Mark got up, rolled the paper up under his arm, and headed back to the car. He nodded toward Pat, who got up and walked toward him. A pair of joggers passed Mark and he nodded to them.
“Get in.”
Pat climbed in the passenger side.
Mark started the engine and turned the heater on high. It was waiting time.
Pat didn’t say anything. Just sat there shivering and holding his hands over the heater vent. Mark glanced at the gun in the back seat. “Do we need that anymore?”
Pat shook his head.
“Good.”
Pulling out into the street, Mark turned left one block down to drive into the alley behind the apartment building. He stopped the car behind a large dumpster with thick, brown grime running down the sides. This end of the building had a carport, where tenants apparently parked their cars. From his vantage point, he could see eleven vehicles parked in a row.
Exhaust spewed from the back of a gray pickup truck about fifty feet from where they sat. He couldn’t explain it, but he was positive the truck belonged to the man in the window. He was headed somewhere.
The truck backed out and started down the alley away from them, aimed at the street. He was sure it was the same man he’d seen standing at the window. His hair stuck up on one side and smoke trailed out from the cracked window of the truck.
Mark tailed the pickup through the city and onto the expressway. Neither he nor Pat spoke. Finally, the truck took the exit to Rockefeller State Park. Soon they were in the mountains, with trees thick on both sides of the road.
Pat’s phone rang, making both of them jump. Mark handed the phone to Pat, screwing his face into the fiercest possible look.
Pat rolled his eyes. “I get the message.” He opened the phone. “Hello.”
“What do you want?” The gruff voice filled the car as Pat turned on the speakerphone.
“I need my money.”
“What money do you think you’re getting?”
“You said to set the bomb, then you’d pay me fifty grand. I want my money! Or we can talk to the police to see what they think about it.”
Mark looked at Pat, half-impressed at his boldness, when just a short time ago he was cowering and snotting all over his leather seats.
“We thought you were dead. A year went by without hearing from you.”
“I was in the hospital. Got out a few weeks ago. Don’t think I don’t know what you tried to do to me.”
“Don’t get all hot with me, kid. You just shut up and listen. I’ll get you your money. Do you remember the KOA campground where you met us the first time?”
“The same one where you gave me the package?”
“That’s the one. You go past that, and you’ll see a dirt road off to your left. Turn in there and it’ll take you to a cabin in about a mile. Meet us there in two hours, and you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
Pat closed the phone and handed it back to Mark. “Yeah, I’ll get it, all right.”
“They’ll kill you, you know.”
“Yeah, I figured. So now what?”
“You see that sign up ahead?” Pat sat up and looked as a KOA sign came into view.
“Guess we’ll be a little early.”
“Yup.” Mark saw a dirt road coming up on the left. The truck they were following turned and disappeared. “You’d better pick whose side you’re on, because it might get ugly.”
“You do what you’ve got to do. I’ll stay in the car.”
Maybe the kid wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
* * *
KIRK LOOKED AT THE CSI building, which looked a lot different than he’d imagined it would look. A one-story, square, brick box with bad landscaping and a bent handicap sign, the plain structure’s dullness was highlighted by a glass door with two narrow windows on each side.
He got out of the dark blue Mustang and started for the front door. They had caught an overnight flight from Detroit and had arrived a few hours before daybreak. Geoff was a handy guy to have around. He’d found them a good deal on airfare as well as the car and hotel rooms with the discount he got through the magazine.
The receptionist pointed them in the direction of Cassy’s office. “I’ll let her know you’re on the way, Mister—Sorry, I didn’t get your name…”
Kirk ignored her and turned toward the hallway she’d indicated, Geoff at his side.
The inside of the building was as bland as the exterior. The dim hall lights flickered constantly , and the pictures on the walls looked like they were from the seventies. They came to a door with Cassy Meyers posted next to the doorframe. Kirk knocked on it.
The door opened. “May I help you?”
“Yeah. We met several months ago. I wanted to go over an old case with you.”
She frowned and peered at him like she was trying to remember who he was. Her blond hair was neat and had a touch of curl to it.
“Detective Kirk Weston.” He shoved out his belly, pulled his hair back and smashed his beard down. “ I lost weight. Plus, I need a shave and a haircut.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh, the detective from Detroit! You were on the David’s Island case, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Okay, wow. You could use a shave and a haircut. For a minute there, I thought you were some bum looking for a handout. What did you do, go on some boot-camp diet thing?”
Kirk chuckled. “Something like that.”
She pointed to the two chairs in front of her desk, motioning for them to sit down. “So, introduce me to your friend.”
Geoff held out his hand and smiled, making his patchy beard crinkle. “I’m Geoff Martin, I’m a friend of Mr. Weston’s. Good to meet you.”
“And you.” She turned to Kirk. “What brings you down my way, Detective?” She sat behind her cluttered desk in a big, black, high-backed chair. Pictures covered the walls around her, tacked up with pushpins and tape. They looked like something from microscope slides: blood samples, pictures of hair and fingerprints, and a few Kirk couldn’t place.
