by Osborne, Jon
Dana shook her head and took out the thin, laminated strip from her purse before handing it over to Blankenship.
Reaching across the table to take it, he laughed and pointed one by one to each of the three frames. “Nice,” he said, focusing on the first frame, which showed Bradley and Dana sitting nicely together and just looking calmly into the camera lens. “Look at your eyes in this one. Exact same shade of blue. You look like mother and son.”
Dana nodded excitedly. She’d thought the same thing.
Blankenship progressed to the second frame, a shot that showed Dana and Bradley screwing up their eyeballs and sticking their tongues sideways out of their mouths. “Attractive,” Blankenship said, shaking his head in bemusement. “You’re lucky nobody hit you guys in the backs of your heads. Your faces would’ve stayed that way for life. According to my mother, it’s a scientific fact.”
Dana giggled. As long as she and Bradley would be together, she wouldn’t have cared one little bit.
The third frame featured Bradley tilting up his chin to kiss Dana softly on the cheek. “This,” Blankenship said, tapping the frame, “is my favorite one of the three, by far.”
Dana looked on with her partner at the third photograph on the strip. “Yep,” she said, feeling her cheeks suffuse with blood. “That’s my favorite one, too.”
She unconsciously touched her left cheek where the little boy’s lips had been. She could still feel Bradley’s kiss there.
Blankenship handed back the photograph strip and shook his head again. “You’re a very lucky woman, Dana. Don’t ever forget that.”
Dana shook her own head again and tucked the strip back into her purse. “Never.”
Just then, Blankenship’s iPhone sounded on the glass-topped table next to his freshly prepared bagel. He glanced down at the caller ID, then back up at Dana. “It’s Krugman,” he said, picking up the phone and sliding the digital green answer bar across the bottom of the screen. “This should be interesting.”
He placed the phone to his ear. “Yes, sir?”
Dana watched Blankenship frown while he listened to what the Director had to say. From all appearances, it seemed to be a one-sided conversation.
Thirty seconds later, Blankenship said, “Yes, sir,” again, then put the iPhone back down on the table.
Dana lifted her eyebrows at him. “Well?” she asked. “What did Krugman have to say?”
Blankenship cleared his throat and briefed her. “Living witness in New Mexico,” he said. “A Janice Wiley, some sort of professor of creative writing at the state university. Krugman wants me to go out there and talk to her personally. See what I can find out.”
Dana furrowed her eyebrows. “What about me? What does Krugman want me to do?”
Blankenship shrugged. “Don’t know. He said he’ll call you in a bit and let you know. He seemed distracted by something.”
Dana frowned. Seemed weird that the Director would separate her and Blankenship at this late stage of the game, especially seeing as how they’d finally started making some serious progress on the case. Still, Bill Krugman was no dummy. He knew what he was doing here – and Dana knew better than to question his decisions. “What time are you supposed to leave for New Mexico?” she asked.
Blankenship glanced down at his watch. “Hour and a half. There’s a ticket waiting for me at the United desk at Hopkins. First-class this time, thank God. Anyway, do you think you could you give me a lift over there?”
“Of course.”
Blankenship rose to his feet and slung the strap of his briefcase over his left shoulder. Holding Dana’s stare, he paused and said, “Hey, congratulations again on everything that’s going on with little Bradley, Agent Whitestone. You’re gonna make a completely awesome mom. I’m very happy for you.”
A sudden wave of warmth ripped like honey through Dana’s veins, raising all the tiny little hairs on her arms as though they were dancing to music only they could hear. “Thanks, Bruce,” she said. “That means a lot to me coming from a completely awesome dad like you.”
CHAPTER 85
Angel placed the garbage bag filled with Sasha Diggs’s computer equipment into the trunk of the Cabriolet before beginning the short drive back to her and Granny Bernice’s modest little house on the west side of Cleveland.
