“What did he write?”
Fiona picked up the journal she’d placed on the nightstand, riffling through the pages until she reached mid-book. “He says I don’t need to write any longer. Soon I’ll be free of the anger that’s been consuming me since my father sent my mother away. He wants me to burn the journals. I told him I have. He doesn’t know about the turret room. When the need arises and the anger makes me weak, I’ll come up here and read this digest of a life well-lived and a dish of revenge served cold and sweet.”
She closed the book and replaced it on the nightstand. “At the end of the first journal, he mentioned his friend told him to burn each journal once it was full. The writing was meant to be an exercise in anger management, not a chronicle of Whitley’s life. Nevertheless, I don’t think they’re enough to bring either man to justice.”
“Probably not, not without mention of the plane explosion or the upcoming bombing. I did come up with a clever idea that might get us the confession we need. Would you like to hear it? After your last, rather snide, comment about my chattiness, I forebear to speak without you first begging to hear what I have to say.”
“Begging? That will be the day. Asking? I can do that. What did you come up with?”
Chapter 21
“Am I still banished from the bed? I’ll wear out this magnificent voice shouting at you from across the room, and we never know who might show up downstairs.” He leaned forward in the chair, holding his breath while studying her expression.
“All right. But no more pretending to drop something so you can scoot closer to me.”
Fighting, but failing, to suppress his grin, Grant leapt to his feet and made what he deemed a dignified approach across the room but what she may have considered overly eager, based on the deepening of her frown upon his approach. Plopping beside her, not too close, but close enough that he wasn’t in immediate danger of falling off the bed, he said, “In the interests of fairness, this plan is based on something you said downstairs, about us perhaps being able to use Whitley’s insanity against him. Have you seen the movie Gaslight?”
She shook her head. “Do share, and this had better be close-proximity–worth.”
“It is. Nutshell recap: A husband wants his wife committed to an insane asylum so he can get his hands on some valuable jewels. He tricks her into thinking she has misplaced jewelry and pilfered items from him or the house. He even refuses to allow her to go outside, telling her it’s not healthy for someone of her nervous disposition. She begins to believe she’s gone crazy and probably would have eventually gone crazy if it weren’t for a sharp-eyed detective.”
“How does this help us?”
“We haven’t discussed Whitley’s alleged sighting of you in Sioux Falls. It’s too much of a coincidence to hope he didn’t see you, but he doesn’t know this. As far as he knew, you were dead. Since then, according to his friend, he’s been seeing you everywhere, which we know is impossible, this being the first time you’ve returned to Saint Paul. The friend thinks Whitley’s on the verge of snapping, of losing all control over his sanity, and based on what we’ve seen and heard, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s right. Think about it. We have no way of knowing when he trashed your room. It may have been three years ago, and it may have been last week, with his rage being a recent occurrence, something he’s built up to since seeing you in Sioux Falls.”
She looked impressed, her eyes brightening beneath arched eyebrows. “Sometimes, in the middle of your flood of words, a pearl fights its way to the surface. That hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes sense, especially given that he’s recently married and the door wasn’t locked. It’s like he didn’t have time to clean up or at least lock the door so the maid didn’t see. I’ll bet he did it shortly before his wedding. Excellent deducing.”
“Leaving the door unlocked might also indicate he’s reached the point where he’s beyond caring what others might think, bordering on insane. Suppose we give Whitley a little push, drive him completely mad, gaslight him? If he were a babbling idiot the morning of the bombing, he couldn’t deliver the bomb. They wouldn’t want to dope up a madman who’s responsible for driving to a target and delivering a bomb. They’d have to table the plan.”
“That strikes me as a stop-gap measure, like sticking a finger in a hole in the dike. It will work as a temporary measure but not forever, and it doesn’t get us the evidence we need to prove he killed my father.”
“Won’t it? Crazy people say and do crazy things. If we set up recording devices, we might get Whitley on tape confessing to his crimes. Besides, it’ll be fun. Be honest. Wouldn’t you like a little revenge for what he did?”
Her eyes narrowed and her head cocked, she considered the proposal in this light and finally nodded. “If we can stop him before he leaves, it’s worth a shot, and, yes, you’re right: It would be fun. How would this work? We won’t have access to him to trick him into thinking he’s misplaced anything but his mind and his moral compass.”
“No, we trick him into believing not only you but also your parents are still alive. Both of them.” He watched her face, looking for a reaction, and she didn’t disappoint him, giving him a smile. It was a small smile, a sad one, but a smile nevertheless.
“I take it you think he had a hand in my mother’s traffic accident.”
“It makes sense. You’ve had the same thought?”
“Since reading Whitley’s journals, yes. I was supposed to go with her that day, a mother–daughter outing to the Hindu Temple of Minnesota in Maple Grove, but at the last minute a friend called, asking me to go with her family to the Mall of America. Mommy was disappointed, but, like my father, she overlooked all my selfish behavior, smiling and telling me to have a good time. On her way there, she drifted into the incoming lane. I don’t know whether my father checked the car for mechanical failure or tampering afterward. If so, he didn’t find anything. We’ll never know whether Whitley did it or, if so, how, but he was nineteen when she died, so it’s possible, maybe even probable, he had a hand in her death. There’s a great deal of hatred toward her in these journals.”
