by Thomas Perry
The two men went to their room to repack, and Elizabeth locked the door behind them. She called the local FBI and introduced herself. She could tell immediately that Holman must have called them. A woman named Special Agent Cable got on the line and said, "A car is on its way to you now, Ms. Waring. The two agents will take you to the scene. Their ETA is about ten minutes."
"Perfect. I'll be waiting."
"Yes, ma'am."
Elizabeth was beginning to like these people. They had a stripped, unembellished way of speaking and a direct decisiveness when they were working, just as Jim had when she'd met him. They all seemed to have an almost military sense of discipline. As she was having that thought, she realized that what she had been doing today would not have been tolerated at the FBI. By now they would have fired her about three times. Holman was undoubtedly aware of that. She was useful and helpful in this set of circumstances, but he wouldn't want her to be part of his organization. She was in terrible trouble in her own job and could easily be out of work in a week.
She went down to the lobby, sat in one of the easy chairs, and looked out the tall glass windows at the cars going by on the street, and more surreptitiously, at the cars that pulled to a stop in the circular drive.
She was in the waning part of a day when she wasn't quite sure what her job was. Her boss seemed to think it was staying at her desk in the office in Washington and collecting intelligence about the Mafia, mostly from amassing police reports and court cases and wiretap transcripts, many of them years old. Her section did perform those tasks. But every one of her people was looking for bits of information that brought them forward in time, information that could lead to arrests and convictions in the near future. They weren't simply constructing some historical archive. They were trying to keep people from being cheated and robbed and murdered.
Murder was often the avenue that was most fruitful to investigate. All kinds of suspicious things happened in the world, but not all of them involved organized crime. When witnesses disappeared and their bodies were found in fields, there was a strong likelihood that it wasn't done by a solitary perpetrator, but by one of the groups her section followed.
A car pulled up in front of the entrance and a man got out of the passenger seat and stepped into the lobby. He looked at her. "Ms. Waring?"
She stood and walked out the door with him. She shook his hand as they walked. "I'm Agent Saddler," he said. It took only thirty minutes to arrive at Joe Castiglione's big, medieval-looking stone house. The openings in the stone wall had been strung across with crime-scene tape. It looked to her as though the only ones coming in or out of the house were police technicians.
Her two companions got out of the car with her and walked toward a man in a gray suit who was standing in the driveway. Whoever went past him seemed to stop and give him some bit of information. He would nod and they would proceed. Agent Saddler said to Elizabeth, "Please wait here," ducked the tape, and approached the man in the driveway.
The man in gray came back with him. "Hello, Ms. Waring. I'm Special Agent Doug Fowles. I'll show you around."
"You're the special agent in charge?"
"Yes," he said.
"Have you had much time to look around yet?"
"We got here at seven A.M. The police called us in as soon as they had the address because they knew who lived here. But you can imagine what we've been trying to do—take fingerprints everywhere, photograph everything we can while we have access, try not to trample the scene in the process."
They went in the front door and Elizabeth stood still.
He said, "It's all right to go up the stairs. The shooter came and went on a back staircase."
"You say 'shooter.' Do you know for sure there wasn't more than one?"
"Not for sure. Never for sure at this stage. Everyone was shot with a shotgun loaded with double-ought shot. All I can say is that there was at least one."
"I think I know who he is."
He looked closely at her. "You do?"
"Not his name. He's been retired for about twenty years, but he used to be a high-end hit man. People knew of him as the Butcher's Boy. He was involved in the confusion in the Carlo Balacontano murder case. In the years since then, the old man has always wanted him dead."
"How can you tell it's him?"
"That Arizona retreat that Frank Tosca called last week was to get the families to help him find this man. He thought Carl Bala would reward him from prison by making him boss of the family. The killer found Tosca first."
"If he got Tosca, why would he come here and do this to the Castigliones?"
"I think that the other bosses didn't like it that he killed Tosca, so they're hunting him. He seems to be making his death as costly for them as possible. It's hard to know exactly what a man like him feels—what portions of his mental life haven't been permanently turned off, or what he wasn't born with. He seems to feel that once they'd agreed to come after him, they were all fair game."
Fowles took the rest of the staircase in silence. At the top of the stairs was a big room with a few metal bunk beds. Fowles said, "He came up those back stairs. He probably looked in those rooms—which are a bathroom and a closet—to be sure they were empty. Then he stepped into this area."
"Who was here?"
"One man, Jerry Grisanti, age thirty-four. He was shot once with a twelve-gauge shotgun loaded with double-ought shot. A neighbor reported hearing the shots, and it wasn't shots tumbling over one another. It was more like this: Boom. Boom. Boom. Each about a second or two apart. Which sounds like one man shooting, pumping the shotgun, and going straight to the next victim, then shooting again."
"Interesting choice, a shotgun," she said.
"He picked up the shells afterward, so there's nothing to fingerprint and no brand name to trace. The shot was the sort you'd find in a store today, nothing antique or exotic."
"I'm not surprised."
