Zeitgeist

by Grace Jelsnik

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I’ve seen you run, Fiona. You’re fast, and you’re fit. You walk by. He sees you. He chases after you, leaving the bomb unattended. Brandon swoops in and dismantles the bomb. Meanwhile, you lead Whitley to us. We apprehend him. Brandon gets evidence of the plan. Whitley goes to jail.”

  “And why do you need me?” Kevin asked.

  “To find out where to lead Whitley that’s not in the open. I googled City of God Temple, and it’s pretty much out in the open. If you can find an alley or a vacant building somewhere nearby, that’s where we’ll wait.”

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” Claire said, “but wouldn’t a sensible Plan B entail picking him up before he receives the bomb? There’d be less risk of injury that way.” She darted worried eyes toward Brandon.

  “It would,” Charlie agreed, “but we’d be right back where we were three years ago, knowing Whitley killed Linda and not able to do a thing about it; only this time we’d know he planned to bomb a place of worship, and we wouldn’t have proof. We need to catch him in the act, getting enough evidence on him to make certain he spends the rest of his life behind bars.”

  He continued, addressing his comments to Grant. “I like the plan, but I suggest several refinements. One, Kevin sets up surveillance equipment around the synagogue so we can tape Whitley’s involvement. Two, we attempt to determine the identity of this Fortney and put Claire on his tail. If we can show Whitley Fortney never planned to pick up the bomb, then he might be more inclined to talk. Three, rather than risk Brandon, we’ll let the Saint Paul PD experts handle the bomb. Kevin will make an anonymous 911 call once Brandon verifies there is a bomb. Brandon can keep the vehicle under observation until they arrive and then join us in the alley or abandoned building. Other than those refinements, I think it’s doable.”

  “I go with you,” Grant said, his voice brusque. “I need to be there.”

  “You will.”

  Despite his obvious failings thus far as a protector, her stalker was determined he’d take care of her. Fiona stood. “It’s getting late. We could use a ride to our vehicle. I parked it in the Nielson Parking Structure.”

  “We have room here,” Claire stated, rising to her feet. “We have the entire floor. I’ll show you where to put your things. Am I right in assuming different rooms?”

  Fiona and Grant responded simultaneously. “Yes.”

  She hesitated, her eyes going from one to the other and amusement lighting her features before she walked away.

  Chapter 27

  Fiona paused, the hairbrush suspended above one shoulder and raised her chin, scenting the air. Bacon—the harbinger of a true morning meal, the herald of a genuine breakfast. There would be no wedding cake or hors d’oeuvres this morning.

  Coffee, too. Flaring her nostrils, she sniffed. Pancakes? Eggs would accompany an elite crowd such as the one her nose perceived. Yes, there they were, wafting in on the wings of butter. She hoped they’d ordered enough. Her thoughts went to Grant, as they had several times since she’d laid her head on a satin pillowcase last night.

  Grant! If she didn’t hurry—was that toast?—there’d be nothing left but grease stains and crumbs. Leaping to her feet, Fiona raced to the door, flung it open, and made her way with dignity to the dining area.

  Last night, only four cream and chrome chairs had surrounded the dining room table; this morning, there were six, three of which were occupied by Charlie, Claire, and Grant, all of whom glanced up at her arrival, only one of whom ran his eyes over her person. “Keep Grant away from the bacon,” she commented while seating herself beside him. “By the time I’ve poured myself a cup of coffee, he’ll have vacuumed up the lot of it.”

  Claire raised her eyebrows. “Not this morning. His appetite must be off.”

  Fiona shot a quick glance at Grant, taking in the strain around his eyes. He must not have had a Soma Tome to read last night; it didn’t look like he’d slept at all. She took a sip of coffee before raising the lid on the closest dish, smiling in satisfaction at the strips of bacon nestled in a broad, deep pile.

  “I take it you slept well,” Charlie commented. “You look fresh.”

  “I did. And you? Brandon mentioned you’ve been having insomnia.”