She paused, placing a hand on the journal lying beside her on the bed. “So, much as I regret ever asking you a question, knowing as I do that the long-winded answer may induce nausea, lethargy, and suicidal tendencies, what’s your plan? How do we trick him into thinking I and my parents are still alive?”
“Recordings. You have those DVDs your father made. If I cut and splice and burn, I can turn them into recordings that sound accusing. Like you asking ‘Why, Whitley?’ And your mother calling his name. And your father blaming him for their murders. We play those recordings back for him while he’s drifting off to sleep. The mystery friend said he planned to drug him on the ride home from the airport. It’s reasonable to assume he’ll lie down once he gets here, so it should be simple to play the recordings without discovery.”
“How?”
“The spiral staircase. We can drill a hole in the chifferobe and stick the speaker either into the hole or duct-taped against it. Once Whitley’s in bed, we can hide back there and play our recordings. We’ll be close enough to remove ourselves and our equipment if he becomes suspicious and decides to check out the chifferobe, but I doubt he will.”
“This could work,” she stated, frowning in thought. “I see a problem. We don’t have a miniature speaker or recording devices or even a drill.”
“That’s where the plan becomes even more complicated. I may have outdone myself with this one.” Curling one hand before him, Grant inspected his fingernails before blowing on them and buffing them against his shirt.
“Are you preening? My god, you’re actually preening. Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“That hurt. Fortunately for me, I am wearing my Fiona armor. Get this. With my plan, we can kill four, no, a whole flock of birds with one stone, the stone being the entire plan.”
“You like clichés: ‘killing birds with one stone.’ I first noticed this ba
ck in Worthing and wondered whether it might be an adrenalin-spawned reaction to near-death, but I was wrong. The tendency might be worsening. Is there some cure you can take, some self-treatment regimen?”
Grant was taken aback. “That’s all you’ve got for me? No applause, no admiring looks? Nothing but a remark about my speaking style? There’s more, you know, but I’m disinclined to open myself to more insults. It’s pretty detailed, and most of it will probably go over your head.”
“Yet another cliché. Tell me about this flock of birds your plan will exterminate.”
“Bird one is driving Whitley completely over the edge. Bird two is calling in reinforcements in case we fail, in which case we’ll fall back on my equally cunning Plan B. Bird three is purchasing all the necessary equipment. Bird four is getting the car out of the garage. So far we’ve been lucky no one has used the garage, or our jig would have been up, yet another cliché for your cliché stockpile. Bird five is getting us some real food, like pizza or burgers.”
“I’m not certain I like where this is headed.”
“You will. This is classic, a plan worthy of a criminal mastermind like Sherlock Holmes’ arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarity. You text Linda’s cousin, telling him you need to use one of her charge cards. Naturally, he’ll be able to track you once the card is used, but he won’t have any location other than the store at which you made your purchases. This will give him a broad location, and he’ll fly to Saint Paul, bringing him and his cronies close enough so, if we need them, they can come running. They may also have experience in disabling a bomb, which could come in handy.
“Once Linda’s cousin tells you what charge card to use, you’ll take the car, purchase our equipment with the charge card, looking right into the store’s cameras so they know it’s you when they view the surveillance tapes, which we know they have the means to do, having accessed the ones at the airport. Then you’ll park the car in a parking garage, getting it out of here, and take a taxicab back, paying cash so Linda’s cousin can’t track you here. He’ll never suspect you’re at your own home. No one would be that nutty. Well, no one but Whitley. On your drive home, you’ll pick up takeout. Lots of takeout. Real food, not dainty hors d’oeuvres and canned delicacies.”
She stared at him in silence for a full minute, her face blank, before nodding. “I like it. It’s a good plan. Please don’t preen again. I don’t think I can take it. When do I make this shopping trip?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’ll make you a list of what I need. You should be able to get everything at one of the big box stores, including the hand-drill for the holes in the chifferobe.”
“Holes? Plural?”
“One for fixing the latch so we can open it from our side and one for playing the voices, which I’ll record while you’re out shopping.”
“All right. It’s a plan.” She turned toward the nightstand, pulling out the top drawer and grabbing Linda’s cell phone. “A text, right? No conversation?”
“No, write and send the text, and then power off the phone. He can trace you all the way to the house if he keeps you talking long enough.”
“Were it you, he could trace you to a location in a specific room and determine what you were wearing and what you had for breakfast,” she commented while powering on the phone. “What do I write?”
“Write this: ‘Need to use a charge card. Which one?’ That’ll do the job.”
She had texting down to an art, whipping through the keyboard and pressing send before powering the phone off. “Now we wait three minutes and check for a reply. While we wait, you can talk about a subject of interest to only you. I can sit here and pretend to listen while I’m actually considering various means of killing you and disposing of your body.”
“Food,” Grant replied. “We haven’t eaten since our canned food buffet. Leftovers are still in the fridge, right?”
