Jack's tone was no more laconic than usual, but it was like a spritz of ice water, reminding me to slow down.
"No bodies have been found yet," I said. "The second girl disappeared on a walk, like Sammi. He seems to prefer quiet, private kill sites. But that could just be a response to circumstances. After he kills the girl, he's stuck with a crying baby. As great as it is to have similar cases, I'm not sure how much they'll help in narrowing down who's doing the killing."
"Got some ideas. Run past Evelyn."
Jack consulted Evelyn. I wasn't thrilled with that, but it was the fastest way to narrow down the list. From her, he got the names of two hitmen possibilities, with the more likely one having moved to Toronto recently.
"Great," I said as I cleaned up after the sunset canoe ride. "This week looks slow for guests, so I can take off and - "
"I'll do it."
My hands tightened around the paddle I was lifting into its berth. Something pricked my hand. I stared at the welling blood.
"Nadia?"
"Hmm?"
"I'll go after him."
"N-no." I fumbled the paddle into place and swiped my hand across my jeans. "You can't, not with your foot. I'll - "
"No, Nadia."
"I can - "
"Shouldn't."
I swiped my fingers again, harder, wincing. Jack caught my hand and lifted it into the dim light of the boathouse.
"Got a sliver."
I balled my fist. "I'll be careful. I'll do proper reconnaissance work and make absolutely certain this is the guy. You can come if you want, and I'll let you make the decisions. I just need to see this through."
"You will. It's him? I'll call. Bring you in. He's all yours."
I opened my fist and stared at the blood, my heart hammering. As much as I wanted to find Sammi's killer myself, he was right. Scouting didn't require my personal touch, and it was better if I stayed put for a little while.
When my hand started curling again, he pulled my fingers flat.
"Only making it worse. Come on. Get it fixed up."
Jack went to Toronto alone. When the guests opted out of the bonfire, I drove him to Peterborough and let him take my work car from there. He promised he'd check in with updates a few times a day. He called the next morning, then afternoon, then evening. He didn't have much to say, just, "I'm looking," "Found him," "Following him," "Cased his place." The calls were a waste of his time, and I knew he was only doing them for my sake, but I wasn't sure what would be more frustrating: his single-sentence updates or none at all.
As for the person he was following, I knew only that he was male. Before he'd left, Jack had sidestepped my questions with "tell you later."
Finally, Thursday afternoon, I heard the words I'd been waiting for: "It's him." Then, "Need you here."
"In Toronto? Sure, I can be there in - "
"No. On the move. Heading your way. Can you meet up?"
"You're coming back?"
"He is."
It took me a minute to decipher his shorthand: Sammi's killer was heading out of Toronto, coming this way. On the move. After another girl.
For a moment, words wouldn't come. All I could see was Sammi's corpse, streaked with dirt, staring up in outrage.
"You there?" Jack said.
"He's on the trail, you mean. Of another - "
"Maybe just hunting."
Hunting...
I took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. Um, so where -?"
"On the 401. Heading east. Just passing - " A pause, as if looking for signs. " - Oshawa."
"So should I -?"
"Get ready. Tell Emma you're leaving. Wait for my call."
The next ninety minutes seemed like nine hundred. Finally Jack called again. He was outside a restaurant in Kingston. His target was inside.
"Might be nothing," Jack said. "Different job. Meeting a client. Still... Thought you'd want to head out. Catch up."
"I do."
Two hours later, after quickly assembling a disguise, I was there. For the last thirty minutes, the target had been parked outside a community center, reading a news paper.
I'd left my truck in a grocery store lot a block away, and joined Jack in my work car parked beside a church. From there, we watched the target as he waited in his compact car, tucked between a minivan and an SUV.
Even with the binoculars I'd lent Jack, I couldn't see the man. He had a newspaper stretched across the steering wheel, either reading as he waited or just wanting to look as if he was.
"Work name, Rainman," Jack said. "Real name, Ron Fenniger."
"You know him?"
