The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen (23 page)

“It's like he just disappeared,” Jake said.

“No. He's smart. He abducted someone else in the parking lot and left with 'em in their vehicle so there wouldn't be any immediate suspicion.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it's what I would've done.”

Jake was quiet.

“Any sign of the driver of the semi?”

“No. Still unaccounted for.”

It was possible that the suspect had left the driver alive, perhaps to use as leverage like he'd done with Ellory, but even though I tried to hold out hope, I couldn't help but think of the truck driver only in the past tense.

Anger.

This guy Chekov was mine.

Jake went on, “No sign of Ellory, but if he drowned in that river like you said, that's no surprise.”

“What do you mean if he drowned?”

“I was just noting that they haven't found his body yet.”

“He went under, Jake. He didn't come up.”

A moment. “Okay.” Then, “The divers never made it down from Ashland, and with this storm it doesn't look like they will.”

No surprise there.

“Where's Natasha?”

“With Linnaman at the hospital. Last I heard, she was assisting him with the autopsies of Ardis and Lizzie Pickron.”

The snowfall illuminated by our headlights wasn't letting up, and the road we were on hadn't been plowed recently. Drifts, some nearly three feet high, were forming, jutting out perpendicular to the shoulders. I'd let Jake drive, and he was doing his best to avoid the drifts, but it didn't seem like he was used to driving in this kind of weather.

The going was slow.

“I also talked with Torres,” he said. “They discovered Reiser's body near the trailer park. And get this: his lungs are gone.”

Basque.

“He must have found out how close we were to catching Reiser and decided he was a liability,” Jake speculated.

Analyze and investigate; don't assume.

“Time of death?”

“They're not sure yet. Still working on that. I haven't heard from the ERT, but I'm expecting we'll find souvenirs hidden somewhere in the trailer. Probably press clippings too.”

Most serial killers keep tokens or emblems of their crimes—body parts of the victims, fingernails, hair, or jewelry, clothing, or accessories, so Jake's words didn't surprise me. I thought again of the profile he had drawn up on Reiser. “You're still thinking he followed coverage of his crimes? Documented them?”

“Yeah, if I'm calling this right, I'd say our guy is a scrapbooker for sure.”

I told Jake about Alexei's claim that he wasn't responsible for killing the Pickron family. “It seemed important to him that I not associate him with the murder of Ardis and Lizzie.”

“Typical assassin mentality,” he said, profiling on the spot. “They have their own unique, individualized set of moral values and convictions. Often they see violence that isn't mission-oriented as immoral, but violence committed in the context of their professional life as simply necessary. Mental compartmentalization.”

Jake was right.

But he was also wrong. It's not just assassins who do that, we all do. Freud once said that rationalization makes the world go round, and whatever else he got wrong, he nailed that one.

Everyone rationalizes their own immorality—people have affairs and yet look their spouses in the eye, they cheat on their taxes and then get mad at corruption on Wall Street, they lie outright to their bosses to get ahead and still manage to feel good about themselves, to have high self-esteem.

Mental compartmentalization.

Rationalization.

Without it we'd have to live in the daily recognition of who we really are, what we're really capable of. And that's something most people avoid at all costs.

As Lien-hua had told me once, “We run from the past and it chases us; we dive into urgency, but nothing deep is ultimately healed.”

Despite my reticence to trust Jake's profiles and observations, I had to admit that he was iterating some of the same thoughts I'd had since my confrontation with Alexei at the river. If we were right about the assassin's state of mind, I wondered if there might be a way to use his skewed moral grounding against him. To trap him. To bring him in.

The conversation faded into silence, and about ten minutes later we arrived at the motel. I tried to stand on my own, but my ankle screamed at me and I had to lean against the car. I hid the gesture from Jake as much as I could.

He went on ahead, and after crutching my way inside, I used my room phone to call my own cell number, to find out where Sean was.

Tessa picked up. “Hey.”

At first I thought maybe I'd inadvertently dialed the wrong number. “Tessa?”

She got right to the point: “You fell in a
river
? Seriously?”

“Why do you have my phone, Tessa? Where are you?”

“I'm with Sean. I decided to drive over and see you. He picked me up at—”

“You what!”

“Decided to come see you. And then I hear you, like—”

“Tessa, I was clear that I didn't want you driving today!”

“I thought you wanted to show me around. Spend time with me.”

“I do, but that's not the point. You were supposed to stay there.”

“Noted,” she said. “So what happened at the river?”

“Tessa—”

“Tell me about the river, Dad.”

Oh, she said that last word on purpose. Very sly.

Very.

Sly.

And despite myself, as I contemplated a reply, I found that her tactic just might be working.

Even though I was frustrated that she hadn't listened to me, I was also thankful she was safe, and right now, more quickly than I ever would have guessed, that relief was overtaking my irritation. “It's a long story.” I laid the crutches against the wall and propped my leg up on the bed. “We'll talk about it later. Where are you two?”

“You almost drowned. You could have died.”

Margaret did say you weren't breathing
 . . .

“Well, I'm up and at it again.”

“You're always doing this to me,” Tessa said softly.

“Always doing what to you?”

“Almost dying.”

“How am I doing that to you?”

“I'm your daughter. You're the one . . .” She hesitated until the silence became uncomfortable. “It's just, you can't go and get killed—or almost killed, or whatever. Not when you have someone that you have to, well, you know.”

Take care of, yes, I know.

“I'll be careful.”

“Yeah, I've heard that before.”

“I mean it this time.”

“That's what you said last time. When you got shot.”

“That time was different.”

“And the time before that, when—”

“Listen, are you two almost here?”

