When Shadows Fall

by J. T. Ellison

  She watched the Potomac slip by the highway, the water on its incessant southerly march. “I know him well enough to know we can’t put him back into the chain of command and expect him to listen to orders. I will tell you this—he must think highly of you to let me off on my own without an argument. He’s been ridiculously overprotective of late, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled at your offer to have me join the Bureau.”

  “Well, when we see him again, I’ll tell him I’m honored. You ready to talk about my offer again?”

  She grinned at him. “Nope.”

  Half an hour later, Baldwin’s GPS unit, a device he called Lola—because what Lola wants, Lola gets—told them their exit was ahead.

  Anne Carter lived on forty acres of prime horse country in Fauquier County. Once they exited the highway, it was a bucolic drive—emerald fields and black fences supplemented by stacked field stones; muscular black and brown horses let out to graze. Gold Cup, the biannual steeplechase event, was coming up in a couple of months, and Sam wondered how many of these beauties would be running.

  The country morning wasn’t as unbearably hot as it had been in the city, and Sam was enjoying watching the horses scamper about, playing in the fields. They were in Civil War country, the rolling verdant hills still masked with the slightest haze of early morning fog, and despite the clear sense of health and happiness around them, Sam couldn’t help feeling the shadow of those lives lost.

  Carter’s drive was flanked with stone pillars and a twin row of poplars, evenly spaced on either side of the drive to create a multidimensional picture as they drove toward the house. The circular drive held two Range Rovers and a convertible BMW similar to Sam’s own, and had plenty of room for more. The cars surrounded a small fountain with a bronze statue of nymphs dancing in the spray.

  Carter’s home was breathtaking, a slice of old Virginia. The house was set right in the wave of a hill; three stories of fieldstone with black shutters and a black roof, four chimneys pointing up to the sky. There was an arbor visible behind the house, rows and rows of grapes running away from the expansive backyard.

  Sam thought she wouldn’t mind having a working vineyard on a century-old horse farm. She wouldn’t mind it a bit.

  Anne Carter met them at the front door wearing a riding habit, the knee-high boots worn and muddied from an early morning ride. Her hair was short and white, eyes as bright blue as Sam had ever seen, her eyebrows still dark despite the white hair, which was slicked back under a headband so it wouldn’t interfere with her helmet. Her lips had a hint of red lipstick.

  Everything about her, from her house to her barns to her clothing, was no-nonsense and elegant, a lethal combination. Even her accent was as cultured and Southern as the environs.

  “Come in, come in. Let me get you something to drink. It’s so beastly hot out there. I can’t wait for fall. Just a few more weeks and there will be a bit of relief.”

  She ushered them into a casual wood-paneled den and made sure they were comfortably seated before handing out tall, cold glasses of tart lemonade.

  Baldwin introduced himself and Sam.

  Once Carter settled across from them, she said, “I just can’t believe what I’ve been hearing. The news this morning is full of excitement. Kaylie Rousch is alive, and Doug Matcliff was, too? We’d given up on him. I was so torn up when I heard the news. That he was out there alone, thinking we hadn’t been in place to help him? It’s such a shame. Such a damn shame. And with all this hoopla, I hope this means you’re on the right track to find the Stevens girl?”

  “About that,” Baldwin said. “I don’t mean to jump right in—”

  “Oh, by all means. We don’t have all day. You’re on a case. I don’t miss it, that’s for sure. The pressure, the horror, the intensity day in and day out. I loved what I did, but I was also happy to retire, to buy this farm with my husband and live out here in the quiet where the worst things we have to worry about are whether the grapes are ripe or the horses lame.”

  Realizing they were waiting patiently for her to finish, she said, “I am so sorry. Forgive an old woman her ramblings. Please, do go on.”

  Old woman. She couldn’t be a day over sixty, and Sam could tell immediately she was as sharp as a tack. So why the artifice?

