Officer Gimm was shining a flashlight into his side garage door.
CHAPTER 55
Kippy tried opening the side door leading into Landvik’s garage while I tried yanking up the two-car garage door. Both were locked down.
Kippy looked in the window and said, “There’s something parked in there.”
“A tow truck?”
She didn’t reply, retrieved a flashlight from the trunk of her Malibu, came back and shined it through the window. “A single vehicle on the far side. Not a tow truck, but an SUV.” She continued staring into Landvik’s garage and said, “I think it’s a Ford Escape.”
“I thought DMV only had Landvik tied to the BMW.”
Kippy called her partner while Vira and I crossed Landvik’s front lawn, searching for a window, any window, not draped or curtained up and obstructing a view of the interior. No such luck, the IDOT executive’s home was wrapped like a Christmas present. We returned to Kippy, still manning her post along the side of Landvik’s garage.
“Wabs is checking, but, yes, Landvik’s only got the BMW registered.”
A second later Kippy’s cell phone rang and she brought it to her ear. After a moment, she said, “No shit?”
Evidently, there was no shit. Kippy hung up and said, “Jake Saunders drives a Ford Escape.”
“Is that his only vehicle?”
Kippy nodded.
“What the hell is it doing here?” Batavia was a solid forty-minute drive from Chicago. And that’s if the traffic’s light. “Doesn’t Saunders live downtown?”
Kippy nodded again and said, “According to the DMV.”
“Well, what the hell?”
“I called him to see if he could view the video feed at Egg River after you let me know that Landvik was tied up for much of the day. Saunders was cheerful, agreeable, and personable. Then, later on, he’s impossible to reach, isn’t returning any of my calls, and his Ford Escape just so happens to be in Landvik’s garage.”
“So maybe Saunders sees something on the Egg River digital recording and makes the mistake of bringing it to Landvik’s attention?”
“If he saw something, he should have called me,” Kippy replied. “No offense, Mace, but if I trip over a video of you strangling a hitchhiker, I’m not driving over to get your version of what you did—I’m going to the cops.”
“Fair enough, but I think Landvik is too bright to let video recordings like that sit around for two months at a pop.”
Kippy stared around the yard and said, “Landvik tinkers with the videos, he manipulates them. Maybe he even deletes the entire day of the abduction.”
“It’s like that saying—who watches the watchers.”
“So then Jake Saunders comes along and notes a gap or a missing day—he’s confused by it, probably freaking out because the request is coming from the police—and he brings it to his boss.”
I added, “And now his Ford Escape is in his boss’s garage.”
“I’ve only been calling his cell phone, because that’s the number on his card.” Kippy tapped up Google on her phone, performed a search, found a phone number and tapped it. A moment later, she said, “Jake Saunders, please.” Half a minute passed; I assumed she was being transferred. Then, she repeated, “Jake Saunders, please.”
I watched as Kippy listened. Vira walked over and licked at her fingertips. Finally, Kippy said, “No, that’s okay. It’ll wait until he gets back.”
“What’s going on?”
“Jesus, Mace—the receptionist asked if I wanted to be transferred to his boss, transferred to Bernt Landvik?”
“Why?”
“Because Jake Saunders is out on personal leave until further notice.”
CHAPTER 56
Everyman watched the scene from his iPhone as it unfolded before him in real time. And he didn’t need subtitles to know what they were discussing. The lady cop had likely been trying to get in touch with Jake Saunders—unsuccessfully, what with cell reception being what it was at the bottom of The Pond—but they’d now discovered Saunders’s SUV.
No big deal there. Nothing he couldn’t talk his way out of. Sure, Jake stopped by last night, he could say, he told me about his dad’s turn for the worse, we had a few beers and talked about fathers and sons. Jake slept on the couch and I dropped him at the airport early this morning.
All Everyman needed was five minutes in his rec room. Smash through the drywall, grab the waterproof-fireproof box containing his new identity—his next life—and be on his merry way. He’d let Nancy Drew and the Dog Man have their fun at his place and, as soon as they’d left, he’d head back to his Batavia farmhouse and … five minutes in the rec room and he’d be on his way.
