“Let’s get to work.
Chapter Thirty-eight
It would go down Sunday night. They needed to clear the use of the Village Center with the city officials, meet with the local agencies, coordinate the sting. And wait for the full moon, for whatever twisted reason the most likely day for the Reaper to strike.
The hotel became their command center. A passel of journalists was summoned for a press conference at the lodge so the team could feed them the story.
Before the conference Roarke briefed Soames on what she would say to the media.
“You don’t tell them anything beyond the talking points. Refuse to answer questions about your present-day occupation and whereabouts. Keep it brief. You want to keep your life private, but you feel an obligation to assist the FBI in any way that you can, so that no family will ever again have to experience what you have.”
She was focused, nodding. “I understand.”
In the meeting room of the lodge, Roarke began the conference with a statement about the reopened manhunt for the Reaper. Every journalist and news station got a packet that included the history of the case and the police sketch of the suspect, whom Roarke said was “wanted for questioning.” He introduced “Cara Lindstrom” with a strict admonition that questions about her life since her own family’s massacre would not be tolerated.
The excitement the whole proceedings generated was almost frightening, the collection of journalists hyped up and shifting constantly in their seats.
Soames performed efficiently and adequately, sticking to the script, affecting a wariness that played as haunted. Roarke could feel the sympathy for her in the room, and a feverish interest under the camera flashes and whirring of equipment. A survivor of one of the bloodiest tragedies imaginable, the Miracle Girl suddenly come back to life, a real-life heroine… it was a media wet dream.
This could work, he thought, from beside the podium where Soames stood speaking. Epps glanced at him, and he read the same thought in his agent’s face.
Then he heard his own name being called. “Agent Roarke, you’re confident the murders of the Cavanaugh family are linked to the Reaper massacres?”
Roarke kept his breath steady as he faced the middle-aged male journalist who had asked the question. “We have evidence to suggest it.”
A murmur went through the assembled crowd: mixed horror and excitement. Then a flurry of questions. “How can you be sure?” “Why would the Reaper suddenly begin killing again after twenty-five years?”
He raised his voice to speak over the furor. “We believe this man has been in prison for a crime unrelated to the massacres and was recently released.”
A younger female journalist popped up from her seat. “How do you think Cara is going to help you with this case?”
Roarke stepped forward. “Ms. Lindstrom is a material witness to the killing of her family. She remembers many details from that night that are helping us develop a profile of the killer, and after his arrest she will be able to provide direct testimony.”
Of course, despite all warnings, one sharp-suited reporter had to push the envelope. “Ms. Lindstrom, you’ve led a difficult life since your survival. Institutionalization, incarceration—”
Roarke stepped forward. “No personal questions. I’m going to have to ask you to leave—”
“It’s all right, Agent Roarke,” Soames said softly, and looked at the reporter. “Yes, I was scarred by what happened. It took me some time to find my way. That’s exactly why I want to make sure the man who killed my family will never be able to do this kind of damage to anyone, ever again.”
Roarke could feel the respect in the stillness of the room.
The last question had been carefully planted with a cooperative journalist. “Ms. Lindstrom, you believe you can identify the man who killed your family?”
Soames looked straight into the cameras. “I’d know him anywhere.”
Roarke stepped forward to end the conference there, and he and Epps escorted Soames out, ignoring the continuing frantic queries from the news people.
Saturday was the same, massive coordination of forces. They would be taking Soames over to the Cavanaugh house the next day, after the media had cycled through the story, hopefully reaching the Reaper and drawing him out. Meanwhile, Singh and Snyder had joined forces to go through Singh’s files of potential Reapers, using the police sketch and profile factors to evaluate the candidates.
By the time night fell and the news stories hit the local stations, Roarke had been on the phone most of the day, greasing whatever wheels needed greasing to get the permissions and manpower they needed, culminating in a briefing in the business offices at the village center. There was one hundred percent cooperation. The small town had been devastated by the news of the massacre of the Cavanaugh family, and all of the town officials were willing to work with law enforcement in any way that might catch the killer.
It was 9:00 p.m. before Roarke shook hands all around with the village mall officials and walked across the plaza for dinner. The wind off the lake was frigid and penetrating. Beyond the circle of trees he could see the dark expanse of choppy water, and the moon, of course, the moon, shining a trail across the surface.
In the village center beside the lake there was a popular and long-established Mexican restaurant that Epps had already scouted out.
The warmth and the smells of the restaurant hit Roarke as he stepped through the front doors of the restaurant: onion and jalapeno, tomato sauce and cilantro. His stomach rumbled and he realized he hadn’t eaten all day.
He walked through the fiesta-lit bar that was the entrance to the restaurant, and into the high-ceilinged dining room with its large plate glass windows. Candles in red glass holders on the tables provided most of the warm, dim light. It all made him think of church, and then something that didn’t belong in church: Santa Muerte.
Epps was at a table by one of the arched window. The walkway they intended to have Soames walk, as bait, was right below them, an asphalt ribbon winding beside the black and icy water. Roarke wanted to be close to it, wanted to be as familiar with it as he could.
