While Lund poured a couple cups of joe, Val explained the fragrance of her clothing and gave Jack a quick rundown of their meeting with Kasdorf, including their theory that Hess might have a second accomplice.
“The ferry was just the beginning,” Val said in conclusion.
“Are the feebies involved?” Jack asked.
“Involved isn’t a strong enough word. They’re throwing around the T word.”
“Typical.”
“No, terrorist,” Lund said.
Both women stared at him for a moment, then went back to their conversation.
“I feel for you, Val. There’s nothing I miss less about the job than the political tiptoeing. And no one can slow down an investigation as efficiently as the feebies. You in contact with them?”
“I’m no longer chief. In fact, I’m not a cop at all.”
“What happened?”
“She was forced to resign,” Lund said.
“Long story.” Val waved her hands in front of her, as if trying to erase the line of conversation. “But I’m on my way over to the station to talk to the new chief.”
“Want some company?” Jack asked. “God knows I have enough experience dealing with the feebies.”
Val glanced at Lund. “Want to go with us?”
Two seconds before, she’d been on the edge of hopeless. Now at least she had a direction. And an experienced, determined former cop just like herself to help with the load.
He groped in his coat and pulled out the pages of ambulance buyer names Oneida had provided. “Go ahead. I have some calls to make.”
Carla
Carla’s index finger was shaking as she pressed the doorbell button. A simple buzzing sounded inside the tiny ranch house. Footsteps creaked on floorboards and the white eyelet curtains pulled back from the window, then fell.
The deadbolt slid open.
The knob rattled and turned.
Carla forced a smile to her face, her swollen lip throbbing with the effort.
The door opened. An older woman peered out. “Can I help you?”
Her hair was too dark for her complexion, and rosacea stained her round cheeks, but the concerned pull of her eyebrows seemed genuine. As if she was worried about Carla. As if she truly wanted to help.
“I’m in trouble,” Carla managed to say. “And I don’t know what to do.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He… he hit me again, and…” Carla turned her head to the side, showing the bruise along her cheekbone. She didn’t have to fake how much it hurt.
“Come in the house. We’ll call the police.” The woman pulled the door wide and stepped to the side, clearing the way.
Carla glanced back over her shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“I’m a social worker. My name is Ruth. I’ll call for help and get you someplace safe. You’re going to be okay.”
Carla hesitated before stepping across the threshold. “He gets so angry. If he knew I was telling someone…”
“You’re safe now. Really. Everything will be okay.”
Carla braced her foot against the door to prevent it from closing.
The woman looked past her, to the step outside. Hazel eyes widening, she let out a gasp.
“Everything will be okay,” Dixon said. He raised his Buck knife, the kitchen light glinting off the blade, the handle a deep blue. “But the only way you’ll be safe is to tell me where I can find my son.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Val
They hadn’t even gotten out of the Doghouse parking lot when Jack voiced the question. “So what’s with you and Lund?”
“He asked me to marry him.”
“Marry him? I didn’t even know you were dating.”
“If by dating you mean dinner and a movie, we haven’t. Not really.”
Jack glanced at her, then back at the road.
Val should probably count herself lucky that Jack was driving. At least this way, she couldn’t stare Val down until she confessed her endless tangle of thoughts on the matter. Val didn’t have the energy to examine them herself, let alone open up her guilty, pitiful, warring feelings with someone else.
Even Jack.
“Did you give him an answer?”
“No.”
“Are you going to?”
“Today? No.”
“Ever?”
“I’m horrible. I just… I can’t think about this now. Hell, I might not even live until tomorrow.”
“Seems like you should tell him yes, then. No downside.”
“Jack, you’re not helping.”
“All right. But just so you know, I understand. After one marriage and one almost marriage, I’m done with it. Better to just live for the day.”
Val really was horrible. At the very least, she wasn’t a good friend. She hadn’t even asked how Jack was doing. “Are you still with Phin?”
“Yes. And it’s good. But that doesn’t mean I want him to put a ring on it. Everything’s fine as it is. Now give me details about what we’re looking for.”
The rest of the drive into town, Val gave Jack more detail about the ferry bombing and attack on the police station. By the time she finished, they were driving down Main Street, the old brewery-turned-police-station looming less than a block away.
Val’s throat closed, and tears welled in her eyes. Pulling in a deep breath, she pushed them back and raised her chin. She couldn’t afford emotion. Not now. She had to make it through this.
For Grace.
Jack parked along the curb behind two construction company vans and a Dumpster. The shattered front window had been boarded up, but the door was blocked open, and Val and Jack dodged two burly men who were hauling burned hunks of desk out into the rain.
The odor reached Val before she stepped inside, even more intense than the smell of her sweater in the damp cold. Tears blurred her vision. Looking up, she opened her eyes wide. She couldn’t let herself remember. Later she’d give herself over to grief, but not yet.
