Enigma

by Catherine Coulter

  Savich went to Kara Moody. A Metro officer was cutting the duct tape from around her ankles and wrists with a pocket knife. She gasped in pain when her wrists were freed. The officer gently pulled her arms back in front of her and began rubbing her wrists.

  Savich went down on his haunches in front of her. “Your shoulders should stop hurting soon, and in a couple of minutes you’ll have your feeling back.”

  Kara stared at him, licked her dry lips. “You shot him twice. He’s not dead, is he?”

  “No, he’s not dead. You don’t know who he is?”

  She shook her head, a hank of sweaty hair stuck to her cheek. “I’ve never seen him before in my life. He said he wanted to save me from something, but when the cops arrived he thought they were here to take him, and take me, too—somewhere, he didn’t say. He was mumbling, shaking, and a couple of times he staggered.” She stopped talking, took a breath. Then she attempted a smile. “I know who you are—you’re Dr. Janice’s friend, Dillon Savich, the FBI agent. She’s told me about you. She told me she was glad she had at least one friend at the top of the food chain, someone who kicked big butt.”

  He started to say something about Sherlock kicking big butt, instead he said only, “Yes. Dr. Janice called me.”

  “If she hadn’t, I might be dead. Thank you.”

  He smiled, still feeling the rush of adrenaline pumping through him. “I’m as relieved as you are that we’re both still alive.” He looked toward the unconscious young man. “I’m glad he’s alive, too.”

  Savich felt her eyes on his face. “He looks so young. Why me? Why did he come here, to me?” Her breathing hitched and a lone tear streaked down her cheek. She tried to raise her arm, but it still hurt too much. Savich wiped the tear away. She said against his hand, her own hands on her belly, “Thank you for our lives.” She looked over at the still figure. “He is mad, isn’t he?”

  Savich saw the living room had filled with cops, most of them shooting looks at him. He turned back to Kara. “He seemed to be.” He noticed how hard she must have pulled against the duct tape that bound her ankles and wrists, hard enough to leave angry furrows. “Now you need to get back to thinking about yourself and your baby. There’s nothing more to be afraid of. The police will find out who he is and why he came here to you.” Savich hoped that would be true, that Mayer would chase it down.

  A paramedic came to look at Kara. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She managed a nod.

  “How does he look?” Savich asked, nodding toward the young man being loaded onto a gurney.

  “The shoulder doesn’t look bad. The bullet tore through fat and muscle and exited. There’s always a lot of bleeding from scalp wounds, but his skull seems intact. We don’t know why he’s unconscious, though. We need to get him to a CT scanner right away.” He gave Savich a salute. “He was either very lucky or that was good shooting,” and he ran after the departing gurney.

  Savich heard Mayer shout his name. He rose and turned to see Fireplug charging him like an enraged bull. He didn’t want to have to deal with Mayer now, with everyone’s adrenaline still running high, with violent emotions still boiling below the surface. He didn’t want to have to punch him out, say something he’d be sure to regret later. Then again, maybe not. No, he had to keep a lid on it. Where was Ben Raven when he needed him? Savich straightened, looked at Mayer straight on, and kept his voice calm. “Detective Mayer, you’ll be pleased to know Ms. Moody is all right.”

  “I don’t care if you live here, or if a neighbor called you! It doesn’t matter. You had no right to enter her house!”

  Savich imagined hurling Mayer through the window, watching him land on his face in the rosebushes. But that wouldn’t do. Savich turned his back on Mayer and helped Kara Moody stand up. She sagged against him, and he held her up, began rubbing her back. Her belly was as big as Sherlock’s had been right before Sean was born. He realized he’d rubbed Sherlock’s back just that way.

  He heard Mayer’s furious voice. “I’m going to see you brought up on charges, you pushy bastard, you interfered in a police matter. You’ve got no defense.”

  Before Savich could figure out how to answer Fireplug, he heard Detective Ben Raven’s voice shouting, “It’s all right, Aldo! Pull yourself together. Savich checked with me first!”

  Savich thought that sounded good, even righteous.

  Mayer whipped around, his face red, his pulse pounding in his neck. “Don’t try to protect him, Raven! He shouldn’t be here and neither should you! I was over on Wisconsin when the call came in, I was first on scene. I don’t even know how he got into the house without any of us seeing him.”

