They drove for a few moments in silence and finally Evans asked, "That incident you mentioned. With your son? What happened?"
"You ever hear about the Boatman?" Parker asked.
Cage glanced at Parker warily. Then back to the road.
Evans said, "Remember something from the papers. But I'm not sure."
Parker was surprised; the killer had been featured in the news for months. Maybe the doctor was new to the area. "He was a serial killer in Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland. Four years ago. He'd kidnap a woman, rape and murder her and leave the body in a dinghy or rowboat. The Potomac a couple times. The Shenandoah. Burke Lake in Fairfax. We had leads to this guy who lived in Arlington but we couldn't make a case. Finally I was able to connect him to one of the murders through a handwriting sample. SWAT arrested him. He was convicted but he escaped on the way to federal detention. Well, around that time I was in the middle of the custody battle with my ex. The court had awarded me temporary custody. The kids, the housekeeper and I were living in a house in Falls Church. Then one night, around midnight, Robby starts screaming. I run into his room. There's the Boatman, trying to break in."
Evans nodded, frowning in concentration. His eyes were pale and they studied Parker closely.
Even now, years later, Parker's heart trembled at the memory: not only at the image of the square, glazed face looking through the bedroom window but at his son's distilled terror. The tears streaming from his huge eyes, his shaking hands. He didn't tell Evans and Cage about the five minutes--they seemed like hours--of absolute horror: shepherding his children into the housekeeper's room, guarding the door while listening to the Boatman stalk through the house. Finally, with the Fairfax County cops still not there, he stepped into the hallway, his service revolver in hand.
He realized that Evans was looking at him even more closely. He felt like a patient. The doctor noted Parker's expression and looked away. He asked, "And you shot him?"
"Yes. I did."
The gun is too loud! Parker had thought manically, as he fired, knowing how the explosions were adding to Robby's and Stephanie's terror.
The gun is too loud!
As Cage pulled up to headquarters Evans shoved the thermos back into his backpack and put a hand on Parker's arm. He gave the document examiner another close look. "Know what we're gonna do?"
Parker lifted an eyebrow.
"We're gonna catch this son of a bitch and both of us get back home to our families. Where we ought to be."
Parker Kincaid thought: Amen.
*
Inside the document lab at headquarters the team was reassembled.
Margaret Lukas was on the phone.
Parker glanced at her. Her cryptic look toward him in return brought to mind Cage's comments in the car.
Maybe she envies you . . .
She looked back down at the notes she was scribbling. He noticed her handwriting. The Palmer Method. Enviable precision and economy. No nonsense.
Hardy and C. P. Ardell stood nearby, also speaking on cell phones.
Parker set the glass sheets on the examination table.
Lukas shut off her phone. She looked at Cage and the others. "The safe house's completely gone. PERT's going through it but there's nothing left. The computer and the disks were totaled."
Cage asked, "How 'bout the building the Digger shot from?"
"As clean as the Texas Book Depository," she said bitterly. "They got shell casings this time but he wore--"
"Latex gloves," Parker said, sighing.
"Right. When he loaded the clips. And leather when he was in the apartment. Not a bit of trace."
A phone rang and Lukas answered. "Hello? . . . Oh, okay." She looked up. "It's Susan Nance. She's gotten more information back from Boston, White Plains and Philly about the other attacks Czisman was telling us about. I'll put her on the speaker."
She hit a button.
"Go ahead, Susan."
"I've tracked down the case detectives. They tell me that just like here there were no solid forensics. No prints, no witnesses. All of the cases're still open. They got the pictures of the unsub we sent and nobody recognizes him. But they all said something similar. Something odd."
"Which was?" Parker asked. He was carefully cleaning the glass that held the burnt yellow sheets.
"Basically that the violence was way out of proportion to the haul. Boston, the jewelry store? All he took was a single watch."
"Just one watch?" C. P. Ardell asked. "Was that all he had a chance to boost?"
