The Killing Season

by Mason Cross

  Virtually everything else I needed was in the trash: a bunch of crumpled bookies’ slips showing amounts in the high hundreds and a soaked and dried-out again beer mat from a place called Jimmy’s Bar and Grill that sported a telephone number scrawled in blue ballpoint pen. The number put me through to one of the bookies represented in the crumpled ball of slips. The sound and manner of the voice at the other end of the line told me it was the kind of operation that would not be above breaking the occasional leg.

  Feeling a hunch, I Googled Jimmy’s on my cell phone. It was a steakhouse in a place called Allanton, a tiny village in the southwest of Nebraska that seemed to be a popular hunting and fishing location. The bookies’ slips explained the busted lock and the absence of Nolan. The beer mat might suggest a possible destination, given what I knew about him from the magazine interviews. Besides being a lousy gambler, Wardell’s dad was a hunter. Like father, like son. I just hoped the similarity wasn’t too exact.

  I thanked the super and went back outside to the rented Caddy. I dialed the number for Jimmy’s and waited. I was about due a lucky break—maybe Nolan would be there right now. A deep voice answered on the eighth ring, loud rock music and raucous laughter in the background.

  “Jimmy’s?” He said it slowly, like he wasn’t entirely sure.

  “Hi, I’m looking to speak to one of your customers,” I said.

  “We’re not the . . .” The voice at the other end paused, trying to think of what it was he was not. “The Yellow Pages, buddy,” he finished, sounding mildly pleased with himself. Like a kid who’s managed to remember what two and two makes.

  I came back quickly before the hang-up I could sense coming. “He told me I could reach him there.”

  Another pause. When the guy at the other end spoke, he sounded unsure. “Got a name?”

  “Eddie Nolan.”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath. It was as though I’d yelled a four-letter word at a church coffee morning.

  “You’re gonna need to speak to Brenda.”

  “Well, can I?”

  “Huh?”

  “Speak to Brenda?”

  “She ain’t in. Try tomorrow morning.”

  I started to ask what time, but the genius on the other end had terminated the call.

  I pondered the conversation for a couple of seconds, then took the road atlas thoughtfully supplied by the rental company from the side pocket in the driver’s door and worked out the route to Allanton. It was another two hundred and fifty miles to the west. If I was wrong, this detour would send me hopelessly off course. But if I was right . . .

  It felt right. With everything I knew, Allanton felt right.

  Carol’s voice chimed in from the back of my mind: Anything you don’t know?

  I glanced down at my phone, half expecting to see the picture from Coney Island. It wasn’t there, just a stock image of a dandelion clock.

  “Always,” I said aloud. There’s always something you don’t know. But that didn’t change my mind about Allanton.

  I mulled over the idea of driving straight through before deciding I’d be better off getting some sleep while I could. The genius had said the person I needed to talk to would be in tomorrow morning. Unless the bar opened unusually early, that probably meant Brenda was the manager and that she’d be on site to carry out administrative tasks. That was good; it would mean not having to deal with a bar full of potentially hostile regulars.

  I locked the Cadillac’s doors, reclined the seat and, despite the discomfort, fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. I woke at four and turned the key in the ignition. I drove south on North Twenty-Seventh Street, took a right on O Street, then merged with I-80 and put the pedal to the floor. By the time the six a.m. news turned all my assumptions upside down, I was two-thirds of the way to Allanton. Too far to turn back.

  DAY THREE

  27

  4:22 a.m.

  Four hundred miles southeast of Lincoln, Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper Abel Williams pulled his cruiser to a halt on the shoulder of Highway 65. He was about as deep into the Busiek State Forest as someone could get without being on his way out again, five or six miles from the nearest streetlight. The remains of the vehicle were far enough off the road that he’d probably have driven right by if he hadn’t spotted the last embers of the conflagration.

  He got out of the car, withdrawing his gun from its holster. Probably just teenagers down from Springfield, burning a car they’d stolen and taken for a ride. And probably they’d be long gone. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  The stink of burnt plastic was carried upward by a chill wind out of the woods. Williams descended the gentle incline toward the dying glow between the trees, unhurried. He unclipped his flashlight from his belt as he walked—it was a heavy-duty Maglite, weighing two pounds and as good as a club as it was as a light source. But he didn’t turn it on just yet, even when the branches overhead began to thicken as he moved deeper into the woods.

  The wreck was farther down than he’d thought at first; its apparent proximity had been deceptive. Perhaps some kind of optical illusion caused by the position of the trees or the temperature of the air or some other damn thing. Still, he kept the flashlight off and the gun aloft—safety on, because he didn’t want to put a foot in a rabbit hole and blow his own head off. He stopped and listened, suddenly feeling very alone and isolated now that he’d walked thirty paces from the car.

  He heard nothing—or that is to say, nothing he wouldn’t have expected to hear. The wind whispering around tree trunks and between the denuded branches above. The small sounds of woodland animals moving restlessly some way off. Among these the intrusive, alien sounds of the dying vehicle: warped metal ticking and sighing as it cooled in the night air. Williams told himself to ignore the shiver that crept the length of his spine. He reminded himself how ridiculous his fear would seem later, under the cold fluorescent lights of the station. There was nothing to be afraid of here, just a quiet spot in the woods and an abandoned and destroyed piece of some hapless sucker’s property.

