“It’s worth a try. And if we do find him, that report gives us a positive identification. He won’t be able to claim he didn’t use your sheets.”
Macimer smiled. “Why not?”
“Those stains. Identification of special antigens in the stain means you can match them up with red blood cell antigens. Take a blood sample from Xavier, and if the antigens match, the chances of identification are something like two million to one, if I remember my lessons.”
“You seem to be doing pretty well,” Macimer said. “Okay, go to it. Find Xavier for me.”
* * * *
In San Timoteo, California, Pat Garvey and Lenny Collins met by prearrangement at one o’clock that Friday afternoon at the Burger King out on the highway to Sacramento. California seemed to be distinguished more by the number of fast-food outlets than by surviving palm trees. It was another hot, dry day, the temperature in the mid-eighties.
Over hamburgers and french fries and chocolate milk shakes the two agents reviewed their three days in San Timoteo. Both thought they had accomplished as much as they could in the town. Lippert’s investigation must have taken him further afield, Garvey suggested. To find out where, they would have to follow him elsewhere. “I’d say we start digging into the records of the PRC Task Force. There’s a copy of that file in Sacramento. That was the office of origin for that investigation.”
“There’s also a copy at FBI Headquarters.”
“But we might see something that anyone who hasn’t been dogging Lippert’s footsteps would miss.”
“You’re probably right, but… there’s one thing I’d like to do first, if we’re all wrapped up here.” Collins had reached the bottom of his milk shake and made sucking noises with his straw as he tried to get the last drops. “I’d like to have a look at Lake Hieronimo. Have you thought any about Vernon Lippert drowning when he did?”
“You mean when he was just about ready to retire. Yeah… it’s ironic. You work your ass off all your life, and just when you’re about to reach the point where all you have to do is go fishing, your boat springs a leak or the wind comes up and you’re wiped out.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I meant… how many FBI agents do you suppose there are who drown alone in the middle of a little fishing lake? What do you suppose the statistics are on that?”
Garvey stared at him. “I doubt there are any,” he said after a moment.
“Right.” Collins drawled out the word. “I’d kind of like to wander up there, maybe talk to a few people, the coroner, people who live there year-round. There must be a few.”
“You think there’s something fishy about that lake besides the fishing?”
Collins gave up trying to extract any more chocolate from the bottom of the shake cup. “Could be. I looked up Lake Hieronimo on the map. It’s maybe an hour’s drive up into the mountains. Probably cooler up there. We could make it this afternoon, then let the boss decide what comes next. That is, if you’d like a break from all the excitement around here.”
“Why not?” Garvey was playing it cool but Collins caught the sharp interest in his eyes.
“You ever do any fishing?” Collins asked.
“Are you kidding? I grew up in a boat.” Garvey laughed at Collins’ transparent surprise. “What did you think, that I grew up playing backgammon in a private school? Or polo?”
Collins grinned to cover the surprise of his perception that there might be more to his partner than the All-American façade suggested. “Polo crossed my mind,” he said.
14
After going off duty, Harrison Stearns spent that Friday evening in and around the Fedco department store. He knew his SAC was convinced that the thief who had taken Stearns’s vehicle three weeks ago was not a stray in the area. He either lived or worked nearby; otherwise, what had he been doing there on a rainy night without transportation of his own? “If you have to go any distance to go shopping without a car,” Macimer had said, “you don’t pick a rainy Friday night.”
But Agents Rayburn and Wagner had already checked out all Fedco employees, paying close attention to any who had recently been fired or quit. None of them fitted the description of the auto thief.
He lives near here, Stearns told himself. Or he works somewhere else close by. And gets off work late.
That speculation narrowed the scope of the search. But there were no offices or small businesses in the area that let employees out around eight or nine at night. The kid might be a busboy at a McDonald’s or a supermarket, or—
Or a thief.
