by Greg Iles
Miles looks at me like a scientist observing some rare protozoan, then blinks and goes back to his screen. When I turn back to mine, I find a message from Sid Moroney awaiting my attention.
Just picked up a secondary frequency in the area. Could be another stakeout, DEA or local cops, but I don’t think so. It’s scrambled. I also heard a couple of references to “Gamma Team” on the primary frequency. No Gamma before that. What are all these guys waiting for? Could it be a dangerous fugitive or something like that?
Without consulting Miles, I type a quick confirmation that the subject of this stakeout could be very dangerous. By the time Miles asks what I typed, I’ve sent the message; by the time I finish explaining the situation, I’ve received a reply from Moroney.
My guess is that the scrambled freq is being used by a sniper team. That’s Gamma Team. A regular stakeout doesn’t mean much to eavesdroppers in this city, but people talking about lines of fire, rules of engagement, and stuff like that would have a TV truck over here like lightning. That’s why it’s scrambled. I’m working on unscrambling it, but the odds are one in a million. This is heavy stuff, guys. Thanks for the invite.
My pulse has settled into a rhythm far above its normal rate. “You were right, Miles! They’ve got sharpshooters up there.”
“Can Moroney hear what they’re saying?”
“No. It’s scrambled.”
He shakes his head, obviously disgusted. “That’s about what I’d expect from the FBI.”
“What do you mean?”
“Using encrypted radio traffic around the safe house is stupid. You think Brahma won’t have scanning equipment? Scrambled chatter is like a neon sign screaming ‘COPS.’ ”
“What choice do they have?”
“Radio silence. Or they could use fake radio chatter, like they’ve got a drug bust set up near there.”
“Should we try to warn them?”
“Way too late.”
We stare at each other in silence. Then a familiar male voice floats out of the speakers, and the printer behind Miles begins humming.
“Brahma’s back,” he says, turning. “Same room.”
By the time Brahma finishes his first sentence, Miles and I have frozen like ice sculptures.
MAXWELL› Greetings, Dr. Lenz. I’d actually planned a more dramatic revelation than this, but now it seems juvenile. After Dallas, I warned your agency not to interfere with my work. Yet you persisted. By putting my life at risk, you implicitly risked your own, and also those under your protection. Learning one’s limitations is always a painful lesson, but it is only through pain that we grow. Perhaps now you will understand that some “lawbreakers” are best left alone. (Besides, considering what you were forced to endure each night in the name of love, perhaps I did you a favor.) We shall not speak again. My condolences in advance.
“He killed somebody,” Miles says in a flat voice. “Right now, somebody close to Lenz is dead or dying.”
My hands are shaking. Before I can speak, my office line rings.
“Don’t answer it!” Miles commands.
“It’s Moroney,” I reply in a hoarse whisper. “The machine’ll get it.”
I steel myself against dreadful news.
After my outgoing message ends, a voice says: “Hello? Guys? Guys! This is Sid! All hell’s breaking loose up here!”
I am rooted where I sit, but Miles reaches the phone in three lightning strides. “Keep talking, Sid, what’s happening?”
“I’m going to hold the phone to the radio.”
Static-filled radio chatter bursts from the tinny speaker of my answering machine: “Alpha, what the hell? What’s going on in there?” More static, then: “Stand by, Green, stand-shit! Stop him, Ressler, goddamn it!”
“That’s Baxter!” I cry. “I recognize his voice. Alpha is Daniel Baxter!”
The first voice comes back: “Alpha, we’ve got a guy running down the walk, wait-he’s turning back for the garage.” Then a new voice, eerily calm: “Alpha, this is Gamma Leader. I have a male adult in my scope. Looks like your shrink.”
