“Your dad could charm the widow’s peak off a fascist general and outwit a Mafia don. He was an excellent man and friend,” Thomas said, eyeing the man. “I wasn’t expecting you to bring anyone else.” He found himself clearing his throat when Savich didn’t immediately respond. “This is all rather confidential, Mr. Savich. Actually, it’s all extremely confidential, there’s a life at stake and—”
Savich said easily, “Where I go Sherlock goes, sir. We’re a package deal. Shall we continue or would you like to call this off?”
The young woman didn’t say a word. She didn’t even change expressions. She just cocked her head to one side and waited, very quietly, silent. A professional to her toes, Thomas thought, just like her husband.
Thomas said then, “Is your name really Sherlock?”
She laughed. “Yes. My father’s a federal judge in San Francisco. Can you imagine what the crooks are feeling when they’re hauled in front of him—Judge Sherlock?”
“Please sit down, both of you. I’m grateful that you came, Mr. Savich.”
“Just Savich will do fine.”
“All right. I understand you head up the CAU—the Criminal Apprehension Unit—at the FBI. I know you use computers and protocols you yourself designed and programmed. And with some success. Naturally, I really don’t fully understand what it is that happens.”
Savich ordered iced tea from the hovering waiter, waited for the others to order as well, then leaned forward. “Like the Behavioral Sciences Unit, we also deal with local agencies who think an outside eye just might see something they missed on a local crime. Normally murder cases. Also like the BSU, we only go in when we’re asked.
“Unlike the Behavioral Sciences, we’re entirely computer-based. We use special programs to help us look at crimes from many different angles. The programs correlate all the data from two or more crimes that seem to have been committed by the same person. We call the main program PAP, the Predictive Analogue Program. Of course, what an agent feeds into the program will determine what comes out. Nothing new in that at all.”
Sherlock said, “All of it is Dillon’s brainchild. He worked on all the protocols. It’s amazing how the computer can turn up patterns, weird correlations, ways of looking at things that we wouldn’t have considered. Of course, like Dillon said, we have to put the data in there in order to get the patterns, the correlations, the anomalies that can point a finger in the right direction.
“Then we look at the possible outcomes and alternatives the computer gives us, act on many of them. You said Buck Savich was an excellent friend. How did you know Buck Savich, sir?”
“Thank you for the explanation. It’s fascinating, and about time, I say. Technology should catch crooks, not let the crooks diddle society with the technology. Yes, Buck Savich was an incredible man. I knew him professionally. Tough, smart, fearless. The practical jokes he used to pull had the higher-ups in the Bureau screaming and laughing at the same time. I was very sorry to hear about his death.”
Savich nodded, waiting.
Thomas Matlock sipped his iced tea. He needed to know more about these two. He said easily, “I remember the String Killer case. That was an amazing bit of work.”
“It wasn’t at all typical,” Savich said. “We got the guy. He’s dead. It’s over.” Then he looked at his wife, and Thomas saw something that suddenly made him aware of the extraordinary bond between them. There was a flash of incredible fear in Savich’s eyes, followed by a wash of relief and so much gratitude that it went all the way to Thomas’s gut. He should have had that bond with Allison, but one stray bullet in a woman’s head had put an end to that possibility forever.
Thomas cleared his throat, his mind made up. These two were bright, young, dedicated. He needed them. “Thank you for explaining more about your unit. I guess there’s nothing more to do except tell you exactly what’s going on. My only favor—and I must have your agreement on this—is if you don’t choose to help me, you will not inform your colleagues about any of this conversation. It all remains right here, in this booth.”
“Is it illegal?”
“No, Savich. I’ve always believed that being a crook requires too much work and energy. I’d rather race my sailboat on the Chesapeake than worry about evading the cops. The FBI is, however, involved, and that does make for some conflict of interest.”
Savich said slowly, “You’re a very powerful man, Mr. Matlock. It took MAX nearly fourteen minutes to even find out that you’re a very well-protected high-ranking member of the intelligence community. It took him another hour and two phone calls from me to discover that you are one of the Shadow Men. I don’t trust you.”
