Find Me

by Carol O’Connell

  Riker opened the car’s trunk and tossed in the black plastic bag with Horace Kayhill’s maps.

  He heard the shouts before he saw Mallory winding her way through the haphazard lanes of parked cars. Dale Berman called out to her, hurrying now to match steps with her longer legs, and then the man put one hand on her shoulder. Never breaking stride, she turned to give him a look that made him think better of annoying her anymore. Finally the fed gave up and returned to the restaurant.

  And Mallory kept coming.

  Riker closed the trunk and leaned back against the car. When she joined him, his eyes shifted to the retreating back of Dale Berman. “What was that about?”

  She set the laptop on the trunk of the Mercedes and opened it. “I told him I knew he was dragging out this case.”

  “Well,” said Riker, “I guess the longer he drags it out the greater the glory. Some people just like to see their names in the newspaper.”

  “That’s not it. He did everything he could to keep the media away from this case.” She powered up the laptop and turned the screen so he could see it. “You thought Dale Berman was just incompetent.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s true.”

  She shook her head. “I told you the screwups were over the top-even for Berman. So I followed the money.”

  Ah, Mallory’s all-time favorite. Trust her to find a money motive in the slaughter of little girls. He stared at the glowing screen of number columns. “What am I looking at?”

  “Dale Berman’s payroll records. He’s been reporting fifty hours of overtime every week.” She pulled a notebook from her back pocket and pointed to a November date. “That’s when Berman takes early retirement from the Bureau. I found the paperwork in his car.” She turned back to the laptop screen. “Now look at these figures for earnings with overtime.”

  Riker whistled in appreciation of the large sum. “Dale’s really building up his retirement fund.”

  “You’re close,” said Mallory. “This has been going on for years. He started padding his paychecks after the Bureau buried him in North Dakota.”

  “You see? I told you he was an idiot. That state only has a handful of people and some buffalo. Nobody does overtime.”

  “And Dale worked in a satellite office-no oversight. That’s what triggered this audit.” Mallory diddled the keyboard to show him a new set of figures. “Lots of pressure-the auditors are coming. He has to explain the overtime. A federal payroll scam is worth five years in prison. So he makes a bogus file for Mack the Knife, and he backdates it.”

  Riker shook his head in disbelief. “That’s good for another charge- falsifying government documents. More jail time. I told you he was an idiot.”

  “No,” said Mallory, “he was a man with a high-maintenance wife and a field agent’s pay grade.”

  “And he was stuck in a backwater office with no action, no overtime.”

  “So he gave himself a bigger salary,” said Mallory. “That’s how it started, and then it snowballed. Berman can’t c lose out a bogus case with no results-not right after an audit. It has to look like an ongoing investigation. Then he gets posted to a Texas field office. He’s running it-all those eyes on him every day. More pressure. He can’t leave the bogus case with another agent in North Dakota. So he develops a false lead in the Texas jurisdiction. The overtime keeps rolling in, but he’s not doing it for the money now. He can’t stop. He only has two years to retirement, and he needs a real live serial killer.”

  “And then he found Nahlman. She saved him.”

  Dr. Magritte left the car at the junction, and he left his wallet in the middle of the road, the one that led west toward an unknown destination. He was following directions fed to him as he traveled. The knife in his pocket gave him no comfort, but the expectation of being found either dead or alive, this was a joyful prospect. His prayers carried no requests for an angel of deliverance. Send Mallory.

  Mallory closed the laptop. “And now, thanks to Nahlman, he’s got a big inventory of bodies and evidence, more than enough to account for his time.”

  “I got a problem with this,” said Riker. “Dale knew that warehouse morgue was gonna be opened some day. If not by Harry Mars then-”

  “And the feds would find a hundred cartons of sloppy paperwork-all hard copy with missing files, fake reports, no times and dates for hunting and digging-nothing to match records with human remains. Berman only needed to drag the case out. He never intended to solve it. He would’ve retired in another six months. The case would get fobbed off on his replacement-along with the keys to the warehouse. The agent who replaced him would put everything down to gross incompetence.”

