“No, wait. You didn’t tell me. Did you get the shooter? Did you catch him?”
“No, Kit,” Warner said. “No, we didn’t. But we will, okay? I promise. Now get your rest. We’ll talk later.”
18
There was a loud racket as the excavator’s blade dropped with a heavy clatter and began to tear open the run-down sunny suburban Los Angeles street like a thumbnail through the peel of an orange.
Crouched in the shadow of the 405 San Diego Freeway overpass, Westergaard sweated as he watched.
He was in Los Angeles now, four or five miles north of LAX. Flying got him wound up so he always liked to get out of airports as fast as he could on foot. He’d get some exercise in and a few hours of walking actually made him feel mentally better.
He’d been walking for a while rather aimlessly before he saw the construction here in Sunkist Park. Already feeling hot and tired, on a whim he had decided to throw his carry-on over his shoulder and climb up the weedy embankment to stop and to watch.
The hard-hatted men seemed to be in the midst of replacing a water main, he thought as he took a warm water bottle out of his roller bag. He watched them, watched the excavator. There was something stabilizing in the normalcy of it. Something soothing in the simple act of men working together. People set to a purpose. The knowable symphony of cause and effect.
Westergaard took a sip of his Dasani, then closed his eyes, listening to the rushing ocean sound of the traffic over the sound wall behind him. When he opened them, a pudgy white kid was jogging by the construction workers. When he looked above him in the sky, a yellow DHL cargo plane was soaring in toward the airport, the air screaming off its steel skin with a high-pitched whistle.
Westergaard squatted there absorbing the nowness of everything, letting things be. He never planned these things, just went with them. He knew it seemed weird, but he’d just have to live with that.
Everybody had his own way of decompressing, he thought.
It was ten minutes later when the horn honked. Westergaard turned down the embankment. Parked at the curb, there was a white sporty Jaguar with its top down. An attractive young blond woman sat behind the wheel. She had big Gucci sunglasses on, and she tilted them down as she looked up at him with her sky blue eyes.
Even with her massive baby bump in her stretched-to-the-limit tank top, his wife was smoking, just smoking, Westergaard thought as he stood. Just turned twenty-six, she was half an inch under six feet and had been a genuine Friday night lights Texas cheerleader before she’d headed out west here for the bright lights.
The construction workers were noticing her as well, Westergaard saw as he dusted off his pants and scrambled down the embankment. His wife had stopped all work.
“Back to work, boys,” Westergaard said in his clipped South African accent as he arrived beside the car. “Get your own Texas piece of prime ass, eh.”
“Get in here,” Elena said, scooting over to let him drive. “What the hell were you doing up there? Taking a leak?”
“No, I was watching the construction.”
“Watching the construction? Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I got tired of walking, and I guess it seemed interesting, eh.”
“You should have said yes, eh, I was taking a leak, eh,” she said, making fun of his accent. Then she kissed him. “You’re always so weird after your trips. You’re lucky you’re so cute.”
“I know,” he said kissing her again. “Screw that Lou Gehrig. I, Clarence Westergaard, am the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
“Speaking of screwing. Screw any hookers at the convention, Clarence Westergaard?” she said as he gunned it past the whistling hardhats. “Be honest. I’ll be scrubbing it with boiling water and a wire brush anyway before it comes anywhere near me.”
“Not this trip. Too busy,” he said, winking at her.
“Well, you better stay busy,” she said, “you want to keep it attached.”
“Okay, okay. Enough banter. Lay the update on me.”
She lifted her phone and tapped it, bringing up an app she had that showed different everyday objects that matched the size of the growing baby inside of her. She showed him the screen.
“A baseball mitt!” he cried. “Two seconds ago our progeny was the size of a peppercorn.”
“Yeah, well, time flies when you’re giving Momma stretch marks.”
“I can’t wait to see those stretch marks, Momma,” he said, tickling her as they pulled up to the red light.
“Right here? Really? That’s weird, but okay,” she said, grabbing the bottom of her tank.
“Come on,” he said as she paused. “What are you waiting for? Do it, you tease. I double dare you.”
“Fine. I’m really going to do it,” she said as she began sliding her tank top slowly up her belly. “Oh, are these folks at this light in for a treat.”
She laughed and then stopped as he finally slapped her arm down.
“Stop!” he cried.
“Ha-ha. I win. Don’t you mess with momma,” she said.
“You’re crazy, eh,” he said, laughing. “You’re a genuine nut.”
“Takes one to know one,” she said as she snuggled up against him.
Westergaard didn’t say anything to that as the light changed, and he hammered it up the ramp for the highway.
19
St. John’s Hospital was only a block north from the medical examiner’s office on East Broadway Avenue.
John Barber pulled the Pathfinder into the parking lot of the Baptist church across from it, and he and Gannon sat looking through the windshield.
It wasn’t a big facility. To Gannon, it looked more like one of those urgent care medical offices than an actual hospital. Like most other buildings in Jackson, it was trimmed with wood beams for a rustic look.
