by Dom Testa
All of that raced through my mind before I answered Miller.
“Your question is valid; I just think my answer would be different from anyone else’s. While this may be just a job for someone else—like Parnell, for example—for me it’s a job and a journey, all rolled into one. A personal journey. And that means the manner of death will never slow me down like it might another agent. Rip my goddamned heart out while it’s still beating, and I’ll get right back up the first chance I get.”
He scribbled something on his pad, and for a moment I thought his expression was one of concern. I never saw that with Miller. Then he defused the tense moment with a line:
“Well, it’s not really your heart anyway, right?”
I laughed.
But I also left the meeting feeling that something between us had changed.
I texted Christina on my way home and let her know she’d find a new me walking in the door. That was a courtesy we’d decided was mandatory after an awkward incident the first time it happened.
When I left the stairwell on the 7th floor and opened the door to number 700, she was waiting on my side of our twin condos.
“Let me see,” she said, crossing her arms and adopting an expression of hard appraisal.
I did a slow spin. “You like?”
“What are you now, like five-seven?”
I adopted my own hard look, but one of outrage. “Hey! Five-nine, lady. And did you not notice the muscles?”
She laughed and came over to embrace me. “I did, babe. You look terrific. Really bad hair, but terrific.”
A glass of wine was already poured for me, and Christina had a mug of tea. We plopped onto the couch and sat right up against each other. I rested a hand on her leg.
After a minute of silent appreciation, she said, “If you’re here with a new body then I’m assuming you have to get right back to it. Tonight?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “Very early. Thank you for taking off tonight to be with me.”
“Of course. So tell me how it’s been for you going back to work. I know you weren’t sure you’d ever do it again. Has it been okay? I mean, up until the part where you got killed.”
I sipped my wine. “It’s been pretty good. I haven’t had much time to sit and stew on all the stuff that built up over the years.”
She thought for a moment. “Well, maybe it means you’re not so worried about it anymore, right?”
“Maybe. But I had six weeks of worrying about it, and this new case has been a tonic. Although I could get morose again before you know it.”
She nestled her head down on my shoulder. “I’ve seen you upset, sad, and really pissed, but I’ve never seen you morose.” She squeezed my arm. “I’m glad you’re working again.”
“Even though I got murdered?”
“Uh-huh.”
We both laughed for a moment and enjoyed the scene out the large window.
“Enough about my dumb job,” I said. “Tell me about the little one percolating inside you. All good?”
“Couldn’t be better. At least according to the doctor. I’m happy with everything, and I know Antonio and Marissa are very excited. They haven’t even bugged me about my diet in the last week.”
“Babe, that’s so good.” I wanted to ask her something, but wasn’t sure if I should at the moment. We only had a short time together before I left again.
Finally I decided to go ahead.
“I know how you felt when you decided to be a surrogate. But, now that you’re several months along . . . well . . .”
“Am I regretting that I have to give it up? No. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Swan, I’m thrilled to be doing this, and I really do feel a close bond with the child. But I know my role in this, and I’m at peace with it.”
We fell back into silence. And I spent a long time thinking about the last thing she’d said.
28
Fife met me at the Des Moines airport. I was totally prepared to screw with him since he wouldn’t know my new body—except Poole had texted him a photo along with the flight information.
She was so efficient that she inadvertently wrecked great practical jokes before they got started.
“So nice of you to finish up your little vacation and come back to work,” Fife said.
“Had to. I missed your face.”
“Hard for me to miss yours since it changes all the time.”
He grabbed my bag and started walking for the parking garage. “I heard about how you bit it in Paraguay. Damn, Swan, sometimes you find the most bizarre ways to die.”
“Just taking one for the team, my friend. What do you have to report here in the Hawkeye State?”
“Just got here this morning,” he said. “Haven’t had a chance to meet with Sarah Eklund yet, but she wants to connect as soon as possible. She’s convinced something bad is about to happen.”
“So am I.”
We reached the car and Fife threw my bag in the back seat. A minute later we were driving away from the airport.
“Did Sarah tell you what she based her feeling on?” I asked.
“I guess before he even got back from South America, Deele was pressing again for some cooperation from Iowa farmers. I don’t know if your snooping around got him antsy or what, but he’s almost demanding an answer to his latest proposal.”
“She thinks he’s going to take out another field or two, doesn’t she?” I asked, rolling down a window and breathing in the fresh air.
“And I don’t blame her,” Fife said. “Besides his success in South America, this is the only state where he’s tried to get a foothold so far. I don’t think he wants to throw in the towel after investing so much time and effort. So yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped a pretty big toxic bomb somewhere around here.”
“All right, we might as well go see Dr. Eklund right away. Does she know I was killed in Paraguay?”
“The word was passed along to your very good friend, Deputy Secretary Halloran, but with no details. Halloran informed her step-daughter.”
