by Noah Boyd
“I assume he chose his murder victims by who was in the news and at war with the FBI.”
“All but Arthur Bellington.” Tye’s eyes started to well up. “Then, I guess because he hadn’t degraded me enough with the rapes, he tells me I have to pick the third victim. He said it was so I’d be as guilty as the rest of them, but it was really about finishing the destruction of any of my character that might have been left. So I told him he should kill Bellington. I knew he had represented Radek in those armored-car robberies. At first Radek protested, but I told him if he ever became a suspect in the extortion, it was a perfect defense for him. Why would he kill the man who had previously kept him from spending the rest of his life in prison? At that point I wanted Bellington dead for that very reason. Because of him, Radek was out of prison and was able to rape and murder at will.”
“And you were the one who came up with Bertok’s name for them?” Tears started running down her cheeks. She was shaking, unable to speak for a few seconds. “They needed an agent of questionable character; otherwise the Bureau would have known right away that he was not a thief and had been kidnapped. Then they would give the media the whole story of the extortion and murders in an effort to enlist the public’s help in rescuing the agent. Radek would never have gotten another cent.
“I swear, Steve, he was just supposed to be kidnapped by masked gunmen and held until they had the entire five million. If I knew they were going to kill him, I would have come forward right then and taken the consequences. I know that sounds hypocritical because of the others being murdered, but as big a mess as Stan was, he didn’t deserve to die.”
“And you supplied Radek with Pendaran’s undercover name so he could buy the extra Glock gun barrel.”
“Like I showed you, it was in the computer.”
“What about Dan West’s murder? The tape of the conversation between him and his killer made him sound like an agent.”
“That was Salton. We assumed the agent would be wearing a wire and wanted it to look like it was Stan. They worked out the dialogue ahead of time. I helped with that, too.”
“What about Radek’s car with the firebomb rigged in the trunk? How’d you know we’d find it?”
She gave a short, joyless laugh. “If it’s any consolation, you were driving Radek nuts. He was naturally paranoid, but ever since you survived that tunnel drop, he was constantly in fear that you would somehow find him. It was his idea that I go to your hotel and seduce you. When that didn’t happen, it got even worse. You killed Salton, and all that hate Radek had for the FBI was transferred to you. He knew he was the most traceable of the group because of his New Hampshire connection. So they rigged Radek’s car and parked it in front of his house, figuring you’d be the one to find it. And because you had survived before, he decided that each trap they set should have something left behind to lure you to the next one. When you didn’t fall for the car, he left clues to lead you to the building where they could kill you.”
“What about the night you called me in Kate’s room? That had to be Radek.”
“He wanted me to lure you to my place again so he could kill you. When you didn’t bite, he thought he could get you out at the movie ranch the next day. Then when he missed you there, we came up with faking my kidnapping as a way to get the three million dollars back.”
“And that brings us to you having me kill Radek.”
“If there’s one thing I want you to believe, Steve, it’s that I never wanted you to get hurt.”
“I guess when Radek was firing through the door, I should have taken a little more time to realize how kind you were being to me,” Vail said, his expression emotionless.
“After you and Kate—and the elevator—killed the others, it didn’t take a great deal of insight to know that I was next. Although he never told me why, he had me start acting publicly like I was in love with you. I knew it was so when you disappeared with the three million, I would suddenly disappear and it would look like you and I took off together. And if you were found dead in that factory eventually with that other woman, they would have started looking for me. Any way you cut it, I was going to vanish. So I came up with a plan to kill him first. Do you know what GHB is?”
“Liquid Ecstasy.”
“It does give you that euphoric buzz, but it also has a steroid-enhancing effect. You’ve seen the weights. He was always on it. But if you take a little too much, it can put you in a stupor; a lot too much and it’ll put you in a coma. Two of the side effects are combativeness and paranoia, both of which were at their peak in him already. I drugged him into unconsciousness once, but I just didn’t have it in me to kill him. So I figured out a way to have you do it. After he got the three million back, he took it to the auto graveyard to hide it. Then we started drinking to celebrate and, for the first time, had consensual sex. I wanted that so I could claim rape afterward, and prove it. I had put just enough GHB in his drink so he’d pass out. As soon as he nodded off, I staged the chained-to-the-radiator video and sent it to you. I was watching out the window and saw you coming up to the hotel with the shotgun. When I heard you on the stairs, I woke Radek up and told him you were at the door. I knew he would be disoriented and tip his hand too soon. His eyes went crazy, and when he saw the lock turning, he opened fire. I ran to the bedroom, taped my mouth and eyes, and chained myself to the radiator again. I didn’t think that in a million years you’d come alone. I thought it would be a SWAT team. But I should have known better.”
“How did you know I’d find you? The directions weren’t exactly GPS.”
“If you didn’t come in a reasonable amount of time, I would have sent you another video or a short phone call, a little more detailed, or a text, something. That was always a problem—we never knew how much information to feed you. Too much would have made you suspicious, too little and you wouldn’t find your way to where we were trying to direct you.” She lit another cigarette off the stub of the one she was smoking. “You want to know what the most satisfying thing about causing his death was?”
