The Prophet (33 page)

A text message from Stan appeared on Vasques’s phone saying that Belacourt was approaching. A moment later, the spotter from the Cook County Sheriff’s tactical team called out over the radio that the target was incoming. This was it. A part of her hoped that Belacourt would resist and choose suicide by cop, but she dismissed the thought. She wanted him to stand trial as an accessory to her father’s murder and probably for the murders of his own wife and daughter. She wanted him to answer for what he had done. And she wanted to look in his eyes as they took him away in chains.

She watched the surveillance monitor showing the feed from a small articulating camera mounted atop the van. It showed Belacourt’s stolen Honda Civic pulling through the mall lot and into a parking space near the mall’s back corner. Vasques keyed her radio and said, “Hold positions. Wait for the second target to arrive.”

Her phone vibrated again, displaying a message from Marcus. It read
Schofield is in the wind—We NEED Belacourt and Jansen
.

Working on it
, she typed back. Then she popped in another piece of Juicy Fruit gum, checked her watch, and wondered how long they should wait before taking Belacourt if Jansen didn’t show.

Troy said, “Hey, I was thinking that after this is all over maybe I could take you out to dinner.”

She raised her eyebrows, and he added, “Not like a date, you know, just to celebrate.”

But there was something in his eyes that she had never noticed before. They had been partners for a long time. And she had never really thought about it, but he was probably her best friend. Still, something in Troy’s demeanor and body language suggested that he hoped for more. The FBI had not rules against relationships between partners or even between supervisors and subordinates. She knew several agents who had met and married other agents or FBI support personnel.

Still, a relationship would change everything between them. How could they be partners and lovers at the same time? Vasques hated to think about spoiling what they already had.

But she was also damn tired of being so cautious in her personal life and being alone. So she smiled and said, “That would be great.”

“Good, then it’s a date. Well, not a date, but a . . . scheduled dinner . . . between co-workers.”

She patted Troy on the shoulder and chuckled. “I know what you mean. Just shut up and watch the—”

The sound of a high-powered rifle shot split the air, the concussive boom and crack echoing through the interior of the van. She watched the monitor in horror as the front windshield of Belacourt’s Honda exploded.

“No!” Vasques screamed. Then she threw open the back doors of the van and ran toward Belacourt. Maybe he was still alive? Maybe she could help him?

Her feet pounded through the brown slurry covering the asphalt of the parking lot. She heard Troy’s voice at her back, but it sounded far away. He was yelling for her to get down, but she
needed
to reach Belacourt. He was their only lead on the location of the missing women.

She scanned the area for the shooter as she ran and pulled her gun.

Belacourt’s car was only a few yards away.

She could see him. His head was slumped over to the side. He wasn’t moving.

Across a large open piece of land was a residential area; there was a mini-van on the road opposite them. Was that the shooter?

Then she was falling. Something had struck her and stolen her feet out from beneath her. Her head cracked against the asphalt, and she felt very cold.

Confusion overwhelmed her. What had just happened?

Her mind replayed the events as she tried to make sense of it.

She had been running, and then something had hit her. A loud sound had followed.

Vasques touched her stomach. It felt warm and sticky. She couldn’t breathe, and her whole body had started to go numb.

The air was cold and fresh against her skin and in her mouth as she gasped for air. Her sense of it seemed heightened. She felt as though she was suspended above the ground, not lying on it.

The sound of screaming reached her ears, and she couldn’t tell if it was coming from her own mouth or from someone else.

She looked up at the sky. The different shades of gray and blue and white.

The numbness had crept over her whole body. Now she felt strangely calm as if she was floating on a tranquil sea, a million miles from anywhere, with an endless sky stretching out overhead.

And then she closed her eyes.

Maggie approached the house at an angle, so as not to be visible from the front or the windows. The neighbor’s home wasn’t nearly as extravagant as the Schofield residence, but it was still a lovely and expensive-looking house, just on a smaller scale. It was a single-story ranch-style place covered with beige brick and surrounded by red rock landscaping. A white Ford Taurus sat in the driveway. The car was free of snow, as if it had arrived only a few minutes earlier.