I nodded. This was one of those somewhat-awkward instances where changing horses in the middle of the race got confusing. Sometimes we simply said I’d been caught up in a different case, and the new guy would be taking over. That wouldn’t work this time, mostly because of the intense pressure Halloran was asserting from Washington. If we’d told her Eric Swan had been reassigned, she’d blow a gasket and say we weren’t respecting the gravity of her case.
So instead she got the news I’d been killed, and had been replaced with a new agent by the name of Gumm. I doubted any condolences would be forthcoming from the Dep Sec, and I didn’t expect the pressure to let up, either.
I hadn’t seen Sarah Eklund since she stormed out of the conference room in Houston. Now she looked tired. It was a reminder that this case with Deele, as serious and draining as it might be, was only one of several issues she had to deal with. She led us back to her office, which still came across as an organized mess. Bright sunlight pressed through the large window behind her desk, forcing her to tilt the blinds.
“Let me start by saying how sorry I am to hear the news about Agent Swan,” she said. “He and I had our ups and downs, but he was a good agent, and I know he was determined to bring down Jason Deele. I hope he was able to find something in South America that will ultimately help us succeed.”
It sounded so much like a prepared speech that I could only nod. And yet I couldn’t blame her; for professionals like Fife and me it wasn’t unheard of to lose agents in the field. For someone like Eklund this was straight out of a movie. She’d now seen two federal agents lose their lives in a span of days. It slammed home a reminder just how dangerous this game was, and she was fairly deep into it. Preparing a quick statement regarding the dead agent she’d worked with made complete sense. The woman was probably freaking out.
I needed to put her at ease.
“Dr. Eklund, I’ve followed the details of this case very closely. Agen
t Swan left extensive notes, including his personal thoughts on everything. I know he made contact with Jason Deele more than once, and he even managed to get inside Deele’s laboratories, not just in the U.S. but in Paraguay. I’m up to speed on everything that’s happened, so there will be no lag whatsoever in pursuing justice.”
She offered a weary smile in gratitude.
Fife said, “We share your concern that something is brewing. We’ve examined the work you’ve done on the samples, but maybe you’d like to clarify how they’re similar and yet different.”
Eklund took a deep breath. “The toxin used to kill the crops here in Iowa and the samples found in Paraguay basically come from the same family of fungi. You could look at it like they’re distant cousins to the main virus, as if they’ve evolved onto a different branch of the family tree. I think Dr. Stone developed one primary strain, which we might consider the ancestor. Then she uses common supplements and some genetic tweaking to isolate these other strains into their own line.”
I took all of this in. “So you’re saying there’s a set of grandparents somewhere who have a variety of offspring. They’re all capable of killing, but we need the original formula to prove that Stone and Deele are responsible.”
“That’s right,” Eklund said. “Think of it like the genetic tracking that companies do when tracing your ancestry. They follow merging lines back up the family tree, finding where everyone connects. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
“We need to find the missing link,” I said.
“Yes. Do that and you’ll be able to connect all of the dots to prove Deele and Stone are behind it all. Right now they can claim pure coincidence.”
I tapped a finger on the arm of my chair. If we really were working under a deadline, we needed some kind of break. We didn’t know for sure Deele would make his next move in Iowa. It could be in another state altogether. Or in a different country.
And yet I had to agree with Fife; something told me he wasn’t through with the good people of Iowa. I’d spent enough time visiting with Miller to understand certain traits in the psychotic killers I pursued, and one of those was an almost stubborn determination. To alter their plan would be acknowledging that someone had got the better of them, forcing them to pivot.
No way Deele would back down from a challenge. He would conquer Iowa’s lucrative agricultural market before he moved elsewhere. Now it was a matter of finding him.
And his pantry of poison.
Fife and I grabbed an early dinner at a steakhouse. Few of the tables were occupied yet, so we requested a large booth away from anyone else.
“I know he’s coming here,” I said. “And when he does we’ll follow him to his secret stash.”
“Unless he’s already here, somewhere,” Fife said. “He essentially disappeared once he landed in Texas.”
The server dropped off a basket of rolls and cornbread. While meticulously buttering a slice of the cornbread I let my mind dance around the odd bits and pieces of the case. If Deele was indeed coming to Iowa, he certainly wouldn’t drive. But his own private plane was parked in Houston, and if he flew commercially we’d have an alert from the airlines.
Then there was the matter of how he’d disperse the toxin once he got to Iowa. If he really intended to make a big splash, then spreading it by hand was out of the question. He may have been able to get away with a small sample size the first time he poisoned crops, but this would need a larger platform.
The cornbread was delicious, and I prepared another slice. Halfway through the act of spreading the butter I stopped.
Fife, busy adding sweetener to his iced tea, noticed. “What is it?”
I set down the knife, but held on to the bread. I used it to punctuate my words.
“You said something in the car when you picked me up this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You said you wouldn’t be surprised if Deele dropped a big toxic bomb.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I was speaking metaphorically.”
“And I’m speaking literally. He’s going to use good old-fashioned crop dusting to deliver his toxin.”
