by Mason Cross
You didn’t have to take Whitford’s word for it, either. You could see it in people’s eyes. Mandy on reception. That acne-ridden, college-fresh prick on the sports desk. Even Urich. The grizzled old bastard had fixed Whitford with a stare after reading his latest copy and said, “Good job.” Eye contact and a couple of words of affirmation. It didn’t sound like much, not unless you knew Urich.
There was a predictable undercurrent of jealousy from some of Whitford’s rivals, of course. People who would previously have considered him not a rival, but an inferior. He was big enough to forgive that jealousy, because even he had to admit that an element of luck had been involved in his renaissance. After all, almost anyone could have picked up that ringing phone two days before. He’d hesitated a beat—he’d been on his way to the bathroom—but then he’d gone ahead and picked up the handset on the hotdesk. The calls bounced through to that one when the lines at reception were all busy. And, boy, was he glad they’d been busy. That two-minute phone call had turned his career around, put him right in the middle of a national story. Caleb Wardell, escaped from death row and killing already. Even better: a government-level attempt to cover the situation up. It was manna from heaven.
He’d been skeptical at first, his coworkers even more so. But when they’d investigated a few of the details the caller had provided, everything had checked out perfectly. The clincher was a phone call to the destination Wardell had never reached: the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute. They had quickly issued a terse “no comment,” but not quite quickly enough. There had been a stunned pause of no more than a half second, but that had been confirmation enough.
From there on, the cover-up unraveled like a hastily constructed cat’s cradle. The FBI had come for him within an hour of the story hitting the networks, but he’d cooperated fully. There was no reason not to. Every detail they needed to know about that two-minute conversation with Wardell was already plastered over every major news website. The agents had made it very clear that they were unhappy with Whitford and his employer, but for the moment, that seemed to be the extent of the situation’s downside. He wasn’t naive: First Amendment or not, he was sure there’d be blowback later. But later was later.
The telephone rang. His own telephone. It had been doing that a lot these past three days. He gave it two full rings, caught it on the third. He said his name with the confidence of twenty years ago.
The voice was quiet, as though it was coming from a long way off, or the speaker did not want to be overheard. It said, “Am I speaking to Mike Whitford?”
Whitford grunted in the affirmative. “Make it quick. I’m busy.”
There was a low chuckle. “I can imagine. But don’t worry. I won’t keep you long, partner. I’m also a busy man.”
“Who is this?”
“Mike,” the voice said, elongating the vowel reprovingly. “Mike, Mike, Mike. You know who this is.”
“I’ve had a lot of people claiming to be Caleb Wardell this week, pal. So far only one of them has been the real deal, and . . .”
“Maybe not even one, Mike.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“The man I killed today was Edward Nolan. The technical term for what he was to me is ‘biological father.’”
Whitford stopped cold. It could be a bluff, but that was Wardell’s father’s name, and your average crank might not even know that much. The name was fresh in his mind because he’d tried—unsuccessfully—to track him down for an interview yesterday. And the Nebraska victim’s name hadn’t yet been released; the feds were keeping a tight lid on it for some reason. He didn’t hang up. His mouth hung half open as he considered what to say next.
“Still there, partner?”
“Still here, still skeptical.”
“You won’t be tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
“Do you know who John Hatcher is?”
“Sure I do. If you are who you say you are, he’s the guy who nailed your sorry ass to the wall last time.”
There was a pause, and Whitford wondered if he’d gone too far and touched a nerve, but when the voice returned it betrayed no emotion.
“I’m going to put a bullet in John Hatcher’s head tomorrow night. Let’s say around midnight.”
The cool certainty of the voice chilled Whitford to the marrow. It sounded like the caller was simply stating an inevitability, like the sun coming up. He cleared his throat. “Why would you tell me this?”
“Because you’ve got a big mouth, Mike, and I can trust you to tell the FBI and their little helper. You’ll remember the message though, won’t you, partner? You need a minute to write it down?”
Helper? What did he mean by that? “Wait a minute . . .” Whitford began.
“You had your minute. Now I got one question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your favorite color, Mike?”
Whitford was caught off guard. “My favorite . . . ?” he heard himself answer before he had time to think about it. “Blue. I guess it’s blue.”
The line went dead, and Whitford realized everybody around him had stopped what they were doing to stare at him.
38
10:14 p.m.
Wardell replaced the receiver of the pay phone and had wiped the prints off with his sleeve before he remembered that there was really no need. He turned and looked across the empty highway at the thick woods he’d be heading into soon enough.
Hatcher was a good target, one that the authorities would find all too plausible. Wardell had been mildly irritated by the way the sheriff had loudly claimed credit for his capture in Chicago, but he was betting some of the guys who’d done the real work were a good deal more irritated. He’d take Hatcher out if he had the chance, of course, but he was more interested now in the chance to engage his current pursuers on his own terms. And particularly the man from the cabin.
The call to Whitford would ensure that they’d focus their efforts properly this time and not on another distraction like the red van. Now they knew where he was going to be tomorrow at midnight. The stage was set.