The voices merge into a babel of confusion. “All units, this is Alpha. That’s Dr. Lenz outside. Repeat, friendly personnel outside the house. What the hell’s going on, sir? Uncertain, Green. He’s in the Acura, Alpha! He’s burning rubber out of the driveway! Please advise! Green, follow the doctor but do not attempt to apprehend. Gamma Leader, this is Alpha. I am standing on the sidewalk. Stand down until the car is clear, then converge on the house and secure it. Green, don’t let the doctor hurt himself, we don’t know what’s happening. Roger, Alpha, in pursuit. He’s turning onto Dolley Madison. Yellow here, Alpha. What about the UNSUB? Contact too brief, Yellow. No useful bearings. UNSUB could be anywhere. Stay sharp. Green, stick to the doctor’s tail. We’re there, Alpha, turning onto Chain Bridge Road….”
A flurry of street names fills the airwaves.
“Does Lenz have any kids?” Miles asks.
“Yes.” I’m still too stunned to move. “A son, I think he said.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know. It’s not the kid, though.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s his wife.”
Miles looks at me. “How do you know that?”
“When I was up there, we stopped off at Lenz’s house for a few minutes so he could get some papers and clothes. She actually hit on me while Lenz was upstairs.”
“And?”
“She’s a bad drunk. That’s what the end of Brahma’s message was about.”
“Christ. Where does she live?”
“Ten minutes from the safe house. That’s why Lenz chose that location.”
The disjointed radio chatter is suddenly interrupted by Sid Moroney’s voice. “You guys got any idea what the hell’s going on up here?”
“No,” Miles says into the phone, his eyes still on me.
“I got traffic on the regular police band. They just dispatched two patrol units to an address not far from the stakeout. That anything to do with us?”
“Could be,” says Miles. “Don’t hang up, Sid.”
“You kidding? I’m putting the phone back to the receiver. I’ll give you whichever channels have the most traffic.”
The ensuing chatter tells a simple story of pursuit, very like an episode of Cops, but for the profanity of the FBI agents attempting to stay up with the racing Acura. After four minutes by my watch, we hear the denouement.
“He’s stopping, Alpha. Six-fifteen Whitehall. Repeat, Six-fifteen Whitehall. Large residential house. The doc just parked in a closed garage. We have Fairfax County blue-and-whites arriving at the scene. What do you want us to do?”
“Green, this is Alpha. I’m en route now. Get inside that house. One of you follow Dr. Lenz, the other tell the locals what’s what. Move it.”
“Understood.”
“Green, make SURE the locals know Lenz is a white hat. Whoever goes in the house, give me play-by-play. I’ll take over when I get there.”
“Alpha, this is Green. I’m in the garage. I’m ahead of the police. It’s dark… my weapon is out. I’m moving through a slightly open door. It’s a laundry room. No sign of anybody. Wait… Alpha, somebody’s yelling. Screaming. I think it’s a man. I have a man screaming-howling really. He… oh sweet Jesus… oh my God, we got a body here, sir. We have a female down. She’s-Jesus, she’s on a kitchen table. She’s naked. The doctor’s giving her CPR, but… I think she’s dead, Dan. She’s got to be dead because her-her head. Jesus, I’ve never seen one this bad-”
“Terminate contact,”snaps a rigidly composed voice. “I’ll be at the scene in less than a minute. Is that understood? IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”
“Understood, sir. Sorry I lost my head… Green out.”
There’s another long burst of static. Then Sid Moroney’s voice drifts through my office in a hushed interrogative:
“You guys heard that?”
Miles doesn’t answer.
&nb
sp; “Guys? Hey. Somebody just got wasted. A lady just got wasted. I, uh… wasn’t expecting that. I think maybe you guys better tell me what’s going on, huh?”
Miles shakes his head and puts his mouth to the telephone. “We didn’t expect it either, Sid. We knew it was serious, but nothing like this. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble.”
“The hell I’m not. I’ve already broken about fifteen statutes that I know of. Now what the hell is this about? You guys really working for a newspaper or what?”
“Yes, Sid. The Times Picayune, out of New Orleans. You can call the office and check us out. But please tell me first what’s happening on the radio.”
