The Kill List

by Nichole Christoff

  Brown shivered at my command. He giggled. He sighed. And then, he obeyed. But he shoved me forward when he released me.

  I fell face-first against some cardboard crates. The overhead light snapped on. I squinted against the sudden glare, righted my square-rimmed glasses on the bridge of my nose.

  We were in a closet, all right. A supply closet. The sharp scent of copier toner bit my nostrils. Shelves stacked with folders and forms, paper clips and pencil sharpeners, reached to the ceiling. I’d bounced off ream upon ream of copy paper.

  I’d have bet we were somewhere near the courtroom, probably not far from the judge’s chambers. Not that that would help me. Security would block the building exits first. And they’d sweep from the outside in. Still, I could hear the hunt. But the hoots and hollers of the searchers were as muffled as if they were a million miles away. And they might as well have been. Because Brown and I were all alone in a very small space—and I’d have to go through him to get to the door.

  Brown’s mouth wriggled with a smile. He took a step toward me. Bile bubbled in my gullet.

  He said, “I got your message, lady.”

  “What message?”

  “You know. You talked to me through my TV. You said you were glad I was getting help for my problems.”

  At first, I didn’t follow. But in a flash, I recalled the reporter outside Albert Foley’s house. Her cameraman had caught every syllable of our conversation. She’d asked if I’d had a message for Brown. Like a fool, I’d inadvertently given him one—and thanks to today’s twenty-four-hour news cycle, it had run over and over.

  “You told me to be good.” Brown knelt before me. His trembling hands, cool and clammy, closed over the arch of my beautiful red shoe. “Have I been good, lady?”

  “You’ve been good,” I said, and rushed to pat his cowed head.

  But the pat wasn’t enough for him. His fingers drifted along my instep, circled my ankle. The chain at his wrists coiled like a snake on the floor. “They’re going to put me in jail, Lady. Don’t let them put me in jail. Jail’s a bad place. Haven’t I been good?”

  “You’ve been very good.”

  But Brown had stopped listening to me. He swallowed hard, enthralled by the silky texture of my stocking. His chilled hands slid along my calf. The chain between them snagged my hosiery. When his fingers found the hollow at the back of my knee, his breath grew shallow and shuddered through his thin lips.

  This wasn’t religious adulation.

  This was animal arousal.

  Brown closed his eyes and began to stroke the curve to my thigh. Nausea pushed its way into my mouth. Panic wasn’t far behind.

  I shoved his shoulder. “Stop it.”

  But he didn’t stop. He pressed his face into my skirt, slipped both hands beneath the hem. He began to moan as his hands slid higher.

  Terror ripped its way along my nervous system. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, but I wouldn’t let him control me. I hadn’t let him have his way with me in Marianne Lewis’s car and I sure as hell wouldn’t let him have his way now.

  I fisted a hand in the hair at his crown, hauled his face from my lap, and shoved him backward with all my might. He fell on his ass. And before he could scramble up, I had what I needed in my grasp.

  When he came at me, I slammed the heavy metal bulk of a three-ring hole punch into Brown’s temple once, twice. He didn’t move. I hit him again.

  Brown dropped to one knee, clutched his head in a rattle of manacle and chain. I darted past him, grabbed the knob of the closet door. I wrenched it open just as Brown staggered to his feet.

  “Come back to me, lady!”

  Bursting from the closet, I rounded a corner, crashed through a fire door, and nearly toppled down a flight of stairs. The clatter of my footfalls sounded like a stampede in the stairwell. But that was better than listening to the sick whispers of Charles Chapman Brown.

  I couldn’t hear him behind me, didn’t hear him closing in on me. I knew it didn’t mean he wasn’t there. I dared to glance behind me as I ran. All I saw were the metal-edged steps rising to the next floor. I certainly didn’t see the pair of Philadelphia’s finest barreling up the stairs to meet me.

  I led them to the closet where Brown had pinned me in.

  We found it empty.