“I’m trying to tie up a few loose ends in the David’s Island case and wondered if you have anything on it still lying around?”
“Hmmm. I think I have still have the file, but I gave most of the information to the FBI after we were finished. I might have something, though. I’ll look.”
She got up and walked over to a tall file cabinet that sat in the corner of her small office. Opening up the second drawer, she flipped through the folders until she came to the right one. “Yup, here it is—or at least my findings, anyway.”
Closing the drawer, she sat down again, opened the file, and went through the papers inside. “I thought this case was closed. Did they reopen it?”
Geoff jumped in. “No. We have reason to believe something else is going on, though the FBI deemed it as an accident—food poisoning. We just wanted to find out what you think based on what you discovered.”
She looked at Geoff, then back at the file. “I did find it odd, given all the evidence we uncovered, that they would still come to the conclusion it was an accident.”
“What did you find out about the second drug? Did you ever find traces of it in the victims?” Kirk asked.
“No, but we did find something interesting about those notes that were sewn inside the pillows. They were made of a cloth we can’t trace. It’s some sort of disintegrating fabric. Most of our samples are gone. Last I knew, we only had a few threads left.”
“Weird.” Kirk stroked his long beard. “Is the fabric toxic in any way?”
“We didn’t check it for toxicity, because it wasn’t a food substance, but that’s a good idea.” She thought for a moment. “If the fabric puts off a gas or fume of some sort as it disintegrates, that could be the missing piece of the puzzle.”
Jumping up from her chair, she asked Kirk and Geoff to follow her. They walked down the hall to a long staircase that led to a basement, which looked like it belonged to a bachelor, not a branch of
the police force. Boxes were stacked along the walls, and the air smelled like mothballs and old dust.
Flipping on the lights, she hurried over to a small room off to the right filled with metal locking drawers. They looked like security boxes, but a little bigger in size. Scanning the numbers on the front of each one, she ran her finger down to one almost at the bottom.
“Got it.”
She removed a small key from the file she’d carried down with her, unlocked the drawer and pulled it out. Inside was a small plastic bag with a few strings of off-white thread. “This is all that’s left of them, but I think I have enough to run a few tests.”
“Great. How long will it take?” Kirk asked.
“A few hours. You can wait if you like, or come back. I’ll run them right now.”
“We’ll stop by later. We still need to run a few errands.” Kirk thanked Cassy, and they headed back up the staircase and out the front door to their rental car.
After they were on the road, Geoff asked. “What do you think?”
“It could be the break we need, but we still don’t know how they died. And one thing confuses me.”
“What’s that?”
“If the FBI handed over all that evidence, why did they ignore all the signs that led to foul play? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It is a little odd, with the note and all. You would think they would jump all over a thing like that.” Geoff shook his head then looked out the window.
“I think we need to find out exactly who in the FBI had access to that CSI file.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“Not sure yet, but I’ll find a way.”
CHAPTER 14
A FRESH SET OF tire tracks broke a trail through the snow that covered the ground like a white blanket. The rolling hills boasted tall, thin pine trees and patches of quaking aspen running up the draws. The ruts in the dirt road were deep, but the snow was hard packed. The BMW was able to make it through without scraping the bottom of the undercarriage.
Mark drove slowly over the crunching snow, wondering what he was going to do if he found what he was looking for. If he did not hand-deliver the criminals to the police himself, the case would stay closed and be lost to the memories of the public. Then again, he wondered if something else going on, some sort of cover-up to protect someone or something. Pat sat in silence, fidgeting with the zipper on his coat.
He went over the items he’d put in his car right after he had the conversation with Detective Owens: zip-ties, a shovel, and some plastic. He also had a full gas can in the trunk plus a lighter in his pocket. He didn’t smoke, but he’d bought a pack of Marlboro Lights just to make it look at least semi-normal to purchase both a lighter and a fill-up on a gas can.
He glanced over at Pat, who appeared to be in his own world. He clenched his jaw. Was he losing his mind? Driving the fool bomber to meet his evil bosses was insane. Bosses who thought it was okay to bomb a supermarket filled with innocent people.
The road crested a small hill, then dropped down to the other side, spilling out into a small valley. His adrenalin began to pump. A log cabin on the far side of the valley billowed gray smoke from the stacked-stone chimney. Several outbuildings stood off to the west side of the cabin. One looked like a storage shed and the other one looked like it was an outhouse. He found a wide spot in the road, turned around, and pulled the car off as far as he dared. This would not be a good time to get stuck.
Pat looked out the window and rubbed his hands together.
Mark sat for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. He remembered how K smelled and that special smile she saved just for him, how it felt to hold her in his arms. He thought about Samantha and her blonde hair bouncing as she ran to meet him at the door when he returned home after a long day at work. She was so innocent and perfect, so full of life. Now she was dead, thanks to the jerk next to him. Nothing in the world would bring her back.
He flipped on the radio, tuning it until he found a station playing opera. He did not know why, but in times of stress, opera was the only music that could clear his head. He closed his eyes and listened as the rich sounds of La Boheme flowed through the car.
