by Gregg Loomis
It would be convenient if the crime could be pinned on the urban outdoorsman, but that wasn't gonna happen. First, if Mr. Fragrant had killed her, he sure as hell wouldn't have run down a cop to tell him about his grisly find. He would be somewhere celebrating the windfall of whatever her purse might have contained by binging on Mad Dog 20/20 or whatever other fine vintage was selling for $2.50 a bottle. Second, the man was visibly shaken, more tremors than the DT's Morse he guessed he suffered from.
He looked up to where another uniform had been unenthusiastically poking around. The man was waving a purse like a trophy. Careful not to trip over the vines, Morse strode over to him.
"I found the vic's purse, Detective."
Morse took it. "Meybbe. Couldda been snatched from somebody else." He checked the color. It more or less matched the pant suit of the dead woman and was an exact fit with the single shoe. "Ennythin' in it?"
The cop shook his head. "Wallet's gone, no ID."
Morse watched two emergency medical uniforms shroud the body and load it onto a stretcher. No way a wheeled gurney was gonna make it in there. He ran a hand around the inside of the purse and held up a business card.
"Paige Charles, Swisher & Peele, Attorneys at Law," he read aloud. "Looks like whoever the vic was, she had high-powered counsel an' I believe I've met that counsel."
He pulled his notepad out of a pocket and began turning pages.
CHAPTER 40
480 Lafayette Drive
Thirty Minutes Later
WITHIN MINUTES OF HIS ARRIVAL, LANG Reilly had taken charge, turning the den into a command center. Wynton stood by helplessly as his neighbor called what seemed to be a private number in the governor's office. A reply in less than ten minutes established Wynn-Three was not in custody of any state or local agency. The next call, also on the directory of Lang's iPhone, was to the local FBI office. It had taken less than a half hour for a team of three conservatively dressed men and one woman to appear on Wynton's doorstep.
Two of the men went to work on the house's phones while the woman and other man interviewed and reinterviewed Paige. Wynton had always heard the FBI was competent, but he was astonished at the practiced efficiency with which they operated.
"If this really turns out to be a kidnapping," Lang explained, "these guys want to both tape and try to trace any ransom demand."
"If?" Wynton asked. "What else could it be?"
"Normally, the Fibbies don't get involved in a disappearance case unless there's some indicia the victim was illegally taken against his will."
No one taught that in law school, Wynton thought. He was feeling like a character in a play without a part. "There's no doubt Wynn-Three didn't go willingly."
Lang was about to say something when the doorbell rang.
Everyone in the house suddenly became still and silent.
One of the FBI men talking to Paige stood and moved toward the front of the house. "I'll get it."
From where he stood, Lang heard a familiar voice and moved toward the hall. Before he could leave the room, a tall, slender black man in a suit was there.
"Shoulda knowed you'd somehow be involved, Mr. Reilly."
Lang smiled. "Well, well, Detective Morse! It's been awhile."
Morse sighed deeply. "Hoped it might be longer, meybbe eight mo' years. Ever' time I see you, somebody either dead or in deep sh . . . trouble."
"Looks like we may have a kidnapping."
"Dunno nothin' 'bout that. I can see you a'ready got the Federal boys here. Leas' they looks like 'em."
This must be the detective Paige had told him about, Wynton was thinking, the one that seemed to know Lang and Gurt.
"The Atlanta Police Department is now interested in a potential abduction?" Lang asked.
Morse shook his head. "No, I came to see Paige Charles." He held up a business card. "Victim in a homicide I'm workin' had it in her purse. I a'ready had the address 'cause of what happened in the park the other day."
"We're interviewing Ms. Charles now," the FBI man said. "We'll be through in a minute or two."
Morse was about to reply, no doubt to comment on the FBI impinging on his investigation. From experience, Lang was aware of the less-than-friendly relationship between state and federal authorities. The FBI treated locals as incompetent; the state people maintained the Bureau did little of the actual work but claimed most of the credit. There was some truth on both sides.
