by Steven James
“Oh, really?” She swung her satchel over her shoulder and set her jaw. “Well, you know what? I’m glad you want me to go back to Denver because I’d rather go there than spend another minute here with you.” Then she spun and stormed off.
And my heart broke to splinters.
And I was thankful she didn’t turn around.
Because that way she couldn’t see the hot tear sliding down my cheek.
69
Victor Drake parked his Jaguar in front of the seedy boxing gym where Suricata and Geoff normally worked out. It was time to dissolve the team, but first, he needed to make sure that all the jobs were satisfactorily completed.
This whole part of town disgusted him. It wasn’t for people like him, and he could hardly believe that he was even here. What if someone saw him?
But then again, since no one would expect a man of his stature to show up here, it was less likely anyone would recognize him.
He didn’t bring the money with him, of course. He wasn’t going to drive into the heart of Barrio Logan with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash in the trunk of his car.
Victor locked his car and then slipped inside the crusty building. The place was just like he expected it would be: dark, rank, and filled with the barbaric sounds of large men pummeling each other into unconsciousness. What a wonderful place to spend your free time.
Geoff and Dr. Kurvetek were already there, waiting for him beside a large punching bag. Suricata was finishing battering the face of a man fifty pounds heavier than him. Victor had always known Suricata was good with knives, but he’d never seen Suricata box before. It was disturbingly impressive.
“Do you have the money?” asked Geoff.
“Don’t be ridiculous. No. Not with me.”
An edge of anger. “I thought you were bringing it?” “I’ll get it to you, OK? But first I want to know if you can keep the cops off my back and tell me where the device is.”
“The cops won’t bother you. I took care of all that,” Geoff said.
“And Hunter didn’t have anything with him when he was killed.
I looked all over the area, the pier, everything. It wasn’t there. It’s gone. And I checked his body. There’s nothing to connect him to us.”
By then, Suricata had joined them. Victor allowed him a brief glance. The man was panting. Perspiring. And he smelled revolting.
What else was new.
Dr. Kurvetek peered at Victor through the sweat-soaked air. “It appears the device truly was destroyed in the fire. Hunter didn’t know anything about it. Why would he have removed it? Everything ended with his death.”
“Yeah,” snarled Suricata. “Now, what about our money?”
“Tonight,” Victor said. “I’ll have it at my house. All of it. Be there at 8:30. I’ll give it to you then. But for now, bury all the evidence, the reports, do what you need to do to pin everything on Hunter.
No slipups.” And then, before the three men Victor had grown to despise could respond or object, he strode past them and removed himself from that filthy place.
He would have the money for them tonight. Yes. After all, he was a man of his word. But then, as soon as this nightmare was wrapped up, he was going on a little vacation until the dust settled again.
He finished off his bottle of pills, pulled out his cell, and called his travel agent. Then he drove as quickly as he could away from the part of town he never should have ventured into in the first place.
I was standing in the hallway outside Tessa’s door waiting for her to get her suitcases packed when Ralph called. I answered, hoping maybe he could encourage me that I was doing the right thing by sending Tessa home, but before we could even get to that, he said, “Pat. Nothing more on Drake. He looks clean.” “What else?”
“Margaret’s taking over the case. Suddenly, she seems very interested in it. We have a briefing at police headquarters at two o’clock, and she’s insistent that you be there.”
Executive Assistant Director Margaret Wellington was the last person I wanted to see right now. She doesn’t believe in environmental criminology or geospatial investigation and tries to discredit me and cut funding for my work every chance she gets. Needless to say, we don’t get together to play Scrabble on the weekends. Having to deal with her would put me right over the edge. “Listen, Ralph.
You tell her I’ll be late, if I come at all. You tell her that,OK?"
He processed that for a moment. “Didn’t go so well with Tessa, huh?”
“Not so good. We’re heading to the airport in just a few minutes.”
He paused, probably to weigh what I’d just said against the con-sequences of me not showing up at one of Margaret’s meetings. “All right. I’ll cover for you. And if you can’t make it to the meeting, I’ll tell Margaret you’re on an assignment from me.”
“Thanks. And, hey, tell me I’m doing the right thing here with Tessa.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Pat.”
“Thanks, Ralph.”
“I think.”
And before I could say another word, Tessa’s door swung open and she stepped past me, carrying her hastily packed bags. After she’d taken four steps, she called over her shoulder, “You can take me to the airport now, Patrick. I am so ready to be out of here.”
Ralph and I ended the call, and I led my stepdaughter and her illegal raven to the car.
70
12:39 p.m.
Neither Tessa nor I spoke much on the way to the airport. I’m sure we both had things we wanted to say, needed to say-I know I did-but the conversation just never got started.
We parked. Unloaded her stuff. Walked inside, all in silence.
Finally, at the ticket counter I said, “Tessa. You know I love you and I want what’s best for you.”
Silence.
“I’ll be home sometime in the next couple days. We’ll straighten this all out then.”
“OK,” she said. And that was all.