  Savich said, “Dr. Janice Hudson, whose house is directly next door, called me because I live on the next block. She was a psychiatrist for nearly half a century, and she was certain he was on the edge, that there wasn’t time to wait. She knew a back way into the house.”

  Raven grabbed Mayer’s arm before he could move on Savich. “Use your brain, Aldo, calm down! The hostage is okay. The shooter is down. We won. We all won. Isn’t that victory enough?”

  There was stone silence from Mayer. He sucked in a breath and stepped back, shook off Ben’s hand. “This isn’t over, Savich.”

  “It should be, Detective,” Savich said. He sent a nod to Raven and said to Kara Moody, who’d been staring at Mayer, obviously confused. “When’s the baby due?”

  She looked at the man’s blood on the oak floor, knew she could have so easily died, Alex could have died. But they hadn’t. She gave Savich a big smile. “Well, actually, soon now. I’ve been in labor for the past ten minutes.”

  2

  NEAR PENNINGTON GAP, VIRGINIA

  MONDAY MORNING

  U.S. Federal Marshal Chan Michaels was chair-dancing to “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots to keep himself alert as he drove the marshals’ big black van. He liked the pounding rhythm, liked the video even more because all of it was shot in jail. He wondered if Liam Hennessey, who actually preferred to go by his moniker, Manta Ray, knew that. Sure he did; the dude wasn’t stupid, anything but, from what Chan had heard. When the Pilots finished, Chan turned down the sound to listen through the wire cage to whatever it was his fellow marshals Otter and Benz were saying.

  They were talking sports, of course, this time, basketball. He heard Manta Ray laugh at something Otter said, a nice, inviting laugh. Amazing, really, coming from a psychopath. Chan had dealt with enough of them to know they could make you forget how seriously scary bad they were when they laid on the charm. The federal prosecutor must have done a happy dance when Manta Ray accepted a plea bargain rather than wait a year for a jury trial. Who knew what would have happened if there were women on the jury? Even men seemed to be drawn to Manta Ray until they found out who and what he was. If he wasn’t out to kill you, you had to like the guy.

  Otter said something Chan couldn’t make out, probably more basketball talk, even though it was baseball season, and he tuned them out. He was happy enough to let the Warriors rule the basketball kingdom as Otter insisted, but he didn’t really care. With him, it was always all about football and the Redskins. He heard Benz say to Manta Ray, “You’re what, thirty-three?”

  Benz knew better than that. The less said to a prisoner while being transported, the better. But Benz was nearing retirement, and he didn’t pay much attention to the rules anymore. He’d transported thousands of prisoners over his long career, seen about everything, and now, he did what he wanted.

  Manta Ray said in his smooth voice with its hint of the Irish from County Cork, his birthplace, “I turned thirty-four in jail last week. One of the lady guards brought me a chocolate cupcake with a candle on top. She couldn’t light the candle, it was against the rules, she said, as if I’d stick it in her face and try to escape, and she rolled her eyes. Her name was Monica. She was cute, and she liked me. I told Monica to take the candle off the cupcake and lick it.” Manta Ray gave them a big white-toothed grin.

 
Otter snorted out an embarrassed laugh. Benz said, “I saw a prisoner stick a lighted match in a guard’s ear once, all he could reach. No one knew how he’d gotten hold of it.”

  “Did he manage to hurt him?” Manta Ray asked.

  Benz said, “The guard outweighed him by fifty pounds. He punched him in the ribs a couple of times, put him in the infirmary. After he got out, he spent two weeks in solitary.”

  “A good story.” Manta Ray lowered his voice. “Me? If that guard had tried that on me, I’d have stuffed my birthday cupcake up his nose and held his mouth closed. Imagine, death by cupcake.” He gave an easy laugh, only this time Chan felt gooseflesh rise on his arms. He heard Otter take a sharp breath. Manta Ray freaked him out. He was young, new to the federal marshal’s service. Chan imagined he hadn’t heard a lot of talk like this before.

  “Now there’s a visual,” Benz said, and yawned. Nothing a prisoner said could touch Benz. “I hear you have a big-time lawyer. Why’d he plea bargain you out?”

