by Mason Cross
Wardell slowed to a crawl to give himself time to think. The next name on his list wasn’t in either direction. The next name was a few hundred miles north. Up until an hour before, Wardell had planned on heading straight on up there. He had felt confident in his plan so far, reasoning that the feds would expect him to head for Chicago and keep picking random targets. While it appeared they hadn’t deviated from that expectation, the encounter at the cabin gave him pause. The man in the cabin had been a step ahead, had seen the Nolan hit coming and had managed to track the old man down. The next name on his list was even more obvious—the hunter would predict it easily. It would be rash to proceed. Safer to delay this mission, mix things up with some more randoms. Or maybe even forget about the list and jump straight to the finale, now that he had all of the necessary tools at his disposal.
But then again, he enjoyed a challenge. And if, as he anticipated, the man at the cabin predicted the next target, that would offer the chance of a rematch on Wardell’s terms. Only now did he realize that the farther west he’d traveled, the more a sense of disappointment had built. Disappointment at the lack of obstacles, of challenges. When he’d reached his destination back there in Allanton, he’d been downright depressed. Even when he’d squeezed the trigger to end the pathetic existence of his . . . of that man . . . it hadn’t felt like he’d thought it would.
But that cloud of despondency had lifted entirely during the ensuing firefight. And it hadn’t returned now, even though the adrenaline had mostly worked its way out of his system. With an alien feeling of surprise, Wardell put a hand to his mouth to confirm a suspicion. He was smiling. And he reckoned he’d been doing so since he’d fallen back from the cabin.
35
12:06 p.m.
The ride up from Missouri in the shiny black Bell 407 was smoother than Banner had anticipated. After she’d gotten off the phone with Blake and realized how she’d be filling the next couple of hours, she’d glanced up at the sky, seen the threatening clouds, and shivered. Banner was prone to airsickness and knew that even a moderately turbulent ride would reduce the chances of her keeping her breakfast down to around zero. But as the pilot upped the pitch of the main rotors and lifted them into the air, the sky brightened a little. It was almost as though the weather had had second thoughts. Banner set her jaw and willed the status quo to remain. Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day. Or don’t.
The nausea meant she was grateful that Castle was in a reticent mood, barely exchanging four words with her throughout the two-hour flight. She used the time to look back over the Wardell file. She scanned the pictures and reports and interviews, wondering how Blake had gotten so far ahead of the rest of them. She wondered how the hell he—or anyone—was going to predict the bastard’s next move. She sighed and put the Wardell section to one side, then opened the victim profiles for the original nineteen.
Whenever a case threatened to overwhelm her, this is what she did: took it back to the basics. The crime and the victim. Just like their killer, every one of the nineteen had a backstory. The accountant celebrating a promotion. The alcoholic fresh out of completing her first successful stint in rehab. Stories cut short for no reason. Lives blacked out on a whim.
Victim number six hit her the hardest. Her name was Emma Durbin, a thirty-two-year-old corporate lawyer recently separated from her husband and raising a young daughter. Banner stopped reading the text and just stared long and hard at the picture of a smiling Durbin at the beach, hugging both arms around her kid’s neck as they posed for the camera.
Jesus, Annie.
She snapped the file shut and closed her eyes. Where had the time gone? Her daughter’s entire childhood was playing out in the background, drowned out by louder distractions: the fights with Mark, the punishing demands of her work. And then once Mark had gone, the demands of the job had increased to absorb any breathing space she might have expected.
She took out her phone to call Helen, but it went straight to voice mail. She left a message, asking how they both were and saying that she hoped she’d be home soon. As she hung up, she promised herself it would be different once they caught Wardell. She could take stock, start to prioritize better, focus on what was important. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Everything was so goddamned important.
They touched down on the wide, flat plain that separated the line of hunters’ cabins from the lake. They were latecomers to the party, and the usual circus of law enforcement, forensics, and media were already entrenched in their traditional positions. Castle leapt from the side door as soon as the skids touched the earth, and Banner followed, ducking down instinctively to avoid the propeller wash.
The center of attention was a cabin that had probably once been fairly indistinguishable from its neighbors, but now looked like it had been transported there from some battleground in Afghanistan. Every window was shattered, lengths of guttering hung loose, large-caliber bullet holes pockmarked the surface like some weird decorative effect. How in the hell had Blake survived this? She wondered where he was now. A couple of states away, perhaps, doubtless hot on Wardell’s trail.
The earthly remains of Edward Nolan lay prostrate on the floor of the cabin, half visible through the open doorway. Castle had told the crime scene people that they could do what they like so long as nobody removed the body before he arrived. “Body” was perhaps too substantial a word for what was left of the man. Three-quarters of his head was gone. Wide blood blossoms adorned the rest of his body, evidently the result of getting in the way of automatic rifle fire. The left hand had been blown off at the wrist.
“So much for one shot, one kill,” Banner said to no one in particular.
“The kill probably was the first shot,” Castle said. “But he’s upping the tempo, no question.”
