by Greg Iles
“Sir, I want to state for the record that it was Agent Morse who first uncovered a connection between Andrew Rusk and Eldon Tarver. Six weeks ago, she suspected criminal collusion between them, and she proceeded to investigate them despite active resistance by the SAC of the Jackson field office and by yourself.”
Dodson laughed scornfully. “You’ve just defined insubordination. You can testify against Morse at her final hearing.”
“I don’t think so,” Kaiser said in a voice so commanding that a glimmer of fear came into Dodson’s face. “I don’t think there’s going to be any such hearing.” He held up a plastic evidence bag that he’d been holding alongside his right leg. “I’d like you to examine this evidence, sir.”
A wary look from Dodson. “What is it?”
“A document. It’s self-explanatory.”
The ADD took the Ziploc bag and tilted back his head so that he could read it through the bottom of his no-line bifocals. His skeptical expression didn’t change until he reached the bottom of the document. Then his mouth opened like that of a fish gasping for air.
“You noted the signature, sir?” Kaiser asked.
Dodson’s face had gone slack with horror, the horror of a bureaucrat realizing he has backed the wrong horse. “Where was this found?” he asked in a scarcely audible voice.
“In the victim’s safe. That document is absolute proof of criminal collusion between Rusk and Tarver and may well prove espionage against the United States.”
“Not another word,” said Dodson, his eyes blinking. “Agent Kaiser, join me in my car.”
Kaiser glanced at Alex, then followed Dodson down to a dark Ford in the driveway. Alex stood on the porch, trying to contain her glee at seeing Dodson taken down a peg, and so publicly. But what truly warmed her heart was the way Kaiser had stood up for her, and at great personal risk. She looked down at the Ford, but its windows were too darkly tinted for her to see what was going on inside.
Two minutes passed before Kaiser and Dodson got out. Dodson’s face was red, but Kaiser looked cool and composed. He motioned for Alex to join him. As she walked, she caught encouraging looks from three different FBI agents, two of them women. When she passed Dodson, the deputy director didn’t even acknowledge her. Kaiser took her hand and led her to the Suburban he had driven up in.
“What about my car?” she asked quietly.
“Drop your keys on the ground. I’ll have one of my guys bring it.”
“What?”
“Drop them.”
Alex dropped her keys on some pine straw and let herself be pushed into the backseat of the Suburban. She settled into the deep leather while Kaiser climbed behind the wheel.
“What happened in the car?” she asked.
“Nothing’s decided yet. You are so goddamned lucky that piece of paper was in Rusk’s safe.”
“And you’re not? Thanks, by the way.”
Kaiser sighed heavily, then began to laugh. “You don’t get many paybacks like that in this life.”
“Did you tell Dodson about the GPS coordinates?”
“Had to. There’s no holding back anything now. It’s all going to be kicked upstairs to Director Roberts. We only won a skirmish, not the war.”
“It still felt good.”
Kaiser started the engine, backed around, then stopped and waited for a coroner’s wagon to come through the long line of law enforcement vehicles.
“Where are we going now?” Alex asked.
“You’re going back to the hospital. Don’t even think about arguing. I’m putting out a statewide alert for Rusk’s powerboat, as soon as I can get a description of it. Then I’m going to see this Neville Byrd character, the one who claims you hired him to watch Rusk.” Kaiser cut his eyes at her. “You didn’t do that, did you?”
“I’ve never even heard of the guy. I swear to God.”
Kaiser nodded. “I’m hoping Tarver hired him. To make sure his partner wasn’t crossing him, you know?”
“Absolutely.”
As the coroner’s wagon rolled by, something occurred to Alex. “Did you tell Dodson about the writing on the floor? ‘A’s number twenty-three’?”
Kaiser said nothing.
Alex suppressed her delight. “I thought you weren’t holding anything back anymore.”
“Screw that precious little bastard.”
“Amen.”
A young FBI agent rapped on Kaiser’s window. Kaiser rolled down the glass. “What is it?”