"Not personally. Evelyn checked him out years back. Possible protege. Seemed promising. Didn't last."
"Where was he putting his money?"
"Up his nose."
An old story, and a common trajectory for professional killers. They start as garden-variety criminals, then discover they have a knack for killing - good reflexes, steady nerves, and the ability to blend. They realize how much money there is to be made in contract hits... but it's like a lounge singer suddenly pulling in twenty grand a gig with no idea how to spend it. They find places - women, booze, dope, gambling, all the usual vices.
That's when it falls apart. The reflexes, the nerves, the ordinariness that made them a good hitman disappear. So they have two choices - retire fast, or find themselves on the other end of a gun, facing an associate hired by someone who deems them a liability.
As Jack explained, Fenniger had begun his crash-and-burn, then leveled out, learning to keep his drugs and work separate. But someone like that would never be top-tier again. He'd made a couple of small mistakes, enough to keep a middleman from recommending him to a big client. He could only pull in top-tier money if he didn't mind taking risky jobs with subpar clients who'd turn him in at the first sign of trouble.
According to Evelyn, though, Fenniger had withdrawn his name from the pool with one middleman, who figured he'd retired. But it seemed he'd just found a way to bypass the middleman, going into business for himself, with clients who wouldn't care how good a hitman he was, because as far as they knew, they were hiring a baby broker.
"Do you think he's meeting with one of those clients now?" I asked.
Jack shrugged. "All I know? Moving too fast. Three girls in four months?"
"The pace doesn't seem to be causing him any trouble. As far as Quinn can tell, none of the missing girls are still being investigated."
"Lotta money. But lotta work."
"You think he's getting greedy and overextending himself. Could be. It probably seems like fast, easy money in an untapped market. I doubt he could keep it going for long, though. Is that what you mean? I should back off and let him hang himself?"
"Nah. This rate? Could kill half dozen girls by then. You don't want that."
I didn't miss the pronoun. I wouldn't want that. As for Jack, well, I'm sure Jack wasn't keen on the thought of a hitman targeting young mothers, but left to himself, I'm not sure he'd do anything about it.
"Are you saying you'd rather not be involved? Because you don't have to - "
"Not saying that. Just... thinking."
The community center side door opened, and out streamed a conga line of teenage girls and baby strollers.
And Fenniger began to hunt.
He was as accomplished as any predator, zeroing in on the best prey even as the door closed behind the last girl. He targeted four with his camera. All were Caucasian. All pretty - though that wasn't a difficult criterion at an age when youth itself makes most girls attractive. But he winnowed out the cute girl with glasses and the beautiful overweight one, both of which could suggest a hereditary condition that might not sit well with prospective baby buyers. Ignored, too, was the blond with the upscale, shining new megastroller, who probably came from a more affluent section of town.
Fenniger made no move to leave his car, just surreptitiously snapped photos, camera lens resting on top of his paper, as if he was still reading. When one of h
is choices lifted a dark-skinned baby from the stroller, to adjust his hat, his number of candidates dropped to three.
His favorite seemed to be a strawberry blond with a quick smile. When she headed toward the sidewalk, his reverse lights came on... until an older model sedan pulled into the lot, a middle-aged woman jumping out to help her daughter get the baby into his car seat.
His next choice headed to a bus stop across the street with two other girls. Fenniger eased the car into the spot behind his. It lacked the cover of the minivan and SUV, but would be easy to slide out of quickly when the bus arrived.
As he watched her, he pulled at his lower lip, head slightly tilted, gaze sliding now and then to option three, a girl with dark curls swaddling her baby against the chill as she cooed at him.
I knew what he was thinking. Option two wasn't as pretty as three, but she was blond and fair, whereas three seemed to have Mediterranean blood, and could be a tougher sell. Yet three was alone while two laughed and chatted with her friends, more vivacious, probably more popular, with more people to miss her. And number two hadn't so much as glanced in the stroller since leaving the building, while three couldn't take her eyes off her baby. Which would be the happier, healthier, better adjusted child? More important, which would provide those important "happy mother and child" photos?
