Unsolved

by James Patterson

  “Life can be complicated, Books, wouldn’t you agree?” says FBI director William Moriarty.

  116

  “COMPLICATED?” BOOKS ASKS. “It doesn’t have to be. Not that complicated, Bill.”

  “But it is,” says Director Moriarty. “For example, a man can love his wife. He can be devoted to her. But he can still acknowledge that he has certain…needs.”

  “So Betsy has a stroke and is confined to a wheelchair, and that gives you an excuse to acknowledge your needs? Which I assume means ‘fuck one of my agents.’”

  “I didn’t say an excuse. I didn’t say that. And I’ll remind you to be cautious both in your judgments and in your tone.”

  “My tone? I don’t work for you anymore, Bill. I came to help out on this investigation at your request. You asked me.”

  Books draws back, letting his own words sink in.

  “Okay, I get it now,” he continues. “I always thought it was a little odd that you’d have me investigate the leak when you thought the prime suspect was Emmy. I took it as the ultimate compliment that you had so much faith in my integrity that you thought I’d even bust my own fiancée if I believed she was the leaker.”

  “That’s true. It’s completely—”

  “Bullshit,” Books snaps. “You wanted an outsider, an outsider you could trust to keep your secrets. You knew I’d have to investigate everyone. You knew that might end up including Elizabeth. And you knew that if I looked into her, I’d see that she seemed to have an awful lot of cash on hand. Which would certainly make her look suspicious. If someone was going to find that out, you wanted it to be someone who doesn’t work at the Bureau. Someone you could trust to protect you. Someone who looked up to you as a mentor.”

  “You’re…twisting this, Books.”

  “You could have told me this straight off, Bill. You could have said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing, but I’m sleeping with Elizabeth, and I don’t want my wife seeing the credit card bills for hotel rooms and dinners and whatever else—but I’m too much of an old-school guy to let her pay, so I’m giving her cash while she puts all the expenses on her credit cards.’ Yeah, that would have been helpful information for me to have, Mr. Director.”

  “I owe you an apology for not telling you,” says Moriarty. “You’re exactly right about that. I hoped it would never come to you investigating Elizabeth. I was certain—we were certain—Emmy was the leaker. Are you telling me she’s not?”

  Books drops his head into his hands. Until about fifteen minutes ago, he was certain it was Elizabeth. He thought he was about to close the loop on the leak investigation, and maybe more. Instead, he’s back to square one.

  “But Agent Bookman, I do not owe you or anyone else an apology for what I do with my personal life. I love Betsy dearly and I’ve been very, very good to her. She wants for nothing. She never will. You have no idea what it’s like to love someone who wants to love you back but can’t.”

  With that, Books raises his head and looks over at his mentor. Actually, he thinks, I do know what that’s like.

  He opens the door and leaves the town car.

  117

  I STARE at the computer screen, at the vehicle registration of the one car whose license plate was captured at all three bombing sites: the bank in Seymour, Connecticut, accused of racial discrimination in lending; the fast-food restaurant in Pinellas Park, Florida, its parent company accused of animal cruelty; the city hall in Blount County, Alabama, that wouldn’t marry same-sex couples.

  A license plate that was scrubbed from the bulk data, deleted forever, so that when Rabbit organized and collated it, we’d never see it.

  My phone buzzes. Books. I reach for the phone, but my hand is shaking so hard I don’t think I can lift it. The buzzing stops. My phone beeps a minute later with a voice mail. Without lifting the phone, I push the button to listen to the message.

  “Emmy, it’s not Elizabeth Ashland. She’s not the mole.”

  I know she isn’t.

  “She’s having an affair with Director Moriarty. They’ve been meeting at the Payton Club. He’s been paying her cash so she can put everything on her credit cards and he can hide the bills from Betsy.”

  My brain is telling me this is a wow moment, but I’m not wowed. I couldn’t care less about Elizabeth Ashland right now. Though this must be what she meant when she was talking about her complicated love life on the airplane.

