by Meg Gardiner
The eighteen-wheeler continued to squeal down the highway on its side, sweeping other vehicles in its path. There were no horns, only brakes and the continuous crunch of metal.
She climbed to her feet. Chest heaving, she ran toward it.
A hundred yards down the road, the tractor trailer finally stopped. A massive pileup completely blocked the highway.
The only road out of town.
Two trash cans were twisted and crushed between the fenders and front wheels of the tractor’s cab. That’s what had caught beneath the big rig, sending the orange flare of sparks along the road as the truck skidded past her.
Trash cans, in the middle of a highway. Detrick had engineered the accident.
Her Glock remained in her hand, her index finger freezing as she held it outside the trigger guard. She turned in a circle, looking for him, but saw nothing.
On the bitter wind came the stench of gasoline and burned rubber, and the sounds of shouts and moaning. A strange, animal screaming. Stomach knotted, she ran toward the pileup.
Detrick was gone.
44
The coffee was lukewarm. Caitlin’s hair was plastered to her head and stippled with ice crystals, her peacoat soaked through the shoulders and sleeves. Her leather gloves did little to cut the numbness in her fingers. Through the blowing snow, the blue and red flashing lights of the fire trucks and ambulances were dimmed to muffled pastel colors. Tow trucks were hooking winches to the crushed vehicles in the pileup.
An Arizona state trooper approached, heavy jacket zipped, snow crusting the broad brim of his tan campaign hat.
“They’re transporting the last casualties now. Broken bones.” He eyed the hundred-yard span of the wreckage. “No fatalities. We dodged a big one.”
“No kidding.” Caitlin eyed the smashed tractor cab of the eighteen-wheeler. “Get anything from the driver?”
“He saw the trash cans in the road when he was almost on top of them. With the snow, he couldn’t tell what they were. He swerved and lost control.” The trooper shook his head. “No question somebody pulled them onto the highway. What a bastard.”
She nodded. Her face was chapped, her nose running.
The trooper said, “Thanks for your assistance. Go inside, get warmed up.”
She shook his hand. This was his patch, and working in these conditions was hellish. And he did it every day.
A voice called to her. “Caitlin.”
Through foot-deep snow, Brianne Rainey trudged toward her along the shoulder of the highway. Her black parka was zipped to her chin, combat pants stuffed into L.L.Bean boots. The flashing lights illuminated the bright yellow letters FBI on her watch cap. Her eyes were narrowed in a cold grimace, but Caitlin felt a warm reassurance at the sight of her.
Rainey put a hand on Caitlin’s back. “No fatalities.”
“Incredible luck.”
The pileup was a stinking, twisted mess. The big rig had been carrying live chickens. The smashed trailer, its back doors open, echoed with the frantic cries of frightened and dying birds.
Caitlin inhaled through chattering teeth. “Detrick used the storm to his advantage. He caused the wreck to slow us down at least. To keep us from following his escape route out of town at worst.”
The highway was the single major road in and out of Crying Call. To reach the town, the bulk of emergency vehicles had been forced to take a winding fire road through the mountains.
Sticking to the verge of the highway, they picked their way around the wreckage. Beyond it spread a vast wilderness. The pine-covered peaks were invisible. Beyond fifty feet, everything was invisible.
“Who’s responding?” Caitlin said.
“City, county, state troopers. Forest Service in the mountains. Air support if the weather lifts.”
“When is that going to happen?”
Rainey shook her head. “Storm extends across four states.”
Ahead of them, the highway was desolate, the snow blowing into deepening drifts. Finding Detrick was going to be a desperate endeavor. The gale had obliterated his tracks. It would prevent trailing dogs from picking up his scent.
Despite the sting of the snow, anger heated in Caitlin’s chest. Every minute Detrick was gone made this disaster exponentially worse.
“You think he’s on foot?” Rainey said.
“He’s wearing a tweed jacket, jeans and cowboy boots,” Caitlin rasped. Her voice was half gone. “If he tries to hike out, he’ll freeze.”
