The Killing Season

by Mason Cross

  “What do you want?”

  Wardell couldn’t help but grin. Whitford was trying to sound as though he was so disgusted with Wardell that he could barely stand to keep speaking to him, but it was no good. His desperation to have his question answered showed through like a pornographic magazine covered by tracing paper.

  “What do I want? I want you to relay another message for me.”

  “Yes?” Pathetically eager.

  “Whoa there. Not so fast. This is becoming kind of a one-way street, don’t you think, partner?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You talk to me, I give you something and you get your story.”

  “And you get the attention you want, right?”

  “Well. Ain’t neither of us averse to that, are we?” When there was no reply, Wardell continued. “Yeah, I thought so. I want you to do something for me, Mike. You do it right, I’ll call you back. I’ll call you with the big one.”

  “The big one?” Whitford repeated before remembering the first part of what Wardell had said, his voice switching from intrigued to suspicious. “Do what for you?”

  Wardell counted to five in his head, let Whitford sweat. “Maybe you’re not interested. I’m sure Gabrielle Wood over at the Sun-Times would be . . .”

  “No!” Whitford said quickly, then seemed to regain his composure. “I’m interested.”

  “Good. That’s good, Mike. You got a pen?”

  “Of course I have a pen. I’m a reporter.”

  “Careful, Mike.”

  Wardell heard an audible swallow at the other end of the line as the other man remembered there might be worse consequences to displeasing Wardell than a hang-up.

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Mike. I understand. We’re all on edge here. Write this down.” He gave Whitford the webmail address he’d set up back at the truck stop in Kentucky. He repeated it to make sure he’d taken it down right.

  “You want me to e-mail you something?”

  “You’re on fire this week, Mike. I want you to find everything you can on a couple of people who’ve been causing me some problems. Special Agent Elaine Banner and another guy who’s been helping the feds. Goes by the name of Blake.”

  “Wait a minute. I can’t—”

  “I’m not asking here, Mike.”

  “You don’t understand . . .”

  “No, you don’t understand, Whitford. You do what I tell you to. You don’t do it, and I’m not just going to cut you off, I’m going to find you and I’m going to cut your fucking throat. Do you believe me when I say that?”

  Another swallow. “Ah . . . I . . .”

  “Do. You. Believe. Me?”

  “Yes.”

  Wardell hung up without another word.

  60

  4:29 p.m.

  “That wasn’t exactly what I expected,” Banner said as we stepped out onto the street and began walking east.

  “What did you expect?” I asked. “A vodka bar above a strip club in Little Odessa?”

  She thought about it and the ghost of a smile appeared at the corner of her lips. “Yeah. I guess that is what I expected.”

  While we’d been inside the building, the sky had grown dimmer and the volume of traffic had intensified. Diagonally across the street from us was a jewelers with a big, ornate clock hanging outside it. Half past four. We both stopped to look at it, then turned to each other.

  “We have to get back to Chicago,” Banner said, reaching for her cell phone.

  We decided to take a single cab the whole way to the airport this time. The unbroken journey would give us time to discuss how Korakovski’s story had changed the dimensions of the game.

  “So what do we know now?” Banner asked as the cab pulled away from the sidewalk. She kept her voice low enough to sail under the talk radio show the driver was listening to. They were replaying the clip of the governor at the press conference the day before: You’re not safe anywhere.

  “You know what we know,” I said.

  Banner looked back at me. “Wardell’s escape was no accident. Somebody specifically wanted him broken out.”

  I nodded. “Who?”

  Banner thought about it, looked out at the darkening rush hour streets as they crawled by. “Somebody very well resourced. Somebody connected.”

  “Connected is an understatement,” I said. “They played Korakovski. They got to Summers. They infiltrated your task force.”

  Banner visibly bristled at this. “I got a call earlier about our Mr. Edgar. They weren’t able to identify him from dental or from facial recognition from the ID photo. But he wasn’t one of us.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Based on the autopsy and the photo, we came up with a list of current agents fitting Edgar’s stats: approximate height, weight, age. There are a couple dozen names—all of them are accounted for. We have dental records for them all, too. Have to. Bureau regs.”

  “He was able to pass as one of you,” I said. “That demonstrates resources and connections again. Whether he was actually a paid-up agent is basically irrelevant.”

  “It’s not irrelevant to me.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you think he was working alone?”

  I shook my head. “Not a chance. This is too big.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense,” Banner said. “You’re talking about some big conspiracy to break Wardell out.”

  “You don’t think there’s a conspiracy?”

  She looked irritated, but she knew it was pretty hard to deny that now.

  “But to what end? Who benefits?”

  “That’s the problem I’m having,” I admitted. “I stopped thinking Wardell’s escape was just happenstance two days ago, after the red van decoy. But the best explanation I can come up with doesn’t wash.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Banner said. “It’s got to be better than nothing.”