  He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and started toward the vehicle again. As he got closer, he could see it had been on the bigger side: some kind of truck or van. Yes, a van by the looks of things. A Ford.

  Williams brought the flashlight up and clicked it on, bathing the wreck in a cone of white light. Yes, a lot of the paint had been charred away, but there was enough left around the sills to identify it as a red Ford E-Series van, just like in the APB. A different kind of shiver ran back down his shoulders and settled in his gut. Different, and not entirely unwelcome. The missing vehicle in a multistate manhunt, and the odds were looking pretty good that Abel Williams had found it.

  Or were they?

  Highway patrol troopers weren’t exactly at the top of the pecking order in such matters, but from the limited intel Williams had picked up, the consensus seemed to be that Caleb Wardell was heading east. That would take him back toward Illinois, not hundreds of miles south to the bottom end of Missouri. And why would he, having somehow eluded the dragnet, choose to abandon his car out here, ten miles from the nearest town—small town, at that?

  Williams made a slow circuit of the burnt-out husk, keeping his feet just outside the blackened radius on the ground. Sweeping the beam of the flashlight over the almost unrecognizable remains of the driver’s seat didn’t reveal much, but made him pretty sure there wasn’t a corpse in there. Not up front, at least. He slowed as he reached the rear doors of the van, reluctant now to bring the speculation to a close. Stepping inside the charred circle, he holstered his weapon and reached a cautious hand out to test the surface of the rear door. He withdrew his fingertips instinctively, then put them back on. Hot, but not dangerously so.

  He hitched up the sleeve of his jacket to use as an improvised oven glove and pulled at the handle. The lock was not engaged, but the door
was warped and wouldn’t give more than an inch at first. He placed the flashlight on the forest floor, covered his left hand as well, and wrenched. A little later and it would have been futile—he’d have had to call it in and request that Toby or Dave bring a crowbar up here—but as it was, the metal was still just hot enough to be slightly malleable, and the door pulled open with a bereft scream.

  He stumbled back, exhaling a long cloud of air after the exertion, and then put his hand down to retrieve the flashlight. He teased it over the open door, then put a boot on the bumper to reach inside and angle the beam over the interior.

  Whoever had torched the van had started the blaze in the front seat, so the back wasn’t as badly damaged as the front. The body of the vehicle was burnt out, too, but there were identifiable traces of things in the back as opposed to the blackened slag up front. A melted triangle of blue plastic that looked like it might once have been the corner of a sleeping bag. The smoking steel hub of the spare wheel. And something just as unmistakable: the warped barrel and charred stock of a rifle.

  Williams hadn’t realized there was a wide grin on his face until it was wiped off by the sound of something moving behind him. He spun around, cursing out loud as the flashlight connected with the doorframe and dropped to the ground. He fumbled at his holster, asking himself why in Christ he’d buttoned it. He got the gun out after five or six seconds that felt like a week and a half.

  He heard it again, a noise like something moving not too far away. A man-sized something, not some foraging animal. His eyes were still adjusting back to the darkness, so staring ahead was getting him nowhere; it was like standing in a dark room and staring into a closet full of old clothes.

  Slowly, aware of his own rapid breathing, he stooped to pick up the flashlight. When he brought it up to bear on the direction from which he’d heard the noise, he saw nothing but trees.

  But somehow, he felt the eyes on him. On some primitive, reptilian level, he knew they were there as surely as he’d known the metal doors had been hot.

  He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, returning the invisible gaze, but after a time he felt that his watcher had gone. He gave it some more time, then started to back away slowly. Stopping every couple of paces to splash light around, it took him ten minutes to get back to the car. When he picked up the CB to call the station, his hands were shaking like he’d just spent a night outside in February.

  28

  8:17 a.m.

  “It doesn’t make any goddamn sense,” Banner said, kicking a loose branch aside.

  “Of course it doesn’t, Banner,” Castle said abruptly. “He’s a grade-A nutcase. You expect him to check in with us? File an itinerary each morning so we can keep in touch?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said. She was looking back down the hill in the direction of the burnt-out van. Both of them were assiduously avoiding the unblinking gaze of the news helicopters hovering overhead. Blame either the cold or the frustration, but Banner had a longing for a cigarette almost unequalled in the time since she’d kicked the habit when she and Mark had decided to try for a baby. God, was it really eight years already?

  “I know it wasn’t,” Castle said. The hint of a smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. “For what it’s worth, I was starting to think he was headed for Lincoln too. Your boy Blake made a good case.”

  Immediate evidence to the contrary, Banner thought he still was heading for Lincoln, sooner or later, but she kept that to herself for the moment. Of greater note was the fact that Castle was speaking to her almost like a normal human being. She wondered if it was brought on by remorse over his Ashley Greenwood crack the day before. Banner knew Castle’s opinion on the Markow case all too well, but he’d crossed a line with that comment, and she suspected he knew it.

