Blood List

by Patrick Freivald

  Come on, Paul thought. Just believe it.

  "You're serious," his dad said.

  Paul squeezed Kevin's hand, then let go. "Yeah, I'm serious." He picked up the doughnut and took a bite.

  "But…who on Earth would want me dead?"

  "My thoughts exactly," Paul said, leaning back in his chair. "It doesn't make any sense."

  His dad frowned. "And how do you know? How are you mixed up in all this, Steve?"

  Paul looked into his cup. "You trust me, don't you, Dad?"

  "Yeah, of course I do. But this. This is nuts."

  "Yes, it is," Paul replied. "Will you do it?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  Paul folded his hands over his head and looked at the ceiling. "Yeah, Dad, of course you have a choice. You can stay here until they get you, or you can run somewhere else while I sort this out. Or you could go to the cops, but they won't believe you." He looked at Kevin. "They'll just think you're crazy."

  Kevin stared at him across the table. "Son, you have a lot of money, more than a mid-level programmer should have. I've known that for a long time. I raised you better than to be a crook, so I always figured you have to work for the government. CIA or something."

  Paul kept his face blank.

  "Anyway," Kevin continued, "I know you've been protecting your innocent old dad from it for a long time. Thank you. I've never asked before, but I need to know. Are you a criminal?"

  "No," he lied. "I do what I'm paid to do. It's…complicated, and classified, but it's on the up-and-up." Paul kept his eyes locked on Kevin's. Finally, Kevin looked down.

  "Okay, son. Okay. I believe you."

  "But?" Paul asked.

  "But can't you do something about this guy? Like, I stay here, and, when he comes to get me, you and your buddies get him instead?"

  Paul sighed. "They'd just hire somebody else. Whoever 'they' are."

  "So I go hide in a hole somewhere, and you find out."

  "Yup," Paul said. "But it's a nice cabin, Dad. You'll like it. You can hunt and fish, and there's plenty of food, satellite TV and radio, a small library. It'll be nice. I'll give you a cell. I'll call every week, and, once I figure this thing out, I'll come get you."

  "So be it. When do we leave?"

  Paul picked up the keys. "Right now."

  Chapter 8

  September 19th, 8:19 PM EST; J. Edgar Hoover Building; Washington, D.C.

  Sam's phone rang. She touched the "answer" icon on her computer screen. "Sam Greene, hold please," she said without taking her eyes from the monitor. She pressed "hold." The satellite video feed showed a truck pulling into a warehouse. She relayed this information to Team Bravo, then hit the "hold" button again.

  "Yes?" she asked.

  "Would you be interested in a lead on the D Street case?" Chad DelGatto asked.

  Sam smiled. Almost a year had passed since the near-miss in Salt Lake, and D Street had gone gun-shy. Palomini's team had been tasked to "supplementary investigations support." They were desperate for a break. "Very," she said.

  "Well, then, look what I've found, Sammy," Chad said. A ten-digit number popped up on the screen.

  "That is?"

  "That's the phone number of the guy who sent those text messages to your I-590 last October. We still can't break the messages themselves, but we managed to crunch through the numerical with Apex-Lucinda and an area code regression Jim wrote. A-L is hot shit, Sam. You should see it in action. Beautiful."

  "Chad, I could kiss you," she said.

  "Happy hunting."

  The line went dead.

  The area code was D.C., the exchange Georgetown. She searched for details on the number. Beaming, Sam hit the COM button for Gene Palomini.

  * * *

  September 19th, 10:38 PM EST; Georgetown; Washington, D.C.

  Jerri surveyed the complex. It was brick, one of a million just like it in cities all over America. According to Sam it contained nine small apartments, three per floor, each over two thousand dollars a month, plus utilities. They were considered cheap for the area.

  Remind me not to move to Georgetown, Jerri thought as she crept up the stairs toward the door labeled 3A. A typical American pre-fab panel, all it would take would be a good kick from a trained martial artist to open it, deadbolt or no. Doug stood behind her, service 9mm pointed at the door. Carl whispered through the COM. "Fire escape clear. Back entrance clear."

  "Approaching entrance," she whispered back, her senses at maximum alert.

  With grim determination, she motioned to Doug. Infrared surveillance showed one person, awake and in the kitchen, with a stove burner on.