"No. Looks like that was all he wanted. It was a Rolex but still . . . Worth only about two thousand. In White Plains he got away with thirty thousand. Philly, the bus murder scheme? The ransom was only for a hundred thousand."
And he's asking $20 million from D.C., Parker thought. The unsub was going for bigger and bigger hauls.
Lukas was apparently thinking the same. She asked Evans, "Progressive offender?"
Progressive offenders were serial criminals who committed successively more serious crimes.
But Evans was shaking his head. "No. He seems to be but progressives are always lust driven. Sadosexual murderers mostly." He rubbed the back of his bony hand against his beard. The hairs were short--as if he'd only started to grow it recently--and his skin must have itched. "They become increasingly more violent because the crime doesn't satisfy their need. But you rarely see progressive behavior in profit crimes."
Parker sensed the puzzle here was much more complicated than it seemed.
Or much simpler.
Either way, he felt the frustration of not being able to see any possible solutions.
The farmer has just one bullet in his gun. . . .
Parker finished cleaning the glass and turned his attention to the evidence. He studied what was left of the two pages. He saw, to his dismay, that much of the ash had disintegrated. The fire damage was worse than he'd thought.
Still it would be possible to read some of the unsub's writings on the larger pieces of ash. This is done by shining infrared light on the surface of the ash. Burnt ink or pencil marks reflect a different wavelength from that of the burnt paper and you usually can make out much of the writing.
Parker carefully set the glass panes holding the yellow sheets side by side in the infrared Foster + Freeman viewer. He crouched and picked up a cheap hand glass he found on the table (thinking angrily: The goddamn Digger just destroyed my five-hundred-dollar antique Leitz).
Hardy glanced at the sheet of paper on the left. "Mazes. He drew mazes."
Parker ignored that sheet, though, and examined the one with the reference to the Mason Theater. He guessed that the unsub had also written down the last two targets--the one at 8 p.m. and the one at midnight. But these pieces were badly jumbled and flaked.
"Well, I've got a few things visible," he muttered. He squinted, trained the hand glass on another part of the sheet. "Christ," he spat out. Shook his head.
"What?" C. P. asked.
"Oh, the targets the Digger's already hit are perfectly legible. The Metro and the Mason Theater. But the next two . . . I can't make them out. The midnight hit, the last one . . . that's easier to read than the third. Write this down," he said to Hardy.
The detective grabbed a pen and pad of yellow paper. "Go ahead."
Parker squinted. "It looks like, 'Place where I . . .' Let's see. 'Place where I . . . took you.' Then a dash. Then the word 'black.' No, 'the black.' Then there's a hole in the sheet. It's gone completely."
Hardy read back, "'Place where I took you, dash, the black . . .'"
"That's it."
Parker looked up. "Where the hell is he talking about?"
But no one had any idea.
Cage looked at his watch. "What about the eight o'clock hit? That's what we oughta be concentrating on. We have less than an hour."
Parker scanned the third line of writing, right below the Mason Theater reference. He studied it for a full minute, crouching. He dictated, "'.
. . two miles south. The R . . .' That's an uppercase R. But after that the ash is all jumbled. I can see a lot of marks but they're fragmented."
Parker took the transcription and walked to a chalkboard mounted on the wall of the lab. He copied the words for everyone to read: . . . two miles south. The R . . .
. . . place where I took you--the black . . .
"What's it mean?" Cage asked. "Where the hell was he talking about?"
Parker didn't have a clue.
He turned away from the board and leaned over the glass sheets, as if he were staring down a bully in a schoolyard.
But the fragment of paper won the contest easily.
"Two miles south of what?" he muttered. "'R.' What's 'R'?"
He sighed.
The door to the documet lab swung open and Parker did a double take. "Tobe!"
Tobe Geller walked unsteadily into the room. The young man had changed clothes and seemed to have showered but he smelled smoky and was coughing sporadically.
"Hey, boy, you got no business being here," Cage said.
Lukas said, "Are you crazy? Go home."
"To my pathetic bachelor quarters? Having broken a New Year's Eve date with undoubtedly my now-former girlfriend tonight? I don't think so." He started to laugh, then the sound dissolved into a cough. He controlled it and breathed deeply.
