Fortunes of the Dead (28 page)

“Why don't you get yourself a whole pot? Are you asleep?”

“A spouse cannot testify against a spouse in court.”

“You think?”

No response to the remark.

“Joel, listen. Kate saw him wrap the sweater around a rock, tie the sleeves in a knot, and throw it into a pond that sits about halfway down the driveway on their property.”

Joel thought for a moment. “You believe her?”

“Absolutely.”

“If it's true … what an idiot. Cops make some of the worst criminals. Okay, even without Kate's testimony, if it's Cheryl's sweater, on his property, that will nail it. The body will likely be close.”

Joel leaned across the desk, put his hands on the side of my face and pulled me close. He kissed me hard, then turned to the phone.

“One other thing.”

He stopped, hand hovering over the dial pad. “What?”

“You can have Kate's testimony. Cory Edgers never divorced his first wife, Amy McAlister. I double-checked, this is straight up. Kate and Cory Edgers aren't legally man and wife.”

Joel frowned at me. “How long have you known that?”

I stared at him for a long moment. “That's the only thing you think of to say to me?”

“How long did you sit on that piece of information?”

I turned and walked away.

I was still in the lobby of the police building when my cell phone rang. The caller ID said
Miranda Brady
.

“Lena? It's Miranda.”

I went through the double doors out onto the sidewalk. The wind was blowing, which made it hard to catch everything Miranda said.

“It looks like we've got him, Miranda.”

“Him?”

“Your sister's killer.”

“How? Who?”

“It's Edgers. There's no doubt.”

“But Cheryl wasn't seeing him, she would have told me.”

“Look, there are still a lot of details to put together. But it's him. With any luck he'll tell us where she's buried and you can put her to rest.”

“Can you prove it?”

Odd question. “Yeah.”

“How? Have you found some physical evidence?”

“The police have the sweater. The one Cheryl was wearing when she died.” They'd have it soon, anyway. “I'm sorry, Miranda, I can't go into it. Just trust me on this. He's nailed.”

She was silent for a long moment.

“Feels weird, I know. You think you're going to be so happy, but you're not. It gets better, I promise. Do you want me to call your father?”

“No, I'll do it. He's been on the phone every night wondering if you'd come up with anything. This should give him some satisfaction.”

“Tell him I'll put together a report, and call with details when it's pulled together.”

“Great. Well done, I should say.”

“Thanks,” At least somebody appreciated me.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
ONE

Wilson tilted the wooden chair back against the wall and picked up his beer mug. His hand was sticky with barbecue sauce but it was pointless to clean it off because he was still eating. He figured he could handle one more beer before he'd have to switch to something nonalcoholic. Two at most. It was prom night and he was the host so he had to stay reasonably sober.

Nobody was falling-down drunk, but he was keeping an eye on the old guy sitting next to the woman with red hair. The two of them had put away a lot of beer. The guy got up to head for the men's room, and Wilson watched to see if he'd stagger. The man was amazingly sure-footed.

The entire group was spread out among ten tables, in groups of twos and threes, with one big group near the cash register. Twice, other customers had looked in the door, then turned around and walked out.

Billy's Barbecue was the perfect kind of place for this sort of gathering. Low-key, informal, wood booths along the back or a step down to the tables on the lower level. Wilson had just settled at an empty table near the men's room, which was not a coincidence. Wilson was a prom night veteran. He'd socialized his ass off, and was taking a break. Keeping tabs on the level of intoxication. Prom night DUIs were frowned upon.

It was going well. The locals loved prom nights; dinner and beer on the ATF, and a chance to discuss the case, trade opinions, war stories, theories. Ruggers had suggested it and authorized the expenditure and taken it out of the Nashville district budget. It happened often enough—a case solved when everyone got together in the same room to shoot the shit. Someone would come up with something he thought everybody else already knew. Sometimes it was the right push in the right direction, and enough cases were aided and abetted by prom night to make it a standard operating procedure.

Times like this made Wilson feel smug and superior to the FBI. You would never catch those guys having beers with the locals. You'd for sure never catch them picking up the tab.

