by Sandra Brown
“Why?”
“It takes years for specialists to recreate a catastrophic event like that. They do it bit by minuscule bit, but even when they’ve fit together all the pieces available, it’s common for questions to remain. The laws of physics apply to explosions, but anomalies occur that defy logic and/or science. How did that human ear wind up a quarter mile away while its mate was discovered six blocks in the opposite direction? Why didn’t that one window blow out like all the others on that side of the building? Why did that can of Coke remain intact when everything around it was blown to smithereens?
“But with the Pegasus, everything was neatly wrapped up. No ambiguities. Every t crossed, every i dotted. No loose ends. Not even the culprits. The guy who confessed didn’t make it to his sentencing trial. He died of stomach cancer, which had been diagnosed months before he carried those bombs into the Pegasus.”
“Leading you to conclude what?”
“He didn’t bomb the place to settle a score with the petroleum company that had gouged him at the gas pump.”
“He claimed that he and his friends were making a statement.”
“That’s what he claimed, but what was the statement? I’ve read the transcripts, watched the videos of his sessions with the investigating agents. He rambled, he groused, but he never gave a clear-cut explanation of their gripe. He had the world’s attention, but didn’t step up on the soapbox?” He shook his head, negating the reasonableness of that.
“There was no indication of religious fanaticism, no white supremacy or anti-establishment leanings. No saber wielding, no screamed threats of annihilation, no swastikas. All the same,” he said, lowering his voice, “three men who, on the surface, were perfectly ordinary, were indoctrinated into committing mass murder.”
“Indoctrinated? That connotes the opposite of what you just said. They didn’t have a cause.”
“They had one. I just don’t know what it was. I was stopped before I could find out.”
“Is this where the aforementioned ‘somebody’ comes in?”
“He’s the indoctrinator. I was close. This close,” he said, holding his thumb and finger an inch apart, “to nailing him. But before I had all the evidence I needed, the plug got pulled. I was making a nuisance of myself, so I got called on the carpet and was reminded that the Pegasus Hotel was a closed case. Sure, my interest in it was understandable; it was deeply personal.”
“You’d almost lost your father that day.”
Trapper was thinking that he had lost his father that day, but he didn’t say so.
“Why was he in the hotel?” Kerra asked. “We didn’t cover that in the interview.”
“After retiring from the army, he went to work for a software developer. A lot of their clients were government agencies, so his military background was useful. The day of the bombing, he and other middle management were courting a potential client. They decided to break for pie and coffee in the Pegasus’s dining room. It was a two-block walk from their office.
“When Mom saw the news bulletin on TV, heard that nearby buildings had been damaged by the explosion, she called him, concerned that his workplace was so close to the hotel. She had no idea that he was in the Pegasus until two policemen showed up to tell her that he’d been taken to the hospital.”
“She must have been frantic.”
“I missed that. I was at school. She was still shaking and crying when the three of us were reunited in his hospital room that evening. He had bumps and bruises, but kept asking the medical staff about the fate of the others in his group, and when he heard, he and Mom both had breakdowns. It was a bad scene.”
“None of them survived?”
“Only two besides The Major. One lost a leg. Never really recovered. Died within a couple of years. The other didn’t suffer any serious injuries but succumbed to survivor’s guilt. He killed himself.”
“Lord.” She took the time to clear her mind of that, then asked, “What put you and The Major on the outs?”
“Several things, but all relating to the Pegasus. At work, I was being reminded that the perps were dead and buried, so what was behind all this poking around, nosing in where I didn’t belong? I was ordered to drop ‘that nonsense,’ move on, and work only on assigned cases.”
“That’s when you quit.”
“Before they could fire me,” he admitted with a rueful smile. “Seconds before.” He checked the road in both directions. It was still dark, no vehicles in sight. Sleet pecked against the windshield. Snow swirled.
“Around the same time,” he continued, “The Major was approached about writing a book, followed by a movie based on it. He’d had similar offers many times over, but this one had serious money behind it and sounded like more than just hype by a Hollywood asshole.
“When it looked like it was actually going to happen, I panicked. I sat down with him, confided my theory, told him I’d become convinced that the individual responsible for the bombing was still out there, and, I was damn sure, monitoring survivors to make sure none ever questioned the outcome of the investigation.
“I told him to scratch the book and movie idea. In fact, I urged him to shut the hell up about that bombing altogether, stop going on TV and talking about it, or the real culprit might get the idea that The Major saw and heard more that day than he even realized, that he might wind up with a bullet in his head to guarantee he wouldn’t reveal an incriminating detail while waxing eloquent at a Rotary Club luncheon.”
“He denounced your theory?”
“In spades. He said I made the whole thing up because I was jealous of his fame. Nobody was after me to write a book, were they? Nobody wanted to make a movie based on my life, did they? Unless it was a porn flick. Furthermore, I was ‘trashing my career’ as well as making a laughingstock of myself with this ridiculous fantasy. No wonder the ATF had fired me. The family could boast only one hero, and he was it.”