Banner looked around the sparsely furnished cabin, every piece of furniture and decoration entirely beyond repair. She knew the team would have gone over the place with a fine-tooth comb already and knew that it had likely yielded zilch in the way of intelligence on Wardell.
“The father was the only person close to a relative we knew about,” Banner said. “So where the hell is he going now?”
Castle was looking down at the body as though he were a Roman priest attempting to read the entrails of a fresh sacrifice. He breathed a long sigh out of his nose. “Blake.” He said the word like it was an admission of defeat. “We need to talk to Blake about where the hell this bastard is going.”
There was a cough from behind them and the two of them turned. Blake’s hair was disheveled, his white shirt streaked with dirt, and there was a cut beneath his left eye. “I’m afraid, Agent Castle,” he said, “that your guess is as good as mine.”
36
3:28 p.m.
The three of them were hunched over a large map of the Midwestern states on a small table inside the mobile command center. Blake sipped his third cup of hot black coffee as he indicated points on the map.
“We don’t have any more than a day until he kills again,” he said. “Probably much less, in fact. So given that he has to keep under the radar, we’ll say a five-hundred-mile radius, max.”
“Less,” Castle said, cradling his chin between the thumb and index finger of his left hand as he considered this. “He’s got to dump your rental ASAP and find another vehicle. Did you get the optional insurance, by the way?”
“Always.”
Banner smiled. There had been no apology from Castle and certainly no gesture of contrition, but he had quietly dropped his open animosity for Blake. Whether he liked it or not, he had to work with the guy if he wanted to nail Wardell. And he wanted that badly; they all did.
“Say three hundred, then,” she said. “What does that give us? We’re looking at towns and cities again, since the next one’s got to be random. He’s out of personal targets.”
“Maybe,” Blake said. He reached for a pencil, guesstima
ted a three hundred mile to scale line stretching out north from Allanton, and drew a near-perfect circle on the map. Banner and Castle inclined their heads to look at what that gave them.
“Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota,” Castle recited, “or he could double back to Iowa.”
“He might want to rest up,” Banner suggested. “The nearest big town is Denver.”
“Kansas City is almost as close in the other direction,” Castle pointed out.
Blake was shaking his head. “Things changed today,” he said.
“You mean because you almost got him?” Castle asked.
“It wasn’t that close,” Blake said. “I was just trying to get out of that situation in one piece. I meant it changed because he’s taken out his first predetermined target. Maybe his only predetermined target. And, thanks to Daddy, he seems to have inherited an arsenal. He’s ready to kick things up a notch.”
Banner tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. She didn’t like to think about what the next notch would be to a guy like Wardell. “Meaning?” she asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” Blake said.
“You’re right,” Castle said after a moment. “Serial killers tend not to keep to their initial pace. They escalate. A lot of the time, that’s why we catch them. More than likely, his next move is going to be something big.”
“Or someone big,” Banner said. This chimed with what she’d read in the psych reports. Wardell had never confirmed it, but the shrinks agreed he was working up to a single episode of killing on an unprecedented scale. Something with a lot of people in a confined space. A baseball game or rock concert had been suggested, but it could just as easily have been a hospital or a shopping mall. Wardell hadn’t sketched out his plans or written a journal, so there was no way to be sure. That was the challenge about protecting a big city—lots of places with lots of people.
Blake nodded in agreement. “Let’s hope we’re not there yet. If he sticks with random, we’re back to a guessing game. But if we can find a specific target he might want to hit within this circle—or even outside—we could make a guess at his direction at least.”
Castle repeated the names of the states that fell within Blake’s circle. Banner furrowed her brow in concentration. Nothing stood out. “What towns do we have in those states?” she said, then started picking them out on the map. “Lincoln, Omaha, Wichita, Topeka . . .”
“Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder . . .” Castle continued, looking west.
Blake picked up the baton and headed north. “Cheyenne, Rapid City, Sioux Falls . . .”
“Wait,” Banner exclaimed. The two men stopped, looked up at her, faces questioning. “Rapid City, South Dakota,” she said. “Something about Rapid City in the case notes.”
Blake snapped his fingers. “Of course. Hatcher.”
“John Hatcher?” Castle prompted. “The sheriff?”
Banner nodded. Hatcher had been the newly promoted sheriff of Chicago’s Cook County, barely two weeks on the job when Wardell had made his first kill. As the senior law-enforcement representative in the county where Wardell’s first two victims had fallen, he’d been heavily involved on the multiagency task force during the first go-round and hadn’t been shy with the media. Hatcher had a weird mix of charisma and abrasiveness, which had worked to his advantage during the frequent press conferences. His prickliness and instinctive way with a sound bite had marked him out as a no-bullshit man of action, especially when contrasted with the more reserved FBI agents, including Steve Castle.
It was an entirely false impression. Away from the cameras, he’d contributed little to the case beyond getting people’s backs up. But he’d been the only one to come out at the other end with a genuine career boost. It had helped, of course, that it had been one of the detectives on Hatcher’s Special Investigations Division who had made the crucial breakthrough. But Hatcher wasn’t slow in taking as much credit for his subordinate’s actions as he possibly could.