“Right. Once we’re done with this, we’ll make a scavenging sortee and collect food. Maybe some Cristal. We earned a bottle of champagne today. In fact, we earned a case.” She powered on the phone, stiffening. “That was fast. We already have a text.”
She clicked on the icon. “He wrote, ‘Nisman. When do we meet?’ He signed it COPs, all capital letters except for the lower-case s.”
She began hitting keys, talking while she typed. “Thursday. Will text location. Bring bomb expert.” After powering down the phone, she turned to him. “I wonder whether they’re the cops the men in the basement mentioned. It’s not spelled like the noun. It’s more like an acronym. Like CIA or FBI. We may regret having brought them in.”
For the first time, Grant doubted the wisdom of his plan. COPs. Covert ops, as in covert operations? Rather than share his doubts with her, he instead bounded up from the bed. “How about that food?”
Chapter 22
An unblemished satin sky shimmered above, serving as a static, photographer’s backdrop for the jagged Saint Paul skyline, its buildings neatly and tightly clustered in sharp, vertical chunks of soot-gray cinderblocks and beige concrete, with the occasional wedge of red brick for contrast. The jarring contrast between shadow and light lent the buildings an unreal quality, like cardboard cutouts used as stage props. If he shifted to the left, Charlie could see sporadic reflections of structures on the gleaming waters of the mighty Mississippi, not so mighty here, some two hundred miles south of its headwaters.
Or was that the Minnesota River? Both rivers merged in Saint Paul, the capital of Minnesota, once the last city of the east for hardy, westward-bound settlers, now the last city of record for foolhardy, risk-taking Linda. Had her last sight been the tree-studded confluence of the Minnesota and the Mississippi? What had she been thinking before N1Delaney had exploded, leaving no trace of its human cargo?
Three years had passed, but Charlie’s wounds hadn’t healed. They wouldn’t, not until her murderer had been brought to justice. Maybe not even then. The worst twenty-four hours of his life, a day begun in concern that progressed to dread and culminated in a pain like he’d never known and would never know again, had centered on this last city of the east. Finally, he’d wept for the cousin he’d never see again.
More than a cousin. Less than a sibling. A good friend, a constant friend. His best friend.
That was the day he’d learned to hate.
Charlie sprang to his feet and made a series of rapid circles around the suite. He needed to sleep. He hadn’t slept in three days, not since Kevin’s tracking equipment had activated the alarms, sending all of them racing for the computer center. A Denver police officer had made inquiries on one of Linda’s aliases, Valencia McDermott.
Charlie remembered Linda laughing when Kevin handed her the ID. “A good Scottish name for a good Lakota woman,” she’d said. “Shall I speak with a burr?”
No, Kevin had replied, telling her she’d look silly in plaid. Brandon had shown up the next day with a set of bagpipes. Claire had called her Linda Braveheart instead of Linda Blackhorse. Charlie had bought her an original copy of Robert Burns’ Kilmarnock Volume. She’d left the bagpipes behind when she drove to Minnesota, but she’d taken with her the book of Burns poetry.
He wondered whether Fiona Delaney still had it.
She still had Linda’s guns, well, at least the Ruger pistol. The last whisper of suspicion about her role in Linda’s death had left him when he’d stood over Chad Farley’s body and counted the bullet holes. Ten. She’d emptied the clip into him, the act of a woman who was either extremely angry or extremely afraid. Maybe both.
The technician, the engineer of Linda’s death, was dead. That should be enough, but it wasn’t. Now they needed to bring the technician’s employer to justice. Charlie knew—they all did—that Whitley Delaney had contracted the hit on his father and sister, but after three years of futile investigation, they had yet to find the evidence necessary to convict him or any of his National Socialist Organization cronies.
Over the past three years, Delaney had escalated his NSO recruitment and
set into motion his plans, and now even a child could spot the patterns Linda had only suspected back then. They could notify any number of anti-hate organizations, should they so choose, but they didn’t so choose. It wasn’t enough. They wanted Delaney imprisoned for Linda’s murder, not fined by the Federal Trade Commission.
Why hadn’t they taken Linda seriously? Her instincts were, had been, nothing short of miraculous. No. He must stop thinking this way, not again. Charlie slumped into a chair, staring out at the Saint Paul skyline but not seeing it. He’d been through this a thousand times since the plane had exploded and they’d learned she was on it.
Twenty-four hours of not knowing, of repeatedly calling her, of having her pick up only to immediately hang up, a hellish day ending because their resident fashionista, Claire, had an eye for brands. Once Kevin had accessed the airport terminal footage, he, Brandon, and Charlie had spent over an hour watching the boarding, watching the onlookers, watching Linda walk from the restroom with her head ducked.
“Why is she holding her head so low?” Kevin asked. “It’s as though she’s trying to avoid the cameras.”
“Who?” Claire asked, entering the room with a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of crullers.
“Linda,” Charlie responded. “She’s leaving the women’s restroom, but she’s keeping her head down.”
Claire set the plate beside Kevin, refilled their cups, and stepped back to better view the screen. “Play it again.”
When Kevin obliged, she commented, “Because that’s not Linda.”
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