Run for Cover

by Michael Ledwidge

  “No. I’m heading back into the office for the first time this morning. DNA lab? What’s going on, Detective?”

  “Well, it’s one of those things,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember my boss, Sheriff Harlan? Well, he retired, and we were going through some of the cold case stuff, and I came across a package. It was the results from Genodex Labs. I hate to say that it’s been sitting there for six months, but it has. There’s no excuse. Just stone-cold incompetence.”

  Kit quickly remembered the details. Due to a pending lawsuit, the FBI wasn’t allowed to solicit the DNA companies to cross-reference crime scene samples, but for some technical legal reason, some of the states still could. Which was why they had made arrangements with Sheriff Harlan at the San Juan County sheriff’s office to send the evidence in to Genodex for them.

  “You’re kidding me,” Kit said. “I thought we’d arranged everything. Sheriff Harlan assured me he’d stay on top of it.”

  “Yeah, that’s Sheriff Harlan, all right. Lots of assurances, not too much follow-up action. Especially after he turned seventy-five. Would you be shocked to hear some people around here aren’t all that sad that he’s finally gone fishing for good? Anyway, I hope you’re sitting down because we got a match on your DNA.”

  26

  Kit’s windowless work space in the corner of the Behavioral Science basement office was way in the back by the mechanicals. Since the whole office was always so dim and depressing, they’d finally gotten the powers that be to rehab the entire floor two months before. There were nice espresso-brown wooden cubicle walls now and overhead pin lighting and a row of shiny new reference books in the open-walled cabinet above her two monitors.

  She was standing up and slipping out the latest copy of Federal Rules of Evidence with Objections from the new cabinet when Francis Sinclair walked in.

  “There you are,” Kit said. “Sit down, Francis. Boy oh boy, do I have news for you.”

  “I have news for you, too, Kit,” Sinclair said.

  “What?” Kit said looking at him. “No, scratch that. Me first. Sit down.”

  She rolled her spare chair over to him.

  “Believe me,” she said. “You have to hear this.”

  “What is it?” Sinclair said as he sat.

  “The shooter on the mountain. That wasn’t our guy. I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t the NATPARK killer.”

  “What?”

  “It was a copycat or something, Francis. This whole thing is so crazy.”

  “What are you talking about, Kit?”

  “I’m coming in this morning, and I get a call from the detective in New Mexico we worked with when we got the DNA in victim three’s truck over a year ago.”

  “The Rocky Mountain Park murder?” Sinclair said squinting. “The Gatorade bottle?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, long story short,” Kit said, lifting up the Genodex Labs report she’d been mailed, “we have a hit on the DNA with a sibling match.”

  “A sibling match?”

  “Two months ago, a woman named Johanna Halstead had a minor health scare and wanted to check her ancestry roots, God bless her. She’s the sister of the unknown subject who left the DNA in our victim’s truck. The beyond awesome news is that it turns out Johanna only has one sibling, a man named Cameron Ketchum.

  “Here’s where it gets good,” Kit said, putting down the DNA report and lifting up a spreadsheet. “I’ve been scouring the database all morning about Cameron Ketchum. He’s a long-haul trucker from Indiana, and I called his company, and his routes line up with the national park locations, Francis. They are a perfect match.

  “He was in North Carolina when victim one was killed and in Grand Canyon for victim two. And not only was he near the Rocky Mountain Park for victim three, he was staying in a trucker’s hotel on the same road within walking distance of where the pickup was found! That very night! Not only that, he’s got some burglary charges from when he was in his twenties and a rape arrest.

  “It’s him. Ketchum is the NATPARK killer.”

  27

  “Wow, that is some incredible news,” Sinclair said. “This Ketchum guy does look good, but I don’t get it. The other part you said. Why isn’t Ketchum the Wyoming shooter? Why isn’t he the one who shot you up in Grand Teton?”