  “No longer. Last night I slept the sleep of the just. Today three years of frustration will be over. Three years of wanting justice for Linda will be finished. I want Whitley Delaney. He’s mine.”

  “He’s the law’s,” Claire corrected while passing a platter of eggs to Fiona.

  “Fair’s fair, Charlie. Grant wouldn’t let me shoot him while he was unconscious last night. You don’t get to shoot him, either. A long stint in prison will have to be enough.”

  “Him dead would be better, and dead at my hands would be best, but I was thinking more along the lines of roughing him up while reminding him what he took from us.” Charlie’s eyes moved from her to the door, and he widened his eyes. “You look like hell.”

  Fiona twisted in her chair to view the new arrival. Kevin stood within the frame, his hair tousled, his clothes rumpled, his demeanor excited. “Thanks. I spent the night setting up surveillance, orchestrating a trap, and studying a USB drive.” He addressed Grant. “You picked well in drives to appropriate. Are there any eggs left?”

  Fiona extended the platter toward him while he took a seat next to Charlie. “There was more than Zeitgeist on the flash drive?”

  “You could say that,” he commented while scooping eggs onto a plate. “And you’d be making a serious understatement. We have enough to hang the lot of them, every last NSO member. Not a written confession but damned close, with documentation of every hate crime they instigated across the nation and its results. Beginning with the initial incident, followed by the tweets and postings escalating the incident, and concluding with a body count. New York, Charlotte, Dallas—they’re all there, as are the in-progress and upcoming incidents, including a drive-by shooting of a black man, any black man will do, by four alleged Hispanic gang members in San Diego two days from now. This is gold.” He reached across the table, forking up several pancakes and depositing them with satisfaction on his plate.

  “We got lucky,” Grant remarked. “That drive was in my pocket, a pocket I fell on several times.”

  “That accounts for the dings,” Kevin said around a mouthful of eggs. “I tell you, those Acme flash drives are built to withstand significant punishment. This one will put them in jail. Seriously.”

  “Maybe not,” Charlie reflected, his brow furrowing. “They could always say they were concerned citizens who were monitoring, not causing, hate crimes. We need more. We need confessions, the kind of confession you beat out of son of a bitch who had a plane blown up.”

  “That’s wishful thinking, Charlie. You know you’re a pacifist at heart. When push came to shove, you’d push or shove, not beat. I made a copy of the USB. Once you’re finished with Whitley, find a way to stick the original in his pocket or on his person without him knowing.” Kevin turned to Fiona. “What happened to those voice-activated recorders you purchased?”

  She widened her eyes. “I forgot about those. We didn’t have time to grab them. They’re still in Whitley’s bedroom.”

  “He didn’t say anything incriminating, though,” Grant added.

  “How do you know?” Kevin asked.

  “I set up baby monitors, one in the office and one in the bedroom. We were able to listen to their conversation,” Grant replied. “I lost one. I had both, but one’s gone.”

  “You probably lost it when you fell from the roof, which would put it on the front lawn,” Charlie commented.

  “Will he see it there?”

  “Not likely,” Fiona replied. “No one uses the front door. The only time we used it was during holidays, like Halloween and Christmas, or when strangers visited.” Like contract killers, she thought but didn’t say. Chad had been walking up the front sidewalk while she’d been approaching the French doors. If he h
adn’t been hired help, things could have turned out much worse for her that day.

  Grant turned to Kevin. “After this morning’s mission, Fiona and I’ll collect the recorders for you. There wasn’t enough to convict him for the plane, but he may have said something since then, maybe a spontaneous confession spoken in his sleep. You never know.”

  Kevin nodded, almost to himself, and glanced around the table. “Where’s Brandon?”

  “He’s surveilling Whitley,” Claire responded. “He’ll follow him from his house and let us know when he’s in place. Speaking of which, I’ve been waiting on you to find out when and where I’m on regarding this Fortney.”