"Detective?" Paige was standing in the hall just outside the door. "I'm glad you're here. I called the police this morning and they weren't interested."
Morse gave a slight head shake. "Miz Charles, we found a woman's body down by the railroad near Ansley Mall. She had this card in her pocket."
Paige stepped closer and examined it. "I think that's the one I gave the woman from DEFACS, woman named Byron-Smith."
Morse reached into a pocket and produced a photograph. "This her?"
Wynton watched the color drain from his wife's face as though someone had pulled a plug. She stepped, more of a stagger, backwards, a hand feeling for a chair into which she collapsed. "I, I think so, yes."
Morse returned the picture to his pocket. "It was taken where we found her. What was your relationship to this Byron-Smith woman?"
Wynton noticed the detective's lazy drawl had disappeared.
"Relationship?" Paige ran both hands down her face. "We didn't have a relationship exactly. She came by here Monday, a couple of days ago. She was with the DEFACS people. I'd taken Wynn-Three, my son . . ."
"The one somebody tried to snatch in the park?" Morse asked.
"Yes. I'd taken him for help. He had been emotionally disturbed by . . . by something. The psychologist suspected possible child abuse. Of course, that was ridiculous . . ."
"Look, detective," Wynton interrupted. "You can see my wife is pretty upset right now . . ."
Paige held up a hand, palm outward, "It's okay. You found her dead? Who . . . ?"
Morse shook his head. "Too early to tell yet."
"I'd try whoever took the little boy."
Everyone's eyes were on Lang.
"You only identified her by Paige's card, right?"
Morse nodded, beginning to understand. "Her wallet was missing. That ain't unusual."
Lang turned to Paige. "And I think you told me the woman who came here with the two men had something that looked like DEFACS ID, right?"
"Oh my God!" Paige said. "They killed that poor woman . . ."
"To get the necessary credentials to take Wynn-Three," Lang finished. He turned to Morse. "You have the guy who tried to take the kid in the park. What have you found out about him so far?"
Morse shrugged. "A real hard ass. S'cuse me, ma'am. He's a foreigner, tell that by his accent. Like we ain' got 'nough homegrown perps. Got no ID, wouldn't say a word, 'ceptin' he wanted a lawyer. Too many TV crime shows rerun overseas. We sent his prints off to Interpol, take 'em day or two t' run 'em."
"He is German, possibly Bavarian."
Everyone turned look at Gurt, who had arrived unannounced. From the color in her cheeks and those of the child whose hand she held, they had been out for a walk in the day's crisp winter air.
"German?" Morse repeated. "How you know?"
Gurt let go of Manfred's hand and began peeling off his coat. "I am German. I know."
"Trust me," Lang said. "She knows."
"The two men come with the supposed DEFACS worker," Morse asked Paige. "They have accents?"
She shook her head. "I don't remember them saying anything."
Lang went over to where she was sitting. "The reincarnation, the person Wynn-Three remembered being . . ."
"He remembered no such thing!" she snapped. "It was all something suggested by that crazy hypnotist!"
Lang was not prepared to split hairs whether of a theological, psychological, or fanciful nature. "The person. Didn't you tell us he was German?"
"Polish," Wynton volunteered. "A polish Jew in one of the Nazi camps. W
hy?"
"Do you still have the recording what's-her-name made?"
"Marcie," Paige said with obvious distaste. "What does that have to do with kidnapping Wynn-Three?"
"Nothing perhaps," Lang said gently. "Perhaps a lot. It's a rock worth turning over. May I hear it?"
Fifteen minutes later, he put down a set of earphones and turned to the senior FBI agent. "I suggest you have someone contact the airlines, see if someone bought tickets to anywhere in Germany, particularly . . ."
"Munich," Gurt furnished.
"To Munich, someone who had no reservations, possibly paid in cash, and had a small child with them, probably a child who appeared to be sound asleep."
