureau.

  I went back to the van and got out a pair of latex gloves, told Tony and Yves to stay put for a few minutes and then we’d likely be on our way, that this could be nothing.

  I just had to look inside, to see if Jessica, or her body, was still there.

  I approached the SUV from the passenger’s side and opened that door to avoid corrupting the driver’s fingerprints. The overhead light went on. There was no one inside the vehicle. I saw nothing except Jessica’s wire rigged to look like a CD player, picking up Kate Smith’s voice, which was still belting from the car’s player, “You’re nobody till somebody loves you … nobody till somebody cares…” Fuck crime scene protocol, I mashed the back of my hand against the button to turn her off. That’s when I saw the smashed Dorito chip mixed with some blood on the floor in front of the passenger seat. The perp had wasted no time disabling her so there was no chance of escape.

  In a manhunt the size of the whole Southwest, people were interviewed, rental-car-agency records scanned (the SUV was rented by Elias Smith, a little play on the word “alias” that proved to be a dead end), and the reports came back quick from the DC forensic lab, best in the country. Jessica’s fingerprints sprinkled liberally around the passenger’s seat in an agent’s version of dropping crumbs to leave a trail. Other fingerprints found but none checked out against any in AFIS. The Kate Smith CD and its container discovered under the driver’s seat were clean. There was trace all through the vehicle, it was a rental for God’s sake, and the killer had no doubt deliberately chosen one that had enough miles on it to show it had been used a lot.

  He made one small mistake, put the headphones on and left his DNA on them, but it was mixed with Jessica’s, and even if we had him on file it would have been so contaminated it would be hard to prove it was his. As it was, I never knew if he could hear me saying, “Jessica? Jessica, are you there?”

  If he heard that, I was the one who blew her cover.

  We continued the hunt, but at the same time expected to find the body posed at some point on the side of the road the way the others had been. After a week we figured the killer wasn’t going to take that much of a chance, that he’d gone into deep hiding.

  The aftermath was all consultations with experts back in Washington and dealing with the Robertsons, Zach and Elena, when Elena was still married to Zach and alive. We all knew Jessica was dead but the Robertsons didn’t give up for months. For years.

  And then of course there were the postcards. Zach’s agony was kept alive by postcards sent by the killer with the cruel joke about having a wonderful time. No further clues.

  The loss of an undercover agent is largely kept out of the news. I kept looking for the killer in the following years, but I never found him. As far as we knew, Jessica was the last victim.

  My full report and the audiofiles of my radio contact with Jessica, including her last words to me, “Ten-four, Coach,” and the Kate Smith CD in its entirety, looped three times, are in the Bureau archives. And that’s all I ever knew for sure until I saw Jessica’s body in the car on the road to Mount Lemmon.

  Lynch’s trucking logs could be verified, but there was no time for that. I thought about the progression of recent events again: Lynch is captured and makes his confession … Coleman is suspicious of it … Peasil is sent to kill me … Coleman goes missing—who else did Coleman tell besides me?… There’s a second attempt on my life. Who would want to stop us from investigating and why? Who was Lynch protecting? If he didn’t commit the Route 66 murders, whoever did had Coleman.

  I’d failed to save Jessica Robertson. I’d failed to save Zach. Regret can be a great motivator. I wouldn’t fail to save Coleman. If Lynch wouldn’t willingly tell me what I wanted to know, I’d beat the truth out of him with his own trucking log.

  But it was now the middle of the night: no way into the hospital without being noticed, and Lynch almost certainly had round-the-clock security outside his door. If I had any perspective on this bloody mess, I’d be amused to thin
k Max had set up the security partly to protect him from me. Lynch would be in intensive care, close to a nursing station but apart from the rest of the patients. No patient would want to know he was next door to one of the more notorious serial killers in U.S. history.

  I worried for a while about how I would find him, set my brain clock for six, then fell asleep for a few hours on the couch. That was something Black Ops Baxter had shown me how to do, force yourself to sleep when you’re in a combat zone.

