Will might have gotten the news on the car radio or a motel TV, and anyway, she didn’t want to call and take the chance of waking him during one of his rest breaks. She’d have to wait for him to reach out to her.
Just as she was pulling into the bank parking lot in Flat-bush, her prepaid phone rang. She hurriedly unlatched her seat belt and scrambled out of the SUV to get far enough away to be out of Mueller’s range when she answered.
“Will!”
“It’s Laura.” She sounded wild.
“Laura! What’s the matter?”
“Mark Shackleton just called me. He wants to meet Dad.”
Will was climbing, which felt good to him because it felt different. He was ragged from fighting hypnotically flat terrain, and the I-40 gradient through the Sandia Mountains was helping his mood. Back in Plainfield, Indiana, he’d caught six hours at a Days Inn, but that was eighteen hours ago. Without another rest soon he’d nod off and crash.
When he stopped, he’d call Nancy. He’d heard about Elder’s murder on the radio and wanted to see if she knew anything. It was making him crazy, but there were a lot of things agitating him, including his forced abstinence. He was jittery, humoring himself in a silly voice:
“Maybe you’ve got a drinking problem, Willie.”
“Hey, screw you, the only problem I’ve got is that I haven’t had a drink.”
“I rest my case.”
“Take your case and shove it up your ass.”
And he was agitated over what he’d told Nancy the day before, the love business. Had he meant it? Was it fatigue and loneliness speaking? Did she mean what she said? Now that he’d uncorked the love word, he would have to deal with it.
Maybe sooner rather than later-the phone was ringing.
“Hey, I’m glad you called.”
“Where are you?” Nancy asked.
“The great state of New Mexico.” There were traffic noises on her side. “You on the street?”
“Broadway. Friday traffic. I’ve got something to tell you, Will.”
“About Nelson Elder, right? I heard it on the news. It’s driving me nuts.”
“He called Laura.”
Will was confused. “Who called?”
“Mark Shackleton.”
The line went quiet.
“Will?”
“That son of a bitch called my daughter?” he seethed.
“He said he tried your other numbers. Laura was the only way. He wants to meet.”
“He can turn himself in anywhere.”
“He’s scared. You’re the only one he says he can trust.”
“I’m less than six hundred miles from Vegas. He can trust me to fuck him up for calling Laura.”
“He’s not in Las Vegas. He’s in L.A.”
“Christ, another three hundred miles. What else did he say?”
“He says he didn’t kill anyone.”
“Unbelievable. Anything else?”
“He says he’s sorry.”
“Where do I find him?”
“He wants you to go to a coffee shop in Beverly Hills tomorrow morning at ten. I’ve got the address.”
“He’s going to be there?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Okay, if I keep going at this clip and take an eight-hour nap somewhere, I’ve got plenty of time to have a cup of coffee with my old buddy.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I’ll stop for a rest. My butt’s sore but I’m okay. Your grandmother’s car wasn’t built for comfort or speed.”
He was happy he could make her laugh.
“Listen, Nancy, about what I said yesterday-”
“Let’s wait until this is over,” she offered. “We ought to talk about it when we’re together.”
“Okay,” he readily agreed. “Keep your phone charged. You’re my lifeline. Give me the address.”
Frazier hadn’t gone home since the start of the crisis, and he hadn’t let his men leave the Ops Center either. There was no end in sight; the pressure from Washington was intense and everyone was frustrated. They had Shackleton within their grasp, he lambasted his people, but an untrained piece of shit had somehow managed to slip the grasp of some of the best tactical ops men in the country. Frazier’s rear end was on the line and he didn’t like it being there.
“We need a gym down here,” one of his men groused.
“It’s not a spa,” Frazier spat out.
“Maybe a speed bag. We could hang it in the corner,” another one piped up from his terminal.
“You want to punch something, come over here and take a shot at me,” Frazier growled.
“I just want to find the asshole and go home,” the first man said.
Frazier corrected him. “We’ve got two assholes, our guy and the FBI turd. We need both of them.”
A Pentagon line rang and the speed-bag man answered and started taking notes. Frazier could tell from his body language that something was up.
“Malcolm, we got something. The DIA tappers picked up a call to Agent Piper’s daughter.”
“From who?” Frazier asked.
“Shackleton.”
“Fuck me…”
“They’re downloading the intercept. We should have it in a couple of minutes. Shackleton wants to meet Piper at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills tomorrow morning.”
Frazier clapped his hands together in triumph and yelled, “Two birds with one fucking stone! Thank you, Lord!” He started thinking. “Any outbound calls? How’s she passing the info?”
“No calls from her home line or her cell since this one.”
“Okay, she’s in Georgetown, right? Get a bead on all public phones in a two-mile radius of where she lives and check them for recent calls to other pay phones or prepaid cells. And find out if she has a roommate or a boyfriend and get their numbers and call logs. I want to see a crosshair over Piper’s forehead.”
It was evening in Los Angeles and the heat was starting to dissipate. Mark remained in his bungalow all day with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He vowed to do penance for Kerry by fasting but got light-headed in the afternoon and broke into the assortment of salty snacks and cookies at the bar. In any event, he reasoned, what happened to her was meant to happen, so he wasn’t really to blame, was he? The thought made him feel a little better, and he opened a beer. He drank two more in rapid succession, then started on the vodka.
His bungalow had its own private courtyard hidden behind salmon-colored walls inscribed with faux Italianate arches. He ventured out with the bottle, sat on a lounger and reclined. The air was fragrant with the exotic aromas of the tropical garden flowers. He let himself sleep, and when he awoke the sky was black and it had become chilly. He shivered in the night air and never felt more alone.
The Mojave Desert was 112 degrees in the early hours of Saturday morning, and Will thought he might spontaneously incinerate when he pulled the car off the road and emerged for a pee. He prayed the old Taurus would start up again, and it did. He’d make it to Beverly Hills with time to spare.
In the Area 51 Ops Center, Frazier was watching Will’s electronic signature as a yellow dot on a satellite-view map. His last cell phone ping was off a Verizon tower five miles west of Needles on I-40. Frazier liked to limit operational variables and eliminate surprises-the digital hawk-eye view was comforting.
Traditional shoe-leather work led them to Will’s prepaid phone. A Defense Intelligence Agency team in Washington established that Laura’s apartment was rented by a man named Greg Davis. On Friday night Davis’s mobile phone had received and placed calls from a T-Mobile prepaid phone located in White Plains, New York. That T-Mobile phone had only made and received calls from one other number since it was activated, a number corresponding to another T-Mobile prepaid phone moving west through Arizona on Friday night.
It was a trivial leap to Will’s FBI partner, Nancy Lipinski, who lived in White Plains. The DIA tappers put both prepaid lines under surveillance and Frazier had it all, wrapped in ribbon in a bow, like a Christmas present. His men would be at Sal and Tony’s Coffee Shop for a nice Saturday breakfast, and in the meantime he’d watch Will’s yellow dot moving westward at eighty miles per hour and count down the hours till the misery was over.