The Blood Flag (18 page)

I knew the names of all the men who had bled on the flag. Of course none of that mattered if we couldn't persuade Eidhalt. He'd have to be involved in the testing to really believe it.

I sent an email to Florian asking him to start thinking about the best DNA lab to use in Germany. After getting sidetracked by checking sports scores and political blogs and losing track of the time, I was brought back to the present when the door flew open and Alex came in looking like she'd seen a ghost. She looked around desperately then saw me. She came over to me and dropped her purse on the small table in front of me like it contained all her burdens. She sat down and tried to catch her breath. She was nearly unable to speak. I waited. She shook her head subtly, got up, went to the counter, and ordered a cup of green tea. She returned to the table and played with the tea bag in the hot water. Finally, she looked up at me.

“Never in my life have I ever met or even seen anyone so completely . . . intimidating.”

“You're FBI. You're not supposed to be intimidated by anybody,” I said half joking. “He was there?”

She nodded.

“What happened?”

She took a sip from her tea. She was holding her cup with two hands, probably so her hand wouldn't shake. Finally, she spoke. “I found the shop, and pulled in. I haven't been to a body shop in a long time. It feels strange, especially for a woman. This isn't one of those fancy shiny body shops that your insurance company sends you to if you get hit. This is one of those dirty, greasy, body shops where sketchy men hang out and probably chop stolen cars and fix cars involved in hit and runs. The kind that never wants any insurance company to pay them for anything, because they don't want the scrutiny. Once I pulled in it was much bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. The door is kind of small to drive through, but once you get through, it's like you're in a warehouse.”

“Go on.”

“I got out of the car and stood there waiting for somebody to approach me. I was looking for Jedediah the whole time, but didn't see him. You know those offices that have a glass window and they can see the whole shop floor? They have one. And a guy was staring at me from there and not moving. I stood looking around with some of the men working on cars glancing at me now and then, but nobody moved. It was damn awkward. Finally, the guy in the office gets up and comes out. Looks like he's doing me a huge favor just by getting his ass out of his chair.”

“What did he look like?”

“Skinny guy, tall, maybe six two, not muscular. Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Blonde hair. Spiked. He had earrings in each ear, sort of pointed earrings where they go through and then they're open at the bottom but they point down to the floor. He came up to me. ‘What can I do for you?' “I was trying hard to look sheepish. Not something I'm good at. Anyway, I said ‘I backed into a pole. I need you to fix it.' I led him around to the back of the Accord and pointed to the damage. He looked at it, put his hands on his hips, and said, ‘Shit lady. What were you doing? You musta been going backwards at thirty miles an hour. Not that easy to do.'”

She looked at me intensely. “I
told
you you overdid it. Anyway, I assured him that I was not, and that I was simply backing out of a parking space and hit a pole. He just looked at me and shook his head. He didn't believe me. But it didn't matter. He probably deals with liars all the time, and I was just the latest. ‘You want an estimate?' he asked. I told him I didn't want the insurance company involved. I'd submitted two claims already this year and if they got a third one, they'd cancel me. I told him I'd pay cash.”

“Go on,” I said.