“They sent me to get you, sir. The AD, I mean. They found something in the garage.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But they’re pretty freaked out.”
Kaiser put the Suburban in park and got out. “Stay here, Alex.”
She slammed the dashboard with her hand as Kaiser ran back to the house. Then she counted to five, got out, and sprinted after him.
CHAPTER 51
Alex stood outside Chris’s room, wiping her eyes with Kleenex given to her by a nurse. She had been trying for five minutes to summon the courage to walk in and tell Chris that his wife was dead, but for some reason, she couldn’t manage it. The irony was unbelievable. She had butted into Chris Shepard’s life because she’d believed that his wife was trying to kill him. Now his wife lay on a table with a pathologist cutting a Y-incision into her chest.
When Alex crept into Andrew Rusk’s garage behind John Kaiser, she hadn’t had the slightest inkling that she would find a body there. Lethal biological agents, maybe, or bags of gold coins—anything but Thora Shepard. The woman Alex had always seen wearing only the finest clothes had been rolled in a paint-stained drop cloth and folded into the rear compartment of an SUV. At least it was a Porsche, Alex had thought at the time. But the condition of Thora’s corpse banished even black humor from her mind. Thora’s silky blond hair had been matted with what looked like pints of blood—a blessing since it covered the shattered skull beneath—and her once-flawless skin looked like the grayish white underbelly of a frog. When Kaiser saw Alex behind him, he lifted the matted hair and asked her to identify the body. Thora’s eyes were open. Those beautiful sea-blue orbs that Alex remembered from the photo in Chris’s house were the deadest things she had ever seen—dull, cloudy marbles already shrinking into their sockets.
“May I help you, ma’am?” asked a passing nurse.
“No, thank you.” Alex stuffed the Kleenex into her pocket and walked into Chris’s room.
When she saw him shivering in the bed, she told herself that this was the wrong time to tell him about Thora. What good could it possibly do? It would surely harm his chances of winning his battle against an unknown illness. Dr. Clarke had warned her that Chris might be suffering. At the suggestion of Peter Connolly, Clarke had administered yet another antiviral drug—this one experimental—and Chris’s reaction had been yet another fever.
“Alex?” he whispered. “Come closer. I don’t think I’m contagious.”
She walked over to his bed, took his shaking hands in hers, and kissed him on the cheek. “I know.”
He responded with a weak smile. “Sympathy kiss?”
“Maybe.”
He jerked his hands away and hugged himself during a particularly violent bout of shivering. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to talk now.”
He gritted his teeth, then gave his hands back to her.
She wanted to distract him, but she didn’t know how. “So Ben is at Dr. Cage’s house?”
“Yeah. Tom’s wife is great, but Ben’s really scared. I wish I was in good enough shape to have him here.”
“What about the chemotherapy option? You still haven’t taken any chemo drugs?”
“No. After what I’ve learned about the Virus Cancer Program—and Tarver’s primate lab—I’m more convinced than ever that he injected me with some sort of retrovirus. No virus can induce cancer in a matter of days, so the way to attack it right now is with antiviral drugs.” Chris struggled to shift on the bed. “I don�
��t want to risk getting leukemia or lymphoma by taking melphalan or something else just as dangerous.”
Alex squeezed his hands. “I think you just don’t want to lose your hair.”
He closed his eyes, but the ghost of a smile touched his lips.
“Are we friends, Chris?” she asked softly.
His eyes opened, questioning her without words. “Of course we are. I owe you my life. If I live through this, that is.”
“I’ve got to tell you something else about Thora.”
“Oh, God,” he said wearily. “What has she done?” Sudden fear flashed in his eyes. “She hasn’t taken Ben, has she?”
Alex shook her head. “No.” And she never will again. “Thora’s dead, Chris.”
He stared up from the pillow without changing expression. His eyes seemed the same, but she knew that inside, the tenuous hold that he had on reality was tearing loose. After studying her face for a few moments, he saw that she had spoken the truth. “How?” he whispered.