I knew what he'd decided. When the dark-haired girl bundled her baby into his shabby stroller, he turned his car off, then got out. He spent a couple of minutes fussing with things in the vehicle, working out the kinks from sitting while giving her time to get a head start.
"Yes, I'm following," I said when Jack glanced my way. "I'll leave a big gap. With that stroller, she's not going to break into a sprint and disappear. Even you could probably keep up."
"Want me to? I follow direct? You circle the block?"
I shook my head. "I'd rather you wait here in case he comes back for the other girl."
I waited until the girl reached the first street corner, with Fenniger tailing twenty paces behind, then I got out of the car.
Chapter Twenty-six
I followed Fenniger for three blocks. The origin of his nom de guerre quickly became apparent. At least an inch shorter than me, skinny, with a pinched face, he looked like a community theater actor trying to imitate Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, right down to the shuffling walk.
The girl finally turned into a three-story walkup. I was a few paces from a bus shelter, so I veered in there, where I could stand around without looking obvious.
Fenniger went about ten feet past the doors, then backed up, straining to see a street number. Finding it, he nodded, took an envelope from under his jacket, and hurried into the building. Playing delivery guy - an easy way to get in.
Five minutes later, he came out, having seen where the girl went, whether she let herself in, and whether a roomie answered her knock.
He scanned the street - low-income housing on one side and storefronts on the other. Then he crossed and went into a tiny Tim Hortons coffee shop, probably settling in for a longer stakeout.
I called Jack.
"I need to find a better place to hang out," I said. "I see another coffee shop a few doors down but it looks dead. Might be closed. The Tim Hortons is packed. I could probably - "
"No."
"I'll head to the other one, then, and call you when I'm settled."
The coffee shop wasn't closed, but I suspected it soon would be. A shame, really. One step inside and you knew the place had been there forever. The faint smell of cigarettes, worn into the walls long before antismoking bylaws. The grooves in the floor from chairs being pulled in and out, day after day, year after year. Yellowing newspaper articles on the walls, trumpeting the triumphs of countless Little League and soccer teams the owner had sponsored.
But now, only the most steadfast customers remained, all the other regulars probably circling the block guiltily to get their daily double-double at Timmy's. Can't say I've ever understood the appeal. The coffee's decent enough, but the rabid devotion the chain inspires is enough to make one suspect there's something more addictive than caffeine in those beans.
With only a few tables in use, I easily got one by the window. Five minutes later, Jack walked in. I waved him over.
"What can I get you?" I asked. "I'd have grabbed it, but I wasn't sure whether you'd want decaf, too." On a job, any stimulant was a no-no, but this wasn't really a job.
"Decaf's good."
Juggling hot coffee and a crutch was a recipe for first-degree burns, but that didn't keep Jack from insisting he could manage. That crutch, though, meant I could move a lot faster, and I sprinted for the counter, leaving him muttering behind me.
So we sat, drank coffee, watched out the window, and talked. Or I talked, about my plans for a meadow picnic area. Intentionally boring conversation. Had anyone been inclined to eavesdrop, he would have given up after about ten seconds... or fallen asleep. Jack seemed interested enough, asking questions and making comments. He always seemed interested in my plans for the lodge. Maybe because he knew it was one topic, other than guns, that I could blather endlessly about.
After an hour, Fenniger left... to relocate to a restaurant farther down, presumably for dinner. We took his place in Tim Hortons and dined on sandwiches.
As dusk fell, the girl and baby left their apartment. I gathered our trash, preparing to follow. But the restaurant door stayed closed. Had Fenniger been caught unawares on a bathroom break? Or with the bill unpaid? Or had he slipped out the back?
We were about to leave when Fenniger finally emerged. The girl was a block ahead, but he didn't hurry to catch up, instead fussing with his wallet under the shadow of the storefront overhang. Two minutes passed. Then he crossed the street, and disappeared into her building.
"Recon work," I said.
Jack nodded.
"Should we...?"
Another nod. I wiped our crumbs from the table, then followed him.