There was little to block the wind in the space between the houses. It bit at her skin and pulled at her hair. The snow was deep, and it crept over the tops of her black ankle-high boots and soaked the cuffs of her jeans. Stomping up into the rocky flower bed, she rounded the corner of the neighbor’s house.

A small porch ran along its front. With her Glock at the ready, Maggie stepped up onto the porch and peered through the front window. Her view of the room was partially obstructed by a thin white curtain, but the venetian blinds were open. There was an L-shaped brown and white sectional sofa facing a flat-screen TV mounted on the far wall. A big blue fleece blanket was draped over one arm of the couch.

In the center of the room, an old man was gagged and had been duct-taped to a kitchen chair. He had thick white hair that was soaked and clinging to his face. His clothes looked wet as well, and his eyes were wide with fear and confusion. She could hear Schofield but couldn’t see him. He was yelling at the old man.

“You should have stayed away from my family!”

She inched farther around the edge of the window, and there he was. He paced back and forth in front of the bound man. A silenced pistol dangled from his right hand, and he held a bottle of Kingsford lighter fluid in the other.

Realizing why the man looked wet and what was about to happen, she rushed to the front door but found it locked.

Focusing on the area just below the knob, Maggie took a deep breath and prepared to strike. She stood sideways a few feet back with her leading foot facing forward. Then she executed a swift side kick, planting her heel into the space below the knob. She carried her momentum all the way through the kick, falling into her target and throwing all her weight behind the blow.

The door flew inward on its hinges and slammed into the drywall. Pieces of the ruined frame shot into the living room. Dust from the drywall and splintered wood filled the room as she raced in.

The air was thick with the smell of smoke and lighter fluid and burning meat. Maggie caught sight of someone moving, running from the room, but she had more pressing concerns.

In the center of the room, the old man was engulfed in flames. He was writhing in agony and screaming beneath his gag. He rocked violently and knocked the chair over onto its side.

Maggie didn’t hesitate.

Dropping her gun, she jumped over the burning man and ripped the big blue blanket off of the couch. Then she flung it out over him and dropped her weight on him to smother the flames.

After several moments of frantic patting and rubbing, the fire was extinguished. He was alive, and he had only been on fire for a few seconds. She doubted that he had a hair left on his head or torso, but his injuries weren’t life-threatening.

Once the fire was out, she didn’t bother to undo the old man’s restraints. Her Glock had fallen near the ruined front door. She scooped it up and ran after Schofield.

She hurried toward a door at the side of the house and burst into the yard. The woods would provide the closest cover and a good escape route, and so her gaze moved in that direction first. But there was no sign of him.

Then she looked down at the snow. Long clumsy footprints showed a path from the side of the old man’s house to the curb. Her gaze followed the tracks up and across the street, and she saw him.

Schofield was already nearly onto the next road over, charging through the snow in between his neighbors’ homes in an awkward loping gait.

Maggie took off after him at a full sprint. The snow was thick and hindered her movements, but she was in good shape and light on her feet. She reached the street and crossed into the neighboring yard. She closed the distance between the houses and the next street quickly.

But she was too late.

She reached the street just in time to see an old Volkswagen spinning its tires in the slush covering the road as it sped away. She took aim with the Glock, but the car was already out of range.

Schofield was gone.

Marcus pulled the Yukon up near the barricade blocking the road down from Schofield’s big brick home. The street and the two houses were a swarm of activity—photographers, CSI techs, police, medical personnel, firemen. The Jackson’s Grove police department had probably called in for help from Cook County, the surrounding precincts, and maybe even the State Police. They had at least three different scenes here containing potential evidence and needed all the manpower they could get. But of all the people on the scene, Marcus cared about only one of them.

As they walked up, he said to Andrew, “Give me a few minutes alone with her.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can dig up about Mr. O’Malley. See if he and Schofield were enemies.”

Maggie sat on the curb across the road from the house of the old man whom Schofield had tried to burn alive. Her hands rested atop her knees, and her eyes were glassy and unmoving. Marcus wanted to rush up and embrace her, but when she saw him, she made no effort to stand. So he just dropped down onto the curb next to her and said nothing.

They sat there for a long few moments as if they were two kids playing the quiet game and the first one to speak would be the loser. Finally, Maggie said, “I let him get away.”

“So what?”