  “That’s just it. It is nothing.” I stopped and tried to arrange hours of brainstorming into some kind of coherent stream. “Okay. Let’s start with why somebody would want to break a clinically psychotic murderer out of death row.”

  “Exactly. Why the hell would they?”

  I shook my head. “You’re still thinking motive, Banner. Think about it literally.”

  She paused, furrowed her brow, shrugged. “To kill people, obviously.”

  “That’s right. And that’s what’s happened. Wardell was freed a little less than five days ago. Since then, by my count he’s killed eighteen people.”

  Banner motioned for me to continue. “Go on.”

  “All right, go back to what we know about whoever set this up.”

  “Well resourced, well connected.”

  “That’s what they are, yeah. But what’s the only other thing we know about them? What do they do?”

  Her brow furrowed again. She didn’t take long. “They use people. Korakovski. Summers. This ‘Edgar’ guy, maybe. And—” Banner stopped midthought and looked at me. “And Wardell himself. Like you told him in the graveyard.”

  “Bingo,” I said. “So what’s the logical conclusion?”

  “They’re using Wardell. They’re using him to do the one thing they know for certain he’ll do. Which is kill.”

  “That has to be it,” I said. “That’s why they went to such lengths to break him out. That’s why they misdirected the media and the task force to guarantee his safe passage.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, holding up a hand to stop my flow. “Why does it have to be him? Hired killers are a dime a dozen.”

  “Not professionals of Wardell’s caliber,” I said, “but point taken.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot of trouble to go to when other options would be available.”

/>   “Agreed,” I said. “For some reason, it’s important that it’s Wardell. We don’t know what that reason is yet, but that’s not the main problem with this theory.”

  Banner played along, refusing to cave in and ask me straight out. She ran through the problem in her head again.

  “Who’s the target?” she said after a few seconds, her tone conveying her full knowledge of the implications of that question.

  “Exactly.”

  “Whoever it is broke Wardell out because they wanted him to kill someone. They knew it would all look like a coincidence, like it was all fallout from the Russians’ ambush. It’s a great idea, when you think about it. You want someone out of the way, what’s the best camouflage? To have them fall victim to a crazed serial killer. Nobody looks for another motive.”

  “It’s tried and tested,” I said.

  “Sure,” she agreed. “People try it from time to time. They want their spouse offed, so they make it look like it’s part of a random series. The guys in Behavioral Sciences call it a ‘leaf in a forest killing,’ as in the best place to hide a leaf is in the middle of a forest.”

  “But this would be even better. Not just making it look like a serial killer did it—actually having the serial killer do it for real.”

  “Except there’s one big problem with that theory, Blake.”

  I held up my hands. “Your killer is unpredictable,” I said. “You know he’s going to kill, but you don’t know who he’s going to kill.”

  “So we’re left with this: Somebody broke Wardell out of death row to achieve an objective. The objective was to kill someone. That objective is not yet complete.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” I agreed.

  “Then we have to forget about the motive for just now and come at it from the other angle. Who might be next?”

  “And as we said, we have some candidates, given what day tomorrow is.”

  “Good candidates,” Banner said. “With money and power and influence. And one of them as good as challenged Wardell to a fight yesterday.”

  I nodded. “So how do we get a meeting with the governor on election day?”

  61

  9:07 p.m.

  Banner and Blake touched down at O’Hare a little after nine p.m., the beginnings of a plan for the following day agreed. Blake had reclined his seat and caught a catnap, while Banner made a few more calls in-flight, talking to agents she trusted to keep quiet about her inquiries and getting updates on arrangements across the states in Wardell’s predicted path.

  Unsurprisingly, the search had yet to turn up any sign of Wardell after the graveyard. Going by his track record so far, he could be traveling by bus or another stolen car. A car was the more likely option, given that they now had a much better idea of his current appearance and a pretty good composite had been splashed all over the news. They were chasing up all reported vehicle thefts within four hundred miles of Rapid City. No firm leads as of yet, although one report of a car stolen from a truck stop outside of Sioux Falls sounded promising.

  The bulk of Banner’s phone time had been consumed secur­ing a brief slot to meet with the governor. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d managed to get ten minutes with him before the rally. Naturally, she’d omitted to mention the fact that she was not officially on the case anymore.

  They landed at one of the outlying runways, far from the terminal, and climbed into the back of a waiting sedan. The driver of the sedan was Kelly Paxon, who was officially off duty for the night. Banner made brief introductions, last names only. Paxon smiled thinly in acknowledgment and shut the hell up.

  “You got a place to stay?” Banner asked as the sedan pulled out and headed for the security check.

  Blake paused in the middle of fastening his seat belt, as though he hadn’t considered the matter, then said, “I think I’ll find someplace that serves coffee and doesn’t close, go through some of the background on Randall and the other guy. Congressional candidates too—I’ll see if anything chimes with Wardell. You should go home, get some sleep.”

  Banner smiled and shook her head.

