by Steven James
Finally, I phoned Margaret and asked if Mollie Fischer had been found.
“Not yet.”
“You’ve searched every room in the hotel?”
“Yes, we-”
“Any video of her leaving?”
“No. There’s been no word from her, and there’s nothing on video. We’re wondering if the killers somehow managed to get her into a car and out of the parking garage before the perimeter was set up. Patrick, I spoke with the doctor who treated your arm-”
“No.”
“No what?”
“The timing doesn’t work. I was right behind them. They couldn’t have gotten her out, especially if they used the taxi.”
Unless only one of them was in the storage room.
But how would they have gotten Mollie down eight flights of stairs?
And who were the two people the Rainey children saw?
“We’ll find her,” Margaret responded.
“But if she didn’t leave the hotel, she has to be inside it.”
“We’re on it.” Her tone had become more terse, and since I’d already gone over most of this with Doehring earlier, I moved the discussion into a slightly different direction. “Did you follow up on the laptop and duffel bag Danny Rainey mentioned?”
“Nothing was left in the cab they used. But we did find the bullet that traveled through your arm. The lab says it’s a 9mm, fired from a Walther P99.” She told me a few more details that the Rainey children had shared with her: the man and woman were walking; she was thinner than their mom and was really pretty. Danny thought he’d seen her somewhere before on a TV show. The man had black hair and a lot of scars on his face and was “pretty much normal sized.”
Scars.
Hmm. Should make him easier to identify.
That was a lot of good information from the children who hadn’t told me anything. “Where did you learn to do that, by the way?”
“Do what?”
“Talk to kids like that. You seem like an old pro.”
“I work with children every weekend,” she replied. “Yesterday you informed me that you didn’t see the man you were chasing…” Since eyewitnesses don’t often recall specific details until hours or even days after a traumatic event, I had a feeling I knew where she was going with this. “Have you thought more about it? Can you give us any kind of description?”
“I only caught a glimpse of him at the doorway to the stairwell, and I never saw his face. But based on the security video footage of him wheeling Mollie into the hotel, we know he’s Caucasian, medium build, approximately five-foot-eleven or six foot tall. He used his left hand to press the elevator button and to open the stairwell door.”
“So, left-handed.”
“Most likely, yes. And he favors his right leg.” My curiosity was getting the best of me. “You work with children on the weekends?”
“I volunteer at a shelter for battered women; I watch their children for them. When you say he favors that leg, do you mean he puts more weight on it or less?”
“Less weight.” It was as if we were carrying on two conversations at the same time. “Margaret, helping at the shelter, that’s impressive. That’s a side of you I never knew existed.”
“Agent Bowers, there are many sides of me you have never seen.”
A comment like that begged for a different context, but as I considered her words, it occurred to me that Margaret Wellington actually had a life outside the Bureau.
Fascinating.
At last she asked about the gunshot wound, and I assured her that I was fine. “One more thing.” I took a seat in the living room. “Are you the one who told Congressman Fischer not to release the information about his daughter, that it might jeopardize the investigation?”
“No.”
“What about my daughter? Did you tell him about the custody case?”
A small silence. “What custody case?”
I heard no hint of deception in her voice.
All right, then, I would deal with all that when I met with Rodale tomorrow. “Never mind.”
“One last thing,” Margaret said formally. “Because of your injury, I’m excusing you from your teaching responsibilities for the rest of the week. If you’re feeling up to it, you can return to the classroom when the NA classes begin on Monday.”
“I’m not teaching arm wrestling, I’m teaching geospatial investigative strategies. I’ll be all right.”
“I’m not debating this with you. There are liability issues at stake here that the Bureau needs to be cognizant of and responsive to.”
“Honestly, Margaret, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“I’ve already spoken with Agent Vanderveld, and he’s agreed to take your classes.”
Not Jake.
Please, not Jake.
“Margaret, he’s screwed up two major investigations he’s worked with me.”
“He’s a valued member of the NCAVC and one of the most experienced profilers we have. He’s qualified to take your classes for two days.” She took a breath. “Besides, I looked it up: Bureau policy clearly states that anyone with a firearm injury caused by adversarial action must be released from duty, with pay, for a minimum of forty-eight hours.”
“I don’t remember that policy.”
“How many policies do you remember?”
Okay, now that wasn’t even nice.
“But what about the case?” I said. “Mollie is still missing. You can’t just expect me to step away and then-”
“I’ll keep you posted on our progress, but for the next forty-eight hours, you are officially on medical leave.”
I didn’t respond.
“Do you understand?”
I said nothing.
“Are we on the same page here or not?”
“I hear you,” I said noncommittally, and left it at that.
A pause, as she no doubt considered how far to press things, but finally she moved on: “Don’t forget, I’ll need your incident report. I’d like it on my desk by 9:00. Also, I spoke with the hospital. They said you need to complete the forms they gave you, that filling in the d’s and b’s was not sufficient.”
