The Killing Season

by Mason Cross

  With Caleb Wardell, death came from above and with no warning. She understood the practical reasons behind shooting from an elevated position, but part of her couldn’t help but wonder if Wardell struck from on high so regularly because it tied in with his god complex. Earlier in the day, she’d finally listened to a recording of the waitress from Rapid City being interviewed. Her recollections of what Wardell had said had chilled Banner, knowing what had happened less than twenty minutes after he’d left the diner.

  With a conscious effort, Banner lowered her gaze to take in the ground level. The great and the good of the party were gathering in their hundreds. The quality of their suits marking them apart from the federal agents and security personnel, who were almost as numerous. Although she was technically no longer on the task force, none of the agents had raised an eyebrow at her presence. If they knew she wasn’t supposed to be there, they hadn’t let on. Paxon was there and had told her Edwards was at HQ with Donaldson, coordinating things centrally. Banner hoped that would continue.

  For once, it looked as though the task force had sufficient manpower, at least in theory. Chicago was virtually on lockdown tonight. The JRTC was one of the high-priority locations, of course, but it was far from the only one. The FBI had their own countersniper teams on rooftops overlooking another six focal sites throughout the city. The Chicago PD’s overtime budget was being maxed out tonight, and police departments from as far afield as Philadelphia had sent over reinforcements to help out. Spot-checks of vehicles were ongoing, and seven and a half miles of downtown Chicago had closed down.

  All of this for one man.

  Except, that wasn’t the whole truth, was it? The road ­closures and the extra police and the state-of-the-art riot gear weren’t for Wardell. Nobody Banner had spoken to had said it out loud, but it was clear that the authorities were focusing on another danger. It was like Randall had said: People were scared, tense, waiting for things to come to a head. Nowhere more so than right here in Chicago. The town was a pressure cooker, and they were trying to keep the lid on with brute force.

  The fact that Wardell hadn’t struck since Hatcher’s house gave credence to the belief that he was headed back to Chicago. The media knew it; the public knew it; the FBI and the cops knew it. This time, Blake’s hunch was in step with popular opinion. Although nobody had come out and said it was a sure thing, the broad consensus had allowed them to scale down their contingency presences in other states and had enabled them to bring the bulk of resources to bear on the city. Donaldson had been interviewed on television the previous night, making the case that Caleb Wardell was just another symptom demonstrating the need to roll back budget cuts to domestic law enforcement. And based on the number of federal wing tips in evidence on the ground tonight, it felt to Banner as though his pleas were having an immediate effect.

  A large stage had been erected on the north side of the atrium. At midnight, Governor Randall would make a speech, either to claim victory or to concede defeat. Watching the people gathering, Banner wondered if any of them could have guessed the man they had voted for might be dead within six months—or six hours.

  A local band who had recently had a fair-to-middling-sized national radio hit were currently playing the stage. Later, the lineup was scheduled to include various minor celeb­rities and party bigwigs. The organizers had already had a few cancellations, and Banner wondered how many more they would get due to unforeseen diary clashes. It didn’t take Banner’s inside knowledge of the case to know that this rally was a strong potential target, and not everyone shared Randall’s desire to place themselves literally in the spotlight this night.

  She squinted into the distance in the direction Blake had headed a couple of minutes before. He’d received another text message and gone to make a call. That meant he hadn’t had time to explain why he was suddenly so interested in the dead of the FBI. Did he think there was some revenge angle on the events of the past week? And if so, how exactly would that tie in with Wardell?

  “Banner.”

  She turned at the sound of her name and saw Dave Edwards pushing through a knot of crowd on his way toward her. Shit. A tall guy with close-cropped hair in a pinstripe suit looking aggrieved at being bumped out of the way opened his mouth and then shut it reluctantly when the lady he was with put her hand on his arm and gave him a cold stare. Oblivious, Edwards carried on his way. Banner blinked, sure she was mistaken, but no—he was actually smiling at her.

  “I thought you were taking a couple of days,” he said.

  She pointed at the stage. “I’m here for the band.”

  “Sure,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” she said warily, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Had he spoken to Donaldson? “You?”

  “Good, good,” he said, and it dawned on Banner that he really wasn’t going to yell at her or order her off the scene. Perhaps he was just happy that Blake wasn’t around anymore. No, it was more than that. He seemed . . . cheerful.

  “You see Donaldson on the news last night?” he asked.

  “I caught the end of it.”

  “I know. Great, wasn’t it?”

  That was the moment when the atmosphere on the floor changed. The civilians wouldn’t have noticed anything, but to Banner and Edwards it was obvious in the way hands jumped to ear pieces and radios. Edwards was reaching for his phone as it rang.

  He located it, said his name and listened, said, “Okay,” and hung up.

  “What’s happening?” Banner asked.

  “A nine-one-one call. Caucasian male—six one, two ­hundred pounds—with a gun at the Art Institute in Grant Park.”

  “That’s four blocks south of here,” Banner said.

  A nearby cop’s radio crackled: “Shots fired at Grant Park scene; repeat shots fired.”

  Banner’s stomach tightened. Shit. Was this it? Another curveball? More random victims?

