“Sounds like a recipe for a serial killer,” said Mallory. “Any pictures?”
“Nope, just an old police report from downstate Illinois. When Adrian was fifteen, he stole a car from his foster home and ran away. Works nice with your car-thief angle. But the cops never caught him, so we got no prints in the system. No social security number, either. I figure he stopped being Adrian Egram the day he stole that car.”
“But he spent five years in foster care. Not one picture?”
“Mallory, in your dreams Child Welfare has records that go back that far—instead of files rotting in storage boxes. But I got something else you might like. Most of the houses in the Egram neighborhood were torn down or they fell down. We found one of the neighbors in a nursing home. She’s got Alzheimer’s but her long-term memory is still strong. The old lady says Adrian’s mother worked two jobs, so the little boy used to ride with his dad on cross-country hauls. They were probably on the road two hundred days a year. Then Mary was born and it was time for Adrian to start school. No more truck rides with Dad. Now Adrian and his sister didn’t get along too well. And here’s where it gets strange. Adrian was ten years old—Mary was only five.”
“And Adrian was afraid of his little sister,” said Mallory.
“Yeah. You were right. Our perp doesn’t like being touched. Every time the girl went near her big brother, the boy ran like hell. That was gonna be my big finale. So tell me something, kid—why do you bother to call in for updates?”
Mallory ended the cell-phone call, disinclined to waste words, and it would have taken a long time to describe what she was looking at. The detective could see her cold breath on the air as she walked down the rows of rough wooden pallets, each one the bed of a child. Most were skeletons, but some had been mummified and still held the shape of sleeping girls whose lives had been interrupted on the way to school one day. In the paperwork for this warehouse, twenty miles outside of Amarillo, Texas, the field-office rental fee was itemized under a file name: The Nursery.
A silver-haired man in a dark blue suit walked beside her. He appeared to be trying to make sense of what he was seeing—as if he had no idea that this had been going on. Harry Mars, now based in Washington, was the former head of the New York City Bureau, but he had climbed higher in rank since attending the funeral of Inspector Louis Markowitz. Graveside, he had vouched a favor against a day when the old man’s daughter might need one. Half an hour ago, Mars had come through for her, ordering guards to stand down while he stripped the seal from the door of this refrigerated storage facility—The Nursery.
“My people count forty-seven dead children,” said Harry Mars, who ranked one rung below the deputy director of the FBI. He led her to an open metal coffin. “And here we have the remains of an adult.”
“Probably Gerald Linden,” said Mallory, “the Chicago victim.”
“I just can’t believe this incompetence,” said Mars. “The case should’ve gone to our task force for serial killers. I’ve got no idea how Dale managed to keep all these bodies and bones under wraps.”
Mallory understood it too well. A gigantic bureaucracy could never have a handle on what every single field office was up to, not until they heard about it on the evening news. So the Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations was not insulting her intelligence when he told her this utterly believable lie. However, the man was an ally and a friend of the family—and so she would not accuse him of deception—not just yet. Timing was everything.
Harry Mars seemed to be uncomfortable with her silence, and he rushed his words now, so anxious to share.
Yeah, right.
“I can’t hold any other agents responsible,” he said. “Dale was probably the only one with the total body count. He had different teams working different states. In and out—very fast operation. None of the evidence was ever developed. So it looks like no one but Dale ever had the whole picture.”
Oh, no. It was not going to be that easy—one sacrificial FBI agent for the media and no harm done to the Bureau.
“Harry, you’ve known about this case for a while—before you saw it on television.” This was not a question, not an invitation to lie to her. “What tipped you off first, the letters from George Hastings? Maybe you’d know him better by his Internet name—Jill’s Dad? Or was it Nahlman who got your attention?” Mallory smiled. Gotcha.
Assistant Director Mars looked out over the pallets of dead children, stalling for time. Finally, he pulled a sheaf of folded papers from his inside breast pocket. “The lab got these e-mails from Agent Nahlman. She wanted to know what happened to her test results on some soil samples.”