I hoped Fenniger was breaking into the girl's apartment. Instant interrogation room. An occupied building in early evening wasn't ideal, but we could make it work.
Unfortunately, Fenniger chose to get his information from a more direct source. As we waited in the foyer, out of sight, we heard him stop a boy who sounded about twelve, naive enough to answer a stranger, old enough to answer intelligently.
Fenniger put on a good show. He was looking for his niece, whom he hadn't seen in a few years. She was a teenager, dark hair, baby... Oh, right. Tina in 2B. Tina? No, his niece's name was Katrina. But he'd heard friends called her Trina. Or maybe that was Tina...
Using leading questions under the guise of making sure his Katrina was this Tina, Fenniger fished for the details he wanted, soon learning that Tina didn't have a boyfriend, rarely had friends over, and was never visited by anyone over twenty. The boy said she kept to herself, and he didn't know her well, but if Fenniger was her uncle, maybe he could help her out, because she seemed really nice, and he'd heard she was behind on the rent. Another marginalized teenage mother, estranged from her family. Perfect pickings.
Fenniger ended with a few general questions about Tina's appearance, and finally admitted that, no, this definitely wasn't his niece. Too bad.
Mission accomplished, he left... and returned to Tim Hortons. Before Jack and I could decide on another place to hole up, Fenniger emerged, large coffee in hand, supporting my theory of addictive properties.
He headed back toward the community center. Jack went for the car as I followed on foot. At the center, Fenniger got into his car and pulled away. We fell in behind.
"A junkyard?" I said, squinting into the darkness at the jagged metal mountains crossing the landscape.
"Auto wreckers"
"Whatever. The point is - "
" - why's he stopping? No fucking idea. Maybe his carburetor broke. Needs a replacement."
I couldn't tell whether he was joking. I never could.
I peered out at a half dozen heaps of parts on a lot blank
eted with rusting corpses. The whole place might be seven acres. Around the front, at the end of the rutted dirt laneway, we'd spotted a tiny building, probably an office, much too small for a house. The only lights came from it, a pair of security floods attached to the roofline.
Whatever the reason, I could only pray that Fenniger got out of that car and walked into that vacant lot, with the nearest neighbors a half kilometer away...
A flare of light as Fenniger opened his door. For a second, he stood illuminated in the glow. Then he eased it shut, trying to be quiet, the click still loud enough to carry through our closed windows. A moment of darkness. Then a second ball of light, smaller, as he flipped on a flashlight and headed for the fence.
I smiled. "Talk about a lucky break."
"Not luck. Wait long enough? Chance will come. Just gotta be patient."
"Evelyn's right. You are an optimist."
He met my grin with a level look. There was no rebuke in it, but no smile, either.
I rubbed my hands over my face, pushing back the lick of giddy excitement. "Okay, I'm fine."
"Never said you weren't."
"You don't have to - it's all in the look."
I massaged my neck, working out the kinks from a long day of sitting, while trying to forget that my prey was walking straight into a trap as perfect as any I could have set.
Too perfect?
What if Fenniger was the one setting it?
That slowed my thumping heart.
"Do you think he could have made us?" I said. "If he knows we're tailing him, this is the perfect place to get us out and separated."
"Yeah."
"Yeah?"
"Thought about that. Was going to mention it."
"When? As I'm running after him? Were you going to shout after me, 'Oh, by the way, this could be a trap'?"
"Nah. Hate shouting."
I shook my head as Fenniger scaled the eight-foot fence.
Jack continued, "Could always be a trap. Any stakeout. Any chase. Any hit. You think you're in control? Never count on it."
Fenniger was at the top now, dimly silhouetted against the overcast night sky. There were two lines of barbed wire across the top. As Fenniger cut it, Jack cracked down his window. I arched my brows.
"Dogs," he murmured, meaning he was listening for guard dogs.
I suspected the barbed-wire fence was the only security. The cars inside didn't look like they'd have enough salvageable parts to make even fence climbing worthwhile.