The Collective

by Jack Rogan

  A metallic creak made her jump. Biting down on the cigarette, she went to reach for the gun and then remembered the security camera aimed at her back, even as the back door of the CVS swung open and a young woman came out carrying two large garbage bags. Even in the dark, the moon provided enough light that the diamond stud in her nose glittered. Her features suggested India or Pakistan.

  Breathe, Cait told herself. Her right hand, which had been going for her gun, relaxed and she let it fall to her side as the girl caught sight of her.

  “Oh!” the girl said.

  “Hi,” Cait said, trying to look normal.

  “Hi. Smoke break?”

  “Yeah. My friend is taking a while. Figured I’d light up while I wait.”

  “This is where we always come to smoke on our breaks,” the girl said as she tossed the lighter bag into the Dumpster and then hefted the other with both hands.

  Cait wondered if she expected to be offered a cigarette now that she had made this revelation, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Must feel like forever, working the night shift,” Cait said.

  “Sometimes,” the girl admitted. “But we get a lot of people who work nights coming in. Well, not a lot, but you know what I mean. Enough. That, and people who need medicine in the middle of the night, parents whose kids have fevers, that sort of thing.” She seemed to realize she was talking a lot and grew sheepish. “Anyway, have a good night.”

  “You, too,” Cait said.

  The girl started to go inside, then paused thoughtfully and glanced back. After a second, a smile spread across her face. “I knew I recognized you.”

  Cait froze, her stomach twisting. Lynch had been scanning radio channels for news stories on the shootings at her house, wondering if the police would bring the media into their search for her. So far they’d heard nothing, but maybe they had just missed it, like flipping TV channels trying to find the weather report. She plastered on a fake smile and dropped her cigarette, grinding it out with her heel.

  “You do?”

  She thought about the gun at her back and wondered if she could kill the girl if it meant keeping her daughter safe. But that would be murder. Cait could not commit cold-blooded murder. Not and live with herself. Which meant she had to think of another way to deal with this girl.

  This smiling girl.

  “Yes! I saw the video of you on TV kicking the crap out of that guy who was beating up his wife. A-Train? I watched it like ten times online. I posted it on my blog, even. That was just awesome.”

  Cait trembled as she exhaled. “Thanks. It wasn’t … I mean, I didn’t enjoy it or anything, but somebody had to do it.”

  “Totally.” The girl shrugged. “I’ve got to get back in there, but it was nice meeting you.”

  “Yeah. Good night.”

  When she had gone back in, pulling the door shut behind her, Cait sagged against the car. From inside she heard a small mewling, which meant that Leyla was on her way to waking up, and she needed her to get as much sleep as possible on this long, insane night. The baby would need a bottle soon, but Cait was anxious and wanted to get back on the road first. So she slipped into the car and began to sing softly—an old James Taylor song that her father had sung to her when she was a little girl, and that Sean had sung once or twice when she was young, just to make her feel better.

  This time she could not fight the pang of grief and it blossomed into something larger, something that began to fill her up inside. The summer night was warm, but she felt a kind of cold that she knew would never go away completely.

  Lynch came out of the CVS and strode across the lot toward her, carrying several plastic bags. His eyes were narrowed in consternation, probably due to the fact that she had her door propped open, but when he got there he said nothing, only handed the bags in to her.

  Oreos. Cheddar Cheese Goldfish. A box of plastic spoons. Four or five yogurts. Juice. A box of Cheerios. Lynch had done well. She tugged a pink Red Sox T-shirt out of a bag and held it up in front of her. At her size, there was no way it would be too small.

  “Not the most inconspicuous choice,” she said.

  “It was that or an XXL Boston Celtics T-shirt.”

  Cait nodded. “Turn around.”

