“He’s a journalist. It makes sense for him to have been at the crime scene.”
“So what did Ralph say?” I’d heard snatches of her second conversation but not enough to catch the big picture. “Did he learn anything from interviewing that guard?”
She shook her head. “Waste of time. He’s on his way back, though. I caught him just before he made it to the federal building. Margaret doesn’t know he’s back in town yet. He’s going to meet us at Grolin’s place. He said to wait for him.”
Suddenly I realized I still had Ralph’s dead cell phone in my pocket. “Wait a minute, whose phone is Ralph using?”
“He told me he’d picked up his wife’s on the way through town.”
I nodded.
“Good. So we go in with Ralph.” If Lien-hua and I went after Grolin and saved Jolene, everything would be fine. Margaret wouldn’t be able to say a word. But if Grolin wasn’t our guy and we moved on this without a search warrant, someone’s head was going to roll-namely mine. Ralph was better at fending off reprimands than I was, especially from Margaret. In any case, I felt better about approaching a suspected serial killer with Ralph by my side. Anyone would.
Billings Road lay on the edge of town and wound seven miles up into the hills.
“Isolated,” said Lien-hua. “It’s perfect. Except…”
She didn’t have to finish her sentence. I knew what she was thinking. This house lay on the other side of Asheville, nearly ten miles from of the hot spot I’d deduced our offender would live in.
“He could have another base he operates out of-a girlfriend’s place, maybe,” I said. “A friend’s house. Let’s have Tucker check on any other residences this guy might’ve had in the last couple years.”
She agreed and placed the call.
As she was finishing it up, we arrived at the dirt road leading to Grolin’s house. I drove up the quarter-mile driveway and pulled to a stop next to Ralph’s beat-up Jeep about fifty meters from Grolin’s house. I could see slivers of Grolin’s two-story home ahead of us through the nearby trees.
Ralph stepped out and eased his car door silently shut. “Margaret know you’re here?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
We started toward the house.
“When this is over,” said Ralph, “I’ll have to remind Margaret that you don’t need a search warrant in the case of an emergency, and if saving a girl’s life isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.” It was typical Ralph. And it was good to see.
“Who drove you back from Charlotte?” I asked.
“Couple state troopers.”
“Were they both named Bubba?”
“Probably,” he mumbled.
Lien-hua smiled.
“So Ralph,” I said, “how do you want to do this?” Lien-hua and I were following him along a trail that threaded through the forest toward the house.
“We go in fast and clean.”
I’d seen Ralph’s idea of fast and clean before. Fast was a word I would use. Clean was not.
I had to hurry to keep up with him. Despite his massive size, he moved like a spider through the trees, the result of a four-year stint as an Army Ranger.
The morning was quiet and still. A few birds chattered in the trees. But I felt anything but peaceful. My heart began to hammer. If Grolin was in there, this could end today, or it could spin off in a very bad way. “He’s a good shot,” I said. “Scary good. Let’s be careful.”
Ralph led Lien-hua and me up the steps and onto the porch. The place had been painted white years ago, but by now most of the paint was peeling off, curling out into the morning. Wisps of the past, flaking down at my feet.
Ralph approached the door, unholstered his weapon, and peered through the front window. “Anything else I should know?” Someone else might have been scared. He was just gathering information.
“He’ll deny everything,” said Lien-hua, the profiler. “He’s arrogant. He’ll probably invite us in, even if he’s got her in there. He’s sure he won’t get caught. He might have her hidden somewhere else.” She looked around the yard, then at the driveway where a VW bug was parked. “There’s a car here, but not the Subaru station wagon. He might not even be home.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” Ralph walked up to the door and knocked.
Nothing.
“Hello?” he called. No response. He tried the doorknob. “Oh, look at that. It’s locked.” He turned toward me with a grin.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I said. I’d seen that look before.
Lien-hua stared at him. “Oh no you don’t what?”
Ralph took a step backward.
She turned to me. “Oh no he doesn’t what?”
“You might want to get out of the way.”
Ralph judged the distance to the door and then rushed toward it shoulder first. At impact, the door ruptured in half. Instantly, Ralph leveled his weapon and rushed forward.
We heard a creak above us from somewhere on the second floor. “Oh, I love my job,” he muttered, swiveling his gun toward the steps and heading up the stairs. “You two sweep this level. I’m going up.”
I pulled out my gun and stepped into the Illusionist’s home.
37
The Illusionist received the automatic page and slipped into one of the vacant janitor’s closets at work. He pulled out his palmtop computer and watched the agents burst into the house on the video feed from the camera positioned in the forest nearby. Oh, it was all so very dramatic with that large agent bursting through the door, everyone drawing their weapons. So very gung ho of them.
He almost giggled. Almost. It was even better than he’d planned it, though they arrived faster than he’d thought they would. He hadn’t expected them to connect the dots quite so quickly. Ah well, good for them. A pleasant surprise. All it did was move up the timeframe a bit.
But it was too bad, in a way, that all three of them went in.
Shame to have all of them in there at once.
He sent the email to the woman whose car he had visited earlier in the morning and then sat back and waited. It wouldn’t be long now.
The timer on his computer had started the five-minute countdown as soon as the door was breached.
Just four minutes and twenty-two seconds remained before the three federal agents would find even more than they bargained for.
Lien-hua headed toward the kitchen, and I moved slowly, methodically, down the hallway, found two doors at the far end, called out, no response, identified myself as a federal agent, pressed open the first door and leaped back out of the range of fire, then burst in, leveling my gun with both hands, sweeping the room. Grolin’s bedroom. The bed wasn’t made. Rock-climbing gear, harnesses, ropes, and carabiners cluttered the floor. It looked like he was either packing for a trip or had just returned from one.
“Clear!” I heard from upstairs. The sound we’d heard must have just been the house settling after Ralph demolished the front door.
I checked the other room. A small office. Computer. Printer. Bookshelves. Desk. Posters of rock climbers and mountaineers on the walls. A Native American dreamcatcher dangled in the window.
“Clear!” I called.
“Clear!” Lien-hua called from the kitchen.
After the initial sweep, we each started to go over the house again, more thoroughly. I’d seen a small inset window as we approached the house, and started looking for the staircase to the basement. It would be the perfect place to take Jolene.
There.
Halfway down the hall past the kitchen I came to a door. I grabbed the doorknob and twisted it. Locked.
I leaned against it. Listened.
“Jolene?”
3 minutes 14 seconds.
For a moment I thought of trying to smash the door open like Ralph had done but decided it was better to keep the damage to the house, and to my body, to a minimum. Besides, that door-smashing stuff is a lot harder than it looks. I glanced around the house. A pile of bank statements held together with a paperclip lay on the kitchen table.