Dead Man Running

by Steve Hamilton

  “He never abducted two women so close together before,” I said.

  “True.”

  “And he could only be with one at a time.”

  Larkin nodded.

  “Carolyn Kline was just for the cameras,” I said. “And this one . . .”

  I looked around the place, trying to find another way to say it.

  “This one was just the bait to set the trap. Nothing more.”

  “So where is she?” Larkin said. “Obviously not in that canyon.”

  I shook my head. She’s wherever you put things you don’t need anymore, I thought as I looked at another photograph. This one mounted on the wall, on one of those cheap pieces of stained wood with the clear sheet of Plexiglas. Stephanie Hyatt with another young woman on either side of her. They all had the same hairstyle. All came from the same place. Sisters.

  Another family that had to answer the door and see two cops standing on the other side, their hats in their hands.

  At this point, I had more of the how, but still wasn’t close to the why. Still wasn’t close to whatever it was that drove him.

  “There’s one more crime scene in town,” Larkin said to me. “His fifth victim, Liana Massey, she lived up in Flagstaff, but after he killed her he brought her down here and kept her in a condo out in Fountain Hills.”

  “Liana Massey,” I said, remembering the file. Remembering the face. “Six months ago.”

  A half hour later, we were on the eastern side of town, fighting our way through the seasonal traffic, with seemingly a million identical brown stucco buildings all around us, each one divided into eight or ten different condo units. It was February, so the part-time residents had left every cold-weather state in the country to come fight the same traffic and live in these cheap plaster boxes, where they could swear at the traffic instead of the snow.

  “He kept her in their bed,” Larkin said when we pulled up to the place. The unit in question was close to the end of the street, as secluded as you could get in a place like this, especially if you broke in during the summer.

  “This place makes sense,” I said as I got out of the car and looked up and down the street. I could picture Livermore parked here, watching the place, choosing the one perfect unit. The construction was so cheap, he could have gotten through any of the windows.

  You’re pretty smart, I thought, when you don’t want to get caught.

  “The wife didn’t even realize someone had been there until she got in bed that first night. There were dried fluids from the victim’s body. Some hair. Some skin that had sloughed off the body. They eventually found the victim’s clothing under the bed.”

  We were about to head inside the building when Larkin was interrupted by his cell phone. He answered the call and listened for a moment, then he looked over at me.

  “Mr. McKnight left the building,” he said. “There was no way to stop him.”

  He closed his eyes as he listened to a few more words from whoever was on the other end. Probably Madison, and he probably wasn’t happy.

  “Yes, sir,” Larkin said. “Right away.”

  “I take it we’re going back to the office,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me. He got back behind the wheel and waited for me to get in beside him. It was a long, silent ride back to Deer Valley Road. Agent Madison was standing outside the front door, blinking in the sun, as we pulled up.

  “This is on me,” I said to him as I got out. “Don’t blame Agent Larkin.”

  “Mr. McKnight, you were not supposed to leave this facility.”

  “I’ll ask you the same question I asked him,” I said. “Am I under arrest or am I—”

  “You’re a person of interest, you know that.”

  “That means nothing to me. Other than getting thrown out of meetings as soon as they get interesting.”

  “I told you at the time, the information we needed to discuss was classified.”

  “You found the bodies,” I said, watching him carefully. “Why wouldn’t I be able to hear that?”

  I didn’t see anything change in his face. I thought about what else could have come to light today, what other piece of information was missing . . .

  “You found his home,” I said. “Where he really lives.”

  This time I could tell I was right.

  “So what did you find?” I said. “Something connected to me?”

  “No,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Then why are you shutting me out? If you really want me to help you—”

  “That was my call at the time,” he said. “You can trust me or not. I don’t care.”

  I shook my head and looked over at Larkin. He was doing a professional job of trying not to be noticed by his boss.

  “That’s the thing about FBI vehicles,” I said, nodding to the dozen black sedans in the lot. “I can go rent a car, wait outside here and just follow the next one that leaves. Or hell, I bet if I just drive around town, I’ll see them all parked somewhere.”

  “Don’t even bother,” he said, looking me in the eye. “I’ve made my decision. I’m taking you there right now.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LIVERMORE LINED UP the crosshairs on Alex McKnight’s face.

  “Stop moving,” he whispered to him, from a hundred feet away. “Just stand still.”

  He waited for McKnight to obey him. A few seconds later, McKnight stood up straight and tall. Livermore had the shot he wanted.

  He pushed the button, and the camera’s shutter snapped open and closed. He pressed it a few more times, because even though he was sure the first shot was perfect, an engineer knows it’s good to have redundancy.

  He’d been following Alex all day, from the moment he had walked out of that hotel right down the street from the FBI offices, the place that should have had a sign reading FBI GUESTHOUSE. While he had watched Alex getting into the young agent’s car, he’d sensed a police car pulling up next to him in the hotel parking lot. Phoenix PD, one uniform behind the wheel. The officer glanced over at Livermore for a moment. Looked right at him.