Angel didn’t know whether she had the law on her side at the moment – didn’t know if taking the items from Sasha Diggs’s bedroom could be construed as tampering with evidence – but she felt a little bit better knowing that she’d be sharing any information she found out with Dana Whitestone.
Angel shook her head. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the reason why, but she already felt a strong kinship with the woman. Maybe because the FBI agent was a fellow female. And why not? There sure as heck weren’t too many of them in their field, so they needed to stick together whenever they could. After all, it had always been a man’s world out there.
A mean, cheating, murdering man’s world.
When she’d reach home ten minutes later, Angel dragged the computer equipment inside with her and set everything up at the kitchen table before plugging the power cord into the wall and pressing the power button on the CPU, waiting for all the start-up processes to complete.
A moment later, the monitor blinked on. Thankfully, the computer had already been equipped with a wireless card – complete with a little plastic antenna sticking up in the back – which allowed Angel to access the Internet from the Linksys router set up in her and Granny Bernice’s house.
Sasha Diggs had set her homepage to Google, the popular search engine that had made a pair of college buddies from Stanford very rich men. Using the computer mouse featuring a “Hello Kitty” sticker fixed to the top, Angel moved the pointer over the downward-facing arrow next to the search bar and called up the history log in the browser.
A few sites she wasn’t surprised to find: Cleveland State University; Elite Escorts of Cleveland; Travelocity.com.
Then a site she was very surprised to find:
www.thebrotherhood.com.
Angel frowned and clicked on the link, not knowing then that she was essentially opening up Pandora’s Box and releasing all the screeching demons trapped inside.
CHAPTER 86
The sounds of Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 filtered into the Race Master’s iPod earbuds as he leaned back in his comfortable leather captain’s chair on the Cessna and punched his password into the keyboard on his MacBook Pro before watching the website pop up. A few more keystrokes were then followed by a second password that granted him administrative access.
The Brotherhood’s website had always been a fine tool for keeping tabs on his operatives scattered throughout the country, and it provided him with a nice little chunk of income, as well. Only those willing to pay the exorbitant registration fee were allowed access to the secret forums where the Race Master had painstakingly outlined his personal philosophy regarding the best way to purify the White race, and only those who’d proved themselves worthy servants to the cause were permitted to view the mission-statement page upon which he’d carefully laid out his plan to free his older brother from his cold prison cell in Germany.
The Race Master shook his head. The vast majority of it was complete bullshit, of course. He pandered to the weak-minded with what they wanted to hear simply to keep them in line, and that seemed to be working out well for him so far. Four thousand subscribers in America, and another seven thousand in Germany, where the neo-Nazi movement had experienced a recent surge in popularity following the brutal murder of a white tourist in Leipzig by a gang of drug-running Jamaicans.
Bane snoring peacefully at his feet and resting up for tonight’s upcoming fight, the Race Master navigated over to the hit counter and called up the IP addresses of the website’s most recent visitors next. He gritted his teeth when he saw the hit coming from a computer terminal on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio.
She hadn’t managed to get into any of the forums, but the
private investigator was still trying her damndest to track him down.
It was something she’d soon regret.
Flipping shut the computer and rising to his feet, the Race Master picked up the airphone from its cradle on the interior wall of the Cessna and punched in the number for Miles O’Reilly. After fifteen rings, the call clicked over to voicemail.
You’ve reached Miles O’Reilly. I can’t take your call at the moment but…
The Race Master turned and slammed the phone violently back down into its cradle, shattering the plastic casing and startling Bane awake.
Goddamn it, O’Reilly, he thought. Where the fuck are you?
CHAPTER 87
Six hours after dropping off Blankenship at the airport, Dana soaked in a hot bubble bath back home in her apartment in Lakewood.
Slipping down into the suds with a loud groan, she tried her best to relax, but it wasn’t easy. The gruesome murders of the pregnant black women had taken up primary residence in her mind again, replacing the giggly, happy thoughts that had been brought about by her visit with little Bradley. Now that she would be a mother herself, Dana knew just how much children meant to those in charge of their safety and well-being, and her dedication to tracking down whoever had ordered the violent deaths of Laura Settle, Betsy Campbell, Kimberly Anderson and Sasha Diggs had been redoubled.