  “Because,” Kit said as she handed Sinclair another printout. “He’s been in custody at the Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas for the last nine months! Last year, he was blind drunk and got pulled over and decided to run. They tried to throw down one of those stop sticks, and as he tried to avoid it, he ran right over a Kansas state trooper and broke the poor young rookie’s leg. He’s been in custody ever since on attempted murder of a police officer.”

  “I see. So you’re saying the good news is Ketchum looks like the NATPARK killer,” Sinclair said.

  “At least in the first three killings,” Kit said.

  “But the bad news is the killer in Grand Teton looks like somebody else?” Sinclair said.

  “Exactly! Grand Teton can’t be Ketchum. Which is crazy when you consider the posing of the victim’s body completely matches the other three. Maybe it’s some kind of copycat or something? Or Ketchum had a partner kill a girl and then shoot us to get the heat off himself? Who knows what the hell it is. It’s just incredible.”

  Kit tapped at the report.

  “Bottom line, we have to nail Ketchum down and pronto. We need to interview him yesterday, Francis. There’s a Delta flight at five thirty. We can be in Lansing in the morning at nine when they let in visitors. I already called the warden’s office to schedule an interview. I’m so pumped I can hardly stand it. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this sick son of a bitch.”

  “This is good, Kit. Real good,” Sinclair said quietly. “But—”

  “Good? No, this is epic, Francis. We’ve been on this four years. This is last-second-Super-Bowl-touchdown, go-to-Disney-World stuff. What’s the but? But what?”

  Sinclair looked at her grimly. That’s when she suddenly noticed something odd. Boyish Sinclair didn’t look so boyish. He was dressed in a suit and tie and his spiky hair was cut and neatly pasted to one side.

  “What is it?” she said uneasily as she remembered she’d never seen him wear a tie before.

  “I don’t know how to put this, Kit, so I’ll just blurt it out. You’re off the case.”

  “What?” Kit said almost falling out of the chair as she reared back.

  “I just got back from a meeting at Justice and they are up this case with a flashlight and a magnifying glass. I stood up for you. I really did. But they don’t care. They want you off the case.”

  “But why?”

  He clasped his hands together and looked at her over them.

  “Did you leak any info to the press?”

  “Me? To those hyenas? Are you feeling all right? The only thing I’m leaking is blood out of the hole still in my shoulder.”

  “I didn’t think so. But somebody did and Justice is pissed, and they think it’s you.”

  “But I didn’t do it! Check my call records. Go through my texts. They can’t take me off this, Francis. Not now. Not after this monster breakthrough. I have to talk to Ketchum. I’ve been on this case four freaking years!

  “Don’t you see?” she said, shoving the report at him. “Maybe he had a partner or something who made it look like it was him on Grand Teton to throw us off or something. We have to find him! We have to figure this out, Francis, and I’m the only one who knows the whole thing. Are you not hearing me? Think about it. Ketchum might know who killed Dennis!”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to happen, Kit. I’m sorry. You’re off. They put their foot down.”

  “Did this foot have a high heel on it? It’s that Dawn Warner, isn’t it? Because every time I turn around, I see that our Assistant Attorney
General in charge of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division is all over the news. Did anyone check if she’s the freaking leak?”

  “Kit, c’mon.”

  “Don’t c’mon me. You know what I heard Warner say on CNN? She said that she flew out from Washington immediately after she heard about the shooting. But that’s complete bullshit. She was already there!

  “She was hobnobbing at some tech conference in Jackson with all these Silicon Valley billionaire people consulting on a new Burning Man event. Then I guess she smelled the potential media coverage on this and was on it like greased lightning.

  “I’m fighting this, Francis. Especially with the new boss. Who is the new boss, by the way?”

  “Well,” Sinclair said standing, showing her his tie.

  “What? You? The new section chief?”

  He nodded sheepishly.

  “What! I mean, no offense, Francis, but you’ve been here what? Three years? I’ve been here over seven. Why you?”

