Guilty Minds

by Joseph Finder

  “What? Let me see.”

  “There’s nothing to show you. The texts have disappeared.”

  “Disappeared.”

  “We’re dealing with Tom Vogel. He’s a clever guy.” I checked the Disappearing Ink app again and found nothing. I typed out another message to Vogel:

  Got an offer for you.

  I waited. A minute, a minute and a half.

  Finally a reply came back:

  Fold up your tent and go home, and MS gets to return to her life. Persevere, and her death will be on you.

  I showed the message to Balakian. He stared at it, said, “Jesus!” and handed it back. By the time I went to look at it again, it had disappeared.

  “Please keep me updated, in real time, on what you find on the traffic cameras in Anacostia,” I said. “It may be our best chance to find her.”

  “Heller, I don’t know how easy you think this is, but the tower location we have is approximate. She could have been anywhere within a square mile, maybe more. That covers a lot of cameras. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”

  “Or time. Look, just start with the traffic cams. I need to get going.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch. I have an idea.”

  71

  Walter McGeorge, a.k.a. Merlin, was doing a sweeping job at a law firm in Alexandria when I reached him. He called me back an hour later, when I’d returned to the hotel.

  “I thought you were never going to talk to me again,” he said.

  For a moment I’d forgotten what he was so sheepish about. Then I remembered about the burning paper in the strong room at the law firm, and the file he left behind. It felt like months ago.

  “Come on. Screwing up is part of the job. Keeps it interesting.”

  “I feel terrible about what happened. I’m really sorry.”

  “Well, now’s your chance to make it up to me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to need a bunch of gear. A miniature tracker.” I explained. “Any hunting stores near you? I need a tranquilizer rifle or pistol and maybe ten darts. A kit’ll cost you a couple thousand bucks—do you have the cash?”

  “I can charge it on my credit card as long as you pay me back soon.”

  “No problem. Now, this’ll be the hard part. A couple sticks of dynamite.”

  “Dynamite?”

  “Either that or ammonium nitrate.”

  “It’s getting really hard to buy ammonium nitrate. I don’t know, man. They’re both hard. Dynamite or ammonium nitrate, this is going to take me a couple of days.”

  “We don’t have that.”

  “When do you need it by?”

  “Noon tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Okay,” I said, ignoring him. “And a couple of electric blasting caps.”

  “Blasting caps?”

  “Electric. And zip ties. The heavy duty kind.”

  “Okay.”

  “A couple of five-gallon cans of gasoline.”

  “This is a goddamn Nick Heller scavenger hunt.”

  “And a weapon. Semiautomatic pistol, if you’ve got one to spare.” Like the others in my Special Forces team—operational detachment Alpha, as the lingo has it—Merlin was comfortable around weapons and kept some in his home, though in reality I’m sure he never had call to use one.

  “You care what caliber?”

  “No.”

  “How about a Ruger Mark II twenty-two LR?”

  I smiled. That was what we used in the field. Same for Mossad. There’s a general misconception about the twenty-two-caliber pistol, that it’s not a serious weapon, that it’s only good for plinking. Wrong. The truth is, both Special Forces operators and Navy SEALs use twenty-twos when they need to kill someone reliably and quietly. For subsistence hunting or sentry elimination. With a well-aimed head shot using twenty-two long rifle hollow-point rounds, the brain will explode.

  “And LR hollow-points,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “And some kind of piece for yourself.”

  “Why do I need one?”

  “I’ll explain when you meet me at my hotel. As soon as you can. Can you be here in two hours?”

  “Not if I need to pick up all this crap, too.”

  “Okay. We’ve got tomorrow morning, too. Be here inside two hours. But one of the items I’m going to need for sure tonight.”

  “Which one?”

  —

  An hour and a half later, when I still hadn’t heard from Kombucha, I called him.

  “You know how many traffic cams the MPD has in DC?” he said. “I mean, total, everywhere?”

  “No idea.”

  “Forty-eight. Total. In southeast, a grand total of seven.”

  “Shit.”

  “The closest one to the Anacostia metro stop is at Suitland Parkway and Firth Sterling, about half a block away. And I didn’t find anything on that one. Nada.”

  “We need other cameras in the area. Banks and liquor stores and supermarkets and convenience stores and gas stations.”

  “Well, we’ve got an intel analyst unit now. Twenty-four-seven. I filled out a request. They’ll search the area for known CCTVs and pull the footage and burn it onto a DVD for us if they find anything.”

  “How fast can they work?”

  “I don’t know, Nick. It’s a laborious search. It’ll take a while.”

  “I see.”

  “But there’s good news. I have an arrest warrant for Richard Rasmussen. I haven’t entered it into NCIC yet—I’m holding onto it, keeping it out of the computer for now.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t arrest the guy yet.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you want to get the ringleader? Give me a little time and you’ll have Vogel, too.”