After she had her boarding pass, I walked with her to the security checkpoint, although she made sure she was a few steps ahead of me the whole way. The line was short, and before she could enter it, I stepped in front of her and said, “Good-bye, Tessa.”
I didn’t think she would reply, but she did. She said one simple, final word: “Good-bye.” Then she brushed past me and walked over to show her driver’s license and boarding pass to the TSA agent.
The words “I’ll see you soon” didn’t quite make it to my lips.
I wanted them to, but they didn’t. I couldn’t stay and watch her walk away like that. I just couldn’t do it.
So at last, without saying another word, I returned to the car.
Tessa dropped her satchel onto the conveyor belt, emptied her pockets, and waited for the bored-looking TSA guy to motion for her to step through the stupid metal detector. She’d avoided eye contact with Patrick so he wouldn’t see that she was about to cry.
She didn’t want him to know how much she hurt.
Hurt because of what she’d done.
Hurt because of what he’d said.
He didn’t trust her. She wanted him to, but he didn’t. And it was at least partly her fault.
The security guy waved her through. The way her day was going she expected the thing to beep. That would have been just brilliant.
But it didn’t.
Thankfully.
But then, as soon as she got to the other side, one of the other worker guys picked up her satchel, shuffled through it, and took out the antibacterial soap for her tattoo because he said it wasn’t 3.4 ounces or less and besides it hadn’t been placed in a quart-sized resealable plastic bag and he threw the soap into the trash and all that did was make her think of the tattoo again and of Riker and Patrick and what had just happened between them and how badly she just wanted to be alone, alone, alone.
Tessa plucked her satchel from the TSA guy’s hands and huffed past him to the gate. She escaped into the restroom, locked hersel
f in one of the stalls, pulled out her notebook, and let the words that were raging inside her bleed onto the page: in the bin of a thousand heartaches, i place my feathered pain.
Then she stuffed her notebook back into her satchel and snapped rubber bands against her wrist until all the ones she had with her were broken. And then Tessa Bernice Ellis began to cry where no one else could see her, locked inside the shiny steel walls of the bathroom stall.
71
It was hard for me to leave the airport.
After dropping Tessa off, I’d sat in the parking garage for nearly fifteen minutes, wondering if I should go back inside to try and talk with her some more. But I finally realized that I was doing the hardest thing, but the best one. If I went back in there, she wouldn’t learn her lesson. I needed to be firm and stand my ground. Over this past year I’ve been learning that being a dad is a much harder job than catching serial killers. Much, much harder.
And sitting there in the parking garage, I began to realize something else: sometimes when you’re a parent, your love has to be tough and uncomfortable, and it has to sting if it’s going to prove to be real and last for the long haul. Love that’s too timid to ache isn’t love at all.
However, as I left the airport, I knew I wasn’t ready to meet with Margaret yet. So, I decided to do the thing I do best-instead of going to police headquarters, I drove back to the site of Austin Hunter’s death to have a look around.
When I arrived, I parked in the same place Lien-hua and I had parked the previous night when we rushed here to try and find-and then to save-Austin Hunter. I stepped out of the car and visually scanned the area, checking sight lines, comparing the scene now to what it had looked like last night.
Why here? Why did Hunter die here?
I closed my eyes and pictured the roads of San Diego, the arteries of the city, intersecting, interconnecting. I knew Hunter’s cognitive map of the city better than anyone, and now, despite my natural tendencies, I tried to climb into his mind, to think like he did.
But I couldn’t do it.
I tried layering in the locations of the fires, and the address of his apartment, and the trolley depots he’d used to leave the scenes; then I mixed in the wind conditions last night, and the most likely place he would have come ashore after swimming across the bay…
But as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t figure out why Austin Hunter had let the police corner him where they did. He was too smart to get trapped in the middle of a road by mistake. This man had spent two years teaching survival and evasion tactics to Navy SEALs, and this location didn’t seem to make any sense. I knew he wouldn’t have led them to the rendezvous point, that much was for sure. So why here?
I opened my eyes and studied the area again.
The device. He wouldn’t have left Building B-14 without the device.
But he didn’t have any kind of device with him, except for the phone, when the police surrounded him. We could certainly analyze it, but when I’d used it, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. I couldn’t imagine that all this fuss was about a prepaid cell phone.
Austin was a pro.
A pro.
I didn’t know what the device was, or exactly what it did, but if Austin was going to steal it, the device would need to be mobile and, if the size of an MEG machine was any indication, the device would have to be at least large enough to be easily seen.
So, if Austin had it with him, where would he have hidden it?
A place it would be safe.
A place he could get to later.
Just before he was killed, he’d tilted his knife at Lien-hua. I walked to the place where I’d been standing; I pictured where Austin and Lien-hua had been.
“It’s over,” he’d said, but I didn’t think he was talking about his life, and I didn’t think he was threatening Lien-hua.
It’s over.
What’s over?
I glanced at the empty stretch of curb beside me. A car had been there last night. The car with the parking tickets, the one Dunn kicked.
