My first thought was obvious. Yes, he’s done it. The killer has struck again. My second thought was, if only Haggerty had let the trooper stay closer to his house. My third thought was, I’m glad I’m not that particular trooper right now.
“The agents are meeting at seven o’clock,” Maven said.
“I’ll be there.”
“This is going to get ugly today.”
“I know.”
I pulled into the Soo post parking lot at 6:45. The sun hadn’t come up yet. It was ten degrees and the air smelled like snow. I walked inside and I could feel the unnatural silence in the place right away. The interview room was empty. I went in and sat down. A trooper I didn’t know walked by and gave me a quick look. It wasn’t friendly.
Maven came in a few minutes later. He nodded to me as he took his coat off. Then he went back out into the office to get a cup of coffee. Actually, he brought back two cups. He put one down in front of me and sat down.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded again. He still hadn’t said a word. I wasn’t about to make him talk until he was ready.
Seven o’clock came and went. Then 7:15. It was almost 7:30 when the agents finally showed up. They came in shivering, each of them carrying folders thick with paper. It took them another minute to take their coats off and get settled with their own cups of coffee. They both looked tired as hell.
“First priority,” Agent Long said. “Chief Maven, if we truly understand what’s going on here, you could be next on the list. Or rather, your daughter could be.”
“I know that.”
“We need to ensure her safety.”
“She’s in Amsterdam, staying with a friend. My wife is over there, too. They’ll stay there until it’s safe to come home.”
“Okay, good,” Agent Long said, nodding. “But until we know who this person is… I mean, we don’t know what kind of resources he may have. For all we know, he could go all the way to Amsterdam to find her.”
“He wouldn’t know how to find her. She’s staying in a private residence there, and there are only four people in the world who know about it. My daughter and her friend, my wife and myself.”
“I’m just saying, if we wanted to contact the authorities in the Netherlands, we could arrange to-”
“You brought up the possibility that it might have been an ex-cop doing this.”
“You mean Fraser? But we established that he’s dead.”
“It’s still something to be aware of,” Maven said. “Think about it. What if it was another cop? An old trooper even, somebody we used to work with?”
“Don’t let those guys outside hear you saying that,” Agent Fleury said.
“My point is, I don’t want anybody to know where she is. Even you guys. As soon as you tell somebody else, you don’t have any control over it.”
“This is the FBI you’re talking about,” Fleury said. “If there’s one thing we’re good at-”
“That’s debatable.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Guys,” Agent Long said. “Can we stay on the same team here?”
“There is another avenue we might want to think about,” Fleury said. “If Maven’s daughter did come home and was willing to help us set a trap for this guy…”
“Agent, let me stop you right there and ask you a question,” Maven said. “Do you have a daughter?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I’m talking hypothetically,” Fleury said. “It would be a very carefully controlled situation.”
“Next topic.”
Fleury held his gaze for a long moment. Then he shook his head and opened the folder in front of him.
“Actually, before we get to this,” he said, “there’s one more thing we have to talk about. We have some other agents on their way up here right now. If the weather stays clear, they should be here by noon. Special Agent Kozak will be among them. He’ll be taking over the lead on this investigation, and we’ll probably be moving to another location.”
“Why would you do that?” Maven said. “This is where all of the records are.”
“As long as we have access to the computer, we can get to them from anywhere. The real problem is just a matter of space. We’re going to have a half dozen people working on this until we have a resolution.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
“What this also means,” Fleury said, looking at me now, “is that our arrangements are going to have to change. Special Agent Kozak is fully aware of the assistance you’ve been giving us, Mr. McKnight, but when he gets here I’m quite sure he won’t understand why you’re still sitting in on our meetings.”
“If he doesn’t understand,” Maven said, “then I’ll just have to explain it to him.”
I put a hand up to stop him. I looked at Agent Long for confirmation.
“I’m afraid it’s true,” she said. “That’s the third thing he’s going to do when he gets here. The first is kick Agent Fleury’s ass, the second is kick my ass. Then the third will be asking us what your official capacity is in this case.”
“Nobody’s happy right now,” Agent Fleury said. “Fair or not, the FBI is mad at the state police for not protecting one of their own. The state police are mad at the FBI for not involving them in this sooner. This is going to end up being a rough day for everyone, Mr. McKnight. I just don’t see how they’re going to let you stick around.”
“All right,” I said. “I get it.”
“I don’t,” Maven said. “If they think they can just-”
“Chief, come on. The man’s right. This day’s going to be bad enough.”
“We really do appreciate everything you’ve done,” Agent Long said. “I don’t think we’d even have a case without you.”
“Just do me one favor,” I said. “As long as the big boys aren’t here yet, tell me exactly what happened.”
Fleury hesitated for a moment. Then he started pulling out papers from his folder.
“All right. As you’ve probably already heard, Lieutenant Haggerty was killed between three o’clock and four o’clock this morning. One single gunshot to the forehead, at fairly close range judging from the powder burns. He was apparently sitting in a chair in the kitchen. There were no marks on his hands to indicate any attempt to defend himself.”
I pictured him sitting there, waiting for exactly this event to happen.
“Or it’s possible that he was asleep in the chair,” Fleury went on. “We’re not sure about that yet. We’ll have some forensics later today, but right now it appears to be a. 45 caliber round similar to the rounds used to kill Sergeant Steele and Ms. Krimer.”
“That was Steele’s service weapon,” Maven said. “Did he keep it to use again?”
“That’s quite possible. We’ll know for sure later on. Right now, the one interesting thing we do have is a few fiberglass fibers close to the entry wound. This would suggest some kind of homemade suppressor.”
“A homemade suppressor? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s possible to make a pretty effective suppressor if you want one bad enough. I’m not talking about the old bleach bottle on the end of the gun thing. I’m talking about a carefully made suppressor, with a PVC pipe and fiberglass matting inside. If you do a good enough job, you can contain the gases very well, and you can even use a wipe barrier to slow down the bullet to subsonic speed. Your accuracy would be compromised, of course, but at such close range…”
“How would this guy know how to make something like that?”
“I could find it for you on the Internet in two minutes,” Fleury said. “You just need the materials, available at any good hardware store.”
“If he knows guns well enough to make a suppressor,” I said, “then he probably knows that we’ll be able to trace that slug back to Steele’s weapon, assuming that’s what it was.”
“Probably, yes.”
“So he’ll know that we’ll know there was a connection between the two shootings. There won’t be any pretense of unrelated deaths anymore.”