  “Looks like this is the genuine article,” Edwards said. “Let’s go, Banner.”

  Banner followed Edwards at a run, heading for the nearest idling cop car. As she moved, she scanned the crowd again for Blake. There was no sign of him. She’d have to call him on the way to the scene and hope that Edwards didn’t realize whom she was calling.

  71

  6:53 p.m.

  Somebody’s been digging.

  Somebody had indeed been digging, and I was beginning to get a picture of who and why. The voice at the other end of the line belonged to an acquaintance of mine in the CIA. The type of acquaintance who specializes in noticing suspicious patterns and unusual requests. The type of acquaintance who owes me.

  “From time to time, administrators sometimes accept bribes to search the open personnel database,” he explained. “It’s usually difficult to identify, because thousands of records are accessed legitimately every day. But certain names are flagged, because we want to know when somebody runs a search for that name. Carter Blake is one such flagged name.”

  “I’m honored,” I said.

  “Don’t be. It’s not necessarily a compliment. We hauled the administrator in. He was like a rabbit in headlights, admitted everything before we’d asked him to take a seat. Sounds like it was your standard fishing expedition, trying to get some intel on you. Needless to say, he came up with zilch.”

  “And who was doing the fishing?”

  “His name’s Mike Whitford. He’s a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.”

  “Whitford,” I repeated. “He’s the guy Wardell contacted.”

  “Could be it’s just background.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t like the timing. Right after I had my chat with Wardell.” I thought about it for a second. “Did Whitford ask your guy to search for intel on anybody other than me?”

  There was a pause. “How did you know that?”

  “Don’t tell me. Special Agent Elaine Banner.”


  “That’s the one. Like I said, a fishing expedition, because we don’t have much on her beyond what you’d expect.”

  So Whitford might have gone elsewhere for information on Banner, I thought. Maybe to a similar source in the FBI itself. Maybe even a more obvious source. I asked my acquaint­ance if he was in front of a computer.

  “I’m always in front of a damn computer.”

  “Good. I want you to search for anything on Banner.”

  “I told you, we don’t have—”

  “Not your database. I’m talking about Google.”

  There was a short silence punctuated by rapid keystrokes.

  “Not much. The Bureau’s website, of course, a few mentions in local news reports. Wait a minute . . .”

  I waited, holding my breath.

  “She was interviewed last year by the New York Times. For their Sunday supplement. Part of a big feature on successful women in traditionally male-dominated industries. She was representing law enforcement.”

  “Damn it,” I said.

  “That a problem?”

  “What’s the article look like?” I asked. “Lots of human interest, day-in-the-life stuff? Balancing the demands of work and family, that kind of thing?”

  There was a pause as he skimmed the article on the computer screen.

  “Sounds about right,” he confirmed.

  “Thanks. I owe you a drink next time I’m in Washington,” I said, terminating the call without waiting for him to ­respond.

  I took off at a run, weaving my way through the crowd, heading back to the spot I’d left Banner. She’d gone. The phone was still in my hand. I called her number. Straight to voice mail. Fuck.

  I heard a loud crack and ducked instinctively. The hundred or so people nearby did exactly the same thing. The abrupt silence turned to uneasy laughter when a shower of foil confetti to the left of the stage signified the source of the noise: a prematurely activated celebration. As the babble of conversation resumed, the forgotten confetti danced in the floodlights and fell to the ground. I saw puzzle pieces fall into place.

  Wardell was going to make a statement all right, and he was going to make sure we were there. For the aftermath, if not the act itself. But the first victim of the night would not be Ed Randall, and neither would the victim be chosen randomly. It was still personal with Wardell. It was always personal.

  I knew exactly who he was going to kill.

  72

  6:57 p.m.

  There was a black-and-white outside ready to go. Banner and Edwards climbed in with a Chicago PD sergeant. He punched the lights and they hauled out along one of the cleared routes that had been cordoned off to allow the authorities free movement. Banner hit redial a couple of times on her cell, found Blake’s number busy both times. She thought about leaving a message, decided against it. It wouldn’t be too difficult for him to figure out where she’d gone. He was good at finding people, after all.

  Small, intermittent drops of rain spattered on the windshield as they headed south on LaSalle and then east on Jackson, reaching the Art Institute in less than three ­minutes. Even so, it was like being the last to arrive at the party. There were at least a dozen more police cruisers already there, parked haphazardly across the street in front of the neo-classical facade of the original Art Institute building. The police vehicles intermingled with shiny Bureau sedans and a couple of ambulances. Cops overtook them on foot, running toward the building. Banner opened the passenger door as they slowed to a crawl and jumped out. Her eyes followed the direction of the tide of running uniformed figures and she saw what they were homing in on.

  The barricades were already up, a clear space extending a hundred yards out from the twin bronze lions that flanked the entrance. Knots of pedestrians were being shepherded farther away down Adams Street, none of them needing much in the way of encouragement. An ambulance started up and pulled out, its lights and siren kicking in as it passed by. A helicopter hung in the air at rooftop level, its searchlight sweeping back and forth over the second floor of the building. The beam focused primarily on the gallery above the entrance doors: an open space bounded by stone balustrades and divided into bays by three grand arches separated by Corinthian columns.