Epps frowned and put away his phone as Roarke sat. “You look like shit.”
“Happy to see you, too.” Roarke reached for a menu.
“Carne asada fajitas,” Epps instructed. “Look no further.”
“Great,” Roarke said, and put the menu aside without opening it. Epps nodded for for the waitress and Roarke ordered the fajitas and a Corona. Epps held up two fingers, then as the waitress nodded and moved off, he glowered across the table.
“Serious, when was the last time you slept?”
“Define sleep.”
Epps shook his head. “You eat, then you go catch some. Can’t have you passing out in the middle of everything.”
The beers arrived and both men squeezed lime into the bottles and drank deeply. Roarke felt a wave of tiredness crash over him, seductive and lethal. Epps was right, he had to sleep or he’d become a liability.
Epps put his bottle down. “I never got to hear. How was the witness?”
Roarke had to take a beat to understand that he was asking about Jade. With all of their focus on the new massacre they’d had no time to talk about his trip to juvenile hall.
“Interesting,” Roarke said. His voice was bleak. “She was in that tunnel. She saw the whole thing.”
Epps tensed. “It was Lindstrom?”
Roarke nodded. “The girl was lying about something, but not about that.”
“Will she testify?”
Roarke paused. “It’s going to be hard to keep track of her.”
“Maybe Elliott can help with that.”
Roarke felt a stab of guilt at the mention of Rachel’s name. “She said she’d try.”
Epps looked at him, frowning, but Roarke was saved from further interrogation on the subject by the waitress bringing the spicy steak, each order sizzling on its own burner, and both agents dug in, spearing meat and pe
ppers to wrap in steaming tortillas.
“That was good work with the Fairchild kid,” Epps said between bites. “The sketch gives us something to go on. We caught a break there, him seeing the guy. I hope to God it was the guy,” he added as he reached for another tortilla, speared another piece of steak.
“It was,” Roarke said. Epps looked up from his plate. Roarke had so far been careful not to speak in absolutes about the sketch, using phrases like “suspected” and “potential.”
“How do you know?” Epps demanded.
“Because he knew. Tanner. He saw the guy because he could feel he was in jeopardy. And Lynn maybe knew they were all in jeopardy because she picked it up from the kid. Or he knew because she sensed something about the cat.”
Epps shook his head. “You’re talking ooga booga.”
“Maybe. Or it’s just self-preservation. Natural selection. There was something out there, and that family saved itself.”
“Evil,” Epps said flatly, and there was a note of hostility in his voice.
Roarke didn’t answer for a moment. “Isn’t it?” They had talked of it before. Epps didn’t answer, and Roarke lowered his voice. “I know you believe —”
“Don’t tell me what I believe,” Epps said sharply. He looked away toward the lake and drained the last of his beer. “I don’t even know anymore.”
They sat in the candlelit dark, and Roarke finally asked the question he’d been holding back all evening. “So she hasn’t turned up.”
Epps looked across the table at him, and Roarke had one paralyzed moment as he started to speak. “Oh, right. We arrested her and they’ve got her in county lockup on suicide watch. With everything else going down it just slipped my mind.”
Roarke felt heat in his face, knew he’d been had, knew he’d deserved it.
Epps shook his head. “Fool.” He concentrated on dressing his food, not looking at Roarke.
“She’s here, though,” Roarke said, unable to help himself.
“Course she’s here. Where would she go?”
Roarke wanted to ask him what he thought Cara was likely to do when she realized that they were putting up an agent in her place to draw out the Reaper. But in his state the beer had hit him hard enough that he was having trouble finding words, and it was an impossible question to begin with. He watched Epps pick over what remained in his fajita pan, though it seemed he’d lost his appetite. He spoke, apparently to the dregs of the pan.
“Full moon. Wild card. All kinds of craziness could go down.” And finally he looked up at Roarke. “So get some sleep, because we’re all going to need it.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
He is walking down the hallway and every detail is as it always is, the tiled floor, the white stucco walls, cold moonlight through the tall arched windows. He can feel the presence of madness… hear the harsh breath of the unimaginable thing that is waiting for him at the end of the hallway.
The terror has turned every cell in his body to ice; his feet barely move him forward. On the floor around him is a pool of dark, he is up to his ankles in it, and there are crumpled shapes on the floor around him, sleeping mounds… but not sleeping, no, the eyes are open, staring… an entire family, slashed, stabbed… slaughtered—
He shuddered awake, and lay still, breathing through the residual images from his nightmare.
He’d been asleep no more than an hour, but the cabin felt unbearably small and he was completely alert and wired, so he got up and dressed, shrugged on a parka.
The cold outside was dry and seductive. His breath steamed in the air as he walked the path toward the main lodge, between slight drifts of snow. The moon shone stark white between clouds, and the frozen ground crunched under his feet.
A shadow loomed up in front of him and he started back, heart leaping… before he recognized it as the chainsaw-carved bear.
He exhaled and kept moving.
The heat of the lodge hit him as he opened the door, instantly inducing a hypnotic numbness.
