The FBI Thrillers Collection (135 page)

“What do you own?”

“A BMW—oh, nice how you did that—but I’m not sure, sorry. BMW popped into my mind, so maybe. I sure hope you find my car, whatever it is, soon. You can find out who I am in about two seconds flat.”

“How?”

“From the VIN, not to mention the license plate.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “I’ve got people out looking for your car. If the person who struck you tried to hide it, he’s in luck. With all this snow it could be well camouflaged.”

She cleared her throat. “Seems like someone tried to obliterate me, and sort of has.”

“You’ll be okay,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I am wondering how you got to my house.”

“Maybe the woods were just handy?” She didn’t sound upset, and that was surely strange for a civilian. She sounded curious, not at all scared, like she had a problem to solve.

“Or maybe you managed to walk into my woods.”

“Who knows?” She laughed, actually laughed. “Here I am as useless as a lifeguard who can’t swim. What could I have been doing here to make someone go to all this trouble?”

“I can see your eyes nearly crossing. Stop straining. Relax. Stuff is coming back really fast now. It won’t be much longer. Do you think your Beemer is one of those SUVs?”

“It’s not an SUV, it’s an SAV. It’s not a pedestrian utility vehicle, it’s an activity vehicle.” She started laughing again. “Oh goodness, can you believe that?”

“Dr. Crocker told me, probably told you, too, that bits and pieces of things may float back to you, but some big chunks might stay out of sight for a while. Like I said, stop straining. When we find your wuss SAV, maybe you’ll recognize it.”

“Your wife must be a very tolerant woman.”

“She was.”

She didn’t say anything to that. Her head was pounding again. To her surprise, before she could say anything, the sheriff handed her a thermos. “You’re hurting. Take one of those pain pills they gave you.”

She nodded, took two, drank them down with coffee, and leaned her head back against the seat.

She heard the loud barking as soon as she opened the car door.

“That’s Brewster. He’s quite a watchdog. Be careful he doesn’t pee on you.”

Brewster didn’t pee on her, but within three minutes of her lying on the sofa, he was cuddled next to her, licking her chin. The sheriff pulled two handmade afghans over her. She wanted to sleep on this wonderful soft sofa for at least a day.

She awoke when she heard the sheriff saying, “Keep it down, boys. We have a guest.”

“The lady you found last night, Dad?”

“Yeah, she’s going to be okay, but there are things she can’t remember yet, including who she is.”

Dix saw she was awake and looking toward the doorway at the three of them. He introduced the boys to her again.

“I made you the hot tea,” Rob said.

“Yes, I remember. Thank you.”

Dix said, “I don’t know what to call you.”

“Hmm. How about Madonna?”

Rob said, “You don’t have a space between your front teeth.”

She brushed her tongue over her teeth. “Do you think you could pretend I did? Pretend I’m a blonde?”

Rob said, “Madonna changes her hair color all the time, that’s no problem.”

Rafer said, “Mom liked Madonna, said she was so loaded with imagination she’d just keep reinventing herself until she was eighty, maybe end up buying the State of Florida.”

Unlike his brother, Rafe had light brown hair, and his father’s dark eyes, an odd combination that would slay girls when he was a bit older. Both he and his brother were skinny as rails right now, but when they reached their full size, they’d be big men, like their father. And their mother?

“Okay,” Dix said, “Madonna it is. Rob, you want to make Madonna some more hot tea, maybe a couple slices of toast with butter and jam?”

Rob looked at the woman lying on the couch. She looked really beat. “Sure, Dad.”

There was a knock on the front door.

Rafer took off to answer it, Brewster barking madly at his heels.

It was Emory Cox, Dix’s chief deputy. “I’m here to get the photo, Sheriff. Hi, ma’am.”

Dix introduced him. “Call her Madonna for the moment, Emory.” Emory took six Polaroid shots of Madonna, then Dix took him out of the living room, out of hearing.

Rafe stood in the doorway, watching her. He opened his mouth, closed it. “Ah, do you know anything about the double helix, Madonna?”

“Sure, Rafe, come here and we’ll talk about it.”

“Let me show you my model!”

 

THE LIGHT SNOWFALL had stopped two hours before, at seven a.m. The sky was iron gray, the clouds thick and bulging with snow that was forecasted to begin again at about noon.