  Chan was surprised Benz would ask that. That was over-the-top even for him. Sports talk was one thing, maybe even the cupcake story, but talking about his case, that was just plain unprofessional. Chan started to say something when Manta Ray said matter-of-factly, “Bowler, my lawyer, was afraid I’d get the death penalty, even though it was Marvin who killed the bank teller, not me. But hey, if you’re there to play, you have to pay. Me? I don’t believe in violence.”

  Benz said, “Yeah, right. One of your priors was for stomping your girlfriend. You broke three of her teeth and her jaw.”

  Chan pictured Manta Ray shrugging. “Bitch hit my kid. I didn’t like it.” He fell silent. Chan had heard the federal prosecutor say the guy had three or four kids with different women. No wives. How would those kids grow up carting this guy’s genes around?

  There was silence in the back of the van. Chan didn’t think it would last. Benz was shooting off his mouth because he was bored, and Otter was only following his lead.

  Sure enough, Benz picked it up again. “Your buddy Marvin Cass got his brains blown out at the bank, but you got away, even with a bullet in your side. I was impressed reading that, even if the FBI found you later in that flophouse in the warehouse district in Alexandria. They didn’t find any of the jewelry or money you stole from the bank safe-deposit boxes, did they? You had the grit to hide it first. That impressed me, too. Tell me something. Now that you’re about to spend the next thirty years in lockup, maybe you want to change your mind, clear your conscience? Tell us where you hid all that fine stuff you stole?”

  Manta Ray laughed, tut-tutted. “Are you conspiring with a prisoner, Mr. Federal Marshal? You want a share to fill out your retirement?”

  Otter gave another nervous laugh, said, “Of course he isn’t, but I bet you could still get less time if you told the FBI where you hid all of it. Why haven’t you?”

  “Ah, lad, an excellent question. Of course there’s an answer, there’s always an answer. Maybe you’ll find out soon enough.” His Irish was riding high, so thick it was like he’d left Ireland the week before.

  Chan looked in his rearview, saw Manta Ray had leaned back against the van wall and closed his eyes. Actually, he’d wondered about that, too. Why hold on to the loot if it was going to cost him thirty years in prison?

  Benz said, “In thirty years, I’ll probably be underground. But thirty years is a long time, a very long time. I plan to spend it fishing the Great Lakes and playing a lot of golf courses. I’ll be free to do what I want when I want. I could have sex every night until I croak, what with Viagra. But you? Sorry, buddy, you’re screwed.”

  Chan would have told anyone but Benz to shut up by now, but he didn’t want to start an argument, didn’t want Manta Ray to hear that. So he decided to mind his own, maybe listen to the Pilots again and chair-dance some more. But first, right now, he couldn’t help but listen.

  Manta Ray said, “You think I’m going to go without sex for thirty years?” He laughed, only this time, his laugh was nasty, with an edge that made Chan’s skin crawl. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

  Silence again. This time it lasted.

  They had less than an hour before they reached Lee Penitentiary, the high-security federal prison in Pennington Gap, Virginia. Chan couldn’t wait to hand Manta Ray over to the prison staff. He looked in the rearview, saw Benz reading a novel, Otter staring through the mesh cage out the front of the van.

  Finally, Chan saw a flash of the huge white concrete penitentiary tower in the distance through a small gap between two low hills. Nearly there. He turned the big black Chevy van off the interstate onto the narrow two-lane road that led to Lee. Only two miles to go. Chan glanced into his rearview, saw Manta Ray was awake, leaning forward, focused. On what? His dark eyes dominated a strong high-cheekboned face that was movie-star good-looking, no doubt about that. But Chan could see that someone would forget the good looks, if he looked long enough into Manta Ray’s eyes and saw the blackness behind them. It looked to Chan like his lips were moving, like he was chanting silently. Was he meditating or trying to cast some kind of a curse? Chan felt a stab of fear, shook his head at himself. Manta Ray was a seriously scary man, and he’d seen a lot of scary in his ten years as a U.S. marshal.