  Books isn’t done, but I get the point. I turn off the phone when Bonita Sexton comes rushing down the aisle. “Okay, what’s up?” she says. “What happened?”

  “Hey, Rabbit.” I gesture to my computer. “Somebody hacked into the bulk data for the Citizen David investigation.”

  “What? Somebody messed with my data?”

  I nod. “I re-created the file,” I tell her. “From the original data.”

  “You did?” she says. “That’s my job.”

  I throw up my hands. “Well, Rabbit, what can I say? I did it.” My eyes are blurry with tears.

  “Well, okay, then. Let me run it for a compatibility anal—”

  “I did that too,” I say. “See for yourself.” I nod toward the computer screen. She turns and looks at the license registration I pulled up.

  “No,” she says.

  I stand and leave my cubicle, not feeling my legs, moving as if I’m floating. I reach Rabbit’s cubicle and pick up the framed photographs, joined together, of her boys, Mason and Jordan. I hear her come up behind me.

  “Jordan, I assume—it was when you were in New Haven visiting him,” I say. “Not that hard to drive over to Seymour and blow up that bank. Mason? In Tampa? Pinellas Park isn’t too far away. Plant a bomb at the fast-food restaurant and make the chain pay for being cruel to the chickens that are in its sandwiches.”

  Rabbit doesn’t say anything. I can hear her heavy breathing, nothing more.

  “The city hall in Alabama? That one would have been harder. But by then,” I say, turning to her, “you knew you were in charge of the data for the Citizen David investigation. You didn’t need to be careful anymore. You could just scrub yourself out of the data.”

  Her eyes are cast down; her chest is heaving.

  “What about Chicago?” I say. “Was that—”

  “Chicago wasn’t me, and you know it,” she hisses. “I never killed a single person. I never would have. That’s why it made me…” She shakes her head.

  “That’s why the Chicago bombing sickened you so much,” I finish. “Because someone was taking your crusade and bastardizing it, bombing people you genuinely care about.” I remember now how upset Rabbit was after Chicago, how personally she took it. I hadn’t realized how personal it was to her.

  Rabbit lets out a big sigh. She’s relieved, probably, in a weird way. How this must have weighed on her.

  “If you’re waiting for an apology,” she says, “you aren’t going to get one. Everyone I hit had it coming. Banks that deny loans to black and brown people? Screw them. Restaurant chains that torture animals? You actually feel bad for them? This country is going to hell, and somebody has to stand up for the little guy.”

  “Did somebody have to leak information to Shaindy Eckstein at the Post?” I ask.

  That question knocks some of the air out of her.

  “You needed a buffer, right?” I go on. “If Citizen David is always one step ahead of our investigation, someone will eventually suspect it’s an inside job. But leak to a reporter who tells the whole world, and the only thing people will suspect is that there’s a leaker. Nobody will think that someone within our own Bureau is Citizen freakin’ David himself. Or herself, apparently.”

  Bonita breaks eye contact, stares at something in the middle distance. No tears have fallen, I notice. Her face is a stone wall. I didn’t realize how hardened she’d become. All the protest rallies she attended, all the volunteer work she did, weren’t enough. Her kids were grown up and she’d had a fulfilling career. It was time for her, I guess, to take bolder ste
ps against what she was seeing happen to her country. And to gather a national following in the process.

  “Guess who the prime suspect for the leak is, Rabbit?” I point to my chest. “Me.”

  “I wouldn’t have let that happen,” she says softly.

  “No?”

  “No, Emmy.” She fixes her eyes on mine. “If it came to it, I’d have said it was me.”

  “You wouldn’t have told them everything, though. Just the leak part, right?”

  She raises her hands. “I guess we’ll never know now. Because now the question is, what are you going to tell them? Are you going to tell them everything?”

  I look again at the photos of her two boys. I set down the frame.