Dana pushed herself up straighter in the tub and lifted a soapy sponge to squeeze some hot water over her bare shoulders. She’d tried calling Bill Krugman down in DC after dropping off Blankenship at Hopkins for her partner’s flight out to New Mexico, but the Director still hadn’t called her back yet. Odd. Krugman usually stayed on top of these sorts of things better than that. Dana wondered briefly if anything were wrong, and hoped that wasn’t the case. Krugman’s wife had recently beaten breast cancer – as much as anyone could really beat breast cancer, at least – but maybe Marie had begun feeling sick again.
The ringing of her cellphone on the side of the tub jangled her nerves and cut into her thoughts. Lifting her hands out of the water, she shook off some excess moisture and flipped open the phone before placing it to her wet ear. “Bruce, you touch down in New Mexico yet?”
In the background of the call, Dana heard a disembodied voice on an intercom system. “Dr Bailey, Room 212. Dr Bailey, Room 212.”
Dana frowned. Blankenship’s voice followed a moment later. “Yep, touched down about an hour ago,” he said. “I’m standing in the hallway of the Brandon-Day Medical Center in Las Cruces right now, current residence of one Janice Wiley, professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University.”
Dana sharpened her frown. The report from the New Mexico field office had said that Wiley had avoided physical injury. Only one other alternative. “Mental breakdown?” she asked.
“You got it. And that would be putting things extremely mildly.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse. You ever see that movie Don’t Say a Word? The one starring Brittany Murphy, where her character says in an eerie, singsong voice, ‘I’ll never te-ee-ll!’?”
Dana shivered despite the warmth of her bath. “Yeah, that was a pretty creepy movie. Thanks for the visual, Blankenship.”
He laughed without humor. “No problem. Anyway, Janice Wiley makes Brittany Murphy’s character in that movie sound downright chatty. She’s frozen stiff as a board still. That means it’ll probably take me a little longer to thaw her out than I originally expected. Krugman get back to you yet?”
Dana stretched her neck. The tension that had started to slip away in the comfort of her bath was already back full-force. So much for her day off. “Nope,” she said. “Haven’t heard from him yet.”
“What’re you doing right now?”
Dana looked down at her naked body. “Taking a bath.”
Blankenship made a noise. “Must be nice.”
“It is.”
“Lucky you. Anyway, I better get going. I just wanted to touch base with you, check in real quick. I’m meeting with Wiley again in about five minutes. Should be a real picnic. Wish me luck.”
“Luck.”
Dana flipped off the connection with him a moment later and set her jaw. Like it or not, she knew that it would take hell of a lot more than simple luck for them to crack this maddening case and finally bring the gruesome murders of pregnant black women to a stop. Luck wouldn’t be a bad place to start, though.
Wouldn’t be a bad place to start, at all.
CHAPTER 88
WHITE POWER, WORLD WIDE!
The frightening words leapt out in bold black letters from the top of The Brotherhood’s homepage, right next to a circle intersected by a cross.
Angel sucked in a sharp breath that stabbed her lungs like a switchblade knife, immediately recognizing the symbol as an Odin’s Cross – an ancient Celtic symbol that had been co-opted by the neo-Nazis in an effort to instill fear in the hearts of black people, much like the KKK did with their burning crosses.
A dozen thoughts flashed through her mind at once: Why the hell had Sasha Diggs been visiting a white-power hate-group’s website? Research? A paper she needed to do? Some sort of morbid curiosity?
Or had it been something else?
Angel didn’t know, but she sure as hell planned to find out.
Various sub-section tabs sat beneath the Odin’s Cross. Newslinks & Articles. Announcements. A forum for posting photographs and ideological hate-speech. All of them were password-protected, though, and registration wasn’t cheap. Five hundred bucks just for a three-day trial.