“Somebody killed her. We’re not sure who yet. Probably Rusk or Tarver.”
Chris blinked once. “Killed her how?”
“She was beaten to death with a blunt instrument. Probably a claw hammer.”
Alex saw despair in his eyes, and then he rolled over to face the wall.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she said helplessly, “but the idea of someone else telling you was worse.”
The back of his head was shaking, as though in denial of the news. But she knew he had believed her. “Where’s Thora now?” he asked.
“They’re doing a postmortem on her.”
She heard a sharp exhalation. Chris knew too well what that meant in medical terms.
“Ben doesn’t know, does he?”
“No, no.”
“Could he hear it on TV or anything like that?”
“No.”
“I need to see him.”
Alex had already taken care of this. “He’s on his way.” She glanced at her watch. “He should be here any minute, actually. I called Tom Cage as soon as we—as soon as I knew. Tom went to check Ben out of school, and he promised to have him here as fast as possible.”
Chris sighed heavily. “Thank you for doing that. Tom deals with death every day. He’ll know how to handle Ben.”
“Will you look at me, Chris?”
After nearly a minute, he rolled over and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. She was about to speak when he said, “Help me up.”
“What? You shouldn’t—”
“Come on.” Pulling against her hands, he managed to bring himself into a sitting position. He was still shivering and panting, but his eyes held only determination. “You can go now.”
“I’m fine right here.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed. “Fine? Why aren’t you out trying to find Tarver?”
“They won’t let me. They’ve turned me into a goddamn bystander.”
“So? You never waited for permission before. And the only way you’re going to save Jamie—or me—is by nailing Tarver. Only he can convict your brother-in-law now. And only he can tell the doctors what he shot into me. Without that knowledge, it won’t matter that I have Ben. I’ll die before he grows out of Little League.”
Alex was stunned by the anger in Chris’s voice and eyes. She was trying to think of some reassuring reply when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. It was Kaiser. She pressed SEND and held the phone to her ear.
“Tell me something good, John.”
“Solve this puzzle, and I’ll give you the best news you ever had.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m sitting with your alleged friend Neville Byrd. He’s recanted his statements about you and admitted that he was hired by Eldon Tarver.”
Alex closed her eyes in relief. “How did you manage that?”
While Kaiser answered, Alex clicked her cell phone’s speaker function, so that Chris could listen in.
“When Mr. Byrd and his attorney heard the words Patriot Act, they became very talkative,” Kaiser said. “But Tarver didn’t hire Byrd just to keep tabs on Rusk. Rusk had set up a digital mechanism that would destroy Tarver in the event that Tarver killed him. Insurance, right? Byrd was hired to find out what that mechanism was.”
“Did he?” asked Alex.
“Yes. Rusk used a Dutch Internet service called EX NIHILO. Every day he had to log on and enter a series of passwords to verify that he was alive. If he didn’t, a digital catalog of every crime Rusk and Tarver had committed would be sent to the Bureau and the Mississippi State Police.”
“Dear God. Tell me you have that file, John.”
“I’m looking at it right now. But I can’t open it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have the final password. Rusk never accessed the file while Byrd was watching him. Neville stole enough passwords for Tarver to log in and pretend he was Rusk, but not to open or delete the confession file. Neville’s been trying to hack the password since last night, but he hasn’t been able to do it.”
Chris was staring at the cell phone with laserlike focus.
“Do you have any idea what it could be?” Alex asked.
“What I’m thinking,” said Kaiser, “is that after Dr. Tarver smacked Rusk in the head a few times with that putter, Rusk’s last conscious thought was to get revenge on the bastard if he could. He couldn’t use the telephone, but he could move his foot enough to write in the blood on the floor.”
“A’s number twenty-three!” Alex cried.