"After this man was dead, the shooter probably took a couple of quick steps to this room." He stepped to the end of the short hallway and opened the door. It was a modern, attractive master bedroom with a California king bed, a pair of matching dressers and nightstands in dark-colored wood. The mattress was covered with the darkened red stain that was left when someone bled heavily. The wall beyond it had blood spatter. "Castiglione was reaching for a gun in the nightstand, but didn't have time to fire it."
"And then he shot the girl?"
"We think Castiglione was first, or he might have had time to shoot back."
Elizabeth nodded. "I appreciate your giving me the chance to see it."
"Still think it's him?" Fowles asked.
"If this and the other two scenes were the work of just one person, he'd be my leading candidate." She turned and walked toward the stairs. "Thanks again."
She descended the stairs past technicians kneeling to dust surfaces for prints and photographers taking pictures, seemingly in every room. Then she was out the front door.
The two FBI agents were waiting back at their car. Saddler said, "Would you like us to take you to the other house?"
"At the other two scenes it was a shotgun, right?"
"No, he used a pistol on Paul. One round to the forehead."
She felt a chill. He seemed to be relentless, someone who could and would do anything. "What about at the motel?"
"I understand it was a nine-millimeter pistol."
"What time of night did that happen?"
"I believe it was around two A.M., before Joe was killed. Then he went to Paul's. By then it was about four, or later."
"So the motel was the first. Can you take me there?"
"Certainly."
They drove out of town along Interstate 57 to a cheap motel. It was a relic of a generation ago, or maybe two—one long, low building with a set of doors along the side, an office near the street, and a tall sign that had NO VACANCY in neon, but the NO was probably never lit. It was easy to pick out the room because there was yellow crime-scene tape
around it and the door beside it. There was a forensic team wrapping up its work when they arrived. She and her two companions got out of the car and looked in the motel-room door.
There was a woman technician just coming out holding an oversize equipment box. Saddler showed her his FBI identification. "You can take a look now," she said. "We're about done here."
Elizabeth looked inside. She saw the overturned dresser, the hole cut in the wall at the baseboard, another big blood stain. She noticed the forensic technician hadn't left. She was still there, watching Elizabeth from the doorway.
Elizabeth said, "Help me."
The woman said, "A lone man checked in at the office and came to this room in the early evening. He seems to have used the bed to sleep in. There was a couple in the next room. They say that around two A.M., some men—four of them—arrived. They walked around in the parking lot, looking in the cars, then came into his room quietly, either picking the lock or using a master key. We haven't found either yet. There was some stomping around and talking. It looks as though the man in the room had already cut a hole in the wall as an escape route and then pulled the dresser over to cover the hole. He was hiding in the unoccupied room on that side." She pointed. "They moved the dresser out of the way, and he shot two of them from the hole. The shots go upward into the stomach and chest of one, and the side of the other. At that point, the hiding man ran for the door of the unoccupied room to get outside. We can see bullet holes running along that wall as they tried to shoot him through it, but he must have made it and waited for them. We found the other two assailants lying outside the door of this first room. The couple in the third room waited for a while and listened until they were sure nobody was still alive, then called the police."
"And this couple—they're sure it was just one man who did this?"
"Oh, yes. As you can see, the walls aren't much. They heard him cough, but there was no talking until the assailants came."
"Thank you very much," she said. "You've helped me a lot."
She and the FBI agents walked to the car. Saddler opened the door for her and said, "I suppose he's long gone by now."
Elizabeth got into the back seat. As she spoke, she realized she was lying to an investigator who was trying to help. "I'm sure he is."
"As I recall, the last actual count we did was four hundred and forty-three soldiers in the Castiglione organization. There are probably a few we don't know about who have made their bones since. Plus assorted hangers-on, wannabes, and allies. They'll all be looking for him day and night."
"No doubt," she said. "He's probably been driving hard since about five A.M. He could be in Canada by now."
For most of her career she had never intentionally lied to another Justice Department official about anything, but now it was beginning to be a habit. In twenty years she had never pretended her opinion was different from what it really was. She had argued for her theories even when the whole Justice Department was arguing on the other side and her opinion seemed to them to be simple obstructionism. But not today. She was almost positive she knew where the Butcher's Boy was going to be tonight. If she told the FBI, they would ruin any chance she had of getting to him in time. He would be dead.
Elizabeth asked the two agents to drive her back to her hotel. It was nearly seven now. As soon as she was in her room, she locked the door, kicked off her high heels, opened her suitcase, and looked at the one outfit she had not hung up. As she usually did when she traveled, she had brought business suits—one with pants and one with a skirt that she could use interchangeably.
Now she took out the third outfit, a pair of black pants, a gray blouse, and a black cashmere jacket. The shoes were ones she had bought when she had been thinking of taking the kids to Europe. They felt as good as sneakers but didn't tell everyone instantly that she was an American tourist. They weren't stylish, but they were unobtrusive, and she could run in them.
She had almost let herself think, Run or fight in them, but tonight fighting would not be an option. If she was almost supernaturally perceptive and could sense when things were about to go wrong, she might be able to run.