“Well, that makes sense. But we still don’t know how to track him. He could do that in the middle of the night, and this is a pretty damned big state.”
I smiled. “We can track him. Get on your phone.”
“Who am I calling?”
“You’re calling to check on a flight plan for a man named Benjamin Hughes.”
“And who the hell is Benjamin Hughes?”
“He’s a pilot and airplane builder. He designed a new plane for Deele, and I got a ride in the backseat.” I popped the cornbread into my mouth. “Deele is going to fly that plane to Iowa under the name of Ben Hughes, so he stays off the official records. And I’ll bet the aircraft is already fitted with all the equipment needed to spray poison across soybean crops.”
I pulled out my own phone and looked up my files on the case. I shared all the details of the plane called Amy Leigh, including its registration number. Fife went to work.
Minutes later he hung up and gave me a big smile. “You’re good, Swan. The Amy Leigh flew to Iowa earlier today, piloted—allegedly—by one Benjamin Hughes.”
“Today.” That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“Yeah,” Fife said. “He’s parked at a small, private airfield about thirty miles from here. I’ve got one of our local guys heading out right now to confirm the plane is there.”
“Let’s get something to go,” I said. “This night could get very busy.”
29
In the car, Fife reached out to his operative heading toward the airfield. His instructions were to prevent the plane from leaving, under any circumstances. It was important to get a good look at it to see if it had been equipped for crop dusting.
“But I doubt he’s sitting with the plane now,” I said, noting the gathering dusk. “He has to get his supplies first, and those wouldn’t be stashed at the airfield. At least I don’t think he’d be that transparent.”
“Unless lots of farmers stow their pesticides out there. Then it would fit right in.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”
But I didn’t think so. Jason Deele was all about having his own storage facilities, and wasn’t one to share space. If he did have the missing link somewhere in this state, it would be kept far from prying eyes.
His so-called vacation cabin. I mentioned it to Fife.
“And you don’t think he was being literal?”
“No,” I said. “He had no reason to mutter anything about a vacation home. We were talking about his business. It’s gotta be the place he keeps his primary stash.”
We drove in silence for a mile. Then Fife said, “You know what else? We keep forgetting about the USDA agent, Culbertson. That guy was a slime bag, sure; but every report said he was a good agent, too. That’s why he was able to stick around so long.”
“Okay,” I said. “And?”
“And Deele had him killed. Now, we’re convinced Culbertson was blackmailing him. But wouldn’t Deele be more likely to kill an agent who knew more than just the basic plan? Like, say, an agent who’d stumbled onto this vacation cabin?”
I stared at the broken white stripes flashing by on the two-lane road. “You son of a bitch,” I finally said. “Of course that’s it. Culbertson sees a way of bankrolling his retirement, and needs to strengthen his play against Deele. So he probably followed him, found the cabin, and used it as part of his blackmail scheme.”
“But,” Fife said, “he slipped up. He never thought the Silicon Valley computer nerd would have his brains blown out.”
“Because this isn’t a million-dollar deal. It’s billions.” I grunted a laugh. “Now we have a bunch of different puzzle pieces. We just have to assemble them.”
Fife’s phone rang, and he answered it on speaker. “Yeah, Danny, what have you got?”
“The plane’s gone,” the agent said. “It definitely land
ed here, but it’s not here anymore.”
“So where did he go?” Fife asked.
“Nobody knows.”
Fife and I exchanged a look.
“What did the people at the airfield say about it?” I asked. “He had to have filed a flight plan.”
“No flight plan. The manager here says the plane landed, refueled, and they were sure it would just be parked for a day or two. There’s no record of it taking off.”
I thought about it, then laughed quietly. “Of course.”
“Hold on, Danny,” Fife said, and muted the call. “So, wanna keep going and talk to the airfield manager?”
“No point,” I said. “Our little billionaire used those big bucks to pay off someone at this small airfield. Even if we went out and talked with them, they won’t know where he went. He just paid them to look the other way while he sailed off into the sunset. They can always claim later their records just got confused.”
Fife made a sound like an angry animal. Then, after a few seconds, he told Danny to go back to the office, then hung up.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Now what?”
“Now we turn this car around, find a place to sit down, and collate everything we know. Probably dig a little into Culbertson’s files. And figure it out.”
When we were heading back toward Des Moines I gazed out the window and watched the first few stars dotting the purpling sky. Our talk of Culbertson’s murder brought home the fact that Jason Deele was a cold-blooded monster. He’d hitched his wagon to an implausible plan, one created in tandem with another psychopath, and now that farfetched idea was close to fruition. He’d offed Culbertson, then me.
I turned and looked at Fife. “Maybe you’d better let me handle this the rest of the way.”
He took his eyes off the road to give me a sharp look. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean this entire operation is screwy and way too unpredictable. We’re dealing with a psychotic killer who’s partly methodical and partly a wild cannon. You don’t have the luxury of popping back up in a new body if things go to hell.”