“What about him?” Castle said.
“He retired,” Banner replied. “Departmental regs wouldn’t allow him to write a book about the case—you know, How I Caught the Chicago Sniper, something like that—so he quit.”
Blake nodded. “He did the book. I skimmed it: It was one of those quickie cut-and-paste jobs thrown together in a weekend by a ghost writer. There was nothing new in the book itself, but the ‘about the author’ bit said he was now living in Rapid City, South Dakota.” He paused and narrowed his eyes, and Banner could tell he was running this new variable through the system, looking at what new scenarios it threw up. He looked back at her and said, “Good job, Banner. You’ve given us the one personal target Wardell could hit in this search radius.”
To Banner’s irritation, she felt herself begin to flush at Blake’s approval. She suppressed the smile and looked skeptical. “It’s just a possibility. We can’t be sure he knows about Hatcher, or that he’d consider him a target. Like you said, if he hits a random victim, we’re back to square one.”
“But we can’t do anything about that,” Castle said. “No more than we’re already doing, anyway. This gives us somewhere to focus. Doesn’t mean we have to bet everything on it.”
Banner turned to Blake, but his head was down again, staring at the map as though he could trace Wardell’s exact path on it. “It feels right,” he said softly, as though speaking to himself.
“You don’t think it’ll be too obvious a target for him?” Banner said. “Assuming he even knows about Hatcher, he’ll know that we know too.”
Blake paused for a beat, considered this. “I think that’s why it feels right, Banner.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I think I do,” Castle said. “He wants to prove he’s the best. That’s been his mission statement since day one. How better to prove it than to take out the very target we’re expecting him to?”
At that moment, Banner’s phone issued a brief fanfare, signaling a received text message. She took it out and read the message, which was from Kelly Paxon. Although she’d eschewed text speak, it was concise and to the point: Missouri gun not a match. Will call soon.
“What is it?” Castle said, noticing Banner’s look of surprise.
“That wasn’t Wardell’s rifle in the van down in Missouri.”
“You don’t say,” Castle said sharply, then murmured a brief apology to Banner. “So we’re not talking some half-assed hoax. Heckler & Koch sniper rifles don’t grow on trees.”
Blake glanced at the map again. “So unless Wardell borrowed a helicopter, there’s no way he could have dumped that van as a decoy. Which means . . .”
“Somebody’s helping him,” Banner finished. “But who? Why? ” The question was met with silence. It seemed even Blake didn’t have an answer for everything. “I’ll be back,” she said after a minute. “I’m going outside to call Paxon.”
“I’ll get things rolling on Hatcher,” Castle said.
Banner’s conversation with Agent Kelly Paxon lasted five or six minutes, but at the end of it she didn’t have any more information than she’d gleaned from the text message. After terminating the call, she sat down on the porch of the cabin neighboring Nolan’s and watched the red sun sink over the western ridge, pausing for a breath as the fevered activity of local cops and task force personnel continued to swirl around her.
The forensics team down in Missouri had found no trace of Wardell in the burnt-out van. No trace of anybody, in fact. The few parts of the cabin that had escaped the flames had been wiped down to erase any prints. The rifle was a Heckler and Koch PSG1, all right, but not the one that had killed Terry Daniels or Father Leary. And now Eddie Nolan.
It was an expertly executed diversion, falling apart only at the point of matching the rifle, but by then it had done its work. If the red van lead hadn’t been so convincing, the task fo
rce might well have followed Blake’s lead and Wardell might not have made it past this quiet little hunting town.
Somebody’s helping him. Her own words echoed in her head. A careful, professional somebody. But that made no sense—Wardell hadn’t had a partner before. He’d gone out of his way to avoid human contact, in fact. No, Banner couldn’t see him accepting help, even if it was offered.
Turn it around then: Who would benefit from helping Wardell? Money was a dead end; Wardell had none. There had to be another reason.
One of the other agents, standing apart from the rest of the activity, caught her eye. She realized she didn’t recognize the man, was only assuming he was FBI because of the way he was dressed. He was tall and thin, wore a dark suit, a dark overcoat, and rounded glasses. He wasn’t a local cop or one of the forensics, so by a process of elimination, he had to be FBI. How else could he access the crime scene?
Banner thought about approaching him, then decided she was just being paranoid. She looked away again, turning her mind back to things of greater importance.
37
10:08 p.m.
Mike Whitford leaned back in his leather swivel chair and yawned, looking out at the cold Chicago night through scrunched-up eyes. Getting on for another eighteen-hour day, the third in a row, and his whole being was starting to feel like an old pair of socks that had been worn for a week. It was worth it, though. For the first time in twenty years, he was looking forward to coming into work every day. He was back, and he still had it. He was feeling so good, in fact, that today he’d forgone most of his usual trips to the bathroom with the hip flask. Hell, maybe once this story had run its course, he would kick the booze entirely. Of course, there was no need to rush into anything. The important thing was he knew he could do it now, because he was back.