After a moment, Moroney says, “Nothing on the FBI channel. I got some McLean P.D. stuff. They’re reporting a one-eighty-seven-a homicide-at Six-fifteen Whitehall.”
“Did they mention a name?”
“They don’t do that on the radio. Female Caucasian is all. They’ve alerted paramedics. Some patrolman’s asking for brass on the scene, complaining about the FBI. And um… uh… I think that’s about it for me, guys. Next time call somebody else, okay?”
“Thanks for your assistance, Mr. Moroney,” Miles says with overdone formality. Then he hangs up.
“This is bad,” he says.
Only now do I realize that Miles was consciously disguising his voice on the phone, adding the drawled Southern rhythms he worked so hard to eradicate during the past few years. “Bad?” I echo. “It’s a goddamn nightmare.”
“I meant the telephone call. It won’t be long before Baxter finds out we were monitoring what happened.”
“You mean that I was. We were using my phone.”
“I may have to split,” he says, rocking in place like a nervous sprinter. “We’ve got to accelerate the plan.”
“What? We’re out of this shit, Miles! As of now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean no more games. No more ‘Erin’ and ‘Maxwell.’ You saw Brahma’s note to Lenz. He’s knows exactly what’s up.”
“Just because he caught on to Lenz doesn’t mean he suspects you. Have you sensed a single false note in his communications with you?”
I pause. “No, but-”
“Any subtle humor at your expense?”
“Not yet, but-”
“It’s totally different! He believes in Erin. Why is anybody’s guess. But he does.”
“Miles, you’re missing the main point here, and that scares me.”
“What main point?”
“How did Brahma find Lenz?”
His mouth remains half open.
“Through the telephone system, right?”
Miles’s brain is operating at a speed I cannot begin to comprehend. I say nothing while he works out the possibilities. Finally, he says, “Unless new information on Lenz’s decoy plan was entered into FBI computers in the last thirty-six hours, I’d have to say yes.”
“So he can trace us too.”
Miles stares at me without speaking, his face masklike in its lack of humanity. “No,” he says at length. “If Brahma checks the phone company’s computers, he’ll find the Vicksburg address coupled with your line. Any other digital data he can turn up will verify that. He can’t check actual land ownership because in Mississippi nothing like that is on computer, and probably won’t be for another fifty years.”
Something in Miles’s tone makes me work through his answer step by step, but it checks out.
“Lenz’s problem was that he was at the physical address that went with his phone line. Not so with us.” Miles pauses. “What I don’t understand is how Brahma knew Lenz personally was behind ‘Lilith.’ I mean, he attacked Lenz’s wife, not the safe house. So maybe he did get his information from some FBI computer. Maybe somebody got careless.”
“We’re still out of it, Miles. Until tonight we were fooling around in a bad situation. Now it’s a Force-Ten clusterfuck. Fate just tapped us on the shoulder.”
“You want to leave it to the so-called experts now?” he asks angrily. “You just saw their incompetence tragically demonstrated. How many women are we going to watch die because we’re scared to take Brahma to the wall?”
“It’s not our fight.”
“The hell it isn’t! You think tonight changed my situation for the better?”
“You couldn’t have killed Mrs. Lenz. I can swear you were right beside me. Let’s just come clean with them.”
“Come clean? A minute ago you threw the team-offender theory up at me. Don’t you see it’s going to be more popular than ever now?”
“Why?”
“Because unless Brahma was transmitting his first message from Lenz’s home, someone else killed his wife. Brahma knew the safe house was a trap. He knew they’d be following his cellular, so he drove around typing messages to Lenz while someone else did his wife. Then he logged off, swung back, picked up the killer, and was already out of town when he transmitted that final message.”
As much as I want to argue, the scenario makes sense.
Miles rubs his eyes and walks over to my minifridge for a Mountain Dew. “Do you realize what just happened? A serial killer murdered the wife of an FBI agent.”
“Lenz was a shrink, not an agent.”
“You think that matters? He was one of the stars of the Investigative Support Unit. And Brahma already took out a Hostage Rescue Team member. We’re about to see one of the biggest manhunts in American history.”
