Wounded Earth (16 page)

* * *

Larabeth sat in an all-night diner and hoped there was safety in numbers. She counted two waitresses, a cook, and six other diners. J.D. thought she would be safe here while he searched her house, and he was probably right. She got the impression that Babykiller would happily kill all these people to get to her, if necessary, but she thought he was patient enough to wait for a better chance.

Her cell phone rang and she jumped. She answered it and J.D.'s voice said, “I've finished searching your house and everything's okay.”

“Did you find any evidence we can use to track Babykiller down?”

“No.”

“Nothing?" she asked. "Not even a fingerprint on the candlesticks?”

“Nothing. Not even any candlesticks.”

“But that means—”

“That means that someone came in, within the last half hour, and took out every trace of candle wax and bubble bath. They dried out the tub. And they took their see-through nightgown and its matching butcher knife with them.”

Gerald
had found the helicopter pilot Babykiller wanted easily. Buzz Eckberg was everything the boss could ask for in a pilot. It hadn't taken much effort to ruin him, either. He had very nearly done that for himself.

Gerald considered calling Babykiller to let him know that Buzz was onboard, but he decided against it. His boss expected nothing less than success, every time. The simple act of following orders was not newsworthy. Gerald and his victim would wait for Babykiller's next request.

* * *

Buzz Eckberg hadn't slept in four nights, not since the first letter came on Saturday. This wasn't the familiar insomnia of cocaine or speed. It was the terror of the rat in the maze, the frustration of the puppet who is self-aware but able only to do and speak what its master wished.

There was no way out. He might as well sleep and give himself some respite from the nightmare, but adrenaline can't be rationally controlled. He lay sweaty between the sheets next to his young wife. Every muscle was tensed. His eyelids were drawn so rigidly open that his dry eyes burned.

When the baby stirred, he was up before his wife heard her. It was terribly important these days to hold her soft body to his chest, to rock her while she took the bottle, to burp her and change her and put her back to bed. Babyhood is fleeting and Buzz had recently come to realize that safety and life were fleeting, too.

Four small things, four letters with no return addresses, had brought his comfortable life to a halt. It had taken only four days to bring him to this sorry state.

The first letter had simply stated that its author intended to notify his employer of his history of drug use. It would have been easy enough to deny the accusation. He had never been arrested. His urine tests had always been negative, and for good reason. He had been clean for years. But this letter was from someone who was clearly out to get him and they knew how.

They named names of drug dealers he had patronized and addicts he had partied with. Attached to the letter were statements from three of these upstanding citizens who were willing to testify that they had seen him high several times within the past year. They were lying, of course, but they knew enough about him to make the charges plausible and that was all his employer would need to drop him immediately. The hospital's foremost concern was safety, as it should be.

He had nearly fallen apart when he received that letter, but the second letter was worse. Attached to it was a lab report with his name at the top. The summary at the bottom stated that his blood had tested positive for opiate metabolites and his blood alcohol level had been 0.21. The most damning bit of data wasn't the blood results. It was the date. His blood was supposedly collected for these tests the day of the accident.

It was a lie. He had been clean that day. He had been clean for years. But this letter claimed there had been a coverup, that the hospital administrators hadn't wanted to let the public know they had a drunk and an addict flying in their air rescue program.

He regretted the accident and the pain the girl's death caused her family, but he hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, he had done a lot of things right.

The weather had been iffy when he took off. A thunderstorm had blown through earlier, rare in those parts, but it had mostly passed, and he had maneuvered the helicopter easily through the winds gusting in the storm's aftermath. He had set the thing down between the traffic barricades on the narrow highway, in the shadow of high hills on either side of the road.

The paramedics had rushed to get the girl out of the wreckage. She wasn't breathing. He had tried not to look at the things the crash had done to her body. It reminded him of the GIs he'd picked up, time and again, in Vietnam. Her face wasn't messed up too bad and he thought she had probably been pretty. Maybe not even eighteen years old.

The paramedics had put her on the helicopter and he had gotten it airborne when things went bad fast. A green-black cloud had rolled in between the hills, bringing with it a freak gust. The helicopter went down.

None of the crew were badly injured, mostly cuts and bruises. It was hard for him to tell whether the girl had suffered any additional injuries. The paramedics had unloaded her and continued their lifesaving efforts with the medications and equipment they could salvage from the wreck, but she died before the ground ambulance arrived.

The hospital did a routine post-accident investigation. Interviews with witnesses. Blood tests. He was absolved of any blame and cleared for flying. Dammit, why would someone want to make it look like he was responsible?

The answer was a couple of days in coming. First, there was another letter. The letter-writer reminded him of the girl's name. Toni Gerancino. Actually, Antonia Gerancino. Attached to the letter were copies of newspaper articles on Anthony Gerancino, her father. He was the leader of the local arm of the mob, just a two-bit hood but, according to the letter, there was no question of whether he had an organization capable of avenging his daughter's death. In the final sentences in the letter, Buzz heard the clang of the last bar in his cage sliding into place, the click of the last tumbler in its lock.

We will be forwarding a package to Mr. Gerancino containing all the evidence we have shown you to date. Proof of past drug usage and proof of flying under the influence of drugs on the day of his daughter's death should be sufficient to spur him into action. It is possible he will have you killed. It is also possible he will choose to extract an eye for an eye. Your daughter for his daughter. There is no way to predict what he will do. We have the power to help you or to destroy you. Sleep on this idea and we will be in touch tomorrow.