  Balakian expelled a mouthful of air. “Not the way I want to play it. Once I have Rasmussen, he’ll give me Vogel. Or we’ll serve a search warrant on him and maybe get the connection that way.”

  “Just . . . give me twenty-four hours.”

  “Give . . . you? Dude, you’re not running this show.”

  I spoke quietly, but he could hear the banked fury in my voice. “You arrest Rasmussen now and Vogel has no more reason to make a deal. Which means he’ll have his guys kill Mandy Seeger. She’ll only be a witness against him. She’ll have no more strategic use.”

  A long silence, then he said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t do it. You arrest Rasmussen, you’re killing Mandy. I mean it.”

  By the time I hung up I felt fairly certain I’d gotten through to him. He agreed to hold off on arresting Rasmussen for the murder of Kayla Pitts.

  That was a relief, but his news about the cameras was a big disappointment. That had been my Plan A. Now it seemed dubious. It was time for Plan B.

  I turned to Dorothy, who’d been listening to my end of the conversation while munching on mixed nuts from the minibar. “Now it’s crucial we find Vogel’s home address.”

  “I’m on it, Nick, but it’s not looking good.”

  “There’s always a way. No one’s entirely off the grid.”

  “This guy seems to be. Everything goes to his post office box in Thurmont, Maryland.”

  “The guy has electricity. And Internet. That’s two utilities right there that require a service address. Time for a little social engineering.”

  She paused, shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  “Do me a favor and get me the customer service phone numbers for the biggest Internet providers in and around Thurmont, Maryland. Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV—let’s start with the biggest ones. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” I glanced at my watch
. “Where the hell is Merlin? He should be here by now.”

  “Okay. What else you need?”

  “Pull up all the pizza places in and around Thurmont. Can’t be that many.”

  “Pizza places?”

  “Yep.”

  “Pizza places, huh. Okay. What else you need?”

  “Phone number for Southern Maryland Electric.”

  “That it?”

  “Oh, and go down to the concierge desk and see if they have an express mail envelope.”

  “FedEx okay?”

  “No, not FedEx. Got to be US Postal Service express mail. If not, see if they can find us one.”

  “How big?”

  “Just a regular flat-rate envelope. But if Merlin’s not here in the next half hour, we’re going to miss the cutoff. But maybe I won’t need it. Maybe we’ll get a hit from the electric company.”

  “That it?”

  “And order us some coffee from room service, okay?”

  “Got it. You’re moving into high gear.”

  “So are you.”

  “Nick,” she said, and she seemed to hesitate.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Make it quick, sure.”

  Now she fixed me with a fierce look. “Do what he says.”

  “Who?”

  “Vogel. He says he’ll let Mandy go if you just go back to Boston? Go back to Boston.”

  “You don’t think I’ve thought about it?” I said. “But I know people like Vogel. The things that trigger him, the small irritants you can’t predict. Thing is, Mandy will never be safe. My nephew—a target, too, anytime the wind blows east and Vogel has a change of heart. I can’t have these people walking around with a target on their backs. The sooner I move against him, the safer Mandy is.”

  She kept looking at me for a few seconds longer. Then, softly, relenting, she said, “Okay. I get it.”

  On my first phone call I got lucky, which only set me up for eventual disappointment. Thomas Vogel indeed had an account with Comcast for his Internet and his cable TV. I told them I was having trouble with my service. They asked for “my” date of birth, which I provided—I’d gotten it from Art Garvin—and then I asked, “What address do you have?”

  This normally works. You give them enough information that identifies yourself and they tend to get loose with the information. People like to help. But she said, “What’s your password, sir?”

  “Password?”

  “Your account has an extra security feature. We’re not allowed to give out any personal information, including the address, unless we’re given a password.”

  “Ohh—I’ve forgotten it, I’m sorry. But I gave you my name and my date of birth.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I’m still going to need a password.”

  Vogel was smart. He’d taken precautions that ninety-nine percent of people wouldn’t bother with. I hung up and called back, hoping to reach another customer service representative who wouldn’t be as scrupulous.

  But no matter how many times I called, I came to the same stopping point. They required a password before they’d give out the home address.

  I was no more fortunate with the electric company. They, too, required a password before they’d divulge the home address.

  Then came the pizza places. I called the first one, giving my name as Thomas Vogel, and said, “You have the address, I assume.”

  “No, sir. Can you give it to me, please?”

  Normally this trick works. Pizza places, take-out places, restaurants that deliver—if you’re a regular customer, and you order takeout from them a lot, they’ll store your information in their databases. But I struck out with all five pizza places.

  Either Vogel didn’t have pizza delivered to his home—he picked it up or he just didn’t eat pizza—or he didn’t live in Thurmont. It was possible that he had his mail delivered to a post office that wasn’t in his hometown but nearby. If so, he was even craftier than I’d figured.

  Half an hour of this, and nothing. No luck finding his home address. Room service arrived with coffee, and then Dorothy came back with an express mail envelope from the concierge downstairs and the form that goes with it.