She nodded, relaxing slightly. “So I told him, yeah, I need an estimate. He went into his office, brought out a clipboard with a blank piece of paper—I kid you not—a blank piece of paper. He looked at the damage, crawled under the back of the car, tried to open the trunk—which wouldn't open—and wrote a number on the piece of paper. Twelve hundred sixty-four dollars. I told him that was ridiculous. I told him, ‘You're out of your mind. This should be about six hundred dollars.' And he looked at me with complete apathy. He clearly didn't care if I had my car fixed there or not. So he said, ‘Have you done a lot of estimates?' I, of course, had to say no and he said, ‘You need a new bumper, a new trunk lid, there's damage underneath, a lot of work.' I said, ‘Well can you do any better than that number?' He shook his head. ‘Nope.' So I began my little charade. He just shook his head. He didn't even bother to respond. So, I asked him, ‘Are you the owner?' He said, ‘Nope.' So, I told him I wanted to see the owner. He simply told me I didn't need to see the owner, that he was the estimator, and that was the number. I told him I insisted on seeing the owner. He insisted I didn't need to. I then told him, I wasn't leaving until I saw the owner and he started to look at me a little funny, evaluating me. He asked me, ‘Where do you live?' I said, ‘What do you mean, where do I live?' ‘Where do you live in Columbia?' I was a little bit taken aback. I said that I lived near Lake Murray. He looked at me again, and then started checking me out. Not like sexually, but evaluating my clothes. I think he was starting to suspect something. He then asked to see my driver's license. I didn't know what to do. I panicked. Why would they need to see my driver's license? We hadn't talked about that at all.”

“We should have anticipated that. We should have gotten you a fake ID.”

“It didn't matter. I told him it had been revoked and I didn't have one.”

“You told him your driver's license had been revoked?”

“What else was I going to tell him? I was going to show him what, my Virginia driver's license? My FBI ID? What the
hell
would you have had me show him?”

“So what happened?”

“I told him it had been revoked because I'd had too many points. So he frowns and tells me I must be a really shitty driver because I've had two insurance claims and enough points to get my license revoked and backed into a light pole at sixty miles an hour. I got pissy and told him he didn't need to worry about it, he just needed to fix my damned car for less than twelve hundred sixty-four dollars and that I wanted to see the owner if he wasn't willing to lower it. He told me he absolutely wasn't willing to lower it, that was the price, and I didn't need to see the owner. I told him I needed to deal with the person who had the authority, as he was clearly a
lackey
and I needed to talk to the person in charge. Well that got his back up, he got pissed. If I didn't like his estimate, I could go elsewhere. I told him I might very well do that, but first wanted to see the owner. I crossed my arms and stood there making it clear to him that I wasn't going anywhere until he got the owner. And I had left my car just inside the entrance so that nobody was going in or out until my car was moved. The keys were in my purse so they couldn't just move the car easily. So he goes into his little office, throws his clipboard onto the desk and picks up the phone and was gesturing—but I couldn't hear what he was saying—and then put the phone down. He sat down at his desk and then didn't say another word. I stood there waiting, looked around the shop at the activity and nobody was making any move toward me. It got awkward. I started looking at the ceiling and the walls and then realized for the first time there were security cameras everywhere. He was probably studying me on the camera. I just waited, and still nothing happened. I walked over to the lackey's office and talked to him from outside his doorway. I asked him if the owner was coming and he didn't even respond. He didn't look up; he didn't say anything.

“Then, from no more than twelve inches behind me, ‘You looking for me?' It's bad enough to get surprised. But when the surprise is so close you can almost feel his breath and then it's a gruff voice and then you whip around and the person looks like a serial killer? I swear I thought I was going to wet my pants. Literally. You just don't even understand. I'm not afraid of many people. I've taken Kung Fu, I can defend myself reasonably. Well probably not, but I
think
I can, which is good enough, and, if I feel like I'm really in danger, I'll just get out my weapon, and if some man is truly going to attack me, I'll shoot him. Deader than a doornail. With a clear conscience. But when you're face to face with somebody who could clearly pinch your head off, and might in fact do that? Whole different deal. And close enough to do it faster than you could even object. It's just something about the intimidating presence of a guy this big and this strong. Not that he's that tall . . . he's just massive. I could literally hit him as hard as I could with just about anything and it wouldn't even phase him. I haven't felt that exposed and vulnerable in a long time. Well, ever. I really wanted to know why I had left my handgun with you and why you weren't a quarter of a block away, and why I wasn't wearing a wire so you could come rescue me. It made me realize how stupidly we had gone about this. Those were the thoughts that went through my mind in the first tenth of a second. In the second tenth of a second, I tried to gather myself and face him squarely. Even though he was twelve inches away and he was way inside my personal space and the only option I had was to step into Mr. Lackey's office, I had to push back. I told him that his estimator's number was ridiculous; it was on a blank piece of paper, he didn't seem to know what he was doing, and that I wanted him to give me a discount from that estimate.

