Killing Pace

by Douglas Schofield

  “It wasn’t my call.”

  “Explain something,” one of the FBI agents demanded. “Lockhart isn’t even on file. She’s nowhere in the system.”

  “She is if you know where to look. Your SAC will need clearance.”

  They’d received their clearance a few days later. She’d known exactly when it came through because Alan had called her, all energized by the revelation that he was hunting “a legend,” even though the public was not being told her true name. “They’re afraid some people might help her just because of who she is,” he’d explained.

  Since then, Alan had been keeping Corbin up to date. Not officially, of course, but informally. Acting on reasoning she’d already planted in his head, he’d rationalized his leaks on the basis that Corbin herself could be viewed as a victim. After all, this rogue agent they were hunting, who’d murdered the Edens and probably stolen their baby, had been working for Phyllis. It was only right, he said, to keep her in the loop.

  Not that Alan’s boss, the special agent in charge at the FBI’s Miami field office, had given him permission to brief any outside agency on day-to-day progress, or at all.

  But then, Turnbull had always been easy to manipulate. Almost too easy. At one point, he asked her about the investigation that had distracted Pace from her work.

  “That baby-smuggling thing,” he’d called it. “The case you told her to brief ICE on.”

  She told him baby-smuggling had become Pace’s obsession. She’d stumbled on some evidence in Sicily and wouldn’t let it go. He needed to understand that the woman had had a weird upbringing. “There’s material in her recruitment file about her mother dying after giving birth to her, and her father being a war orphan, and him dying in the Lockerbie crash when Pace was still very young, and her being raised by a bitter old grandmother who wasn’t even her natural grandmother. She definitely has a psychological thing going on. That might explain the missing baby.”

  He had listened to it all, nodded, and suggested they go to bed.

  Long ago, Corbin had figured out that Turnbull had a mother-goddess complex. At least he seemed to fit most of the so-called diagnostic indicators that she’d been able to track down on the internet. So she had played into it. Just as his now-deceased mother must have done, she pampered him with praise, fed his neurotic vanity and grandiosity … and screwed his brains out with “come-to-Momma” sex whenever he asked.

  She’d taken him to bed right after that conversation and he’d never mentioned ICE again. There was no way Alan Turnbull was going to let his quarry’s psychological issues get in the way of his own.

  Two months had passed since Corbin’s witness interview, and now Laura Pace, who should have been dead, was very much alive. And the little bitch hadn’t lost her touch. She had Alan and his team chasing their tails.

  Two weeks ago, Alan told her he’d been present when Laura phoned Scott Jardine, the Collier County detective who’d originally taken her into custody, only to lose her again. She’d been asking Jardine about the baby cam at the Edens. The Mazzara thugs who’d grabbed her were dead, but before the collision they’d told Corbin the camera was at the bottom of Lake Worth Lagoon, but it sounded like Pace might be thinking there was some way to find archived footage.

  Alan was raging after they’d tracked her through an unretired false identity to a motel in Clewiston, but got there too late. There was no doubt Pace had been staying there, but the motel staff had no idea when she’d left. Alan had told her more than once that he suspected Jardine was communicating with the fugitive behind his back, but he didn’t have enough to get a warrant for the detective’s phones. So, just in case Jardine was in touch with Pace, Corbin had recruited one of her former employees from the old days in Jacksonville to keep her advised on anything Jardine had to say about the case. All it took was the promise of another shot at a job at Homeland to persuade Bernice Castellano to keep her ears open. The woman’s brass hair and heavy makeup probably hadn’t worked very well for her at her last set of interviews, but this was the federal bureaucracy, where anything could be fixed. One quick lunch at Wajiro’s in Tamiami had been enough to convince Bernice that a bit of undercover work for Homeland would look good on her CV, and was probably all it would take to reverse the HR department’s attitude. “Anything those detectives over there are holding back—anything you pick up, no matter how trivial it might sound—could be just what we need to track down this rogue agent,” she’d told her. “The one to really watch is Detective Jardine.”

  And now this.