  “And Nahlman could back him up on the incompetence,” said Riker. “She’s Dale’s worst critic.”

  “Of course she is. Berman groomed her for the part.” Mallory let that settle in for a moment, and, when the poison had taken hold, she went on. “Even now that the Bureau’s onto him, he can still get away with it. Let’s say Harry Mars opens an investigation. Nahlman will testify that her boss had no idea what he was doing. If Harry asks her about the warehouse full of dead kids, she’ll tell him that’s no surprise, not to her. She’ll swear under oath that Dale Berman is just a garden-variety screwup. And he’ll still get his pension, even though people died on his watch. He never developed any of Nahlman’s leads because he didn’t w ant this case solved- not yet.”

  “Okay.” Riker threw up his hands. “I’m a believer. Dale’s not just a screwup. He’s a sociopath. The little monster doesn’t c are who dies. You were right about everything.”

  Mallory had her half-smile in place, the one that warned him to run while he could; he had seen it before, and he knew she was going to turn on him. Riker braced himself, hands spread flat on the trunk of the car. He had watched her grow up; he had loved her so long and knew her too well.

  “And all this time,” said Mallory, casually offering him the stolen driver’s license of the Illinois LoJack tracker, “even before Savannah Sirus died, you thought I was a sociopath-a monster.”

  Riker was bending over in the manner of a man who has just had his entrails pulled out and held up before his startled eyes.

  “Now let’s talk about your friend Nahlman.” Mallory pulled a small blue velvet pouch from her knapsack and emptied it on the hood of the Mercedes. Tiny bones clattered across the dusty metal. “I found them in Nahlman’s g love compartment. Or maybe you think I’m lying?”

  Make it stop!

  He shook his head. She was telling him that it was time to choose up sides, her side versus the rest of the world. “You’re my partner,” he said. “I’m with you.”

  “Good.” Mallory scooped up the little bones and put them back into the pouch. “Now it’s time to arrest Dr. Magritte.”

  “What?”

  The FBI moles had become engaged behind the travel plaza’s garbage dumpster.

  One mole gently caressed the face of the other and said, “I love you.”

  Behind them, startling them, a man’s voice said, “How nice. But where’s Dr. Magritte?”

  The moles spun around to face the detectives from New York City, Riker and Mallory.

  “Tell me you didn’t lose that old man,” said Detective Mallory, “not again.”

  One of the moles said, “Oh, shit.” And the other one was only thinking it.

  “ Yes, I see it,” said Paul Magritte to his caller. “The turn is just up ahead.” This was a lie. His car was parked, and he was walking back to the juncture of dirt road and hard pavement. He spread an open book on the ground. This might be the most useful thing he had ever done with it. Looking down the unpaved road, he could see for miles and miles, and so could the killer of children. This would be the last time he dared to stop. Dr. Magritte held the cell phone to his ear and offered more reassurance that he was quite alone. In turn, he received the good news that the kidnapped parent was still alive. And was this story believable? No. Up ahead there was only death on two legs,
no heart, no soul. But this time, he would see it coming, and soon-so would everyone else.

  He returned to his car and continued to follow the directions of a coldly mechanical voice that conjured up fat black flies inside his ear. He knew his final destination would be some distance away. The man would want privacy for what he planned to do to his old doctor-his former priest.

  The moles ran back to the restaurant to make their report. Riker took the old road east, and his partner drove west on the interstate.

  Mallory was flying across the highway, taking every exit ramp and doubling back to take the next one. It was slow going even at great speed. Finally, she spotted the jacket tied to an exit sign, and she turned onto a stretch of Route 66, still racing, only slowing when she came to the crossroad and saw the wallet lying on the pavement. She knew it was Magritte’s, and she left it there. He was headed west. As she approached another turnoff, her car crawled along in search of other signs.

