Find Me (41 page)

Magritte looked down at the knife held tight in his right hand. What a fool he had been to believe that he could save a child this way. His best weapon had always been words. “More pictures to burn,” he said to his caller, his torturer.

“What did you say?”

“You didn’t think I kept them, did you?” Magritte waited out the silence for an endless crawling minute. “You never made copies, did you? No, of course not. Well, they’re gone. I burned them all.”

The cell-phone connection was broken, and his usefulness to a psychopath was at an end. He sat bolt upright, the knife clutched in both hands now. Hours passed. The sky was lightening, and every star had been lost when he reached that point where even fear could not keep him awake. His eyes closed, but only for the time it took for the sun to clear the horizon line. The early light was slanting through his windshield when he awoke to the noise of barking dogs. The parents were striking camp and packing vehicles. The caravan would soon be underway. When he turned to the side window, he sucked in his breath. Detective Mallory’s face was inches from his own, and she was staring at the knife in his lap.

She ripped open the car door. “You should be under arrest, old man. What kind of a deal did you do with Agent Nahlman?”

A new insurrection had begun
.
Charles Butler stood at the heart of the crowd, yet Riker had found him. The detective carried a plastic sack, the fruits of a beer run to a liquor store. “What’s going on?”

“Trouble.” Charles pointed to an embedded reporter from a cable news network. The man was standing on the hood of a car, and his voice was amplified by a bullhorn. “He’s trying to convince the parents to drive the scenic route to Santa Fe.”

“Well, that’s not good,” said Riker, as he popped the tab on a beer can and took a deep swallow. “The caravan would choke the Santa Fe loop in fifteen minutes.”

Now Mallory was visible in the distance as she climbed onto the hood of a pickup truck to stand two heads taller than the newsman. She needed no bullhorn. The crowd was hushed, waiting, and then she said, “Come nightfall, you’ll all be strung out as easy pickings in a mile-long traffic jam.” She slowly revolved to catch every pair of eyes in this large group of parents, federal agents and media. “And there’s no point in taking that route.”

“That’s not true!” The cable newsman shouted into his bullhorn to regain the crowd’s attention. “I can guarantee two solid hours of airtime for every day on the Santa Fe loop!” Raising the ante of his bid, he yelled, “You get the prime-time slot!”

“There were no bodies found on that segment of the old road,” said Mallory, and hundreds of heads swiveled to face her again. “None of your children ever went that way.”

“If that was true,” said the cable reporter, “then the FBI agent in charge wouldn’t have approved my route change.” He lowered his bullhorn and climbed down from the hood of his car. Now he had to crane his neck to look up at her and smile. In an unamplified voice he said, “The negotiations are over, Detective.”

“Wrong,” she said.

Charles looked around with the vantage point of the tallest man standing. Dale Berman, the agent in charge, was nowhere to be seen, and Riker had also disappeared. He turned his eyes to Mallory, who still had the high ground atop the truck’s hood.

The reporter at her feet raised his bullhorn again. “It’s a done deal, Detective. We’re going to Santa Fe.”

Mallory removed her jacket, the better to display her gun, and now she clipped her gold shield to a belt loop of her jeans. Hands on hips, she addressed the reporter. “I don’t w ant any doubt in your mind that this is a lawful police order. Now shut your mouth!”

Undeterred, the reporter yelled at her. “Freedom of the press, Detective! Ever heard of the Constitution of the-”

“I got it memorized,” said Riker, stepping out of the crowd to grab a handful of the reporter’s shirt, and now he was dragging the man backward across the campground, his voice trailing off as he loosely paraphrased the reporter’s constitutional right to remain silent. “Don’t flap your mouth anymore.”

And now Mallory owned the crowd. All eyes were on her and every camera lens. The cameras loved her more than the man from the cable news network.

“The Santa Fe loop is part of the old route from the thirties. That’s your great-grandfather’s idea of Route 66-not the killer’s. He dug his graves along the old trucking route from the sixties. That’s
his
Route 66- and yours.”

