“My delicate inner thighs thank you,” Lou said as they drove away.
“In nearly a month working together, Chuck McCall never cost me a dime,” Vaill replied. “And he never mentioned his delicate inner thighs, neither. Now, let’s first make certain Burke isn’t even better than we fear, and then find somewhere to settle in and look at this evidence I brought.”
The place they settled on, after nearly half an hour of evasive driving, was a no-frills Great Southern Inn and Suites. In truth, the Great Southern was the exact sort of place Lou would have picked had he not accumulated an abundance of credit card points. The irony was not lost on him that those points had most likely saved his life. There was only a micro-sized pool at the two-story motel, and no balcony from which he could have jumped.
Vaill registered as Gregg Campbell from Houston, and had a license and credit cards to back that up.
“I have half a dozen of these sets,” he said to Lou in a more than passable Texas drawl. “Passports, letters of credit, the works. Gregg Campbell is one of my favorites, although the truth is he would probably never stay here. Oil, dontcha know.”
“Our tax dollars at work,” Lou said.
He liked it when Vaill shed his grim mantle, but he well understood why he didn’t do it often.
The Great Southern was up a long drive, about a quarter mile off a sparsely traveled highway. They found it because of a large sign on a very tall pole. Lou wondered what a six-story-tall pole would look like. After they registered for a second-floor suite, Vaill waited in the shadows near the entrance for a good while, fixed on the driveway and the parking lot. Finally, satisfied enough, he led Lou up to their room.
“I wouldn’t put it past the monster to leave his car someplace and walk a mile or so to come up behind this place,” he said.
He pulled the small desk over in front of the closed pull-out, set up his laptop, and inserted one of two DVDs.
“I thought we could start with the one Burke’s wife gave to me and McCall. I showed her graphic photos of what he did to Maria, and she cracked and gave this to us. There’s nothing really of use on it, but I thought it would be a good place to start. Want me to go out for some popcorn for the matinee?”
“Let me see if I can recall what happened the last time you left me alone in a hotel room,” Lou replied.
“Okay, no popcorn, no Raisinets.”
“So there’s not much to this recording?”
“It’s a tearjerker featuring a murderer. Doesn’t even get a PG rating.”
“Sounds like at least you guys are making use of the warehousing technology.”
“This is a video of Burke, sent to his wife. It’s been analyzed by one of our very best intelligence people. No, make that our absolutely best intelligence people. Like I said, he didn’t come up with much. But if nothing else, it presents some interesting insights into the man.”
Vaill hit play and Lou felt his insides go cold. The screen lit up with the image of Alexander Burke, although not the Alexander Burke who had attacked him at the hotel.
“Amazing disguise he wore,” Lou said.
“Believe me, this one’s the real deal.”
This man, clean-shaven, had gray eyes, a different-shaped nose, and straw-colored hair. He was totally at ease, and dashingly good looking, perched on a high, bar-type stool, set on a swath of brownish green lawn. Behind him, an endless expanse of steel ocean churned before an arcing horizon, and on either side, small groves of trees set off his carefully staged tableau. A small plastic device—a remote, Lou assumed—dangled in his hand. The camera, rock steady, was probably set on a tripod, and it did not look as if the killer had help in making the recording.
“Hi, Lola, hey sweet baby.” His voice was nothing like the one Lou had heard in the hotel room. His inflection was warm and full of love, incongruous with the cold eyes and the harsh memories Lou held of him. “You’re not going to hear anything from me in the coming months. But sooner or later you will, and none of it is going to be very flattering. I wish I could be there with you when it all comes out, in order to comfort you in what is going to be a difficult time. But I can’t. I have to be where I am, doing what I will be doing.”
Vaill paused the recording.
“Like I said, this has been analyzed by our best. But it’s good that we’re starting at the beginning. Pay attention to voice, his manner, the way he holds himself. I guess the best thing we could hope for is some clue as to where this film was made, but I believe that’s asking too much.”
“Got it,” Lou said. “Keep rolling.”
Burke’s image again became animated.
“You understand our cause,” he was saying, his tone far calmer than the white-capped ocean behind him. “You know what’s at stake. It’s not just about our future, but the future of this country. Somebody has to take a stand. The politicians have had their chances and it’s time for my organization to step up and make a real difference.
“I told you when we first met that I didn’t want children, because I didn’t want them raised in this corrupt and weak society. But every day I wished we had a bunch. You would have made an amazing mother, and I would have been the luckiest man in the world. As it is, I am lucky. I’m blessed to have the opportunity to make it possible for other people to have children and raise them in a country that is as strong and as financially stable as the original foundation upon which our forefathers built it.
“I miss you, Lola, and I love you with all my heart and soul. I want to tell you that I will come for you when it’s safe. If there is a way, I will come get you. But that might not happen. More likely is that I will be a wanted man—wanted for doing what I believe in my soul is right. But know this: my heart is pure, my conscience is clean, and my conviction in the cause is as unwavering as my love for you.”
Burke raised the remote control and the image on the screen went to black.
