Ellen softened, too. “Tibor’s not like that. Not anymore. He wouldn’t just walk out on me like that.”
Saint Tibor. “So what’s left?” Jonathan asked. “If he’s not cheating on you and you’re not worried about him lying dead in a ditch, what are you worried about?”
Her race to make the next light failed, and she stood on the brakes to get the Mercedes stopped at the line. “He’s been different lately. Just in the last week or so. Anxious, I guess.”
“Good anxious or scared anxious?”
“A little of both. He’s been consumed by this story. When I asked him what it was about, all he’d say was that it was big, and that I’d be proud of him when he was done. Then, when he left, he just disappeared. He called me from the office to chat as he walked to the post office to mail something, and another call came in. I got tired of sitting on hold so I hung up. Next time I heard from him he said he was out of town, but he didn’t want to tell me where. He called a second night just to tell me that everything was fine, but I sort of knew from his voice that it wasn’t. And then I didn’t hear from him again.”
Jonathan agreed that the circumstances were strange. “But there’s just been so little time. Even if he’s in imminent danger, we don’t even know where to look.”
“But you could find that out, couldn’t you?”
“You’re talking a lot of resources, Ellen. If it turns out to be a dead end-”
“If I was the one missing, would you be able to do something?” Ellen used the question with the skill of a surgeon using a laser, cutting straight to his soul.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Chapter Six
The basement murders and the yard murder were officially two crime scenes, at least for the time being, and now that the State Police technicians had arrived, Gail Bonneville tried her best to stay out of everyone’s way. Preferring fresh air, she decided to hang out near the spot where the girl had fallen.
Staying quiet and passive was not her long suit, hoyelled to him just as he was tipping the pitcher to take a mold of what appeared to be a wheel print out in the grass, about fifty feet from the burned van.
The technician, a youngster who had a certain computer-geekiness about him, responded angrily. “What!”
“Have you photographed that print yet?”
“Of course.”
“From a high angle or a low angle?”
“Both,” he said.
Gail gave him a hard look, judging his sincerity, and then nodded. “Go ahead then.” It had been a trick question, and he’d given the right answer. Gail couldn’t count the number of latent fingerprints, footprints, and tire prints she’d seen ruined over the years when the transfer process went awry. Without the backup of good photographs, they’d be left with nothing.
Besides, the Indiana State Police loved to snatch command of major incidents away from local authorities, and Gail knew that if she didn’t continually piss on the fire hydrants, the territorial lines could easily become blurred. Her thirteen years with the Bureau had taught her volumes about snatching command.
The charred van, they’d found, was registered to Lionel Patrone, whose DMV record had confirmed that he was one of the corpses in the basement. Another DMV search had found brother Barry. The inside of the van reeked of chemical lachrymator-tear gas-and one of the techs easily found the source, a CS canister that had apparently been tossed in through a broken window in the back door.
Beyond that, the charred vehicle produced little else but rolls of duct tape, singed junk food wrappers, and the twisted, melted remains of a five-gallon gas can. The crime scene techs would continue to search, but the fire damage was so complete that Gail doubted they’d find much of substance. Their best bet for usable clues, she thought, lay with the van’s engine block, which had mostly escaped damage from the fire. She wouldn’t know for sure until the ballistic analyses were completed, but it looked as if the shooter had thought to load armor-piercing ammo. At least two of those bullets had done their work to kill the van.
Unlike the bodies in the house, Christine Baker appeared to have been killed with a rifle. Her belly wound was through-and-through. They were still scouring the woods looking for the source-indicating something high-velocity, which was entirely consistent with the 5.56 millimeter shell casings they’d found in the yard. The second wound-probably non-fatal in and of itself if it had received prompt medical attention-had made a hell of a mess of the girl’s shoulder. All of it was consistent with Gail’s theory that the shooter was a professional. Young Christine Baker, however, was not.