Stearns, who at that moment was in the television and stereo sales area of the big discount store, watching the crowds, withdrew into a corner with his new idea. He began to get excited. Suppose it was no accident that the kid was in the parking lot that night? Suppose he wasn’t really an auto thief but a small-time scavenger, one who worked the parking lots, the cars that were left unlocked?
Would he feel safe enough, after three weeks, to come back here again?
Stearns reacted gloomily. Putting himself in the thief’s shoes, he could not see himself returning so soon to the scene of this particular crime.
But there were other crowded parking lots not far away. A group of stores nested around that intersection to the west, less than a half mile from Fedco. A restaurant on another corner, even closer. It had valet parking, but the kids chasing the cars didn’t have time to pay attention to loiterers—not discreet ones. And a parking-lot thief, usually bent only on stealing loose packages or car stereo units, was small-time enough to panic if he actually stole a car and belatedly discovered that it was a police car. Even worse, an FBI vehicle.
Leaving Fedco, Stearns located his own car and drove a half mile down the street to the next traffic light. There he turned into the parking lot serving a group of stores clustered around a Walgreen’s and a supermarket. When he got back to the office, he thought, he would check out any reports of parking-lot thefts. Might have to ask for police reports covering thefts in this vicinity; reports of petty thievery might not get past the first basket.
From a back corner of the lot, hunched down in the passenger seat of his unmarked car—anyone checking a parked car to see if it was occupied instinctively looked at the driver’s seat—Stearns began his own private surveillance.
* * * *
Back at Fedco, Jack Wagner and Cal Rayburn bought a cheese and pepperoni pizza in the cafeteria and carried it to one of the undersized Formica-topped tables. While Rayburn carefully wiped debris left by the previous occupant from the table, Wagner folded a wedge carefully and brought it to his mouth. Through a mouthful of pizza he said, “What do you suppose Stearns was doing here? Free-lancing?”
“Could be,” said the taciturn Rayburn. “But he isn’t the only one around.”
“What do you mean?” Wagner grabbed a napkin and wiped some juice from his chin.
“I’ve seen another one a couple times. Don’t know his name, but I know his face.”
“You’re sure he’s an agent?”
“Uh-huh.” Cal Rayburn glanced sleepily around the busy cafeteria. The place was about ready to close. Which made it close to the time of night the FBI vehicle was stolen from the parking lot. He attacked his wedge of pizza, chewing it methodically. “Maybe our boss isn’t telling us everything. Maybe he’s got a backup team assigned to give us competition.”
Jack Wagner grinned. “Hell of a waste,” he said.
* * * *
Paul Macimer left the office in the late afternoon. Jan’s car was not in the drive or garage when he arrived home. He found Kevin alone in the family room. “How’s it going, Kev?”
The boy ducked his head and mumbled something. He picked up his baseball glove from the couch beside him, stuck his left hand into the glove and slapped a fist into the oiled pocket.
“Do you know where your mother is?”
“She had to go to the store.”
“When are you going to get over being mad at me?”
&nbs
p; Kevin studied the spotless floor. “I’m not mad.”
“Disappointed?”
The boy hesitated, stuck his fist again into the glove’s pocket and shook his head.
“Still think I should have gone against those robbers with guns blazing? Have you thought about what that might have meant? The risks involved?”
“I know. It’s just that… I don’t know what I thought.”
“I think I do,” Macimer said gently. “I was more than a little bit disappointed myself, if you want the truth. Maybe I can do better the next time. Or make sure there isn’t a next time. But sometimes, Kevin, the thing you’d like to do isn’t the right thing.” Hearing his own words, he wondered if they sounded as hypocritical to the boy as they suddenly did to him.
Kevin pounded his glove, avoiding his father’s gaze. “I bet you could take those guys!”
Macimer was silent a moment, studying the boy, resisting the strong desire to take him in his arms. He didn’t want to embarrass Kevin any more than the boy already was. “Just remember this, Kevin. I wouldn’t have stood by while anything happened to you or your sister or your mother. No matter what.”