Sherlock cocked her head to the side and said, “What are the Shadow Men?”
Thomas said, “It’s a name coined back in the early seventies by the CIA for those of us who have high security clearance, work very quietly, very discreetly, always out of sight, always in the background, and frankly, do things that aren’t sanctioned or publicized or even recognized. Results are seen, but not any of us.”
“You mean like the ‘Mission Impossible’ team?”
“Nothing so perfectly orchestrated as all that. No, I’ve never burned a tape in my life.” He smiled then and it was an attractive smile, Sherlock thought. He was a handsome man, well built, took care of himself. A bit younger than her father, but not much. Ah, but his eyes. They were filled with bleak, dark shadows, with secrets huddled deep, and there was pain there as well, pain there for so very long that it was now a part of him, burrowed deep. He was a complex man, but most important, he was alone, so very alone—now she saw that clearly—and he was afraid of something that went as deep as his soul. She didn’t think that being a Shadow Man was the reason for all that bleakness in his eyes.
She said, “It sounds like cloak-and-dagger stuff, sir, like it should have gone out of business when the Cold War ended.”
Thomas said, “Perhaps there’s a bit of cloak-and-dagger still in the mix. Actually, before the end of the Cold War things were a lot simpler. We knew the enemy. We knew exactly how the enemy operated, what to expect. However, now the projects we’re involved in are rarely so clean, so splendidly satisfying and clear-cut as that ‘Mission Impossible’ TV show.
“In my area, there is rarely an obvious and clean line between us and the bad guys, although Saddam and Qaddafi look like they’re going to be long-timers. An enemy of yesterday is a confederate of today. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.
“This is more true today, of course. So many petty tyrants and greedy despots who want to rule, if not the world, then a larger portion of it than they do currently. China is the giant fist, more frightening than the USSR ever was. So many people, so many natural resources, such endless potential. Somehow we have to deal with all of them.”
Thomas looked off over Sherlock’s left shoulder, seeing into the past, into the future, she didn’t know. Then he said quietly, “There are always failures, mistakes, lives lost needlessly. But we try, Mrs. Savich. More often than not, thank God, we do succeed and perhaps make the world a bit safer. For the most part we’re not allowed to be nice people, so your husband is smart not to trust me. However, this is something entirely different. This isn’t business. This is entirely personal. I need help badly.”
She lowered her head and began weaving a packet of Equal through her fingers. Finally, she looked straight at him, picked up her iced tea glass, raised it toward him, and said, “Why don’t you call me Sherlock.”
Thomas clicked his glass to hers. Somehow, he knew, she and her husband had communicated, had agreed to hear him out. “Sherlock. It is a charming name. It goes very well with Savich.”
Savich sat forward then. “Let’s cut to the chase, Mr. Matlock. We give you our word that nothing you tell us today will go beyond this booth. We will accept the possibility of a conflict of interest, at least for the moment.”
Thomas felt the same sort of loosening in his gut that he’d felt when Adam
had told him he’d already begun to protect Becca. He smiled at the two of them and said, “Why don’t you call me Thomas.”
13
Sheriff Gaffney said, “Well now, what we got was an anonymous tip, Mr. Carruthers.”
“That’s rather odd, don’t you think, Sheriff?” Adam had his arms folded over his chest and was leaning against Jacob Marley’s screened front porch. Sheriff Gaffney looked tired, he thought, a bit pasty in the face. He wanted to tell the sheriff to lose fifty pounds and start walking the treadmill.
“No, sir, not odd at all. Folk don’t like to get involved. They’d rather tattle in secret than come smartly forward and tell you what they know. Sometimes, truth be told, folk are just shits, Mr. Carruthers.”
That was true enough, Adam thought. “You said the girl’s name is Melissa Katzen?”
“That’s right. It was a woman with a real whispery voice who said it was Melissa. She didn’t want to tell who she was. She said everyone believed at the time that Melissa was going to elope right after high school graduation. So when she up and was just gone, everyone figured she’d done it. But she thinks now, what with the skeleton, that Melissa didn’t go anywhere.”