  “The office, then?” he asked.

  She shook her head again. “I’m on leave, remember? We’ll go to my place.” She paused. “Don’t worry. I have a comfy couch.”

  62

  10:31 p.m.

  As Banner turned the key in the lock of her apartment, she silently gave thanks that the cleaner’s day was a Friday and that she hadn’t been home since. It meant she avoided the embarrassment of empty pizza boxes in the kitchen and a teetering ironing pile.

  She kicked off her shoes and turned on the lights in each room of the apartment—habit, ever since she’d been living apart from Mark.

  “Nice place,” Blake said, hovering in the doorway.

  “Thanks. Feels like I’m barely here, even in a normal week. Have a seat,” she said, indicating the living room.

  She went through to the bedroom, quickly changing out of her suit and into sweatpants and a gray Northwestern University T-shirt. When she went back to the living room, Blake was on the leather couch by the window. Looking at him, she remembered it was only a two-seater, which meant that while it was indeed comfortable, it was probably better if you were five six or shorter. Blake had picked up the framed photo from the table beside the couch. The one that showed her—smiling, with her hair down—shoulder to shoulder with Mark—tall, serious-looking, dark suit—each of them with a hand on their daughter’s shoulders.

  “That’s Annie,” she said.

  He looked up. “She’s beautiful.”

  Banner swallowed. All of a sudden an urge hit her like a physical blow, the urge to drop everything, to forget about Wardell and go and be with her daughter. Forget about protecting the city and focus on protecting Annie.

  Blake caught the look on her face. “You okay?”

  “Fine. It just feels like I’m barely here for her, either.”

  “Is she with her father right now?”

  Banner shook her head. “My sister. She’s been really great. Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to miss her school play. Calamity Jane. Annie’s playing Adelaid Adams. I said I’d try to be there.”

  Blake looked sympathetic, but like he didn’t know exactly what to say. It was the look of someone who’d never had a family. Banner decided to test the waters again, see if he was ready to open up a little more.

  “How about you, Blake? Any kids? Anybody special?” As she said the words, she remembered Blake’s involuntary smile four days before, when she’d asked him if there was anything he didn’t know. There was somebody special, all right. Somebody in the past, Banner thought. But if she was a memory, it was a fond one.

  He didn’t answer for a second, thought about it, then shook his head and looked away again. “Nobody special. Free agent, remember?”

  “Makes work easier, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  Blake put the photo down next to a glass paperweight Annie had brought back from a school trip to the Museum of Science. He glanced out of the window at the view. He didn’t volunteer any personal information whatsoever.

  “So where do you live, Blake?” she asked, needling him just to try and get a rise. “You got an apartment somewhere? A house? Motor home perhaps?”

  “I move around a lot.”

  Banner waited for elaboration. When none was forthcoming, she shook her head. “You are impossible.”

  He turned back to her, looked honestly confused. “What?”

  “Fine, let’s talk about the damn case.” Banner reached for the remote and turned on CNN, muting the sound. The Wardell mug shot stared back as though taunting them.

  Blake’s eyes narrowed, then he turned his head from the screen. “Wardell’s coming back to Chicago and he’ll be arriv­ing tomorrow.”
/>
  “If you’re right.”

  “I’m right. It’s election day and he wants to make an impact. That’s why Governor Randall is the most likely target.”

  Banner sat down beside him. “And we have a six o’clock appointment with him. But what if it’s not him? What about the challenger, Robert Weir? Or the congressional candidates, for that matter?”

  “It’s a possibility, but I’m factoring in Wardell’s history. Randall was pretty visible during the original manhunt and the trial. He was scheduled to attend the execution, in fact. He’s like the next level up after John Hatcher.”

  “How does this fit in with your theory? About someone using Wardell, I mean?” It was the first time she’d brought it up since the plane. They’d both found it easier to focus on Randall as a likely target than banging their heads against the brick wall of figuring out the motivation behind Wardell’s escape.

  “Randall makes a lot of sense as a planned assassination. He’s not like the other people Wardell’s killed up until now. We’re talking about a man of consequence. You remove a governor from the equation and somebody somewhere will benefit.”

  Banner shook her head. “I don’t buy it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I mean yes, I agree he’s the most likely target, assuming Wardell is coming to Chicago on this day of all days. But it doesn’t solve the major problem with this theory: Wardell’s unpredictability.”

  Blake sighed in frustration. “It’s like we can see the left side and the right side of the puzzle, but we have a bunch of pieces missing from the middle.”

  Neither of them spoke for a full minute. The news switched to an interview with SAC Donaldson from earlier in the day. He looked calm, but Banner knew his body language well enough to see he was making some kind of forceful point to the interviewer. She turned her head from the screen and gazed out of the window at the lights of some faraway vessel on the surface of Lake Michigan. She turned to Blake when she realized he was looking at her, those searching green eyes alighting on the curve of her neck. He looked away and looked back, as though catching himself out.