"That's pretty wild speculation," the Bureau man observed.
"You have a better idea?"
The man left the room to mutter into his cell phone in the hall. Morse looked around for the overcoat he'd thrown over a chair. "Well, I ID'd my vic an' looks like the Hoover Boys have ever'thin' else unner control." He turned to Lang. "You need me, counselor, you knows where to find me."
Lang was watching the policeman make his own way out, unaware Wynton was right behind him. "Sounds like you and the detective are old buddies. He in some of your cases?"
"You could say that."
Wynton waited a beat for an explanation that was not forthcoming before the FBI man on the cell phone approached. "Good guess, Reilly! Delta had a German national pay cash for two tickets for this afternoon's flight to Munich, was carrying a small boy who seemed asleep. No baggage. Odd enough for the ticket clerk to remember him."
The three other agents joined them. "Where is he now? The local cops alerted? Have you had the concourse sealed?"
"Is he all right, the child?" Paige asked in a quavering voice.
"No reason to think otherwise, ma'am," the woman agent assured her. "We'll have him sleeping in his own bed tonight."
Wynton exhaled for what seemed like the first time that day. Calling Lang Reilly had been a good idea, a brilliant inspiration. He owed him a lot more than a bottle of fine champagne. The unanswered questions about his next-door neighbors, the martial arts, the accent recognition, the close connections with the FBI and governor's office. None of the above mattered any longer.
The only dampener on his spirits was Lang himself. The man clearly wasn't sharing in the general relief everyone else felt. From somewhere deep down, some place Wynton didn't even want to think about, he feared Lang was the only person who really knew what was happening.
CHAPTER 41
International Concourse
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
Thirty Minutes Later
WYNTON HAD GRIPPED THE DASH OF the Porsche with one hand while he held the armrest in a death hold with the other. He didn't dare glance at the speedometer as Lang Reilly smoothly dodged around traffic on I-75/85 South. In addition to the governor's office, the man clearly had connections with the local police. Had Wynton driven at these speeds, he would have faced ten years in the electric chair.
Even so, it still seemed an eternity before Lang exited the expressway and stopped in the traffic caused by the airport's current runway construction project, an enterprise many Atlantans suspected to be the city's equivalent of the weaving of Penelope's tapestry: intentionally endless. A policeman waived them on. Parking was not allowed in front of the terminal and stopping was severely discouraged.
"Move it!" The cop was standing in front of the Porsche.
Lang rolled down the window. "We got an emergency!"
The cop couldn't care less. "You gonna have more n' emergency, you don' move that car outta here."
This was, after all, the same police force that had literally knocked a grandmother to the pavement for not moving her vehicle fast enough to suit them. The Atlanta constabulary, at least those at the airport, would have compared poorly in the sensitivity department with Genghis Khan's Mongols.
A man in a suit emerged from the crowd, reaching into a coat pocket. He flashed a badge at the policeman and said something to him. The uniform shook his head and stood his ground until another man appeared, sartorially identical to the first. The cop shook his head again. Without further discussion, each man took one of the policeman's elbows, lifting him to the side.
One of the men stuck his head in the window. "Mr. Charles, come with me."
Lang gave Wynton's arm a reassuring pat. "Go on. I'll catch up later."
Wynton had thought he was familiar with Hartsfield-Jackson, but he had never seen the warren of passages, hallways, stairs, and elevators that bypassed the airport's check-in and security areas. His companion said little, only identifying himself as Special Agent Whittier of the Atlanta FBI office.
"Did you find my son?" Wynton asked, straining to keep up.
"We found someone matching the description," Whittier said laconically. Beyond that, he ignored Wynton's questions.
Passing through a steel door, Wynton was led to the bottom of the escalators by which passengers descended to the tram to all concourses. An electric golf cart was waiting with a driver in the airport security uniform. As soon as Wynton and the FBI man were aboard, it sped down the corridor that connected the various concourses, coming to a stop in front of an unobtrusive and unmarked door. An Atlanta police officer in SWAT regalia stood on either side, each holding what Wynton guessed were automatic weapons.