  He recognized the early model car of an impoverished caravan parent. Paul Magritte knew what he would find even before he had closed the door of his Lincoln. He moved on leaden feet toward the other vehicle. The trunk was open, awaiting his inspection. Inside lay the dead body of a slender man in his middle thirties. This time, the only blood came from the corpse’s gaping mouth. The throat had not been slashed, but the cause of death was clear in the tire tread marks made on the clothing. This body had been run over by car, not once, but many times. Magritte had not known this man by name. So many people had joined the caravan in recent days. Yet he grieved for the stranger.

  By force of habit, he began the ritual of commending the dead man’s soul to God, though they were much estranged these days, himself and the Almighty.

  Mallory slammed on the brakes, and stared at the open book lying on the ground, its pages rippling in the wind. She never had to leave her car to know that it was a Bible, an ex-priest’s version of the proverbial breadcrumb trail.

  She drove over it.

  A car was approaching from a distance, coming overland, just a dot on the horizon of mesa and desert brush. He watched it grow-his impending death-and when he could see it clearly, he yelled, “I never betrayed you!” And though vengeance was the province of God, one hand closed on the knife in his pocket.

  Soon.

  He had anticipated an exchange of words, but that was not to be. The jeep was not slowing down but gathering speed. Impact came with a sickening thud of the metal impacting on flesh and bone. The force knocked the air from the old man’s lungs and he was in flight, flying forever it seemed. He lost consciousness before his body hit the hard ground.

  When he opened his eyes again, he tasted blood in his mouth-proof of life.

  His assailant-soon to be his murderer-was standing not far away in some new incarnation so different from the misshapen child he had known all those years ago.

  Paul Magritte’s resting place was a deep and narrow ditch, and now he could understand why he was still alive. It would not be possible to run him down a second time. And so this killer-loath to touch a living body-was helpless. He could only wait for an old man’s death rattle.

  Wait a little longer.

  Paul Magritte suffered much pain. It was agony only to lift one hand- to beckon his murderer-come a little closer.

  Mallory looked down at the corpse in the trunk, a clear death by vehicular homicide. Gone were all the trappings of a ritual, a killer’s pretense of a twist in the game. Once his monument was finished and all the little girls were laid out in a row, he had simply turned his sights on advertising. But these attacks were different. The old man was a material witness, a loose end. And the dead parent in the trunk of the car? That was bait. But what was his agenda with the murder of Horace Kayhill?

  The detective returned to the ditch and knelt down beside Paul Magritte. The old man had been fading in and out, but now he was conscious again. “The ambulance should be here any minute.” She was not looking at him but at the old dirt road, watching for the first sign of an emergency vehicle, listening for a siren.

  “Mallory?” Dr. Magritte’s voice was weak. He was also staring at the road. “My faith doesn’t lie in that direction… It lies with you.” And now he turned his eyes to the great prize he had given her.

  She looked down at the bloodied knife in her evidence bag. “It was a good try, old man. A good try.”

  “No… a success.” His words came out with ragged breath and fresh red bubbles of spittle from his lips.

  “Don’t talk,” she said.

  “That blood on my knife… not mine… significant.”

  Mallory decided not to tell the old man that it was all for nothing, that this DNA evidence was useful in court but not in the hunt. “It’s significant,” she said. “He’s getting reckless, careless. With any luck at all, he’s suicidal, too. That’s how it ends sometimes.”

  “He can’t go back… to the caravan… I cut him.” Magritte’s moving finger drew a jagged line on his neck.

  “You marked him for me.” Mallory smiled with something approaching real affection. “That’s why you carried the old revolver. A bullet wound would get some attention, wouldn’t it? Did Nahlman take the gun away from you?”

  The old man nodded. “Not her fault… She couldn’t know.”

  “So, you decided to knife him instead. That cut was your loophole in the seal of the confessional.”

  This man had walked into a trap, knowing that he would be murdered. And the knife wound would pass for an act of self-defense-the only act that Paul Magritte’s faith had allowed.

