Comes a Horseman
Page 4
Brady moved the phone from his ear and pushed the button that lowered its volume. When he put it back to his ear, she was saying, “. . . believe it? So soon?”
“What’s so soon?”
“Brady! Where are you? I just said he struck again! It’s been only two days since the last one. Hold on—”
He heard a horn blare and what may have been tires squealing.
“Alicia . . . ?”
She came back on without a hitch. “The one before that was four days. If this guy’s pattern is accelerating . . . I don’t want to think about the implications.”
“Where are you?”
“On my way to the scene, where you should be! Listen, you have to get out here now.”
“My ticket—”
“Is no good. You were going to fly into Denver, right? Then drive up to Ft. Collins? Change it to Colorado Springs, and then drive north to the next town. Hold on.”
The rustle of paper. Maps, Brady presumed. His mind was clearing. One dose of Alicia had that effect.
“Two towns,” she said. “Palmer Lake. Wait a minute. When will you get here?”
“If there’s a flight, and I leave home in an hour—”
“You’re right, you’ll get here too late. Seven hours at the soonest. The locals are waiting for me at the scene, and they’re not happy about it. What else is new, right? Anyway, I gotta dive in as soon as I get there. Call me when you land, and I’ll guide you in.”
“How did you—”
There was an electronic click.
That was Alicia: what else was there to say? He supposed the call could have consisted of a single line: “Get here now, then call me.” Good thing she was feeling talkative. In the state he was in, he probably would have chalked up the words to a dream and gone back to sleep. But encountering her for longer than a few moments was like slamming down a triple shot of espresso.
He rubbed his face with both palms. Even the sandpaper scrape of his whiskers sounded loud.
This isn’t good, he thought for the umpteenth time. He envisioned himself in ten years: fifty pounds heavier, cheeks and nose mottled with rosacea, hiding the boozing but not its effects, barely getting by at the Bureau on luck and sympathy. Worse, Zach would hate him by then—for all the missed baseball games, the times the boy had to be responsible because his old man wasn’t, the lost weekends and years. It would not come to that, but, he reminded himself, it could.
He had no intention of throwing away everything else he had because the most precious thing in his life had been stolen from him. But for the first time, he truly understood why tragedies catapulted some people into a watery abyss of bitterness and despair, a Mariana Trench of hopelessness. No one who had not been there could grasp the appeal of that abyss, the way being there seemed to atone for not dying too; the numbness it offered to replace the pain; the feeling that by wallowing there you were shaking a fist, however pathetically, at the cold, uncaring world. Maybe that explained the booze and the decidedly unwholesome turn his vocabulary had taken lately: he was dipping his toe into the abyss, checking it out.
Come on in! The water’s fine!
Thank God for Zach. Without him Brady would have plunged in a long time ago. But not before hunting down the scum who’d plowed into his jogging wife, his “I’ll just run to the park and be back before breakfast” wife. Not before hunting him down and blowing his brains out . . .
He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to dislodge a parasite that was burrowing into his scalp.
Focusing his thoughts on a cold shower, he lifted himself off the sofa. Then crumpled back onto it. The Alicia Espresso Machine was fine for prying open welded eyelids and jump-starting the synapses, but it was going to take more than that to shake off the lingering ghost of Jim Beam. He remembered a Red Bull energy drink in the fridge. That would be a good start. He hoisted himself up and, teetering only slightly, headed for the kitchen.
“ZACHARY?”
Brady gently shook the sleeping boy. Zach tried to roll away, but Brady pulled him back. His eyes fluttered into a squinting gaze, though the only light came in dimly from the hall. He smiled.
“You smell good,” he said.
Brady had showered and shaved and spent extra time scrubbing the alcoholic film from his teeth. He had given his body a squirt of Lagerfeld Photo, which Zachary had given him for Christmas two years before.
“Thanks.” He brushed the hair back from his son’s face. “It’s not time to get up yet, but I have to go. Miss Wagner called.”