  Livermore smiled. Believe in the disguise, he told himself as the cop nodded to him and drove away. The short dark hair, the mustache that would grow in better with each passing day. The glasses. Have absolute trust in yourself and reflect that trust to the rest of the world.

  He waited down the street from the office, picked up Alex again when he went out with the young agent, making stops all over town. The house in Mesa, then the trailer park, now here in Fountain Hills. Livermore was parked down the street in his Japanese SUV, holding the new Japanese digital camera he had bought, a Nikon with a seventy-to-three-hundred-millimeter zoom lens.

  He watched Alex get out of the car, take a few steps down the street, and look up at the condo’s bedroom window.

  You can see why I chose this place . . .

  * * *

  —

  HE HAD BEEN two hours from Flagstaff, driving in the dead middle of the night, with Liana’s body in the backseat. He’d kept to the speed limit. Used his turn signals. Everything straight and correct, still seeing that face from the laptop screen. Still working through the new plan in his head.

  He’d brought her to this empty condo, already chosen. Close to the end of the street, with one window on the back that could not be seen from any of the neighboring units. A quiet street during the summer, but not so quiet that his vehicle would be suspicious. Far enough away from his own apartment on the west side of town, but not so far as to make it inconvenient.

  He went through the window and unlocked the front door, then spent another hour back on the street, watching the place to make sure he hadn’t tripped any silent alarms. When he was satisfied, he brought her out, still wrapped in the sheet and slung over his shoulder, took her inside through the front door, and then arra
nged her carefully on the queen-sized bed in the master suite. Where he would keep her for exactly eight days.

  This was the ritual. Eight days, coming back every night to be with her. To watch how she changed. Her fingernails turning black. Her skin changing color.

  From pink.

  To purple.

  To gray.

  It still amazed him how quickly it happened, how he could almost imagine the color changing right before his eyes. Like in the bamboo forests he’d seen in Japan, how they had told him that if you stood still enough, you could actually watch the plant growing. It was the same thing. Only it was the timeless changes of death he was watching, not of life.

  It aroused him.

  It was a simple fact, something he had learned about himself from the very first time, had observed in himself with the same clinical precision he brought to everything else in his life. He was a man, after all. He was flesh and blood, born with a hard wiring every bit as well defined as the wiring in a robotic arm.

  He’d been aroused when he’d taken that first woman’s life from her, more aroused an hour later when her body was still warm. Even more aroused the next day when her body was cold. Part of it was the all-consuming sense of power he felt over her. Another part of it was the sense of uniqueness: This is something that most men do not experience. Cannot experience. It is something left only to the rare few. To the superior beings who walk this earth once in a millennium.

  And yet a final part of it was just a mystery to him.

  I don’t know why I respond this way. I just do.

  Therefore it is right.

  After eight days of being with her, of watching her, touching her, allowing her to give him pleasure even after her death, Livermore had taken Liana home. Not back to the empty apartment where he slept. He had taken her home, where he could keep her with the others.

  With Arlene, Theresa, Claire, and Sandra.

  All five of them together, even now.

  They had all taken advantage of that one human part of him. They had fooled him into believing, for one moment, that they could live up to the standard that another woman had set.

  That they could somehow take her place.

  And they had all paid for this mistake.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after watching Livermore kill seven men, I was standing at his doorstep.

  The apartment they had found was on the north side of town, in one of a dozen tall, gleaming buildings that rose thirty stories above the street. His was two blocks from the ramp to I-17. The perfect place for a man to stay anonymously comfortable, with a quick escape if he needed it.

  Madison badged the security guard at the welcome desk, taking the passcard from him and leading Larkin and me to the elevator. He slid the card into the slot, and we rode up to the top floor. When the door opened, I saw a private vestibule, with access to only one apartment.

  Martin T. Livermore lived in the goddamned penthouse suite.

  The door was propped open, and I saw half a dozen agents already moving around inside. They were all wearing crime scene gloves and shoe covers. Madison grabbed a pair of each from the cardboard box outside the door and gave them to me, then to Larkin. The two men slipped theirs on quickly and waited for me to do the same. Then we stepped inside.

  “We’re just starting our work here,” Madison said to me. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you not to disturb anything.”

  There were two agents setting up a floor grid, long white strings that would run parallel across the hardwood floor, with another set of strings running perpendicular. The result would be a perfect set of one-foot-by-one-foot squares covering the entire apartment. They would use this to catalog any trace materials found on the floor.