Tomorrow at noon, however, was a different story.
DAY FOUR
39
10:47 a.m.
The second voice sounded like it had come a long way, and not just in distance.
“What’s your favorite color, Mike?” it said, an eerie crackle on the vowels.
A startled pause and then: “My favorite . . . ? Blue. I guess it’s blue.”
And that was all there was, save a couple of seconds of dial tone as the little ball at the bottom of the Media Player window completed its journey to the end of the bar that signified the length of the audio clip.
Castle was hunched over behind the technician at the laptop. As the recording of Mike Whitford’s phone conversation ended, he straightened up and looked down at the tech, who was rake thin with curly red hair. Although Castle had known about the existence and content of the recording since the previous night, this was the first time he’d actually heard it.
“Perfect match, sir,” the tech said.
“It’s him, all right,” Castle agreed. He’d spent long enough watching the interview tapes to be able to say for certain.
They were set up in the living room of Hatcher’s house, a sprawling faux-rustic executive cabin built on the slopes overlooking Pactola Lake, nestled deep within the Black Hills National Forest. The house was about twenty miles outside of Rapid City, and the thick, dark pines that gave the Black Hills their name encroached on the structure like a hostile crowd.
The owner of the house was in one of the other rooms berating Dave Edwards about the way the manhunt had been carried out so far. Former Cook County Sheriff John Hatcher had a deep, booming voice and a propensity to repeat himself, so Castle had been grateful for the respite. He turned to the other man
in the room, Special Agent Eric Wetherspoon. Wetherspoon had more than thirty years with the Bureau, but had openly disdained the quest for promotion, happy to keep working on the front line.
“What did you have to give Whitford to sit on the recording?” Wetherspoon asked. His arms were folded, and he was leaning against a tall bookcase packed with beautifully bound tomes with pristine spines.
Castle sighed. “A lot more than I wanted to. If it were up to me, we’d just take the little prick into protective custody and lose the key. He gets a one-on-one with me tomorrow.” He said it like he wished the one-on-one could be held with the reporter’s mic switched off, in a locked room with no windows.
Wetherspoon changed the subject. “Is Agent Banner joining us for the main event?”
“A couple of hours,” Castle replied. “She was held up in—”
“Leave my house? Leave. My. Fuckin’. House? ” The conversation died as Hatcher bulled through the door into the living room, a pair of exasperated agents in tow, plus Dave Edwards. Hatcher was tall, barrel-chested, and bald. He wore slacks and a slate-blue short-sleeved shirt. “You pencil dicks have got a lot to learn about the law of the jungle.”
Castle cast his eyes across the tropical hardwood floor to the triple-glazed French doors and the Japanese reflecting pool beyond, then saw the skinny technician doing the same thing. Some jungle.
“This motherfucker knows I beat him first time around, so he’s gotta bring it to my house now. He’s makin’ it personal now. You askin’ me to back down from that, Agent Wetherspoon?” He used the word “agent” like it was a racial slur. To a certain type of cop, that was exactly what it was.
Whether it came naturally or he’d mellowed with age, Wetherspoon was a man who seemed utterly unprovokable. It was a quality Castle couldn’t help but admire, mainly because it was one he lacked. He responded to the question with characteristic calm: “If that’s the way you want to dress it up, Mr. Hatcher, that’s fine with me.” His voice betrayed no irritation, just matter-of-fact. “We just wanted to explain to you how this operation is going to run.”
“This operation? Let me tell you something about—” Hatcher stopped, sighting Castle, and strode over to him. He placed his palm between Castle’s shoulder blades, as though bringing an ally into the debate. “Steve, you know what I’m talking about. You got half a brain at least, not like these pen pushers. You got some real cop in you.”
Castle pushed back from the desk, turning to slide Hatcher’s hand from his back. He drew himself up to his full height, which was an inch or two taller than Hatcher, and looked him in the eyes for a moment. Count to ten, he thought. If Wetherspoon could do it, so could he.
“Mr. Hatcher,” he said. “Agent Wetherspoon has apprised you of the situation. We’ve identified a credible threat against you from—”
Hatcher’s face creased into disgust. “Aw, don’t give me that shit.”
Castle continued as though there had been no interruption. “A credible threat that became even more credible when Wardell confirmed it personally. We’re asking you to leave this location for your own safety.”
“Asking me,” Hatcher repeated. “But you can’t make me.”
Castle briefly wondered whether they could tie Hatcher to a tree out front and hang a bull’s-eye around his neck.
Dave Edwards chipped in. Castle was unsurprised: Edwards hated to have his authority questioned. “In point of fact, we can make you, Mr. Hatcher,” he said. “We’d just rather you went of your own free will.”
Hatcher ignored Edwards, stared back at Castle for a good twenty seconds before turning away. “Fine. Piss on you assholes,” he said over his shoulder as he walked back across the living room and slapped the door open with his palm. Edwards’s face reddened, and for a moment he looked unsure of what to do. Then he just nodded his head, as though the exchange had gone exactly as planned.