“Who was the boyfriend?” Adam asked.
“No one knew, since Melissa wouldn’t tell anyone. Her folks didn’t know what to think after she was gone. They didn’t know about any elopement talk, came as a shock to them. I’m thinking that maybe one of Melissa’s family called in this tip, or a friend and that friend is afraid she’s in danger if she tells us who she is. Now, if that skeleton is Melissa Katzen, then she didn’t elope. She stayed right here and got herself murdered.”
“Maybe,” Becca said, “she decided she didn’t want to elope after all and the boy killed her.”
“Could be,” said Sheriff Gaffney, shaking his head. “A bad way to end up.”
He got no argument.
The sheriff adjusted his thick leather belt that was digging into his belly and said on a sigh, “As the years passed, most folk just forgot about her, figured she was in another state with six kids now. And maybe she is. We’ll find out. We’re talking to all the people who remember her, went to school with her, things like that.”
“You don’t have any idea who called this in, Sheriff?”
“Nope. Mrs. Ella took the call, said it sounded like someone with a doughnut in her mouth. Mrs. Ella believes it’s a relative, or a chicken-shit friend.”
“You’ll do DNA tests now?”
“As soon as we can locate Melissa’s parents and see if they have anything of hers we could use to get her DNA to match against what they have in the bones. It’s going to take a while. Science—all this newfangled stuff—it’s all iffy as far as I’m concerned. Just look at how poor O.J. was nearly sent away because of all that flaky so-called DNA evidence. But the jury was smart. They didn’t believe any of that stuff for a minute. Well, it’s something to do. We’ll know in a couple of weeks.”
“Sheriff,” Becca said mildly, “DNA is the most scientifically solid tool that law enforcement has going for it today. It’s not flaky at all. It will clear innocent people and, hopefully, in most cases, put monsters in jail.”
“So you think, Ms. Powell, but you force me to tell you that yours is an Uninformed Opinion. Mrs. Ella doesn’t like all this fancy stuff, either. But she thinks it’s real possible that the skeleton is poor little Melissa, even though she remembers Melissa as being all sorts of shy and sweet and so quiet you’d have thought her a little ghost. Who’d want to kill a sweet kid like that? Even old Jacob Marley, who didn’t like anybody.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I go for the boyfriend. Hey, at least there’s something to go on now. Won’t you come in?”
“Nah. I just wanted to fill in you and Ms. Powell. I gotta go talk to the power company, hear they accidentally cut a sewage pipe. That’d be no good. You pray the wind doesn’t blow in this direction. Now, Mr. Carruthers, you going to hang around with Ms. Powell much longer?”
“Oh yeah,” Adam said easily, looking over at Becca, who hadn’t said a single word since Sheriff Gaffney, button sewn back on, bemoaned poor O.J.’s treatment. “She’s still real jittery, Sheriff, jumps whenever there’s a sound in this old house. You know how women are—so sensitive it makes a man want to coddle them until the sun’s shining again.”
“That was well said, Mr. Carruthers. We got us one of our perfect summer days. Just smell the air. All salty ocean and wildflowers, and that sun smell. Nothing like it.
“Ah, here’s Tyler and little Sam. Good morning. Just running down possibilities on Ms. Powell’s skeleton. Could have been Melissa Katzen. Don’t suppose you disguised your voice like a woman’s and called in the tip?”
“Not me, Sheriff,” Tyler said, raising an eyebrow. “Who did you say? Melissa Katzen?”
“Yep, that’s right. You remember her, Tyler? Didn’t you go to school with her? Your ages are about right.”
Tyler slowly lowered Sam to the porch and watched him wander over to a low table that held a stack of books, some of them very old indeed.
“Melissa Katzen.” Tyler frowned. “Yes, I remember her. A real sweet kid. I think she might have been in my high school class, or maybe a year behind me. I’m just not sure. She wasn’t really pretty, but she was nice, never said a bad thing about anybody, as I remember. You really think she could be the skeleton?”