“So maybe you were right. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a field agent. I can help in other ways. After what happened today and in Harrisburg—”

“Maggie, please shut up. You did good today. I’ve come to realize that our job isn’t to catch killers. It’s to protect innocent people. And that’s what you did. You saved a man’s life.”

She met his gaze. Her cheeks were flushed, but he couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or the cold. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re a good agent, and if I were any kind of a team leader, you would already know that.” Marcus blew out a long breath. “And if I were any kind of a man, you would also know how much I love you. But we—”

Her hands shot out and grabbed him by the sides of his head. Just as quickly, she pulled him in close and kissed him. It was a long and hungry kiss.

His arms folded around her. He could feel her heart pounding, and she was breathing hard. When she pulled away, she said, “Don’t say anything else. You’ll just ruin it.”

Marcus found Stupak standing next to the Jackson’s Grove cruiser containing the dead officer. The dead man looked young, probably only a few years out of the academy with a wife and kids waiting for him at home. When Marcus was a boy, not long before his parents died, his father had been hit with a baseball bat by two kids robbing a small electronics store. His mother had received the late-night call that the wife of every police officer dreads. When his father had worked nights, she liked Marcus to sleep in the bed with her, and so he was there when she received the call. Although his father walked away with only a slight concussion and a few stitches, Marcus would never forget the look on her face, and he wondered if there was another child out there at that moment seeing the same look of fear and heartbreak in their mother’s eyes.

Stupak’s overly expensive suit and overcoat looked rumpled. Both were unbuttoned. His tie was undone, and his shirt untucked. For the first time since Marcus had seen the detective in the Jackson’s Grove briefing room, the man looked flustered.

“I’m sorry about your man,” Marcus said.

Stupak nodded, but his stare didn’t leave the technicians retrieving evidence from the cruiser. “He was a good cop. Young, but he took the job seriously. It was more than a paycheck.” Stupak ran a hand over his perfectly shaved head. “This kind of thing doesn’t happen here. Two of our own dead within a few hours.”

“Two? You had another officer killed today?”

Stupak gave him a look of contempt as though he seemed to be trying to determine if Marcus was serious. “Belacourt. I don’t care what anyone says that he did. He was a good detective . . . and my friend.”

“Belacourt’s dead?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“No, I’ve been trying to call Vasques, but I haven’t been able to reach her.”

Stupak groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. You won’t be able to reach her anytime soon. She had set up an operation to lure in a man named Erik Jansen by using Belacourt. Apparently it backfired. We think it was Jansen that shot Belacourt with a high-powered rifle. He died on scene. Vasques caught a round in the stomach. Her vest wasn’t enough to stop that kind of round, but I’m sure it slowed it down. She’s in surgery now. That’s all I know.”

Marcus felt like all the air had suddenly been sucked from the world. He couldn’t breathe. Cold chills lanced down through the core of his body. But, within only a few seconds, the feeling of cold was replaced with fire. “I’m going to find these guys, Stupak. And I’m going to kill them. Conlan, Schofield, Jansen. All of them. You don’t have to help me, but don’t get in my way.”

Stupak just looked at him for a long, hard moment. Then he said, “What do you need from me?”

“Have your guys been through the house?”

“Yeah, we found a gun safe in the basement loaded with some illegal weapons. A couple of automatics and a grenade.”

“Grenade? Where the hell did he get that?”

“Not as difficult as you might think. Especially with him working in the security field. I’m sure their company employs a lot of ex-military. You can also buy disarmed grenades at just about any military surplus store. Then it’s just a matter of having the know-how to put the guts back in.”

“What about the family? Any word on them?” Marcus said.

“We contacted the cell company to track their phones. Led right back here. They left them behind. Then we spoke to Schofield’s mother-in-law, and she said that her daughter called her late last night and said that an emergency had come up and they would be gone for a while. She tried but didn’t get any details beyond that.”

Marcus looked around at the expensive neighborhood and Schofield’s house, which was the star of the block. It was the kind of house that raised everyone else’s already bloated property values. The guy had a wife, three kids, and the biggest house on the block. But he still couldn’t run from his past. The hunger that Schofield felt couldn’t be filled with all the possessions and money in the world.