  “He’s my boy now?” she said.

  Castle shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to be Donaldson’s boy anymore. He’d gone cold on him big-time when we spoke. Reminded me he’s just an adviser, not to let him distract us too much.”

  “So pretty much the opposite of what he said two days ago.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Banner smiled. “I hear selective amnesia becomes a real issue above a certain pay grade.”

  Castle didn’t return the smile, but he didn’t dispute the point either.

  “It’s the rifle, too,” Banner said, returning to the previous discussion. “Why discard a perfectly good weapon?”

  “This is America. It’s never difficult to lay your hands on another perfectly good weapon when you need one.”

  “Still, it’s too neat. Like he’s signposting.”

  “That may be, but we have to take a look at where the signs point anyway.” He checked his watch and changed the subject. “How far did you get? Last night, I mean.”

  It had taken Banner an hour to stop back at the house to pack an overnight bag, another forty minutes to grab Chinese for dinner, and she’d made good time after that. There wasn’t a direct flight to Lincoln until eight forty-five the next morning, so she’d opted to drive. She’d been on I-80, a few miles outside Des Moines, at six a.m. when Castle had called her with the news.

  “That’s okay, I guess,” he said. “At least you didn’t have to backtrack. How’s the family?”

  “She’s fine,” Banner said shortly.

  Castle looked like he was about to say something, then shut up. They stood in silence for a minute, both staring down the slope to where the forensics people were picking over the remains of the car. The rifle had already been recovered, given a preliminary investigation, and rushed to the lab. It would be a while before they’d know if it was even possible to tie what was left of the weapon to the Heckler & Koch PSG1 rifle used in the shootings in Cairo and Fort Dodge, but they could certainly confirm that it had been a PSG1, if not the PSG1. She thought about how sure Blake had been and how sure she herself had been of Wardell’s likely direction just twelve hours before.

  “Maybe it’s not him,” she said. “Maybe it’s not a red van.” Castle’s brow furrowed in confusion at that. “Maybe it’s a red herring, instead.”

  Castle shook his head. “Be a hell of a coincidence.”

  Banner realized she’d phrased it wrong. “I don’t mean he didn’t dump it here, or that this has nothing to do with him. I mean maybe he’s trying to throw us off again. Like with the green shirt. That would explain the rifle being here.”

  Castle’s face set hard at the mention of the green shirt. It was still a sore point. Last night they’d managed to finally tie up that particular loose end in the form of a homeless drunk found sleeping among the trash in an alley near the West Harrison Street Greyhound station, green T-shirt still very visible under the puke stains. After being hauled in for questioning, he admitted “some dude” had paid him fifty bucks to swap shirts and take the bus to Chicago. When pressed for a description of said dude, his recollection was shaky to say the least. The fifty dollars had evidently been spent in exactly the way Wardell had hoped it would be.

  Banner pretended she hadn’t noticed Castle’s discomfort and continued. “Just because he’s not on a straight-line drive doesn’t mean he’s not still gunning for Daddy dearest. So either he’s doubling straight back to Nebraska . . .”

  “Or he’s taking the scenic route,” Castle finished. “Which would involve either laying low for a few days, or killing again down here.”

  “He’ll kill again today.”

  Castle nodded agreement. “He will. Look, Banner, the father was a good theory. I’ll admit it. But we’ve got no real evidence to suggest that’s what he’s planning. Not counting the escape, we’ve got two victims so far, and they fit the established MO like a glove: perfect strangers chosen for convenience.” He paused, evidently considering the choice of a priest as the last victim. “Convenience and impact. Today will be the same, unless we get lucky.”

  �
�What about Mia Jennings?” Banner said, referring to Wardell’s ex-girlfriend and first known victim. “She wasn’t a perfect stranger.”

  “That was different. You read the report from Behavioral Sciences. Jennings was just the spark for the fire.”

  “That’s not what I took from it,” Banner said. “It was more like Jennings was the excuse to get started.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Banner said nothing, but she thought there was a difference, and it was an important one.

  Castle let the silence hang for a minute and then said, “Random kill, somewhere in this area, within the next two hours. Maybe Springfield, maybe one of the smaller towns.” He sighed through his nostrils. “We’ve already routed teams to every town within a hundred-mile radius of this spot. Everywhere with a population over a thousand.” He said this with a slight edge of defeat in his voice. The unspoken rejoinder: What if he picks one of the other places? Castle shook his head in frustration. “The canvas is just too damn big this time: He’s only one man against all of us, but he’s making that an advantage.”

  Banner understood his frustration and shared it. Most serial killers operate within much tighter geographical boundaries: choosing their victims within easy reach of their home or base. Wardell was different. Wardell could strike anywhere there were people, whereas they could only hope to cover the areas with the largest concentrations of population, play the odds as best they could. Meanwhile, the bodies would pile up until they got lucky or Wardell got careless.

  Banner looked at her watch. Coming up on eight thirty. That meant she’d been up for twenty-seven hours after sleeping three the previous night. It also meant it was peak rush hour, central time: prime time for Caleb Wardell. She looked up at the news choppers.