Behind the door was a short hall with two more doors on each side. Whittier's knock on the first on the right brought a grumbled response. The FBI man followed Wynton inside.
Wynton took one look and almost choked on his disappointment. Seated in one of six cheap plastic chairs ringing a table was an old man, his clothes rumpled with travel. Next to him a small boy sat, the double-eared Mickey Mouse cap of Disney World on his head. Instead of the smile associated with the Magic Kingdom, snail tracks of tears streaked his cheeks.
It was not Wynn-Three.
Two men occupied chairs across from the forlorn pair, eying Wynton expectantly.
"It's, it's not him," Wynton said in a dispirited near whisper.
"My grandson and I," the old man said in a tremulous voice, "we come to America to see New York, Washington, and Disney World. We hear it is better than Disneyland in France. We come and now we are treated as criminals."
"The hotels in New York, Washington, and Orlando check out," one of the anonymous men said, tossing a pair of passports on the table. "Herr Herman Fest, sixty-two, and Dormer Fest, age five, both of Munich. He bought his tickets in cash."
The elder Fest's eyes switched between the two men like a cornered mouse watching a pair of cats. "Please, I meant no harm. I did not want to invite the attention of the German tax authorities by a large credit card balance. I promised for his birthday my grandson . . ."
Wynton felt even worse than he had. Not only was his son still missing, but this old gentleman and his grandson had also been thoroughly terrorized for nothing.
Both the men across the table stood.
"Okay, Herr Fest. We're not the equivalent of the German IRS. People on this side of the pond screw the tax man, too."
The old man glanced at the door. "We may leave?"
The other man smiled. "As you wish. If you hurry, you may still make your flight."
"There's a cart outside. Why not let them use it to get to their gate?" Wynton suggested.
Wynton couldn't see Special Agent Whittier, but the two government men who were in his view exchanged glances that told him they had given no thought as to the consequences of their mistake.
At that moment, Delta Flight 607 received instructions from ground control to taxi into position, hold on runway Two-Seven-Left, and await clearance from the tower for takeoff. The 757 was destined for Miami International, where it should land about an hour before a Lufthansa flight departed.
Near the rear of the tourist section, Friedrich Gratz settled back into his narrow seat after carefully strapping the seat belt around his small, sleeping comp
anion. It should be at least another hour before he had to administer another dose of the drug. He patted a pocket containing the small eyeglass case holding the hypodermic needle.
Things had gone well, exceptionally well. It had been pure luck that his lookout in Atlanta had seen the Department of Family and Children Services markings on the car in the Charles's driveway. Five hundred dollars had found a woman, a prostitute, who had been more than willing to use the dead agent's credentials. He regretted killing them both. It had been necessary, but good things had never come easily to him. His careful and speedy planning had been the key: a German passport for the child had initially presented a problem until he found a skilled forger who had prepared one, assuring them that, if the child stayed asleep, it was unlikely anyone would wake him to check the photograph too closely. Cash was raised in advance so that the return flight could be made in two legs, each unconnected to the other by a paper or electronic trail. He idly wondered if the authorities had put things together quickly enough to detain poor Herman and his grandson. Either way, both had enjoyed a vacation at the expense of Friedrich and his friends back in Munich.
Yes, things had gone well. Now came the harder part.
CHAPTER 42
480 Lafayette Drive
That Evening
WYNTON WAS TRYING TO KEEP PAIGE'S mind occupied, thereby keeping his own mind from the terrible emptiness his child's absence had created. It was like a huge black hole in his very existence, sharp-edged loneliness, despite the fact that at least two FBI agents were upstairs monitoring the phone and Lang and Gurt had accepted his invitation to join them for Chinese takeout. Manfred seemed to be the only one enjoying the meal.