by Barry Eisler
Little shook his head, plainly at a loss, and she went on. “What I’m saying is, for the kind of creature I’m describing, it isn’t about killing the victim. It’s the dominance, it’s knowing that the rapist is part of the victim now, knowing that every night that girl goes to sleep remembering and every morning she wakes remembering. They’re inside her mind the way they were inside her body. They cherish the memory of raping her because they know she shares that memory, and that for her it’s a torment.”
“You mean like . . . sending cards to the victim afterward. Or the victim’s family.”
“Exactly like that. What they crave almost more than the act itself is the aftermath. The way they matter to that girl now, forever.”
His face contorted. “You’re saying Snake and Boomer keep them alive? You’re saying—”
“No,” she said quickly, realizing she’d inadvertently fueled a hope he couldn’t let go of. “No, the logistics of that would be impossible. The ones they’ve disappeared are dead. To a near certainty. I’m sorry.”
He clamped his jaw and managed a nod, and she went on. “But why have we been assuming the disappearances, and the killings that must be part of them, are the point? Isn’t it at least equally possible that the disappearances are a subset of something else?”
He shook his head, not getting it. She understood. When Nason welled up in her mind, it made clear thought nearly impossible. Being this close would be overloading all his Presley circuits exactly that way.
“Of what?” he said.
“Of raping teenaged girls they planned to release. Why always black and brown girls? We’ve been thinking that’s a signature, but it could as easily be part of the MO. I mean, if they plan on killing and disappearing the girls, what difference would it make if the victims were marginalized? There would be nothing to go on, no matter what. We talked about this—they made a mistake taking Presley because her father is an HSI agent. And it still didn’t matter. They could have taken a rich girl, a white girl, they could have snatched a princess off her throne—none of it would have mattered. If disappearances were the point.”
He looked at her. “You’re saying . . . they only disappeared them when something went wrong. That the disappearances were a Plan B.”
“I don’t know for sure. But . . . think about it. Forensics was a total loss with Hope Jordan. Now Hope, they had a specific reason to kill, but in general, if they’re confident they’ve left no evidence, why not let the girl go so she can spend the rest of her life remembering them? Boomer let them go in high school. And reminded them, with that yearbook entry. They both let them go in Iraq. They’re not afraid of risk—if they were, Snake would have killed Sherrie Dobbs at her house, like you said. I think these two have raped a lot more girls than we first thought.”
He pressed his fingers to his skull so hard his arms trembled. “I was only looking at the disappearances. All these years, I was only—”
She surprised herself by taking hold of his hands. “It’s not your fault, Little. A child disappearing is a parent’s worst nightmare. A good parent, like you. How could that not eclipse everything else? Especially when you found other crimes with what seemed to have a similar signature. And you weren’t wrong. You just missed that the disappearances were a subset of something else.”
“You’re saying that when they’re confident they’ve left no evidence—no witnesses, no DNA, just a marginalized teenaged girl with a story probably no one will even believe—then they go with Plan A: let her go. Because they love knowing their victims can’t stop thinking of them.”
She nodded, hating what this was going to do to him.
“But if there’s a problem,” he went on. “A girl . . .”
His voice caught. He made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a whimper. Then he said, “A girl fights back. Maybe gets some of their skin under her nails. Or gets too good a look at them. Or”—tears started flowing down his face—“or calls for her daddy in a way that makes them worry this child will be believed, and protected, and that if she ever tells her story, someone will hunt them down to the ends of the Earth and never, ever stop.”
He turned away and sobbed. She waited. She knew there was nothing else she could do.
After a moment, he pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his face, and blew his nose. “Sorry,” he said.
She shook her head. More than that would have been too much.
“They’re methodical,” she said. “Not just with the Plan A. With the Plan B as well. Including where”—she paused, not wanting to say it, then went on—“where to dispose of a body if they need to. Someplace it won’t be found.”
“But if things go well . . .”