As she went on to describe all the changes and versions of this shifting historic highway, Charles Butler realized that she had slipped into someone else’s words. At times she reminded him of a schoolgirl reciting memorized lines of poems.

The poetry ended. Her hands curled into fists.

“The next stop is Clines Corners,” she said. “It’s been a landmark on this road for over sixty years. If you take the old Santa Fe loop, you can’t get there from here. Your cars won’t move. You’ll be sitting in the dark- waiting. You think rolling up the windows will protect you?” Mallory pointed at the reporter in Riker’s custody. “You think he cares? Hey, fresh blood means a bonus where he comes from. His network turned dead children into a damn TV show, a soap opera. He
wants
to drag this out. That’s the only reason for the side trip. And more time on the tube-that’s like currency to you. It’s all about money. He wants to buy your kids. Dead or alive, same price.”

The caravan was under way
-Mallory’s w ay. Her final selling point to the crowd had been the fact that long traffic jams were only worth a mention on the evening news. The reporters would desert them for better entertainment-action shots of the police unearthing small bodies on the old trucker’s route. And now her silver convertible prowled the shotgun lane of I-40 as she watched for strays up and down the line of vehicles.

Of all the dead who rode with Mallory, she was most compatible with Ariel Finn, perhaps because the teenager never spoke; she could not, for the detective had never heard the sound of the girl’s voice. In Mallory’s version of this murder victim, the pale skin was without blemish or bruises or gaping wounds, and the girl was made whole again; her severed hand had been restored. Ariel raised it as the small silver car approached Joe Finn’s old Chevy. Dodie’s face was pressed to the glass of the passenger window when dead Ariel waved to her little sister.

And Dodie-waved-back.

Mallory pushed the gas pedal to the floor and turned up the volume on the radio, blasting Ariel out of the passenger seat, leaving the dead girl and little Dodie far behind. She could not leave them fast enough.

So
this
was fear.

The car went screaming down the road, her radio blasting the heavy-metal music of Black Sabbath, drums gone wild, all the thrill of a crash without the carnage. But Mallory had the sense of heading into some distant wall and a crash of another kind, one that made no sound at all.

At the landmark travel plaza,
where the caravan stopped for food and gas, Riker stood in conversation with the manager, a silver-haired man in a crisp white shirt and black vest. Joe Villanueva had worked at Clines Corners through three generations of owners and renovations.

He had already consoled Detective Riker on the loss of the horseshoe bar, and now he explained the disappearance of the buffalo mural. “It’s been gone for a
long
time. We took out that wall to make room for more tables. You’re the second customer to ask about the mural.” The manager turned to point at Mallory, who was examining a display of straw cowboy hats. “She says she’s never been here before, but she even knew the color of the old carpet.”

Riker worked his way through the press of people in the gift shop, aiming for the dining room on the other side of the building. Though this place was accustomed to handling large tour groups, the swollen caravan and its media entourage had filled two dining rooms to capacity. Some people jammed the lines of a nearby fast-food counter and carried their meals outside. Others waited for tables to be liberated, and those who were seated waited for menus.

But Charles Butler had managed to secure a table, and it was already laden with food and drink.

As Riker sat down to his customary cheeseburger-and damn the fries were good-he asked how his friend had done this trick, and the answer was “Magic.” The detective was left to imagine a sleight-of-hand where Charles had made a fistful of cash appear, or maybe it had been a more tasteful hundred-dollar bill. It was easy to pick out their lucky waitress by the broad smile on the young woman’s face.

“You look worried,” said Charles.

The detective inhaled the rest of his meal and lit a post-cheeseburger cigarette. “Mallory knows things about this road-about this place-things she never got from a guidebook. And I know she’s never been here before.”

“Well, the letters might’ve given her-”

“Her father’s letters. Yeah, maybe Peyton Hale has a fixation on this road. You think he might be anything like his kid?” And by that Riker meant to ask if the ruthless streak of a sociopath could run in families.

And so it was predictable that the man who loved Mallory would change the subject. “I hope she turns up before her food gets cold.”

“She’ll be along,” said Riker.