  High-res photographs of two very dead Mazzara heavies, bullet holes in their skulls, right there on her cell phone.

  When it suddenly rang in her hand, she nearly dropped it in her coffee.

  “Yes?”

  “You alone? Boss wants to talk.”

  She recognized the raspy voice of Vincent Basso, the Mazzaras’ lawyer.

  “Yes, I’m alone.”

  Gus Mazzara came on the line.

  “Why didn’t you call?” He sounded concerned, but she knew what lay beneath.

  “I was in the shower,” she lied. “Just saw the pictures.”

  “Lanza’s behind it. He sent those photos to a burner we were using to talk to Nelthorp when he was in Italy, so he’s got him and he’s talked. I need you to move those files.”

  “Don’t you mean, burn them?”

  “No. It’s gonna take cash to set up a new supply chain, so we’ll use that paperwork to shake down our old customers. Those people won’t want the world to know they paid for a kidnapped kid. We’ll get an extra hundred per.”

  “That’s risky!”

  “You’ll get your cut. Now listen … Vincent rented a new storage locker near the airport. He’ll give you the details. Move the files and then stay low. If Lanza’s got Nelthorp, he probably knows who you are.”

  “How? I didn’t tell him my name.”

  “Lanza has connections. Assume he knows. But I doubt he’ll touch you. For one thing, you’re a fed, and for another, he can’t use you to get to me, and he’ll know that.”

  “Very comforting!”

  “I think of it this way, Corbin. I’m not only protected by your uniform, but also by how little I care for you.”

  And by the knowledge that if I’m ever arrested, I’ll be dead before I can testify.

  Struggling to quell the sick feeling in her stomach, she changed the subject. “What about Riley?”

  “I’m pulling him out. He’s moving to Philly.”

  “What’s there?”

  “A branch office. Too much heat in Florida right now. He’s gonna be running the shakedown from there. He knows the customers, so he knows the pressure points.”

  “There’s still that nanny and the kid he’s working on. They’re sitting in that—”

  “Forget them! Go to your job, keep your head down, and leave the cleanup to us. The main problem right now is Lockhart … Pace … whatever her name is. Why didn’t you give us a heads up on the raid at that motel?”

  “Alan didn’t say anything to me until after.”

  “Losing your touch? Don’t worry. We’re ahead of your clown-boy boyfriend now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re way ahead. We’ll get her. Now, here’s Vincent. Get those files moved today!”

  “Wait a minute … what about that Lewis guy? He’s sitting on remand over at Immokalee. How much does he know about us?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. He’s the Cubans’ problem, and they’re fixing it.”

  * * *

  It was the third story on the 10:00 A.M. news.

  Roland Lewis, a man who was being held at the Immokalee Jail Center on multiple counts of accessory to murder, had been found dead in his cell. The cause of death was still being investigated but, as the news anchor was quick to add: “Lewis was also rumored to be involved in the short-lived apprehension of fugitive Sarah Lockhart earlier this
month. Lockhart is wanted in connection with a double murder in Palm Beach. She is once again at large after escaping from a hospital in Naples within hours of being taken into custody. Authorities have refused to comment on her alleged connection to Lewis.”

  It didn’t take long for Corbin to find the new storage locker behind the tire shop on NW 32nd, but it took a bit longer to locate the wrecked ’97 Saturn at the auto wrecker’s next door so she could retrieve the magnetic box under the left rear fender that contained the key to its padlock. Corbin didn’t know who to curse the most: Vincent Basso, or the family’s local associate who’d wasted her time with a scavenger hunt.

  She’d just finished unloading the files into the unit when her phone pinged.

  A text message from Bernice: Got something.

  Corbin called her.

  “Jardine got a call on his cell. As soon as he saw the number, he went into the lieutenant’s office. Powell’s not here today. The door didn’t close all the way and I could hear him talking about that prisoner Roland Lewis, the one who was found dead in his cell. He said it was murder. Some kind of drug, injected in his neck.”

  Corbin played along. “Okay, how does that—?”