Zach came more fully awake. “Did he do it again? He killed again?”
“Yes, and now’s the best chance we have to learn more about him.”
“Evidence collected in the first twenty-four hours after a crime can make or break the case,” Zach said matter-of-factly.
“That’s right.”
The boy thought for a moment, then he hardened his face and looked deep into his father’s eyes. “Catch him.”
Brady nodded. There were dual purposes to that goal: to make the world better by eliminating a worm that was chomping his evil way through it, and to make his parting from Zach worthwhile by accomplishing something good. These two motivations appeared as one, but to a boy and his departing father, they were as distinct as the love for family is from the love for friends.
They kissed and hugged. Then Brady leaned down to the foot of the bed and pushed his face into Coco’s fur.
“You take care of Zachary now,” he told the dog, who immediately rolled onto his back to get his belly scratched. Brady complied. “You hear me? Got your first-aid kit and cell phone, Coco?”
Zach grinned.
Brady rose. “I’m confident you’re in good hands . . . uh, paws. Mrs. Pringle will be here in a few minutes, but with Coco’s skills, maybe I should tell her never mind.”
“Yeah!”
Brady snapped his attention back to the dog. “What’s that?” he said. He leaned in close to hear some whispered doggie secrets. Coco pawed at him for more loving, and Brady nodded. “You don’t say?”
To Zach he said, “Coco wants Mrs. Pringle to stay. Says she showers him with tummy rubs and beef chews when you’re at school.”
Zach gave in. “Okay, she can stay, but only as long as Coco says so.”
“Deal.” They high-fived, and Brady saluted as he went over the threshold and shut the door.
In the hallway, he leaned heavily against the wall. He’d done his duty; he’d left on the right note. But, man, his head throbbed.
5
In a dark ocean of pines and aspens, the lights pulsed like a lost vessel. Red chased blue and blue chased red along dense walls of bark and needles. The light bar on one of the three patrol cars was canted, which put its rotating beams into a diagonal trajectory that Alicia Wagner found a bit dizzying. She slowed her rental car and took in the scene: a string of cruisers and unmarked cars aligned on the left side of the narrow lane, broken only by the entrance to a long unpaved driveway; one officer standing guard at the drive, his butt half-on, half-off the trunk of the nearest vehicle and a cigarette between his fingers, forgotten as he scowled at her windshield; neighbors from unseen houses milling around fifty yards up the lane, curious and uneasy.
She reversed, then pulled in behind the last car, a beige sedan with federal government plates. As she got out, the loose red dirt under her feet gave way, and she had to jump into a three-foot-deep drainage ditch to keep from falling. At least it was dry. Then she thought about snakes and scrambled up the embankment, grabbing hold of her car’s rear bumper. All of it reminded her of the backwoods parties where she had learned to drink and decipher male intentions—except for the strobing colors. Those always came later, closer to dawn.
She pulled a spherical leather case from the trunk and set it on the ground, then hefted out a heavy valise and slung its strap over her shoulder. It dug in and made her blouse pucker and pull. She slammed the trunk lid and, case in hand, headed for the drive entrance and the young man in
the gray uniform of an El Paso County deputy.
When he saw her trudging toward him, he slid his buttock off the car and adjusted his utility belt. He took a hard pull at the cigarette. As she drew closer, his lips slowly bent into a crooked smile, smoke drifting from it, as though his mouth had been freshly formed with a laser.
Alicia had been told she was pretty enough times to believe it, though in her experience pretty attracted more demons than angels. Five feet six, with oversized green eyes, full lips, and a small nose that turned up at the tip. Straight blonde hair swept across her forehead and fell to her shoulders. One long-forgotten boyfriend had told her that, except for her coloring, she was Ariel from The Little Mermaid come to life. In high school, she had stopped using makeup to lure male attention. Now she applied it sparingly simply to feel more feminine. God knew she had “more boy than girl inside of her,” as her father would proclaim at discovering a frog in her socks drawer or a sharply worded letter from a teacher.