  When he obliged, his back to the car, she pulled off her shirt. In addition to Leyla’s pee it had bloodstains on it. She dropped it on the floor and tugged the Red Sox tee over her head, finding it a little more snug than it had looked. Pink had never been her color, much too girly for her, and she wondered if she would have felt the same if she had grown up with a mother to look after her. A stray thought, filed away for another day, when such mundane things might mean something to her again.

  She handed her soiled T-shirt out to Lynch, who walked over and tossed it into the Dumpster.

  “You didn’t run,” he said.

  “How far would I have gotten?”

  He nodded in approval, took off the glasses he’d donned to go into CVS, dropped them on the pavement, then crushed them underfoot.

  “Those things were hurting my eyes,” he said, and then he walked around to the driver’s side and got in.

  Shutting the door quietly, he sparked a couple of wires together and the engine purred to life. As he put the car into Drive, he glanced over at her. “You didn’t look in the last bag.”

  Curious, Cait dragged it onto her lap. Inside she found a pair of fashion glasses that people sometimes wore just for show. They had clear lenses, but made you look smart. Also in the bag were scissors, a box of hair dye, and a hard plastic container that held a small black object.

  “You bought a phone?”

  Lynch pulled out of the parking lot and sped back toward the turnpike. The next exit up would put them on Route 84 toward Hartford, and New York beyond.

  “It’s a go-phone. Pre-paid. Your cell phone would have been easy as hell to track, but this is clean. Not linked to you. I’m more used to killing people than saving them, but I’m trying to work with you here. So you’ve got to think very carefully, Caitlin, before you use this phone. With your baby’s life on the line, you’ve got to ask yourself, who can you really trust?”

  As she stared at the plastic-encased phone, a cry rose up from the backseat and she turned to see Leyla fussing and licking her lips like she was hungry. The noise of the engine hadn’t comforted her after all.

  She just wants to be home in her crib, Cait thought.

  But they didn’t have a home anymore. Not for a while, at least. And not unless Cait could perform a miracle. Lynch’s revelations had been sinking in. How long had ruthless bastards been doing this? Could it really be centuries? Millennia? How did one twenty-six-year-old woman fight that kind of history—that conspiracy—and keep herself and her child alive?

  Cait felt her gun jabbing her in the back. She took it out and stashed it in the glove box, then picked up the phone again. After a few seconds she reached into the bag, drew out the pair of scissors Lynch had bought, and started cutting the phone free of its plastic.

  Wondering who to call.

  Josh hung back in the darkness beneath an oak tree while, across the yard, Voss ripped Ed Turcotte a new one. With the chopper noise overhead and the radio static and chatter on the ground, he was pretty sure that the assorted cops and Feds crawling over the grounds of Cait McCandless’s house couldn’t hear the exchange. Josh couldn’t hear any of it, either, but he smiled to himself as he watched the two of them face off, circling each other like dogs about to go for the throat. Turcotte didn’t stand a chance.

  Nala Chang and Ben Coogan walked up to join him, both of them distracted by the confrontation, but neither of them daring to get close enough to overhear.

  Voss and Turcotte stood at the corner of the house in a patch of shadow untouched by the crime-scene light setups and the strobing blue lights that swept across the house and yard. Their gestures and facial expressions were a visual staccato akin to the flicker of an old-time kinescope, and Josh didn’t ha
ve to hear to know the gist.

  Rachael wanted to know what the fuck the FBI had been thinking putting out a BOLO suggesting Cait McCandless was a terror suspect. Whatever the Bureau’s rationale—and Josh couldn’t wait to hear it—Turcotte would be bristling at the suggestion that he needed to get Voss’s approval on anything.

  “That doesn’t look fun,” Coogan said.

  Josh shot him a dark look. “It isn’t.”

  Coogan glanced at Chang, disapproval writ large on his face. “Isn’t this Agent Turcotte’s case? Why is he even listening?”

  Chang closed her eyes and shook her head at the insult implied in the question. Josh narrowed his eyes, wondering what Coogan could be thinking to outright slam Josh’s agency and partner with him standing right there. Maybe the guy was sick of being stuck in a field office and wanted a more dynamic posting, or maybe he just liked the way Chang’s blouse clung to her breasts and wanted to swing his dick a little. Either way, it was a dumb move.