Angel sighed and powered down the computer. Oh, well. To hell with it. She’d always been better at old-fashioned research, anyway.
Much like the Rhodes scholar Sasha Diggs had once been, she was certainly no stranger to the library, herself.
CHAPTER 89
Three long hours after stepping onto the chartered Cessna in Worcester, Massachusetts, the Race Master led Bane by a thick steel chain onto the tarmac of a private airport in Richmond, Virginia.
After they’d been ushered into a waiting limousine, he cracked the seal on a fresh bottle of Black Label and sipped the strong drink while the long black vehicle whisked them off to a sprawling farmhouse thirty miles south of the city. The intro to perpetually-in-trouble-rapper DMX’s It’s Dark and Hell is Hot blasted over the Bose sound system as they drove. Obviously enjoying the aggressive tunes, Bane flattened back his ears against his thick skull and howled along in perfect time to the thumping music.
The Race Master took a deep breath. Tonight’s fight would be for one hundred thousand dollars and marked the crown jewel of a yearlong underground competition run by a professional football player, who’d cleverly named his illicit operation “Bad Intentionz Kennelz”.
Only two dogs remained following the preliminaries that had taken place over the course of the past several months: Bane and Jaws, the football player’s powerful brindle pit bull. Each canine had already dispatched four opponents apiece in the most ruthless fashions imaginable. Hell, after the last fight, the Race Master had actually had to pick bits of Bane’s opponent out of his teeth.
Since they were in the South, they’d be adhering to “Cajun Rules”. No matter. Bane had been trained very well in all aspects of the fight game and, as always, he stood ready and willing to get down to work.
As per Cajun Rules, the pit itself was square with sides two feet high, the scratch lines twelve feet apart.
Half an hour later, a palpable air of excitement crackled in the barn as dogfight lovers from all over the country huddled around to watch the bloody battle that would end in the violent death of at least one of the dogs. Entering the pit on opposite sides, the Race Master and the football player held their fighters facing away from one another. A moment later, the referee in the middle of the pit gave the order for which everyone had been waiting.
“Face your dogs.”
Bane strained mightily against his leash as the Race Master turned him around. The mass
ive pit bull did the same on the other side of the pit. The referee looked down at the dogs, then back up at their owners before bringing down his right arm in a quick chopping motion.
“Let’s go!”
Snarling angrily, the dogs were at each other’s throats in a matter of seconds. The pit bull drew first blood, sinking its sharp white fangs deep into Bane’s thick neck. a look of wild fury exploding in its flashing brown eyes. In the very next instant, Bane tore his flesh out of the other dog’s powerful jaws and whipped his head around like a lightning bolt as his own teeth found their painful mark.
The fight raged on for nearly three minutes from there, both dogs giving as good as they got, before the brindle pit bull finally began to tire. The fury had gone out its eyes now, and it whimpered helplessly as Bane went in for the kill.
“Enough!” the football player cried out, turning his terror-stricken gaze up to the Race Master. “Call off your fucking dog!”
But the Race Master simply ignored his opponent and let Bane finish off what they’d come there to do. This was a fight to the death, after all, as had been clearly spelled out in the rules.
The pit bull’s tortured screams echoed throughout the huge barn and the raucous crowd went wild as Bane’s sharp white teeth found their mark once again.
Seconds later, with his dog lying dead on the ground in a pile of bloody at his feet, the huge football player lunged across the pit at the Race Master, his dark brown eyes flashing with the same sort of fury his destroyed dog had displayed only moments earlier.
Stepping quickly to one side, the Race Master brought up the heel of his palm hard into the football player’s broad nose, splintering the bone and sending a sickening gush of blood rushing down his face.
After several intense moments of pushing and shoving in the crowd that were punctuated by loud curses and the production of at least one silver handgun, everyone in attendance agreed that the action had been taken in self-defense.