  “How many times did we talk?” she says. “How many times did we say to each other, ‘David’s one of the good guys’? You know what I was doing was right. When I hacked into that pharmaceutical company and exposed all their lies about that hepatitis drug—that they knew all along it would destroy people’s kidneys but didn’t say anything? That wasn’t wrong. Or when I hacked into that bullshit Ivy League school that claims to care about diversity and exposed their hypocrisy?”

  “The bombs were different,” I say.

  “Why? I just damaged property. I didn’t kill anybody. Or even wound anybody. I called in bomb threats to scatter anyone who might be inside. And the explosions themselves—they just messed up the interiors of the buildings. I didn’t knock down buildings, like Darwin did in Chicago. I just wanted to shake them up. And I did.”

  She’s not wrong. We always noted how Citizen David took precautions to avoid human casualties. And it’s true that we privately rooted for Citizen David even as we tried to catch him. Or I did, at least.

  “I can’t do this right now,” I say. “There’s something bigger at stake.”

  “Darwin,” she says.

  “Darwin. I need to stop him. And one thing I know for certain is that I need you to help me.”

  She nods.

  “You want to catch this monster, right?” I ask.

  “More than you do,” she says.

  Before now, I wouldn’t have believed that. But although chasing Darwin has become my obsession, it’s never been personal. For her, this is personal. I can harness that energy and determination. I need it right now.

  Catch Darwin first. Deal with Rabbit later.

  “See you tomorrow, bright and early,” I say.

  118

  BOOKS PICKS me up at the Hoover Building after ten. He’s still reeling from what he learned about Elizabeth Ashland and is full of commentary on the subject. It makes it easier for me to stay mum about what I just learned.

  I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about that information yet. Until I do, telling Books would only put him in a compromising position.

  “So I guess we’re back at square one on the leak investigation,” he says.

  “The leak investigation doesn’t matter,” I say too quickly, too harshly. “All that matters is Darwin.”

  If Books notices the tension in my voice, he doesn’t say anything.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I say, “we’re going to chase down the Chevy Impala registration list. If you’re right that it’s the model of car Petty was driving, and if he lives somewhere nearby—which he probably does—we’ll be able to narrow it down pretty quickly. Now all I need is a photo of Petty to show the people at the rehab facility.”

  “I think I can help you with that.”

  “You got a photo of him on your phone?”

  “Not exactly. My store has a security camera in the alley, remember?”

  I forgot all about that. “Perfect. Petty came in through the back door today, right?”

  “He did.”

  We drive to Alexandria and he slows the car as we approach the rear of the store. “The last time we came here,” says Books, “I told you to be careful, that you never knew where Darwin might be. Remember how you pooh-poohed that?”

  “I’m not pooh-poohing it now,” I say. “No pooh-poohing. Negative on pooh-poohing.”

  We pull into the alley. The security camera looks down on us as we enter the store. Books draws his weapon just in case. It’s dark inside, so Books flicks on the light immediately. Rear inventory room, empty. The remainder of the store, Books quickly confirms, also empty.

  “Okay.” He goes to work on the video equipment, pulling up yesterday’s video, stopping where it showed Petty hobbling down the alley, his heavy bag over his shoulder. Books downloads the video onto a DVD and hands it to me.

  “Keep it safe,” he says. “With any luck, we’ll know a lot more about Petty tomorrow. We may even find him. And hopefully Tom or Louise at the clinic can identify him and help us start building a case.”

  “Great.”

  “Now, one more thing,” he says. He walks over to the corner of the inventory room where Petty slept. The bed is still neatly made. Next to it, two crates are stacked, and on top of them, there’s a glass vase of fake flowers.

  Books finds a stray plastic bag on one of the bookshelves and throws it over the vase. “Petty put this vase here,” he says. “It used to be up front, but I moved it back into the storage room.”

  “I remember it.”

  “Petty must have seen it on the shelf and put it here.” Books carefully lifts the vase, now securely in the plastic bag. “Fingerprints,” he says, holding it up.

  “Oh, that’s perfect.” We are keeping the fingerprint techies busy these days.

