Unsolved

by James Patterson

  “You’re ruining his garbage bag.”

  “I know. I feel awful.” He winks at me, then sucks in his breath and dives his hands in. He tosses out crumpled paper towels, soda cans, trays for microwavable meals, an empty yogurt cup. A flattened box, empty soup cans, junk mail, an empty bag of microwave rice, a cardboard paper-towel cylinder—

  And then he freezes. His hand slowly rises out of the bag, holding something. He shows it to me.

  It’s wet from some liquid inside the trash. He wipes off a couple of grains of rice.

  A Garfield the Cat watch. The red band. The cartoon cat on the face.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper. “That’s it. The same watch we found in Chicago.”

  I knew Wagner was our guy. I knew it in my bones. But seeing this kind of proof sends a jolt of electricity through me.

  “Take a photo of it with your phone,” Books says. “And text it to Elizabeth Ashland.”

  “This is good,” I say, scrambling for my phone.

  “This,” he says, “is probable cause.”

  95

  BOOKS PATS the steering wheel, practically buzzing. It’s now just past nine. We are down the street from 407 Morningside Lane, within sight of it but keeping our distance. Three other cars of local FBI agents have joined us, but they are keeping their distance as well and are spread out on all sides, trying not to stand out too much. There is still a chance that Lieutenant Martin Wagner will return home from wherever he is, and if he does, we don’t want to scare him off.

  Once we get the search warrant, we’ll swoop back on that apartment like bees to honey. Until then, we wait.

  We wait for a call from Elizabeth Ashland, who amended the application for a search warrant, grabbed a lawyer from Justice, and rushed it in front of a federal magistrate.

  “Elizabeth did it herself?” I ask. “She wouldn’t delegate that part to someone lower down on the chain?”

  Books makes a face. “Well, in fairness to her, there really isn’t a chain on this one. This case was never staffed with agents.” He shakes his head. “Because nobody believed you.”

  “They do now.”

  “But mostly,” he says, “I think Elizabeth wants in on this. Trying to steal some glory.”

  “Well, she did go to bat for me. She convinced Dwight Ross to let me pursue this. If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Books turns to me. “People have more than one face.” It’s a saying he often used to describe the criminals he chased. The duality of man, so to speak. How good and evil can coexist inside a person. The example he frequently cited was a local city bureaucrat he once busted who was taking thousand-dollar bribes to fix liquor licenses and who also devoted his free time to starting up a battered-women’s shelter. “Elizabeth does the right thing on this case. But on the flip side, she tips off Citizen David in exchange for gigantic cash payments.”

  “You don’t know she’s David’s mole. You suspect it.”

  “All that cash?” he says. “I’ll prove it. I just have to figure out how.”

  I look at the Garfield the Cat watch, which is resting on the console between us in an evidence bag. “You think Lieutenant Wagner’s in the wind?”

  He shrugs. “It’s odd for someone not to be home at dawn. But who knows? Maybe he has a lady friend and he stays at her place. Or maybe he has some morning routine. We don’t know much about him.” He looks at me. “But, yeah, if I’m putting money down—I think he’s gone.”

  “Shit,” I mumble. I suppose I spooked him. It’s always one step forward, two steps back with this guy. “But you have alerts out for his van?”

  “Everywhere,” he says. “Local cops, state troopers. Every county road, every highway. If he took off, we’ll catch him.”

  His phone rings. He punches the button for the speakerphone.

  “We got the warrant,” Elizabeth Ashland says. “I’m on my way.”

  96

  ALL FIVE vehicles converge at once on 407 Morningside Lane. Five male and three female agents, all wearing blue windbreakers with FBI on the back, plus Books and me.

  And Elizabeth Ashland and Dwight Ross, who arrived with the search warrant. Everyone wants in now that my search has borne fruit, now that it’s no longer a wild-goose chase.

  One of the local agents picks the locks on the front door in less than a minute, and we enter. Books calls out, “Lieutenant Martin Wagner! FBI! We have a warrant to search these premises!”

