Mist, as thick and white as tear gas, was slowly boiling up from the gullies and hollows as the cooler air under the storm mixed with the August heat.
The GPS told us that we were coming up on our turn.
The lane onto which I’d turned ran straight as a rifle barrel from the road, through a fence of rough-cut rails, to the front door of a Cape Cod that looked as out of place here in Pine Deep as a sequined thong looks on a nun. Heavy oaks lined the road and the big front lawn was dark with thick, cool summer grass.
“Okay, gentlemen,” I said softly. “Place should be empty, and except for a brief walk-through by the handler, no one else will have disturbed the crime scene.”
“Wait,” said Top, “you want Farm Boy and me to play Sherlock Holmes?”
“We’re just doing a cursory examination. If we find anything of substance we’ll ship it off.”
“To where? CSI: Twilight Zone?”
I rolled the car to a slow stop in a turnaround in front of the house. The garage was detached except for a pitched roof that connected it to the main house. A five-year-old Honda Civic was parked in that slot. The garage door was closed.
“Looks nice and quiet,” Benny said as he got out, the big shotgun in his hands. We split up. Bunny and Top circled around to the back and side entrances. I took the front door. We had our earbuds in place and everyone was tuned into the team channel.
“On two,” I said. I counted down and then kicked the door.
The door whipped inward with a crack and as I entered, gun up and out in a two-handed shooter’s grip, I heard the backdoor bang open, and then the side door that connected to the garage breezeway. We were moving fast, yelling at the top of our voices at whoever might be in the house and at each other as we cleared room after room.
Then it was quiet again as we drifted together in the living room, holstering our guns and exhaling slowly. No one felt the need to comment on the fact that the place was empty. It was now our job to determine how it came to be empty.
“You take the bedrooms,” I said to Bunny. “Observe first before you touch.”
He was a professional soldier, not a cop. There were no smartass remarks when being giving straight orders that could remind him how to do his job.
“Why don’t I take the garage and around the outside,” offered Top, and off he went.
I stood alone in the living room and waited for the crime scene to tell me its story. If, indeed, it was a crime scene.
The doors and windows were properly closed and locked from inside. I’d had to kick the door, and a quick examination showed that the dead bolt had been engaged. Same went for the side and back doors. I went upstairs and checked those windows. Locked. Cellar door was locked and the windows were block glass.
Back in the living room I saw a laptop case by the couch, and one of those padded lap tables. However, the case was empty. The power cable and mouse were there, but the machine itself was gone.
Significant.
The question was . . . was Simon Burke crazy enough to actual write his novel about the unstoppable terrorist plot?
I hadn’t met him, but I read his psych evaluations. He had that dangerous blend of overblown ego and great insecurity that creates the kind of person who feels that any idea he has is of world-shaking importance, and must therefore be shared with the whole world. They typically lack perspective, and everything I’d read in Burke’s case file told me that he was one of those. Probably not a bad person, but not the kind you’d want to be caught in a stalled elevator with. Only one of you would walk out alive.
So . . . where was he?
My cell rang, and I flipped it open. The screen told me that it was an UNKNOWN CALLER.
That’s . . . pretty unsettling. Our phone system is run through MindReader, which is wired in everywhere. There are no callers unknown to MindReader.
It kept ringing. Before I answered it I pulled a little doohickey the size of a matchbox from a pocket, unspooled its wire, plugged the lead into the phone and pressed the CONNECT button. MindReader would race down the phone lines in a millisecond and begin reading the computer and SIM card in the other phone. One of Mr. Sin’s toys. He did not like surprises.
It rang a third time and I punched the button.
“Hello—?” A man’s voice on a phone fuzzy with static.
“Joe?”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Joe? Is this Joe Ledger?”
“Sir, please identify yourself.”
“It’s me, Joe,” he said.
“Who?” Though I thought I already knew.
“Simon Burke.” He paused and gave a nervous little laugh. “Guess you’ve been looking for me.”
“Where are you, Mr. Burke?”
“C’mon, Joe, cut the ‘Mister’ stuff. Mr. Burke was my dad, and he was kind of a dick.”
I looked through the window at the white fog that was swirling out of the cornfields. It was so thick you couldn’t see the dirt. Between the black storm clouds and the ground fog, visibility was dropping pretty fast. That wasn’t good. I said, “You told me that same joke the first time I met you.”
“Did I?”
“Can you verify where we first met?”
“Sure,” he said. “Central District police station on East Baltimore Street.”
“Okay,” I said, “good to hear your voice, Simon. You want to tell me where the hell you are?”
He laughed. “Too far away for you to come get me. At least right now.”
I turned away from the window just as tendrils of fog began caressing the glass. “We need to get you back into protective custody, Simon.”
“Joe,” he said, “listen . . . I’m sorry for doing this to you.”
“Doing what?” When he didn’t answer I said, “We know about the cell phones, Simon.”
“Yeah . . . I guessed you’d figure it out. I just thought Church would send more people. I . . . I didn’t know it would be just three of you.” My mouth went dry.
“Jesus Christ, Simon, what did you do?”
There was a sound. It might have been a sob, though it sounded strangely like bubbles escaping through mud. “Look . . . I was getting tired of waiting . . . and I knew that you’d be able to handle just about anything. So . . . I started reaching out to . . . ”
“To whom?”
“Potential buyers.”
“Oh . . . Christ . . . why?”
“I wanted to draw them in, just like the FBI said they were going to do. Only the Feds were taking way too much time. I was wasting my life away in this crappy little town.”
“Simon . . .”
“I offered to sell my plot. I . . . reached out to several buyers and told them that I had it all written down, and that they had to bring two million in unmarked bills. Don’t worry, I’d have turned over the cash. I just needed it to look and feel real to them. And they bought it, too. They thought I was selling out.”
“Who’s bringing the money, Simon?”
“All of them.”
“What do you mean? Damn it, Simon, how many buyers did you contact?”
“A lot.”
“Simon . . .”
“Six,” he said in a small and broken voice. “There are six teams of buyers. I told them to meet me at the house. I figured they’d get there and started shooting each other. It would be like a movie. I could sell that scenario. I could make a best seller out of it . . . I could make a movie out of it . . . ”
“Simon, when are the shooters expected here?”
“When? Joe . . . that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I was sorry it was just the three of you. They’re already here. I . . . I didn’t mean to kill you.”