“Trapper.” Her expression turned sorrowful, almost pitying, and he couldn’t countenance that.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said with terse emphasis. “He said what he thought, and it was ugly, but I didn’t want to see him dead. Since he refused to listen to reason, I resorted to another means of shutting him up.”
“What?”
“Blackmail.”
She flinched.
“I’m not proud of it,” he said.
“What did you blackmail him with?”
“Mom’s journal.” Kerra blinked but didn’t say anything, so he went on. “He denied she kept one. I asked how he would know, since on every page she wrote about the other side of Major Franklin Trapper, the one who neglected his wife and son while he went off heroing for weeks at a time. I told him that if he signed this book deal, I’d make a deal of my own with the tabloids and shatter the myth of how fucking fabulous ‘The Major’ was.”
“Would you really have done that? I think he loved your mother.”
“I know he did. But that didn’t keep him from making her a distant second to his celebrity.” He stared into middle distance for several seconds, then said, “Anyway, he took the threat to heart. He stopped. Cold.”
“Until I came calling,” she said softly.
“You dangled the carrot. He didn’t have to take it.”
“It’s clear to me now why you tried so hard to get rid of me. You’re still protecting him.”
“Yes. Whether or not he ever speaks to me again, I’d prefer him to die of natural causes at a ripe old age, still a hero in everyone’s eyes. But he’s not the only one who needs protection, Kerra. You showed up out of nowhere and announced your intentions, and my gut dropped to my boots.”
He reached across the console and brushed his thumb over her beauty mark. “You had a jewel of a secret and couldn’t wait to show it off. But you were setting a deathtrap for yourself. This somebody never worried about that little girl in the photo. Didn’t even know her name until Sunday night. She turns out to be not just a grown woman with a memory, sh
e’s famous. A newscaster, no less. A reporter who gets to the bottom of things.
“When he learned that, he wasted no time, did he? You and The Major were on TV talking about your shared experience, then hours later two gunmen showed up to silence him forever. They failed. Worse, they squandered an unexpected opportunity to kill you, too.”
“I’ve told you, I’m no threat to anyone.”
“He won’t see it that way. He’s got to be nervous about what you and The Major discussed when the cameras weren’t rolling. What did you two talk about? Will you make another startling revelation during tomorrow night’s interview? If not tomorrow night, when?”
He reached for her hand. “Kerra, do you get what I’m telling you? You’re like that egg timer to him. He’s not going to let it blow up in his face.”
Her eyes were wide and still. They gazed into his as though she’d been hypnotized. Before either of them spoke again, his phone rang, causing her to flinch.
“That’s probably Glenn calling to ask if I’ve seen you.” He pulled his phone from his coat pocket. It was Carson. Trapper clicked on. “Is this important? I’m busy.”
“Two things. First. Did you know about Thomas Wilcox’s kid?”
Trapper shot a glance over at Kerra, whose ears perked up when she heard the familiar name. “His kid?” Trapper said. “No, what about him?”
“Her. Died a year and a half ago.”
“How old was she?”
“Sixteen. Light of his life. Apple of his eye. Pride and joy.”
“Died how?”
“That’s the interesting part. Nobody’s really saying.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the investigator, you are. But her manner of death was murky, and it was kept very hush-hush, which is why you didn’t know about it.”
Carson was right. That was interesting. “Send me what info you have. Dare I ask how you came by it?”
“Better not. If you’re ever put on the witness stand—”
“Understood. What’s the second thing?”
“It’s about the SUV.”
Trapper didn’t want to tell him that its rear end was presently in a ditch. “Sorry to be keeping it so long. Did you tell the guy I’ll pay him a rental fee?”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The vehicle is sort of, uh…”
“Sort of what?”
“Sort of stolen.”
Just then Trapper’s attention was drawn to the horizon, where he saw one, possibly two, police units braving the icy conditions, running hot, and coming in their direction.
Chapter 15
As he did most nights after his wife, Greta, had gone to bed, liberally dosed with vodka and Xanax, Thomas Wilcox sat on the edge of his late daughter’s bed. He was anchored there by guilt.
Tiffany’s room had been preserved like the tomb of a pharaoh. Everything she had loved and valued remained where she had last placed it. Their housekeeper had been given strict instructions not to touch or move anything, to dust around every item: a snow globe with a carousel; the picture of the high school dance squad, of which Tiffany had been captain; the trophies and ribbons from the riding academy where she had excelled at dressage. Her goal had been to make the U.S. Olympic team.
The room and every tangible thing in it was a heart-wrenching reminder of her, but Thomas noticed that the remnants of her vital spirit diminished a little bit each day like a slow leak from a stoppered bottle of perfume. At first, the room had contained a strong essence of her soul, but its evaporation was inexorable. Soon it would disappear altogether, and she truly would be gone.
Believing himself to be untouchable, Thomas had called another man’s bluff. Tiffany had been the price he’d paid for his misjudgment.
He took a final look around, ending on her pillow where lay the teddy bear she’d slept with every night since infancy. “Night-night, sweetheart,” he whispered. Then he pushed himself to his feet, switched out the lamp, and left the room, gently closing the door behind him.