  For safekeeping, the cops stashed me in the anteroom of the judge’s chambers while they organized a new search of the courthouse—and a sweep of the streets and buildings around it. A pretty paralegal, antsy for the all-clear so she could pick up her preschooler and hightail it to the comforts of her own home, turned on a television. Brown’s face was on every channel—but so was mine. We had the dubious honor of being declared late-breaking news. Brooke Thorp, it seemed, was now all but forgotten.

  My nerves frizzled with frustration at the shortsightedness of the press. Brooke’s life was more important than me and Brown. And so was Marianne Lewis.

  I called her immediately. She’d already heard of Brown’s escape. I recommended she pick up her kids and head out of town. She took my advice. I arranged for two of the bodyguards on my payroll to accompany her.

  Frank walked in, overheard the tail end of my conversation. “It wouldn’t hurt to get one of those bodyguards for yourself.”

  “My body doesn’t need guarding,” I snapped. But maybe it did. At that moment, Brown should’ve been facing charges for the stalking, attempted kidnapping, and attempted rape. Instead, he was walking around free. After running his cold hands up my stockinged legs.

  My stomach rebelled at the memory and my teeth chattered like a chipmunk’s. I donned the suit coat Frank offered to ward off my chill, but I knew there was nothing wrong with the temperature in the room. It was physical shock, plain and simple.

  Matty phoned me the moment he saw the news. And he wanted to come get me. I refused his offer. I didn’t want to talk about Brown anymore. I wanted to talk about Brooke—because by the time I’d fought my way out of that closet, Brooke had been missing for two and a half days.

  “I’m stuck like glue to our surveillance receiver,” Matty told me. “Cadaver dogs turned up nothin’ behind the house and no one’s come on with a demand, a threat, or a play for ransom money, either.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “The Feebs spend so much time in Thorp’s house, they ought to be paying rent. A ransom demand would be like kicking an anthill. Those Feebs would be everywhere in a hurry.”

  Matty had a point.

  “So no ransom demand,” he said glumly. “Why do you suppose that is, girlie girl?”

  There could be several reasons for that. None of them were good. Most criminologists would point to the classic one. Nearly a century ago, other kidnappers abandoned their ransom plan—when they accidentally killed the Lindbergh baby.

  “Oh, Matty…”

  “No sense fretting over the unknown. We’ll find her. You just stay out of Brown’s way.”

  That was a suggestion I had every intention of taking.

  Brown, however, apparently had other ideas.

  Frank rushed into the anteroom, his salt-and-pepper mustache bristling. “Brown’s been spotted walking the Ben Franklin Bridge, trying to cross into Jersey. He retreated to the Philly side when a patrol car tried to pick him up. I’m riding down to the waterfront now. Jamie, I want you to stay at my apartment until we pick him up.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Jamie, damn it, please!”

  Frank’s fleshy face was gray with fear for me. I touched his cheek in gratitude. But even gratitude couldn’t change my mind.

  “I can’t stay, Frank. I’ve got a little girl and two little boys to find. But I’ll give you a day. We’ll look for Charles Chapman Brown at the waterfront today.”

  We didn’t find him near the river, though.

  The day wore on. The search plan evolved. Frank and I joined K-9 units and helicopter sweeps checking Fairmount Park and other urban green zones. There, a man like Brown could blen
d in with the homeless and not draw attention to himself.

  What those sites offered, Pennypack Park practically guaranteed. Situated in Northeast Philly, it was the largest park in the city. With miles of hiking trails, deep woods, and the wide Pennypack Creek at its heart, it had one more element in its favor. The creek met with the Delaware River. Jersey would be a short swim away.

  “Brown’s been known to live out here for days,” Frank told me as we stood on the rocks above the dam on Pennypack Creek.

  And why not? The rest of Northeast Philly seemed to be here. The working class and the well-to-do. The homeless and the well-heeled. Behind us, mommies, nannies, and mannies pushed small children along the walking path in low-end and luxe strollers. All kinds of dogs dragged their owners through the waking spring woods.

  I watched a man throw a tennis ball for his black Lab.

  And thought of Barrett and his stray.