  All eyes were on the gallery. A hundred yards wasn’t a safe distance, of course, Banner thought, not even close to safe. They were relying on the threat of superior firepower: a hundred of their guns to Wardell’s one. Certain death if he started shooting. It was a false sense of security—if he was still up there, he had nothing to lose. Edwards hung back, making sure to keep low and behind the cruiser they’d arrived in. Banner crouched a little and moved across to the nearest uniformed officer, her eyes never wavering from the three arches where the spotlight played. She tapped the cop on the shoulder and held up her ID, which was barely glanced at.

  “Special Agent Banner,” she said. “I’m on the Wardell task force.”

  The cop nodded. He was a young Hispanic guy, mid­twenties. “You came to the right place.”

  “Is the building evacuated?”

  “Uh-huh. SWAT just entered the building around the back,” he said. “We think he’s up there,” he said unnecessarily, pointing up at the second-floor gallery.

  Banner risked a glance behind her, in the direction the ambulance had gone. “Who was the vic?”

  The cop shrugged, still not looking at her. His voice was tense, distracted. “White female. Teens, early twenties I guess.”

  Banner’s brow furrowed. It sounded like another random target. “Dead?”

  Head shake from the cop.

  “What?”

  The cop turned to look at her for the first time. “She wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyw—”

  The unmistakable snap of a bullet breaking the sound barrier stopped him in the middle of the word. The snap heralded an inevitable sequence of signals, unfolding so quickly that they appeared to be simultaneous, but not quite: the louder crack of the rifle, the bright muzzle flare in the darkness behind the balustrade beneath the left-hand arch, and finally the startled yells from the crowd.

  Banner had time to wonder who’d been hit, and if it could be her, before she heard the rotors of the helicopter screech as it banked sharply and rose up and back from the facade of the building, recoiling like a dog getting too close to an open fire. As it banked away from the building, she saw a big crack spider-webbing the glass on one side of the cockpit.

  Less than two seconds had elapsed since the shot, but it felt like an eternity before the return fire began. Bullets peppered the building’s facade from a dozen different angles and as many calibers. Stone chipped and windows smashed and lights winked out. The onslaught lasted ten or fifteen ­seconds before enough senior officers yelled it to a halt. Relative silence descended, undercut by the rotors of the retreating helicopter and the wail of far-off sirens.

  Banner looked around for Edwards, finally located him about thirty yards away, standing with a group mostly dressed in body armor behind a van emblazoned with the word SWAT. She crouch-walked over, and Edwards nodded in acknowledgment. He was standing next to a tall, athletic­ally built man with graying hair she took to be the SWAT commander. He and the two men around him were gazing intently at a tablet computer, evidently running a live video feed from the team inside the building.

  “You think we got him?” Edwards said.

  Before Banner could answer, the tall man’s right hand shot up to quiet them, his left pressing the earpiece of his headset deeper in to pick up what was being said more clearly. “Second floor is clear; they’re about to go out on the gallery.”

  Banner tensed, heard breaths being taken in from the others gathered. An interminable pause followed, though it could have been only a matter of seconds.

  Finally, the tall man closed his eyes and nodded. “Suspect is down. Confirm, suspect is down. Good job, fellas.”<
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  Banner was shaking her head even as smiles broke out on the faces of the men around her. “It’s not him.”

  “What do you mean?” Edwards asked.

  “The victim’s not dead. If nobody’s dead, it isn’t Wardell.”

  “Banner, did you just see—”

  “She’s right.”

  They both turned to look at the SWAT commander, who was holding his earpiece again. He spoke into the mouthpiece part of the headset again. “Miller, can you hold on the suspect’s face?”

  Then he turned the tablet around to show them the video feed from the team up on the gallery. The image itself was shaky, obviously being broadcast from a helmet-mounted camera, but the conclusion was high-definition: the unconscious or dead man lying on the ground beside a discarded rifle was not Wardell. The shooter was a skinny kid of no more than twenty, maybe a college boy. Shoulder-length dark hair pooled around his head on the ground like a dark halo.

  “Holy shit,” Edwards remarked. “A copycat?”

  Wonderful, Banner thought. With the blanket coverage and the building tension, she supposed it had been inevitable that Wardell’s spree would provoke something like this before too long. Either this kid had been inspired to carve out his own piece of celebrity, or it was something more calculated: an attempt to kill some enemy or ex-girlfriend and pin it on Wardell. It really didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Wardell was still out there somewhere.

  The rain began to fall, fast and hard. The SWAT commander departed and Edwards followed in his wake with barely a nod to Banner, no doubt to make sure he’d appear in the news coverage. Banner looked around for the cop who’d given her the ride from the JRTC but was unable to pick him out from the dozens of other uniformed officers. They’d all be kept busy here for some time, meaning it would be quicker to make the trip on foot. She started across the road, heading for Adams Street, checking the display on her cell as she walked. One missed call, one voice message received. She speed-dialed voice mail, heard Blake’s voice.