“Don’t know. Got an anonymous call about her.”
Tyler frowned a bit. “I think I remember hearing that she was going to elope, yeah, that was it. She eloped and no one ever heard from her again.”
Sheriff Gaffney said, “Yep, that’s the story. Now DNA will tell us, at least if what those labs claim is true. Well, it’s time for me to see the power company. Then I’ll call that Jarvis guy in Augusta, see what they’re doing.”
Sam was holding a small, thick paperback in his hands.
Adam dropped down to his knees and looked at the little book with a fancy attack helicopter on the cover. He said, “It’s Jane’s Aircraft Recognition Guide. I wonder what Jacob Marley was doing with one of Jane’s publications?”
“Jane?” Sam said.
“Yeah, I know, that’s a girl’s name. Hey, they’re Brits, Sam. You’ve got to expect them to do weird things.”
Becca said, “Hey, Sam, you want a glass of lemonade? I just made some this morning.”
Sam looked up at her, didn’t say anything, but finally nodded.
Tyler said, his chin up, a hint of the aggressor in his voice, “Sam loves Becca’s lemonade.”
“I do, too,” Adam said. “Now, I’m out of here. I’ll be back tonight, Becca.”
She wanted to ask him where he was going, who he was going to talk to, but she couldn’t say a blasted thing in front of Tyler. “Take care,” she called out after him. She saw Adam pause just a moment, but he didn’t turn back.
“I don’t like him, Becca,” Tyler said in a low voice a few minutes later in the kitchen, one eye on Sam, who was drinking his lemonade and looking for the goody in the box of Cracker Jacks Becca had handed him.
“He’s harmless,” she said easily. “Really harmless. I’m sure he’s gay. So you knew this Melissa Katzen?”
Tyler nodded and took another drink of his lemonade. “Like I told the sheriff, she was a nice kid. Not real popular, not real smart, but nice. She also played soccer. I remember once she beat me in poker.” Tyler grinned at some memory. “Yeah, it was strip poker. I think I was the first guy she’d ever seen in boxer shorts.”
“Rachel makes good lemonade,” Sam said, and both adults looked at him with admiration. He’d said four whole words, strung them all together.
Becca patted his face. “I’ll bet Rachel does lots of really good things. She rented me this house, you know.”
Sam nodded and drank more lemonade.
After they’d left ten minutes later to go grocery shopping, Becca cleaned up the kitchen and headed upstairs. She made h
er bed and straightened the bedroom. She didn’t want to have anything to do with Adam Carruthers, but she sighed and walked down to his bedroom. The bed was neatly made. Nothing was out in plain sight. She walked over to the dresser and pulled out the top drawer. Underwear, T-shirts, and a couple of folded cotton shirts. Nothing else. She pulled his dark blue carryall out from under the bed. She lifted it on top of the bed and slowly started to pull back the long zipper.
The phone rang. She nearly leapt three feet in the air. The phone rang again.
She had to run downstairs, as that was the only phone in the house. Her cell phone had run out of power and was recharging. She picked it up on the sixth ring. “Hello.”
Breathing. Slow, deep breathing.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
“Hello, Rebecca. It’s your boyfriend.”
Her brain nearly shut down on her. She stared at the phone, not believing, not wanting to believe, but it was him, the stalker, the man who murdered that poor old woman, the man who shot the governor in the neck.
He’d found her. Somehow he’d found her. She said, “The governor’s alive. You’re not so great after all, are you? You didn’t kill him. You were so ill informed, you didn’t even know there would be a bunch of doctors around him.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to kill him.”
“Yeah, right.”
“All right, so the bastard is still breathing. At least he won’t be climbing into your bed anytime soon. Hear he’s having a tough time talking and eating. He needed to lose a few pounds anyway.”
“You killed Dick McCallum. You made him tell those lies about me and then you killed him. How much did you pay him? Or did you threaten to kill him if he didn’t do as you asked?”
“Where did you get all this information, Becca?”
“It’s true.”
Silence.
“Nobody could have found me. The FBI, the NYPD, nobody. How did you find me?”