  Barrett had phoned me twice since the news of Brown’s escape hit the air. I hadn’t taken his calls. I didn’t want to voice how much my encounter with Brown had shaken me. And something about Barrett always made me feel like voicing all kinds of things. So when he called, I didn’t pick up.

  I listened to the message he left for me, though.

  “I saw the news,” he said. “Keep your head down.”

  Being a general’s daughter, the sentiment made me smile—whether I wanted to or not.

  Frank didn’t let me reflect on it long.

  “Brown’s first arrest was out here in Pennypack,” he said. “That was about six months after he got a medical discharge from the army.”

  In my mind, I heard the clinking of Brown’s dog tags as he laid his knife against my throat in Marianne Lewis’s car. “When was that?”

  “First Gulf War. Claimed he heard angels calling him to form his own army out in the desert. Maybe he was crazy; maybe he wasn’t. His chaplain got him into treatment, and a medical discharge rather than a court-martial.”

  “Nice chaplain.”

  “Yeah. When he came home, though, he wouldn’t stay on his meds. He took on odd jobs, was a handyman at Saint Patrick’s for a while. Sometimes he’d terrorize little old ladies when they came to Mass. He stalked a nun. That was his first stalking charge. Father Kilkenny works with him when he can, gives him a place to stay, a little change in his pocket. The rest of the time, Brown goes it alone.”

  But going it alone in the Big City often meant going to shelters.

  Our visit to one changed everything.

  The sun sank below the jagged Center City skyline as Frank and I stopped at our fifth shelter of the day. Some had been little better than bus stations for all the amenities they provided. Others offered job training and placement.

  Most fell somewhere in between.

  In none of them did we find Charles Chapman Brown, though twice we found people who knew him. These were staffers at shelters that took in families. The men were relegated to one side of the building, women and children to the other. It saddened me to think Brown was drawn to these kinds of places—where life and love struggled to go on. The Sheep of His Pasture was one of them.

  Anita, the kindly chief of staff with a no-nonsense attitude and rainbow beads swinging from the ends of her braids, said she hadn’t seen Brown all winter. But she escorted Frank and me through the building to ask other staffers, and some of the residents, if they had. We passed an old gymnasium, a relic of the Pasture’s past as an elementary school. It was filled with preschool children playing house, engrossed with Play-Doh, and finger painting. Anita noted my surprise to see such a sight.

  “Homelessness is tough for adults,” she said, “yet it’s downright devastating for children. When you have to worry about where you’ll sleep and when you’ll eat, it’s hard to just be a kid.”

  While Frank showed Brown’s photo to people in the dining hall, Anita pointed me to a bank of windows. Outside, kids darted over brightly colored slides and swings, in clubhouses, and on jungle gyms. For them, for a moment, life was normal.

  Their moms stood together in knots of companionship, huddling against the spring chill in too-thin jackets and sweaters. One mom watched her two boys a little too closely as they laughed on the sliding board. And she watched everybody else as well. Her right hand worried the thick, black braid she wore over her shoulder. The familiar black braid I’d seen in her photograph.

  When Anita turned her attention to Frank, I stepped into the play yard and joined the woman at the slides. “Beth?”

  She ignored me. The women with her exchanged nervous looks. They drifted away when I said, “I know you’re Beth Padilla.”

  “Please.” She caught the first of her boys as he came flying down the chute. “I think you want somebody else.”

  “No, I want to talk to you. About what happened to you. And what happened to your husband.”

  The second boy slid into the first. Both screamed with laughter. The elder broke from Beth’s hands so he could slide again.

  “No!” Beth grabbed at him. “We have to go in now.”

  The terror in her voice had both boys skidding to a halt in the mulch.

  The younger boy began to sniffle.

  “I won’t tell him where you are,” I promised Beth.

  She wiped her son’s tears with a wadded tissue. “He probably doesn’t even know I’m gone.”

  “He does. He’s been arrested on suspicion of your murder and for attacking a superior officer.”

  “Arrested?”

  And that’s when Beth Padilla decided to talk to me.

  Chapter 21

  “He was different,” Beth Padilla told me, “when he came home.”