Marcus wondered why Schofield’s family had run away. Had they finally learned his secret and fled in fear?

He retrieved a business card from the inner pocket of his leather jacket and handed it to Stupak. “I’m going to check out the house myself. If you find anything, call me.”

Stupak took the card and replied, “Same goes for you.”

Marcus moved up the stamped concrete walkway to Schofield’s front door. One of the techs didn’t want to let him in, and it took a showing of his credentials and some harsh words to gain access. Once inside, he did a quick walk-through of the first floor. There was a long hallway in the center of the house that was packed with family photos. Vacations, graduations, school events, candid shots, professional portraits. All variations were represented. It felt like a museum display, missing only the little info cards explaining what was depicted in each scene. It was a chronicle of the Schofield family and their lives together. They looked genuinely happy.

He thought of Vasques and wondered if she would get the chance to have a family like this. Husband. Children. A hall of fame commemorating each happy moment. Those bastards might have stolen that from her, and they needed to pay for it.

His phone rang, but he didn’t recognize the number.

His teeth ground against each other, but he accepted the call and immediately said, “I have nothing to say to you.”

“What did he tell you?”

“The truth.”

Ackerman laughed. “I very much doubt that.”

“He told me that you and your father killed my parents.”

“Did he? Interesting. I guess that is partially accurate, but definitely not the whole truth. I was just a boy myself and had nothing to do with their deaths. I did, however, have something to do with how you lived past that night. Do you honestly not remember anything about what really happened?”

Marcus said nothing, but he knew exactly what Ackerman was referring to. He remembered the voice in the darkness that had helped him hide as his parents screamed on the floor below. He remembered someone holding his hand. He remembered the fear, the sadness, the emotions of that night. But he had been young, and it was all blurry and incoherent images that had either been blocked out or mostly forgotten. It had always bothered him how some memories from that time—trips to the Bronx Zoo and Coney Island or meals shared at Mazzola’s bakery or Nino’s pizzeria—could be so vivid and complete, but that night eluded him.

Ackerman continued. “I only learned the truth recently myself. I remembered that night, but I hadn’t made the connection to you. I just remembered a scared little boy in cowboy pajamas. I was told to bring you down. But I remember there being something in your eyes that compelled me to keep you away from him. I hid you on the porch roof outside your bedroom window. Then I made the bed and told my father that you weren’t there. He stormed up the stairs and checked for himself, but he couldn’t find you. You’re only alive today because of me. Because I saved you.”

Marcus didn’t know what to say. What the killer had told him coincided with his own scattered memories, and the new information didn’t even necessarily mean that the Director had lied to him. His superior might never have known the whole story. Plus, the story rang true on another level that he couldn’t quite identify.

“How did you figure out that was how we’re connected?”

“Marcus, come on now. You can’t expect me to give up all my secrets. Besides, we have more pressing concerns at the moment. How goes the hunt for our friend the Anarchist?”

“Goodbye, Ackerman.”

“Wait, I can help you. I know how you can find him.”

Marcus knew that he should have hung up right then. He knew better than to give in to the madman’s fantasies or encourage him in any way. But curiosity, coupled with his desire to protect innocent life and avenge its taking, was too strong. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t hang up either.

The killer accepted the silent acknowledgment and said, “If you want to beat someone or control them, you have to learn their weaknesses. Who or what does this person love? What do they want? What do they need? What is the most important thing in the world to them? If you can answer those questions about the Anarchist, then you can exploit his weaknesses and make him dance to your tune. And I think you already know what you need to do. You just need to have the necessary intestinal fortitude to step up and walk that path. This is what you are. Good hunting.”

The line went dead, and Marcus closed his eyes. Ackerman was right. Marcus knew what Schofield loved, but he hated himself for being the kind of man who would use it against the killer.

He looked around at the pictures of smiling faces and happy memories one last time, and then he dialed Stan’s number.

“Stan’s Crematorium. You kill ’em, we grill ’em”

“Not in the mood, Stan. I need you to track down Schofield’s family. They’re running, but they don’t know the game. I’m betting they’ve screwed up and left a trail somewhere along the way.”

“Okay, I’m on it. What are you going to do when we find them?”

“I’m going to kidnap them and hold them for ransom.”