Sebastian came over. ‘I’ve got surveillance on the Jacobsen house. Both she and Mary Upson are there.’
I stood up. ‘Let’s go then.’
‘Not yet. I’m waiting for some essential material from D.C. We’ll interview them tomorrow morning. They aren’t going anywhere.’
I looked at him doubtfully. ‘You’d better hope they aren’t. They’re our only leads.’
‘Apart from Gordy Lister. Look at this.’ He handed me a printout.
‘Jesus, this came in hours ago. How come you only got it now?’
Sebastian pursed his mouth. ‘I didn’t. I was informed this morning. I thought you had enough going on.’
I glared at him. ‘Don’t do that again. I’m the tethered goat here. I need to know what’s happening.’ Sebastian nodded, so I went back to the paper. ‘This Mikey Lister was what? Gordy’s brother?’
‘Yes. I’m embarrassed to say that our Jacksonville field office had him under surveillance, near Tallahassee. I thought Gordy might show up there after we spotted him in Philadelphia. The hit-and-run driver was gone before our people could react. There will be disciplinary proceedings.’
‘“No witnesses,”’ I read. ‘In broad daylight?’
‘Apparently.’
Quincy Jerome stirred. ‘Are you sure it was an accident?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Who would have wanted him dead?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe someone else trying to find Rothmann thought Gordy’s brother might be able to help,’ I suggested.
‘So why kill him?’ Quincy asked.
Sebastian and I exchanged glances.
‘You’ll learn a lot if you pay attention, Sergeant,’ the FBI man said, shaking his head.
‘I thought we were done with ranks,’ Quincy countered.
That almost made me smile. Then the door opened and Special Agent Bimsdale appeared, carrying a couple of heavy bags.
‘There you are,’ Sebastian said. ‘Have you got the insertion tools?’
The little man nodded and started unpacking his bags on the table. He handed a couple of long, thin boxes to his boss.
‘Right, gentlemen,’ Sebastian said, with a tight smile. ‘Arm or leg?’
‘I’m a leg man myself,’ Quincy said, grinning. Then his eyes opened wide. ‘Just what the hell is that?’
Sebastian had stripped the wrapping from an evil-looking, stainless steel probe. ‘Surely you didn’t think we were going to abandon you? There’s a GPS implant and signaling system in each of these.’ He stepped toward Quincy. ‘Come on, pull up your pant leg.’
I watched as the big man obliged. Bimsdale swabbed a patch of his calf, then Sebastian pressed the button on the insertion tool. Quincy blinked once.
‘Didn’t hurt then?’ I said, rolling up my shirt-sleeve.
‘You kidding? Hurt like hell.’ Quincy Jerome smiled. ‘But I got no problem with pain.’
I didn’t enjoy the next five seconds.
Sixteen
Sara Robbins was in her apartment in Brooklyn, looking at the screen of her laptop. She spent a lot of time doing that on the days when work didn’t call her away. The flight from Miami had arrived at 6:00 p.m. Since getting home, she’d been after him. Sometimes she felt like she was looking for a needle in a very large haystack, but she had made herself keep the faith. The systems she used were state-of-the-art and Matt Wells wouldn’t stay out of sight forever.
As the computer ran the complex algorithms, she found herself thinking about the hit in Florida. She hadn’t been told the target’s name, only his address and a description. The fact that he was in a wheelchair made him hard to miss, but she’d covered herself all the same. Killing people without identities wasn’t something the Soul Collector did. Havi was unaware of that-there was no reason he should know she was so fastidious. It hadn’t taken her long to find out the target’s name. It was on the rental agreement for the condo. Then she had run into problems-no one of that name and description had been treated for serious spinal or leg injuries anywhere in the U.S. in the last five years. She sent the photo to a seriously expensive identity recognition site that had been set up by a geek who had hacked into every archive bank he could and bingo, there he was-Michael Anderson Lister, born Oklahoma City, 3/12/1978, electrician, with an address outside his birthplace. According to his health insurer, he had shattered both legs in a car accident nearly thirteen months ago and had undergone extensive surgery and rehabilitation, the latter being withdrawn after it became clear that prosthetic limbs were not an option. There was no record of criminal activity and no connection to ongoing investigations. That had been enough to satisfy her and she had left to carry out the hit.
And now everything had changed. The word among the informants she paid was that Matt Wells had been released from FBI custody. Now she had to find him. The formulas continued to check local law enforcement sites around the country, as monitored by her network of hackers. Some of them could get into the FBI’s system, too, but she had found that wasn’t worth it, as the encryption codes took too long to decipher and illicit access was spotted quickly. State police sites were much less secure, and they also provided up-to-the-minute information. If the FBI took Matt out of lockdown, the likelihood was they would be using him to find Heinz Rothmann, given the murders going down. If they took him to any of the scenes, local law enforcement would be involved and, if she was lucky, some eagle scout would note his presence, not least because anything the FBI did in other people’s jurisdictions tended to be logged in detail.
She sat back and watched the streams of data tumble down the screen. If there was a match within the parameters she’d entered, the flow would stop and the machine would ping like a microwave that had incinerated dinner. So far, it had been as silent as her conscience. That set her back to thinking about the man she’d killed in Florida. Lister. There was something familiar about the surname. She booted up her older laptop and inserted a memory stick-it held everything she had found about Matt Wells’s involvement in the Washington Occult Killings and the subsequent massacre in the National Cathedral. Within five seconds, she had a match.
According to Washington D.C. Metro Police records, Gordon David Lister had held a senior post at the Star Reporter, a supermarket tabloid, and had disappeared after Jack Thomson, owner of the paper and son of Nazi doctor Nikolaus Rothmann, had vanished from his cabin cruiser on the Anacostia River.
The Soul Collector ran another check and confirmed that Gordon Lister was the brother of the man she’d killed in Florida. What she wanted to know now was, who had ordered the hit? Predictably, Havi wouldn’t tell her, saying only that her next job was on the secure site they used. But she could see no reason for Rothmann to have done away with his accomplice’s sibling. It was much more likely that someone was putting the squeeze on Rothmann himself. But who?
A loud ping came from her laptop. She turned back to it and looked at a small section of print ringed in red. It was part of an internal memorandum written by a Major Hexton of the Maine State Police in Portland. In a group led by FBI violent crime Director Peter Sebastian was one Matthew John Wells, holder of British passport number…
Sara turned off the computers and put the laptop in the carry-on bag that she had permanently packed. The plastic switchblade was in her underwear. She was out of the door in less than three minutes. For once, she welcomed the pain that pulsed and clenched across her upper back. It would keep her mind on the job.