  We sat at one of the long dining-hall tables, drinking coffee and watching her boys draw sunny family portraits with fat Crayola crayons. I admired their handiwork—and their resiliency. This, I thought, was the beauty of children. In their eyes, all things were possible. Even happiness.

  Frank watched over us from a distance. I’d insisted he wait out of earshot. Beth kept slipping him uneasy looks. She was scared; that much was clear. But with the clatter of dinner preparations going on all around her, Beth felt safe enough to say what she’d been holding in her heart.

  “Something happened when he was over there. I knew it from the way he acted when he came back. He started drinking more. Then he was drinking all the time.”

  She drew a shuddering breath, then went on. “He started arguing with me about the boys. About how I handled them when they did things they shouldn’t.”

  “How so?”

  “Last month, Michael, our older one, pushed Georgie out of a swing, so I gave him a time-out. He threw a temper tantrum, but I wouldn’t budge. Tony went crazy, said I was too harsh.” She swallowed hard.

  “And Tony hit you. Had he ever done that before?”

  “Never! We don’t even paddle the boys.” She looked down at them where they sprawled on the floor coloring. “He apologized later.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Beth wiped away a tear and, in starts and stops, told me what her husband wouldn’t tell her—but that she’d heard from the other wives.

  It was a simple story with a horrific ending about a routine traffic stop outside the Green Zone, about a smiling boy who instantly reminded U.S. soldiers about to search his father’s car of their children back home, and about the bomb that had been strapped under the boy’s clothes so the soldiers wouldn’t find it.

  As the car began to drive off, Tony Padilla ordered it to stop. He wanted to give the child a stick of gum. As the boy reached for the treat, the bomb exploded.

  “Tony would wake in the night,” Beth said, “screaming. Sometimes he slept on the floor between the boys’ beds. When I’d go to wake them in the morning, he wouldn’t let me in the room.”

  She drew a stuttering breath. “His sergeant’s wife said he’d get over it. And I wanted to tell my priest, but…”
<
br />   “Your priest isn’t military. You thought he wouldn’t understand.”

  Beth burst into tears. “I didn’t know what to do!”

  “It’s okay.” I wrapped an arm around her shaking shoulders. “I do.”

  I called Pearce. As an army chaplain, he’d dealt with situations like this before. He promised to help me help Beth and Tony Padilla.

  That left me with one other army officer I needed to talk to. And whether it was my heart or my head, part of me whispered a phone call wouldn’t do. I needed to go to Fort Leeds for this conversation.

  Frank, however, didn’t want me to leave Philadelphia.

  He dropped me at my rental car, protesting. And began to check it over carefully. I didn’t really think Brown would be hiding in the Taurus, but considering how he’d wanted to get up close and personal with me in a closet, I didn’t mind Frank’s searching it.

  With his head in the trunk, Frank said, “I don’t think you oughta go while that squirrel’s on the loose. He might follow you. I wouldn’t put it past him to tail you, try to run you off the road.”

  I wouldn’t put it past Brown, either. Still, I offered Frank the bravest smile I could muster. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  “I’m just sayin’ it’s a long way to your place, Jamie. A lot could happen.”

  But that was okay.

  I wasn’t going to my place.

  —

  Tracking down Barrett’s home address proved to be too easy. Even shortly after dawn on a Saturday morning. Considering what I did for a living, I’d always made sure my address and phone number weren’t listed anywhere. I didn’t need the Charles Chapman Browns of the world showing up on my doorstep. Lieutenant Colonel Adam Barrett, on the other hand, had a listing in the Leeds phone directory.

  Maybe he was too trusting.

  Maybe I didn’t trust enough.

  I didn’t figure it out by the time I reached Barrett’s house. I found his place on a winding road a couple miles beyond the heart of Leeds. And a country stroll from Bertie’s deli.

  It was a whitewashed brick Cape Cod, with dormered windows and black shutters that really shut. The front door was a strong and welcoming red. A pair of Adirondack chairs kept company on the wide porch that swept across the front of the house.