  “For Thurmont, Maryland,” she said, “they don’t guarantee delivery until noon.”

  “So noon it’ll have to be.”

  Then came a knock at the door. It was Merlin, holding a shopping bag.

  “Hey, man.”

  “Thanks for coming. You got it?”

  “I brought two, just in case you need a second one.”

  “I shouldn’t, but I appreciate the thought. All right, hold on.”

  Merlin said hello to Dorothy while I called Ellen Wiley.

  “I never heard back from you,” she said. “I thought things might have gone sideways.”

  “Worked out okay. But I need one more favor from you.”

  “Whatever the hell you want, sweetie,” she said.

  When I’d finished talking to Ellen, I tried Mandy’s cell phone one more time, but once again there was no answer.

  Everything depended on one complicated plan with a lot of moving parts. With any number of ways it could go wrong.

  72

  This is the book you wanted, right?” Merlin said. “The 48 Laws of Power?” He pulled an orange hardcover from a plastic Barnes & Noble bag out of one of the duffel bags and set it on the dining table. Next to it he placed a small True Value hardware bag. “Razor blade and glue,” he announced.

  The book was a remainder, but it was a hardcover, which was the important thing. It had to be a hardcover book. “That’s the one.”

  “What’s so special about it?”

  “Never read it,” I said, absently. “It just seems plausible, and it’s thick enough.” I opened the book to the title page and scrawled, in loopy handwriting,

  Contract on the way—meanwhile enjoy this.

  XOXO

  Ellen.

  It looked like a woman’s handwriting, or close enough. Then I opened the razor blades’ packaging and slid out one blade from the dispenser.

  Dorothy looked at what I was doing and laughed. “Heller, you son of a bitch,” she said.

  —

  We got to the big post office on Mass Avenue, next to Union Station, shortly before seven. Just in time to send off the package via overnight express mail.

  In the car on the way back to the hotel, I sniffed the air and said, “You started smoking again.”

  “Couple days ago,” Merlin said. “I feel lousy about it. Don’t give me shit.”

  “Stressed?”

  “I don’t know. Nick, I gotta be on an FBI or DHS list somewhere, buying all this junk.”

  “You’re nobody if you’re not on a Do Not Fly list.”

  “Yeah. Uh, are you going to fill me in on what exactly you’re planning?”

  It was a reasonable question, but there was no quick explanation. I didn’t finish outlining for him the operation I had in mind until we were back at the hotel suite.

  “You don’t even know for sure what to expect—what this guy Vogel’s house is like, what kind of security precautions he takes. I mean, we’re flying blind here.”

  “Not really. I know people like Vogel. So do you. I know what someone like Vogel would do. Which reminds me.”

  I took out my phone and texted Vogel, using that Disappearing Ink app:

  Wrapping up business. Flying back to Boston tomorrow morning. How is Mandy?

  The answer came thirty seconds later:

  Alive.

  I wrote back:

  Want proof of life.

  The reply took almost five minutes. It was a picture of Mandy, seated. Her eyes open, obviously alive. Looking exhausted and terrified. There was a cut on her cheek. Her hands we
re at her side, probably bound. I couldn’t tell where she was. Some kind of garage, maybe.

  Then the picture disappeared.

  73

  Merlin drove home, and Dorothy and I talked for a while. We ordered some room service—a club sandwich for me, a Cobb salad for her. She picked at her salad; she didn’t seem hungry. She had a glass of white wine, and I had a beer.

  “Why are you so sure Vogel’s going to keep Mandy alive?” she said.

  “She’s only leverage if she’s alive.”

  “But for how long? Do we have till tomorrow?”

  “He’s planning on at least that long. Until I return to Boston, he said.”

  “Where do you think they’re keeping her?”

  “I don’t know. It looked like she was sitting in a garage of some kind. There were garden tools hanging on the wall behind her.”

  “What you’re planning for tomorrow—it’s risky.”

  “No question.”

  “Are you sure it’s . . . a good idea?”

  “Vogel’s the sort of guy who responds only to overwhelming force.”

  She looked into her wineglass for a few seconds, then set it down. “Can we speak frankly?”

  I smiled. “Do you ever do anything else?”

  “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never been what I’d call cautious. You always seem to be willing to go to the very edge.”

  “Only when I have to. I don’t play games, and I don’t take chances when I don’t need to.”

  She sipped from her wineglass, and I took a bite of my sandwich. “From where I sit, it doesn’t look that way. You always seem to be pushing. Almost asking for trouble. I’m asking you to think twice, this time. Take some precautions.”

  “I always do.”

  She sighed. “You’re not—afraid?”

  “Of course I am. George Patton—I know, he was a jerk, but the guy was brilliant—said, ‘I’ve never seen a brave man. All men are frightened—the smarter they are, the more frightened.’”

  “These guys are ruthless, Nick. Just be careful tomorrow. You don’t know what you’re facing.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t.”