I feel a sudden urge to set the air conditioner at sixty-five degrees, climb into bed, and sleep for twenty hours.
Miles drains the Mountain Dew like a man dying of thirst. “If I turned myself in now, I’d be asking for a legal reaming the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Sacco and Vanzetti.”
While I marshal my arguments, he drops the empty can, picks up the TV remote control, aims it over my shoulder and switches on my office television.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing what’s on TV.”
“What?”
“My time’s almost up, Harper.” He gazes past me, surfing through channels at superhuman speed. “I’m going to find a movie that’ll induce deep hack mode, then lie down and finish my stupid Trojan Horse. The e-mail thing isn’t going to work. Too short a time frame now.”
“I meant what I said, Miles. I’m through with Brahma.”
“I heard you.”
Suddenly a wide and placid smile soothes the lines from his face. His eyes glaze with almost religious receptivity.
“What is it?” I ask, looking over my shoulder.
“ This Gun for Hire. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Ladd’s first big break, and he was playing a killer. It’s only been on a few minutes. This is like the fourth scene.”
“Film noir? I thought you liked seventies trash.”
“I’m eclectic. This is perfect. We’re living noir right this second. Digital noir.”
He gives me a buck-toothed imitation of Humphrey Bogart, and for a moment I actually doubt his sanity. But then he clicks off the halogen lamp, sits on my bed with his back against the headboard, and props his laptop on his thighs. The black-and-white light of the television flickers over his features like shadows of clouds on the face of a cliff. Whatever anyone may think of Miles Turner, he is a man doing what he was born to do. Not many of us can say that.
“I’ll sleep on the couch in the den,” I tell him.
He nods slightly, or perhaps not at all. In Miles’s universe, I am already running in a minimized format.
CHAPTER 31
“Harper! Wake up!”
“Huh?”
“Wake up!”
My eyelids are sealed shut with epoxy.
I rub my fists into them. The first image that materializes is Miles’s face hovering inches from my own in the dark. I remember now. I’m lying on the couch in the den. Miles shakes me again.
“Wake up!”
A bolus of adrenaline sprays through my system, bringing me into a sittin
g position. “Are the cops here?”
“No. Come to the office.”
“I had a nightmare… Jesus. What’s going on?”
Miles is no longer there. I rise and stumble toward the office, noticing faint blue lines around the edges of the blinds. I must have slept through the night. The muted cyclone of Drewe’s electric hair dryer whirs from the end of the hall as I pass across it and through the office door.
Miles is seated before the EROS computer. “You’ve got e-mail,” he says.
“From who?”
“Look.”
I rub my eyes again and peer at the screen.
TO: ERIN
SENDER: UNAVAILABLE
I must talk to you. You know who I am. I shall check the Blue Room every half hour by the clock.
“It came in about two hours ago,” Miles informs me. “I let you sleep as long as I could. Notice anything interesting?”
“No.”
“The momentum of the relationship has shifted. Brahma’s desperate to talk to you.”
“So?”
“You’ve got to answer him.”
A knock at the door lifts Miles an inch off his seat.
“We’re awake!” I call.
Drewe opens the door and smiles. She’s dressed for work, in dark slacks and a white Liz Claiborne blouse. “I’m having cereal for breakfast,” she says. “Best I can do this morning. You guys want any?”
“No thanks,” says Miles, trying to look nonchalant.
“Harper?”
“Sounds good. I’m starved.”
I ignore Miles’s angry expulsion of breath and follow Drewe into the kitchen, glancing at my watch as I go. Seven-twenty a.m. Miles must have figured it would take ten minutes to convince me to answer Brahma’s message. I’m definitely not going back into the office before seven-thirty.
Drewe pours two bowls of raisin bran and slices a navel orange into bright crescents. I go straight for the coffeepot. It’s Community dark roast with chicory, and I savor the kick.
“You look rough,” Drewe says.
“You look like an ad for Ivory Snow.”