  As Madison and Larkin went to talk to one of the other agents, I looked the rest of the place over. Everything was sleek and modern, with an open plan that provided a sight line all the way through the kitchen. There were granite countertops with brushed-steel side plates. White cabinets with European-style handles. The living room was bigger than my entire cabin back in Paradise, with black leather furniture on chrome frames. There were two huge Japanese prints on the walls, a crane standing in a pond, and a twisted tree in fog with a pagoda in the distance. No human figures anywhere. No television.

  Another agent was busy setting up a series of numbered yellow evidence tags, small tents that would be placed next to anything of possible interest. He’d already put one next to a neat stack of mail on the dining room table, and another tag next to the newspaper, carefully folded next to the mail. I went to the big picture window and looked out over the city of Phoenix. The Superstition Mountains rose in the eastern distance.

  As I went into the living room, I scanned the bookshelf. There were thirty or forty engineering reference books, a few books on Japan. Nothing else.

  I stepped around another agent who was putting an evidence tag next to a slight indentation in the hardwood floor. Probably just an old dent in the wood, but I knew they’d run DNA tests on everything they could find, trying to determine if anyone else had been here. They’d also dust for prints, and they’d spray luminol under a black light to test for blood.

  My gut told me they’d find nothing. As luxurious as this place was, there was something oddly sterile about it. Something almost impersonal.

  This is where he lives, I said to myself, but he doesn’t really live here.

  When I went down the hallway, I saw that the first door was closed. I could hear voices coming from behind it. I continued down to the bedroom, to the bathroom, back to the kitchen. Everything was just as immaculate. Just as sterile.

  “McKnight,” Agent Madison said. I turned to see him standing before the first door, which was now open. “In here.”

  I followed him into the room. It was Livermore’s home office. Filing cabinets, a computer station, and a separate writing desk stacked with papers.

  “Give us one moment,” Madison said to Larkin and the other two agents in the room. His voice was all business.

  The three men left the room. I stepped closer to the desk and looked at the papers. It took me a while to process what I was seeing. On top was a large map of San Francisco, then beneath that a set of blueprints with neatly drawn red arrows pointing to several different parts of the building.

  “This is the classified information you were talking about at the meeting,” I said. “I don’t understand why I couldn’t—”

  “This is national security, McKnight.”

  I looked up at him. “Are you kidding me?”

  As I carefully lifted the blueprints, I saw another map below it, this one of the larger Bay Area, and beneath that I saw the corner of a brochure, with a list of times and what looked to be names of events. Welcome Cocktail Party. Opening Ceremony.

  I put everything back in its original place. “You don’t believe this bullshit, do you?”

  “Give me a reason not to.”

  “What’s he going to do?” I said, reading the text on the blueprints. “You think he’s really going to blow up the Moscone Center?”

  “This evidence points that way. We have to take this seriously.”

  “He’s a killer,” I said. “He’s not a terrorist.”

  “You don’t know what he is, McKnight. You don’t even know why he brought you here, remember?”

  “Look at this apartment,” I said. “Think about the man who lives here. Everything you know about him so far. Would he really leave all his master plans out here for you to see? Unless he wanted you to?”

  “So what are we supposed to do? Ignore this?”

  “Yes, you’re supposed to ignore it. You know why? Because you’re too smart to fall for this. You’re supposed to go back out there and find him.”

  “We’ll find him. I promise you.”

  “Not in San Francis
co you won’t.”

  He took a beat, then nodded to the wall behind me. “Look at that time line.”

  I turned and looked at it. Several sheets of paper neatly stapled to the wall, with carefully drawn lines in a dozen different colors, each labeled with the name of a convention event. Another line read Travel time, Moscone to San Mateo. Another, Enter and exit building.

  “The only thing missing is ‘Dear FBI,’” I said.

  “In five days, there’ll be twenty thousand people there. How many—”

  “But not Livermore.”

  “Listen to me. Twenty thousand people. God knows how many more in San Mateo. All in the same weekend. He can hit both venues within five hours.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s the diversion. You’ll be in San Francisco while he’s off killing ten more people somewhere else.”

  “If this is all fake, why did he keep this place a secret?”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “Come on. He knew you’d find this place.”

  “I don’t know about that. He kept his computer pretty damned secure. We took a heavily encrypted hard drive out of his computer, and as soon as we crack it—”

  “Don’t you understand what’s going on here? He’ll tie up your computer people for a week. Along with every agent you’ve got. You’re going to spend all this time, all this manpower . . . On what? On an illusion.”

  “Maybe,” he said, looking me in the eye. “But I’m not going to have fifty thousand deaths on my hands. This is the same man who killed seven cops yesterday.”

  “I know,” I said, “I was there, remember?”

  “We have no idea what he’s capable of, McKnight. We have an obligation to—”

  “You have an obligation to catch him,” I said. “Nothing else matters. How many more people does he have to kill before you realize that?”

  “We’re going to catch him,” Madison said, after taking a beat. “But this isn’t just a manhunt anymore. It’s a potential massive casualty disaster.”