The Shadow Priest: Omnibus Edition: Two Complete Novels

by D. C. Alexander

  Arkin couldn't put a finger on exactly why he thought so, but to his watchful eye, she looked worse. Maybe her skin had grown a touch sallow, or maybe she'd lost more volume in her eyebrows. He wasn't sure. But it worried him.

  As Hannah handed a glass of lemonade to Pratt, she asked him, "What are you reading?"

  "It's called Khyber Recon. It's about—"

  "Ah! Spare me."

  "You too? You're just like your husband."

  "I'll slap you if you're going to insult me on my own front porch," Hannah said with a wink.

  "She will," Arkin said, plopping down into a rocker.

  "You shouldn't read pop fiction, John. It kills brain cells. If you like war stories, read War and Peace."

  Pratt smiled. "See, now, that's exactly what your husband told me not two hours ago."

  Her eyebrows arched. "Really? Usually I tell people that it's a bad idea to listen to him. But just this one time—"

  "Ahhhhhh," Morrison groaned as he emerged from the house, stretching his arms above his head as he came through the doorway. "Lordy bees. That was the most satisfying—"

  "Bill!" Arkin barked. "Spare us. Just grab a beer and sit down."

  Hannah went back inside to work on an appellate brief due to be filed in district court at week's end while the guys sat on the porch looking down-valley to where a short stretch of the Animas River lay in view.

  "October blue-wing olive hatch is coming off," Pratt said. "We should fish this weekend. I hear there's good action on the Animas, from the border down to Aztec. Huge rainbows and some nice browns. And the water is high enough that we can do a float."

  "I was going to take my horses out and camp somewhere up on the Uncompahgre Plateau, but I could be talked out of it," Morrison said. "Arkin?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Are you in?"

  "For what?"

  "Man, where is your Ivy League head today?"

  "I attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Perhaps you've heard of it."

  "Whatever. Do you want to hit the Animas this weekend?"

  "Let me check with Hannah. And only on condition that Pratt promises not to wear his neon lanyard or creepy white lipstick."

  "It's sunscreen."

  "Sure it is." Arkin went quiet again, staring down at the river slowly disappearing in the twilight. "Hey, Pratt…."

  "What?"

  "Mmmmmm—never mind."

  "Come on. What?"

  "Have you ever worked an assassination case like this Egan thing since you joined DCI?"

  "Are we calling this an assassination already?" Morrison asked.

  "No, I haven't," Pratt said. "Why?"

  Arkin shook his head and leaned back in his rocker. "I don't know."

  "Nate, come on."

  "Well, it might be useful for you to look at the file of a similar case. You know, to see how the agency handled it. What investigative techniques were used and so forth. For comparison purposes. Might help."

  "Sure," Pratt said before waiting for more. "And?"

  Arkin took a deep breath. "Right before I quit DCI, I worked a case that might be good for you to look at. Target name: Bryant. File number 03-125A-MCE."

  "You remember file numbers?"

  "It was a memorable case."

  "Tell me about it."

  "Nah. I'm too tired. Read the summary of the electronic file in INDIGO tomorrow, see if you want to use it for reference."

  "I will. Thanks."

  They sat silently watching the moon rise and listening to coyotes cry to each other across the distant expanse of the darkening valley.

  *****

  After Morrison and Pratt went home, Arkin went inside to find that Hannah was already asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he added logs to the cast-iron wood-burning stove and poured himself a healthy glass of an exceptional Washington State cabernet sauvignon. Then he queued up the Seattle Symphony's version of the Tallis Fantasia on his stereo, loosened his tie, and kicked off his shoes. He slipped on his noise-canceling headphones, closed his eyes, and sank into his oversized leather club chair to reflect on the day.

  Two glasses of wine and a half hour of music later, his thoughts at last left the real world behind. He pictured himself flying just above the jagged and snowy peaks of the San Juan Mountains in the pink dawn light of a clear winter sky, nature's grandeur all around him. The vision stayed with him until he fell asleep in his chair.