Lou sat quietly, stunned by what he had just watched. Nothing leaped out at him, except that the emotion expressed in the recording was as true as a bullet—as bright as the torch Lou still carried for Emily’s mother, Renee. Also, it was clear that Burke was not simply a hired gun. He was invested in the principles espoused by the Neighbors. Their cause was his, and he was willing to kill to support it.
Lou shared those thoughts with Vaill.
“Anything else?” Vaill asked. “Anything that would give us other insights into the man, or maybe something that would give us a clue as to where this was made?”
Lou shook his head. “The only things I saw were ocean, trees, grass, the stool, and a few large rocks, mostly embedded in the earth.”
“Come on, doc. More. You’re doing fine.”
“Well, I feel stupid even saying it, but he was up high.”
“On a cliff,” Vaill said. “It’s like he chose the most scenic, romantic spot around wherever he was. And his face was well lit—no shadows.”
“Good. His shadow sitting on the stool wasn’t very long, and it went out behind him, toward the water, so he’s probably facing west.”
“Past noon, facing west. That’s it, partner. That’s the idea.”
“I can’t make out the few trees to his right, but there are leaves with some color on them, and just a few on the ground. Doesn’t look like winter.”
“Or summer,” Vaill said, “judging from his clothes. There are a few wispy clouds and the water is a little choppy, so that’s a half point against summer and winter, too.”
“I agree. My money’s on autumn, maybe six months ago. Sorry, Tim, but at the moment, I can’t come up with anything else.”
“Then we’re going to do what any decent FBI agent would do in this situation.”
Lou shot him a curious look. “And that would be?”
“First we’ll go over the other material I recorded in order to bring you up to speed. Then we watch this recording again, and we keep watching it until we’re fried—until our eyes bleed or we find something else of value. At
the moment, it’s really all we have.”
“In that case,” Lou said, “before we settle in for a quintuple feature or whatever it turns out to be, maybe they have a vending machine here with some Raisinets.”
CHAPTER 46
Liberty cannot exist without sacrifice, nor can sacrifice exist without suffering. Blood may be shed, but should the suffering of the part in the end save the whole, it is a pain we are obligated to endure.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, A Secret Worth Keeping, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P. 199
Tim Vaill’s exhaustion was a concern.
Med school and a grueling residency had trained Lou for endurance studying and long shifts, so it wasn’t surprising that he felt solid after five straight hours of reviewing the evidence from the Information Data Warehouse, and then plunging back into the Burke video.
Lou had supposed that Vaill, who was about his age, was put together similarly, having survived the punishing tests of Quantico and hours spent cooped up inside various vans conducting surveillance. But at the moment that seemed not to be the case.
Lou eyed the scar arcing along Vaill’s right temple, speculating on how much the injury and subsequent surgery might have affected his stamina. This was the second time in the past hour the agent had drifted off in his chair during a playback. Lou would have let him rest, except this time he had begun to snore, making it hard to study the nuances in Burke’s speech, even though Lou had already committed every word and vocal inflection to memory.
Making matters even more difficult, the air conditioner was on high, even though the room at the Great Southern Inn and Suites still felt humid and stuffy. For a time, Lou busied himself folding empty Domino’s pizza boxes and forcing them, the Diet Coke cans he flattened, and the wrappers of each item in the motel vending machines into the wastebasket. Finally, after some stretching and a hundred double-crunch sit-ups, Lou tapped Vaill on the shoulder. The agent came awake with a start.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, pawing at his eyes. “What’d I miss?”
Lou appraised him thoughtfully.
“Only our one hundredth viewing of Alexander Burke. You want to take a real break? A lie-down nap?”
Vaill again massaged his eyes and then wet his lips with his tongue. He still looked glazed, so Lou passed him a half-empty can of warm Diet Coke, which Vaill drained in one gulp.
“No,” he said emphatically. “I want to keep watching.”
It was intense work, but Lou believed they were making some progress, even though a Eureka! moment continued to elude them. Having focused on everything Burke was saying—every word, every nuanced change in his vocal inflection—Lou had compiled a complete transcript of the killer’s impassioned speech for Lola, and was now dissecting it for hidden clues—a message within the message.
“If there’s really anything encoded in this,” Lou asked, “why wouldn’t Lola have told you what it was when she gave it to you?”
“Inner conflict, I suspect. Maybe guilt kept her from making it too easy for us.”
With Lou perched on the pull-out and Vaill on the desk chair, they watched the killer again—viewing number 101. Afterward, Lou crumpled a ball of the white copy paper he had gotten at the front desk, and tossed it with frustration at the wastebasket, which blocked his shot with the top edge of a folded Domino’s box.
Despite this latest disappointment, he continued to pursue the latest possibility—that the letters of each word Burke spoke could be used to form new and more revealing sentences. So far, only gibberish. At Vaill’s suggestion, they had diligently recorded each time Burke had blinked, thinking perhaps he was using Morse or another code to send Lola his location. If there was a subliminal message hidden within the recording, it was proving to be as elusive as an A was in Lou’s college organic chemistry class.
“You okay?” Vaill asked.