There was a change in her; she now spoke mechanically, totally devoid of emotion. Confession in this case apparently wasn’t good for the soul. Instead the recounting of her complicity was giving her some kind of awful realization, shutting off the defense of emotion.
“What was that?” Vail asked.
“Watching him go through the process of planning these terrible crimes. I had this perverted fascination about the way he went about it. You have to admit they were brilliant. I got caught up in the creativity of it all, occasionally making suggestions. Probably something like Stockholm syndrome. Whatever it was, he actually taught me how to commit unsolvable crimes—well, almost unsolvable. He handed me the tools to bring about his own death. He allowed me to finally get even.”
“So with him dead and the money returned, no one would have known about you,” Vail said.
“That was the plan. I was leaving the United States attorney’s office and getting out of California, maybe the country. Originally when I announced it a couple of months ago, it was with the intention of getting as far away from Radek as possible. As of yesterday, it was to get away from myself, but that’s never possible. Since Radek died, the fact that I’m the only responsible person still alive has been haunting me. The guilt has been increasing constantly. I can’t sleep. That’s why I’m here so early. I can’t eat. I am tortured.” She nodded at the wall where the morning light was finally shining on the framed quote from Martin Luther. “‘Each lie must have seven lies if it is to resemble the truth and adopt truth’s aura,’” she read. “He certainly knew what he was talking about. Funny, isn’t it? I put that up my first day as a warning against those who would lie to me, and I became its prisoner.”
“Maybe it’s time to take it down.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could let me turn myself in?” She lit a third cigarette off the one she had exhausted in f
our long drags.
“I thought you told me you were going to quit smoking.” She sensed something humane in his switch to the trivial observation.
She gave him an exhausted smile. “This is the last one. I promise I’ll quit…forever.”
He searched her eyes. They had suddenly lost the jitteriness that he had seen in them since the day they met. Some resolution had settled in. Vail then realized what she meant.
To her surprise, Vail stood up and turned to go. “Did you forget? I’m no longer an FBI agent.”
As he opened the door, she said, “It seems I’m always trying to thank you.”
He couldn’t look back as he shut the door.
When Vail got off the elevator in the lobby, he walked past the guard, who was speaking on the telephone in a panicked voice: “Send an ambulance to the federal building right away. Someone has fallen from a sixth-story window. Hurry.”
THIRTY-SIX
AS KATE WALKED INTO THE FEDERAL BUILDING SHE COULD HEAR sirens in the distance. She took another sip of her coffee and headed for the elevators, distracted by thoughts of Vail. How was it possible to admire someone and dislike him so much at the same time? As far as him and her, it was probably better that nothing was going to happen. Irreconcilable differences, wasn’t that what her mother had claimed in her divorce suit? “Give a man enough time, and he’ll show you his hand,” she had always said.
The doors started to close and Don Kaulcrick edged through them. They glanced at each other for a couple of uncomfortable seconds before she said, “Morning.”
“Morning. I’ve got a couple of ideas I want to run past you. See if we can”—he looked at the other passengers and didn’t recognize any of them as being from the FBI—“recover those units.”
“My office is nice and quiet.”
“Now a good time?”
She could see he wasn’t trying to patch up their working relationship. She had heard this conciliatory tone before. In all likelihood, he had no ideas, at least not any he was confident in, and wanted her help. “None better.”
As they walked through the office, there seemed to be a lightened mood even though both the agents and support staff knew that long days were ahead. Kate suspected that with everyone in the Pentad out of the picture, the hunt for the money would be considerably less stressful. Unlike chasing murderers, looking for money became less a priority with each passing day. Kate tried to push her key into the lock on her office door, but it wouldn’t go in. “You didn’t have me evicted last night, did you, Don?” She tried it again and then bent over to examine the lock. “There’s something in it.”
Kaulcrick looked and then scraped at it with a fingernail. “Someone’s screwing with your lock. I’ll call Demick.”
Five minutes later Tom Demick was poking at the lock with a pick. “Looks like somebody superglued it.”
“How do we get in then?”
“Let me go get some tools. The walls around the door are panels. I’ll have to take them apart.”
When he returned, Demick took a small crowbar to the sections of metal frame around the door and pried them away. Then, after lifting the fiber wall panels away, he used a hammer to collapse the metal-rib wall supports. Once he did that the door and its frame loosened and fell into the room. “Jesus Christ!” Demick said, looking into the office.
The others stepped up around him to see. On the floor was a three-foot-high replica of the Portsmouth Naval Prison, constructed completely of banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. The rounded turrets had been fashioned from fanned-out bundles held in circular tubes with rubber bands, the notched turrets with folded single bills. Where supportive corners were necessary, the ends of the stacks were riffled into one another like half-shuffled playing cards. Kate noticed that the courses were bonded in a staggered fashion, like bricks. No one said anything, but instead walked slowly around the structure, being careful not to touch it. Finally Kaulcrick said, “Get someone from the accounting squad up here.”