  It doesn’t take long to confirm he’s not here. The place isn’t that big. A living room in front connected to a kitchen in the rear. To the left, a door to the garage, a small powder room, and the one and only bedroom.

  I watch my step and don’t touch anything. I follow Books. Elizabeth and Dwight, I note, waited until the place was confirmed empty before they walked in.

  In the bedroom, the bed is unmade. A small bedside lamp is on the floor. There’s a low dresser with the drawers pulled out to varying degrees. The top drawers are empty. The others are mostly empty. Hangers are spilled across the carpet.

  The closet, which has a low bar for a disabled owner, is nearly empty, just a couple of shirts and a pair of pants in a bundle on the hardwood floor. In one corner of the closet are two large dust outlines, one a square, the other a rectangle. Boxes or containers that rested there for a long time, now gone.

  One picture missing from the wall, the nail there naked.

  “Packed up and gone,” says Books. “He was in a hurry too.”

  On a desk in the bedroom is a neat pile of bills. I find one from AT&T and get his cell phone number. I dial Rabbit and read the number to her. “Do your work,” I say. “Do it fast.”

  The bathroom attached to the bedroom is empty of toiletries; some of the drawers beneath the vanity are open. The shower curtain is pulled back; the ledge above the disabled-accessibility bar, where presumably he’d keep soap and shampoo, is empty.

  “He’s going to have a hard time on the run,” I say. “He can’t just stop at any old hotel or stay in any old place. He needs disability access.”

  Books hums his doubt. “If he’s as good as you say, he probably already thought of that.”

  We are almost bumping into each other in here. It feels like overkill, twelve people searching an apartment that can’t be a thousand square feet. I go to the living room and look at the books in a small bookcase—The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, The Prince, Intelligence in War, Deep Undercover. I could spend all day in this apartment, getting inside his head. I’ve spent so long chasing him. Chasing him, to be sure, for the purpose of arresting him, but still—it’s hard for me not to feel a strange sort of bond with this monster.

  From the bedroom, Elizabeth Ashland calls out, “Books!”

  We both return to the bedroom. One of the female agents is on her hands and knees. Next to her is a weapon, black and yellow, that looks like an elongated handgun, like something out of the Star Wars movies or a comic book.

  “It was under the bed,” says Elizabeth. “I think this is the Taser.”

  “You were right about this whole thing, Lizzie,” says Dwight Ross, his hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Sorry I doubted you.”

  “Yeah, this was Elizabeth’s hard work,” Books whispers to me. “What would we do without her?”

  I squeeze his arm, my way of telling him to let it go.

  Books and I crouch down by the Taser. “He customized it,” says Books.

  “How’d he keep the darts from burning the victims’ skin?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I’m not an expert on Tasers. Maybe he insulated the darts somehow. With rubber, probably. We’d have to fire it to find out.” He rises to his feet. “This guy is not screwing around.”

  “But it’s odd,” I say. “He left it behind.”

  “He doesn’t need it anymore. Now he blows things up.”

  “Whoa!” We hear this from the kitchen, which is only a few steps away, connected to the bedroom. With so many agents
and so little space to cover, the revelations are coming at us one after the other.

  “Whoa is right,” says Books when he enters the kitchen. At the base of the stove is a small pull-out drawer. I have one of those. I shove frying pans in there. Lieutenant Wagner, apparently, uses it for something else.

  He’s filled his with cash, enclosed in brown paper bags. The agent sitting on the floor pulls out one brown bag after the other from the neatly stacked rows. Another agent has one of the bags on the counter and is counting the money inside. “There’s…five grand in this one bag,” he says. “Fifty bills. A hundred dollars each.”

  The agent on the floor counts the bags in the pulled-out tray. “So that’s…twenty-two bags, total.”

  “A hundred and ten thousand, if every bag has the same amount,” says Elizabeth.

  Cash. Over a hundred thousand in cash. “It doesn’t make sense,” I say.