“And the lab was clueless, but they didn’t want to admit it.”
Harry Mars let this comment slide. “Then, the other day, Nahlman made a request to release the body of Jill Hastings. Up till then, I swear I thought George Hastings was a crank.” He wadded these papers into a tight ball. “That’s when we started looking for this warehouse.”
A lie well worded.
Mallory had her own ideas about the starting date of the FBI’s internal investigation. According to Kronewald’s sources, Agent Cadwaller had been attached to Dale’s field office three months ago, and she took him for a spy from the Assistant Director’s office. “Now,” she said, “the next question is motive.”
“For Dale? He’s a bungling screwup.”
“No,” said Mallory. “That’s not it.” Her favorite motive would always be money, but there was no market for the bones of little girls.
“I can suspend him pending investigation,” said Mars. “But I think you’d rather I took out my gun and shot him.”
“Yes, I would.” She rewarded Lou Markowitz’s old friend with a smile, though she knew this man was still holding out on her. “But you’re going to leave him in charge.” It was easier to work around Dale Berman. A competent task force would present problems; they might decide to run her case. “I’ll tell you how this is going to play out with the Bureau—my way.”
Harry Mars was appalled as she laid out her list of demands, but he recovered quickly, and Then he smiled. “I wish your old man could see you now. All this leverage to embarrass the Bureau. You’re even better at it than Lou was. I think he’d be so proud.” This was said with no sarcasm whatever.
Riker sat at the boxer’s campfire, trading baseball stats with Joe Finn and his son. Dodie lay quiet in the safe cradle of her father’s arms. Both children were yawning, and the detective was waiting for them to fall asleep. Then he would talk to the boxer about Kronewald’s plan for protective custody. The Finns must leave this road.
The fire had burned low, and Peter dropped his head against his father’s shoulder. At this same moment, a teenage girl came walking through the camp with a sleeping baby riding on one hip. Her big brown eyes searched everywhere. She grinned when she looked toward Darwinia Sohlo’s fire, and she called out, “Mom!”
Heads turned from neighboring campfires as a stunned Darwinia rose on unsteady feet to embrace the young mother and child. The woman would have fallen to her knees, but a young man rushed to Darwinia’s side and caught her up in his arms. He was the same age as the girl, and Riker pegged him as the father of that baby. The youngster was broad in the shoulders and tanned, built like a workingman who did hard labor for his living. This boy was so painfully young that he probably believed he could always keep his family safe; he would not have heard the boxer’s story of Ariel. The conversation around Darwinia’s distant fire was low and Riker could only watch the smiles, the hugs and imagine the talk of miracles and wonders.
What destroyed the detective in this moment was the look in Joe Finn’s eyes.
And the tears.
If this reunion could happen for Darwinia, why not for him? And now it was clear that the boxer preferred his fantasy that Ariel was alive, for he could not live in a world where she had died. And nothing—not an act of God, not even Mallory—could take him off this road.
Charles But
ler waved good-bye as Darwinia Sohlo and her family drove off in separate cars but in the same direction, for the woman had not only found a lost child but also a safe haven—a home.
“Shouldn’t they have an FBI escort?”
“No,” said Riker. “Those people aren’t part of the pattern. The biggest threat to Darwinia was that nutcase husband back in Wisconsin. And our freak likes to plan his murders around an isolated victim. Can you see him picking a fight with the son-in-law?”
“Yet Dodie’s father’s is a professional fighter, and you worry about her.”
“You bet I do,” said Riker. “Thanks to Dale’s little showdown with the boxer, Dodie’s a threat to a serial killer. There’s a safe house waiting for the Finns in Chicago, but I don’t think Joe can get there from here. Not unless I can reach him.”
Charles shook his head. “He won’t hear you. He’s not thinking clearly. Probably lack of sleep. It took him an hour just to assemble that little pup tent.”