Wilson picked up a barbecued rib, teeth scraping the bone to get the meat off. He was full but still eating. They didn't have barbecue like this in California.

He thought of Sel, and how much she would love this place. How she would have a healthy appetite for the barbecue and cobbler. Sel had grown up in Michigan, and currently worked as a chef in a bistro in Woodland Hills—a job she loved. She cooked, she surfed, she walked her dog. She talked about opening her own restaurant, but worried that it would take too much time away from the beach. In a town full of people who were never happy with how they looked and pursued the impossible dream of physical perfection, Sel was exotic in her personal contentment, and her seemingly oblivious lack of awareness of the California Code of Appearance.

Wilson dreamed of helping Sel run a barbecue place in Marina Del Rey. A southern barbecue place.

He looked across the room, watching Mendez. They'd met for the first time the day before in the muted but busy Lexington PD office. Mendez was different from the other locals. More reserved, watchful, giving the impression of a man who was tightly wound. Not a guy who took advantage of casual Fridays.

Mendez had been cordial, wary, but very open with the facts of the case. He had answered every question Wilson posed, addressed every issue head-on, no apologies, no fluff. The man was slender, and dressed very well. His tie was tight, even now, when everybody else was coming apart at the seams. His hair was a mix of black threaded with silver; he had brown eyes, and a faint white scar on one cheek. He did not have a hint of the resentment or inferiority complex Wilson occasionally found with locals.

It was funny, Mendez didn't talk much, get loud, or tell jokes, but somehow he put his detectives at ease. Maybe they were always at ease. They were southerners. Wilson noticed that Mendez listened a lot while making sure everybody had beer and barbecue. Besides Mendez and three other Lexington PD detectives, there were two local ATF agents there.

A few minutes before the gathering started up, Wilson had gotten a call from Nashville. An attorney representing Cory Edgers had been in touch—Edgers wanted to come in, to talk, to cut a deal. Wilson had been hoping the prom night discussions would give him a glimmer, something to burn Edgers with during the negotiation. No body made the whole thing difficult. But so far, nobody had come up with anything new. The barbecue had been great, the beer had been cold, and the case facts and theories had been the same old shit.

Edgers's attorney had requested both Wilson and Mendez be present and ready to “work things through.” Which meant Edgers had something to give them. If it concerned Rodeo, Wilson could see where he and Mendez might have a difference of opinion. Mendez wanted premeditation and murder; he wanted recovery of the body. Wilson had his eye on the ball, and the ball was Rodeo.

The tab at Billy's came to four hundred eighty-nine dollars plus tip. Mendez had grimaced at the bill, but Wilson's jaw had dropped. You would never get away that cheaply in Los Angeles. They'd had their fill of beer and ribs, beans and deep-fried banana peppers, corn bread, Texas toast, blackberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream. Wilson fumbled through his wallet for the company credit card—the ATF American Express Platinum—and noticed that Mendez was standing by the wreckage of their meal, staring out the window. He seemed to be waiting.

“Did you want to order anything else to eat?” Wilson asked. He'd signed the credit card slip, including a tip that brought tears of happiness to the restaurant staff.

Mendez gave him a small half smile.

Right
, Wilson thought.
Why waste a whole smile when a half of one would do
.

Mendez looked antsy. If the beer had an effect on him, he hid it well. “Edgers and his attorney will be in before noon. Are you interested in thinking through some strategy, or would you rather do that tomorrow?”

“I'm still on West Coast time. I'm wide awake. Let's go get a clean table and sort things through.”

Mendez looked over Wilson's shoulder at the kitchen.

“They won't be going home for another hour or two. They've locked the front doors but they said we could pick out a clean table and stay as long as we want.”

Mendez followed Wilson up a level to the long pinewood booths. The beer was working in their favor; both of them more relaxed than usual.

“I answered all of your questions today,” Mendez said.

Wilson leaned back against the cushion. He knew where this was heading.