After a few minutes, he shut the car down, got out, and pocketed the keys. He walked around to the passenger side and opened the door, pulling zip-ties from his pocket. “Give me your hand.”
“Come on,” Pat squealed. “I’ll be good, I swear!”
He grabbed one of the kid’s wrists, slipped a zip-tie around it, and reached across the seat to attach his wrist to the steering wheel. “You’d better be here when I get back.”
He slammed the door shut, popped open the trunk and grabbed a handful of shotgun shells, shoving them into his pocket.
The shotgun sat in the back seat He dropped more zip-ties into his other pocket and shut the trunk lid. Then he opened the back door to grab the shotgun. ”How many should I expect?”
“Don’t know—I only saw three, but there could be more.”
Three.
He shut the door and started down the incline, keeping to the trees and cradling the shotgun in the crook of his left arm. After about ten minutes of hiking and moving from tree to tree in the crisp snow, he could see the cabin backed up to the side of a mountain that closed off the small valley. He made his way deeper into the woods, where the snow was softer, and there was more cover.
His heart was racing as he crouched behind a rock outcropping, holding his shotgun in one hand. The cabin was just beyond the next clump of pine trees. He could see the gray pickup truck sitting next to a brown Chevy extended-cab that was even more beat-up than the gray one.
The cabin looked like any other log cabin, similar to one his parents took him to on summer vacations when he was a child. The place was square and probably only had a main room and one bathroom. A stack of wood was piled beside the front door. Though he didn’t see any movement, smoke poured from the stone chimney and he smelled the faint odor of coffee and hickory.
He pulled up the collar on his jacket and crept closer to the cabin, angry, violent thoughts flooding his mind as he made a dash for the gray pickup. He slid to the ground and crawled under the truck on his belly in the snow. After a moment, his heartbeat dropped to normal, his breathing slowed, and his eyes sharpened.
In a flash, he rolled from beneath the first pickup, across the gap, and under the second truck. One more roll, and he found himself at the edge of the front porch. For a brief instant, he laid on his back in the dirt and snow staring up at the clear, blue sky.
He jumped to his feet and leaped onto the porch, where he lowered his shoulder and crashed through the front door.
As he broke through the door, he hit the floor and sprang to his feet, his shotgun aimed at the two men sitting at the table.
They jerked to their feet, as a third man ducked behind a green leather couch.
“Don’t move—or I’ll shoot!”
Eyeing the shotgun, the two men at the table threw up their hands.
“Get up from behind that couch,” Mark bellowed, “or this riot gun will go to work on your friends!” He was surprised to note his breathing was normal and he was thinking more clearly than ever before.
The third man raised his hands from behind the couch. “I got no gun. Don’t shoot!”
“Sit at the table, and keep your hands where I can see them, all of you.”
All three men sat down, arms raised above the bomb components they’d been assembling.
Mark leveled the shotgun at the thick man on the far left. “Now, here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to answer with a yes or a no. If any of you tries to move or does anything that sets me off, you’ll all die. Got it?”
They nodded.
“You in the red, stand up and empty your weapons onto the table.”
The man, who wore a red, tattered, flannel shirt, pulled a six-inch-long hunting knife from the back pocket of his tattered jeans. Slowly reaching down to his boot, he
drew out a revolver and placed it on the table. After he was finished, Mark had the next man do the same, then the third, until the table was piled with pistols and knives.
“Now, if any of you feel the need, you go ahead and reach for one of those guns, but I would strongly advise against it.” He fired a shotgun round into the roof, sending wood chips and dust raining on the three terrified captives.
No one moved.
He glared at the men. They looked like a bunch of wild hogs just waiting for the right moment to stampede. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the door to the bathroom and the cook stove off to the left, steam rising from a pan of water boiling on top. The place stunk of burnt metal and sweat.
His gun still pointed at his prisoners, he walked over to the stove, pulled off the pot of hot water and held it in his free hand.
He turned toward the table and spoke in a calm, low voice. “First question, and don’t bother lying to me.”
The men glanced at each other.
“Did you have a kid named Pat steal C-4 for you?”
“No,” said the slim man in the middle. He had a long-sleeved brown shirt on and a thick, black beard that made him look like a mountain man. He seemed to be the leader of the group, and from the size of his arms, he was probably a former logger.
Mark shook his head in disappointment as he moved over to the messy-haired driver of the gray pickup sitting closest to the kitchen. He pushed the shotgun barrel up against his neck.
The driver squirmed in his chair.
Mark’s voice deepened, and he narrowed his eyes. “I’ll ask again.”
The man didn’t even blink as he growled out the same response.
Without hesitation, Mark dumped the hot water on the driver’s head.
The man screamed and fell to the floor.
Mark dropped the pot, grabbed his coat collar and yanked the writhing man back up into his chair. He flipped to the front of the table and pointed the gun directly into the face of the leader. “I’ll ask one last time, and this time, you better tell me the truth!” He was yelling now, and his blood was thumping in his ears as he stared into the dark eyes of one of his wife’s killers.
Sweet Dreams Page 14