Rainey looked at her funny. “Come on.”
“What?”
She put a hand around Caitlin’s back and led her toward the town square.
“You’ve stopped shivering. You’re getting hypothermic. Inside, now.”
• • •
In the police station, they found noise, bustle, urgency, and anxiety. Uniformed officers ran in and out. The two jail-wing officers who had escorted Detrick to the courthouse without shackles sat in Chief Silver’s office, slumped like dough. Silver paced behind his desk, phone to his ear, trying to coordinate the hunt for Detrick. At the front desk, Officer Villareal looked like she’d been stunned by an electric eel. But when she saw Caitlin and Rainey, she sprang to life.
“Hang up your coats. Radiator over there is hot. Get coffee.”
Caitlin couldn’t unbutton her coat. Rainey offered to help, but Caitlin muttered, “I got it.”
She didn’t. She walked to the radiator, used her teeth to pull off her gloves, and pressed her hands to the hot metal. It was agonizing, stinging relief.
Villareal brought a gym towel. “Your hair’s going to melt in a minute.”
“Thanks.”
Caitlin draped it across her shoulders, over the frozen mass of her auburn hair. She pressed her legs to the radiator.
Rainey, watch cap crusted with ice, leaned against the radiator beside her. “I doubt the escape was spontaneous.”
“No. Detrick . . .”
The heat paradoxically caused her teeth to chatter. She clenched her jaw.
After a minute, she started again. “He planned it. He knew the layout of the courthouse. He spent two weeks buttering up his jailers. Today he wheedled them into leaving his hands and feet free. He created the opportunity and seized it,” she said. “He waved at me, Rainey. He was grinning.”
Caitlin’s hands warmed enough that she could fumble to unbutton her coat. She pulled it open and pressed as much of herself to the radiator as possible.
“His life as he knew it is over,” she said. “There’s no going back, no pretending he’s innocent. And the escape makes him truly infamous. So what’s he plan to do? Go underground? Cross the border, change his name, try to fade away?” She shook her head. “No way.”
“No,” Rainey said. “He has a blinding urge to kill.”
Caitlin gave her an anguished look. “He’s free. When that urge erupts, there’ll be nothing to stop him.”
Rainey pulled off her hat. “Something triggered Detrick last summer, and he started abducting and killing women in Solace,” she said. “With every new victim he took, his inhibitions drained away.”
“Psychopathology on display.”
Rainey nodded. “He has a high threshold for physiological arousal. Killing became the act that satisfies it. And once a psychopath finds the prize button, he keeps hitting it. His reward system for sex, drugs, or crime goes into overdrive and doesn’t turn off. He won’t cut his losses. He has no shutoff valve.”
“He indulged his rage and his drives. Hell—he tried to abduct a woman here in Crying Call, when he knew the FBI was on his tail. He convinced himself he could act with impunity.”
“He’s on an arousal jag. Pedal down, and the brake line’s been cut.”
In the chief’s office, Silver banged down the phone. He turned to the jail officers who’d left Detrick unshackled. “You two
.” Caitlin caught a glimpse of their faces just before Silver slammed the door. They were braced for a verbal beatdown.
Rainey’s gaze lengthened. “The only thing that will restrain his actions is fear of capture. And he’s just gotten a huge boost to his sense of omnipotent power and control.”
A full-body shiver overtook Caitlin, and the heat from the radiator flooded in. Her shoulders were screwed up tight. She concentrated and got them to drop an inch.
“Detrick’s an expert at manipulating women. He’s honed it to a high art. He feels infinitely superior to us,” she said. “But he feels inadequate beside men who are accomplished and confident. That’s one reason he impersonates cops and soldiers.”
“He wants men with authority to appreciate his cunning,” Rainey said.
“And he yearns to be recognized by them. If he can’t have their admiration . . .”
“He’ll take fear and disapprobation.”
“He’s going to want to rub law enforcement’s nose in his success.”
Rainey’s brown eyes were grave. “What’s his end game?”
“Stay free. Murder when he wants. Exact revenge on the world for daring to turn his life upside down,” Caitlin said. “He’s going to want to make a statement kill.”
At the front desk, a phone rang. The desk officer answered and held the receiver up. “Agent Hendrix.”
Caitlin frowned in surprise. With her half-numb fingers she worked her cell phone from her pocket as she walked to the desk. No Signal.
Villareal handed her the desk phone. “Cell towers are down between here and Flagstaff.”
Caitlin thanked her. “This is Agent Hendrix.”
“He escaped?” Lia Fox said. “He pulled a fire alarm and waltzed out of the courthouse like Fred Astaire? What the ever-fucking hell?”
Caitlin took a breath. “Every law enforcement agency in northern Arizona is searching for him.”
“What kind of Barney Fife cops do they have in Crying Call?”
Lia’s frantic voice carried beyond Caitlin’s ear. Villareal turned away.
“What if he comes after me?”
“He doesn’t know your name. He doesn’t know where you live. Your number is unlisted. Your identity has been kept confidential.”
Lia’s voice cracked. “Like that’s going to make a difference?”
Caitlin thought of Detrick in the storm. If he was on foot, maybe he would freeze to death. If he’d stolen a car or hitched a ride, he could be warm, safe, and rolling south.
“He’s not a normal person,” Lia said with blank panic. “If he tracks me down . . .”
“I’ll contact the Phoenix Police Department and ask them to add a patrol to your neighborhood.”
“Why not just send me a sympathy card?”
Caitlin let a silence hang. She understood Lia’s fears, but something more was going on. “What else is frightening you?”
“That’s not enough?”
“Please.” She wished this was a video call. Wished she was in the room with Lia. She was missing major context, and the woman’s voice only told so much. “Tell me.”
Lia seemed to fight tears. “Nothing.”
“If you’re trying to protect someone, you don’t have to do it alone.” She eyed Rainey. “You have the FBI here to back you up.”
“From here on, I got only myself,” Lia said. “Don’t you understand? He’s loose. He’ll figure it out.”
She hung up.
Uneasy, Caitlin leaned across the counter and replaced the receiver. Rainey walked over.
“News is out and our source is scared,” Caitlin said.
She thought about it. Outside, the snow continued to blow.
“You worried about her?” Rainey said.
Another shiver passed through her. Her fingers still felt icy. “Yes. But she’s not the only one.” She turned to Rainey. “I’m worried about Aaron Gage’s family.”
45
Rainey’s face turned grave. “Aaron Gage’s family. In Oklahoma.”
Caitlin, finally warming up, took off her coat. “Detrick knows an informant supplied his name to the FBI. If he thinks it’s Gage, he could go after them. They’re easy to find.”
She still had no cell signal on her phone. “Wi-Fi?”
The desk officer gave her a password. Logging on to the network, she put through a video call to Quantico.
Emmerich answered on the move, walking from the BAU office toward the exit. He wore a black ski parka. His computer case was slung over his shoulder. “I’m on the way. Wheels up in thirty. Flight plan filed for Flagstaff, but if this storm sticks, it’ll be Phoenix.”
“Great.” She felt bolstered. “One thing’s worrying me.”
She explained her concerns for Aaron Gage’s family.
Emmerich pushed through the building’s doors into a gray day and headed toward his car. “I doubt Detrick would connect the informant with Gage. It’s been eighteen years. He’s probably stewing over the informant’s identity, but it’s more likely that he thinks somebody in Austin gave him up.”
“I agree that he probably spent hours in his cell running through his contacts, trying to pin it on somebody. Except for one thing. During Detrick’s interrogation, I focused on the white nightgowns.”
“The victims were found wearing them.”
“But Gage is the one who caught Detrick sniffing a nightie. Detrick might certainly conclude that Gage put us on his trail.”
Emmerich stopped at the door of his Audi S5. “Point taken. Alerting him wouldn’t be unduly cautious.”
“On it,” she said.
“See you soon.”