  Baldwin merely nodded. “It’s no problem, ma’am. Doug Matcliff wrote to Dr. Owens, and told her he was going to be murdered, and then, of course, he was. We’ve located, and now lost again, Kaylie Rousch. She’s the one who indicated Matcliff had been checking in regularly to no avail for at least a year after they escaped the NRM.”

  “Oh, call it by its rightful name, Dr. Baldwin. Eden is a cult, and always was. That woman, Curtis Lott, was as bad as Jim Jones as far as I’m concerned. Letting all those people kill themselves in that barn. She will surely burn in hell for her actions.”

  “I understand you’ve been involved in investigating cults before. You were on the task force that went into Jones’s Guyana compound after the mass suicide, correct?”

  Her eyes grew distant. “Yes, I was. What a scene that was. Jones was the worst sort of fraudster, a drug-addled predator preaching peace, love and harmony among the races, all the while bleeding his followers dry, getting them high and raping their children. We had a chance to take him out once but couldn’t get authorization. Think how many people could have been saved if someone had been willing to make the hard choice.”

  “Was that what happened with Eden? No one was willing to make the hard choice?”

  She took a sip of her lemonade. “I made the hard choice. But we were too late. Doug must have warned them, briefed them on how it would go down when we came in, that they’d have a window to get everyone dead before we returned with the warrant. They had to be ready to move at a moment’s notice, and the skills to evade us could only have come from insider knowledge.”

  Her tone was bitter, and the faraway gaze was gone, replaced by the anger of a predator who’d missed its prey.

  “So you’re saying when Doug went native, he went in all the way?” Sam asked.

  “Yes. So you can imagine, hearing after all these years that he actually got out and took the Rousch girl with him is confusing, to say the least. If he was so disillusioned, why not come back to us?”

  “He was afraid of being prosecuted,” Baldwin said.

  “Yes, yes, that’s the party line, I’m sure. It wouldn’t have happened. We would have spent time and money to see him deprogrammed, and he would have been a hero for finding that little girl. He wouldn’t have been an agent anymore, but he wouldn’t have to stay on the run, either.”

  Sam couldn’t help herself. “What do you really think happened with Doug? You had serious clout. You could have protected him. Surely he knew that.”

  She took another sip of lemonade. Pointedly avoiding Sam’s question, she held up a finger and shook her head.

  “I assume you got the parents’ permission to exhume the body of the one we messed up on?” she said to Baldwin.

  Baldwin nodded. “We have a tentative ID—Jennifer Harvey. Lived in an orphanage in Anacostia, may have gotten caught in the cross fire in a drug deal. We’re following up, and Kaylie’s stepmother is willing to cooperate if reparations are made. She’s a piece of work. We found the father dead in the bedroom. He’d been there for months, if not longer. There’s a team liaising with the local homicide office to make sure there was no foul play, but the woman was clearly addled. She hated Kaylie. That much was clear. Said she was a compulsive liar.”

  Anne leaned forward in her seat. “Did she, now? How very interesting.”

  Chapter

  52

  SAM WAS FASCINATED by Anne Carter’s sudden change in demeanor. It was as if she’d seen an answer to a question Sam and Baldwin hadn’t asked yet. She began muttering to herself, quietly, under her breath, like a simmering kettle read
y to boil.

  Sam leaned back on the sofa. “Why do you say that, ma’am?”

  The blue eyes lasered onto Sam. “First, Dr. Owens, tell me, what information did Kaylie Rousch give you about the cult?”

  “That they were selling babies. The women were routinely raped in something they called the Reasoning, and the resulting babies were sold off.”

  “Is she telling the truth?”

  Baldwin set his glass on a marble coaster with a clink. “We’re looking into it. A trafficking operation of this scale, totally off the record, would take quite a few people to pull off. There would have to be a funnel organization, so to speak, to get the babies to the market, and the money back to the cult. That’s a lot of people along the chain to stay silent. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Carter’s eyes narrowed, and she clasped her hands in her lap tightly. “Dr. Owens, you asked what I think happened. Doug could have put the ball in motion for them, then got scared and run. He had a business background, studied economics. We were going to help him get his MBA. He had a strong head for business, and a promising future. It was one of the reasons I brought him along.”