Gannon looked at the ER entrance sliding doors. He shook his head as he thought about the amount of FBI personnel that were probably in there right now. And more on the way, no doubt.
How do you like that? Gannon thought. He and the good old FBI. What was that Buck Owens cowboy song? Together Again?
He glanced over at John. He wasn’t looking too hot. Ever since he heard about what happened, he was looking like he wanted to kill a few people himself.
“You ever hear of anything like this when you were in the NYPD?” Barber said, squinting. “Cops getting shot on their way to see a body?”
“Cops getting shot, sure,” Gannon said. “But actually at a crime scene? Never.”
Barber nodded.
“Those cars there near the ER entrance look like government to me,” he said.
Me, too, Gannon thought, swallowing.
“How likely you think it is they tell us anything?”
Uh-oh. Here we go, Gannon thought, taking in the thousand-yard stare in Barber’s eyes.
There were people who followed normal channels. Barber wasn’t even close to being one of them.
“If they’re state cops, not likely,” Gannon finally said. “If they’re Feds, no chance at all. What are you thinking?”
“About taking a walk,” Barber said opening his door.
20
Gannon had to hurry to catch up with his friend as they crossed the street for the hospital. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest when instead of heading for the ER entrance like normal people, Barber veered off left into the lot.
Around the corner at the rear of the facility was an enormous dumpster with a loading dock on the other side of it. Gannon groaned silently as he noticed the propped-open door atop the concrete.
“Are you sure about this?” Gannon said as Barber immediately mounted the steps beside the dumpster.
The narrow corridor inside was dim and empty of people. As Gannon entered it, Barber was already a half dozen steps ahead, pu
lling open a door on the left.
It led into a cement stairwell, and as Gannon caught up on the second story, Barber opened another door into a bright hallway.
They walked down between what looked like patient recovery rooms. A man with a broken wrist was inside the third one they passed. An old smiling woman in a wheelchair was in the next.
On the other side of the push door at the end of the hall was a nurses’ station with a black-haired very young-looking nurse behind it. She looked up at them in surprise.
“Sheriff’s office,” Barber said without the slightest hesitation. “I think we got turned around somehow. We’re here to talk with the wounded FBI agent?”
“Of course. Miss Hagen. Room 207. First room on the left through the hall door there,” she said pointing. “She just woke up.”
Room 207 was a large suite with a huge window behind the bed that showed a stunning view north of the snowcapped mountains. Lying in the bed beneath its window was a woman asleep. She was pale and pretty with reddish-brown hair. As they stepped over, Gannon looked at the massive wrapping of gauze at her left shoulder. Her entire left arm was strapped into an elaborate sling.
The woman’s eyes suddenly opened. They were pale brown and glazed from the painkillers. They fixed immediately on Barber’s face.
“You...you made it,” she said.
Barber smiled down at her.
“No, Agent Hagen. I’m not who you think I am. I’m Owen’s younger brother John. Owen died. He was shot dead. You were there, right? Did you see it? That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”
“What in the hell is going on here?” said a woman’s voice from behind them.
Gannon turned to where three people—two men and a blond woman—had just come in through the hospital suite doorway.
“Shit,” he mumbled as he noticed the blue windbreakers the men were wearing over their business clothes.
Why didn’t I wait in the car, again? Gannon thought as half of the FBI west of the Mississippi suddenly appeared in front of them.
“Are you deaf? Who are you? And who the hell let you in here?” said the woman.
Barber and Gannon looked at her. At her short blond hair that looked expensively colored. At her slightly masculine strong-jawed face that looked surgically tightened. Her clothes were too nice for an agent.
Some kind of lawyer, Gannon thought. Some jackass Fed administrator or Fed PR spin doctor or something.
“My brother, Owen Barber, was killed this morning is who I am,” Barber said glaring right back at her. “Who the hell are you?”
“Owen what?” the snippy blond woman said, baffled.
“The Park Service employee who was killed, ma’am,” said the taller of the two FBI agents with her.
The woman’s taut cheeks puffed and her eyes flashed as she wheeled around at the guy.
“You have got to be shitting me!” she cried. “What in the hell is this, Patrick? A joke? This is secured? You call this security?”
“I’m sorry,” the tall agent said stepping forward. “Mr. Barber, is it? I’m Agent Fitzgerald. I’m so sorry for your loss, but you can’t be in here. No one can talk to the agent. She just came out of surgery. You have to leave immediately. Please.”
“And you are?” the other shorter agent said, suddenly standing there right next to Gannon.
Gannon blinked at him. He was in his early forties, broad-shouldered and thick-featured with receding blond hair. Beneath his intelligent blue eyes, his slightly homely plain face exuded an almost convincing harmlessness.
“I’m...nobody. I’m Mike,” Gannon said nodding calmly. “I’m John’s friend. I’m just a family friend of the Barbers.”
“What happened to my brother up on that mountain?” Barber said, still glaring as he stood his ground beside the hospital bed. He looked past tall Agent Fitzgerald, who was practically breathing on him, at the pushy woman.