Gail sat on a deadfall out of the way and opened the newest of the black-and-white speckled composition notebooks for which she was famous among her colleagues. Identical in every way to the notebooks she’d carried with her through elementary school, they were her favorite means by which to document cases. If you shopped carefully, you could buy them for less than a buck at Staples or Office Depot, and they were nearly indestructible. She liked the way the pages were securely stitched into the cardboard binding. Even more, she liked the way the wide-ruled paper accommodated her loopy and admittedly girlish handwriting.
Every case, no matter how small, got its own notebook, into which went every name, phone number, thought, and intuition. Some cases filled four, five, six volumes-he on, and if we turn out to be wrong, that would be a hard one to cover.”
Jesse nodded. “Yeah, okay, but it’s the theory that makes the most sense to me, and it’s been bothering me all day. Why would he wait till the worst possible moment to make his entry?”
A scenario started to form in Gail’s mind. “That’s where the shears come in. They forced his hand by threatening the victim.”
“No, before that. I think shearing the victim is why he didn’t wait any longer. The question I’m asking is why did he wait as long as he did?”
Gail’s eyes traveled to the spot where the girl’s corpse had lain. “He was waiting for her.”
Jesse clapped his hands together. “Bingo. Which meant that she was part of the plot in the first place.”
Gail let that simmer.
Jesse nearly vibrated with excitement. “Clearly he did his homework, and clearly he had good intel. He watched and waited so long because he was waiting for Christine. When the shears came out, the wait had to end. Bang-bang, time to go. I’m figuring that just happened to be when Miss Christine Baker pulled up in her van. Really, really bad timing on her part.”
Gail weighed his words and nodded. She liked the theory.
Jesse continued, “Judging from the tire tracks in the driveway, I’m guessing that she pulled up on all of this and got spooked. She panicked and spun her wheels trying to drive away, and our shooter had to stop her. That explains the bullets in the engine. Then she tried to shoot back.”
“Problem was, she wasn’t very good.”
“Not as good as our guy, anyway.” Jesse let a beat pass. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m finding it harder and harder to think bad things about this guy.”
Gail scowled. “Don’t go there, Jesse, please. This isn’t Tombstone, Arizona, and it isn’t 1870. People are dead, and it all looks premeditated. That makes it homicide, and last time I checked, juries are the ones who get to determine guilt or innocence. Our job is to find this guy, and to give him a chance to tell his story.”
Jesse looked uncomfortable. “You think he should have called us-called the police-before taking on a job like this.” His eyes narrowed and he dropped his voice. “If he had, do you really think we could have done this good?”
Gail’s eyes grew hot as she tried to determine her deputy’s intentions. Her memory still ached with the images from Waco, where she’d been an HRT shooter, and it had been an issue in the early days of their campaign against each other.
“What we need to do,” she said, changing the subject completely, “is find out more about these victims. If our theory is right, our best shot is to find out who he was trying to
rescue. To get there, we need to find out what links Christine Baker and the Patrone brothers to whoever they tied up in the basement with duct tape. Once we find a link, we’ve got a case.”
Chapter Seven
Jonathan was thankful that Ellen didn’t want to stick around after she dropped him off at home. Every moment he spent with her was an exercise in agony; not because of the divorce, per se, but for the loss of the life he believed they could have had together.
After he’d agreed to help, he’d spent a solid half hour on the t was awkward talking in front of Ellen-a fact that Venice understood and capitalized on by making comments to which he couldn’t respond-but in the end she gave in. The remainder of the drive was spent convincing Ellen that the information would likely take hours to obtain and that she probably would not hear back from them until tomorrow morning. Like it or not, it was the best they could do.
And now, finally, he was home.
Fisherman’s Cove was a peaceful place, a town where people probably could-but rarely did, he would imagine-keep their doors unlocked. The main industry in town was still commercial fishing, along with the businesses that supported fishermen and their suppliers. Because the main business district still thrived, people had money to spend, and that kept shops and restaurants profitable. The nearest big box stores were ten miles away, too far for everyday shopping needs.