  “The thing is, whoever he was talking to, he was angry. Here … I wrote down what he said: ‘I told you I wouldn’t cross that line. Yeah, well obviously somebody helping you did, so you’re on your own. Where? Not smart. Someone might decide to search that place again. Goodbye, and don’t call me again.’ And then he hung up.”

  “Was that it?”

  “Yeah. He left the office right after that looking totally pissed off. Any idea what all that meant?”

  “Maybe. I’ll have to think about it. Thanks, Bernice.”

  The moment she disconnected, Corbin locked up the storage unit and got in her car. Her service pistol was in the gun safe at home, which was fine. It would be useless to her anyway. She lifted the armrest between the front seats and removed the custom insert she’d had fabricated by an independent body shop right after she bought the vehicle. Inside was a Heckler & Koch P2000SK—a subcompact version of her CBP-issued weapon. The SK was small, lightweight, and accurate.

  But its main virtue was that it was unregistered.

  She checked the magazine. Full load.

  As her Santa Fe rolled up the westbound ramp to the Dolphin Expressway, she checked the GPS. Fifty-two miles. The Dolphin was a toll road, but it was Sunday, she was off-duty, and no one was looking for Phyllis Corbin’s car. She knew she could be tracked for the ten miles from the airport until the turn south on Route 825, but that meant nothing. For the rest of the trip, the cameras thinned down to zero.

  “Where? Not smart. Someone might decide to search that place again.”

  Right before Jardine said that, he’d been talking about Roland Lewis’s murder. So, what place would be searched again?

  Roland Lewis’s cabin.

  Which was exactly where Laura Pace would think no one would look for her—hiding out in the shack where Lewis had kept her prisoner.

  Back at the storage unit, Corbin had debated calling Gus Mazzara.

  Debated for about five seconds.

  Mazzara and his crew were in New York, their only two assets in Florida had been eliminated by Lanza’s people, and by the time he lined up some help from the Cubans, Pace could be gone.

  She’d take care of this herself.

  It was early afternoon when she slowed her vehicle near the big bend on Loop Road and started looking for the gate into Lewis’s property. She’d only been here once before. She’d driven by, following directions sent by Mazzara, who asked her to check the place out and take a couple of photos.

  “Don’t let the mug see you. Just make sure you get a good one of the turnoff … the gate or whatever, so the boys don’t miss it.”

  And suddenly, there it was, the metal gate, the misspelled warning sign, the rutted driveway through the trees.

  The gate was closed, but not chained as it had been before.

  She rolled past, upping her speed, looking for a place to ditch her vehicle. A few hundred yards along, she found a pullout next to an alligator hole. She parked, got out, and tucked her pistol into the waistband of her jeans. She walked back and slipped through the gate. A length of chain glinted in the weeds next to one of the gateposts. She kneeled to check it. It had been cut with bolt cutters—either by the police, or by Laura Pace.

  Just in case the police were on the scene, she edged up the driveway, keeping to one side, ready to duck into the brush. She came to the cabin—a sagging clapboard eyesore sitting on the edge of an algae-choked channel of swamp water. There were no vehicles in sight. She stepped into the trees and circled. Eventually, the other side of the cabin came into view.

  No cars … but one motorcycle, parked next to the building.

  Bingo.

  The bike’s tag number matched the one that came up when she’d run Pace’s grandmother on DAVID. A registration that had somehow been miraculously renewed after the date on the old woman’s death certificate.

  Just another little nugget she hadn’t bothered to share with Alan.

  She focused on the cabin’s windows, looking for signs of movement inside.

  There!

  She circulated back until she reached a point of concealment closest to the building.

  She pulled out her gun and racked a round into the chamber. The sound was louder than she’d remembered. She’d forgotten how strong the recoil spring was on this little gun.

  She waited, watching for any change in the pattern of movement inside the cabin.

  Nothing happened.

  She moved.

  42

  Laura was standing at Roland’s beat-up kitchen table, stuffing clothes into her knapsack, when the door banged open behind her. She wheeled to find herself staring straight into the muzzle of a pistol.

