Resistant (36 page)

“Come on, doc. More. You’re doing fine.”

“Well, I feel stupid even saying it, but he was up high.”

“On a cliff,” Vaill said. “It’s like he chose the most scenic, romantic spot around wherever he was. And his face was well lit—no shadows.”

“Good. His shadow sitting on the stool wasn’t very long, and it went out behind him, toward the water, so he’s probably facing west.”

“Past noon, facing west. That’s it, partner. That’s the idea.”

“I can’t make out the few trees to his right, but there are leaves with some color on them, and just a few on the ground. Doesn’t look like winter.”

“Or summer,” Vaill said, “judging from his clothes. There are a few wispy clouds and the water is a little choppy, so that’s a half point against summer and winter, too.”

“I agree. My money’s on autumn, maybe six months ago. Sorry, Tim, but at the moment, I can’t come up with anything else.”

“Then we’re going to do what any decent FBI agent would do in this situation.”

Lou shot him a curious look. “And that would be?”

“First we’ll go over the other material I recorded in order to bring you up to speed. Then we watch this recording again, and we keep watching it until we’re fried—until our eyes bleed or we find something else of value. At the moment, it’s really all we have.”

“In that case,” Lou said, “before we settle in for a quintuple feature or whatever it turns out to be, maybe they have a vending machine here with some Raisinets.”

CHAPTER 46

           Liberty cannot exist without sacrifice, nor can sacrifice exist without suffering. Blood may be shed, but should the suffering of the part in the end save the whole, it is a pain we are obligated to endure.

        
—LANCASTER R. HILL,
A Secret Worth Keeping
, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P. 199

Tim Vaill’s exhaustion was a concern.

Med school and a grueling residency had trained Lou for endurance studying and long shifts, so it wasn’t surprising that he felt solid after five straight hours of reviewing the evidence from the Information Data Warehouse, and then plunging back into the Burke video.

Lou had supposed that Vaill, who was about his age, was put together similarly, having survived the punishing tests of Quantico and hours spent cooped up inside various vans conducting surveillance. But at the moment that seemed not to be the case.

Lou eyed the scar arcing along Vaill’s right temple, speculating on how much the injury and subsequent surgery might have affected his stamina. This was the second time in the past hour the agent had drifted off in his chair during a playback. Lou would have let him rest, except this time he had begun to snore, making it hard to study the nuances in Burke’s speech, even though Lou had already committed every word and vocal inflection to memory.

Making matters even more difficult, the air conditioner was on high, even though the room at the Great Southern Inn and Suites still felt humid and stuffy. For a time, Lou busied himself folding empty Domino’s pizza boxes and forcing them, the Diet Coke cans he flattened, and the wrappers of each item in the motel vending machines into the wastebasket. Finally, after some stretching and a hundred double-crunch sit-ups, Lou tapped Vaill on the shoulder. The agent came awake with a start.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, pawing at his eyes. “What’d I miss?”

Lou appraised him thoughtfully.

“Only our one hundredth viewing of Alexander Burke. You want to take a real break? A lie-down nap?”

Vaill again massaged his eyes and then wet his lips with his tongue. He still looked glazed, so Lou passed him a half-empty can of warm Diet Coke, which Vaill drained in one gulp.

“No,” he said emphatically. “I want to keep watching.”

It was intense work, but Lou believed they were making some progress, even though a
Eureka!
moment continued to elude them. Having focused on everything Burke was saying—every word, every nuanced change in his vocal inflection—Lou had compiled a complete transcript of the killer’s impassioned speech for Lola, and was now dissecting it for hidden clues—a message within the message.

“If there’s really anything encoded in this,” Lou asked, “why wouldn’t Lola have told you what it was when she gave it to you?”

“Inner conflict, I suspect. Maybe guilt kept her from making it too easy for us.”

With Lou perched on the pull-out and Vaill on the desk chair, they watched the killer again—viewing number 101. Afterward, Lou crumpled a ball of the white copy paper he had gotten at the front desk, and tossed it with frustration at the wastebasket, which blocked his shot with the top edge of a folded Domino’s box.

Despite this latest disappointment, he continued to pursue the latest possibility—that the letters of each word Burke spoke could be used to form new and more revealing sentences. So far, only gibberish. At Vaill’s suggestion, they had diligently recorded each time Burke had blinked, thinking perhaps he was using Morse or another code to send Lola his location. If there was a subliminal message hidden within the recording, it was proving to be as elusive as an
A
was in Lou’s college organic chemistry class.

“You okay?” Vaill asked.

“Maybe a little pizza-ed out, but I’m fine.”

“Then let’s play it again,” Vaill said. “We’ll shoot for Chinese delivery in another couple of hours.”

By run-through 105, Vaill’s chin and eyelids were heading south again.

“Honestly, Tim, I think it’s time we take a break,” Lou said.

Vaill lifted his head and Lou saw the fire he recognized from the interrogation room.

“I’m not going to give up because Burke is out there,” Vaill said, tapping the killer’s image with the butt end of a pen. “That piece of garbage murdered my wife, is stealing your best friend’s life, and is laughing at us for coming after him because he doesn’t believe we’ll ever catch him until he wants us to catch him so he can kill us.”

Lou’s own resolve felt strengthened by Vaill’s intensity, and he was about to hit play, when they were interrupted by a series of sharp knocks on the door.

“Hey, Tim,” came a voice Lou recognized with virtual certainty, “it’s McCall. Open up.”

Lou froze. Usually unflappable, his pulse kicked off like a jackrabbit’s. Vaill, by contrast, appeared unfazed.

Whatever exhaustion Lou had seen in the man was gone, and he was instantly on the move, his actions rapid and purposeful.
Situations like this are his ER,
Lou thought—the equivalent of a doc being confronted by the multiple victims of a car crash. Calm as a summer breeze, Vaill put a finger to his lips, moved the stuffed wastebasket to a remote corner with his foot, pointed to the laptop then to Lou, and lastly to the bathroom. The unspoken message was clear: this was quite possibly a threat.

As Lou headed into the smallish bathroom, he saw Vaill smoothly check his gun and stuff it into the rear waistband of his jeans, concealing it underneath his T-shirt.

“What do you want, Chuck?” Vaill called out without rancor. “It isn’t a great time to talk.”

“What are you doing in there?” McCall implored. “Come on, Tim. Let me in!”

Lou closed the bathroom door behind him and threw his still drying clothes into the tub. Then he climbed in himself, forcing the damp clothes beneath his knees, clutching the laptop, and pulling the plastic curtain closed. The tight fit reminded him why he never chose a tub over a shower unless it was a good-sized Jacuzzi.

Willing himself to control his breathing, he listened, using his imagination and ears to create details he could not see. It was clear Vaill was going to allow his partner in. Lou imagined him crossing the room, then checking through the security peephole. Next came a click and a faint creak of unoiled door hinges opening then closing. Chuck McCall, in Vaill’s mind the chief possibility to be an agency mole working with Burke, was in the room.

“Are you doing drugs?” McCall asked.

“What are you doing here, Chuck? How’d you find me?”

“When I couldn’t get a hold of you, I checked to see if anybody was using your credit card or one of our fake ones, and saw activity on the Gregg Campbell Visa. Wasn’t hard to track you down from there.”

“Next time I’ll be more careful.”

Lou decided to mute Vaill’s laptop in case an e-mail or other warning tone sounded. Gingerly, he lifted the cover and killed the volume. Burke’s face stared out at him.

Where are you?
Lou asked the face.
Where have you taken the notebook? Did you kill Humphrey? Torture him?

“What in the hell is going on with you?” he heard McCall ask. “Where’s Welcome?”

“I let him go. I called Beth and told her.”

“You did what?”

“I let him go. We were off base on him. He’s not involved in any way we don’t already know about.”

Lou had no trouble picturing McCall’s disbelief.

“You can’t just do that,” he said.

“Why not? I work for the FBI. We make those decisions all the time.”

“But I’m your partner! You’re supposed to make them
with me.
”

“Speaking of that, I’m thinking of putting in for a few weeks off. Medical leave. My headaches are getting worse.”

“Yeah, well I’m thinking about putting out an APB for Lou Welcome. I can’t believe you let him go.”

“Don’t do that, Chuck. As your partner, I’m asking you to back away from this. Miller and Welcome aren’t terrorists. A doctor and a scientist. That’s all they are. They’re victims of One Hundred Neighbors, not their allies. I think the murder in Miller’s apartment is proof enough of that.”

A long pause ensued. Lou’s eyes traveled back to Burke’s frozen image. Without sound or movement, he could better focus on other details—the dusky blue of the sky cut off by the gray of the sea, the angle of the sun on Burke’s face and straw-colored hair, and the carpet of grass running from the killer to the cliff’s edge.

But for the first time in more than a hundred viewings, something else in the frame caught Lou’s eye. Like the audience of a magician using misdirection to perform a trick, Lou realized he had missed seeing the object because he’d been so focused on other details—the timbre of Burke’s speech, his words, his eye blinks. But this new discovery, frozen in the field just beneath the horizon, might be real, provided it was not just a figment of the filming or something the endless plays had done to the disc.

“Look, Tim,” McCall was saying, “I know I can never replace Maria, but that doesn’t mean I can’t care about you as a partner and a friend.”

“Good to know. If you care, you’ll head out.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“What about the job?”

“I’m going to take some time off. I’ve already given Snyder the heads-up. I need to rest.”

McCall went silent.

“It’s that bad?”

“I’m taking a leave, aren’t I?”

“Promise me you’ll check in with your doctor.”

“If you promise me you’ll back off Welcome.”

Lou’s lower back was starting to ache. He wanted desperately to shift positions, but worried that even the slightest movement might cause a sound. Instead, he focused on the image to distract himself. As before, the object was there, nearly lost in the whitecaps and the horizon and the scattered clouds.

Maybe, just maybe …

“I need you to go, Chuck,” Vaill said. “Please. I need my time and space to heal. Can you do that for me?”

The younger agent exhaled loudly.

Lou pictured his discouragement, but now his own pulse was beginning to quicken. McCall was just seconds from leaving.

“Mind if I use your bathroom before I go?” he said suddenly.

Lou’s breath caught and he braced himself against the sides of the tub. There was nothing he could think of to do except to remain motionless and keep his breathing slow and soundless.

“Sure,” Vaill replied. “But then I need you to go.”

The door opened. McCall stepped in and closed it behind him. Lou could think of nothing around the sink that would give his presence away. He clutched the laptop to his chest like a life preserver and stared up at the showerhead as the agent did his business two feet away.

McCall flushed the toilet and washed his hands, standing not much farther away than the thickness of the vinyl shower curtain. Lou held his breath. The porcelain tub was feeling like it was made of shirt pins, and the damp clothes were becoming bothersome as well.

Then the bathroom door opened and clicked shut.

“I’m really worried about you, Tim,” McCall said.

“I appreciate that.”

“If you change your mind about staying on the team, call me.”

“Roger that. I’ll see you again soon, Chuck. Don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll be fine.”

The door to the outside corridor opened and closed with the rusty squeal and a soft click. Two endless minutes passed before Vaill called out.

“He just drove away. I don’t think he suspected anything, but we’ve got to think about getting out of here to another place. That was really stupid of me with the damn credit card, especially when I have one with a fake name that I don’t think the agency knows about.”

Lou unfolded to his feet, stepped into the room, and glared at Vaill.

“I can’t believe you let him use the damn bathroom. Why couldn’t you have told him the toilet was plugged or something?”

“I didn’t think of it. Next time,” Vaill said. “Nice going in there. You have the makings of a decent agent.”

“Actually, thanks to your partner’s visit, we might have caught a break.”

“Explain,” Vaill said.

Lou brought the laptop back to the desk.

“Take a look at this. Because I turned the sound off and paused the DVD, I just lay there and stared at this one image. I can’t believe we missed this every time. Top center.”

Vaill looked at the screen for just a few seconds.

“Jesus,” he murmured. “There’s a ship out there.”

“A tanker, I think. And at that distance, I would guess it’s a large one.”

“I’ll be damned. Our analyst must have missed it, too. He never mentioned a word about it.”