Resistant (15 page)

The next day he had a plane ticket and a new partner.

The flagstone walkway was bordered by neatly tended shrubs. Vaill led the way up three steps to the front door. He brushed a hand across the breast of his suit coat for reassurance the envelope was still there, and rang the doorbell. Lola Burke checked them out through her sidelight window. Her expression went from curious to saturnine in the time it took her to open the door. She did not bother asking who these latest suits were, or what they wanted. According to her file, well before her husband became first an agent, then a fugitive, she knew what a G-man looked like, and also that they seldom brought anything but trouble.

“I guess there’s no shortage of Feds,” she said. “You people just keep rolling in like Old Man River. I haven’t heard from him if that’s what you’re here to ask.”

Vaill and McCall flashed their badges—protocol. Lola sighed and made a face as if they were her least favorite vegetable. She kept her arm against the door frame, as a barrier.

“Mrs. Burke, I’m Special Agent Tim Vaill and this is my partner, Special Agent Charles McCall. I know we’re not the first agents to come here to speak with you, but it’s very important that we find your husband. We were wondering if we could try again.”

Lola rolled her eyes and lowered her arm.

I’ve been through this all before and I’ve got nothing more to tell you, but go ahead if you really need to.

They followed her into a bright and airy kitchen. Light spilled into the room from a bank of mullioned windows that looked onto a lush lawn. The home, from Vaill’s quick inspection, was well appointed—nice furniture throughout, granite countertops in the kitchen, new appliances, too, but nothing that looked unaffordable on an agent’s salary. If Burke’s motive for murder was money, it certainly wasn’t ending up here.

“Want something to drink. Water?”

“No thank you, we’re fine,” Vaill said, speaking for both himself and McCall. If Maria were here, she’d be the one speaking for Vaill.

Lola shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. She took a seat at the kitchen table, with her back to the windows, leaned back, and waited. Vaill sat where he had a full-on look at her face. Either she was an expert with makeup, or her smooth, porcelain skin showed none of the strain he’d seen on other people who’s loved ones had gone missing.

She doesn’t think he’s gone forever.

“Before you get going,” Lola said, a slip of venom in her voice, “let me save you both some trouble. I haven’t seen him. I haven’t heard from him. I have no idea where he is, or where he might have gone. I don’t know why he did what he allegedly did. All I know is that he’s gone and you’re here to harass me some more, as if my life isn’t already enough of a shit mess, because you think my husband murdered two of your own. Does that about sum it up?”

Just prior to leaving on this trip, Vaill had spent several hours with the brightest minds from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), getting a crash course on some of their techniques. In the span of her short and embittered speech, Lola Burke had given away four glaring tells confirming she was a liar. She was fidgeting with her hands, acting nervous. She was also uncooperative, making negative statements and complaints, saying nothing to support the search. In addition, he’d get more eye contact from a blind person, but when she did look at him, her pupils were the size of two nickels, possibly the result of a pheromone found more commonly in liars than truth tellers.

Thank you, BAU.

It was going to take patience and finesse to get her to come clean—and perhaps the picture.

“We apologize for adding any strain to what is most certainly a difficult time, Mrs. Burke,” McCall said. “If you don’t mind, could you tell us about the last time you spoke to your husband?”

Good,
Vaill thought.
Let McCall get all the bullshit out of the way. He’s smart to keep it nonconfrontational—good cop, bad cop.

Lola sighed heavily. She then went through a long and passionless diatribe about the day her husband left for his latest assignment. She shared what he ate for breakfast that morning, how he kissed her good-bye and said he’d call her soon, same as he always did when he left on an assignment. She was adamant that he did nothing at all out of the ordinary—no indication that he was planning on going rogue.

McCall dutifully took notes, even though Lola had already provided the same information to the agents who had been there before.

“So there’s nothing else?” McCall said. “No explanation for your husband’s actions? No idea where he might be?”

Lola shot McCall an angry sideways glance. “I don’t have any information, Agent McCall. I’d be more interested to know what you all have come up with.”

Jackpot.