And now, with his children safely tucked away, Joe Finn was too tired to unroll his sleeping bag. He laid his body down in the grass before the closed tent flap. The man’s thick arms were his pillows, and his gaze was fixed upon heaven. The boxer’s lips moved, perhaps in an old custom of prayers before sleep.
Good night, sweet prince.
Charles raised his eyes to the stars and also bid goodnight to Ariel.
15
Though Assistant Director Harry Mars had lived most of his life in the east, a Texas drawl was creeping back into his voice as he stood upon the land where he was born. He turned to the young woman beside him. “I won’t be going back to Washington just yet. Tomorrow morning I’ve got a meeting with Kronewald in Chicago. I think that old bastard’s holding out on me.” Oh, but that was the game they all played. It was an easy guess that Kathy Mallory had not disclosed half of what she knew—and neither had he.
The sun had been up for hours when the two sightseers stood on the old road, just beyond Amarillo, Texas. The FBI man was feeling some wear after a long night in Dale Berman’s Nursery. The soil samples had been located, and he planned to ram the tests through the crime lab within the hour. As a final order of business, he had offered a Bureau job to the young detective from New York City, and she had turned him down—much to his relief.
He remembered the year she had joined the NYPD and the toll that had taken on her foster father. “The kid’s not a team player,” Lou Markowitz used say, “but what a kid.”
The old man had proven to be a grand master of understatement. It was a singular cop who could extort the FBI in the upper echelons. Over a morning meal, he had caved in on the last of her demands, only stopping short of giving her a key to the men’s room, and he was damned tired. But now Lou’s daughter also wanted his promise that, following a speedy examination of the remains, one of the dead school girls would be sent straight home.
“It’s a favor to Riker.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “This is the undertaker who’s going to bury George Hastings’ daughter in three days. So Jill’s body is your number one priority. When she’s in the ground, I’ll send you her father’s correspondence with Washington—with you—all those crummy little form letters you signed—and dated.”
It was too late to run a bluff; his jaw had already dropped. Those dates would kill the Bureau’s chance to crucify Dale Berman and then claim clean hands. With this final bit of blackmail, Kathy Mallory was giving up way too much for too little in return—a sack of bones.
After a breakfast of steak and eggs, Harry Mars, native son of the Texas Panhandle and a graceful loser, had offered to play tour guide this morning. “That’s it,” he said, pointing to a far-off row of falling-down dominoes in a cow pasture. That neat line of slanted shapes in the distance was actually a collection of upscale cars that were partially buried nose-first in the ground. “That’s the Cadillac Ranch. I’m not surprised you overshot the field. You were looking for a big sign, right?”
“So that’s it?”
Could Kathy Mallory be less impressed?
“Well, I always liked it,” he said. “I remember back when those Caddys were new and the local teenagers hadn’t gotten round to the graffiti yet. Damn kids. Sorry, I can see you’re disappointed. I guess it’s not much to look at from the road, but you can’t get any closer. There’s a bull out there with the cows.” And now, because he had some history with her, he added, “Kathy, it would just be wrong to shoot a man’s livestock.”
“Mallory,” she said, correcting him for the third time this morning.
“Right.” Harry Mars watched her check the Cadillac Ranch off her list. He noticed another Texas attraction, the halfway marker for Route 66. “So your next stop is the MidPoint Café.” He waited for some enlightenment, even a simple yes or no, but he did not wait long; he knew her that well. Still staring at her list, he asked, “You plan to tell me how those landmarks figure into this case?”
He had his answer when she closed her notebook, slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans, and said, “Good-bye.”
“Kathy—sorry—Mallory, I could never see you as a damn tourist.” He well remembered their first meeting soon after she had gone to live with Lou and Helen Markowitz. Kathy had been much shorter then, but her eyes had never changed. One look at her, all those years ago, and Harry Mars knew that she had seen it all, whatever the world could find to throw in the path of a child.
The list in her notebook would continue to nag at him. Kathy Mallory would sleep tonight, and he would not. But that was fine by him. He did not care to dream of forty-seven little girls lying upon wooden pallets in a cold warehouse—so young—unfinished when they died.