  “Trafficking is a big charge to level. Did you feel betrayed by his actions?” Sam asked.

  “Betrayed?” She huffed out a short laugh. “I’m a grown-up, Dr. Owens. This is a sad reality we sometimes have to acknowledge—people do stupid things for stupid reasons. I suppose Curtis Lott made it worth his while to leave our fold and enter hers.”

  “But he ran away, then spent a year sending in reports asking for help.”

  “Was he asking for help? Or was he sending us on a wild-goose chase?”

  “That’s part of why we’re here, Anne,” Baldwin said. “The SIGINT from Matcliff indicates he wanted help extracting another girl from the cult.”

  She looked pained. “If only that were the case. Those girls are dead, Dr. Baldwin. You know that.”

  “I don’t know that, not at all. It wouldn’t be unheard of for us to find them alive.”

  “Now who’s kidding whom? You really think the Eden cult would keep them alive, all these years? Use them for this ‘Reasoning,’ sell their babies? It’s preposterous. They are victims, like Kaylie was. She just got lucky, made an impression on Doug somehow, and he got her out. The rest are gone. We searched for them high and low. Each one, each case, thousands of man-hours.”

  “Yet you were promoted and sent to New York. You weren’t on those cases anymore. Right?” Sam couldn’t help prodding the woman; she was holding back on them.

  The sharp cheekbones got even more pronounced when Anne Carter pursed her lips. “It’s entirely possible Doug Matcliff was behind all of this, you know. We found all sorts of things on his computer when we searched his home.”

  “Like what?”

  “Child pornography, for starters.”

  “Could the files have been planted?”

  Carter sighed, clearly running out of patience. “Dr. Baldwin, you of all people know there are aspects to this case that defy logic. We were tipped off to Eric Wright and the trailer that held Kaylie’s things, but it was a setup. I wasn’t entirely convinced the photos were Doug’s, but when you look at the situation en totale, what else were we to think? He went down the rabbit hole and chose not to come out. I always thought he was the one who set up Wright. He knew exactly which buttons to press, and we fell for it.”

  “That’s very possible. And yet, after everything, he chose to come out of the rabbit hole, and not come back to you. Maybe he was afraid you’d given up on him,” Baldwin said.

  Or framed him, Sam thought, but bit her tongue. She wasn’t sure she liked Anne Carter. She had to remind herself the woman had been a star in the upper echelons of the FBI, and you don’t get there without being one hell of a good politician in addition to being a good cop. And pragmatic. Anne Carter was nothing if not pragmatic.

  Carter waved a hand, dismissing the thought. “So long as he hadn’t killed anyone, I would have welcomed him back with open arms and made everything nasty go away. He was a good man, even if he did some stupid things. But if it’s true the other girls were in the cult, he wouldn’t have risked signal intelligence, which was why, after several months of nonactivity, the channel was closed.”

  Baldwin couldn’t hide the shock in his voice. “You were the one who closed the SIGINT channel? Your only connection to a missing agent?”

  “I didn’t close it. My successor did. When I found out about it, and looked into the SIGINT, I couldn’t disagree with the decision. The last several messages we received were out of sequence, didn’t use the appropriate language and codes. Then they stopped completely.”

  She paused a moment. “I may not have made the same decision if it was mine to make, but I understand what happened. A new system was being put into place. Attempts were made to utilize the channel, but there were no responses. We were dealing with a compromised agent, and we all thought he was dead. After a year of silence, the channel was shut down to protect the Bureau from outside infiltration.”

  She ran a long finger along the side of the lemonade glass. “Dr. Baldwin, you’re a lifer with us. You know that mistakes get made. Looking at the situation now, in hindsight, it’s easy to see that was a very bad choice. At the time, it seemed...logical.”

  Logical. “And that protected quite a few people, didn’t it?” Sam blurted out.