Val felt Jack watching her, reading her.
“Looks like the Chicago feebies are assisting the Wisconsin feebies.” Jack gestured to the back of the station. Originally a tasting room in the old brewery, Val had converted it to a makeshift conference room when the police department had taken over the building. But due to a very limited budget, the oak bar remained, and one wall was still lined with giant mash tuns once used to brew beer.
The incompleteness of the transition had always bothered her. The unprofessional look of the conference room, definitely, but more seriously, the lack of security of the windows up front. If only she’d replaced those, even if it had taken her own money.
Beating the thoughts away, Val focused on the two men in dark suits speaking to Pete Olson. One man she recognized as Special Agent Subera, who she’d met in the past. She didn’t recognize the second man and assumed he must be from the Chicago office.
The second man glanced over and raised his brows in apparent surprise. Val realized he was staring at Jack.
“You have a contact in the FBI?”
“More like an annoying and nondescript thorn in my shoe. Why don’t I find out what the feebies know? I’m sure you have a lot to deal with here.”
While Jack met the men at the conference room door, Val forced her feet to carry her into her office. Or at least what used to be her office.
The desk had already been hauled away, matching soot spots on floor, walls, and ceiling all that was left of the fire besides the oppressive smell.
Val eyed her diplomas still hanging on the wall and wondered what had happened to the items in her desk. She didn’t keep many personal things at work, but there were a few things she’d like to salvage if possible.
The pewter Bucky Badger paperweight Oneida had insisted Val keep, a reminder of the first time they’d managed to survive Dixon Hess.
The photo of Val’s sister, Melissa, holding Baby Grace.
And Val’s
address book.
One Christmas a few years ago, after she’d lectured Grace about the lack of security on the internet, her niece had given her a leather-bound address book so she could keep track of her contacts the “old lady way.”
Funny girl.
Even funnier was that Val had used it. She didn’t hate technology. She knew her way around a computer. These days it often seemed she had an umbilical cord connecting her to her iPhone. But she always, always backed up her contact information in hard copy. Probably something to do with living through the scare preceding Y2K. She didn’t know. But it made everything feel more… permanent.
Now the book was gone. Just like the paperweight and the photo. Just like the job and many items in her house.
Just like Oneida.
Just like Grace.
“That bastard destroyed everything.” Pete Olson spoke quietly, but his tone vibrated with cold anger.
Val turned to face him.
“I never minded working with the feds before,” he continued. “Always thought stories about local police being shut out were a myth or at least an exaggeration.”
“They aren’t telling you anything?”
“You’d think I’m a damn reporter. Except I think the feds are giving reporters more. This morning I had to watch the news to find out that three deputies died on that ferry. Three.” He held up the requisite number of fingers. “And two are in stable condition. Yesterday, we only knew about one death. I mean, you don’t even let other cops know about two more of our own before you tell the public? What the hell?”
“We think Hess has more explosives, Pete. A lot more.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t say.”
Olson ran a hand over the blond bristles on his head. “Really, Val? Now you’re withholding information from me, too?”
“I need my informant, Pete. Not being a cop… well, it’s working for me in this instance.”
“Kasdorf.”
“Let me handle this.”
“The nut sold bombs to Hess, and you want me to ignore it?”
“He didn’t sell anything. Hess stole them.”
“What did he steal?”
Val told him about the ANFO and the Claymores.
“Shit.”
“It would be good to know what he used on the ferry… and what is still out there.”
“I’ll see what I can find out, but don’t hold your breath. This is the feds’ game and at this point, their rules are strictly information in, nothing out.”
“There’s something else.”
“Shoot.”
“We suspect he might have someone else working for him, someone who knows explosives.”
Olson nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Don’t you have a friend who’s a CO at Waupun?”
“Best man at my wedding. He keeps flapping his gums about writing a book about Hess, retiring with his fat advance. I’ll give him a call, see if any names come to mind.”
Val glanced back at the soot spot where her desk had been. “Was there anything in my desk that could be salvaged?”
“A few things.”
“The photo of my sister?”
“I think so. Everything we found has been photographed and processed. It’s in the conference room.”
They left the office and dodged a member of the cleaning crew on their way to the conference room. The federal agents and Jack were gone, the room vacant. A line of boxes perched on the bar.
Olson led her to a box labeled Chief. Inside she found the photo and the paperweight, among other things she kept in her desk. The frame for the photograph was cracked, but despite the strong smell of smoke, the other items seemed unharmed. There was only one thing she cared about that was missing. “Did anyone find an address book?”
“If it’s not in the box, it wasn’t in the desk, but feel free to check through the rest.”
Val did. No leather-bound old lady address book.
“If these other things survived, the book should have, too.”
“We were very careful to account for everything. Video, photographs, the works.”