"How you doing, buddy?" C. P. Ardell asked, hugging Geller firmly. In the huge agent's face you could see the heartfelt, mano-a-mano concern that tactical agents have no trouble displaying.
"They don't even make a degree for my burns," Geller explained. "It's like I got New England tan. I'm fine." He coughed again. "Well, aside from the lungs. Unlike certain presidents I did inhale. Now. Where are we?"
"That yellow pad?" Parker said ruefully. "Hate to say it but we can't make out very much."
"Ouch," the agent said.
"Yeah, ouch."
Lukas walked to the examination table. Standing next to Parker. He couldn't smell the scented soap any longer, only acrid smoke.
"Hm," she said after a moment.
"What?"
She pointed to the fragments of jumbled ash. "Some of these little pieces might fit after the letter R, right?"
"They might."
"Well, what's that remind you of?"
Parker looked down. "A jigsaw puzzle," he whispered.
"Right," she said. "So--you're the puzzle master. Can you put them back together?"
Parker surveyed the hundreds of tiny fragments of ash. It could take hours, if not days; unlike a real jigsaw puzzle the edges of the pieces of ash were damaged and didn't necessarily match the adjoining pieces.
But Parker had a thought. "Tobe?"
"Yo?" The young agent coughed, dusted a burnt eyebrow.
"There're computer programs that solve anagram puzzles, aren't there?"
"Anagrams, anagrams? What're those again?"
It was tattooed C. P. Ardell who answered--a man whose most intellectual activity you'd guess would be comparing prices of discount beer. "Assembling different words out of a set of letters. Like n-o-w, o-w-n, w-o-n."
Geller said, "Oh, sure there are. But then you'd never use software to help you solve a puzzle, would you, Parker?"
"No, that'd be cheating." He smiled to Lukas. Whose stone face offered nothing more than a momentary glance and returned to the fragments of ash.
Parker continued, "After the sequence '. . . two miles. The R . . .' See all those bits of letters on the ash? Can you put them back together?"
Geller laughed. "It's brilliant," he said. "We'll scan a handwriting sample from the note. That'll give us standards of construction for all of his letters. Then I'll shoot the pieces of ash on the digital camera with an infrared filter, drop out the tonal value of the burnt paper. That'll leave us with fragments of letters. And I'll have the computer assemble them."
"Will it work?" Hardy asked.
"Oh, it'll work," Geller assessed with confidence. "I just don't know how long it'll take."
Geller hooked up the digital camera and took several pictures of the ash and one of the extortion note. He plugged the camera into a serial port on a computer and began to upload the images.
His fingers flew over the keys. Everybody remained silent.
Which made the braying sound of Parker's phone a moment later particularly startling.
He jumped in surprise and opened his cell phone. He noted the caller ID was his home number.
"Hello?" he answered.
His heart froze as Mrs. Cavanaugh said in a taut voice, "Parker."
In the background he heard Robby sobbing.
"What is it?" he asked, trying not to panic.
"Everybody's okay," she said quickly. "Robby's fine. He just got a little scared. He thought he saw that man in the backyard. The Boatman."
Oh, no . . .
"There was nobody there. I turned the outdoor lights on. Mr. Johnson's dog got loose again and was jumping around in the bushes. That was all. But he's scared. Really scared."
"Put him on."
"Daddy? Daddy!" The boy's voice was limp with fear. Nothing upset Parker more than this sound.
"Hey, Robby!" Parker said brightly. "What happened?"
"I looked outside." He cried for a moment more. Parker closed his eyes. His son's fear was like his own. The boy continued. "And I thought I saw him. The Boatman. It was . . . I got scared."
"Remember, it's just the bushes. We're going to cut them down tomorrow."
"No, this was in the garage."
Parker was angry with himself. He'd lazily left the garage door up and there was plenty of junk inside that could resemble an intruder.
Parker said to his son, "Remember what we do?"
No answer.