She had never felt like a boy, as far as she knew. She had played with Barbies and an Easy-Bake Oven; she liked to wear dresses; she teared up at chick flicks and felt a yearning deep inside at the sound of a baby’s cry. But she also had kept an army of G.I. Joes to defend her Barbies; she favored distressed bomber jackets when the weather turned bitter; she liked Terminator 3 and was as gung ho about catching the bad guys as any boxer-shorts-wearing he-man in the Bureau. To her eternal surprise, it was this last characteristic that seemed to irritate the Bureau brass the most. Heaven forbid she should do her job better than Mr. Testosterone did his.
She focused on the gravel driveway that apparently led to the crime scene and didn’t slow her pace as she approached the deputy. Without a word, he blocked her path with his arm. She turned toward him and noticed it wasn’t her Disney-sculpted face the deputy was appraising, but her chest. To the dismay of her teenage self and the gratitude of her current self, busty was a word that no truthful person would ever apply to her. Even so, this jerk was leering, almost challenging her to confront him. She centered her gaze on his crotch and said, “Special Agent Alicia Wagner, FBI.”
It took him another five seconds to comprehend the object of her attention. He let out a nervous but good-natured laugh, which startled her into raising her eyes to his.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said through a strained smile, any hint of lecherousness gone. In the reflected dimness of his flashlight, she detected a rosy blush rising into his face. “If I was staring.”
“You were.” Though she remained firm, she felt her anger melting. This kid could not be older than twenty-one, the minimum age for most deputy sheriffs, and an age when most men were still knee-deep in the ocean of adolescence. Add to that the cockiness that often came with a gun and badge, and Deputy—she looked at his name tag—Britt was bound to have some womanizing tendencies needing exorcism. By twenty-six, he’d be over it . . . or grounded in it for life. She blinked to break her glare and smiled a halfhearted acceptance of his apology.
Deputy Britt tossed away his cigarette and asked for her ID. She set down the case in her hand, bent to deposit the heavier one on the ground, and fished her FBI credentials out of a hip pocket. After studying her picture, he directed his flashlight beam into her face.
“Nice to see it done right for a change,” she said, squinting.
The man produced a clipboard and began transcribing the information. She sighed and craned her neck to see the house. The nearest pines appeared to be jumping forward and falling back as the strobe lights caught and released them. Behind those, more battalions stood in her way. Finally, she picked out a hulking shape, blacker than the dark landscape around it, about a hundred yards away. She saw no lights burning in the windows. That was a good sign.
He finished and handed her the clipboard and pen. “Agent Wagner, ma’am, would you please sign in the space next to your name?”
The form appeared to be more than a mere visitor’s log. Text too small to read in the glare filled the top third of the paper. Hers would be the eleventh signature.
“What is this, exactly?”
“It says that you agree to provide any requested exemplars, such as hair, blood, shoe prints, fingerprints—”
“I know what exemplar means, Deputy.”
“We also ask that you provide a report explaining your involvement in the investigation and your actions while at the scene.”
She lowered her head to conceal a smile and signed the paper. Agreeing to provide fingerprints and samples of hair and blood was a given. If the lab techs found unidentified DNA at the scene, they would need to rule out the people authorized to be there. Likewise, if some fool messed up the crime scene or lost evidence, everyone there was expected to explain themselves and what they witnessed. Calling that obligation a “report” and demanding signatures was an attempt to scare away people who had the authority but not the necessity to be there—department heads, assistant district attorneys, politicians if the case was high-profile.
“Just up the drive, ma’am. They’re expecting you.”
