“I will.”
We hung up and I looked over Donnie’s arrival times at work.
If, as his emails had indicated, he checked his messages just before he left home every Monday and Friday, then it apparently took him nearly two hours longer to clock in at the sawmill on those days than it needed to.
He might just take a scenic route.
Or, he might have another stop to make.
I pictured the trails in my mind, evaluating the most likely routes he might have chosen and their relationship to his house.
My thoughts raced back to the Navy and their interest in this case.
Why here?
Why now, this week?
I needed to take a closer look at a topographic map of the region to see what areas the trails from his house might have passed en route to the sawmill.
While I was pulling them up on my cell, Deputy Ellory phoned.
“Pat here,” I said, “what’s up?”
“We have a suspect in the Pickron slayings.”
27
“It’s not Donnie,” Ellory told me.
“Talk to me.” Holding my cell against my ear with one hand, I collected the time cards and personnel files with the other.
“Twenty minutes ago we got an anonymous call to look for prints on a knife at the Pickron residence, and that it would point to a man named Neil Kreger-but that ‘Neil’ was just a name he was going under. They gave us the tag numbers for his rental-”
“Hold on. An anonymous caller told you all this?”
“Yes. Natasha was in the area. She checked the knife, found the prints, and apparently this guy’s real name is Alexei Chekov.”
“Who is he?”
“A ghost. No one really knows. She said the Bureau has a name, but no photo, no background. But he’s a person of interest in half a dozen murder investigations worldwide.”
I was on my way to the door. My next course of action clear: call Quantico, get Angela Knight in Cybercrime on it. She can find out anything about any “And,” Ellory went on, “we have a location on his rental car.”
“What? Where is he?”
“That’s the thing. A state trooper pulled him over, then we lost radio contact with him. I sent a car and I’m on my way myself. The GPS signal on the officer’s cruiser just went off the grid.”
I stepped outside. Snow shot crazily past me into the room. The storm was picking up. I was really glad Tessa wasn’t on the roads.
“Where exactly was the cruiser’s last known location?”
“Two miles south of the river.”
About six miles away.
“I’m at the sawmill,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Close. Only a couple minutes out. Just south of you.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“Still at the sheriff’s department in Woodborough.”
A quick calculation. “All right. Swing by. Pick me up. Put out an APB on the rental car and the cruiser.”
“Already done.”
End call.
In the white fury of the storm I could just make out the snowmobiles across the yard, near the entrance to the sawmill. I contacted Angela to get her started pulling everything she could on Chekov, then jogged through the stinging curls of snow toward the sleds.
28
Three minutes ago, in order to avoid drawing attention to himself, Alexei had parked the cruiser at a pull-off a few hundred yards down the road from the entrance to the Pine Shadow Sawmill, then he’d disappeared into the woods so that he could approach the property undetected.
Now, he neared the edge of the lumberyard. In a moment he would emerge, grab a sled, and be gone. Once he hit the trails that led to the national forest there was no way they’d be able to track him, not with this snowstorm covering his snowmobile tracks.
My thoughts scampered forward, backward, studying the case from a myriad of angles.
The shooter at the house used one of Donnie’s rifles. Removed the spent cartridges.
I could feel my heartbeat quicken.
Timing. Location.
The lights in the study were off when the officers arrived.
Web pages had been accessed.
But the rest of the residence’s lights were on.
All of them were on.
I put an immediate call through to Natasha and asked her to check for prints on the light switch in the study. “He may have unconsciously turned off the lights when he left the room.” If I was right, the prints wouldn’t match Alexei’s but would match the real killer’s.
I heard a siren close on the road and figured it was Ellory.
Hurried to the road.
Alexei peered between two thickly bristled white pine trees. A man stood about fifty yards away near one of the log piles in the lumberyard, but he appeared to be watching the road rather than observing the sleds.
After a quick review of the snowmobiles, Alexei decided on a sled, a newer-model Yamaha with the key still in the ignition, left the forest, and headed toward it.
Ellory swung to a stop at the entrance to the sawmill not far from me and leapt out of his cruiser.
“He’s close,” he hollered. “I found Wayland’s cruiser just down the road. Wayland was…” Ellory’s voice trailed off. “His hands. I don’t know, this whack job Chekov. He attacked him.”
“Where?”
“His hands, like I-”
“Where is the car!”
He pointed south. “About a quarter mile down the road.”
I considered the typical flight patterns of suspects fleeing on foot.
No, not on foot. Not in this weather.
My eyes landed on the line of snowmobiles.
A man was striding toward them. Jeans, a dark blue parka, a black stocking cap and gloves. I ran through the clothing of the men I’d seen at the sawmill, didn’t recognize him as any of the employees I’d seen so far. Caucasian. Stocky frame. Six feet tall. Gait and posture indicated early to mid-forties.
“Hey,” I yelled to him. “Hang on.”
Alexei heard the man near the road call to him.
Time to go.
He snagged the helmet that was hanging by its strap on the back of the snowmobile, put it on, took a seat, squeezed the throttle, and hit the trail.
“Stop!” I ran toward him, but he disappeared across the road.
By the time I’d made it to the line of snowmobiles, Ellory had already found one and was firing it up. “That’s him. Fits the description of our suspect!” Sean was on his way toward the sleds as well. Ellory took off.
“Stay here,” I called to Sean, hopping onto his snowmobile. I gave him the files, grabbed his helmet rather than Amber’s, and tossed him my phone. “Call for backup.”
I envisioned the labyrinth of snowmobile trails that I’d memorized last night. Analyzed them. Played them out in my mind.
“What are these?” He was staring at the manila folders.
I didn’t have time to explain. “Hang on to them and don’t read ’em. I’ll get them from you later.”
He pointed at the sled. “I know how to handle a sled at high speeds. I know these trails.”
“So do I.”
I tugged on the helmet, cranked the ignition, and headed into the storm.
29
The suspect rode directly toward Tomahawk Lake.
Ellory was still ahead of me, and I wished I had a way to radio in our position because with the snow falling as thickly as it was, it would be hard to follow our trail.
I hit the ice and felt the engine whine as I squeezed the grip and leaned into the wind.
On the flat surface of the lake, throttling all the way, it didn’t take me long to hit 70.
But I wasn’t gaining on Ellory or the suspect.
Then 80.
It’d been years since I’d pushed a sled to these speeds, and I could feel a thread of apprehension run through me as I passed 85. I tried not to think about what wiping out on the sled at a speed like this would feel like.