"Robby? Remember?"
"I've got my shield."
"Good for you. How 'bout the helmet?" Parker glanced up and saw Lukas staring at him raptly. "You have your helmet?"
"Yes," the boy answered.
"And what about the lights?"
"We'll put them on."
"How many lights?" Parker asked.
"Every last one," the boy recited.
Oh, it was so hard, hearing his son's voice . . . And knowing what he had to do now. He looked around the lab, at the faces of these people who had become his own band of brothers tonight. And he thought, You can--with luck and strength--pry yourself loose from wives or lovers or colleagues. But not from your children. Never from your children. They have your heart netted forever.
Into the phone he said, "I'll be right home. Don't worry."
"Really?" the boy asked.
"As fast as I can drive."
He hung up. Everyone was looking at him, motionless.
"I have to go," he said, eyes on Cage. "I'll be back. But I have to go now."
"Is there anything I can do?" Hardy asked.
"No, thanks, Len," Parker answered.
"Jesus, Parker," Cage began, looking up at the clock. "I'm sorry he's scared but--"
Margaret Lukas lifted her hand and silenced the older agent. She said, "There's no way the Digger could know about you. But I'll send a couple of agents to stay outside your house."
He thought that she was saying this as a preface to talking him into staying. But then she added quietly, "Your little boy? Go home. Make him happy. However long it takes."
Parker held her eyes for a moment. Wondering: Had he found a clue to the maze of Special Agent Lukas?
Or was this only a false trail?
He started to thank her but he sensed suddenly that any show of gratitude, any response at all, would throw off this tenuous balance between them. So he simply nodded and hurried out the door.
As he left, the only sound in the lab was Geller's raspy voice speaking to his computer. "Come on, come on, come on." The way a desperate handicapper pleads with a losing horse at the track.
21
Pixel by pixel.
Watching the images fall into place on Tobe Geller's
screen. Still a jumble.
Margaret Lukas paced, thinking about anagrams, about ash. Thinking about Parker Kincaid.
When he got home how would he comfort his son? Would he hold him? Read to him? Watch TV with him? Would he be the sort of father who talked to him about problems? Or would he try to distract the boy, take his mind off his fear? Bring him a present to bribe away his sorrow?
She had no idea. All Margaret Lukas knew was that she wanted Kincaid back here now, standing close to her.
Well, part of her did. The other part of her wanted him never to come back, to stay hidden forever in his little suburban fortress. She could--
No, no . . . Come on. Focus.
Lukas turned to compact Dr. Evans, watched him examining the extortion note carefully, rubbing his hand over his stubbly beard. His pale eyes were unsettling and she decided she wouldn't want him to be her therapist. He poured more coffee from his thermos. Then he announced, "I've got some thoughts about the unsub."
"Go ahead," she told him.
"Take 'em with a grain of salt," the doctor cautioned. "To do this right I'd need a ton more data and two weeks to analyze it."
Lukas said, "That's the way we work here. Kick around ideas. We're not holding you to anything."
"I think, from what we've seen, the Digger's just a machine. We'd call him 'profile-proof.' It's pointless to analyze him. It'd be like doing a profile of a gun. But the perp, the man in the morgue, he was a different story. You know organized offenders?"
"Of course," Lukas said. Criminal psychology 101.
"Well, he was a highly organized offender."
Lukas's eyes strayed to the extortion note as Evans described the man who'd written it.
The doctor continued. "He planned everything out perfectly. Times, locations. He knew human nature cold--he knew the mayor was going to pay, for instance, even though most authorities wouldn't have agreed to. He had backup plans upon backup plans. The firebomb at the safe house, I'm thinking of. And he found the perfect weapon--the Digger, a functioning human being who does nothing but kill. He took on an impossible task and he probably would've succeeded if he hadn't been killed in that accident."
"We had the bags rigged with tracers, so, no, he probably wouldn't have gotten away," Lukas pointed out.
"Oh," Evans said, "I'll bet he had some plan to counter that."
Lukas realized that this was probably right.