  Carter stood and stalked around the room. “You didn’t know Doug. He was smart, and dedicated to making me believe he wanted to be on my team. Enough that I fell for his lies, too. I always believed if he was alive and knew there were more girls at risk, he would have come to me directly and told me. He may have gotten his own signals crossed, so to speak, but I always thought his moral compass was sound. If he was aware of something terribly untoward going on at Eden, he would have told us. I believed he would come in if it meant saving lives. I was wrong about him. A mistake I’ll have to live with for the rest of my days.”

  “But he did continue sending in information, instead of coming in to you. We’re going through his SIGINT now, looking for what he had to say,” Baldwin said.

  She stiffened a bit, but gracefully covered the movement with a small back stretch. “I was told this morning the new SIGINT traces—with an unauthorized code name, at that—were misleading at best. They were misdirections, lies, and we would have wasted a great deal of time and energy chasing down false leads.”

  She sat across from Baldwin. “Knowing he’s been alive all these years infuriates me. If he wasn’t dead, I’d see him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But there is nothing more to be done here. Mistakes were made, and my part in this case is finished. Now, are we through? I have another horse that needs a bit of a frolic.”

  Baldwin was angry. Sam could see the muscles in his shoulders were tensed. She didn’t blame him.

  “A shame, isn’t it, that your pride and ambition took precedence over retrieving an asset,” he said.

  Carter’s eyes flashed, and her lips thinned into a grim line. “You forget yourself, Dr. Baldwin. I still have friends at the FBI.”

  He grinned at her, feral and quick. “As do I, Anne. As do I. Just a few more questions, and then we’ll leave you to your frolic. Do you know anyone named Frederick McDonald?”

  She started to say something, then stopped and watched Baldwin closely. “What do you know about Frederick McDonald?”

  “He was one of the beneficiaries named in Doug Matcliff’s will. We believe the will was solely designed to lead us through this story to all the players. So far, we’ve identified each one—and they’re all either dead or close to it. Who is he?”

  She leaned back in her seat, the soft old leather easing with a small squeak. “McDonald was a bagman for the Dixie Mafia. He got out, supposedly, though do they ever get out? He set h
imself up a nice little operation in Asheville, North Carolina, running moonshine out of the mountains, of all things. We turned him, and he was a very helpful informant over the years.”

  “What did he inform about?”

  “Dixie business. Drug running, mostly. Supply chains. He helped us wrap up several elaborate operations, and he was rewarded for his troubles with a clean slate. I’ve often wondered what happened to him. He seemed like an intelligent man, happy to have a chance to start his life over.”

  “He’s dead now. Someone broke into his house and turned his head the wrong way around last night.”

  She didn’t look terribly surprised. “That is a shame. Clearly he didn’t keep himself on the straight and narrow, after all. But I haven’t heard his name for many years. And I’m afraid I have nothing more of use for you.” She stood, signaling the end of the interview. Smiled at them both graciously, let a bit of Southern pleasantness back into her steely tone. “If you find out anything more, or need more help, please don’t hesitate. This case seems quite complex. There’s nothing I’d like more than to hear those little girls are actually alive after all this time. But I’m not going to hold out hope.”

  The interview was over. Baldwin stood, as well. “Anne, Adrian Zamyatin is systematically eliminating everyone on Matcliff’s list. Your name is on it, front and center. I have a couple of agents on their way out here to watch your back until this is all finished.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then sighed. “That will be fine. Thank you.”

  She walked them out, and waved as they climbed into Baldwin’s car. Sam watched her smile disappear when she thought she was out of sight.

  “Pride goeth before a fall, eh?” Sam said.

  “You know it. Man, they really screwed up on this one.”

  “She could have been more forthcoming. She knew more than she said. At this point, what does telling the truth matter?”

  “Anne is making sure her ass is covered in case this all blows up and she’s called to testify. She gambled and lost the chess match with her boy wonder. It stands to reason there will be fallout.”