This was the opening Vaill had been waiting for.

“You want our theories?” he asked.

“I’d like to think the massive manpower of the FBI could come up with something, so yes.”

More anger. More negativity. More lies.

“I can’t speak for the Bureau,” Vaill said, his eyes fixed on her, “but I’ll tell you what
I
think. There are three possible reasons why someone would betray their country: money, sex, or ideology. Now, you’re a good-looking woman, Lola. If you don’t mind my saying so, any man would be a fool to betray you in that way. That doesn’t mean anything, though. As they say, love is blind and it can be blinding. But you don’t seem like a woman scorned, and if your husband had left you for another woman, if he’d been seduced into this betrayal, you’d have had at least some suspicion along the way. You seem angry with us for intruding, but not angry at Alexander. So let’s take sex off the table for the moment.”

“Whatever.”

“How about money? Did he get paid to murder two agents? If he did, it had to be a hell of a lot of money, which would make me think again about sex … or drugs, I suppose. But when I look around this house, and from what I could tell of Alexander, I don’t see a man obsessed with money, or on drugs. Just my opinion, maybe I’m wrong.”

“You’re not,” Lola said flatly.

“So, that leaves ideology—a belief so profound, so consuming, it could make a person commit an unspeakable act. It would need to be something at their core—a powerful, misguided sense of justice. Maybe you share that belief. Maybe that’s why you’re angry with us instead of outraged and sickened by your husband’s actions. Is that your husband, Lola? Was he a misguided individual? Is that why you’ve lost him?”

“Misguided is your word,” Lola said, looking away.

“Well, I lost something, too,” Vaill said. “Mrs. Burke, I’m not speaking to you as an agent. I’m not even here to vilify your husband. I’m here because of this scar.”

He pushed aside his hair to give Lola a look at the track left by the bullet that had torn through his scalp and into his brain.

“Why are you showing this to me?” Lola asked, looking away quickly.

“Because that’s where your husband shot me,” Vaill said. “I was standing next to my wife, my partner, a beautiful woman named Maria, when he shot her dead at point-blank range. Right here, just above the bridge of her nose. Then he shot me—twice.”

“Please stop.”

“I didn’t see evil in Alexander’s eyes. I saw fervor—a belief. And I don’t see any evil in you, Mrs. Burke. I see a woman who loves her husband very much, the way I loved my wife. And I think he made a promise to you. I think he told you he’d come back for you when he could, when it was safe. But I’m here to tell you that he’s never going to come. He’s never going to come because sooner or later we’re going to get him—and because the belief that led him to kill my wife is stronger than his love for you. Like me, the person you love more than anything, is never coming back.”

This time, Lola’s quivering lip and the tears welling in her eyes seemed genuine.

“I … I want you to leave,” she managed.

“We can do what’s right, Mrs. Burke,” Vaill went on, ignoring her plea. “We can do what’s right and not turn our back. Please, Mrs. Burke, you’re not in any trouble. You won’t be in trouble. You have my word on that. But please stop lying for him. Tell me everything you know that might help us and we’ll be gone.”

Lola bit her lower lip.

“Please go,” she said. But there was no force behind her words.

Vaill forged ahead.

“Do it for my wife.”

He withdrew the envelope with the crime scene photos inside and spread the three of them on the table. It had ripped at his guts to keep it so near to his heart, but Lola Burke was close to cracking. This was a beautiful woman’s flesh and blood and bone. Lola gasped at the gruesome photographs. Even McCall looked disturbed. Vaill kept his eyes fixed on her, in part to keep himself from looking at the pictures again.

A tear broke loose from the corner of Lola’s right eye and wound down her cheek. She flipped the photo facedown on the table.

Then, without a word, she stood, walked through the kitchen entranceway, and disappeared down the hall. McCall was reaching for his gun, but Vaill raised a hand to hold him back.

“Don’t, Chuck,” he said. “We’re okay.”

A moment later, Lola returned with a small plastic baggie. She passed it over to Vaill.