Agent Ron Latham was standing two feet from Agent Connie Ashley, who was perusing a map of Arlington National Cemetery. “Why would Moses Grace come here? I think old Rolly has got some expensive habits he needs to feed—”

“No,” Connie said automatically. “Not feed—drink.”

“The guy’s an alcoholic on top of everything else?” Agent Jim Farland was pretending to speak into a cell phone.

“Well, I don’t think so, no. I’ll tell you later about his drinking habits.”

Agent Jim Farland said into his cell phone, his voice loud enough to be heard ten feet away, “Hello, Mom. Yeah, we’re going to go over to section twenty-seven, where all the former slaves are buried. . . . Yeah, that’s where all the pre-Civil War dead were buried again after 1900. Listen, Mom, I’ve gotta go, a funeral is expected in twenty minutes. See you soon.”

Ron said to Connie, “They put this op together so fast I’m not sure I’m clear on all the details. We’re supposed to hang out here acting like tourists until Moses Grace and Claudia show up, for whatever reason we don’t know, Pinky Womack in tow?”

“Yeah, that’s what the psycho snitch told me. Ruth said Rolly’s never let her down. He’s reliable and we’ve got to go with that, until we know for sure. The only reason I’ve got her cell phone is because I’m a woman and Rolly doesn’t relate well to guys. Anyway, time for us to get ourselves moving.”

Ron said with a smirk, “I like that pillow tied around your belly, Ashley. Hey, how many kids you got?”

Connie waved both of them off and paused to rub her back. It wasn’t just for show. She’d been walking around the cemetery for almost two hours, stopping to listen in at a funeral, speaking briefly to other agents, all of them dressed as tourists strolling through the huge cemetery. She’d read in her brochure the astonishing fact that more than two hundred and sixty thousand people were buried here. She wondered if she’d walk by every marker and monument and memorial before she was through. She thought of Ruth, hoped she was having a better weekend than she was. She would have liked to be in the wilds of Virginia with her rather than here, waiting for a crazy old lunatic to appear. Many of the agents and all of the snipers were from the Washington, D.C., field office, the snipers posted wherever they could find cover in the cemetery, in position since eight o’clock that morning.

Savich stood by the Memorial Gate in section 30 speaking on his cell to Deputy Assistant Director Jimmy Maitland, his boss. “There’s no sign of them yet.” Just as there hadn’t been an hour before when he’d reported in, but he didn’t say that. “There aren’t that many real tourists around, understandable given the weather, and that’s good since we can’t do anything about it in any case. We’re keeping an eye on them, while we all try not to do anything Moses Grace could spot easily.”

Maitland sighed. “One of my boys is playing basketball today, his first time starting as Maryland’s forward, and here I am sitting in a damned van waiting for a psychopath crazy enough to detonate a bomb on top of my agents in a frigging motel to show up here in the nation’s biggest cemetery. I doubt Pinky’s still alive. You agree, Savich?”

“You’re right, not likely. Anyone who would pull that stunt at Hooter’s Motel wouldn’t bother to keep Pinky alive. I didn’t tell that to Ms. Lilly, though. She’s still hopeful. Pinky’s such a piece of work, no harm in him, not really, just a big mouth, always saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. I’ve got an incoming call I should get. I’ll call you back in an hour with a status report. Can you get your basketball game on the radio?”

“I’m counting on it, Savich.”

Savich raised his face to the steel-gray sky, breathed that fresh wild air deep into his lungs. He could feel Moses Grace was close. He punched up the incoming call. “Savich here.”

“Hello, boy. This here’s your nemesis. Ain’t that a grand word? Claudia read it to me out of a book, said that’s what I am to you.”

Savich stilled, his mind working furiously. He knew, he simply knew. “Who is this?”

“Why, this is the poor old man you’re trying to hunt down and kill, and bury real deep, Agent Savich. I saw you on TV after our fun at Hooter’s Motel—on a local channel, real early this morning. I’ll bet you didn’t get much sleep, did you? I’ll tell you, I was impressed, no question about that. But you see, you’ve got all these rules and you stick to them like a stupid lemming. That’ll do you in when it’s crunch time between you and me. But hey, you sure talk good, boy, all cool and calm for someone who almost got himself blowed up. Too bad you didn’t break your damned neck when you jumped off that balcony at old Ray’s motel. Would have been easier. Claudia, that sweet little girl of mine, said you was an athlete, made her want to jump your bones. Flat-out embarrassed me the things she said she wanted to do to you. As for Pinky, I wouldn’t say he’s in such good shape now.”