Four men came through the door and had the same reaction as everyone else, except for the older accountant, who was the one who had originally discovered the money missing. He walked around the structure analytically. “How much is supposed to be here?” he asked no one in particular.
“Three million,” Kaulcrick said almost before the question was out of the accountant’s mouth. “Give or take.”
The accountant took another pass and said, “I’m going to guess it’s closer to five million.”
“That’s not possible,” Kaulcrick said.
“There’s only one way to find out. We’ll start counting it.”
Demick said, “Hold on just a minute. I’ve got to get some pictures.” Kate couldn’t believe that Vail had recovered the money. And as anonymously as disrupting the bank robbery. Demick pulled out his cell phone and, circling the replica, started snapping photos.
Kate wondered why Vail had chosen to build the castle-like prison. Was it supposed to be a metaphor: stealing money gets you prison, or that money is a prison? Then she noticed on the parapet of the structure a one-dollar bill folded into the figure of a woman. She was wearing a floor-length dress; her arms were extended out to her sides gracefully, the left wrist turned upward. Now she wondered if Vail’s message might be that it was she who was imprisoned by her career. Whatever it was, coupled with his dramatic absence, she was sure that he wouldn’t be taking the director’s offer of reinstatement.
Kaulcrick was watching the accountants intently, and when he realized that they were calculating beyond three million dollars, he said, “It can’t be more than three million.”
That’s when Kate noticed that her computer was on. She never left it on. She moved the mouse and the screen lit up. There was a typed message. She read it out loud: “‘What’s the difference between the ashes of two hundred bundles of hundred-dollar bills and the ashes of two hundred bundles of one-dollar bills?’”
The head accountant pondered the riddle and said, “So instead of two million dollars being burnt, it was just twenty thousand dollars.”
Kate answered. “Of course. Radek knew we’d analyze the ashes but wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one-dollar bills and hundreds. Same weights of paper, same amount of ink. He just had the hundreds on top to fool us.”
At the bottom of the page was a link for a dollar-bill origami Web site. She clicked onto it and a full-page photo came up entitled “The Faceless Woman.” The image showed a dollar bill folded exactly like the one on the castle’s parapet. Where the face would have been was one of the few blank spots on the bill.
Carefully she lifted the single folded bill from the castle and noticed that just a few touches of a pencil had produced a woman’s delicate features. She knew it had to be her imagination, but she thought it resembled her. There was even a slight gray flick of color where her scar was.
AFTER
STEVE VAIL WAS WORKING ON A NEW SCULPTURE, SO HE IGNORED THE knock at his apartment door. It was near dusk and the late-summer light was being extinguished by an impending storm coming off Lake Michigan. The wind had shifted to the northeast again and the temperature was dropping. There was another knock. He thought it unusual because it was not any more insistent in either volume or rhythm. He covered the figure and took a beer from the refrigerator. Before he got to the door, there was a third knock, this one also controlled. He decided it did not belong to a man.
He opened the door and Kate Bannon was standing there in a black dress. She smiled apprehensively. “Hi?”
“Hi.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not here as an employee of the FBI. Purely social.”
He stepped out of the way. “Then you may enter and state your business.”
“It’s not business.” She walked in and said, “Got another one of those?” She pointed at the bottle in his hand.
After retrieving a second beer, he handed it to her. “No glass?” she asked.
“If I don’t like what you h
ave to say, you can take it to go.”
“Get a glass. I’ll be sure to say something you like.”
“I lose more glasses that way.” He went to the cabinet and got her one.
“I assume you know about Tye Delson.”
“I heard about it.”
“Evidently she was smoking, lost her balance, and fell out her office window. I went to the service. It was pretty sad after all she went through.”
“We probably don’t know half of it.”
Kate got that old feeling about Vail, that he knew something no one else did. “By the way, did you hear that we got the five million back?”
“No kidding.”
She smiled. “Yeah, no kidding. Of course Kaulcrick tried to twist it around with the director. You know, his leadership and all.”
“What makes you so sure he wasn’t responsible?”
“Still can’t stand to take any credit. I get it. I won’t bring it up again,” Kate said. “And in return for what you did, I won’t thank you either.”
“Thank you.”
“Very funny. Also, Pendaran has been cleared. Well, cleared of being part of the Pentad.”
“Did you finally get rid of him?”
Kate shook her head. “He’s suing for false arrest. Looks like he’ll be with us until he retires.”
“Sounds about right.”
“And the director has made a couple of requests. The first was of Assistant Director Kaulcrick. He explained to Don how it was time to retire. He’ll be gone after the first of the month. On behalf of the entire FBI, thank you. The second thing was he told me to get an answer from you this time. He really wants you to come work for us. Like he said before, anywhere you want. You can travel around the country picking and choosing cases.”