He found a corner table beside one of the tall windows, and ordered Scotch. He sat back watching the light on the snow as a jazz combo played across the room, the sound smoky and longing. The notes of the piano rippled like water.
He looked up as a blond woman walked into the bar and hovered inside the doorway. He froze, the beating of his heart suspended… and then he recognized Agent Soames.
She saw him and a complicated look crossed her face. Then she came toward his table.
“May I?” she asked.
He gestured to the chair across from him. She peeled off her parka and sat.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, and he wondered what he must be putting out that women kept looking at him like this. He fought a tidal wave of weariness.
“That’s natural,” he said.
The waitress came by again and Soames ordered a tonic and lime. Very professional, he thought. Ambitious.
“I guess I’m a little jumpy,” she said, and he thought there was something under her tone, a subtle invitation.
He made his voice harsh. “You should be. I want you on your toes.”
“Can we talk a little, then?” she asked, looking at him directly.
“Of course,” he said, and braced himself.
The waitress came with her tonic. Soames took a sip of her drink and waited until the waitress was gone before she spoke.
“I’m sorry I went off script today, when—”
He cut her off. “It worked. It was a good call.”
She nodded, and looked toward the darkness out the window beside them, and he could see that wasn’t the real issue at all.
“The killer… he’s only killed families so far. Why do you think he’ll come after Lindstrom? Or me, as Lindstrom?”
It was a fair question, he had to admit. And he couldn’t very well tell her the real answer: that he didn’t understand why it would work, he just knew in his bones that it would. Aloud he said, “It’s a theory. That he won’t be able to stay away. And we’ve put it out that you are able to identify him, which may spur him to come after you.”
“You don’t think that will just drive him underground?”
Sure, if logic had anything to do with anything here. “It’s a possibility. But we think his compulsion is too strong for him to let this go.”
Soames nodded and sipped her tonic, but she wasn’t done. “You’ve met her?”
In spite of himself, he flinched. “Met” was an absurd word. “I’ve been in a room with her,” he said warily.
“What is she like?”
He felt rage rising from somewhere inside him, barely tamped it down. “Agent Soames, this isn’t a casting call. You don’t have to play her.”
She colored slightly. “Sorry, sir.”
He held back a sigh. “Our unsub doesn’t even know what she looks like now. It’s all context. He’ll think you’re her because we’re saying you’re her.”
“I understand.” She hesitated, but was bold enough to speak. “I’m just curious.”
Fascinated, she meant. Who wouldn’t be? He made his face and voice hard.
“I want you to stay focused on your surroundings. Now that the news is out, we have to act as if he is right there, wherever we go. Anything that feels off to you, any twinge you have, I don’t care how small, you talk to me immediately.”
She looked appropriately chastened. “Understood.”
She had the police sketch, and Snyder had given her the rundown of what the Reaper might look and act like, the general dishevelment and odd affect of schizophrenia. But Roarke stressed again, now: “You need to treat everyone you meet as potentially lethal. We just don’t know.”
“Yes, sir.” There was no more invitation in her voice, only deference to a superior officer.
“Now you should get back up to your room. Try to sleep.”
She stood, and reached for her parka… then she looked back at him. “One more question.”
He looked up at her.
“I was told that Cara Lindstrom is somewhere in the area.”
He looked at her steadily. “She was. She may still be. And?”
She faltered. “I… just wondered if that had any bearing on anything.”
He wanted to say no, to cut her off, but in good conscience he couldn’t. “You need to treat everyone you meet as potentially lethal,” he repeated, and it occurred to him that he needed to be doing the same thing.
Chapter Forty
In the morning the show began.
Soames was outfitted with a radio mike and given the strict instruction that she was to wear it at all times. She moved out of her room in the main lodge into a cabin of her own, close to the others so as not to draw too much suspicion, but a unit chosen for its blind spots, so that the Reaper would find approaching a possibility. Of course she was armed and would be constantly guarded. There was already a deputy planted in her room who would not leave it until the operation was concluded.
They all gathered in the war room they’d set up as headquarters. Every move they made, inside or outside, was accompanied by telegraphing of purported intentions: stopping on bridges and in open spaces to provide maximum visibility for anyone watching, lengthy greetings and conversations outside before retreating into the room. Then there was an equally telegraphed procession to the cars to drive to the Cavanaugh house.
The day was cold and shrouded in white mist; their breath clouded in the air. Roarke had been obsessively checking the weather sites and reports. The prediction was daytime snow flurries, cold and windy that night.
The agents and detectives took Soames on a full walk-through of the Cavanaugh house again. It was all for show, but it couldn’t hurt to go over all of it again. The bodies of the family were gone, but the house still felt like a tomb. Roarke could see Soames bracing herself against every description of the scene.
Snowflakes were swirling in the air by the time the reporters showed up, a few carefully chosen photographers and video teams to create the media show. They staged scenes outside the house, cameramen shooting footage and photographers snapping photos of Soames talking to the agents, circling the house, stopping to point out the side door that was the point of entry, the suspected angle of observation of the house.
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