But then Everyman spotted the dog—Mason Reid’s golden retriever, Mason Reid’s cadaver dog—the same mutt that had sniffed out Weston Davies at Gomsrud, the same mutt that had warned Reid of Everyman’s presence among the pine trees, the same goddamned mutt that had gotten beyond the tear gas, that had trailed him, and watched as he scaled Knob Hill to make good his escape.
The Pond wasn’t on his property. And The Pond was a third of a mile into the bog and the dirt and the weeds, but what if Reid let his dog go roaming?
Once the first diver surfaced, even the most civil libertarian of magistrates would break the sound barrier penning off a search warrant for everything.
Goddamnit.
Everyman saw red.
Blood fucking red.
If Reid and the bitch cop were in his office, he’d cut them with the ESEE-6—deep and quick. Then he’d rush into the cube farm, throwing himself at fellow staff members, at his own employees, stabbing at them until he was … somehow stopped. Corkscrews—long and sharp—twisted into his temples. Agony. Much worse than that night in Bridgeport when he watched as they hauled the kid out of Nicky Champine’s rambler in a body bag.
Everyman dropped to his knees to keep from acting on his most basic nature. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the corkscrews continued their inward twist. And if there ever was a time for clear thinking, this was it.
Fuck it, he thought, got to his feet, and left the office.
“Hey Tommy B.,” Everyman stood in the opening of his least-favorite employee’s cube. Tommy’s signature line on all his email was Tommy B. Johnson as though the Tommy B. compensated for having such a generic last name. “Can you help me load some computers into one of the vans?”
Tommy glanced up, looked as though he were contemplating Descartes’s breakthrough in the fields of geometry and algebra, and finally nodded.
The two headed into Landvik’s office. The arrogant nose-picking little prick, Everyman thought, spends all day rocking in his chair, feigning forward movement. Tommy B. Johnson contributed nothing—nothing of value, nothing at all—yet he was the kind of guy who’d stand up and take a bow at his own funeral. Yes, Tommy B. had proved to be completely worthless, Landvik’s worst hiring decision by a country mile. And—as everyone knew, including Tommy B. himself—once hired, it was all but impossible to get rid of a government employee in the great state of Illinois.
Although … Everyman had some ideas.
Even though he’d utilized his position at IDOT to help supplement his private needs, he did take his work seriously. Not true for Tommy B.—not in the slightest—and, in a perfect world, Tommy B. would be forced to reimburse the Illinois Department of Transportation for every single penny the state had wasted on his salary and benefits since the do-nothing had been hired, up to and including extracting Tommy B.’s organs and selling them on the black market.
“The boxes are in the back,” Everyman pointed Tommy toward his office closet. “We’ll need to haul them down to the garage.”
As Tommy B. approached the closet, Everyman closed his office door, twisted the blinds shut, grabbed a length of modular phone cable, and followed his subordinate.
“I don’t see the boxes.”
“Look in the corner,” Everyman suggested.
To
mmy bent down in incredulity, wondering what the hell his boss was talking about, and that was all the time Everyman needed. The phone cord looped around his subordinate’s neck, tightening instantly, crushing Tommy B.’s larynx, asphyxiating the insignificant waste of oxygen. Everyman kneed Tommy B. in the back, dropping him to the floor. Face a boiling crimson, Tommy B. attempted to push up but Everyman shoved him down hard.
It was going quickly now, the point he’d come to know so perfectly. Everyman leaned into Tommy B., as though nibbling at the man’s earlobe, and whispered, “Performance evals were a bit rushed this year, Tommy. I hope this will suffice.”
When it was done, the red was gone—dissipated—along with Tommy B. Johnson’s life, as though it’d never been.
Everyman felt a great release … and he was able to think clearly again.
He could now go kill the lady cop, the Dog Man, and the Dog Man’s golden retriever.
And feed the trio to The Pond.