He glanced down the hallway toward another closed door, that of the bedroom now occupied by his wife.
Initially Greta had used bereavement as her excuse for leaving the master suite to sleep in the guest room. But now, eighteen months after the death of their only child, she was still there, permanently installed.
Neither he nor Greta acknowledged this estrangement. Their interactions these days were reserved and formal. They didn’t love, nor did they fight. Any emotion required too much of them. From Tiffany’s birth until the day she died, she had been the sun around which their lives orbited. When her life blinked out, the two of them had been left in a vacuum, devoid of light, warmth, and energy.
Thomas descended the sweeping staircase to the ground floor and headed for his study. He’d just reached it when the intercom panel buzzed. The blinking dot of red light was labeled “Front Gate.” He depressed the speaker button. “Yes?”
“It’s Jenks.”
Thomas’s melancholia vanished. His body language, tread, and facial expression reflected this automatic shifting of gears from that of grieving parent to that of a man who protected his interests. At all costs.
He crossed to the window and, being mindful to stay behind the adjacent wall, flipped open one panel of the louvered shutters. His sprawling lawn was frosted with sleet. The fountain in the center of the circular driveway had become an ice sculpture. From the distance of thirty yards, twin headlight beams shone through an aura created by the frozen precipitation, making it impossible to identify the vehicle or the driver.
Thomas returned to the control panel. “What are you doing here at this time of night, during an ice storm?”
“I was sent to tell you that we have a problem.”
“I already know. The ten o’clock news covered the press conference from the hospital. The Major is going to make it.”
The deputy snuffled. “Actually, that’s the good news.”
Thomas deliberated then punched the button to open the gate.
Going to his desk, he took a pistol from the lap drawer and checked the cylinder to see that every chamber held a bullet. The revolver was nickel-plated and had a mother-of-pearl-inlaid hand grip. But for all its fanciness, it was essentially a six-shot cannon. He held it at his side against his thigh while waiting at the front door as the deputy alighted from the sheriff’s unit and stamped up the stone steps.
Jenks removed his leather gloves and slapped them against his palm. “Cold as the very dickens.” He tugged off his wet boots and placed them just inside the front door. He also removed his hat, but held on to it.
Thomas tipped his head in the direction of the study. Having been here before, Jenks knew the way. As they entered the room, Jenks looked toward the wet bar. “What I’d give for a whiskey.”
Thomas didn’t offer to pour him one. Jenks would have declined, not because he had a conscience about drinking and driving, but because he wouldn’t leave a fingerprint on a drinking glass, or on anything inside this room, this house.
Thomas sat down behind his desk and placed his hand, still holding the pistol, on the leather desk pad. He was certain the deputy had noticed the revolver the moment he’d entered the house, although he hadn’t remarked on it.
Jenks glanced at the framed portrait of Tiffany that hung above the mantel. She had posed for it dressed in her equestrian habit. Red coat, shiny black boots, small derby atop the platinum blond braid that draped over one shoulder. Her enchanting smile was forever preserved in oil paint.
It was likely that the man looking up at her had had a hand in her murder, and to Thomas that was obscene. He wanted to raise the pistol and blow Jenks’s head off where he stood in his stocking feet. The only reason he didn’t was because he knew that Jenks and the man who’d sent him on this errand would have liked nothing better than for him to attempt it and provide them with a valid reason to kill him.
They hadn’t up till now only because he had something they desperately wanted. As long as it remained in his possession and inaccessible, he was safe from assassination.
However, they had ways of reminding him that he was vulnerable. He’d tested them; two days later his daughter was dead.
Keeping his hatred under control, his expression vacant, he said, “Why risk the long drive here on a night like this? Why not just call and tell me the bad news?”
“He wanted you to hear it in person. Wanted me to gauge your reaction.”
“Well?”
“Kerra Bailey has gone missing.”
Thomas just stared at him, unable to contain his bafflement. “She ran off?”
“She’s presumed kidnapped.”
“What? As of when?”
“Couple of hours ago. And it gets worse,” Jenks continued in a way that was almost snarky. “The person who took her? John Trapper.”
Jesus Christ. On the inside, Thomas deflated. “The proverbial bad penny.”
“Ain’t he just?” Jenks said. “How come you haven’t taken him out of circulation?” He raised his index finger and tapped it against his temple. “Bet I can guess. I figure it’s because you don’t know what all Trapper’s got on you or where it’s stashed.”
Although his thoughts were in turmoil, Thomas resumed his usual stone face. “Is that what you figure?”
Jenks grinned. “Am I warm?”
He was precisely right, but Thomas wouldn’t credit it. “Doesn’t it stand to reason that if Trapper had anything incriminating, I would be in prison already?”
“Just because the feds didn’t run with it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. With The Major being shot and all—”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have shot him.”
“I didn’t. Petey did.”
“Same difference.”
“Not hardly. Anyway, as I was saying, whatever it is Trapper’s got on you, he may take it out, dust it off, try again, and this time get somebody to give a listen. Think how bad things would get if Trapper has more goods on you than you’re aware of.”