  “Sure it does,” says Elizabeth. “He wants to avoid detection when he’s traveling around the country committing his crimes. Credit cards pin you down. He pays for everything in cash.”

  Yes, Elizabeth, I know why criminals use cash. That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant at all.

  “Count up the money, guys,” Elizabeth says. She turns to me. “Emmy, the people he’s killed. Are they all in the ground?”

  Still thinking, I shake my head, confused. “Are they…”

  “Buried,” she says. “Are all the victims buried?”

  I close my eyes. “Nora Connolley isn’t. The New Orleans victim. Sergeant Crescenzo convinced the family not to bury her until he’s finished his investigation.”

  “Good. Let’s try to tie that Taser to the wounds on her body.”

  “I’m on it,” I say. But at the moment, my thoughts aren’t on the Taser or Nora Connolley’s wounds.

  I’m still thinking about all that cash.

  97

  WE DON’T want to be obvious about it. We stay in the apartment, continuing the search, until Books and I get a moment to ourselves in the living room.

  “All that cash?” I whisper to Books.

  “I know,” he says, stone-faced. He walks out the front door. He wants to talk privately. Once outside, he stops and turns so quickly that I almost run into him. Some neighbors are gathered a few driveways down, wondering about all the law enforcement vehicles. Books notices and keeps his voice low.

  “Is it possible that the person funneling money to Elizabeth is…Wagner?” he says.

  “Citizen David has been funneling cash to Elizabeth. That’s what we think, right?”

  Books nods. “Why can’t Wagner be Citizen David?”

  “I…Wagner? So Darwin and Citizen David are the same person?”

  “Why not?” says Books. “They’re both smart. Highly disciplined.”

  “They’re polar opposites. David is a crusader against corporate greed and oppression and all that kind of stuff,” I say. “He’s for the little guy. Wagner wants to kill the poorest and the weakest. He’s the anti–Citizen David.”

  “Which is why it’s the perfect cover,” he says. “Think about it, Em. He sets himself up as this righteous, modern-day Robin Hood. He sees how the FBI responds. He gets better. It’s all a setup to do what he really wants to do, which is use his bombs to kill the poor, the sick, the homeless.”

  I pace the front yard. The heat is already blossoming from warm to oppressive. Some neighbor is recording us with a smartphone.

  “You really believe that?” I ask Books.

  “I’m not sure, no. But it’s a thought. I mean, why—” He catches himself, lowers his head, draws closer to me. “Why is Elizabeth Ashland so goddamned interested in this case all of a sudden?”

  “To steal credit for catching the Chicago bomber. Just like Dwight. But—Elizabeth is the one who gave me the green light. If it weren’t for her, I’d still be sitting in front of a computer begging someone to listen to me. We wouldn’t have a dozen agents and search warrants.”

  “True.” Books stuffs his hands in his pockets. “But maybe she realized how strong a case you were building. She wanted to get on the train before it ran her over.”

  Maybe. The pieces haven’t fallen into place yet. But at least we have some pieces now.

  My phone buzzes. Rabbit. I almost drop the phone, I’m trying to answer it so quickly. “You have something good?” I ask. I put her on speaker so Books can hear too.

  “Negative on current CSLI.” Cell-site location information, she means. Cell phones are always scanning the environment for the best signal—the closest cell site—even if the phones aren’t being used, and sometimes even when the phones are turned off. Every connection with a new cell site generates a time-stamped record of cell-site location information—CSLI. Once I gave Wagner’s cell phone number to Rabbit, she was able to go to work on the CSLI.

  But there’s no current CSLI, meaning Wagner’s phone isn’t sending out any signals right now. He either destroyed his phone or removed the SIM card. We were hoping he’d make a rookie mistake.

  “Last CSLI for Wagner’s cell phone was in Annandale at two thirty-eight a.m. So that’s when he killed it or pulled the SIM card.”

  “That’s when he left Annandale, in other words.”