  "Entrance in three, two, one!" Doug Goldman body-slammed the door. The flimsy wood shattered against not one but two deadbolts and a security chain. Doug smashed right through the cheap door and into the room, rolling left to give Jerri a clear field of fire.

  "FBI, FREEZE!" she yelled, stepping through and panning her sub-machinegun toward the kitchen. The place reeked of sautéed garlic and unchanged litter box. An unattended pan crackled on the stove, the source of the more pleasant of the two smells. Where is he? she thought. Paul Renner had gotten the jump on her once, and she swore to herself it wouldn't happen again. Carl still didn't know where the hell he'd come from in that bathroom.

  She covered Doug as he moved into the kitchen. Staccato gunfire rang out from the fire escape, the high-pitched ricochets louder than the muffled shots of Carl's automatic. "He's got a gun!" cried Carl over the COM as Gene eased up behind her. Jerri tracked her weapon left and right. Nothing moved.

  "You're surrounded," Gene yelled. "Come out with your hands up!" His voice filled the small apartment, making the following silence that much more silent. Five seconds passed. Then ten.

  A shape emerged from the bedroom on the right, hands folded on top of his head like a good little criminal. Great, career perp, thought Jerri. Keeping his assault rifle trained, Gene ordered him into the living room. The man did as he was told and stepped into the light. About 5' 10", he was in his mid-twenties, with brown hair and eyes to match. His stupid grin made Jerri regret not shooting him the moment he came into view. He wore a wife-beater and plaid boxers, with black socks that matched the spit-shined dress shoes by the door.

  "Sit on the couch and keep your hands where we can see them," Gene said. The man complied. Jerri wanted to bash the grin off his face with the butt of her gun.

  Instead she asked, "ID?" The man reached slowly toward the wallet on the end table. He seemed oblivious to the danger posed by three high-strung and heavily armed FBI agents. Cool cucumber, Jerri thought.

  "CLEAR!" sounded from the bedroom, and a few seconds later from the bathroom. Gene still stood in the doorway, weapon pointed at the man's head, finger on the trigger, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. The suspect tossed the wallet to Jerri. She found a D.C. driver's license for Brian LaMonte, whose picture matched the man in front of her, sleazy grin and all.

  "Do you know why we're here, Mr. LaMonte?" Jerri said. She kept her voice calm in spite of the adrenaline pumping through her system.

  LaMonte shook his head and didn't even look around as Doug came back into the room behind him. Doug held up a small pistol. "This was on the bed," he said.

  Jerri sneered at LaMonte. "Can you guess?"

  He shook his head again.

  With a sigh, Gene began the Miranda litany. "You have the right to remain silent…."

  LaMonte's voice shook, but not as much as it should have. "Don't bother. You're in over your head, agent whoever-you-are, and you're not getting a life preserver from me." A nervous giggle punctuated the remark.

  Gene's jaw clenched tight as he spat the rest of the words through his teeth. "Does 'don't bother' mean you are waiving your rights?"

  Jerri glanced at her boss with serious concern. Just don't kill him, Gene.

  LaMonte looked from Gene back to Jerri. "Nah, not waiving. I just think you should talk to my boss instead of me."

&nb
sp; Gene waited, but LaMonte just let him wait. "And who might that be, Mr. LaMonte?"

  "I'm not at liberty to say."

  Jerri put her hand on Gene's shoulder and thanked God that Marty was with Carl. Gene held his temper in check, one of several reasons he had "In Charge" after "Special Agent" on his title, while Marty didn't.

  Jerri broke in, holding a slip of paper in front of LaMonte's eyes. "What does this phone number mean to you?" She ignored Gene's annoyed look.

  The man said, "You'll have to ask my boss."

  Time for bad cop, she thought. LaMonte gasped in pain as Jerri grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back.

  "I SAID WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT MEAN TO YOU, ASSHOLE?"

  LaMonte's grin returned. "Get your hands off me or I'll have you up on charges."

  "Well then," Jerri said, "we might as well get our money's worth." Her hand tightened on his hair and bent his head back farther. LaMonte looked desperately past her. Gene left the room. Doug cracked his knuckles and formed a pair of ham-sized fists. It was time for "bad cop, worse cop."

  Brian LaMonte broke immediately. "Don't. Please. I work for Central Intelligence."