  A pistol held by Phyllis Corbin.

  “Well, look at this!” Corbin said.

  Laura was calm. “I could say the same thing.”

  “Turn around. On your knees! Hands on your head!”

  Laura’s eyes turned to stone. She didn’t move.

  “NOW!”

  Slowly, she turned.

  “On your knees!”

  When Laura complied, Corbin shoved her violently to the floor, kneeled on the small of her back, and snapped handcuffs on her wrists. Then, slowly and carefully, she frisked her.

  Laura could smell the woman’s sweat.

  She’s afraid.

  “Stay down!” Corbin barked. She quickly searched the cabin. As Laura knew, there wasn’t much to see: a combination kitchen-dining-sitting room, one small bedroom, and a closed door with a hasp, but no padlock. Corbin opened that door carefully and stepped in, gun up. Laura already knew the safe room’s Spartan furnishings were unchanged since her imprisonment: a cot, a lamp, a chair, and a bucket.

  “So that’s where the little worm was keeping you.”

  She concluded her search by checking the pot Laura had left on the stove. Its bottom was lined with the burnt remains from a tin of baked beans.

  “Did you really think you could hide out here forever?”

  “Where’s the rest of your team, Phyllis? Where’s the FBI?”

  “On their way.”

  “No, they’re not. They don’t even know you’re here.”

  “You know nothing.”

  “Nothing? I know all about you and Gus Mazzara and your sick little baby-selling racket. I know exactly how many babies you’ve smuggled into the country. Forty-two. I know exactly how many you’ve sold. Forty-one. I know you’ve been using a shell company in Delaware to salt away your take, using it to buy rental properties. I know you helped frame me for the Edens’ murders, and then tried to make me disappear. Oh, and, I know that Mazzara is now planning to blackmail all your former customers and you’re more than happy to take your cut of the proceeds.”

  Corbin jammed her pistol against the back of Laura’s h
ead. “How the fuck could you know all that?”

  “Doing your own hits now, Corbin? I thought you left that to Mazzara’s thugs.”

  BOOM!

  The door flew open with a force that nearly tore it from its hinges. Corbin stumbled backward as her gun swung up.

  A powerful-looking man with a tattooed neck was standing in the doorway.

  He advanced toward her.

  He was unarmed.

  Corbin pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  She fired again.

  Click.

  In three strides, Rolf was on her. He ripped the gun out of her hand and drove his fist into her stomach.

  She dropped to the floor.

  He searched her, took her keys, and unlocked Laura’s handcuffs. He helped her to her feet.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead. I’ll finish up here.”

  Rolf returned to Corbin’s panting form. He cuffed her and yanked a black cloth bag over her head. He lifted her off the floor, tossed her across his shoulder like a sack of grain, and headed out the door.

  Minutes later, Laura exited the cabin carrying her knapsack. She set off down the trail toward the shed by the river.

  Inside the shed, two chairs had been set facing each other. By the time Laura entered, Corbin was already tied hand and foot to one of them. Her mouth was an intermittent outline in the cloth bag as her breath came in short gasps.

  Laura dropped her knapsack beside the empty chair and sat down. She nodded to Rolf. He pulled the bag off. Phyllis Corbin’s head whipped around, her eyes sweeping her surroundings. They settled on the vat in the corner, lingered there, and then cut back to her captors.

  Laura took the cloth bag from Rolf’s hand and used it to wipe a dribble of saliva from the stunned woman’s chin. “You know, Phyllis,” she said, “I once admired you. Tough, decisive. A credit to women in law enforcement. I don’t know what happened to turn you into a monster, and I don’t care. You tried to have me killed. That’s all I need to know. You aced the audition, and now you’ve got the part.”

  “What?”

  “Welcome to my personal revenge movie.”

  Corbin said nothing. Her eyes flicked about above Laura’s head, as if she was looking for a camera. They finally settled on Rolf, who stood, expressionless and menacing, at the side of the former Customs agent Corbin had once privately scorned as overrated.