“Exactly. But Neville and I have googled our way through all the baseball rosters of the Oakland A’s for the past hundred and six years. We’ve tried every player we can find who wore number twenty-three, but no combination of any of their names or birthdays or batting averages or anything else is the password.”
Alex thought furiously. “You’re making an assumption that A’s refers to the baseball team. Throw that out and start from zero. A’s number…What else could it mean?”
“The only hits that search engines kick up are baseball-related. I just put in a call to the NSA in Washington. They’ve put it in the queue for a supercomputer.”
“It can’t be that hard,” said Alex. “It’s something Rusk thought we could figure out. What were his other passwords?”
“One was pi to the ninth decimal place.”
“Pi,” Alex echoed.
“A couple were names from classical literature. One was the speed of light.”
In a strangely detached voice, Chris said, “How did he write ‘miles per second squared’?”
“Who’s that talking?” asked Kaiser.
“Chris,” Alex replied. “Can you answer his question?”
“Hang on.”
Alex looked down. Chris had taken hold of her elbow. “The only A’s number I know about is Avogadro’s number,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“A constant in chemistry. It has to do with molar concentration. Every high school chemistry student has to memorize it.”
“What was that?” asked Kaiser.
“Chris has got a password for you to try. Hold on.” She looked at Chris. “What’s the number exactly?”
“Six-point-oh-two-two times ten to the twenty-third power.”
“The twenty-third power?” Alex echoed.
Chris nodded.
“That’s the twenty-three? A’s number twenty-three.”
“How would you type all that out?” asked Kaiser.
Chris looked up at the ceiling. “Six period zero two two X one zero two three.”
“I heard him,” said Kaiser. “Neville’s typing it in.”
Alex’s ears roared as she waited.
“No dice,” said Kaiser, obviously deflated. “That’s not it.”
Alex closed her eyes.
“Try leaving out the decimal,” said Chris.
“All right,” said Kaiser. “Byrd’s trying it—”
Alex winced as a
scream of triumph came through the phone.
“That’s it!” shouted Kaiser. “We’re in!”
Alex was squeezing the phone so tightly that her hand hurt. “What does it say? What’s in the file, John?”
“Hang on. My God…it’s a confession, all right. There’s pages and pages of it.”
Alex caught Chris’s hand in hers. “Do you see Grace’s name? Tell me you see Grace’s name.”
“I’m looking…I see several of the victims you listed for me.”
Alex’s whole body was shaking. Chris’s jaw muscles were working steadily.
“I see it,” Kaiser murmured. “Grace Fennell. I’m reading it right off the page.”
Alex felt tears streaming down her cheeks. The lump in her throat kept her from speaking until she managed to swallow. “Copy that file now, John.”
“Neville already copied it,” he assured her. “He’s printing it out right now.”
“What about Thora?” Chris asked. “Or anything about me?”
“It’s probably the last entry in the file,” Alex said.
“No. The last entry is a guy named Barnett. An oilman. Rusk thinks Barnett is going to approach him any day about getting a divorce.”
“Keep looking.”
“I am. Wait…here it is, Christopher Shepard, MD. It’s all here, Alex. All the proof in the world.”
Chris was holding his fist over his mouth, as though he might lose control of himself.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kaiser said in a fascinated voice. “I mean, I’ve discovered the trophies of serial murderers…monsters, aberrations…but this is just business. Naked fucking greed, by people who knew better.”
Alex saw tears in Chris’s eyes.
“Listen to this,” said Kaiser. “‘In November of 1998, I was approached by a law school classmate named Michael Collins, a criminal lawyer who works for Gage, Taft, and LeBlanc. Collins wanted my advice about a client, a physician named Eldon Tarver. Dr. Tarver’s wife had recently died of cancer, but his wife’s family believed she was the victim of foul play. They were a wealthy family, and Tarver feared they had gotten the police involved. He’d hired Collins because he believed he was in danger of being arrested. I was puzzled that Collins would seek out my help, because I specialize in divorce, but Michael told me that he needed my psychological insight, not legal expertise.