  * * *

  October 2nd, 7:53 PM EST; J. Edgar Hoover Building; Washington, D.C.

  Marty pulled off 9th Street toward 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, the J. Edgar Hoover Building. He eased the government-owned Ford Taurus four-door through the tourist-choked traffic, cursing the existence of every car in his way. The building ahead of him was awe-inspiring, both in size and in modern hideousness. It was everything that the White House was not.

  The squat edifice covered a city block and comprised 2.8 million square feet of cubicles, offices, training grounds, and even a gun range. It housed more than six thousand employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover himself was rumored to have called it "the ugliest building I've ever seen." Rumor or no, Marty agreed. The thing was grotesque. He waved his pass at the security guard, parked, and went inside.

  Brian LaMonte was in FBI custody at an undisclosed location, and once he realized that, no, he wouldn't be given a phone call, and, no, he had no rights except what they chose to give him, and, no, it didn't matter that he was a CIA spook, he'd finally given them the name of his boss and a promise that he'd "clear everything up."

  LaMonte's boss, Ernest MacGowan, was in a conference room in the Hoover building, waiting for Marty and the rest of his brother's team to show up. He'd already told Gene by phone that there was nothing he could do for them. He'd also agreed to meet with them, if only for the sake of professional courtesy, and on the condition that they released Brian LaMonte into his custody. According to Sam, Mr. MacGowan had been stalling, hedging, and hiding behind the "classified nature of the subject." Marty couldn't wait to shatter his illusions.

  Marty lumbered down the hall to Conference Room Magnolia. Why the FBI would name their rooms after flowers of all things he'd never know. Fucking flowers. He opened the door without knocking, the sneer on his face unrelenting. The rest of the team sat at the table, and every one of them looked annoyed as hell.

  MacGowan was a short, fat dude, obviously of Scottish descent, with a mop of curly red hair and pasty white skin that would rival that of any vampire. If Moby Dick got drunk enough to fuck Carrot Top…, Marty thought. He hated him on sight.

  Carl and Doug glared at MacGowan with naked hostility. Carl's bad arm rested on the table. Poor bastard will never heal completely. The thought infuriated Marty. Jerri lounged against the wall while Gene frowned across the table at the pasty, fat little man.

  With a momentary glance at Marty, whale-boy continued talking. "Like I said, Agent LaMonte is on special assignment, and his involvement with Mr. Renner is classified." He crossed his arms in a matter-of-fact, "so that's that" sort of way.

  Gene opened his mouth to speak, but Marty never gave him a chance. He lunged, grabbed the fat little puke by the chin, and hefted him to his feet. The CIA-man's pale face flushed with anger, and he blustered in protest. Marty slammed him against the wall one-handed, adrenaline cooperating with corded muscle in one fluid motion.

  He leaned to within inches of MacGowan's stinking little freckled face and spat out in barely-controlled rage, "You realize we have a fucking serial killer on our hands? You realize this guy's killed at least two dozen people over the past ten years?"

  Pointing at Carl's wounded arm with his free hand, he seethed through clenched teeth, "You realize he crippled my fucking partner, you fat fuck? If you think you're getting your man back without some kind of cooperation—"

  Gene laid a hand on his brother's arm. Marty's eyes flashed in anger. "Let him go, bro."

  Marty shook with rage, ready to pull MacGowan’s head off with his bare hands. After a long moment, he dropped him with a shove into the wall. The recoil propelled Marty backward and into the table. With a sneer he spat, "Okay, then, CIA-man, what the fuck is the problem? You going to tell us to just walk away from this?"

  To Marty's surprise, Ernest MacGowan calmly straightened his clothes, even though his hands were shaking. "That's exactly what I'm telling you to do. This man isn't a common criminal. He isn't even an uncommon criminal." He sat down, picked up a powdered doughnut, and added, "In fact, you might not be able to call him a criminal at all." He took a small bite, white powder coating his double chin.

  His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, and Doug blurted, "What does that mean, Agent MacGowan?" Doug's face was blotchy from the effort of remaining civil under the circumstances. Marty was right there with him. "I may be just a dense G-man, but how is a serial killer not a criminal, exactly?"