She wondered how many other people had expected to meet him and thought about their fussy little advance preparations. Will wearing this outfit, or this one, give me an advantage? What if I bring a can of pepper spray? If I plan a route in advance that I can run efficiently from memory, will that save me? All of these decisions were nothing at all to him, the kinds of precautions he must have brushed aside a hundred times on his way to stopping somebody's heart. And the silliest of all was probably the notion that she would sense in advance that he was about to kill her, that he had weighed the options and decided that it was better for him if she died now.
Her professional self, the part of her brain that had spent twenty years studying criminals, knew that there was no way to tell if someone like him was lying. He wasn't going to telegraph anything he was thinking.
She dressed in the dark, comfortable clothes she had brought, took her pistol out of her purse and checked to be sure the magazine was full, then clicked it back in but didn't put the first round in the chamber. She had never liked guns very much, although circumstances like tonight's made them indispensable. She had an almost superstitious distrust, a feeling that they were inclined to go off unexpectedly. Their entire design was an embodiment of their purpose, and so it added a tiny physical force to an otherwise neutral object. It was hard to even pick up a gun without having your index finger slip inside the trigger guard. Keeping that finger straight along the slide took an act of will. She put the gun into her jacket, took her federal ID, her driver's license, a credit card, and a hundred dollars in cash, put them in her pockets, and locked her purse in the room's safe.
She plucked her phone out of her pocket and looked to see if she'd missed the kids' call. She hadn't. She dialed her home number, heard the ring, and then Amanda's voice. "Hello?"
"It's just your absent mother," she said. "How many people are at the party?"
"What party?"
"You mean you and your brother aren't having a huge party full of people I wouldn't approve of, doing things that would make me faint?"
"I wish. I've got a chemistry test tomorrow, and the Bad Sibling has been working on an AP polysci paper since, like, four this afternoon."
"I thought it was awfully quiet for a Festival of the Vices. How come you didn't call me?"
"You just said to call if we needed something. We were glad to know you'd landed safely and all that," she offered. "Do you want to talk to Jim?"
"No, if he's trying to concentrate on his paper, I'll let him. I'm about to go out anyway." She instantly regretted mentioning it. If something went wrong and she died tonight, she didn't want Amanda to wonder if she should have said something more or put Jim on because it would have taken up time and saved her. "If he wants to call, he's welcome. I hope to see you both late tomorrow. Love you."
"Love you."
She pocketed her phone and hooked the bow of a pair of sunglasses over her collar because the sinking sun was still bright in the west. Finally she took one last look at the enlarged street map she had printed of Vincent Pugliese's neighborhood. As a final precaution, she took the pair of police handcuffs out of her suitcase and put them in the inner pocket of her jacket. She was sure they wouldn't be of use, but carrying the proper equipment seemed to her the responsible thing to do.
As she passed the mirror, she touched her hair to get it to look fuller, but couldn't avoid looking into her own eyes. She had never planned to search for the Butcher's Boy alone. It was a stupid, risky thing to do. But things had changed radically in the past few hours. He had killed a lot of people during the night, but he hadn't done what was necessary for his purposes, which was to make the sweep total. He had to get Salvatore, the last Castiglione brother. If he wanted to terrorize the old men, he had to end the dynasty and exterminate the family. And he had to get Vincent Pugliese, the man who offered him help and then sen
t men to kill him in his sleep. But with the city full of Castiglione soldiers and police, she could save him, offer him another way of staying alive. If he saw her with FBI agents, he would never come near her. If she was completely alone, there was a chance.
She stepped out of her room and closed the door, then walked down the hallway. She wasn't used to filling her pockets with things before she went out, particularly things as big and heavy as a pistol. Every item seemed to her to bulge or hang, but she reminded herself that there wasn't another choice this time. She was the only one who would recognize him and the only one he would recognize.
When her elevator stopped, she looked across the lobby and saw Irwin and Manoletti. They were wheeling their suitcases to the front desk. Neither of them had seen her, so she backed into the elevator and pressed the button to go to the top of the building. The doors opened and she saw the entrance to a restaurant with a small podium and a young hostess with hair that was so carefully gathered into a bun that no single loose strand showed, and it looked more like polished wood than hair. Elizabeth pressed the button for the lobby again and descended.
As she waited, she reflected that it was ridiculous to avoid the two men she had asked Morris to assign to her for this trip. She found she didn't care about being gracious. She felt a strong reluctance to talk to anyone right now. She didn't want to explain or make up a lie or answer questions or pretend. For the moment, there were only two people who mattered—her and the Butcher's Boy—and the rest of the people in Chicago were distractions or enemies.
26
HE WOKE UP in Milwaukee in the evening. He had driven out of Chicago after Salvatore Castiglione had escaped. The drive had been only a bit over an hour and took him out of Illinois and into Wisconsin. It had been a small irony to him to be taking the same drive he and Vincent Pugliese had made together the day they had broken the ambush in the cornfield.
In Milwaukee he had checked into the first large hotel he had seen, a Marriott Residence Inn, gone into his room, showered, and slept. It was now after six o'clock, and he had caught up on the portion of last night's sleep that he had lost. He felt alert and energetic and restless.