Kevin looked up at him, his manner suddenly sheepish, his eyes suspiciously moist. “I know that.”
Macimer grinned. “Good. Were you planning on using that glove, or were you only improving the pocket?”
“Davey and I were gonna play catch.”
“Okay, go ahead. Don’t be late for dinner.” As Kevin bolted toward the sliding patio doors Macimer called after him, “Is anyone else home?”
“Just Linda!”
Macimer watched the boy race across the yard, heading for the home of Davey Kramer. Kevin had been eager to escape, but his step seemed lighter, more buoyant after the brief exchange.
I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Confident promises, Macimer thought. He was remembering again Jan’s fears that not only she but also the children might be being followed. And watched.
* * * *
He found Linda in her room. The door was open but Macimer tapped lightly with his knuckles. “Okay if I come in?”
She was lying on the bed, propped up against the headboard with a copy of People magazine in her lap. Her extension phone was on the pillow beside her but the instrument was in its cradle. “Sure,” she said, without expression.
“Mom had to run out?”
“Yes. She went so fast she didn’t even ask if I wanted anything.”
Macimer found a place to sit on a chair crowded with cushions in the shapes of stuffed ladybugs, frogs and other comical creatures. It was his afternoon for trying to mend fences within his family. He knew why Jan had gone out so suddenly, probably soon after his telephone call saying he was leaving the office early. She hadn’t given Linda a chance to go with her. She had created an opportunity for Macimer to have his talk with Linda.
“Mom tells me you’re having trouble with what happened that night with the robbers. That you haven’t been able to forget it—to put it behind you.”
“What did you expect?” The question was sharp. Linda’s eyes were cool, alarmingly adult, strikingly like her mother’s when Jan was feeling hostile.
“I don’t know. It happened to you in a different way than it happened to me.” Macimer, trying to prepare for this moment, had found no magic words, few that seemed any good at all.
“What can I tell you? There are people like that. They have all kinds of things pushing them, all kinds of motives. Sometimes nothing more than anger.”
“Don’t try to make me feel sorry for them!” Linda cried. “Those creeps! I don’t need to understand them. They made me feel like I was some kind of bug they could squash anytime they wanted. Only first they’d have some fun, you know, like pulling off the wings and the legs.”
“That’s one of the hardest things to learn,” said Macimer. “That there are some people to whom you don’t matter at all. Even your life means nothing to them. Nobody ever found that easy to accept.”
“You know what it was mostly?” Linda demanded. “The macho thing. Strutting around this house, those two apes telling each other and trying to show the girl what big men they were. I’m beginning to think all men are the same. Some just have nicer manners.”
“We’re not all the same,” Macimer protested. He smiled. “What about your brothers? Look at Chip. Can you imagine him hurting anyone deliberately, especially a girl? You, for instance?”
“Lots of brothers rape their sisters.”
The comment chilled him. He reminded himself that he was talking not only to his daughter but to a young woman who had been hurt. “A great many people find an infinite number of ways to hurt each other. But that isn’t us, Linda. You know that. You didn’t answer my question about Chip just now because you know the answer, and it doesn’t fit with what you want to believe right now. That’s my point. All men aren’t like those two creeps. You know that from your own experience. Don’t take my word for it. Lean on what you know yourself.”
“What else would you say?” Linda answered with dignity.
“Because I’m a man? Because I’m a chauvinist myself, an exploiter of women?”
She was silent for a moment, staring at him, troubled. Then she said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
As Macimer stared at his daughter in silence, baffled and worried, wondering if perhaps Jan wasn’t right and the girl needed outside professional help, someone she could accept as objective and wise and supportive (fathers had once been supposed to be wise and supportive), another voice called out. “Yoo-hoo! Anyone there?”
Macimer and Linda exchanged glances. He offered an exaggerated grimace that brought a faint smile to her lips. They both recognized the voice, and there was an evident relaxing of the tension between them. “To the rescue, Daddy.”