Everyman locked what remained of Tommy B. in his office closet. The janitors never cleaned in there anyway, not in all the years he’d been at IDOT. He’d take a second to shut down Tommy B.’s PC on his way out. It’d be as though Tommy B. had never shown up for work at all.
Damn that Tommy B.—coworkers would think, if they thought about their colleague at all—he’s always so undependable.
Everyman slipped the ESEE-6 out from his duffel bag and into his jacket pocket, re-zipped the duffel, and placed it on his desk.
Then he called down to the garage to let them know he’d need an IDOT car—preferably the Subaru Forester—for an unexpected trip to their headquarters in Springfield.
And that he’d be leaving immediately.
CHAPTER 57
The three of us traipsed along the rear of Landvik’s two-story, which, from the back appeared more like a three-story. As had been in the front, all curtains were shut and all drapes were pulled tightly together. Kippy climbed up the wooden steps of the deck and attempted to peer inside the sliding glass door, but instead shook her head. Kippy tried the door’s handle, but that, too, was locked from inside.
Next, our modest search party hit Bernt Landvik’s garden shed, a twelve-by-eight piece of rust on a concrete slab in a back corner of his property. It might have been shiny and new during Jimmy Carter’s presidency but now appeared like the place where they hid the amputees in a bad horror movie.
I walked Vira around the shed’s perimeter, watching to see if she caught hold of a scent.
No such luck.
“He’s got a few stacks of those landscaping toppers,” I called to Kippy. “You know, retaining wall caps.”
A couple summers back, Paul Lewis had talked me into spending a series of weekends helping him construct a tiered garden and I had to lug a couple hundred of these heavy bastards into his backyard. I glanced around Bernt Landvik’s yard, but saw no sign of tiered gardens or retaining walls or paved walkways. And why the heck would he only have the wall caps and no corresponding landscaping blocks?
Kippy’s fortune fared better and the shed’s metal doors slid open with a hair-curling screech.
We weren’t able to liberate any amputees, but shrouding the shed’s interior were an array of shovels and spades, hoes and rakes—none of which appeared to have seen heavy use—as well as bags of mulch and lawn fertilizer, and a gallon tank of weed killer. In the center of Landvik’s shed, ironically, sat a John Deere lawn tractor, which the IDOT executive must utilize to mow his acre or four of grass.
I looked at the tractor and said, “You think he got a free green cap with the purchase?”
Kippy made no comment.
I noticed a couple of ice augers in the corner behind the tractor. “Landvik must ice fish.”
Suddenly Vira began to bark. Somewhere along the line, while Kippy and I itemized Bernt Landvik’s gardening supplies, my dog had slipped away. She now stood in the opposite corner of Landvik’s backyard, pointing straight into the woods and marsh.
Vira turned back at us and barked once more.
My golden retriever didn’t have to bark again.
I knew exactly what she was telling us.
Vira had caught the scent of death.
CHAPTER 58
Everyman pressed the Forester over eighty miles an hour on I-88 west as he raced to Batavia. The Subaru had Illinois Department of Transportation emblems on both side doors and, whether you mentioned it in polite company or not, the state police cut IDOT vehicles a great deal of slack regarding posted speed limits.
For the tenth time that day, Everyman wished he’d killed Nicky Champine that very first night or, better yet, had never gotten involved in Champine’s amateur hour to begin with, but, at the time, he’d not wanted any attention drawn toward or a spotlight shined on any of IDOT’s rest areas. He’d been updating the surveillance software at several of the facilities when he’d pulled into mile post 333 off I-57. He wasn’t on the hunt—had, in fact, legitimately been carrying out his day job as Everyman took more pleasure working in the field than in piloting a desk—when he’d spotted the purse lying under a well-worn VW Cabrio. He assumed the owner had maybe struggled getting her children out and the purse had inadvertently gotten knocked below and forgotten. He’d even moved the IDOT repair van next to the VW so no one else would spot the purse and make off with it.
Ninety minutes later, when his work on the security update was complete, he’d hauled his dolly of equipment back to the van and damned if the VW Cabrio wasn’t still there. Everyman packed the van, walked about the empty patch of grass containing picnic tables, checked the lobby, and then said screw it, got out his laptop and logged in.