I’d had a feeling that would come back to haunt me.
“Paperwork. Good. Sounds like fun.”
“I’ll see you in a couple days. Just get some rest. Good night, Agent Bowers.”
“Good night, Margaret.”
End call.
And when I looked up I saw Tessa standing in the doorway. “Did you hear that?” I said.
“Sort of. I mean, your part at least. I could pretty much fill in the rest.”
She placed a stack of manila folders filled with printouts on the table. The folders had been labeled “Primate Metacognition,” “Primate Aggression,” and “Altruism in Higher Primates.”
Primate metacognition? Altruism in higher primates?
“That was Assistant Director Wellington.” My eyes were on the folders. “I’m not sure you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting her.”
“Has anyone?”
Ooh. Nice line.
That one was worth remembering.
Tessa took a seat beside me. “Is she always like that?”
“Pretty much.” Curious, I flipped through the altruism folder. Tessa had printed out more than a dozen scientific journal articles on reciprocal altruism, cognitive empathy, primate intentionality, and partner-specific reciprocity among chimpanzees. I caught the gist of what the phrases were referring to, but I wasn’t sure how these articles could possibly relate to the case.
“The word uptight doesn’t even come close, does it?” Tessa said, referring to Margaret again.
“The words that come close would not be appropriate for a seventeen-year-old girl to hear.”
“I’ll bet I can guess ’em.”
“I’ll bet you can.”
As I paged through the printouts I was impressed with the thoroughness of Tessa’s research. “You did a lot of good work here. I�
�m proud of you.”
“I hope it helps.” She was setting up the chessboard.
I closed the folder. “I’ll take a look at these in the morning when I have a little more time.”
When she’d finished arranging the pieces, she quietly rotated the board so that the white pieces were in front of her, and then without a word, moved her king’s pawn to e4 and glanced at me.
I positioned myself across from her and played e5. Tessa favored a Ruy Lopez opening, so I wasn’t surprised when she countered with knight f3.
But I went with Petrov’s Defense to see how she’d respond, so instead of knight to c6, I played knight to f6.
She eyed me.
Smiled in a soft, confident way.
And as the game progressed, the stress from the case began to drain away, the pain in my arm became less and less noticeable, and although Tessa and I hardly spoke, it seemed like we were both opening up to each other in ways deeper than words.
I was just a dad spending time with his daughter.
It struck me that it was times like these that Paul Lansing was trying to steal away from me.
Then I made a move, she took my knight, and I realized that I needed to change my entire strategy or I might end up losing this match before it had barely begun.
45
Oasis Hotel
Vienna, Virginia
11:47 p.m.
After the debacle at the Lincoln, Astrid had suggested that she and Brad stay at a hotel tonight rather than the house, just to play it safe.
“At least it all worked out,” Brad had told her as he locked the door.
“But shooting an FBI-it was rash. Careless.”
“Okay.”
“You understand?”
“Yes.”
So that was an hour ago.
Now, she was slipping into something a little more comfortable for bed, and he was watching her.
Over the last few minutes, for whatever reason, they’d gotten onto the topic of serial killers. “They take souvenirs,” Brad said. “The serial killers do. So that they can relive their crimes, so they can feel that sense of power and control again.”
She already knew this of course, but decided to pretend that she didn’t. “What kind of souvenirs?”
“Jewelry, underwear, body parts. In a surprisingly high number of cases, shoes.”
Serial killers.
Like Brad.
But not like her. She’d never killed anyone, not in NowLife. It’d always been him.
She’d planned it that way from the start.
Just in case they ever got caught.
No, she was not a murderer. Just a bystander. “We keep a different kind of souvenir,” she said, getting back to the conversation.
He stared at her quizzically.
“In the freezer,” she added.
“The freezer?”
“Prison, our little fishbowl.”
A questioning look.
“I never told you about that? About the fishbowl?”
“I don’t think so.”
She stepped into the bathroom to freshen up. “You mentioned once that you had a dog, when you were a kid.”
“Brandi, yes. She was a Sheltie.”
“I never had a pet myself, but my sister did.” She’d told him stories about her sister Annie before. “A goldfish named Goldie.”
“Annie had a goldfish named Goldie.”
“What can I say, I was always the more inventive one in the family.” She washed her face. “Goldie lived in a fishbowl on the dresser in our bedroom; anyway, one night Annie and I got into a fight. I don’t remember what it was about-who was supposed to help Dad with the dishes, maybe. Something like that. But I ended up being the one who got into trouble, and Annie spent the rest of the night teasing me. Well, the next morning when she woke up, Goldie was gone.”
“You flushed her goldfish?”
“No.”
Astrid finished in the bathroom. “Goldie’s bowl was gone, and Annie looked all over for it. It was Saturday but my father worked weekends, so we were home alone. Annie was bigger than I was, stronger, and she hit me. A lot. But I didn’t say a word. She emptied out the garbage, didn’t find any glass, looked everywhere outside. No sign of the fish or the bowl anywhere.”