“I feel like I'm somewhat out of the loop on your end of the case, and I wondered if you'd like to fill me in. I think as it stands that you and I are going to go into that negotiation tomorrow with two different agendas.”

“I had that same thought. Give me a quick rundown on what you do know. I can make sure everything you have is accurate and fill in the blanks.”

A waiter appeared, left a pitcher of beer and two clean glasses and told them it was on the house.

“I know Edgers was involved with Cheryl Dunkirk—professionally and personally. I know Edgers is not legally married to the woman he says is his wife. I know he killed Cheryl Dunkirk and tied her bloody sweater to a rock and threw it into a pond on his property. The last two aren't confirmed.”

Wilson felt his stomach go tight. “Who's been holding out on who?”

“The last two came in today, still being checked. I also know Cheryl's disappearance is somehow crossing one of your ongoing investigations, and that whatever it is, it's big.”

Wilson poured beer into both glasses, shoving one toward Mendez. “Is that why Edgers is coming in? He knows about the sweater?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Has there been a leak?”

“Let's just say the evidence came from a leak.”

Wilson sat back in his booth, shredded one of the paper towels Billy's provided for cleanup. “Okay, Mendez. This is what I've got. There have been five federal agents assassinated in the last five years—three were FBI, two were our guys. All of them were present at Waco during the firestorm.”

Mendez reached for his glass. Took a long swallow. “Go on.”

“The killer keeps the same MO. Stuns them with some kind of high-powered Taser, binds their hands and feet with baling wire, strangles them with baling wire.”

“Torture?”

“Doesn't look like it. On the other hand, the method of execution is pretty up close and personal.”

“So you're not thinking this is a hire job.”

“We don't think so. Right on the heels of every death is an Internet radio broadcast with the name of the victim, location of the body, details of the kill. Information that could only come from someone who either did the job, or was in communication with the one who did. We tracked the data streams, and have come up with a different survivalist group each time. What these groups have in common is they're loosely organized, ineffective, small-timers. It's never the same group twice.”

“So the killer is using them to draw fire.”

“Not bad for a local guy.” Wilson looked up quickly and saw that Mendez hadn't taken offense. Stupid joke. Too much beer. “Your office do much with geographical forensics?”

“We've got some people training at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Nothing formal, nothing up and running yet. The sniper investigation your people did in the D.C. area put the spotlight on it, so we may get some funding on down the road.”

Wilson balled up a paper towel from the roll at the end of the table. “We work with a marine intel group out at Pendleton, and they spent a lot of time on this. Kept coming up with the same results—the killer had no discernible geographical base. We interpreted that to mean that the killer was not a single person, but some kind of networking conspiracy with these groups. And then more data came in and we started to get another picture—a geographical route. We pounded the computers for anything that runs that particular track and came up with the U.S. Pro-Am Markus Bourbon Rodeo.”

“Stun gun. Baling wire. Large animals—bulls.”

“The Rodeo Assassin. We still haven't got anything solid on the Waco connection. But we had an agent working undercover at the Markus Bourbon Pro-Am, and she was certain she'd identified Rodeo's girlfriend, a rodeo clown named Janis Winters, who functions as a sort of liaison between the survivalist groups and Rodeo himself. That was the last we heard from our agent before we found her body.”

“Same way as the others?”

“Down to the last detail. Except for no Internet radio stream.” Wilson rubbed his eyes. “In the meantime, we get an intern here in Kentucky who disappears, and one of the last things she did before she went missing was have a conversation with her ex-boyfriend, who used to be an ATF intern himself. She tells him that a sheriff by the name of Cory Edgers, who'd been mentoring her since she'd gotten the intern job, and who had actually gotten her into a bit of trouble with her boss, had told her that he was working undercover on a big case that involved the murder of federal agents. She told the ex, Robbie, that she thought Edgers was bragging to impress her, but that a lot of what he said sounded pretty real. She also said he knew who the next victim was going to be, and that he would bring “the big guys” in when he'd made his case. He was going to make a big splash, and get himself hired on with the ATF. He told her the name of the victim.