  “Maybe because I came over from the administrative side? Your guess is as good as mine. You think I asked for it, Kit? I didn’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t even want it.”

  “Well, who will you assign the case to then? Grissom? Clay? They’ve been here for five minutes. Gonzales is good and knows a little, but he’s still testifying in Boston, right?”

  Sinclair winced, staring at her.

  “I haven’t even decided yet. But when I do, I’ll let you know.”

  Kit looked at Sinclair for a long moment, then down at the floor.

  I’m getting hamstrung, she thought. But why?

  She stared at Sinclair, wanting to explode. But it wasn’t the time.

  Kit took a deep breath and put the pin back in.

  She suddenly smiled and stood and gave Sinclair a hug.

  “I’m sorry, Francis,” she said. “Don’t listen to me.”

  “Kit, I’m sick about telling you all this.”

  “I know. It’s fine. Congratulations on the promo. I’m happy for you. Honestly. Are you kidding me? It’s actually great. You’ll be terrific at this. Besides, you need a promotion to start saving up for braces for those three kids of yours. Congratulations, Francis, really. To you and Naomi, too.”

  “Thanks, Kit. That actually really means a lot,” he said, his face still crestfallen. “You’re always so nice. This isn’t right. And I know how eager you are to get to the bottom of this. It’s completely understandable. They just want you to take a month off, okay? That’s all. A lousy month and then I’ll get you back on the case or I swear I’ll resign. I’ll let you know who I give the case to and what happens with the new lead, okay? Just a month. Sound good?”

  “Of course. Sounds great,” Kit lied as she stood and grabbed her bag.

  28

  At a quarter after two in the afternoon, Assistant Attorney General Dawn Warner was giving a speech at the Spotsylvania County Regional Criminal Justice Academy in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

  Poised, confident, wearing a chic new tailored saw-grass-colored skirt with matching jacket, she stood behind the lectern speaking about her time as a rookie criminal prosecutor in Florida’s Southern District. She told a few jokes about the Bush versus Gore debacle and then drilled down into an intensive explanation of how it is the likeliness of conviction rather than the probable cause to arrest that leads DAs to decide to prosecute.

  The classroom, the state police academy’s largest, was one of those amphitheater-style ones where the lecturer stands at the bottom with the students sitting above in ascending rows like spectators at a basketball game.

  Atop the amphitheater just to the right of one of the entrances, Kit Hagen stood looking down over the police academy students’ flattops and tightly bunned hair.

  She looked at Warner’s somewhat pinched face as she spoke. She thought she was Botoxing for sure and had some work done around her eyes. Kit wondered what she had looked like before.

  “Great speech,” Kit said as she arrived down through the flow of students five minutes later. “I think the crowd really liked it.”

  “Thanks,” Warner said with a shrug of her elegantly tailored shoulders. “Not exactly Virginia Law School out here in the hinterlands, but I like to give back. I believe in sharing your life. Teaching what you learned. Especially to women. Sisterhood is good for the spirit.”

  Kit had to squint to keep her eyes from rolling as Warner put some papers into a briefcase. Hagen noted the famous Italian designer name subtly embossed beneath the clasp.

  “I actually saw you come in,” Dawn Warner said, smiling. “How’s the arm, kiddo?”

  “It’s my shoulder, actually. It’ll take twelve weeks to heal completely. Luckily, I’m right-handed, so—”

  “Thank God for small miracles?” Warner finished for her with a tiny smile.

  “Exactly,” Kit said as they started up the stairs for the exit.

  “What brings you out here?” Warner said.

  “Well,” Kit said following beside her stride for stride. “I went into work this morning for the first time after my sick leave, and I wanted to talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “About why was I taken off my case.”

  Warner stopped at the top beside the exit door.

  “What do you mean?” Warner said, not batting a single eyelash. “Why are you asking me about it? Shouldn’t you ask your boss?”