“Then they let the girl go. Degraded. Humiliated. Traumatized. A good chance she’ll just live with what they did festering inside her and not even report it. But if she does report it, so what? They know the girls they choose won’t be taken seriously.”
“Or even if they are taken seriously—”
“Right,” Livia said. “Even if they are taken seriously, when the girl and her family realize what it’s like to be in the system, maybe the victim just retracts her statement. You know how many times I’ve seen that happen? And even in those rare cases where the girl is taken seriously, and is determined to see things through, there’s no evidence. Because these guys are careful. Condoms. Bleach wipes. Maybe masks for themselves, hoods for the victims.”
Little’s cellphone buzzed. Livia’s heart leaped.
Little raised the phone to his ear. “Yeah.”
He frowned and pursed his lips. And the surge of elation she felt was suddenly extinguished.
“I understand,” Little said. “It was just a lucky guess.” A pause, then, “I can’t talk now. I’ll explain later. Thank you for following up. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”
He clicked off. “Snake dumped the transmitter at the mobile-home park. It must have occurred to him, based on what happened in the hotel lot, that someone could have placed something on his vehicle.”
“No sign of him?”
“None. And that close to Page, he could be anywhere by now. North to I-70. South to Flagstaff and I-40. Or staying on back roads. Or holing up for a while in the backcountry.”
Livia pressed a hand over her mouth, feeling sick. She’d thought they had him. But he’d stayed one step ahead. Again.
You should have shot him. You should have shot him. You should have—
“Hey,” Little said, his tone sharp. “Stay with me now. We’re not done here. If what you’ve said is true, Snake hasn’t killed her yet.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t. Not for sure. But . . . look, we’ve been talking about patterns, right?”
Livia nodded, not sure where he was going, but hoping he could bring her along.
“Well, here’s a pattern. Noreen Prentis disappears into thin air. SOP for these guys, right?”
Livia nodded again.
“And then Hope Jordan. That’s a departure. An escalation. Because Hope gets found. Along with her toddler son.”
Livia looked at him, beginning to see it, trying not to hope. “And Sherrie Dobbs is even more of an escalation.”
“Hell, yes. This time, Snake murders a cop in front of Sherrie’s house and then crashes the cop’s own cruiser through the front door to abduct her. That is off the charts for these guys. You said it yourself—he wasn’t just here to kill her. But now I’m thinking, it wasn’t just to rape her first, either. Because when all Snake and Boomer want is to rape someone, we know how careful they are to make sure it might as well have been a ghost that did it. And okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that, yes, Snake is a rapist and that’s why he didn’t just kill Sherrie Dobbs. But he still could have been more careful here, more low-key, no?”
That made sense. Even though it scared her to hope.
“You’re right,” she said. “Snake isn’t stupid. This is a small
town. He knows they don’t have law-enforcement resources. They couldn’t keep a cop on Sherrie Dobbs twenty-four seven.”
Little nodded quickly, obviously excited at the way he was seeing it. “He could have come back at night, or the next day.”
She was trying to stay calm, but his excitement was infectious. “Okay,” she said. “Why’s he in such a hurry?”
Little leaned closer. “Because he wants to share her. Like a dog bringing its owner an animal carcass. Share her with Boomer.”
Livia looked at him. “Not because he wants to share her. Because—”
“Because they have a plan to share her.”
He was right. She could feel it. The escalation. Whatever weird psychosexual bond there was between Boomer and Snake. The timing. All of it.
“Then if we track Boomer—”
He shook his head. “Find me anyone who’s going to agree to sign a warrant for surveillance of a sitting congressman, war hero, and son of the vice president. Not going to happen. At least not within a time frame that would save Sherrie Dobbs. And we can’t do it ourselves. Just the two of us, staking out and trying to follow a former Special Forces combat veteran career criminal on his way to commit another crime? He’ll spot us before we even get our cleats on.”
Livia wanted to disagree, but she knew his assessment was accurate. Still, there had to be another way. There had to be.