With over two miles of waterfront on a wide part of the Potomac, and with four major commercial marinas, Fisherman’s Cove had only recently become a weekend tourist attraction for families wanting to ditch the hassles of Washington and Richmond without incurring the hassles of the major beaches. It’s funny, Jonathan thought, how you never think of your hometown being the subject of postcards until people come from somewhere else to take the pictures.
Having rid himself of the childhood estate that was now Resurrection House, Jonathan moved to a place in the business district, just one block up from the river. The house, located on First Street, had been Fisherman’s Cove’s first firehouse, back in the days when horses pulled the pumpers and hose wagons. As a child, when the building was still an active four-bay fire station, Jonathan had fallen in love with the structure’s brick design and fifteen-foot ceilings.
Some of Jonathan’s fondest memories were tied to his years as unofficial firehouse mascot. As a skinny ten-year-old, Jonathan learned to tie a rescue knot that would allow him to be safely lifted out of a burning basement. When the guys got their hands on a scrap car, young Jonathan would sometimes play the role of the trapped kid who had to be lashed to a backboard. By the time he’d turned twelve, he’d been secured to every conceivable rescue device at least a dozen times. In return for being the mascot, he got to shine (and use) the brass fire pole and wash the apparatus.
Those firemen from his youth-Hack Dean, Big Dave Millan, Fi-Fi Pfeiffer, and the rest-kept him from following too closely in the footsteps of his father. They treated him like a valued member of the team, even as they wouldn’t put up with any of his shit. They taught him to play poker, but they expected him to play with his own money and they never threw the game to let him win. Every pot he pulled off the kitchen table was earned fair and square.
In a weird twist of fate, at the very time when he was signing the papers to transfer ownership of his childhood home to Resurrection House, the Cove town commissioners had decided to relocate the firehouse to more modern digs closer to the interstate. Jonathan bought the old station without negotiation. The third floor served as the offices for Security Solutions, and the rest of the 12,000-square-foot building was his home. It cost a fortune to air-condition and heat, but he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
As Ellen drove off, Jonathan heard running feet closing in on him. You’d think he’d have learned by now. The seventy-five-pound Labrador retriever took him out nced around him as if on springs, yelping and whining as she pummeled his face and neck with her cold nose and enormous tongue.
“Hello, Joe,” he said, doing a rope-a-dope until she settled down a bit.
At the sound of Jonathan’s voice, the five-year-old puppy took off on her victory lap, tearing off at a dead run to the end of the block, then turning on a dime to sprint back at him, breaking off from another collision at the last instant to bolt past him to the other end of the block, where she turned again and repeated the maneuver. It was a dog thing, he figured-like licking your own ass or turning in circles before lying down.
He’d never sought the company of a dog, and he’d never officially adopted her, but she’d appeared in his life one night, whining outside his door on one of those rainy nights that Disney producers love-the kind where you can’t turn an animal away. She was maybe eight weeks old, and after she fell asleep on his sofa that first night, she’d claimed it as her own. She spent time at Doug Kramer’s place, too. As police chief, Doug called her his K-9 Unit.
As the beast ran her circuit, Jonathan unlocked the personnel door he’d installed in the middle of one of the old overhead doors. Stepping inside, he nearly tripped over the bags Venice had dumped in the foyer. One duffel carried firearms and explosives, the other clothing, body armor, and initiators. The wall of cool air embraced him as he stepped inside. With it came the smell of fresh paint. He’d been remodeling this old place for years, and he wasn’t sure it would ever be done. He wasn’t sure that he wanted it to be done. Hammers, spackle, and power tools were among his favorite toys.