“This is the DVD my husband sent me after he disappeared,” she said. “It’s the last time I heard from him. It contains everything I know. I’m sorry about your wife. I’m so sorry.”

She walked McCall and Vaill to the door.

“We’re going to have this handled by our evidence-processing people. You know the drill. There’s almost sure to be more questions once we’ve gone over this,” McCall said.

“I’ll be here,” Lola said. “I’m not going anyplace for the time being.”

“It goes without saying that if you hear from your husband, please call me,” Vaill said, passing over his card.

“I can’t promise that.”

“As you wish.”

The two agents had driven more than a mile before McCall spoke.

“That was masterful, man,” he said. “Truly masterful. I know that picture was a tough thing for you to show, but you did it. And just at the right moment, too. This DVD could be the break we need.”

McCall had his phone out, dialing the field office while he was driving and talking.

Vaill was facing away from him, face turned toward the passenger window, eyes closed tightly. The blinding pain behind his eyes had come on with unrelenting force.

CHAPTER 19

           Secrecy is tantamount to success and therefore to know a Neighbor’s true identity is to strip them of a fundamental power.

        
—LANCASTER R. HILL,
100 Neighbors
, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P. 100

“I created a spreadsheet and I think the Bake-a-Thon could raise a thousand dollars,” Emily said.

Lou was back at work at the PWO when his fourteen-year-old called with the latest development in her campaign to raise money for Cap and the Stick and Move gym. Much to her mother Renee’s chagrin, and Lou’s delight, she had been training with Cap for more than eight months and was actually showing serious potential in the ring. Not surprisingly, she absolutely adored the man, and was desperate to do what she could to help pay his mounting bills and save the gym.

“That’s great, sweetie,” Lou said, cupping the phone’s receiver and speaking softly. With well less than nine hundred square feet of office space, no matter how quietly people spoke, conversations in the PWO were rarely private. With the other associate director Wayne Oliver in the next cube over, and secretary Babs Peterbee almost directly across from them, it was hard not to know one another’s business.

Meanwhile, Lou was eyeing the mountainous stack of paperwork Babs had just deposited on his cluttered desk. She appeared unfazed that the carpeted floor inside his cramped cubicle was already serving as an auxiliary workspace. In the span of less than a week, the usual pile of documents and paperwork had multiplied like rabbits. Lou stopped multitasking so he could give Emily his undivided attention, not that she needed it. He had seen his daughter take up the banner of a cause before, and knew what an unstoppable force she could be.

He thought back to the time her computer crashed, and with it the term paper she had finished less than a day before. There were no tears. No throwing things. No rants. She did not talk about asking for an extension. What she did instead was to berate herself for not making a backup, then vowed never to repeat the mistake again. Finally, after a bowl of her favorite mint chocolate-chip ice cream, she gathered her reference books and rewrote the entire eleven-page paper in one marathon session.

A
+.

In the game of life, divorce or no divorce, Lou’s money was on his kid.

She was just four when Renee decided that Lou’s amphetamine addiction was bigger and stronger than their marriage and, quite understandably, bailed. For a couple of years, it was hard going for all of them. But gradually, understanding, flexibility, and communication took the place of anger, and Emily became a tribute to what was possible when a husband and wife refused to allow the failure of their marriage to mar their commitment to their child and the strengthening of her self-esteem. Now, a byproduct of that commitment had been the reestablishment of the friendship and mutual respect with Renee that years of Lou’s self-serving drug use had destroyed.

Mental … Physical … Spiritual—like water from a pipe leaking in the attic, Lou’s alcoholism and other addictions had seeped down and destroyed the fabric of all three aspects of his being. Now, recovery and hard work had restored them, and in doing so, had stabilized the life of a kid who was already making a difference in the world.

“I think what you’re doing is great, Em,” Lou said. “You’ve got my full support.”

“I don’t need support. What I need is a hundred and fifty boxes of brownie mix.”

“Hey, I thought we were trying to raise money, not spend it.”

“We are,” Emily said. “I’m looking for donations.”

“Donations? Who are you soliciting? Betty Crocker?”