  *****

  Arkin woke close to 3 a.m., undressed, and crawled into bed, feeling his way in the dark. But his anxiety over the Cortez shooting returned with a vengeance, and he couldn't fall back to sleep. Just before 4 a.m., his fidgeting finally woke Hannah. She switched on her reading light, replaced the knit cap that had fallen from her bald head as she slept, propped her hand under her ear and looked at him. He stared at the ceiling.

  "Can't sleep?"

  "No."

  "What's on your mind?"

  "That scene we looked at today."

  "Cortez?"

  "Yeah."

  "That bad, huh?"

  "No, it's not the shooting, though it was gruesome."

  "What then?"

  "It brought up memories."

  "D.C.?"

  Arkin exhaled through his nose. "Yup."

  "Nathaniel, that's all behind us. You're a duck. Let the rain roll off your back."

  "I know."

  "Our lives are so much better now, away from there."

  "Yes."

  "Why is it on your mind at all?"

  "Pratt was asking me about what happened. How we ended up here. Plus. . . ."

  "Plus what?"

  "There were some things about the crime scene that reminded me of the Priest."

  "Nathaniel."

  "I know."

  "How many times have we talked about this? You have to let it go."

  "I know. I have."

  "Except that it's giving you insomnia again." She paused for a moment. "Do you think there's a connection?"

  "No. I don't know. There were a few things—maybe too much to discount entirely."

  "Really?"

  "I don't know. What are the chances? It was years ago, and 2,000 miles away from here."

  She turned on her side and massaged his forehead and scalp with her fingers. "Sleep, Nathaniel," she whispered. "Go to sleep."

  "What time is your chemo tomorrow?"

  "9:30."

  "I'll go with you."

  "No, Diane is giving me a ride. Go to work and save your leave for our next trip to Kauai." She squeezed his hand. He turned to look at her and she smiled. "We'll go for a month this time. We'll eat coconut-mango shave ice at Joejoe's and seared ahi at Cafe Coco. Then we'll hike to the Kalalau Valley, bathe under the little waterfalls, and pick ripe fruit from the vines and trees. Papaya, mangos, guavas, and passion fruit. Sunny skies, sandy beaches, palm trees, and warm blue water. Focus on that. And then dream about it. Our next trip to Kauai. To paradise." She smiled at him as she closed her eyes.

  Arkin kept himself outwardly composed. But on the inside, as he gazed at his wife, ravaged as she was by her illness, his heart was breaking.

  SEVEN

  The next morning, Arkin stood in his office in Durango, sipping a cup of hot black coffee, looking out his windows, down onto a long curving reach of the Animas River where it was flanked by grassy flats. A kayaker was plying a small stretch of rapids. The gentle piano notes of a Chopin nocturne were barely audible, playing from impossibly small Bose speakers Arkin had bracketed up in each of the four corners of his ceiling. Though it was still early, he was already on his third cup of coffee, trying to revive himself from a near sleepless night.

  Aside from the speakers and a gleaming chrome Breville coffee maker, Arkin's office was spartan, his old wooden desk bare but for a keyboard, flat-screen monitor and framed photograph of Hannah from before she lost her hair. He had a simple black chair and an old-fashioned standup coat hanger. On his window sill sat a miniatu
re potted bonsai tree, its dark waxy foliage neatly trimmed into four flawlessly rounded spheroids. On one wall hung a framed, hand-painted map of the Four Corners region. On another, a print depicting the 16th match of the 1985 World Chess Championship between Arkin's favorite player in the world, Garry Kasparov, and Kasparov's long-time rival, Anatoly Karpov.

  For the most part, the low-rise building was occupied by small contingents of Forest Service, Department of Energy, and Bureau of Land Management employees. For reasons lost to history, but no doubt having more to do with political favors and pork barrel politics than need, logic, or notions of government efficiency, the building also housed, against all odds, Bill Morrison of ATF, John Pratt of DCI, and Arkin, himself now an employee of the obscure Military Weaponry Administration—the three of them constituting the entirety of federal law enforcement officials stationed in Durango.

