The Last Family (17 page)

The man yelled down. “Sierra, I’m gonna have to rewire.”

“How long?” Eve asked, feeling the stories were in the pipe somewhere on their way to the TV set from the station, like water heading toward a shower nozzle from a reservoir.

“Half hour to an hour,” Sierra said. “I better help him. He’s a bit slow unless you work him. You know how men are.”

“I should say I do! I had to stay on my Milton day and night.”

Sierra slipped into Eve’s bedroom and, being as quiet as possible, fired the small nail gun, placing a transmitter in each heel of the four pairs of orthopedic shoes in Eve’s closet. Then she sneaked back to the ladder and climbed up so she could look in on her partner’s progress.

The attic was one shallow space that ran the length and width of the narrow house, peaking at four feet and sloping to inches at the outside edges. Agent Walter Davidson moved like a snake to avoid hitting his head on
the roof beams, and within a half hour he had installed the fiber-optic lenses so the team could view the activity in any room in the house at will from the mobile observation van. The lenses at the end of the cable would have fit into the barrel of a cheap ballpoint pen. Each had been positioned in a corner, up where the walls met the ceiling. Even in the bathroom and hallway. The microphones for each room were so sensitive, they “would pick up a mouse breaking wind between the mattresses,” Walter had said. After he finished, he and Sierra climbed down, and she went outside to reconnect the cable to the house. That was easy, since it had been disconnected the night before. Eve’s calls to the cable company had been fed to a cellular phone in the step van parked a block away.

As soon as the people had left the house, Eve settled down to watch her first story. Mr. Puzzle, unused to such excitement and physical exertion, fell fast asleep in her lap, the small beast rattling loudly as he exhaled.

Sierra and Walter returned to the long motor home and went into a rear room illuminated by a cluster of nine-inch screens. The German coach was the agency’s best-equipped surveillance van. The front of the van looked as if it should be filled with tourists from Iowa. The driver’s and passenger’s seats fronted a dining area, the kitchen, and a door that would seem to lead to the bed and bathroom. Behind that door there was a large open area that held a network of sophisticated electronics, with two swivel chairs at the console. Beyond that room were four bunk beds, which folded into the wall, and a bathroom, which had a shower head in the wall over the toilet. Water drained down from a large tank on the roof, and electricity was supplied by means of a diesel generator. Agents could remain in the van, in relative comfort, until a job was over, ideally in a few days.

Eve Fletcher’s post-office branch was located in a strip mall beside a large grocery store less than a quarter mile from Eve’s house. McLean’s assortment of federal warrants guaranteed access to mail addressed to three hundred
twenty-one Tucker and allowed phone taps for the same address, and entry and search for the house and grounds at Joe McLean’s discretion. He even had a pair of warrants signed by a federal judge but not yet filled in as to specifics of the search.

Joe led the young agents through the sorting room to the rear office door. Larry Burrows carried an aluminum case the size of an orange crate, and Joe was lugging a pair of small cases. Stephanie had been given responsibility for the thermos of hot coffee. Joe tapped at the door, which was opened almost immediately by a short, wide man with a stiff toupee set on his head like a beanie. He was dressed in a crumpled seersucker suit, and his shiny black wing-tip loafers looked as wide as they were long. His face seemed too red, his hands trembled slightly, and his breath smelled of fresh peppermint over old bourbon.

“Andy Lustiv,” he said as he shook Joe’s hand. “Come on in, and Ed’ll get you whatever you need here. You have any problems, call my beeper. Day or night.”

The postal clerk, a man who looked like a thin Burl Ives, opened an office door for them and handed the inspector a nine-by-eleven-inch manila envelope.

“This is to be delivered to the house tomorrow. Only Ed here is aware that you’re working the address. He’s a valued employee. His lips are sealed as tight as a frog’s asshole, and that’s waterproof,” Andy said. Ed was a man who had just been threatened into silence and looked it. If he was the sort of man to drop hints at the water fountain, letting his co-workers know he was important enough to be trusted with classified information, he understood that to do so would mean the loss of his job. He was close enough to retirement to hear the fish jumping.