And they had been in touch, as promised. The last letter had arrived. It lay, with the others, in the bottom of a shoebox in the back of the closet he shared with Suzi. The letter outlined his situation, as if he weren't already aware of it. Evidence of flying under the influence of drugs would alone cost him his job and his license. Re-opening the accident investigation, coupled with evidence of narcotics use, could land him in prison.

He and Suzi had debts, big ones. He had spent all he had, more than he had, on drugs all those years ago, and he had never caught up. They lived from paycheck to paycheck. They had no family to turn to for help. If he lost his job and went to prison, Suzi would be destitute. Immediately.

He couldn't even think about the last threat. He would do anything—anything—to safeguard his daughter and his wife. And the letter-writer knew that. The last letter had contained detailed instructions. If he followed them carefully, Suzi and the baby would be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

He would probably not live, but they would be okay. And if he pulled it off, if he managed to do what they wanted and survived, then he would be well taken care of, too. The fact that this offer looked like a good deal to Buzz was a fair measure of his desperation.

Larabeth
unlocked her front door and let herself in. J.D. followed right behind. She felt disoriented by the act of skipping work Wednesday, especially since she had spent Tuesday night on J.D.'s couch. He checked her house for bad guys, again, and he swore the coast was clear, but her stomach was unsettled.

She told herself things could be worse. J.D.'s electronics expert was coming to check out her house and she was intrigued by the idea. Even better, Guillaume had almost certainly gotten her tapes to the FBI by now. The sense that she was turning the tables on Babykiller made her almost giddy. She had a pot of chicoried coffee going by the time the doorbell rang.

“Right on time,” J.D. said. “My favorite surveillance expert is so reliable for a certified nutcase.”

Larabeth opened her front door and a twentyish African-American woman stepped in, carrying an armload of electronic equipment. She was wearing a white t-shirt, olive drab pants, and, despite an early-morning temperature in the upper eighties, an oversized camouflage jacket. Only after carefully arranging the equipment on the coffee table did she acknowledge Larabeth's outstretched hand. She made eye contact, but it was brief and half-hearted.

“I'm Kydd,” she said, nodding. Then she walked back outside.

She doesn't have much to say,” Larabeth said.

“Not when she's offline.” J.D. replied.

Kydd walked back in with another load of equipment. “I don't suppose you have access to the internet,” she asked, jamming her hands into her coat pockets.

“Of course I do—”

Kydd interrupted Larabeth with a grunt apparently intended to communicate pleasure and surprise. She walked outside again.

“Do I look that old? It's 1995. How does she think I run my business without my internet and my fax and—”

“It's best not to mention fax machines to Kydd. She thinks they are abominations that enable Neanderthals—like you—to continue society's antiquated dependence on paper.”

“You got her to string that many words together?”

“You underestimate Kydd. She's very articulate. When she's online.”

“‘Articulate’ is an interesting choice of words. I was going for ‘psychotic’.”

Kydd reappeared and J.D. asked, “Can we come out to the van and look around?”

Kydd nodded and they followed her out.

J.D. fondled Kydd's equipment with his eyes. “This is great,” he said. “You can't get half this stuff any more, not since they passed that law.”

“Is any of this legal?” Larabeth asked.

“Maybe in Tibet,” Kydd said. “Does it matter?”

“Not if it works,” Larabeth answered, surprising even herself.

* * *

Babykiller relaxed on an overstuffed armchair in the master suite of one of his homes. He drew a slender file out of his briefcase. The file held a few key documents. The rest he had scanned and stored on diskette. He found it necessary to move around a great deal and he had learned to travel light.

There were four crumpled sheets of stationery, each partially covered with firm, neat handwriting. He considered having Larabeth's handwriting analyzed by an expert—it paid to know one's adversaries—but there was really no need. Any fool could interpret her penmanship.

The vertical strokes were strong and evenly slanted to the right, just slightly. There wasn't a single flowery ornamentation, but no one could mistake the fact that the letters were formed by a female hand. Larabeth was a consistent woman. Even in her handwriting, she was firm, careful, and in control.

Dear Cynthia
, each letter began, continuing with some version of
I don't know where to begin, except to say I am your mother.
They made interesting reading, but the real value in these letters lay not only in their text. The name and location of the addressee were clearly laid out in the upper left-hand corner of each sheet. Cynthia Parker, Winter Colony Villas, Apartment 6C, Aiken, South Carolina.

Larabeth's daughter.

He carefully replaced the letters in the file and pulled out seven photocopied and stapled pages—photocopied and stapled on BioHeal's own copier, right in Larabeth's office. And now she'd hired a private investigator to improve security. He had no doubt that the man was quite capable, but this was a case of too little, too late.

He had no reason to think he'd be needing to rifle through her office again. He could get quite enough information on Larabeth's whereabouts by calling her idiot secretary and posing as a client. Or a reporter. Or an admirer. Old Norma was a sucker for romance.

He hadn't logged on to her computer system lately to see if it had been secured. If not, he was sure it was just a matter of time. The detective would get to it soon enough, but until that time, Babykiller had access to everything on BioHeal's local area network.

He flipped through the photocopies. A simple employment application. He doubted that people realized how much personal information they revealed when they were desperate for a job. Full name. Permanent address—which for recent graduates was usually their parents' home. Alma maters, personal references, and previous employers, all of them valuable sources of information in themselves. Sometimes even a photograph.