“Where would he take her?” she said, as much to Little as to herself. “You said they have a plan. That’s who, what, when, where. Who is Sherrie Dobbs. What is they’re going to share her like they do. When is soon, otherwise Snake would have waited out Chief Cramer. But where are they planning on meeting?”
Little pulled off his glasses and scrubbed his face. “Boomer’s campaigning in California. That’ll be his alibi, if he’s ever questioned about Noreen Prentis or Sherrie Dobbs. But it also means that if they’re planning to meet, it has to be somewhere convenient for Boomer.”
“Yes. Snake’s going to Boomer. Not the reverse.”
“Do we know where Boomer lives?”
Livia had done all that research and then some. “A town called Alpine. East of San Diego.”
Little smiled grimly. “That’s at least an eight-hour drive from here. A lot more, if you’re keeping to back roads to elude a dragnet and making sure you don’t go a mile over the speed limit.”
“What if Boomer’s campaigning somewhere else?”
“Even better. Anywhere else he’d be campaigning in California would be an even longer drive. The southeast of the state is mostly desert. National parks like Death Valley, Mojave, Joshua Tree . . . thin populations. He wouldn’t waste his time.”
Little seemed to know the region well. “You’ve been there?” she said.
He grunted. “A long time ago. Family trip.”
She should have realized that. She was tired. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Plus his district is in Southern California. That’s his base. You don’t waste a lure on the fish you’ve already caught. Either he’s home in Alpine, or he’s visiting some population center at least that far away. Either way, we have time.”
Livia pulled out her cellphone. “His campaign schedule. Maybe it’s online.”
It took her less than two minutes. “Palm Springs tonight. Some kind of thirty-thousand-dollar-a-plate thing.”
Little groaned. “Outside Palm Springs, there’s nothing but trackless desert and national forests. They could meet anywhere.”
Livia thought. Almost certainly, they’d be too smart and experienced to have their cellphones on them when they were active. But also almost certainly, they’d have burners.
“What about Kanezaki?” Little said, seeming to read her mind. “They won’t have their own phones, but with a program like God’s Eye, Kanezaki might be able to zero in on their burners. Or what about a satellite?”
“I already asked him about satellite surveillance. He told me it was a no-go. And that’s when we had exact coordinates. This time, like you said, we’re going to be looking at thousands of square miles of desert and national forests. It’s a needle in a haystack. We need a magnet, and I don’t . . .” She balled her fists in frustration.
“Maybe not a magnet,” Little said. “Maybe there’s another way.”
“What?”
“Reduce the amount of hay.”
“Okay, but how?”
“By using the proper inputs.”
She looked at him, too distressed to follow his meaning.
“You said it yourself,” he said. “I was looking for disappearances and not realizing the disappearances were part of a larger puzzle. In fact, the disappearances were preventing me from seeing the real nature of the crime. What I should have been looking for were all the same aspects—the minority girls, the time of day, the walk to the convenience store. And a perfectly executed abduction, of course—but without the disappearance. I was seeing a piece of it, yes, but I might as well have been looking through a straw. But now we can widen the aperture. See the pattern clearly. We’re looking for serial rapes, not serial murders. And we have one more thing we didn’t have before.”
She still didn’t follow. “What?”
A hateful smile spread on his face. “A song.”
37
Kane was in his private bungalow at the Avalon Hotel in Palm Springs. He’d told his chief of staff to cancel all appointments and hold all calls—to free up Kane’s schedule for everything but the fundraiser for Bradley. And to have someone get him some Dramamine or other antinausea medicine. But the Dramamine had been as much of a failure as everything else, because as soon as he was alone, he’d vomited into the wastebasket, his stomach rebelling so suddenly he hadn’t even been able to make it to the marble-lined bathroom.
After vomiting, he felt somewhat better. Part of it was knowing someone would clean out the wastebasket. Or better yet, replace it. With no questions asked. Just a mess cleaned up, gone, as though it had never happened.