  Arkin stood in the center of the room, good posture, rigid back, one hand in his suit pocket, the other holding his coffee, watching the kayaker negotiate the rapids as he described the Cortez crime scene, speaking into a wireless microphone he'd clipped to his lapel. Voice recognition software recorded his every word on the computer under his desk. "Firing point approximately 1,320 yards from target. Two shots fired four to five seconds apart. Likelihood of the use of a bolt-action rifle, considered in light of the speed with which two shots were fired, as well as their accuracy, suggests a high level of specialized training. Note to self: compare technique to that of DCI case involving—"

  A knock on the door.

  "Come in." Pratt poked his head through the door. "Morning, Opie."

  "Morning, Andy."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I checked INDIGO for that file you were talking about."

  "Yes?"

  "There's nothing in it. Or almost nothing."

  "03-125A-MCE?"

  "Target name: Bryant. That's the one. There's a tab for it in the index. But when you click the file open, there's basically nothing in it.

  Arkin stood for a moment, his eyebrows furrowed, then removed his microphone. "Show me."

  A minute later, they sat in Pratt's tiny, damp basement office, staring at Pratt's INDIGO terminal. On the screen, they looked at an electronic case file cover page. What would normally be an information-filled document describing the vitals of the case record was instead a page of unfilled blanks. At the very top, in the space normally filled by the name of the assigned case officer, was a notation reading "ALL INQUIRIES TO DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS." With Arkin watching over his shoulder, Pratt scrolled through several other standard sections, labeled "reports of interviews," "evidence log," "grand jury materials," "telephone communications log," "scanned documents," etc.—with the same results. Each section was empty.

  "That's odd," Arkin said. "In hard copy, this was an enormous file, with several volumes." He didn't mention that the current director of operations, Tom Killick, was his former colleague, partner, and friend.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "You know what probably happened here—they were just implementing INDIGO, just getting it up and running, when I handed this file over. Before that, everything was in hard copy. They probably just have a huge backlog of old cases they still need to manually enter into the system."

  "Makes sense."

  "I would call Central Records and have them ship the hard copy of the file out to you."

  "Is it worth the sweat?"

  "It might be. After that, it might be worthwhile to call ViCAP and have them do an ad hoc query for similar cases."

  Pratt grinned.

  "What?" Arkin said.

  "One time Morrison told me ViCAP is about as useful as teats on a bull."

  "Yeah, well, bear in mind that Morrison's an ignorant hillbilly chawbacon, despite being an encyclopedia of Southern colloquialisms. Just send them a query."

  "For sniper killings?"

  "For shootings involving a .50 or other high-caliber rifle, in which the offender was lying in wait, in which no living person witnessed the offender's approach, in which the murder weapon was not recovered, in which the victim was a high-profile figure and Kool-Aid pusher with respect to some sort of extremist religious, political, social, or whatever sort of ideological movement. A victim whose popularity and influence was surging."

  "Does ViCAP have that sort of detail?"

  "It depends on the officer who submitted the report to ViCAP in the first place. They'll probably have to sift through quite a few cases, looking for unusual characteristics and details described in the textual overviews instead of just running a simple search string with straight variables. It might take them a little while. But give them a chance. They're good."

  Pratt stood for a moment. "Do you think I'll even end up having jurisdiction in this one?"

  "Don't want to bother?"

  "Well, I mean, some local extremist creep, no wife, no kids, gets his head blown off. A hate monger. Who cares, you know? Maybe the shooter did everyone a favor. Anyway, why would I be involved? What's it got to do with terrorism?"

  "Get the file, check with ViCAP, and we'll see."

  "You don't sound very enthusiastic either."

  "Yeah, well, let's just see what we find."

  *****

  That afternoon, Pratt stuck his head through the office door once again, this time finding Arkin sitting in his chair and staring at his blank computer monitor. "ViCAP already got back to me with two cases."

  His words seemed to startle Arkin from a trance. "That was fast."

  "They were the only two they could find in the past three years that seemed at all like what you were saying I should look for."

  "And?"

