He took his time determining that the area was clear before approaching the Acura, which was parked where he’d left it, several blocks from his old building. He drove it swiftly out of the immediate area, pulled into an isolated parking lot, and wanded the car down with an RF emitter he pulled from the war bag in the trunk in case a transponder had been installed. To quell his concerns, he took apart the wand, in case the ESU geeks had installed a device within the emitter itself, a move he might have pulled on one of his better days. Nothing.
He wasn’t surprised the car was clean-there was nothing to link the Acura to him, his now-defunct false identity, or the apartment building-but at this stage of the game, reassurance was a needed ally.
Once on the freeway, he was careful to obey the speed limit. After parking a good five blocks away, Tim crept up on the house, surveying it from all angles.
Like a dog to his vomit.
In the driveway Mac tinkered under the hood of his car, greasy rag protruding from his back pocket. Palton and Guerrera were about thirty yards up the road at the curb, looking conspicuous as hell in an ’89 Thunderbird that listed left. They were doing dick to avoid getting eye-fucked because they knew, as did Tim, that he’d be an idiot to come here. They were sitting on the house simply because most of the time, as a deputy marshal, that’s just what you did-covered your bases and tried to stay awake.
Aside from the obvious detail out front, the house looked clear. Tim withdrew and reapproached through the backyard, sliding through the rear door. The smell of stale pepperoni and fresh coffee. Blankets and bed pillow still on the couch-Mac, concerned friend with the ulterior motive. Two pizza boxes on a new Ikea coffee table. Tim stared at the impostor, probably the first of many. The master bedroom was empty. The coffee-table box sat in the middle of Ginny’s room, discarded, making all too evident that no one lived in the space anymore.
Tim found Dray at the kitchen table, silhouetted against the drawn blinds. Before her sat a canary yellow file and Tim’s boom box. A tape rasped lethargically in the player, the speakers emitting a grainy whisper that showed the recording had ended. Dray sat at an angle, hunched right as if recoiling from intense heat or bracing herself for a blow. One arm she’d wrapped around her stomach; the other clamped it tightly in place. Her face had gone white, save for her trembling lips, which were a wan red. She looked more or less as she had when she’d taken the news of Ginny’s death from Bear, the instant before she’d hit her knees in the foyer.
Just beyond the knuckles of her quaking right fist gleamed the brass safety-deposit key.
He approached on numb legs, on deadened feet.
Her head pivoted like a robot’s; her eyes pointed at him but took no note of his presence. Her hand extended to the boom box, pressed “stop,” “rewind.”
Tim turned aside the file’s vivid cover. The public defender’s interview notes were on the top. He scanned them quickly-same stabbing words.
The victim was the client’s “type.”
Client claims to have taken an hour and a half with the body after death.
He turned to the deflating fifth page, but in place of what he’d read before appeared: Client claims he was contacted at night by a man at his residence. Man was well built, blond, mustached, wore a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. Client knows nothing else about the mystery man.
Or imaginary friend-the PD’s annotation slyly read.
Client claims man showed him photos of the victim and maps and schedules regarding the victim’s movement from school to home. Client was to kidnap victim, then take her back to garage shack for a later sex “show.” Client and mystery man agreed on date and meeting time for “show.” Mystery man never appeared again.
Another single-sentence scrawl in the margin. Story thin, no corroborative evidence-deafness stronger route for prelim.
A prickly rage was fighting its way north from Tim’s gut, forcing itself up his throat. It emerged in a horrified exhale, something between a grunt and a cry.
Rayner had doctored the notes before giving them to Ananberg to copy-knowing, perhaps, that she’d leak them to Tim. Either way he’d never planned on Tim’s seeing anything but the expurgated version that indicated that Kindell had acted alone.
The glossy surveillance photograph underneath took Tim’s breath from his chest. A nighttime shot of Kindell, leaving his shack wearing only a T-shirt, his naked thighs stained with blood.
Ginny’s blood.
Tim stepped back violently from the table and leaned over, hands on his knees. He retched a few times, the muscles under his rib cage straining, but he brought nothing up. Sweat fell from his brow, spotting the floor.
The tape deck clicked, signaling the end of the rewind.
Dray reached out, hit “play.”
“Hello?” Rayner’s voice.
“This a secure line?” Frenzied breathing. Panic. Robert.
“Of course.”
Tim pictured the sleek recorder by the phone on Rayner’s nightstand, generating another insurance policy that Rayner could lock away in a safety-deposit box.
“He killed her. He fucking killed her.” Gagging noise. “Cut her to pieces, the fucking retard.” Robert’s high agitation matched the description of the anonymous caller who reported Ginny’s body’s location.
Rayner’s breathing quickened. He managed a single breathy word. “No.”
“The whole thing’s fucked. I didn’t-fuck-didn’t sign on for a little girl to get…Christ, oh, Christ. He was just supposed to hold her here and wait. Not lay a finger on her.”
“Calm down. Is Mitchell there?”
The phone being fumbled, then Mitchell’s voice, dead even. “Yeah?”
“Did you leave any evidence behind?”
“No. We haven’t even approached the shack. We’re up on the road above the canyon, our staging point for the entry. When we got here, we saw him inside, through the binocs. He was already at work on the body.”
Dray emitted a little noise from deep inside her chest.
Robert in the background. “He was supposed to do nothing to her.”
“Quiet down,” Mitchell hissed. Then, to Rayner, “I figured our little rescue-and-execution plan was out the window, so we aborted the mission.” Rustling. “Hang on, hang on. Here he comes. He’s stepping out. Stork-get the lens on him.”
The click of a high-speed camera. Tim’s eyes returned to Kindell’s glossy, blood-smeared thighs, his throat constricting. The photo was date-stamped-February 3. The top one of a stack of at least twenty. Tim felt as though his heart had shattered, and any move he made caused the jagged edges to dig further into his insides.
Robert’s voice in the background. “God, oh, God. The sick motherfucker.”
“Listen to me,” Rayner said. “The plan is off. Get the hell out of there.”
Mitchell’s voice came, cool and sly like a knife. “We can still use this. For the candidate.”
That’s me, Tim thought. The candidate.
“What are you talking about?” Rayner asked.
Mitchell, already calculating, maintaining a bone-chilling serenity. “Think about it. ‘A strong and personal motivation’-isn’t that what you said we’d need to flip him? Well, William, I’d say we’ve just been outdone.”
Rayner’s tense breathing across the mouthpiece.
Robert’s raised voice. “We gotta tell Dumone.”
“No,” Mitchell said. “He’d go ballistic that we even thought about doing something like this. Plus, we gotta keep him clean for the candidate. The way this worked out, we don’t have to tell Dumone anything at all.”
The way this worked out, Tim thought. The way this worked out.
“No one breathes a word of this to Dumone. He’d have our asses. Or to Ananberg.” The media-polished, in-charge Rayner, rearing his well-groomed head. “This isn’t what we planned, but Mitchell’s correct. It’s a tragedy, but we might as well bend it to serve our aims. Get the hell out of there, and we’ll regroup in the morning, get a new strategy.”