  “You want to take that question?” Chang asked, glancing at Josh.

  “No,” Josh said. “You go ahead.”

  As Chang started to explain that Voss could take the case away from the FBI anytime she felt the urge, causing all the color to leach from Coogan’s cheeks, Josh tuned out the conversation, watching his partner instead. He wondered if Turcotte would push back hard enough to make Voss burn the bridge, to force her to take the case from him.

  “What do you think is going to happen?” Chang asked.

  Josh blinked and looked at her, her face bathed in blue light. He had not noticed, but Coogan had marched off. Presumably he intended to try to make himself useful, though he might have come to the realization that he would not be on this case for long. That left just Josh and Nala standing beneath the branches of an oak tree by the sidewalk, waiting to see how it all shook out.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?” Chang asked.

  “On why.” He looked at her. “Do you know why Turcotte had them word the BOLO that way?”

  Chang seemed almost hurt by the question. “No. This woman sounds like a target to me. If people are coming after her child and she did this to them, she’s my new hero. So, no, Agent Hart, I don’t know. But I’d like to.”

  Josh found himself hoping Voss and Turcotte could keep from killing each other so he and Chang could continue this investigation together. He liked her smile and the way she did her job. Liked the way she could move from grim to amused with easy confidence. Over the past twenty-four hours or so, he had found that he liked her a great deal.

  But you can’t go there.

  The dilemma of his job had turned out to be that while he had made a rule for himself about not getting sexually or romantically involved with Feds or cops or anyone else who dealt with crime and punishment for a living, finding a civilian who could put up with what that life could do to a person—with the hours and the moods and the nightmares—had proven almost impossible. His blind date with Molly had gone well—right up until it had been interrupted by a quadruple murder in Fort Myers.

  “What did you make of what Detective Monteforte was saying?” Josh asked.

  “I think we’ve got to look into McCandless’s brother,” Chang replied. “If he’s actually dead, that’s a new wrinkle. None of the other child killings had collateral damage outside the household. And if he was really some kind of spy or what ever …”

  “I know. It sounds crazy, right?”

  Chang hesitated, then looked up at him. “Maybe not. If someone is really killing these kids because they’re of mixed race and Sean McCandless had the kind of connections and training all this implies, he’d come after them. Taking him out first would be the smart thing to do.”

  Josh exhaled loudly. “We’re not talking serial killers now. They’d have to know about him in the first place, be able to track him down, and then kill a government agent and get away with it.”

  Chang gestured toward the lawn, which had been turned into a killing ground. “This is way past serial killers, Josh.”

  He felt a pang of sorrow as he thought about Grace Kowalik, whose parents had named her after she was already dead. He didn’t want Cait McCandless’s daughter to end up the same way, on the bank of a river somewhere, or killed in her sleep like the Greenlaw twins and who knew how many others.

  “I know. I just hate conspiracy shit.”

  “You don’t think conspiracies happen?” Chang asked, eyebrows rising.

  Josh surveyed the damage to Cait McCandless’s apartment house. Bullet holes. Shattered windows. At some point the poor bastard who lived on the second floor would come home and find his place sealed off by the police. He might even be out there right now, kept back by the police cordon.

  “Conspiracy’s the wiring in the walls, Nala. It’s always there. We’re just not supposed to see it. And unless you’re very careful, you’re never supposed to touch it.”

  “We’ll just have to be careful, then.”

  Her confidence made him smile but when he glanced at her, something else caught his attention. On the street, a cop bumped his cruiser up onto the opposite sidewalk to let a white box van get past. The van bore no insignia or identifying mark, but it had to be some sort of official vehicle or the cops wouldn’t be letting it out.

  “What’s wrong?” Chang asked.

  “Maybe nothing.”

