Knowing that my face had been exposed to subzero temperature for an indeterminate period of time, I apprehensively slid my hand across my nose, felt my earlobes. They still stung from frostnip, but thankfully, all seemed fine, frostbite hadn’t ravaged my face. I checked my hands, my fingers, wiggled my toes. All good-but when I tried to move my ankle, I felt a jolt of pain.
I thought again of the river, of what had happened.
Ellory is dead. You let him die.
I’d barely known the man, and yet now I felt a wash of stark sadness and loss as if we’d been friends for years. He might not have been as thorough as he could’ve been in his police reports, but he was forward-thinking enough to send the Lab the tread patterns that led to the open water on Tomahawk Lake. And he was dedicated: he’d done all he knew to do at each scene, pursued the suspect through the snowstorm, and died trying to apprehend a killer.
No, he died when you let him drown.
You let him go.
Ellory was a hero, and I was the one who’d let him die.
Another voice tried to reassure me, but it was faint and distant: No, Pat, you were the one who tried to save him.
Any negative thoughts I’d had earlier about Ellory now vanished, and I felt armed with fresh fire and a deep sense of purpose to catch his killer. I was going to get the man who did this and I was going to bring him in or put him down.
Needles make me queasy, but I sat up, steeled myself, and tugged out my IV, then slid the piece of tape over the needle hole to stop any seepage.
My clothes were piled on a chair in the corner of the room. Surprisingly, all of them, even the camo coat, looked dry, and I was thankful for whoever had taken care of that little detail.
I swung my legs out of bed, paused to catch my breath and calm my dizziness, and noticed a note beside the phone in Amber’s looping handwriting: “Good news from the X-rays. The ankle’s not broken! I’ll be right back. You’re supposed to call Margaret.-A.”
The last I’d heard, Margaret was checking on Donnie Pickron to see why he had Sensitive Compartmented Information access.
Since Sean still had my cell, I dialed Margaret’s number from the room phone. She picked up.
“Margaret, it’s Pat.”
“Jake told me about the river.”
“I’m all right. But-”
“Agent Bowers, do you have any idea how serious your condition was?”
“Listen, I’m not on a secure line here. Can you have security reroute the call through our proxy server and call me back?”
A pause. “Just a moment.”
I hung up and only a few seconds later the phone rang and I answered. She spoke first: “I understand the suspect got away.”
“He did.”
“And we still have no confirmation that Donnie Pickron is dead?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you fall into the river?”
“I jumped in to try and save Bryan Ellory.” It felt like a stone was lodged in my throat. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get him to shore. He’s gone.”
Another pause. “Yes, I heard. I’m very sorry. I’ve sent condolences to his wife Mia on behalf of you and the Bureau.”
Just hearing his widow’s name seemed to make things worse.
“You put your life on the line for him,” Margaret said. “I’ll recommend you for a citation of-”
“None of that matters.” I didn’t want to talk about the river. “Did you find out anything more about Donnie? Why he was in the area?”
A moment passed. “Yes. He used to lead an information warfare team at an old Navy communication base nearby.” Her tone shifted slightly and indicated to me that, at least for the time being, she was willing to leave behind the conversation concerning what’d happened at the river. “I’ll send you the files, everything I have on it. But the station was closed in 2004.”
“According to the Navy.”
“Yes.” A small pause. “According to the Navy.”
The recently issued biometric ID card came to mind. “Tell me about the station. Where is it?”
“In the center of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.”
Hmm. Yes-the area Donnie would have passed on his snowmobile on the way to the sawmill.
I tried to stand on my swollen, discolored ankle. Couldn’t. Dropped back onto the bed. “I’m going over there.”
“Not tonight you’re not. We have no idea what we’re dealing with here. And you need to rest.”
I would never admit it to her, but I really was exhausted right now and I couldn’t even imagine fighting my way through a blizzard with this ankle in the pitch black looking for a communication station that might not even exist.
“Besides,” she said, “for all we know, this Alexei Chekov is halfway across the state by now.”
For all we know, he hasn’t gone anywhere, I thought.
But she was right as well, he might be gone.
“Is there an APB on Chekov?”
“Well, that’s the problem,” she told me. “We don’t have a photo.”
“State patrol found the rental car he was driving and we have the plate numbers. The anonymous caller said he was using the alias Neil Kreger. Check with the rental car companies and airport security at all the airports within a day’s drive. We should be able to pull a photo of him from airport surveillance cameras, get it to law enforcement across the state.”
“Yes. Good. I’ll get some agents on it.”
“I assume there’s an APB on the semi?”
“There is.”
Maybe it was too obvious, but I felt like the next few words needed to be said: “This is a lot bigger than just the Pickron murders. I don’t think he committed them.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know. An associate. An accomplice maybe. At the river he told me he didn’t kill Ardis or Lizzie.”
“And you believed him?”
“I did.”
She thought about that for a moment. “You need a couple days of rest; however, if you’re up to it, I’d like you to brief Jake, Natasha, and Sheriff Tait in the morning. I told them 9:00.” I hadn’t yet met Tait, who’d been down with the flu yesterday, but with Deputy Ellory gone it made sense that Tait would get involved even if he was still sick.
There was no way I was going to sit around resting for a couple days. “Nine isn’t a problem.”
“I’ll have Tait send some state troopers to check on the site of the old ELF station as soon as it’s light.” Even though the sheriff’s department was lead on this, I knew that in remote rural areas, they work closely with the state patrol, as it appeared Tait was in the position to do here.
“ELF?”
“Extremely Low Frequency, that’s the kind of electromagnetic waves the communication system used.”
“All right. I’ll go with the officers.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Do you realize you were not breathing when they found you?”
“That’s probably overstating things.”
“Not to mention your ankle. I need you to take care of yourself.” She actually sounded concerned for me.
How does she know about my ankle?
“I’m fine, Margaret.”
“I believe the word is stubborn. If the officers find anything, we’ll get you and the rest of the team over there as soon as possible to have a look around.”
With that, she ended the conversation.
Stubborn?
That wasn’t very nice.
I put a quick call through to Lien-hua. She was in the middle of a meeting and sounded very rushed, so when she asked how I was, I simply told her that it’d been a long day, and that the weather had gotten the best of me. “I’ll fill you in later,” I said, “when we have a little more time to talk.”
Before ending the call, she made a point of assuring me that my surprise was still coming. “You’ll find it later tonight in your room.”
“At the Moonbeam?”
“Yes.” A slight pause. “Pat, I have to go. It’s not that I don’t want to talk. It’s just-”
“No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. Talk to you soon.”