  “Glass holds fingerprints pretty well. I’ll run it over to Rich Rudney tomorrow morning,” he says. “And maybe we’ll have an ID on our mysterious Sergeant Petty.”

  119

  I WALK into the office at seven sharp. Pully isn’t in yet, but Rabbit is in front of her computer, looking different—rested, oddly enough, maybe because she feels unburdened now that I know her secret.

  She sees me come in but says nothing. The look she gives me—a mix of scorn and defiance—fills me, more than anything else has, with a palpable sense of loss. We will never look at each other the same way again. We will never, in any way, be the same again.

  She must know that I have no choice but to turn her in. She must know that.

  She will probably go to prison for the rest of her life.

  Pully rolls in not long afterward, his hair sticking out in all directions, looking about fifteen years old. How I envy him not knowing what I know about the third member of our team.

  But there’s no time for that now. By eight o’clock, we are humming like the old days, a three-headed crew of data analysts. Pully is looking at registrations on Chevy Impalas in Virginia on the assumption that Books correctly guessed the model of car Petty was driving.

  Rabbit, meanwhile, is doing what she does best—compiling. This time, she’s gathering and combining ALPR records extending out from the location where Petty jumped Books in Huntington, the assumption being that some police squad car or some mounted reader on a traffic-control device caught Petty’s license plate.

  Hopefully, we’ll be able to cross-reference Virginia-registered Chevy Impalas with plates caught on ALPRs near the scene where Petty and Books tangled.

  Books himself has a busy morning. After he gives Agent Rudney the glass vase that hopefully has Petty’s fingerprints on it, he swears out a complaint for an arrest warrant against a man known to him only as Petty for the crime of assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. So now, if and when we find him, we don’t need to immediately stick murder or domestic terrorism charges on him; we can scoop him up for the assault alone.

  By noon, Rabbit has compiled data within a five-mile radius of the spot where Petty jumped Books. If Petty sped away in his blue sedan—hopefully an Impala—which he must have done, we have his license plate in here somewhere.

  “Run the ALPRs against the vehicle registrations,” I say.

  Rabbit does. We get two hits, two matches on the cross-reference. Two Chevy Impalas registered
in Virginia crossed the path of some license-plate reader within five miles of the ambush spot yesterday.

  She pulls up the registrations. The first one is to an African-American man who lives in Roanoke, on the other side of the state. “Gotta be a couple hundred miles in distance,” says Pully. “And the wrong race. Petty’s a white guy, I assume?”

  Yes, he is.

  The second registration is to Mary Ann Stoddard, age fifty-one, who lives in Huntington, Virginia.

  Huntington. The town next to Alexandria. The town where Petty ambushed Books.

  I grab my phone and dial Books. “We got it,” I say.

  120

  BOOKS LAYS out a satellite view of a Google map before the other FBI agents he’s assembled for the raid.

  “The Meredith Court and Gardens,” he says. “A twelve-story apartment building in downtown Huntington, just off Route One. Mary Ann Stoddard lives on the seventh floor, unit seven-nineteen. Officially, she lives alone.” He looks around at the agents. “But obviously, we have reason to believe she’s not alone at the moment.”

  “Seven-nineteen,” says one of the agents. “Is that an interior unit?”

  “Actually, that’s the good news—no, it’s not. It’s a corner unit.” Books spreads out an architectural layout of the apartments that Emmy found online. “Unit nineteen on each floor is on the southeast corner. That means…” He returns to the Google map, the satellite view of the building. “Right here, this side. So we can set up shooters on the roofs of these buildings right here.”

  “Do we know he’s there?”

  “We don’t. I think it’s fifty-fifty at best. He could definitely be in the wind. I may have spooked him yesterday.”

  “You mean yesterday, the day he kicked your ass?” That comment from an agent named Hendricks, whom Books has known for years. He’s got a chaw of tobacco in his mouth and a smirk on his face. It’s like Books never left, these guys and their bullshit.