She glanced at him to see his reaction.
He was listening intently. She had him, she could tell.
“I guess Annie must have searched for three or four hours that morning. Finally, at lunch, I figured it’d been long enough. I told her to check-”
“The freezer,” he said.
She smiled. “Yes. Annie cried for three days. My dad beat me for doing it, but every time he hit me I hardly noticed, all I could think of was how it had felt when Annie was looking. The feeling was…” She searched for the right word, couldn’t find it. “It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.”
“Exquisite,” he said. “It was exquisite.”
“Yes.” She joined him beside the bed. “All I’d done was set the bowl in the freezer and close the door. It was that simple. And then the water began to freeze and I knew that slowly, slowly, it would become a solid block of ice.”
“It made you feel powerful.”
“Yes.”
“Is that how you got started?”
“It wasn’t the only thing.” She reflected for a moment. “You set things in motion and then life simply goes on, but you have a secret, and in a way you want someone to open the freezer to see what you did, to see your handiwork, but you don’t tell them because while they search, while they wonder, while they worry, you own a piece of them.”
“Like the FBI, right now,” he said. “Searching for Mollie, for us. We control a part of them.”
She thought of the current game, but also of the four men in prison because of her. The goldfish from the previous games. She could get them released at any time; all she needed to do was tell the authorities the truth. “Yes.”
Then, after watching him for a moment, she stepped back and smiled. “So, how did I do?”
“With what?”
“The story. Did I have you?”
A question mark on his face. Then dawning disappointment. “You made it up?”
“It was good, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t know it was a story.”
So, yes, he had believed her. He was staring at her with a wounded, confused look, the same look he’d had at the hotel when she deleted the picture of Rusty.
“Don’t sulk.” She trailed a finger along his cheek. “It was a good story, wasn’t it?”
After a moment: “Yes. It was a good story.”
“Time for bed.”
“Okay.”
The novel that was her life played out in her head. He remained distant and distracted throughout the night and that bothered her, especially since he was the one who had failed her earlier in the day-being so impulsive, so remiss, shooting the FBI agent. Yes, it was true she’d deceived him, now, twice in one day, but it shouldn’t have been a shock to him. After all, so much of their relationship had been built on the sand of half truths and lies. Ever since the beginning. Ever since DuaLife. This moodiness, his carelessness, were not acceptable. In a quiet, slow U-turn of emotion, she found herself considering possibilities she had never fully explored before. She began to wonder if he might be turning into a liability. The idea made her uncomfortable. He was the father of her unborn child and she loved him, but now she realized that if things came down to it, she might need to be ready to swing the freezer door shut on this scarred little pet resting in her arms. And to her surprise, she found the idea enticing. Maybe even exquisite.
46
Thursday, June 12
5:15 a.m.
My arm was killing me.
I’m not a big fan of drugs, so last night, even though I took the antibiotics, I’d passed on the second dose of meds the doctor had offered me, and as a result, the gunshot wound had ached and throbbed throughout t
he night, keeping my sleep light and fitful and sporadic.
At last, when daybreak cut through my window, I gave up fighting for sleep and climbed out of bed.
And took the stupid painkillers.
No workout today, but I washed up, and as I was getting dressed I noticed the St. Francis of Assisi pendant that Cheyenne had given me lying on my dresser where I’d left it when we moved into the house for the summer.
Last month when I was preparing to leave to testify at Richard Basque’s retrial, she’d offered the pendant to me, explaining that St. Francis is the patron saint against dying alone. “It helps remind me why I do what I do. It’ll be good for you to have at the trial. To remember the women he killed.” I knew she was Catholic, and her words had underscored to me how seriously she took her faith. “Don’t worry, I can get another one.”
I’m not very religious or superstitious, but the gesture meant a lot to me, and I’d accepted the pendant.
Now, as I picked it up, I couldn’t help but think of what Lien-hua had mentioned about how Mollie Fischer would’ve gotten rid of the locket that Rusty had given her if she’d really broken up with him.
So maybe you shouldn’t keep the pendant…?
But Cheyenne and I had never broken up, never been a couple-in fact, we’d only gone out once, and that was just a pseudo-date since Tessa had tagged along.
Pseudo-date or not, I slipped the pendant into my pocket, chose a shirt that was baggy enough to hide the bandages on my arm, bypassed the sling, and went to the kitchen for breakfast.
Margaret had made it clear that she didn’t want me working on the case today, but there was no way I could shut off that part of my brain for forty-eight hours.
Besides, we hadn’t found Mollie yet, and there was a remote chance that she was still alive. I figured job security wasn’t all that big of a deal when there were lives at stake, so after grabbing some breakfast and brewing a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, I went online and logged onto the case files to see what had been added since last night.
The FBI Lab had established with certainty that the woman who’d been found in the primate research facility was indeed Twana Summie. Her family had been contacted, and as I read through the autopsy report, I thought of the words that had likely been said to them: