The Killing Season

by Mason Cross

  “Meaning?” Castle snapped.

  “Meaning there’s a good chance that spot was vacated around the time of the killing, right before the police locked everything down. And meaning there’s a good chance that whatever vehicle was in that spot belonged to a member of staff, one who hasn’t reported—or who hasn’t been able to report—their car stolen.”

  I half expected Castle to shut me down, but in this I was pleasantly surprised. Castle thought it over for a couple of seconds. Beneath it all, maybe he was too much of a professional to discount a possible lead, however much he might dislike its source. His voice was cautious when he spoke. “Not necessarily.”

  “No,” I said. “But possibly.”

  Castle turned in Banner’s direction, mouth open to say something. But she was already gone.

  11

  1:57 p.m.

  “Got it.” I looked up at Banner as she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. She was smiling, carrying two steaming cardboard coffee cups. I had left the tent and the body of the deliveryman to gather my thoughts and was sitting against the hood of a silver Toyota, watching Castle pace back and forth a hundred yards away, talking animatedly on his cell phone.

  “Must be good coffee,” I said, taking the cup she offered.

  “Sandra Veldon. Assistant manager in the doughnut place. Didn’t show up for work today.”

  “Habitual absentee?”

  Head shake. “More like employee of the month: every month. She calls if she’s going to be five minutes late. Today? Nothing.”

  “Car?”

  Nod. “Dark blue 2009 Ford Taurus. Got the plates from the DMV already, got the BOLO out.”

  I nodded and looked at my watch, impressed. “All this and coffee.”

  Banner shot me a warning look, rebuffing the pat on the head. “I can hold up my end. But you helped us along. She might not have been reported missing until tonight. Maybe you’re not as much of a waste of time as I thought you were, Blake.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I said ‘maybe.’”

  “It’s a hunch,” I cautioned. “Looks good so far, but it might not pay off.”

  Uninvited, Banner moved closer and took a perch next to me on the hood, taking a sip of her own coffee. “Good at finding people,” she said. This time she said it like it was a world-famous corporate motto: like good to the last drop, or king of beers, or something. “So what makes you so sure he’ll pick specific targets this time?”

  “What makes you so sure he won’t?”

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t fit with what we know about him. With what he did before.”

  “It fits,” I said, thinking about Mosul. “I know the type.”

  Banner said nothing for a minute, then she asked, “Any­thing you don’t know?”

  I smiled, because that exact phrase and the expression on her face brought back a memory of someone else. A far more pleasant memory this time.

  “Plenty of things,” I said.

  “Why are you smiling like that?”

  “You just . . . reminded me of someone for a second.”

  I looked back in Castle’s direction again. He was still on the phone, still pacing. The young agent was approaching him, a pained look on his face. I lip-read “I gotta go,” saw Castle hang up.

  The agent began talking to Castle, his hands held out defensively like he was negotiating with an aggravated suspect armed with a chain saw. Banner had been looking at me, but now followed the line of my gaze.

  The young agent was pointing in the direction of the mobile command center. After he finished speaking, Castle took off at a run.

  Banner and I both slid off the hood of the car and jogged after the two men. My mind was racing, trying to predict what had happened. Another shooting, almost certainly. Maybe they’d found Sandra Veldon’s body. Whatever it was, the urgency meant one thing: Somebody new was dead.

  But this time, I was wrong.

  We reached the door to the command center and stepped up and inside. There was a bank of flat-screen monitors on one wall, all eyes fixed on the one that was tuned to CNN. Nobody had thought to turn up the volume, but perhaps that was because they didn’t need sound.

  The screen was split into panels, like a comic book page. Two small squares on the left, one long vertical rectangle on the right. Top left: aerial footage of our current position. Bottom left: a county cop manning the barrier in a field somewhere, almost certainly the scene of the prison escape. Right-hand side: Caleb Wardell’s mug shot.

  Bottom of the screen, two words, white on red: breaking news.

  12

  3:02 p.m.

  To my surprise, Castle took the latest development pretty well. After the initial shock, after the questions about who had leaked the story and why, he, Banner, and everyone else seemed to be able to let it go and get back to the task at hand. I decided that made sense—the media blackout was not a natural facet of the manhunt, but rather a complication that had been imposed from above. From that perspective, the media getting ahold of the story was almost a blessing. It took unnecessary pressure off, meaning the task force no longer had to operate with one hand tied behind its collective back.

  And, as the day progressed, it became apparent that the story hadn’t been leaked at all. The story had broken first on the website of the Chicago Tribune. A staff reporter named Mike Whitford had received a call that morning from somebody purporting to be Caleb Wardell. And if it hadn’t been Wardell, it had been somebody equally well informed, because one thing was clear: Whitford had his facts straight in the story. Everything from the details of the escape to the position of the shot that had killed the deliveryman. The detail was accurate, the message concise and pitched perfectly to a mass audience: Wardell was back. Five men dead already, and he was just getting started.

  Castle spoke to Donaldson at length by phone. The SAC was not happy. But there was work to be done, and so it got done. The focus of activity had switched to locating Sandra Veldon’s Ford Taurus, but everything else that had been set in motion was still ongoing, with an added load of media briefings.