He hefted the bags and humped them through the expansive living room, then through the hallway that led past his dark-paneled library on the right and the dining room on the left. In the very back, he walked through the utility room, and on through the steel door that led to the thirty-foot tower that had once been used to hang folded fifty-foot sections of fire hose to allow them to dry. A door in the far corner of the hose tower led down to the cellar. Years ago, it had been the only part of the place that young Jonathan Gravenow had found too scary to enter.
Now, of course, he had Joe to protect him. She was right there as he opened the door, and pounded down ahead of him the instant it was open. Joe liked doors, and she liked going first. Again he figured it was a dog thing.
Made of stone and sporting only a six-foot ceiling, the cellar spanned an area that was fifteen by twenty feet. Without looking, Jonathan found the light switch with his shoulder and brought life to the overly bright fluorescent ceiling fixture. Despite his frequent toils in the shadows, he didn’t relish living with them in his own home.
He U-turned to the left at the base of the stairs and carried the bags to the far wall, where he dropped them near a long-unused 300-gallon heating-oil tank. He pushed the tank out of the way to expose a heavy wooden door that was painted to look like the surrounding bricks. Behind the tank, the random patchwork of stones wasn’t quite as random as it might appear. Without a thought, he found the stone he needed and he dislodged it to reveal an electronic keypad. Jonathan carefully punched in a memorized fifteen-character random cipher. He took his time. He’d designed the system to allow only three consecutive tries, after which it would lock down forever. It was outrageous overkill-more suitable to a Surring twice was statistically implausible.
With the code entered, he pressed the red button at the bottom of the keypad and heard the hydraulic locks pull away from their housings on the other side. The heavy door floated in silently, revealing his tunnel. It was the one place where Joe wouldn’t go. As soon as she heard him moving the stones, she headed back upstairs to shed on the sofa.
The tunnel ran exactly fifty-six yards from this point in his basement, under his parking lot to its termination at the near wall of the basement of St. Katherine’s Catholic Church. Jonathan had commissioned the construction years ago from a contractor who owed him the kind of favor that only people in Jonathan’s line of work seemed to amass. To protect against mold and critters, he’d finished the interior walls with tiles, the shape and color of which were reminiscent of New York subway stations. About halfway down the hall on t
he right, a 25-by-25-foot vault served as his weapons locker; its door was built of reinforced steel and resembled the door of a bank vault-the purpose for which it was designed. For this, there was a six-number combination. As he pulled the door open, it nearly blocked the passageway.
Steel cabinets designed for fire protection lined the inside of the vault. With all the concrete and steel, it was difficult to imagine a scenario in which a fire might start in the tunnel, but if it did, he didn’t want his stock of high explosives cooking off. Not only would that require an explanation that he didn’t relish, but it could also open up a crater big enough to swallow a neighbor or two.
Jonathan liked it down here. He enjoyed the solitude. Much as a gifted artist enjoys the aroma of his paint or clay, he relished the unique aroma of gun oil and pyrotechnics. The first order of business was to clean his weapons. Both had been fired, and that meant both had to be stripped and oiled. Since the weapons had killed people, he would also have to retool the receivers and the rifling before he used them again.
He had just pulled himself up onto the stool in front of the waist-high worktable that dominated the center of the vault when he heard footsteps and whistling in the tunnel. He knew it was Dom. Father Dominic D’Angelo frequently visited Jonathan when he returned from missions, and when he did, he always whistled as he strolled down the tunnel from its secondary access in St. Kate’s. Jonathan figured it had something to do with never wanting to startle a man surrounded by firearms.
“I hear you, Dom. I won’t shoot you.”
“How reassuring,” said the voice from nearby. Dom appeared in the doorway smiling and carrying a six-pack of Coors. Tall and trim and sporting a helmet of black hair, Dom had no doubt triggered more than his share of very unCatholic fantasies among his female parishioners. “I bring hydration. Today I offer up brain cells as a sacrifice for my flock.” He dangled the six-pack like a bunch of grapes, offering the cans to be plucked.
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