Of course they would be. This wasn’t a simple fire reclamation. Her office, the entire station, was a crime scene. Everything, no matter how small, needed to be documented. There was no way a leather-bound book simply disappeared.
Unless…
“Hess took it.”
Olson frowned. “Is there something in that book he’d be interested in?”
Val went over the contents in her mind. “Just addresses, phone numbers…”
“Of who? People he thinks wronged him?”
“That can’t be it. He already knows how to find those of us who are left.”
“Good point,” Olson said. “But why steal an address book? These days, as long as you have a name and the general area where someone lives, you can find anyone’s contact info online. “
A shiver worked its way over Val’s skin. “But what if he didn’t have a name?”
“What are you saying?”
The thought built, bringing with it a feeling of dread. What did she know about Hess? That he wanted revenge against those he blamed for putting him in prison. That revenge wasn’t just about killing but taking away those things they loved.
As they had taken what he loved.
His son.
“Hess didn’t attack the station just to get to Oneida,” Val said. “He’s trying to find Ethan.”
Olson’s blond eyebrows pulled low. “But you don’t have the foster family’s address. Do you?”
“No. But I had the name and phone number for Ruth Steviak, the social worker who placed him.”
Chapter
Twenty-Four
I learned a lot in prison. Not just base survival, because I am not a base man. I spent hours in the prison library. I read. I absorbed. I honed my thoughts. I studied philosophy and politics so that I would understand what had happened to me. I found Machiavelli and devoted myself to becoming strong. I discovered Gandhi and strove to become wise. Plato, Thucydides, and so many more it would take too long to name.
Mostly I learned about myself. What I was made of. Who I was on a deeper level. Not what people said about me. Not how others saw me. But the truth.
“There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent.” —Niccolò Machiavelli
I’ll tell you why others are so afraid of me. Not because I am a bad person. They are afraid because I am a man who comprehends. I can sense the true nature of things.
Insight is what makes me dangerous.
—Convicted murderer Dixon Hess, from his A MANIFESTO FOR JUSTICE, as received by the Wisconsin State Journal.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Grace
Grace had no idea if her message would get to Aunt Val, but she was pretty sure no one else would understand it. Hess had missed it. Carla had, too. Aunt Val would be the only one who would notice. The only one who would question. The only one who would look for a deeper meaning.
Grace sagged against the radiator, the sharp fins biting into her back.
The building had been quiet for what felt like hours now, although Grace had no way of knowing the time. The throbbing in her head had lessened, at least a little. But when she touched her tongue to her lips, they felt like something foreign. Big, fake, rubber lips. Or the result of too many collagen injections. An attempt to look like Angelina Jolie gone horribly wrong.
Grace must look hideous.
Vain to be worried about how she looked when she was about to die. But whatever.
She’d already spent so much time trying to wriggle her hands free of the handcuffs that her wrists were raw and sticky with blood. She’d spent so much effort trying to scratch the paint off the radiator and leave another message, her finger
nails were chipped and broken.
When Grace had scratched out the B, she’d intended to say bye to Aunt Val, in case she or her officers ever found this place. But then Carla had said Aunt Val was fired and the rest. And Grace had gotten an idea. A way to be more useful. A way to help.
She’d managed the U next. By the time she started scratching out the R, she’d had no fingernails left. There was only one other thing she could use.
She yanked her hands hard against the metal cuffs. Again. Again. Agony ringed her wrists and shot up her arms. Blood, sticky and hot, oozed down her hands and dripped off her fingers.
She finished the R. At least she hoped she did, hoped it was legible. Because this wasn’t about Hess and Aunt Val and her anymore. From what she’d overheard, Hess’s plan was about to become much bigger.
And Grace could only pray what little she could do would be enough to help stop it.
Lund
“Hey, Lump.” Harry McGlade burst into the back room of the Doghouse tavern, a grin on his face. Under one arm, he held a hardcover book. “Where’s Jack?”
Lund set down his phone. Sitting around waiting was not his forte. So when he’d discovered the list of people who’d won bids for ambulances still jammed in his coat pocket, he’d pulled it out and started calling.
The ambulance might be no more, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t still lead them to Carla.
But so far, Lund had only gotten through ten of the names on his list and had at least two dozen more numbers to call. He didn’t have time to deal with McGlade. Letting out an annoyed groan, he focused on the private eye. “Gone.”
McGlade gave a shrug. “You’ll never guess what I found.”
Lund glanced at what Harry was holding. “You found a book. You can read?”
“I know you’re stuck in a dead-end public service job where you risk your life for a salary barely above the poverty level, but get some control over your bitterness. Now guess.”
Lund glanced down at his list of names. “Someone who bought an old ambulance?”
“What? No. Already got an ambulance on my F list. Guess again.”
Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3) Page 15