The one he’d ordered taken to impound.
It’s over… It’s over…
Could Austin have been talking about the device? The device is over…
Austin pointed. He pointed.
Oh.
The device is over… there.
Austin had put it in the car.
It was time for me to pay a visit to the police impound yard.
When Tessa finally stepped out of the restroom and walked to her departure gate, she heard the poofy-haired airline lady who was working at Gate 24 announce that their departure time was delayed because of mechanical problems.
Great. Just great.
Tessa pulled out her cell phone and slouched into one of the airport chairs, ergonomically designed to cause permanent back problems. She tried not to think about how stupid the TSA rules about soap were, how stupid this whole trip had been, or how much her tattooed arm was hurting. Or her wrist where she’d snapped the rubber bands.
Or any other part of her body, like specifically, maybe, hello, her heart.
So some of it was her fault. So what? Patrick still wasn’t being fair. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t. She pulled out her phone, scrolled through some of her email, and was texting a couple friends to tell them she was coming back two days early when a white-haired woman sitting in the chair beside her said, “Good afternoon, dear.”
Tessa didn’t want to be rude. “Hi.”
“Are you going to Denver too?”
You think? Could that possibly be why I’m sitting at this gate?
“Um, yeah.”
“I wonder…” The woman had tender wrinkles around her eyes and a soft grandmotherly smile. “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind letting me leave my purse and my bag here? If you wouldn’t care to watch them for a few minutes?” Tessa saw a cane resting beside the woman’s leg. “It’s such a task taking them to and from the bathroom.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
The woman handed her a smile. “Thank you. That’s very sweet of you.”
Then the lady, who was starting to remind Tessa of her second grade teacher, stood up slowly. And, using her cane for balance, she left her purse and her carry-on bag beside Tessa’s chair and walked gingerly toward the restroom.
At the impound yard, I learned that a video camera had been found in the abandoned car’s trunk and had been handed over to the evidence room at police headquarters. I had a feeling it was much more than a video camera.
When I arrived at headquarters, I took my laptop with me to the second floor, walked past the infirmary, and found room 211: the evidence room.
At most police stations, everyone calls this facility “the evidence room” rather than “rooms,” but nearly always, the “room” consists of a maze-like series of many narrow rooms, packed with shelves that are piled high with boxes labeled by year, by case, by type of crime. The officer in charge of the evidence room, a bearded man named Riley Kernigan, who appeared to be serving his last stint with the force before retirement, lowered his newspaper and greeted me with a languid smile.
As he glanced halfheartedly at my FBI badge, I asked him if I could see the sign-in sheet for the video camera. “Sure,” he said.
“But it’s empty. You’re the first guy interested in this thing.”
“Can I see the camera then?”
“Camera, yeah,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “I’ll show you the video camera.” Obviously Kernigan didn’t believe it was a camera either. He pushed himself to his feet and led me past two narrow hallways to the storage room for current, unsolved cases. I saw the device sitting on the table beside a large duffel bag-the same kind of bag I’d seen the man carrying at the site of John Doe’s suicide.
A thick, foam protective wrap lay beside the duffel bag. I figured Kernigan had unwrapped the device when he checked it in.
The device that the impound guys thought was a video camera didn’t look like any video camera
I’d ever seen. It had a digital display screen, laser targeting, radioactive stickers. I didn’t know how it worked, or what it did, but someone thought it was important enough to kill to get, and that was enough for me.
Officer Kernigan stood beside me, stared at it, and then shook his head. “Darndest thing I ever saw.”
The facts of the case were folding in on themselves like a great origami figure. I just wished I could guess what the final shape would look like.
“Can I have a few minutes?” I asked him.
“Take as much time as you like. Stay all afternoon if you want.”
He gave the device one last lingering glance and tossed his newspaper onto the table beside it. “I get off at five-thirty, though. Shift change. Just be done by then ‘cause I gotta lock up back here. Do me a favor and stick it back in the bag when you’re through.”
“Thanks, I will.” Then he returned to the front desk.
I needed to make a decision. This device was stolen from a secure military base, but, as far as anyone else knew, it had been destroyed in the fire. The only other person who knew it had been removed from the base was Austin Hunter, and he was dead.
No one else had signed in to look at it yet, but I knew that a lot of people would be looking for this thing. Most likely the military, maybe people from Drake Enterprises.
Maybe the men from Monday night.
And Shade, whoever he was.
It might be good to see who comes searching for it first…
I set my laptop up in the corner of the room, turned on the video chat camera and the computer’s digital video recorder. Even after the screen went to sleep, the built-in camera would continue recording. With the amount of battery life and memory on my computer, I could take six to eight hours of video if I needed to. I didn’t think any visitors would be suspicious of a computer in the corner of the room, nor would they notice the tiny display light indicating that the camera was on.
Before putting the screen to sleep, I changed the computer’s system settings to allow me to remotely access the hard drive through the Internet. This way I’d be able to run any of my programs even if I wasn’t able to retrieve the computer from the evidence room until evening.