  “I found him. As suspected, he’s an employee at Delaney.com, the head of security. He’ll be at work. I have a necklace camera for you. When I give the word, you visit him, and I can stream the footage to the repair shop.”

  “Repair shop?” Charlie asked.

  “I researched the synagogue layout and found the two most likely places for him to park. Both probable locations are within sprinting distance of a vacant building, an auto repair shop that hasn’t been used in over two years. You might need to break in. If it’s open, you might need to roust vagrants who have moved in. You can wait in there for Fiona to arrive. You should also have an exit strategy so she can keep right on running without slowing down. You can’t let him get his hands on her.”

  “What if he’s armed?” Grant asked. “What if he decides to shoot her?”

  “You might have considered this before you devised this plan,” Fiona responded, her voice dry.

  “It only now occurred to me.” He turned to Charlie. “What do you think?”

  Charlie appeared to ponder the possibility before shaking his head. “Based my own sense of the man and on what you told us last night, I don’t think we need to worry about him either being armed or shooting her. They’re not going to give him access to a gun, not in his current mental state, and I bet he wants to prove to his friend he hasn’t been imagining things. He’ll try to catch her. Besides, Brandon will be right there. For a big man, he’s talented at becoming invisible. If he sees a gun come out, he’ll handle it.”

  “When do we leave?” Fiona asked. “It’s past 7 now.”

  “We need to wait until Brandon’s in place. Then Kevin can select a drop-off location for you to begin your walk.” He turned to Kevin. “You should familiarize her with the route she’ll be running to the auto repair shop.”

  “Will do. Let me finish my breakfast first.”

  * * *

  Charlie turned into the parking lot. “This is it.”

  Fiona studied the two-story cream building with dual staircases leading to a beveled second-floor entry. The parking lot was behind the synagogue, so she couldn’t see Whitley from here, nor could he see her.

  “Whitley’s parked on the other side, along the sidewalk, which extends twenty yards or more away from the front entrance. See those juniper hedges running along both sides?”

  Fiona nodded while glancing at her watch. Brandon had called ten minutes ago, at 7:58, letting them know Whitley had arrived and where he’d parked. It was now 8:08. They had twenty-two minutes left to make this work.

  “If you walk beside the hedges, on the far side, you can take an angled approach from his rear. Cut across the grass, angling straight toward him. That’ll take you to the sidewalk. Stop there. Stare at him. You said Whitley claimed the woman in Munich had stopped on the sidewalk and was staring up at his hotel room. That rattled him, so do the same thing here. If possible, wait until he gets out of the car before you begin your run. You know how to get to the auto repair shop from there?”

  She nodded again. They were in her old stomping grounds. Not far from here, she and Vicki Campbell had ditched school and smoked their first and last cigarette in the same alley leading to the rear entrance of the building Kevin had chosen for the trap. Vicki had thrown up; Fiona had coughed until she’d thought she’d be spitting pieces of lung. Neither had smoked again. “I’ll have no problem. I run through the back door of the shop?”

  “Yes. We’ll go there now. Give us five minutes to set up before you approach him. I’ll probably need to pick the lock on the back door, but that should take less than a minute. We’ll leave the door open so you can run right in. Keep running, all the way through and out the front. Grant and I will handle Whitley.”

  “Of course,” she lied, giving him an insincere smile. The day she stood by while two men took care of her would be a long time in coming.

  She stepped from the car, closing the door behind her and glancing at Grant. He hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words this morning, and now he wore a painfully serious look, one she’d never before seen on his face. She smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up, mouthing “Fort Folly” and enjoying the confusion crossing his face before she turned away. She paused when she heard him whisper after her, “What’s for Farley?”

  So that’s what he’d been saying when they were hiding behind the chifferobe! Smiling to herself, she kept walking.