She ended the call. Rainey looked concerned. She had her own phone on the Wi-Fi network.
“What?” Caitlin said.
“A series of storms is tracking in from the Pacific, and this one’s a monster. I doubt he’ll get into Flagstaff.”
She showed Caitlin the radar map. The blizzard crossed a vast swath of the southwest, from New Mexico and northern Texas into Oklahoma.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Caitlin said.
At a free desk, she called the Phoenix Police Department about Lia Fox. Then she phoned Gage’s landline. She got a Circuits Busy tone. She tried his cell. Call Failed. Repeatedly. On the desktop’s computer screen, she brought up the National Weather Service.
Storm sweeps east through Oklahoma, knocking out phones and power.
In the heated station, the ice on her hair was melting. The back of her blouse was wet. Rainey went to the station’s break room and brought back cups of rank instant coffee. Caitlin took one gratefully, warming her hands around it.
Rainey drank hers in one long go. “If this storm extends across four states, our team’s not the only ones who’ll struggle to get anywhere. So will Detrick.”
“I know.”
That thought should have reassured her. But, as her father had once said, Don’t ever leave a warning until later. You never know when too late might show up.
“It’s not Aaron I’m worried about,” she said. “It’s Ann and Maggie.”
She pictured Gage’s young, no-nonsense wife and the little girl who had bounced into the house the day she and Rainey spoke to Gage. She called Quantico and asked Nicholas Keyes if he could find a cell phone number for Ann Gage.
Clicking noises. “Sending it to your cell,” Keyes said. “You sound cold.”
“I’m defrosting. Thanks for the info.”
Caitlin placed the call from the landline. To her relief, Ann Gage picked up.
“Mrs. Gage. It’s Special Agent Caitlin Hendrix.”
There was a brief, surprised pause. “What’s going on, Agent Hendrix?”
“Are you at home?”
“Oklahoma City. Why are you calling?”
<
br /> She sounded under pressure. On the desktop screen, the weather map showed Oklahoma City, one hundred twenty miles north of Rincon, socked in by the blizzard.
“Are Aaron and Maggie with you?” Caitlin asked.
“They’re home. I’m at my grandmother’s—she shouldn’t be on her own during this storm. What’s wrong?”
Caitlin was certain that Ann didn’t know about Detrick’s escape. “I have to pass along some news.”
When Ann heard it, she went stone silent for a minute. “Is Maggie in danger?”
“We have no indication that Detrick plans to harm your family. But he’s dangerous, and we want you to be aware of the situation.”
“Have you told the Rincon cops?”
“My next call.”
“Jesus. I’m stuck here. The city’s solid ice,” Ann said. “Get somebody to the house to warn Aaron. I don’t care if you have to call Fort Sill to send someone out there in a tank.”
“I’m working on it, Mrs. Gage.”
Caitlin managed to get through to the Rincon Police Department, but they were nonplussed by her call, overwhelmed with blizzard search and rescue.
“It’s a full-court press until the storm clears,” a police lieutenant told her.
“I can’t contact Sergeant Gage,” she said. “He’s disabled, and alone at home with his toddler—”
“I know Aaron. He’s pretty self-sufficient.”
“That’s not my worry.” She reiterated that an escaped prisoner might have a grudge against him—a man considered armed and extremely dangerous.
The lieutenant, Bill Pacheco, said, “Yeah. I see the FBI bulletin coming in.”
“It’s urgent that Sergeant Gage be warned about the threat.”
“I agree that Aaron should know this SOB is on the loose. But power’s out and phones are down.”
“I know how bad it is. I’m on the back side of it here in Arizona.”
“All our officers are on the roads, pulling wrecked motorists out of ditches. I can’t promise assistance for such a tenuous threat.”
“I don’t think the threat is tenuous.” She found that her hands were shaking. She was still colder than she’d thought. She tried to keep her voice calm but insistent. “Please, Lieutenant. This man is beyond dangerous. I know the chance is slim, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t warn Sergeant Gage. If one of your patrols is out his way—”