  Two spent 7.62 cartridges were recovered from the wooded area overlooking the lot, validating the forensic guy’s guess. A thumbprint found on one was quickly checked and matched as Caleb Wardell’s, to the surprise of no one. Good work from all concerned, but crime scene work wasn’t what I had been brought in for. To do that, I needed three things: a little time, a little space, and a lot of information. I caught up with Banner outside in the parking lot as she finished a call on her cell.

  “Yeah,” she said in acknowledgment. She delivered the word flat: not a question or a challenge, sounding neither impatient nor pleased. She did not seem in any mood to be standing around shooting the breeze, so I cut to the chase.

  “Listen, I know bringing me in on this wasn’t exactly your idea, but I think I can help you.”

  Banner turned away, staring into the distance and looking like she was thinking of all the things she ought to be doing five minutes ago. Then she looked back at me. “But first you need something from me?”

  “Bingo.”

  I asked Banner to have everything on Wardell e-mailed to me.

  “You already have the file,” she said.

  I shook my head. “That’s the Reader’s Digest version. I mean the big file. Everything.”

  “Everything,” she repeated. “More homework?”

  “Something like that.”

  A pause, then she said: “All right. I guess Castle would say it’ll keep you out of the way.”

  I didn’t rise to that. Being honest, it did feel a little against the grain, to retreat to desk work when there was a killer on the loose, but it was all part of my system. The game was on, and if I was going to play my part, I was going to have to know my quarry inside out. The task forc
e would take care of chasing up leads, coordinating dragnets and searches, warning the populace—all of the thousand and one other concerns. In the meantime, I had to forget about all of those distractions and get down to business. My business.

  Banner didn’t complain about having to take the time out to make the calls, didn’t ask what I was planning to do. Most of the material was available electronically, but she had the remainder faxed through to the command center. While I was waiting, I bought some maps from the supermarket.

  When it was done, I thanked her. I meant it, because she didn’t have to help me. It certainly wouldn’t increase her standing with Castle.

  She brushed it off. “No need to get all warm and fuzzy. Let’s just say I’m hedging my bets.”

  By three o’clock, and with no small amount of difficulty, I had located what seemed like the last motel room in town that had not yet been snagged by an incoming journalist. I checked in as Jerry Siegel: an assumed name to hide an assumed name. The room had cable, Wi-Fi, and a desk: every­thing I needed. I switched on one of the news channels and muted the sound; then I set my laptop up on the desk and got to work.

  13

  4:10 p.m.

  “Agent Banner?” Banner started a little at the sudden voice and looked up from her phone, on which she’d been reading a terse e-mail from Donaldson. The expression on Agent Paxon’s face told her this wasn’t another shooting, not yet. That news wouldn’t come to her in person. When it happened, the first sign would be the ringing of multiple phones.

  Kelly Paxon had to be in her first or second year with the Bureau, Banner guessed. She wore a dark skirt and jacket, white blouse, only a little makeup. Her strawberry-blond hair was tied back, and she wore glasses with thin, dark red frames. She was nervous. This was evidently her first time in the midst of one of the really big cases and she, like everyone else, had probably been yelled at a couple of times today by stressed-out superiors.

  Banner smiled reassuringly. “What have you got for me?”

  “Marion.”

  “Wardell’s prison?”

  Paxon nodded. “We’ve gone over every piece of paperwork on the transfer. Looks like Wardell was a last-minute substitution.”

  “He wasn’t meant to be transferred?”

  “It was scheduled, but he was meant to go on his own. Death row transfers are almost always solo. A bunch of the guards called in sick—stomach flu epidemic. They tagged him along with Mitchell, who was also meant to be moved alone.”

  Banner massaged her right temple with her index finger in slow circles. “A celebrity serial killer and a Mob witness. Sounds like they were playing pretty cavalier with the star attractions.”

  “It seems so, ma’am.”

  Banner hated being called ma’am. She knew it was a chain-of-command thing, but it set her teeth on edge every time. It made her feel about a hundred and five. “But why didn’t they have an escort?” she asked.

  Paxon looked uncertain, as if she were somehow personally to blame for the lapse in security. “The original paperwork has Mitchell’s transfer coded 1AA. That means silver service—outriders, chopper, decoy vans, the whole ball of wax.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Somebody recoded it the day of the transfer. It was downgraded to regular security only. Mitchell went from VIP to standard class.”

  Banner was incredulous. “‘Somebody’? Wouldn’t something like that need to be signed off on by a bunch of people?”

  “In theory, yes. In practice . . . maybe not. This time it seems to have gone unchallenged.”

  “So who made the call?”

  “The relevant document is signed by the prisoner transfers coordinator, Paul Summers.”

  Banner opened her mouth only for Paxon to answer her question before she’d voiced it.

  “Summers didn’t show up for work today or yesterday. We’ve got an address; he lives just outside of a town called Janson. It’s about twenty-five miles north of here.”

  “Good work. Do we have anybody out there?”