  "The first one isn't similar as far as technique is concerned, but they sent it to me because of details in the text overview. Victim was a white supremacist in rural Michigan who burned to death in his house two months ago. Body was too toasted for a meaningful autopsy, but the fire was ruled an arson, started with kerosene. At any rate, the guy was an activist. Gaining in popularity. Head of a group of about 500 backwoods troublemakers. Advocated the use of force by the general citizenry for 'defending the constitution.' Plus he had a radio show that was starting to get picked up by redneck radio stations in the Bible Belt."

  "Interesting."

  "Now, the second case involved an Earth First guy out in Eureka, California. A regional honcho. Local law enforcement listed him as a suspect in a couple of pipe bombings of timber company vehicles. Getting more and more popular on the whacko granola lecture circuit until he was killed two years ago on his morning jog along the high cliffs of the Pacific Coast. But get this: He was sniped."

  Arkin closed his eyes, exhaled and slumped forward in his chair as though punched in the gut. "What make of rifle?"

  "Don't know. The locals didn't recover the bullet. The guy was shot when he stopped on the pinnacle of the trail for a breather, a bong toke, or whatever. Shot came from the east, so the locals figured the bullet flew out to sea. But they guessed it was of an awfully high caliber based on the size of the partially intact entry hole in the victim's skull."

  "Have you sent out your credit card data subpoena yet?"

  "No."

  "Amend it to include the areas around these two killings, covering a period a week before and after each of them. Give it at least a 200-mile radius."

  "Are you my boss now?"

  "Your role model."

  "Isn't this subpoena a bit overbroad?"

  "It's legal. The data is relevant. Just limit your request to the card numbers, and the locations and dates of the transactions. If we identify a link, we can go back and ask for details on the account holders later."

  "You think an AUSA will sign off?"

  "Pratt, if you're worried about it, take it to Bramwell."

  "Bramwell? Doesn't he mostly do civil side now?"

  "Please. He still has a 'remember 9/11' flag flying from a 50-foot pole in his front yard. Just use the phrase 'possible links to ter
rorism' in your request. He'll sign off." Pratt looked dubious. "Look, we aren't asking for a truckload of documents to randomly fish through here. It's all electronic. If the clearinghouses or payment processors balk, we'll get a court order. My only concern is that their data might not go back far enough to capture the California information. Though in this day and age of endless terabytes of storage and automated backups, it certainly should. So get that subpoena out the door today, young man."

  "Subpoena to AUSA Bramwell. Aye-aye, captain."

  Morrison appeared in the doorway, empty coffee cup in hand. "Bramwell? Don't go to that chicken head."

  "Why not?" Pratt said.

  "He's the type of guy who would spend $500 for a bus ticket when he could spend $50 for one that would get him to the same place."

  "Huh?"

  "Morrison means he's a talker."

  "I mean he never shuts his mouth. Takes 10 years to make a simple point. Drives me to tears."

  "Pratt has a lot more patience than you do. Now, why don't you just help yourself to a perfect cup of aged Sumatra coffee, brewed at exactly 205 degrees, with a carafe temperature of exactly 195," Arkin said, smiling as it occurred to him that Hannah would call him an ass for being so pedantic.

  "Only if it's at exactly 195." Morrison poured a cup, sipped, and sighed. "Damn, Nate. Anal or not, you brew a damn good pot of coffee."

  "Where have you been all day?"

  "Had to go over to Pagosa Springs to interview some asshole claiming his neighbor was running a still."

  "Was he?"

  "He was home-brewing beer. Needless to say, these neighbors aren't the best of friends. Sounds like it all started when one guy's dog started shitting in the other guy's yard."

  "How mundane."

  "Yeah, well. We still up for fishing on Saturday?""Definitely," Pratt said.

  "I'm out," Arkin said.

  "Come on. Don't be a boarding school wuss."

  "Hannah had chemo again today."

  "Oh."

  "I'll catch you next time."

  *****

  Just past 3 a.m., Arkin woke to the sound of retching. He scrambled from bed to find Hannah sitting on the tile floor next to the flushing toilet, bile dribbling from the corner of her mouth.