  MacGowan sucked powdered sugar from his fingers and looked up at the ceiling while he formulated his reply. "What I'm about to tell you can't leave this room." He looked at Gene, eyebrows raised in question. Gene looked at Jerri, Marty, Doug, and finally at Carl. Carl gave a quick nod. Gene looked back at the CIA agent.

  "Okay, shoot."

  "Over the past ten years, the CIA has employed Paul Renner as a part-time employee. He's useful when certain elements need to be removed in a permanent manner."

  Gene snorted. "You mean the CIA paid him to kill people."

  MacGowan idly scratched his forehead. "Who do you think we use, Boy Scouts?" Gene and Jerri shared a knowing look. Carl clenched his fists.

  Marty interrupted, shaking his head in anger. "Now wait just one goddamn fucking minute here. You're telling me that the guy we've been chasing for the past three years, this motherfucker who crippled my fucking partner is a motherfucking CIA Agent?" A gentle hand on his arm—Jerri's—calmed him down just a little. He shook his head in disbelief and added, "No fucking way." He sat down, deflated.

  For the first time, MacGowan looked uncomfortable. "Not exactly. He's more of an…entrepreneur. A, shall we say, contractor. Part-time." Marty wanted nothing more than to wring the neck holding up his flabby head.

  Gene fingered the file in front of him. "What reason would the CIA have to kill Jenny Sykes? Eugenia Klammen? Darrell Eaton? What reason would they have to kill half of these people? They're nobodies. There's no correlation between any of them."

  MacGowan shrugged, then jerked his hands up defensively when Marty lunged toward him. "Wait!" Marty stopped short, inches from crippling the man with his bare hands. "I don't mean that I won't say. That's not it. Several of these people weren't CIA targets."

  "So he's a professional and a hobbyist?" Carl asked.

  "No," MacGowan said. "I don't think so. I think he does a lot of freelance work."

  Carl looked at the victim file. "That explains why we couldn't figure out the M.O. or how he chooses his victims. Or why his psyche profile didn't make any sense."

  Marty scowled. "If he's not a serial killer, why does he taunt us?"

  "We don't know," MacGowan said. "I don't know what this current killing spree is about. We haven't even tried to contact him since last October."

  "How do we contact him?" Gene asked.

  MacGowan s
hook his head. "'We' don't, Special Agent Palomini. I do. If we have a job, I have Brian call a number. It gets forwarded through an online messaging service. A few days or weeks later, we get a cell phone through the United States Post Office. We get a text message within forty-eight hours that tells us where to send a name and address. It's always some kind of Internet relay, totally untraceable. You cannot find this man."

  You've got to be kidding me, Marty thought. We have a lead we can't use.

  Jerri interrupted his thought. "Yeah, but we don't have to find him."

  Every eye turned to her. "We use you to set some bait, then you get your agent back." She raised her eyebrows at Gene.

  "I'm game," Gene said.

  MacGowan took another bite of doughnut. "Done."

  Marty smiled ear-to-ear. Here we come, motherfucker.

  * * *

  October 24th, 11:28 AM EST; J. Edgar Hoover Building; Washington, D.C.

  This second meeting was almost too much, even for Gene. The wry smirks on MacGowan and his toady LaMonte's faces were enough to drive the most stable of men right over the edge. From the look of Marty and Doug, they weren't feeling too stable. If it weren't for the black I-590 NetPhone that sat on the table in front of them, Gene would have happily let them beat both men into unconsciousness.

  Gene unlocked LaMonte's handcuffs and shoved him toward the table, just as Jerri picked up the phone and hit the "messages" button.

  She found a single text message, a Gmail address of random letters and symbols. She typed in the name and address of Mr. Mark Burton.

  Staff Sergeant Mark Burton was a former Marine sniper from Camp Pendleton, California, who had volunteered to be bait, no questions asked. They needed a real person for a decoy, not someone connected in any way to Gene's team or the FBI. It had to be someone whom Paul Renner wouldn't suspect and a man whom someone in the CIA might want dead.

  Ten years prior, Burton had destroyed the drug empire of a rogue agent. He'd come clean on some unauthorized black ops, testifying before Congress at the cost of his own job. None of it hit the media, but the agent went down, and so did Burton's career. Those in the know described it as "taking a lot of balls." Almost as much as it took to be bait for an assassin the FBI hadn't been able to catch for ten years.