  Chan drove carefully as the road narrowed over a short bridge, the stream beneath running high because of the recent heavy rains. Once off the bridge, the oaks and maples grew so lush they nearly met over the road. It was beautiful country, endless rolling hills dotted with small towns, cattle, sheep, an occasional white house, and more trees than you’d care to count. That day the sky was a clear shining blue, the air sweet and warm. He’d never minded the prisoner runs to Lee—except maybe this one. He didn’t want to think about it, but he was uncomfortable in the same van with this prisoner. He was a bottomless pit of mean covered with a coat of slippery charm. He wanted this run over.

  Chan smoothly followed a bend in the road when he saw a motorcycle on its side across both lanes, the rider down beside it, unmoving. He braked, threw the steering wheel over just as a man burst from the trees and ran toward them, dressed in commando black, mask, and army boots. A dark metal canister shot through his open driver’s-side window, an inch from Chan’s face, and slammed against the passenger door.

  A flash bang.

  Chan only had an instant to throw the van into reverse and lay on the gas before a ferocious bright light blinded him and an incredible blast in the enclosed space deafened him. The whole van shook with the force of the concussion. It knocked him senseless for a moment. When his brain was working again, his world was spinning and his body bowed forward in pain. He lost control. The van shot backward off the road, its rear end slamming hard into an oak, throwing Chan sideways. As his head lashed back, the airbag exploded in his face.

  He heard Otter and Benz yelling, moving around. Then he heard the back window shatter under a rain of bullets, and heard another flash bang crash into the van. He heard Otter yell, heard another huge explosion, then he heard groans. At least Manta Ray wasn’t going anywhere in his three-piece prisoner’s suit, his feet shackled to the floor of the van.

  Only Chan could get them out of here. He pushed away the airbag and swiped his shirtsleeve over his tearing eyes, trying to clear his vision. He got the engine turned over again, but the van only lurched to one side on its rear wheels. It had to be a broken axle.

  He heard another canister slam into the van through the shattered back window. Chan knew it wasn’t another flash bang when he heard it hissing out some kind of aerosol and heard Benz and Otter wheezing and coughing. The gas would get to him through the wire cage in seconds.

  Chan pressed the power button on his sat phone, punched in the emergency number and yelled, “We’re down! We’re down! One mile from Lee! We’re down!” He felt the world fading, and there was nothing he could do about it. He watched smoke rise in a skinny gray funnel from beneath the hood as the sat phone dropped from his hand.

  He heard
someone’s voice outside the van, shouting orders. How many were there? It didn’t matter, nothing he could do mattered anymore. Chan wondered if the gas, or whatever it was, was going to kill him. He didn’t want to die, he wanted to stay with Liddy and the kids—

  3

  CRIMINAL APPREHENSION UNIT, CAU

  HOOVER BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  When Savich invited Special Agent Cam Wittier to move over to the CAU from the Criminal Division, there was no question in her mind it was a good move, though her chief had cursed Savich out for stealing her. She knew it was going to be an easy transition for her since she already knew most of the CAU agents and liked them, and they seemed to like her and think she was a good addition. She’d long admired the unit and what they did, just as she admired CAU chief Dillon Savich, occasionally even wished he wasn’t married to her kickboxing partner, Sherlock. She did wonder, though, if he would have invited her into the unit if she hadn’t managed to solve the Starlet Slasher murders two weeks before in L.A. She wasn’t about to float that question. She doubted she ever would.

  It was twelve thirty on a bright Monday afternoon in July, an oven outside, but inside the Hoover Building the AC was pumping along fine. It was officially her first day in her new unit. She’d left the personnel department only a few minutes ago and paused a moment in the doorway, uncertain. All five agents working in-house looked up from their computers and their cells, stopped their conversations, smiled at her, waved, welcomed her. Shirley, the unit secretary, hugged her and showed her to the desk of Special Agent Dane Carver, who’d recently transferred to the Los Angeles Field Office, with his professor wife and baby daughter. L.A. was a meaty assignment in the bank-robbery capital of the country, but Cam preferred the CAU. She spoke to everyone, listened, laughed. She didn’t see Sherlock, but she did see her new boss, Dillon Savich, through his office windows, alternately speaking on his cell and typing on his laptop MAX. He looked up, smiled at her.