Faintly, I heard her speak off the phone to Sean before returning to the line. “Sean says we're like ten minutes from his house, about twenty-five from the hospital. Maybe a little more.”

“Actually, I left the hospital. I'm at the motel.” I'd reserved a room for Tessa earlier this morning, and in the rush of the day's events I'd forgotten about it.

But—

“Hang on, that'll take you even longer. Let me talk to him a sec.”

A short pause as she handed Sean the phone. “You doing all right?” he asked.

“I'm good. Listen, just take Tessa to your place for the night. Don't chance the roads, there's no reason to. We'll connect in the morning.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Great. And just hang on to those papers that I gave you at the sawmill. I'll get them tomorrow.” I paused. “Oh, and did you hear about your sled?”

“I was there with the paramedics when they picked you up at the river. I saw what was left of it.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn't really expect that tree to jump out at me like that.”

“Didn't really shock me. You can be impulsive sometimes.”

He had me there. “I'll get you a new one.” A lightness that hadn't been present between us for years had entered the conversation, and it felt good. “Maybe I can even get the Bureau to chip in since I was chasing a suspect in a federal investigation when I commandeered it.”

“Finally some tax dollars put to good use.”

“Exactly.”

“I'm just glad you're all right. Amber's snowmobile is in the shed. I can use that if I need to get around.” His words held forgiveness, and it made me wish my apology had been a little more forthright and comprehensive.

We said our good-byes, hung up, and then I headed to the front desk to borrow a couple five-gallon buckets.

Time to take care of that ankle.

Simon Weatherford, the manager of the Schoenberg Inn, hadn't given Cassandra Lillo's associate Ted Rusk any trouble on Wednesday when Ted offered him $50,000 of Valkyrie's money for exclusive use of the two basement sections of the hotel for the week. Weatherford vowed that they wouldn't be interrupted for anything, and so far he'd held unswervingly to his promise.

The hotel had been named a National Historic Landmark in 2004, and a federal grant had allowed the place to be restored and refurbished to its 1930s decor and even some of the little-used rooms in the lower level had benefited.

The two sections of the basement were on opposite wings of the building and weren't connected. She'd chosen a room at the other end of the hotel yesterday for their meeting with Alexei Chekov. A small precaution, but if he were as good as she was beginning to suspect he might be, a wise one. Now, even if he came looking for them, he would be looking in the wrong place.

She traversed the hallway toward the room where Dillinger had once stayed for five days in 1934, waiting for federal agents to give up their search and go home. As she did, she passed the rarely used guest rooms that now housed the seven members of her team she hadn't allowed Chekov to meet.

So, Bowers, the FBI agent, had survived—or been brought back to life, depending on the definition of death you wanted to use. In either case, even though it would probably take him time to recover, he was still around, and she would have to make sure the FBI didn't poke too closely into her team's affairs.

A brawny man who was standing sentry at the room at the end of the hall acknowledged her with an informal salute. She'd moved him into this role after she'd strangled Clifton White—who'd let her down when he encountered Chekov—and had her people deposit his body outside and cover it with snow.

She pressed the door open, and inside the room she found two more of her people on guard, as well as the man who'd been the reason for so many of the events this week.

Donnie Pickron.

Alive and well.

He sat at a desk with three flat-screen computer monitors arranged in front of him and now looked up from his work. Sweaty. Nervous. His bald head appeared shiny and polished in the blue-tinged light of the computer screens. “I want proof my wife and daughter are still alive.” He spoke with a surprising amount of determination. “Or I'm not going to do any more work for you.”

His words were not unexpected. Cassandra unpocketed her cell and walked toward him in silence. His right ankle was chained to the leg of the metal table.

“If I let you speak to your wife on the phone, will that be sufficient?”

He seemed shocked by the offer. “Yes.”

She excused the two guards, tapped in a number, handed Donnie her cell.

He waited for an answer, then said anxiously, “Hello? Ardis?”

Cassandra watched him closely. Getting the electronic voiceprint earlier in the week from his wife hadn't been difficult. It simply meant stopping by their house to ask for directions and then recording Ardis's reply and the short conversation that followed. With some of the software these days, you don't need much audio at all to make a near-perfect match. To pull off the overlay, after you have the sample you just speak into a microphone hooked up to the computer, and the program does the rest.

However, there were always glitches in these types of operations, always—

“Is Lizzie there?” Donnie said into the phone. “Is she okay?”

Hmm . . . Good. Millicent Alman, one of the three people who'd met with Alexei Chekov in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn, was making it work.

“She's okay.”
Cassandra ran through the words in her mind, as if she herself were part of the conversation.
“She's right here, but she's sleeping. They have guns. Oh, Donnie, please! Do what they say. They threatened to hurt Lizzie!”

“You're going to be okay,” Donnie said, as if on cue. “Don't worry.”

Cassandra had been careful to brief Millicent on what to say and what not to say. “If he tries to ask you anything personal, perhaps about where you met or went on your honeymoon, or if he mentions a specific name, location, secret item, don't answer him. Stick to the threats you're under: tell him they're watching you. That they know everything. That they're listening to every word. End by pleading for his help.”

Her operative had nodded. “I've done this before. I'll be all right.”

After a few more moments of conversation, Cassandra took the phone from Donnie.

The look on his face made it clear that Millicent really did know what she was doing—he appeared convinced that he'd been speaking with his wife.

Now he looked at Cassandra. “And when this is over, you'll let them go? Let us all go?”

Though she didn't like to lie there were bigger things at stake here than her pointless sensibilities. She reassured him that he and his family would be fine.

“Okay,” he said at last.

She gestured toward the keyboard. “How long?”