  “Well, that’s when he wanted us to stop tracking his movements, anyway,” says Books. He looks at me, shaking his head. “Two freakin’ thirty-eight. If we’d gotten that warrant last night…”

  I know. We’d have caught him.

  “You guys didn’t think I’d call you with only bad news, did you?”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “We got two hits on ALPRs last night.”

  Books almost jumps in the air. “Where? When?” An ALPR—for “automatic license-plate reader”—is a device mounted on a squad car or some stationary object that reads every license plate that comes within its field of vision and logs it.

  “A Fairfax County Police patrol car caught the plate on a county road about a half an hour from you guys, due west,” says Rabbit. “Time of four thirty-one a.m. There was a two-car accident on the road and they were blocking it off.”

  “And the other?”

  “The second was caught farther west, but he was heading southbound, back toward the county road. Time of four forty-six a.m.”

  “He went off the county road and got back on?”

  “I’ll send you the map. Looks like he had to backtrack and take a different route to go around the car accident and get back on the county road.”

  “He had to call an audible,” Books says.

  “So he kills his phone at two thirty-eight a.m. in order to conceal his movements from us,” I say. “Then we catch his license plate at four thirty-one a.m. on the county road. And it took him only about thirty minutes, you said, to reach that spot.”

  “Approximately, yes,” Rabbit says.

  “So that’s a two-hour window, with only thirty minutes built in for travel. What did he do in those other ninety minutes?”

  As if Rabbit knows.

  We’ll deal with that later. This is huge. Wagner finally made a mistake. Looks like he was forced into it, but we’ll take a mistake however we can get it.

  “Let’s go,” says Books.

  98

  WE USE the data points that Rabbit sent to our phones. It takes us less than thirty minutes to reach the spot on the county road where Wagner’s license plate was tagged first. We are out of town, a rural area full of cornfields.

  “There,” says Books, pointing off the road toward the sloping shoulder at a car’s fender, bent and battered, part of the carnage from the car accident. Some shattered glass is sprinkled along the side of the road.

  “So Wagner gets to this spot and he hits a police blockade, he can’t go any farther,” says Books. “He has to backtrack. We know he ends up taking Bell Road to get back on the county road about two miles up ahead.”

  Books does a three-point turn and drives east to the next turnoff. “He�
�d have taken this road,” he says. We go left and follow the road until we reach a strip mall. There’s a tailor shop, a real estate agent, an ice cream parlor. Signs for the interstate point left.

  “We know he didn’t take the interstate,” says Books. “But this will get us to Bell, right?”

  “That’s what the map says.”

  So we turn left, heading west again, until we reach Bell Road. He takes another left, and we travel north, back toward the county road. On top of the sign for the approaching intersection with the county road is a mounted reader, the one that tagged Wagner’s license plate the second time.

  Books moves the vehicle up to the T-intersection and pulls over to the side.

  “So what does Wagner do at this point?” he asks. “Does he go right—west?”

  “Probably,” I say. “That’s the direction he’d been headed when he hit the police barricade.”

  Books looks at me. He reaches for his phone and dials up Bonita Sexton. “Rabbit,” he says, “we’re at the intersection of Bell and the county road. If I turn right and go west, when’s the next ALPR?”

  “It’s…three miles up ahead. There’s a speed camera and an ALPR.”

  “But he didn’t hit that one,” I say.

  “No, he didn’t. That ALPR didn’t register Wagner’s license plate last night.”

  Books asks, “Are there any turnoffs between where I am right now and that ALPR?”

  “Not according to this map,” I say, looking at my phone.

  “No,” says Rabbit. “No turnoffs.”

  “So he didn’t turn right at this intersection,” says Books. “He must have turned left.”

  “He headed back east?” I ask. “Back toward the police barricade?”

  Books’s eyebrows lift. “Maybe there’s something between here and that police barricade.” He turns left and heads east on the county road.

  Nothing but foliage and green fields for the first mile. Then we see the sign, XTRA STORAGE, standing tall and wide, far off the road.