He turned to Castle. “Donaldson wants a sit-rep at one thirty. And where the hell is Banner?”
“He’ll get it, and Banner’s on her way.”
Edwards reenacted the imperious nod and exited the room in the same direction Hatcher had gone.
Wetherspoon moved to Castle’s side of the room and leaned back against the mahogany desk on which the equipment had been set up. “Well, that went better than I expected.”
Castle turned to stare out at the reflecting pool, thinking about Hatcher’s display. “Why do I get the feeling he was open to persuasion?”
“I don’t know,” Wetherspoon said, pretending to give the matter some thought. “Maybe because he’s a chickenshit asshole who was looking for the excuse?”
Castle cracked a smile for the first time that day. “Might be onto something there.”
40
12:00 p.m.
It was twelve o’clock: high noon. But instead of a blazing sun at its apex, the skies overhead were dull, and coal-black thunderheads were building above the imposing hills on the western horizon. There was an old man at the far end of the lunch counter. He was staring out of the window at the clouds, over the rim of his coffee cup. The man was in his eighties at the very least. His skin was yellowed and scattered with liver spots, and he wore a checkered shirt and thick black-rimmed glasses. He shook his head in disapproval, as though taking the incoming weather as just one more screwup of somebody else’s doing that he’d just have to grin and bear.
“Those clouds look like Satan’s workin’ real hard,” he said. He turned to Wardell and nodded grimly.
Wardell’s lips curled into a wide grin, exposing two perfect rows of teeth. He returned the nod, fully approving of the old man’s homily. “He’s about to be,” he agreed.
The old man gave Wardell a quizzical look and then returned to looking at the gathering storm.
A twenty-eight-inch flat-screen television was fixed to the wall behind the counter, something that would have seemed luxurious at the time Wardell went inside, but that had apparently become commonplace in the interim. Despite the proximity to the congressional elections, the news was all about one subject: Caleb Wardell. That was one thing that hadn’t changed: A good serial killer story trumped just about anything, except maybe terrorism.
They’d announced the identity of the man killed in Nebraska in time for the breakfast news, and that had given the pundits and the criminal psychology experts and the psychics plenty to chew over all morning. Every so often they’d flash up Wardell’s mug shot, but he wasn’t concerned about being recognized. For one thing, he looked almost nothing like he did in the picture; for another, he had always found that, unless you acted guilty and drew attention to yourself, people were by and large pretty unobservant. You had to signpost something for them to take notice.
Wardell listened to some rent-a-shrink speculate about his Oedipus complex while he finished his brunch: steak, rare, with two eggs and fries on the side. The news cut to yesterday’s interview with the FBI agent who seemed to be in charge, the one with the gray hair and the permanently pissed-off expression. Castle, wasn’t it? And the pretty brunette occasionally by his side was Banner. The camera liked her.
He swallowed the last bite of steak, positioned his knife and fork vertically in the center of the plate, and nodded over at the waitress. She was quite a looker herself: twentysomething, five two, 110 pounds, wearing painted-on black jeans and a navy blue halter top. A small and tasteful silver cross hung from a chain around her neck, nestling in her generous cleavage. She tucked a strand of blond hair that had strayed from her ponytail behind her ear as she smiled and sauntered over. A name tag reading suzie was pinned to the blue halter top. Blue: that reminded him. He had a color, but he still needed a number.
“Get you anything else?”
Wardell looked in her green eyes and remained silent for just a second longer than could have been mistaken for an innocent pause for thought. He didn’t leer or anything, d
idn’t look her up and down. He didn’t want anyone to think he was some kind of pervert, no matter what the news said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “What do you have?” He smiled. Not the grin he’d just shown to the old man, but the one that women liked.
Suzie glanced away coyly and cocked an eyebrow. Feigning disapproval but with a half smile to show she didn’t really mean it. Light flirtation, the kind any good waitress masters in her first week on the job. “Just what’s on the menu, pal,” she said.
“Pity,” Wardell said. He looked beyond her at the television screen. “Serial killers,” he said with a shake of his head. “You ever wonder if anything else is happening in the world right now?”
She gazed back at the screen at the exact moment that Wardell’s picture flashed back up, staring impassively down at her. She didn’t flinch.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing that gets this kind of ratings, I guess. My boyfriend says that’s why they do it.”
Wardell was momentarily confused. “The networks?”
She looked back and grinned, thinking he was kidding. “No, the killers. Like this Wardell guy. They dig the attention. That’s how they get their kicks. That’s what my boyfriend says—if we didn’t give them all this attention, they’d just go away.”
Wardell smiled again, playing along that he’d been kidding. Only the smile was a little frozen this time, a little off center. “You think so?”
“Don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe some of them. The ones who want to be famous and can’t think of any other way.”
“Isn’t that all of them?”
“No,” he said sharply, and something in his voice must have unnerved the girl, because the breezy good humor seemed to drain from her face.