  I even dreamed. This time it was my recurring dream where I’m chasing on foot after a van that I know contains Jessica. It’s not always the same vehicle, sometimes it’s a dinged-up old Volkswagen van and sometimes an SUV, something dark and expensive-looking, and I’m frustrated because I can’t determine the make. I’m on city streets or a country road, and I yell to other drivers to go after the vehicle because I can’t keep running forever. The things that remain constant are that it’s always night, I never catch the vehicle, and I can hear Jessica screaming, “Coach.”

  Forty-five

  I woke up at six, showered, changed my clothes, and neatened myself up so I wouldn’t look and smell like a crazy woman. I was wild to get to the hospital, but it was located only a few miles from Coleman’s house and showing up before eight would be suspect. To kill some time I nosed through Coleman’s fridge and came up with little bottles of liquid yogurt that had the word “probiotic” written on them. I took three and lined them up like the little vodka bottles they give you on a plane, tearing the foil top off each one and sipping it while I sat at a table on her shaded back porch, my cell phone with me just in case Coleman finally called to tell me I was all wrong.

  It rang. I watched Max trying to reach me. When he was done I listened to the message. He’d been by the hotel to confirm I had a room there. I took the battery out of the phone.

  Coleman had some mouthwash, deodorant, and makeup in her bathroom. I covered up the dark circles under my eyes and chose a lipstick with the pale name of Barely Caramel. I brushed and rearranged my white hair in an unbecoming twist. I tucked my T-shirt into my jeans, then pulled it out again. Needed to put my gun there.

  There are benefits to being small and faded. A glance in the mirror told me I was just right for blending into the background of a hospital. I put the trucking log that showed Lynch’s routes in August 2004 in my tote and headed over to the hospital, along the way passing through a McDonald’s drive-through for coffee and a sausage biscuit so I wouldn’t get the caffeine and carb shakes.

  The Tucson Trauma Center on Campbell is four stories, complete with a helipad on the roof for transporting patients. The directory in the reception lobby told me that the first floor was all administration. I stopped a volunteer, told her my husband was in the hospital, bad traffic accident. I trembled. She tsked.

  I said I had heard there was a dangerous killer somewhere in the hospital and should I be nervous about that? My husband was staying on the fourth floor. She said I shouldn’t be concerned for my husband’s safety—the killer only killed women, and from what she had heard, wasn’t in a condition to kill anyone right now. Conveying a sense that this was the biggest thing that would happen to her all year, she also whispered confidentially that everyone knew Floyd Lynch was on the third floor because of all the policemen coming and going, but she didn’t know in which room.

  That was easy; it would be the room with the guard standing outside. I planned my next move on the elevator, came to a vestibule with turns to the right and left. Turned to the right, looked down hallways heading in both directions, didn’t see anyone who didn’t look like a nurse.

  Came back to the elevator area and headed in the other direction. Sure enough, there was the metro police guard standing about midway down the hall, barely paying attention. Looked like he had been there all night and was waiting to be relieved. It was hard to be sure precisely which room Floyd was in because the guard was standing between two doors, one open, one closed. If I had to take a chance, though, I’d bet my money on the door that was closed.

  I ducked into the closest room on the opposite side of the hall, luckily empty so I didn’t have to make up a story, and found a clean hospital gown. I drew it on and doubled my slacks up over my knees. Tucked the trucking log into the front of my jeans and hid my tote behind the door after taking out my cell phone and a pocket mirror. I put the battery back into the phone. More like a patient now, I stopped at the edge of the open door and held up the mirror to reconnoiter prior to making my next move.

  But before I could put the mirror down to dial the phone, a chubby nurse with proportionately fat hair and feet turned out like a duck emerged from the elevator with a full intravenous-fluids bag. Wary of being spotted, I drew further back into the shadow of the room and only stepped toward the door when I saw her waddle by. I watched her reflection in my mirror as she opened the door to Lynch’s room and closed it again behind herself. Now I knew it wasn’t locked.

  Still watching, I waited patiently for three or four minutes until the nurse exited the room with a half-empty IV bag. She nodded at the guard, who didn’t look up, and exited via the stairway to the side of the elevator.