He might have laughed if he hadn’t still felt queasy. The operation in Kanab was another disaster. Snake had been there, as Kane had hoped and indeed anticipated. But so were Lone and Little. Kane’s attempt to have the Seattle Police Department rein in Lone had been a total failure. It hadn’t even slowed the woman down. And that feckless moron at HSI, Tilden, who was supposed to be controlling Little, hadn’t even known where the man was until Little himself had called Tilden from Kanab.
At first, reports had been confused, and Kane thought it was Snake who had killed the OGE team Kane had sent. But no, it seemed it had been Little and Lone who had done that. If he had realized the two of them might put together the Noreen Prentis–Hope Jordan–Sherrie Dobbs pattern and themselves go to Kanab to try to anticipate Snake, Kane would have sent a much larger and more heavily armed team. Once again, he’d sent a force just large enough to fail. And fail spectacularly.
Well, it could have been worse. From what Kane’s people were telling him, Snake had killed a local cop and abducted Sherrie Dobbs. He’d gotten away, at least, which was a thousand times better than if he’d been taken into custody. But Little and Lone had given his name to the Utah and Arizona State Police. That was bad, but still containable. Another team could find him. Fix him. Finish him. There would be questions, but Kane had battalions of lawyers, and public-relations specialists, and media people, and shock jocks, and wizards skilled in the darkest arts of social-media manipulation, all of whom would spring into a coordinated counteroffensive if anyone mentioned so much as the possibility that Bradley could have had anything to do with Stephen “Snake” Spencer’s alleged crimes. Not to mention Bradley’s own shock troops and rabid supporters, who Kane had to acknowledge were even more willing to slash and burn their way to victory than the more professional cadre Kane was accustomed to dealing with.
All right. How to find Snake didn’t present an insurmountable challenge. The last time, Kane had found him through Sherrie Dobbs. This time, he woul
d do it through Bradley.
Because Bradley was going to meet Snake somewhere. Kane knew that, though the thought disgusted him even in ordinary times and at the moment brought him dangerously close to vomiting again. This . . . thing of theirs. They obviously enjoyed doing it together. In Iraq and all over America, before Kane had Snake sent away. And then Hannah Cuero, after Snake got out. Plus the girls from high school, of course—most recently, Sherrie Dobbs.
Maybe they were planning to share Dobbs even as soon as tonight. After the fundraiser. It was just a gut feeling, but if Kane was wrong, his men would follow Bradley to Snake another time. It was why Kane had taken the expedient course of having his security people, in the guise of searching vehicles for explosives, affix a transmitter to Bradley’s car. At some point, whether late tonight or late some other night, Bradley would go out. Kane had purchased another OGE team that would follow the boy. Urban-ops people. Military trained, combat and CIA joint-ops experience, currently in the private sector. Exceptionally capable men. Equipped with the latest night-vision, and more.
Bradley wouldn’t like any of it, of course. He’d been upset to learn that Kane had engineered Snake’s prison sentence, and he’d be upset at the knowledge that Kane had arranged this more permanent solution, too. But what could the boy do? He’d have to live with it. Adjust. Hate his father, possibly. But that happened between fathers and sons from time to time. And probably more often between kings and crown princes. It was all right. They’d get past it. And eventually, Bradley would realize his father had acted only out of love. And that it had been for the best.
Yes. Bradley would understand. Especially when he learned that the team’s orders weren’t only about Snake. Because Kane had of course tasked them with taking out Little and Lone as well.
38
Little and Livia had Dan Levin fly them to Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport—at thirty miles southeast of Palm Springs, the closest they could get to Boomer. Slipping out of Kanab hadn’t been illegal, exactly, but it wasn’t entirely aboveboard, either. Still, they already had so much explaining to do that disappearing in the confusion following Chief Cramer’s murder, Sherrie Dobbs’s kidnapping, and the three men Livia had killed afterward felt trivial by comparison.