  Curious, he crossed the sidewalk and moved between two cars into the street, and Chang followed. The van passed them, but Josh only got a quick glimpse of the driver—Caucasian, thirtyish, buzz cut—which told him nothing for certain. Maybe fifty feet farther up the street was a second box van, identical to the first. The rear doors were open and a quartet of men in dark jumpsuits were loading body bags inside. A few cops and a man wearing an FBI jacket stood nearby chatting, ignoring them. Gurneys that had been used to cart the bodies over from the yard were being rolled back to waiting ambulances and a black truck bearing the logo for Suffolk County on the side, obviously from the medical examiner’s office. But the gurneys were going back empty. The M.E.’s truck and the ambulances would leave without their usual cargo.

  “Any idea what this is?” he asked Chang.

  “Let’s find out.”

  They started toward the first white van, walking fast, dark suspicion rising in Josh’s thoughts. “These guys look military to you?”

  “My first thought.”

  “Shit.”

  As they approached, two of the guys climbed into the back of the van. Two others were about to close the doors.

  “Hold on a minute,” Josh called.

  The two inside the van started shifting body bags around, but the men by the doors turned toward the interruption with guarded expressions. Other than the variance in skin color, they seemed made from the same mold: strong jaw, tightly cropped hair, powerful build, veiled eyes.

  “Where are you taking them?” Chang asked.

  The man on the left, African-American with coffee-colored skin, cocked his head as he studied them. Then he nodded to the other man and they slammed the rear doors and turned their backs, the white guy starting around the passenger side. The other was apparently the driver.

  “Whoa,” Josh said, anger flaring. He started after the driver. “A federal agent just asked you a question. You need to answer it.”

  As Josh caught up to him, reaching for his arm, the driver turned and stopped him with a look.

  “You don’t want to touch me, sir.”

  The sir confirmed all of Josh’s worst fears. They were soldiers. On this case, soldiers meant SOCOM, and SOCOM meant Arsenault.

  “Nobody wants this to turn ugly, soldier,” Josh said. “It’s a simple question. Where are you taking the bodies? And I’ll ask another one: Who gave the order?”

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Chang a few feet behind the van. The passenger appeared, edging into position in back of the doors, ready to act if something went down. The tension attracted immediate attention, seve
ral police officers and techs and a few FBI personnel gathering.

  “We’re going to get into the van now, sir,” the driver said. “If you have questions about our orders, I suggest you take them up with your superiors.”

  Chang took out her ID, flipped it open, and stepped closer to the jarhead at the back of the van. “You will answer the question or you will be detained.”

  A restless shudder went through those who had gathered to watch. One police officer touched the butt of the gun hanging from his belt, eyes shifting back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match. Josh pulled out his cell, rang Voss, and she answered on the second ring.

  “I’m kind of in the middle—”

  “Come out on the street right now. White van. Bring Turcotte.”

  Voss didn’t ask questions. She knew from his voice there was trouble. Josh killed the call, put away his phone, and looked around to find that every person in the vicinity seemed to be holding their breath. He knew he had to end this confrontation before it erupted into something they would all regret.

  But the driver smiled, and it was almost a sneer.

  “You don’t have the authority to stop us,” he said.

  Josh didn’t like that sneer. “The FBI doesn’t have the authority? All right, then. I’m with ICD—”

  “What the fuck is ICD?” the passenger muttered.

  “A division of Homeland Security, moron,” Chang said.

  The passenger laughed. “So’s the Coast Guard.”

  The driver silenced him with a look. Obviously his superior officer, and the one with the brains.

  “Where’s Lieutenant Arsenault?” Josh asked. “Let me talk to him and we’ll sort this out.”

  The driver’s nostrils flared in alarm—the only sign that he even knew who Arsenault was, or that he was troubled that Josh had figured them out. Now that Josh thought about it, he hadn’t seen Arsenault or Norris for at least twenty minutes, maybe more.