  “I did,” Hagen said. “Now I’m asking you.”

  “Hagen, I mean, Kit, right? Kit, I know what you must be feeling, but we discussed this fiasco at Justice and decided we need to take a step back. The Bureau agreed. Have you read the papers? We all really took a good hard smack on the nose over this. First of all, you need to heal, of course. But besides that, the optics couldn’t be worse. We need the press to move on a little here.”

  “A smack on the nose?” Kit said staring at her. “My partner had his head blown off.”

  “See, you’re too close, Kit,” Dawn said with a nod. “You need to give this some time and distance. The guideline for in-the-line-of-duty shooting incidents says three months, but I relented and agreed to one. You should be thanking me.”

  “Thanking you?” Kit said, wide-eyed.

  “Have you ever thought about therapy? Of the nonphysical kind I mean?”

  “No, but I have thought about how I’m the only person on the planet who knows anything about this case, and yet I’m being told to stand down. I’ve tried to piece together how it makes any reasonable rational sense, but I keep coming up empty.”

  Dawn Warner took out her cell phone and looked at it.

  “I’m really sorry, Kit. I have to take this,” she said as she thumbed at the screen. “Honestly, I know you’re upset, but therapy, Kit. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. My daughter had a bulimia thing last year and her therapist was so incredible.”

  She took out a business card from her perfectly elegant Italian briefcase and handed it over.

  “If you call my assistant, Roberta, she can give you his name and all the details, Kit. Talking things out with a professional. That’s the way to do it. You’ll see.”

  29

  “Hey, sleepyhead, want to go for a run?” Gannon called over to the lump on the bus’s back bedroom bed.

  “No.”

  “Want to go to the shoothouse?”

  “No.”

  “Want to play with Dempsey?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the story, Dec? Hey, wait. I know. How late you get in?” Gannon said as he pulled at one of the sheets.

  Declan groaned.

  He’d started going out with Stephanie and some of her friends to the nearby town of East Carbon after the funeral. Now it was becoming a routine apparently.

  “Oh, I don’t know. One?” Declan said, pulling th
e sheet over his head.

  “Or, who knows? Two?” Gannon said looking at him. “Three? I see. Now you’re the one gallivanting around.”

  “At least I don’t go near the cops, Dad,” he called out from beneath the blanket.

  “That’s true. You have a point there, son,” Gannon said, leaving the room. “But we should probably call a meeting or something. We’re really losing mission discipline around here.”

  Gannon had just clacked a mug of old coffee into the microwave when heard the phone ring in the shoothouse. Hastily putting on some flip-flops, he jogged over and picked it up at the end of its third ring.

  “Hi, Mike,” John Barber said. “I was wondering if you could come on down to the house. I’d like to show you something.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I just got something in the mail. I want you to see it.”

  John’s wife, Lynn Barber, was alone waiting in the threshold of the house wearing workout clothes when Gannon stepped out of his pickup in the driveway five minutes later.

  She was a dark and petite pretty brown-haired woman. Half Cuban and half Irish, John had met her in the 1990s in a bar in Tampa, Florida, outside the MacDill Air Force base, where he’d been first stationed with Delta Force.

  As he came up the stairs of the porch, Gannon smiled at her cautiously. He noticed that her dark brown eyes were even more intense than usual. In lying low out here, he knew he was imposing on her the most. Even though he spent most of his time out of sight up in the canyon, whenever he saw her, he always felt like a rude houseguest who had unwisely overstayed his visit.

  Probably because he was and had, he thought.

  “Hey, Mike,” Lynn said quietly as he arrived. “Um, just wanted you to know John’s mom had a medical thing last night. We just got back from the hospital.”

  “No! He didn’t even tell me. Is she okay?” Gannon said.

  “They don’t really know. She’s awake and talking, but she’s not doing so hot. Her face is numb, and she’s having trouble with her left arm. Might be a stroke, they said.”