  Keeping close to the building, Fiona moved across the concrete until she reached the junipers. Following them to the far corner of the synagogue, she stopped with her back against the wall while peering around the corner to survey the territory. Parked alongside a sloping curb sat a royal blue Mercedes convertible with the top down. For the moment, she ignored it, concentrating on the route she’d be taking if, when, Whitley took the bait.

  The sleepy street served residences, not businesses, and she saw no cars coming or going. A hundred yards to her right and on the opposite side of the street, a dirt-surfaced alley with a strip of short, stiff vegetation running up its center yawned where it intersected the asphalt. She’d run up the sidewalk and veer across the street at that point, racing up the alley. According to Kevin, she’d reach the auto repair shop two or three hundred yards later, a short, easy sprint.

  She glanced at her watch. 8:13. They should be in place now. Brandon was out here somewhere, but she didn’t look around for him. She wouldn’t see him. Charlie had said the man was an expert at invisibility.

  She studied the vehicle while resuming her walk. Whitley had traded in his SUV for something a little classier, better suited to the sole owner of a multi-million–dollar company. She wondered about the significance of the blue color. Was it representative of the company or of his greatest victory, the bombing of his father’s plane? He sat behind the steering wheel, his head thrown back against the headrest. At first she thought he was sleeping, which could prove problematic, but when she drew nearer, she could see his eyes were partially open, mere slits above pale cheeks. He stared straight ahead through the windshield, his jaw working, and didn’t notice her reach the sidewalk and stand there, staring at him.

  At first glance, he looked well, the same even features, the same pink-tinged complexion, the same smooth brow. With the exception of the white-blond hair clipped short on a bullet head, Whitley looked like Daddy from a distance. Up close, viewed from six feet away, she could see dissatisfaction tracing lines from the downturned corners of his mouth and the worry furrows between the near-white eyebrows. Her brother had aged, and he didn’t wear his age well. He looked unhappy.

  Her eyes drifted to his shoulders, calling to mind the raised lumps and cords of scar tissue she’d seen on his pink back. When she returned her gaze to his face, she saw he was staring at her, his expression thunderous. She tensed to run, waiting for him to open the door and pile out, but he surprised her by bracing both hands on the door, vaulting from the car and then diving across the hood. There were no cries of “you” or “leave me alone.” The look on his face wasn’t fear or shock or horror. It was grim determination.

  Fiona leapt out his reach, feeling the fingers of one hand graze her arm, and began her run. He was right behind her; she could hear his breathing. Racing down the sidewalk, she ran with the ease of long practice, but he ran like a madman, his steps pounding and furious, his respiration
deep and sobbing. When she sprinted across the street and began her run down the alley, he attempted a lunge, clutching at the back of her tank top and stumbling forward. She felt and heard the fabric begin to tear, and then she heard him curse. Loose gravel strafed a wood privacy fence while he fought to maintain his balance. And she heard him again running, but he’d lost ground with his eagerness and was now several yards behind her.

  There was the auto repair shop. That was Charlie’s car behind it. The door was open, a black rectangle beckoning her onward. Whitley was again gaining on her. She could hear him puffing behind her. Putting on a final burst of speed, Fiona raced through the door.

  Chapter 28

  “I should have stayed with her,” Grant stated, no longer confident in his plan.

  Charlie parked the car behind the auto repair shop, turning off the ignition and shifting in his seat to look at Grant. “Can you run?”

  “No.”

  “You said she can.”

  “Three miles a day, three days a week, rain or shine. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.”

  “Claire was right. You’re her stalker.”

  “No, I’m interested in her.”

  “All stalkers are interested in their victims.”

  Grant felt a tiny spurt of anger and a significant spurt of frustration. “There’s a difference.”

  “If you say so.” He looked unconvinced. “Can you fight?”

  “No.”

  “I saw her moves last night. She can fight. Even if he’s lucky enough to catch her, she can take care of herself, and Brandon’s out there as backup if necessary. Let’s get in there.” Charlie climbed out and walked to the back door. After trying the knob, he pulled a flat pouch from his knapsack, opening it and extracting a thin wire.