“Once more unto the breach…. You see, we aren’t all bad.”
“Yoo-hoo? Paul? It’s Aileen…”
Linda looked unconvinced but willing to let their confrontation be set aside for the moment. Macimer went down the stairs to the family room. Aileen Hebert, a neighbor, stood just inside the open patio doors. Her face lit up with relief.
“Thank heaven you’re home! I saw your car, and I was hoping you’d be here. The door was open….”
“What’s happened, Aileen? Lock yourself out again?” Divorced and living alone—one child was married, the other away at school—Aileen was forever losing her car keys or locking herself out of the house.
“It’s not my fault this time, Paul. I know I had the house keys when I went out, I just can’t find them.”
“Everything’s locked? Have you tried all the windows?”
“Well, I think so. I put the keys in my purse as I was leaving, I remember that distinctly. I only went over to the mall to do some shopping.”
Macimer walked her back toward her house, which was two doors down the street, while they talked. She was a graying, still attractive woman in her forties whose vague manner, hair that seemed to have been used for nest building, and a tendency to dress uncertainly, as if she wanted to be ready for both a dinner party and a picnic, caused observers to overlook well-composed features and a fine figure. Macimer wondered if the vagueness, the haphazard dress and the lost keys were not all a consequence of the divorce, a cry for attention. But what particularly puzzled him about Aileen Hebert was how she could function efficiently—as she apparently did—as a secretary in one of Washington’s prestigious law firms.
“You ought to have a house key with your car keys,” he suggested.
“Well, I don’t know, Paul… I mean, you know I often forget my car keys, or leave them in the car. And if there was a house key with them and someone found them, well, they could just walk into the house, couldn’t they?”
Macimer had no answer for that.
Aileen Hebert followed him around her house, chattering as he checked the doors and windows. At the back of the house he found a bathroom window open about six inches.
There was a “burglar-proof” stopper for the double-hung window, but it had been carelessly opened out to allow the window to be pushed up. Macimer found a narrow putty knife in the garage and used its blade to pry loose the catch on the screen. Then he opened the window, climbed inside, rehooked the screen, set the window stopper to the safe position and walked through the house to the front door, where he let Aileen Hebert in. Her house keys were in a tray on a table in the foyer.
“I don’t know how that happened,” she said in bewilderment. “I know I put them in my purse. I must have been thinking of something else on my way out and put them down there, do you suppose?”
Macimer grinned. “Aileen, you and keys aren’t compatible, that’s all.”
“Not only me and keys,” she murmured ambiguously. “Would you like some coffee, Paul? It won’t take a minute. Or a drink?”
“No, thanks, I–”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to Jan. The funniest thing happened the other day. Was it Monday? No, I think it was Tuesday. Are you sure you won’t have a beer?”
“Thanks just the same, Aileen.”
“I was listening to the radio—I always keep it on FM, you know, I like to listen to the music. The house is so empty if I don’t have the radio on. Anyway, I was changing to another station. All of a sudden, as clearly as if she were standing right there in the room with me, I heard Jan’s voice!”
Macimer paused in the doorway. “Jan’s voice? Are you sure?”
“Yes! She was talking to someone on the phone. I didn’t mean to listen but, you know, I was so startled. She made a date—it was with another woman, Paul,” Aileen added archly, suppressing a giggle. “They were going out to dinner.”
“Tuesday night,” Macimer said slowly.
“Yes, I’m sure it must have been Tuesday. That is…”
“I think I will have that beer,” he said. “Then I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened.”
* * * *
Macimer had come home early but his working day was not over. He spent the evening in his den, waiting for telephonic reports from Taliaferro, the case agent monitoring the surveillance of the suspect Molter from the Energy Research and Development Administration. The phone rang shortly after eight o’clock and Macimer snatched it up.
The Brea File Page 17