  On my cell I dialed information to get the main hospital number and asked to be patched into the nurse’s station on the third floor. When the nurse answered, I said, “This is the Tucson Police. Would you please put Officer Joe Btfsplk on the line?”

  “Do you mean the policeman standing guard at four-twenty-six?” she asked.

  “Yah, that’s the one. Thanks.”

  In a moment I heard her, “Officer Bit … Officer there’s a call for you on the hospital phone.”

  He looked puzzled but took the bait. I grabbed a rolling intravenous rack from the room on my way out, and hung by the wall as I approached, just a patient getting a little exercise. I slipped through the door before the deputy could find out whoever was on the phone had hung up. He would take a little time calling the office and trying to find out who wanted to talk to him.

  Lynch was resting with the back of the bed slightly raised, his head rolled a little to one side, his hands on the cover. He was thin when I first saw him at the body dump site, but prison food followed by twenty-four hours of nothing by mouth had made him a mere sliver of a man. Tubes ran fluids in and out of him, including one leading to a colostomy bag that might or might not be permanent depending on the seriousness of his wound. A tube for oxygen led from his nose, and an IV was attached to his hand that was providing him with hydration and megadoses of antibiotics to stave off peritonitis. Besides the monitors that allowed the nurses to keep tabs on him from their station down the hall, he was also hooked up to two machines that dispensed painkillers, one a morphine pump he could press himself, and the other an epidural.

  I recognized it all; I had been in this position once myself. If infection didn’t set in, he’d live. I threw my tote on the single chair near the bed, shrugged off the hospital gown, rolled down my jeans, and pulled out the logbook.

  He appeared to be sleeping. “Hey, Floyd,” I said, reluctantly nudging his shoulder. There was something about this man I didn’t want to touch.

  He looked up at me, groggy. “Wha?” he said. The morphine was going to make this a little harder. “Who’re you?”

  “Brigid Quinn. We’ve met. I’m working with Agent Laura Coleman.”

  “Now I’m shot, everybody wants to see me,” he said.

  That gave me pause. “Who else?”

  “My father was here yesterday. He didn’t care I was attached to this shitbag, all he wanted to know is what I did to his fuckin’ dog. Christ, you don’t think I’ll have this thing hanging out of me forever, do you?”

  “I didn’t think you were allowed to have any visitors.”

  “He got in. The cop threw him out.”

  Lynch giggled, a hiccupy kind of laugh that appeared to hurt. “My hand hurts,” he said, and fumbled for the button of his self-administering morphine pump.

  Rather tha
n continue talking about his father or his ongoing medical condition I held the logbook in front of his eyes. “I need you to look at this. Do you know what this is?”

  His eyes grew a little more alert, either from the mysterious presence of this woman in his room or rising pain. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and then licked his lips. “I’m thirsty.”

  “That’s because you’re not allowed to drink anything. Answer my question and I’ll get you a wet swab for your mouth.”

  “Where’s the guard?” He reached for the nurse call button but I got there first and covered it with my hand.

  “Wait a sec. Look, Floyd. I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t care one way or the other about you anymore. I don’t care about you fucking mummies, or about your colostomy, or even whether you go to prison for life. There’s something more important for me just now.”

  He made contact with dull eyes that were still a little unfocused, but I could tell I had his attention.

  “This is your logbook that places you far away from the scene of Jessica Robertson’s murder. I’ve got all your logbooks. I didn’t take the time to match up all the Route 66 murders, but the chances are you weren’t there when they happened.

  “That means you’re covering for someone. I think the someone you’re covering for tried to kill me and has kidnapped Agent Laura Coleman because we got suspicious about your confession. I want the answers to some questions and I know you can give them to me.”

  He licked his lips again before he could speak. “Why do you think I know anything?”

  “Let me ask the questions for now. How do you know Gerald Peasil?”

  “I don’t know any Gerald Peasil.”

  “Then try this one: who’s got the ears?”

  He grew as pale as I remembered him in the interrogation video. He started picking at the IV in his hand the way he had picked at his wart. You could tell he didn’t want to talk, but the morphine might have been acting as a kind of truth serum. “He’ll kill me, man. He said he’d kill me if I went back on my confession.”