The detective was ready to leave him now. She sat behind the wheel and revved her engine. There was still one matter that tethered him to her, a question he could never ask; it was a giant rubber band, stretched between them and about to snap as her car rolled away:
Was Dale Berman a major screwup or a very sick man?
Charles Butler parked the car in front of the MidPoint Café in Adrian, Texas. It was as inviting as a private house, small and homey, painted white with black trim. “So is this the way you remember it?”
Riker shrugged. “I was just a kid when I stopped here. And I killed most of my road-trip brain cells with booze. What makes you think Mallory’s gonna show?”
“I saw the name listed in her note book.”
Once inside, Charles, who loved every old thing, approved of the place immediately. An early model kitchen appliance served as decoration, and all about the dining room were other artifacts of a bygone era. As he joined Riker, taking a stool at the counter, he averted his eyes from the next room, a gift shop stocked with more modern wares.
The woman who waited on them had a long history with the café and a good memory. By the time they were on a Charles-and-Fran footing, Riker had demolished his pie, and now he was ready for business.
The detective’s description only got as far as, “Tall, real pretty, blond hair. She drives a Volkswagen convertible.”
And Fran said, “Peyton’s kid? You just missed her.”
“Peyton,” echoed Charles.
The woman nodded. “The minute she walked in the door, I said, ‘You’ve got to be related to Peyton Hale! Or maybe I just think that because you’ve got his strange green eyes and you’re driving his car.’”
Charles smiled. His theory was panning out for the author of Savannah’s coveted letters, and now he finally had a name for Mallory’s father. “I never met Peyton Hale. I gather you knew him quite well. He’s from around here?”
“No, he was a California boy the first time he came through. Then he settled in Chicago. Went to school there. But he drove Route 66 every summer for years and years. So he’d stop by twice, coming and going. Always wanted pie. That’s all he ever ordered. They’re fresh baked every morning.”
Riker’s voice was blunted, and his smile was gone. “When did you see this man last?”
“It was a long time ago.” Fran took a knife to the pie tin. “I’m sure his daughter hadn’t been born yet. He would’ve mentioned that.”
“So it’s been at least twenty-five years, maybe longer,” said Riker. “But you remember her father’s eyes? His car? There’s gott a be more to it.”
“He was a charmer,” said Fran. “Charmed me out of twenty dollars once. Gave me an IOU. Peyton was driving west to California that time. Said he’d pay me back on the way home to Chicago. And that was the last time I ever saw him.” Fran slipped another wedge of pie onto Riker’s plate. “Peyton’s daughter was even more suspicious than you are. She wanted to see the IOU. Well, of course, I didn’t have it anymore, but she settled up anyway.” Fran dipped one hand into an apron pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “The girl’s a big tipper.”
“Yeah, she is.” Riker, seduced by the bribe of a second slice of pie, was acting less the policeman now. “Did you find out what happened to Mallory’s dad?”
“I never asked.” Fran was staring at the window on the road. “I like to think he’s still on that road—driving like a maniac. My God, that little car of his could go. Well, like father, like daughter. One second Mallory’s car was out there in the lot, and then voom—gone.”
Another day, another travel plaza.
Finding the caravan was a simple thing; Mallory only had to listen to the parents’ radio interviews being conducted on the other side of Adrian, Texas. When she entered the lot, she found it choked with more cars than parking places. She created her own space on a patch of sidewalk that ran around the restaurant. The young FBI agents on guard duty did not object; they even opened the car door for her, celebrity treatment, and they all but saluted as she passed them by and entered the restaurant.
Mallory favored tables near the window, and she picked one out, unconcerned that it was occupied. It was only necessary to hover a moment or two before the agents seated there decided that they had eaten enough for one day. And now she sat down alone, another preference, and opened her notebook of landmarks and murder suspects. In the manner of a schoolgirl at her lessons, she bowed her head over the list and crossed off the Mid Point Café.
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