“He stared at me with these cold eyes and told me that he wouldn't change anything. This guy was the best estimator in the city. So I looked right back at him and asked him if he would take a look at the car himself. He looked over my shoulder at his estimator, then back at me. Then he said, ‘Sure. Why not.' He sort of pushed me aside as he went into the office and picked up the guy's clipboard with the estimate on it. He walked out to the Accord, went around to the back of it, did nothing but glance at it, circled the estimate on the clipboard, and put a big check mark by it. He handed the clipboard to me. ‘That's our estimate.' So, I asked him if that was it. If that was the best they could possibly do. He stared right back at me, again getting too close, maybe a foot. I could smell the sweat on his body. ‘No, it's not the best we can possibly do. But it's the best we're going to do.' So I told him I didn't think that was very helpful. He stares at me, then he looks me up and down. He asked me what I did. I told him that I was a secretary at the University and worked in the Department of Education. And he asked me why there wasn't a USC parking sticker anywhere on my car. I told him I lost my parking privileges when I lost my license. He didn't buy it. ‘So you went out and scraped off your sticker? Where's the residue? Where's the outline of where it was? I think you're a cop. I don't know why you're here, but I think you probably oughta get going.' I laughed. ‘A cop. That's a good one.' But he was right. I needed to get out of there. So I put out my hand, where I'd hidden the piece of paper between two fingers. He paused, then shook my hand and felt the paper. He curled his hand into a fist and put it into his pocket. He turned his back to me, and walked back in the direction he'd come from. I shook my head, got in the car, backed out, and drove straight here.”

I sat back and considered what she had said. “Do you think he knows who you are?”

She shook her head. “Probably. He knows something's up, that my story wasn't holding together, but I don't think he really cared what the real story was. He just knew he didn't want anything to do with me. Do you trust him?”

I took the lid off my Starbucks cup and scraped the remaining foam from inside with the stirring stick and ate it. “I'm not sure. As of right now? No.”

“So you set up a meeting with him for you and me in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.”

“Yes, tonight.”

She finished her tea. “You've been such a comfort to me, thank you so much.”

We drove to the dead end at Lake Murray at ten o'clock. We turned at the same bent road sign and drove to the end of the road, right by the water. I stopped in the same place I had stopped before, turned out the lights and shut off the engine. We were an hour early. I wanted to see where Jedediah came from this time. No surprises. If Jedediah Thom had in fact gone out on his own and had killed the head of the Southern Volk, he might feel free to do whatever he thinks will make him more secure in his position. “Let's check the area and wait outside the car in the woods. I want our eyes to adjust to the dark before he gets here.”

We opened our doors at the same time and just as I was closing mine, I saw a rush of motion on the other side of the car. I heard a shocked cry from Alex and a rustle of activity, which then went silent. I unholstered my Glock and ran around the car. Jedediah was standing at the edge of the trees holding Alex with his forearm around her neck. He was barely visible in black jeans, a black turtleneck, and black rubber gloves. His other hand was over her mouth. I could hear her panic, but he had obviously threatened her as she was not fighting his grip. I raised my gun and pointed it at his head, twenty feet away. “Let her go.”

Jedediah began moving slightly in unpredictable ways. I could and absolutely would shoot him in the head from twenty feet away with Alex right next to him. I could hit a head-sized target from twenty feet away ten out of ten times, swaying or not. He said softly, “Put your gun down.”

“Not a chance. Let her go.”

“You have to answer a question for me first.”

“Here's one answer. If you kill her I'll either shoot you right now, or I'll make it my life's mission to get you a special injection that will put you to sleep forever.”

He shook his head. “You here to arrest me?”