“Maybe a little pizza-ed out, but I’m fine.”
“Then let’s play it again,” Vaill said. “We’ll shoot for Chinese delivery in another couple of hours.”
By run-through 105, Vaill’s chin and eyelids were heading south again.
“Honestly, Tim, I think it’s time we take a break,” Lou said.
Vaill lifted his head and Lou saw the fire he recognized from the interrogation room.
“I’m not going to give up because Burke is out there,” Vaill said, tapping the killer’s image with the butt end of a pen. “That piece of garbage murdered my wife, is stealing your best friend’s life, and is laughing at us for coming after him because he doesn’t believe we’ll ever catch him until he wants us to catch him so he can kill us.”
Lou’s own resolve felt strengthened by Vaill’s intensity, and he was about to hit play, when they were interrupted by a series of sharp knocks on the door.
“Hey, Tim,” came a voice Lou recognized with virtual certainty, “it’s McCall. Open up.”
Lou froze. Usually unflappable, his pulse kicked off like a jackrabbit’s. Vaill, by contrast, appeared unfazed.
Whatever exhaustion Lou had seen in the man was gone, and he was instantly on the move, his actions rapid and purposeful. Situations like this are his ER, Lou thought—the equivalent of a doc being confronted by the multiple victims of a car crash. Calm as a summer breeze, Vaill put a finger to his lips, moved the stuffed wastebasket to a remote corner with his foot, pointed to the laptop then to Lou, and lastly to the bathroom. The unspoken message was clear: this was quite possibly a threat.
As Lou headed into the smallish bathroom, he saw Vaill smoothly check his gun and stuff it into the rear waistband of his jeans, concealing it underneath his T-shirt.
“What do you want, Chuck?” Vaill called out without rancor. “It isn’t a great time to talk.”
“What are you doing in there?” McCall implored. “Come on, Tim. Let me in!”
Lou closed the bathroom door behind him and threw his still drying clothes into the tub. Then he climbed in himself, forcing the damp clothes beneath his knees, clutching the laptop, and pulling the plastic curtain closed. The tight fit reminded him why he never chose a tub over a shower unless it was a good-sized Jacuzzi.
Willing himself to control his breathing, he listened, using his imagination and ears to create details he could not see. It was clear Vaill was going to allow his partner in. Lou imagined him crossing the room, then checking through the security peephole. Next came a click and a faint creak of unoiled door hinges opening then closing. Chuck McCall, in Vaill’s mind the chief possibility to be an agency mole working with Burke, was in the room.
“Are you doing drugs?” McCall asked.
“What are you doing here, Chuck? How’d you find me?”
“When I couldn’t get a hold of you, I checked to see if anybody was using your credit card or one of our fake ones, and saw activity on the Gregg Campbell Visa. Wasn’t hard to track you down from there.”
“Next time I’ll be more careful.”
Lou decided to mute Vaill’s laptop in case an e-mail or other warning tone sounded. Gingerly, he lifted the cover and killed the volume. Burke’s face stared out at him.
Where are you? Lou asked the face. Where have you taken the notebook? Did you kill Humphrey? Torture him?
“What in the hell is going on with you?” he heard McCall ask. “Where’s Welcome?”
“I let him go. I called Beth and told her.”
“You did what?”
“I let him go. We were off base on him. He’s not involved in any way we don’t already know about.”
Lou had no trouble picturing McCall’s disbelief.
“You can’t just do that,” he said.
“Why not? I work for the FBI. We make those decisions all the time.”
“But I’m your partner! You’re supposed to make them with me.”
“Speaking of that, I’m thinking of putting in for a few weeks off. Medical leave. My headaches are getting worse.”
“Yeah, well I’m thinking about putting out an APB for
Lou Welcome. I can’t believe you let him go.”
“Don’t do that, Chuck. As your partner, I’m asking you to back away from this. Miller and Welcome aren’t terrorists. A doctor and a scientist. That’s all they are. They’re victims of One Hundred Neighbors, not their allies. I think the murder in Miller’s apartment is proof enough of that.”
A long pause ensued. Lou’s eyes traveled back to Burke’s frozen image. Without sound or movement, he could better focus on other details—the dusky blue of the sky cut off by the gray of the sea, the angle of the sun on Burke’s face and straw-colored hair, and the carpet of grass running from the killer to the cliff’s edge.
But for the first time in more than a hundred viewings, something else in the frame caught Lou’s eye. Like the audience of a magician using misdirection to perform a trick, Lou realized he had missed seeing the object because he’d been so focused on other details—the timbre of Burke’s speech, his words, his eye blinks. But this new discovery, frozen in the field just beneath the horizon, might be real, provided it was not just a figment of the filming or something the endless plays had done to the disc.
“Look, Tim,” McCall was saying, “I know I can never replace Maria, but that doesn’t mean I can’t care about you as a partner and a friend.”
“Good to know. If you care, you’ll head out.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“What about the job?”
“I’m going to take some time off. I’ve already given Snyder the heads-up. I need to rest.”
McCall went silent.
Resistant Page 28