  “This time…” The old man’s lips moved in silence. His eyes were closing.

  Mallory finished the sentence for him. “I’ll see it coming.”

  18

  Paramedics hooked the old man up to portable machines, and then they stabbed him with needles to fill his veins with drugs and plasma. Troopers were standing by for escort duty, and Paul Magritte was nearly stable enough for transport to a hospital.

  When Mallory’s car reached the paved highway at the end of the dirt road, she was in a quandary. East or west? The New Mexico State Police now owned the manhunt, and the structure of her day had been lost. She could not even guess the time, for the days were getting longer-too long.

  She turned east-one decision made. Now for the music. After fiddling with the iPod, she found her old Eagles album. The volume was turned up as high as it would go.

  “-take it eeeeasy, take it eeeeeasy-”

  On the way back to the caravan, she passed the cars of FBI agents trailed by news vans, all heading off in the direction of the new crime scene-her crime scene.

  “-don’t let the sound of your own wheeeels make you craaazy-”

  When the first sign for Clines Corners came into view, Mallory seemed to awaken in the moving car. How much time had passed? How much road? She could not say. The caravan parents were gathered in the parking lot, milling about in disarray like refugees from the end of the world. She parked at the far edge of the lot and watched them for a while. Should she stay or go? There was still time to get back on the road unseen. She could travel westward and rid herself of all these needy people.

  To o late.

  Agent Nahlman appeared at the side window, bending low to say, “I heard about Dr. Magritte. You knew he was a target, didn’t you? Is that why you told me to feed him to Berman?”

  “Does it matter anymore?” The detective opened the door and stepped out of the car. “Magritte will be dead by morning.” Or he might live a bit longer if she trusted no more federal agents with his life. Back at the crime scene, she had arranged for local police to guard the old man’s hospital room.

  Nahlman was behind her and talking to her back as they crossed the parking lot. The agent was almost indignant when she asked, “Why couldn’t you let me in on it? I would’ve turned the bones over to Berman as evidence. Dr. Magritte would’ve-”

  “You didn’t turn in the bones?” Mallory leaned heavy on a to
ne of disbelief, though all the while the pouch of bones was resting in her knapsack. Some punishment was called for here.

  The FBI woman’s understanding came with a look of pain. “If I had, Magritte would’ve been arrested. He’d be in custody instead of-”

  “That was the plan,” said Mallory.

  Riker stood at the edge of the crowd milling around in the parking lot. He turned to the tall man beside him. “Charles, I need help. The perp’s cleaning up his loose ends and Dodie’s one of them. The Finns have to go into custody. Kronewald’s working out a deal with Harry Mars.”

  “What about the other parents?”

  “As long as they stay on the road, our boy’s gonna pick them off one by one. He just loves all this media attention. And the reporters are so excited they’re pissing their pants. So, yeah, it’s time for the rest of these people to go back where they came from.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Charles. “Most of them are better off here than they were at home.”

  “Oh, sure.” Riker nodded, as if this made perfect sense to him. “You mean apart from the fact that they’re getting killed?”

  “There’s dying and there’s dying.” Charles imagined each one of them sitting around the house with only profound grief for company, knitting socks for grief and spoon-feeding it with melancholy. Here, on this road, these people had a mission. At last, something lay ahead of them, and they could see into the day after tomorrow. The caravan city had nurtured them; it was solace and companionship, and, while the old man had been among them, there had been some order to their daily lives.

  All of this came to an end as the ambulance bore their shepherd away.

  The emergency vehicle raced past the travel plaza. The parents faced the road in silence, helpless to do anything but watch the distant ambulance spinning its lights, siren screaming, disappearing down the interstate. They revolved in place, turning this way and that, as if they lacked the ballast to withstand the wind of a blown kiss, ultimately deflating, collapsing to sit upon the ground or squat by their cars.

  Mallory walked toward them, and, one by one, they turned their eyes to her. Charles understood what was happening. She was law and order to them, a protector of sheep.