The office was government issue. The Steelcase desk and chair were in matching olive drab. There were two four-drawer file cabinets in olive and a calendar depicting three identical, undoubtedly playful, kittens in and around a basket with several balls of colorful yarn in it. The bulletin board was layered with official announcements. Agent Andy Lustiv might have been in the
employ of the Soviet Union rather than the U.S. government.

The nervous clerk left, and Andy leaned against the wall. As soon as the door closed, Larry and Stephanie cleared the desk surface and began unpacking the cases.

“What sort of setup is that?” Andy asked. He gestured at the cases.

“Larry?” Joe said.

“This is a print recovery and identification kit.”

Andy looked at Larry, ran the name through his personal filter, and smiled. “It’s a Prick!” he laughed. “The initials. P-R-I-K. That’s rich! I swear it is.”

Stephanie rolled her eyes. Joe smiled. He wouldn’t have imagined Andy for a brain that worked so well. Looks could be deceiving.

Larry ignored the remark and said, “It consists of a laser-beam scanner that isolates any body oils. It’s from Lawrence Livermore research and development. The print scanner isolates and scans, the fingerprint is digitized and fed into this computer. The computer is armed with a complete set of fingerprints belonging to our subject.”

“I’ll be dogged,” Andy said. “It works?”

“It sure does. One of only four in existence.”

“We’re field-testing it,” Stephanie added as she pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves.

“Mind if I watch?” Andy said.

“No,” Joe said. Stephanie cut her eyes toward Larry, who frowned.

Stephanie opened two bottles, and the small room filled with the odor of solvent. She selected a piece of mail and began dabbing the two solvents on the back edge of the envelope. Within seconds the flap popped open.

“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Andy said. “Dries fast.”

“Four to five seconds and doesn’t leave a water mark,” she said as she slipped out and opened the letter using steel tongs with rubber tips. She placed it on the glass plate of the scanner. Suddenly a copy of the document appeared on the computer screen, and two blue
swirls appeared at one edge of the latter. “Folded by hand,” Larry said hopefully.

Larry tapped on buttons creating a black border around the individual prints, and the blue swirls grew in size until they filled the screen, one at a time. After a few seconds the words “No Match” appeared at the top of the screen.

“Sheeeit,” Larry said.

“Junk mail is usually printed, folded, and stuffed by machines,” Stephanie said.

“We know the subject stays in touch with the target. We suspect that the subject is contacting by mail. He’s too bright to call her, and she’s a shut-in,” Joe said.

Andy nodded.

The room was silent as the process was repeated over and over again until all ten pieces of mail had been thoroughly scanned. After each failed to turn up Martin’s finger tracks, Andy clucked his disappointment, but he was impressed.

“You boys always get the best toys,” he said.

Stephanie began the task of resealing the envelopes. It was a slow process because it was of the utmost importance that none of the seams appeared to have been tampered with. A chemical reanimated the original glue strip, and she closed the envelopes one at a time.

For one and a half hours Andy and Joe leaned against the wall and watched closely. After each envelope was resealed, Larry would look at the seams through a powerful lighted pocket loupe to make sure there were no visible marks left by the tampering.

“What if he—the subject … target—already wrote her?” Andy said. “What if she got the letter yesterday? They haven’t got a time machine for you to test yet, do they?” Andy said.

Joe laughed. “It’s coming. Soon as they get those crashed UFOs figured out.”

After they had completed the search, Joe handed Andy the manila envelope and they packed the kits. Andy handed the envelope of cleared mail in turn to Ed, who had fallen asleep in a chair outside in the sorting
room and had to be awakened. Then they filed out into the alley where the cars waited. Ed stood in the open door, watching them leave.

Andy paused with his car door open and his arm on the roof. He spoke over the gleaming expanse of government-standard white. “Remember, if we can be of any assistance, call. Ed’ll let you in from now on. Thanks for showing me your
Prick!”
He laughed loudly and slid into the Taurus.

“Can I ask what y’all are looking for?” Ed asked from the doorway.

“Sure you can,” Joe said as he and the rookies climbed into the rental car and rolled away, leaving a confused-looking postal employee standing in the doorway.

13

P
AUL WAS ON EDGE AS HE PACED BACK AND FORTH SMOKING CIGARETTES
. The coffee, always in good supply, didn’t help calm him. He tried to stay busy and not think about the clock that was ticking away toward October 3. He had selected the final group of seven men from Tod’s files, the ones he would use to cover Eve’s arrival at her destination and the taking of Martin Fletcher. They would be in the air as soon as Paul figured out where she was going when she left the house in Charlotte. They were all resourceful, proven professionals. When Paul thought about them, he got a mental picture of a pack of lion dogs. And he couldn’t help but think about what often happened to such a pack when they were successful and cornered a lion.

He wouldn’t need them until Eve flew out, but they were sitting on an air base in east Texas. He had also been on the telephone to the chiefs of police in New Orleans
and Charlotte to make sure they would be ready at a moment’s notice to sweep in officers to help Thorne’s or Joe’s teams. The chiefs had no idea who the teams were after, and Paul hadn’t let them ask but once. Although he had also been hoping to track Martin from the information he had to sift through, he didn’t hold out any real hope that he would be able to work that angle. Martin wasn’t big on leaving a trail.

His mind was whirring with logistics and angles, and the conference-room table was covered in a layer of paper, photographs, composites, and manila folders in varying thicknesses. He had also tried to wait at least an hour between calls to Joe and Thorne, but he could usually find a valid reason to call more often than that. The fact that he knew they would call him if anything came up was irrelevant. He decided to lay off, and the only way to do that was to stay busier himself. Otherwise, they would begin to see his calls as intrusive, or worse, decide that he mistrusted their ability to make decisions.

He could see Sherry Lander seated at her desk in the anteroom. He imagined she was worn-out, but she had eagerly agreed to work on his schedule for the next few days. He told her to feel free to stretch out on a couch if she needed rest, but he doubted she would.

He felt more comfortable in the conference room, where he could spread out on the long table’s surface, than in Rainey’s office. Rainey had been replaced by his assistant agent in charge, a young up-and-comer. Without an office Rainey seemed content to sit in a corner of the conference room and stare out the window or read his Bible or pore over files. He was waiting calmly. He stayed right with Paul; nothing interested him beyond the chase.

Paul told himself he should be moving faster, getting to New Orleans sooner, but he felt overwhelmed by the size of the task. He had work to do here, but wasn’t it really work someone else could be doing? He tried not to think about Laura and the kids. He tried to concentrate on keeping the teams sharp while he pulled up the rear.
He knew there was more to his fear than he wanted to admit.

“Sherry,” he said, loudly enough to get her attention.

She stood and came into the room.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I can run out if you are.” She smiled patiently. “I really wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m not,” he assured her. “How long since I asked you that?”

She looked at her watch. “Ten minutes?”

“Rainey?”

Rainey shook his head without looking up.

Paul opened a hole in the files on the desk and placed the composites of Ranger Ron and the old doctor across the surface of the table for the tenth or eleventh time in so many hours.

“Could be anyone,” he said as he shifted the twelve composites.

Sherry exhaled a bit too loudly but smiled when he looked up.

“They’re just children, Paul,” Rainey said. “They saw the Smokey the Bear hat, the gun, the mirrored glasses, and the mustache.”

“The composites from the Brooms and the kids share a general facial structure, but they don’t look anything like Martin looked before the surgery. The eyes might help, but they were covered both times. The face remake in Spain must have been remarkable.”

“Extensive enough to make spotting him in airport films all but impossible,” Rainey said. “He must have been confident of that.”

Sherry made a note on the stenographer’s pad, ready to go through the familiar territory as often as he wanted.

“So let’s say it’s Martin alone. He grabs …” Paul stopped, not wanting to mention the death of George Lee. “He leaves the mountains and drives here in three hours. That’s pushing it, running at seventy-five or eighty. Taking a chance of being busted for speeding. We should check the speeding tickets issued between here and there at the time he had to be on the interstate.”

Sherry scribbled. “How do you know he took the interstate?” she asked.