“What about Pinky?”

“Let’s say the little schmuck is where he deserves to be.”

Savich felt disgust, his belly slick with nausea. He wanted to squeeze the life out of this man, to shut up that illiterate drawl. “And where is that?”

Moses Grace’s scratchy laugh made Savich’s flesh crawl. Could the evil old monster be watching him now?

“Well, it’s like this, Agent Savich. Pinky is already underground. Why don’t you find Private Jeremy Willamette’s gravestone; young fellow died in Korea, aged eighteen. Exactly Claudia’s age. She’s the one who picked the spot where Pinky would reside until you guys hauled his carcass off to cut it up.”

“How did you get my cell phone number?”

“From Pinky, of course. Turns out Ms. Lilly gave it to him, and guess what?”

Savich remained silent. He was thinking of Pinky, how he’d probably been dead since they hauled him out of Hooter’s Motel. They buried him with a soldier?

“You want me to spell it out for you, boy? Well, here it is. No one beats me, particularly a loser cop like you.” He laughed and Savich could hear the spittle hurtling out of his mouth. “You know Rolly, that little pervert who snitches to your agent Warnecki? I think you’ll have a much harder time finding him.

“I hear that little redheaded agent who’s standing over there is your wife. I told Claudia those cops had more guts than brains but she wasn’t listening. Too excited about all this and who can blame her? Looks like you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to catch me, and I really appreciate that. It makes me feel important. How many of you are there? Twenty? Forty? All for me and Claudia.”

The words were out of Savich’s mouth before he could begin to censor them. “You’re right about one thing, you crazy old man. I’m going to kill you and bury you real deep.”

The old man guffawed and cleared his throat. Savich could hear a sticky liquid sound. Was he sick?

“Nah, you wouldn’t shoot me for revenge, that’s one of your dumb-ass rules. You’d take me in all polite and proper. You’d even help me get a nice ACLU-type lawyer who’d claim I heard the voice of my long-dead mother who locked me in a cellar until I was sixteen, and so I’m not responsible for anything. You wouldn’t want to be cruel to a mentally disturbed person, would you? I might even end up in a nice hospital with a bunch of cute little nurses swinging their asses in my face. My, I do believe this sounds familiar, almost like
day-ja vou.

“Thing is, boy, you don’t have the guts to kill me, yet. Hey, would you look at your wife, so serious and alert, all that lovely red hair, thick and real soft, I bet. Claudia doesn’t like her at all. Maybe I could fit her right in with Pinky once Claudia was done with her.”

Then there was silence. Moses Grace had punched off.

Savich called Sherlock, who was checking the names on the markers against a list she was carrying, a pencil in her hand. Moses was looking at her. She’d walked away from the Rough Riders Memorial in section 36, stopped to study the markers around her. Not three yards from her was a real tourist all bundled up in the cold morning, blowing on her hands as she stood in front of a marker and stamped her feet.

Savich was so scared he wanted to puke. Sherlock was a perfect target for anyone with a clean shot and a scoped rifle. He didn’t doubt for a second that Moses had both. He didn’t doubt that Moses could shoot. How far away were they and where? Savich never took his eyes off of her as her cell phone rang.

“Agent Sherlock.”

“Sherlock, down! Find cover right now!” But from where would a shot come?

In under a minute Sherlock was surrounded by agents in Kevlar body armor. A few minutes later, Savich, with Sherlock in lockstep beside him, walked quickly toward section 27, where the cemetery records showed that Private Jeremy Willamette was interred. To Savich’s surprise she hadn’t questioned him when he first told her to get down. And now she accepted the impenetrable shield of men and women surrounding her, all of them with guns drawn and held at their sides. When they’d quickly assembled, Savich looked at each of them and said, “Moses Grace called me. He’s here and he’s crazy and I’d bet the farm he’s got a scoped rifle. We’ve all got to be careful. And he talked to me about Sherlock, threatened her.”