“What happened up on that mountain?” he said again.
“I’m done with you,” the woman said. “You’re not authorized to be in this room. You have exactly one second to leave or you will be cuffed.”
“Cuffed?” Barber said, tilting his head back with a genuine laugh. “Cuffed? Is that right? My brother is dead and now you’re going to cuff me? That’s interesting. Really? I gotta see this.”
“Please, sir. Everyone, let’s be reasonable,” Agent Fitzgerald said.
Barber stared at the blond lady for a long beat, then slowly turned down toward Agent Hagen in the bed.
“You get your rest, okay?” Barber said, smiling with a wink. “We’ll talk later.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” said the woman in the suit.
Barber ignored her. He was too busy staring at Agent Fitzgerald until the agent finally stepped out of his way.
“Alrighty then,” Gannon said as they came out of the room. They headed quickly past the nurses’ station and down the hall toward the back stairs.
“I told you this was family stuff,” Barber said. “I told you to wait in the car. Hell, I told you to stay back in Utah, but you insisted.”
“Don’t remind me,” Gannon said. “Now what?”
“How about we find a hotel? Cool our heels for a bit?” Barber said.
“I like that idea,” Gannon said as they reached the back stairs. “A lot.”
21
When Gannon woke in the hotel room, it was pitch-black, and he clicked on the bedside light and sat up. It was 3:00 a.m. on his phone. He thought there might be a message from John, who had left the hotel that afternoon around two, but there was nothing.
The tiles of the dark kitchenette were cold on the soles of his bare feet as he came out of the suite’s bedroom. He took a bottle of water out of the mini-fridge and took it to the window. It gave a view of the hotel’s rear parking lot. He stood and drank some cold water, watching in the silence. The fluorescent light on a dozen lonely cars. The darkness beyond. Everything still.
He’d just finished the water bottle when he heard the rattle at the door. He turned and watched it open.
“You hungry?” John Barber said.
The all-night diner they found twenty minutes later was near the entrance of town by the antler arch. Barber took out his reading glasses as they slid into a booth. He took a little notebook from his pocket and began to mumble to himself as he went over his notes.
When the tired-looking waitress came over, they both ordered the same thing, eggs and bacon with french fries instead of home fries. Gannon yawned as a tractor trailer pulled out on the other side of the window beside them. The grumble and scratch of its upshifting made the plate glass wobble. After it left, the only sound was the country music that was playing low from the kitchen.
“The FBI agent who was killed was named Braddock,” Barber said.
“And you found this out how again?” Gannon said, squinting.
“My brother’s coworker and friend, Don Hicks. I spoke to him and several of his Park Service buddies. One of the buddies is dating the local DA who is working a task force on this case with the Feds. Turns out there’s a lot going on with this thing. A hell of a whole lot.”
“I’m getting that impression,” Gannon said. “So this Braddock was Agent Hagen’s partner?”
“Yep. They were both from the Bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit.”
“Behavioral Science? Wait. The serial killer squad?” Gannon said holding up a finger.
Barber nodded.
“They’d just flown straight in from DC when it happened. They came looking for a serial killer they’ve been after. The NATPARK killer, they’re calling him.”
“The what?”
“The NATPARK killer,” Barber said, tapping at his notebook with a finger. “Over the past three years, three women—all young, all attractive—have been abd
ucted, raped, and tortured in three separate national parks while on camping vacations. Two were taken off hiking trails during the day and one out of her tent in the middle of the night. Each victim was strangled to death after extensive torture, and in each case, there’s been a very distinctive...”
Barber licked a thumb and went through his notes.
“Postmortem posing,” he finally said.
Gannon took a sip of the water the waitress had poured, then shook his head.
“What’s highly unusual even for a serial murderer is the massive distances between the crimes,” Barber continued. “The first victim had been taken at the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, the next at the Grand Canyon, and the most recent was at Rocky Mountain Park in Colorado last year. Without any witnesses, the FBI worked out a profile and have been doing a lot of investigating in the RV community for people with histories of sexual violence.”
“You’d think this case would be front page stuff,” Gannon said. “Let me take a wild guess. The Feds are keeping a tight lid on it?”
“Yep,” Barber said, turning a page in his notebook. “National parks have millions of visitors each year so the rumor is the Bureau of Land Management especially have their undies in a bind about making sure it doesn’t leak. They wanted it investigated discreetly. Didn’t want it to cause some kind of panic.”
“Guess those Fed pencil pushers take their family vacays at the beach these days, huh,” Gannon said. “So Braddock and Hagen came here to look at victim number four?”
“Yes. Owen found a dead young woman up in the foothills of Grand Teton the evening before around eight. Hagen and Braddock were actually waiting on the next killing to see the fresh crime scene so when Owen called it in, they immediately jumped on a plane. They actually told Owen to stay put at the crime scene until they got there. Then yesterday morning as they were heading into the site, they were all shot as they stood right beside the body. With a rifle. Apparently from some distance. All the bullets match. Lapua Magnum .338 boat tails.”
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