  Paxon shook her head. “We only just got the heads-up.”

  Banner looked away from Paxon and at the busy scene around them. Castle was on the phone; Blake was nowhere to be seen. Chances were she’d have to head back to Chicago soon. The consensus at Quantico was that Wardell would be heading back to familiar ground. In the meantime, there wasn’t much she could do here until Sandra Veldon and her car were accounted for. Banner dug the keys to the gray SUV out and jiggled them in her hand. “Come on.”

  “To Janson?” Paxon sounded surprised.

  “Where else? Let’s see what Paul Summers has to say about all this.”

  14

  4:42 p.m.

  Paul Summers lived off the beaten path, in a farmhouse about three miles off the old Highway 51. Banner and Paxon missed the turnoff the first time. On the second pass, they saw that the sign for Whitecart Farm had been obscured by bushes.

  Paxon was driving, so Banner had been the one to answer the call from one of the other agents chasing up the Summers lead. It turned out his bank account had been credited with a hundred thousand dollars from a bank in the Caymans the previous Friday afternoon. That made it official: The escape hadn’t simply been a matter of the Russians getting lucky.

  Not that it really mattered anymore: Caleb Wardell had personally tied up virtually every loose end on that particular case by killing Mitchell and his would-be assassins. Running down Summers and whoever else had been involved in downgrading the transfer was a side project. The real issue was the genie they’d inadvertently let out of the bottle.

  As Paxon negotiated the narrow, rutted dirt track that led up to the house, Banner ejected the magazine in her Glock, checked the load, then slapped it back in.

  “Expecting trouble?” Paxon asked.

  “No guts, no glory,” she replied. “But I’ll be happy to be disappointed.”

  They knew something was wrong as soon as they heard the barking. They heard it a good thirty seconds before the house came into view. It got louder as they approached. Paxon steered through a wide-open security gate and into the yard in front of the house.

  It was a conversion that must have been done twenty or thirty years before, and on a tight budget. The farmhouse itself was ramshackle, with a roof that buckled in places. White paint peeled from every wall. There was an extension on the south end that wasn’t in much better shape: a one-story timber structure that tapered off to a covered deck area. The dog was tied by a length of chain to one of the posts supporting the roof over the deck.

  It was a big German shepherd, virtually wolflike in proportions. It had been pacing from side to side, but angled itself toward the interlopers as they opened the car doors. The barking increased in intensity, and the chain stretched tight as the animal strained to get at them.

  “He’s starving,” Paxon said, a lilt of sympathy in her voice.

  Banner was focused on the spot where the chain had rubbed against the wooden post, noticing that it had worn down an inch deep or more. “Why do I get the feeling he’s visualizing a couple of roast chickens in office wear?” She was glad she had the Glock in her hand. “Come on.”

  They headed for the front door, giving the dog a wide berth. Banner kept a wary eye on it as Paxon rapped on the door. She wasn’t a dog person at the best of times—her ­parents had told her that, when she was a toddler, some ­idiot’s rottweiler had gotten off the leash in the middle of the street and had tried to get to her in her stroller. Thankfully, her father had beaten the dog off before it could savage her, receiving a couple of nasty bites for his trouble. Banner had no memory of the incident, but she didn’t doubt it was the reason behind her aversion to canines.

  Paxon knocked again, harder. They waited another thirty seconds. Banner shrugged and reached for the handle. It twisted down and the door swung open.

>   “Unlocked,” Paxon said.

  “No,” Banner said slowly. “It was ajar. Right?”

  “Of course. My mistake.” Paxon drew her own gun, and they stepped through the doorway and into a hallway. It was warmer than outside, but not by much. There was a stillness, a silence that spoke of uninhabitation. The only sound was the muted barking from outside, which suddenly sounded much farther away than it was.

  The hall was narrow, with two closed doors on the right-hand side, a steep flight of stairs to the left, and a glass-­paneled door at the far end that looked like it would lead to a kitchen. A light was burning in the room beyond, visible through the frosted pane.

  “FBI agents,” Banner called out. “Be advised we are armed.”

  There was no response. They advanced down the hall, and Banner noticed there was a slight incline, probably indicative of the house settling. A breeze from the top floor whispered past them, and Banner looked up the flight of stairs to where it ended in a half landing. She was considering ascending the stairs when they heard it.

  It was a low, intermittent scratching sound. Quiet and tentative. It was coming from the kitchen.

  “What the hell was that?” Paxon whispered.

  Banner didn’t answer. She changed direction and moved to the far end of the hall. The carpet was so old and so cheap that she could feel the lines of the floorboards through the soles of her shoes. One of the boards creaked loudly as her hand touched the kitchen door handle, and the scratching stopped. They exchanged a glance, and Paxon raised her gun to cover the door.

  Banner let out a tiny breath and pulled the handle.

  A dark shape flashed out of the kitchen, glancing off Paxon’s calf. She let out a restrained yelp, and they both turned to see the German shepherd puppy as it scampered the length of the hall and out into the yard.

  Paxon let out a nervous laugh and put her free hand over her heart. “Jesus.”