Sure enough, he watched as a male abductor—all round eyed and openmouthed—grabbed a young woman in a full nelson as she returned from the ladies’ room, and tossed her into the trunk of his puke-green Pontiac. It had taken the man all of five seconds. Everyman had to give the guy extra credit for speed and brutality, nevertheless, Everyman was able to maximize the video and acquire the abductor’s license plate number. Five minutes later, compliments of the DMV—one of the many perks of his vocation, and the same manner in which he’d tracked Dog Man Reid per the plate number on his pickup truck—Everyman had Nicky Champine’s name and home address.
That’s how the entire sordid mess had begun.
And now Everyman raced to Batavia in order to finish it.
He kept one eye on I-88 and the other on his iPhone. He had two additional cameras—one on the roof of his house, one on the roof of his garage—that covered the span of his backyard. Dog Man Reid and Officer Gimm were currently fumble-fucking about his garden shed. But as they took notes on which fertilizers he used, what Everyman had anticipated came to fruition.
He glanced at the road and then watched as Reid’s golden retriever slowly worked its way across his three backyard acres to the point where the woods and the wetlands began, to the point where Everyman’s makeshift path began. He glanced at the road again and then watched as Dog Man and bitch cop suddenly turned toward the cadaver dog. Although at this distance he had no corresponding sound to go with the video feed, but it didn’t matter. Everyman knew the golden’s bark had alerted the two.
Had notified them that death lay this way.
Reid and the bitch cop began heading across his backyard lawn.
Everyman tossed his iPhone on the passenger seat and focused on the road ahead of him. He still had enough time. That goddamned dog could bark and point at The Pond all day long … but The Pond would not cough up its secrets that easily.
No—The Pond would demand divers or boats to drag what lay beneath.
There was plenty of time to put an end to this.
Everyman wished he’d not tossed his SIG 1911 into Lake Michigan as that would have hastened events along. He figured he’d feed the two a plausible scenario, tell them that Jake Saunders had been renting the farmhouse from him, had been doing so for the past year, and that he’d caught something on the E
gg River digital—an eighty-minute gap in the period that Jake was supposed to have been reviewing. Jake had called in, something about taking an immediate leave of absence, and he’d driven out to Batavia to confront his employee. Of course, as a landlord he still had keys to the farmhouse, and if Saunders’s car was in the garage, he felt obligated to go inside to check on Jake’s well-being.
Everyman had to get them into the house.
There’d be no Jake at home, of course, but he’d set up his laptop and he’d show Nancy Drew and the solo Hardy boy the true feed from Egg River. They’d be fascinated—mesmerized—for a few moments as they’d note Jake’s gap in the video feed.
It’d be the last thing they’d ever see.
As the Dog Man and bitch cop watched the footage, intently, not wanting to miss out on the moment they cracked the case wide open, he’d slip the ESEE-6 from his pocket and swivel—two throats in two seconds.
Everyman knew that nothing ever went off as planned, but if this did, Everyman would drop the blade as though it were a microphone, as though he were a winning contestant in a singing contest.
Then, after retrieving his new ID, Everyman would let Reid’s dog inside on his way out.
CHAPTER 59
I slapped at the back of my neck as we followed Vira deep into the heart of the thicket. It was my twentieth confirmed kill in my skirmish against the unyielding swarm of mosquitoes that seemed to prefer the taste of my blood over Kippy’s. It’s too bad we’d taken her Malibu instead of my F-150 as I always had a can or two of Cutter insect repellent rolling about in the pickup’s back seat.
Tricks of the trade.
Vira looked unfazed but she’d be on the receiving end of a serious tick check in the near future.
My hiking boots were a mess, but it didn’t matter—this was my job and that’s what I used them for. Kippy’s newish pair of Brooks running shoes were muddied; she also didn’t seem to mind. And whenever the path got overly messy or wet, someone—I’m going to put money on Bernt Landvik—had dropped a sheet or two of plywood to serve as a do-it-yourself bridge or stepway.
The Finders Page 21