She lifted her case, pulled the valise’s strap onto her shoulder, and started toward the house. Remaining at his station, the cop kept the ground before her illuminated until she rounded a small bend; by then she was comfortable that the drive was free of potholes and ruts. She walked farther, then stopped to adjust the strap pressing into her shoulder. For a moment, she was astounded by the stillness of the area: no hum of distant traffic, no whisper of wind through the trees, no animal or insect noises at all. There was only silence. The air was crisp and smelled of pine and moss and dirt. She could almost believe she was standing in the remotest place on earth, a place unspoiled by man. Then she noticed how the moonlight coming through the trees landed on the ground in a classic blood-spatter pattern. She shook her head and got her feet moving.
A few seconds later, she was startled to see the flare of a cigarette as someone drew on it; she cursed the crunching gravel for making it impossible to hear anything else. She discerned a dozen shapes on a concrete pad in front of a garage door. The garage lights were extinguished and the area was out of the direct gaze of the moon, so the people appeared as slivers of gray where reflected moonlight brushed a profile here, a bald pate there. Several dots of undulating orange indicated more than one smoker among the group. Their smoke rose and caught the moonlight streaming over the peaked roof.
One of the men jerked his head around, spit something to the ground, and rushed toward her.
“Agent Wagner?” His voice was more gravelly than the driveway, the calling card of a lifelong two-pack-a-day habit.
“Yes. Agent Nelson?” He appeared to be just south of sixty, heavyset, with a full head of silver hair, lightly streaked with stubborn black strands. He wore a dark suit that had likely come off the rack at Sears, rumpled, but nothing like Columbo’s overcoat; a thin, colorless tie; and shoes that must have last held a shine when Clinton was president. He was assigned to the Colorado Springs resident agency, which reported to the Bureau’s field office in Denver. Maybe it was because of the smaller-city pace or the relative lack of political or competitive pressures, but she tended to get along better with RA agents than with their FO counterparts. It seemed to her that an agent’s aggressiveness and aloofness increased with his proximity to Washington or the size of the office to which he was assigned. Her own office of record was the FBI Academy in Quantico. Case closed.
“Jack,” he said. “We spoke on the phone. Let me help.” He reached for the strap, and she let the heavy bag slide off her shoulder. It swung into his leg, knocking him off balance. “Man!” he said.
“Laser printer,” she explained. “Supposedly portable.”
He gestured at the other case. “Going bowling?”
She smiled and hoisted the case, which did resemble a bowling ball bag on steroids. “This is why I’m here. The future of crime scene processing.”
He gave it another look, his eyebrows crinkling in wonder.
She lowered her voice. “Thank you for being so on top of this.”
“Doin’ my job.”
“Getting locals to wait for us is above and beyond.”
She surveyed the people standing in the shadows. They seemed to be watching them but were not particularly interested in their conversation. “How do they feel about our involvement?”
Nelson switched the bag to his other shoulder and leaned closer. “The point is, we’re not involved. The County Sheriff ’s office has a crack investigative unit. One of the highest clearance rates in Colorado—every one of their homicides last year. Fortunately, the Bureau has a great rapport with them, mostly because we know when to stay out of their business. You’re here because you asked for a chance to check out your new gadgets, and someone in your department had already done the groundwork at the capitol for lending investigative support on any Pelletier killings in the state. I’m not saying you’re not welcome, just that you gotta tread lightly.”
She nodded. “That’s what I needed to know. Which one’s in charge?”
He leaned to one side and spit out the sunflower seed shells. Half a shell flipped over his lip and stuck to his chin. “Detective Dave Lindsey,” he said. “My height, balding, mustache.”
“Thanks.” She stepped around him and waded into the group of detectives, deputies, and technicians. She nodded at their stares as she marched up to a man who was leaning one shoulder against the pillar that separated the garage doors. He had managed to work his expression into one of bored curiosity. “Detective Lindsey, thank you for waiting for me. I’m Special Agent Alicia Wagner.” She stuck out her hand.
He paused before taking it. “This better be good,” he said, coming off the pillar. “I got half a division twiddling their thumbs and a murder scene I can’t process because you have friends in high places.”
“Be nice, Dave,” Nelson croaked from behind her.