“Mallory? I just saw her in the gift shop,” said Dale Berman as he sat down with them uninvited. “She’s buying a cowboy hat.” His words were aimed at Riker. “It fits, doesn’t it? True colors you might say. A cowboy hat for a gunslinger.”

Riker exhaled a cloud of blue smoke, and the game was on.

Mallory wore
her newly purchased cowboy hat into the parking lot, where she opened the door to a car that was not hers. She had a preference for robbery in broad daylight and in plain sight. And, as she had anticipated, no one had noticed her popping the lock on government property. After ransacking one vehicle, she went on to the next one on her to-do list.

The agents posted outside were running a ragged pace, trying to separate departing tourists and reporters from parents, checking credentials and checking clipboards, and none of them even glanced toward the cluster of FBI cars. The caravan had swelled to ungovernable numbers, and the boys and girls on parking-lot duty were newly minted agents fresh from the academy. Their eyes were glazing over. Because no one had told them their task was impossible, they could only assume they were doing it wrong.

And they were.

Paradoxical Mallory-who despised clutter and knew the names of every cleaning solvent on the planet, Mallory the Neat-thrived on chaos. There was no better cover for breaking and entering. If anyone remembered her in the vicinity of government vehicles, she truly believed that they would only recall the standout detail of the cowboy hat-not the shape of a tall, slender blonde who moved with deep grace, her hair catching sunlight as if it caught fire. And who would remember her unforgettable face? If she did not see these things in her own mirror, then why should anyone else take notice?

When she was done raiding the second car, Mallory dropped the brand-new cowboy hat in the trash on her way back to the restaurant.

Charles Butler was
an innocent bystander without the luxury of being able to dive underneath the table as the detective and the FBI agent traded salvos across the dinnerware.

Riker glanced at the window on the parking lot, where another search of caravan vehicles had begun. He took a drag on his cigarette and sent a stream of smoke in Agent Berman’s direction. “So I’m guessing you didn’t find any baby bones in the first search.”

“That’s not what I’m looking for.” The FBI agent laid an open pocket- knife on the table. “This is consistent with the weapon that was used on Gerald Linden’s throat. Ask your buddy, Kronewald. It was his pathologist’s finding. That was before we-”

“Before your ghouls made off with the body?” Riker smiled so insincerely. “Yeah, those Chicago cops are quick.” The detective looked down at the weapon on the table. “You arrested Nahlman yet? Her Swiss Army knife has the same size blade.”

Berman’s o w n smile was equally disingenuous. “I’m not looking for a knife anymore. Today, I’m hoping to find a hatchet.”

Charles glanced at the window on the parking lot. The trunks of cars yawned open, as did the doors of mobile homes, and tarps had been pulled away from the beds of pickup trucks.

“A hatchet.” Riker splayed his hands. “You lost me, Dale. I guess that would only make sense to a fed.”

The FBI man leaned toward the detective, and Charles Butler backed up in his chair, as if anticipating splatters from a messy food fight.

“It’s really easy,” said the agent, “to separate a hand from a little skeleton, but what about the adult kills? Fresh kills-meat and muscle and bone.” Dale Berman handed the pocketknife across the table to the detective, and this was perhaps a mistake in Charles’s view.

“Look at that blade, Riker. It’ll slash a throat easy enough, but do you really think you could chop off a man’s hand with that thing?”

“Nothing easier, Dale.”

Charles Butler bit down on his lower lip. The detective had a dangerous air of glee about him as he laid the cutting edge of the knife across Dale Berman’s wrist. The FBI agent not only allowed this, but the man’s s mile got inexplicably wider, and he never even glanced at the sharp blade that rested on his bare skin.

Countdown. One second, two seconds.

Never taking his eyes off of Berman, the detective said, “Charles, do me a favor? Go outside and find me a rock? Not too heavy, just big enough to drive this blade home to the bone.”

Enough said.

Now that the FBI man could see how the thing was done, he withdrew his hand from the demonstration. And Riker, the clear winner, dropped the knife in the center of the table.