Hüber chuckled, cold and dry like ice in an empty glass. “I wish it were that easy. We could simply blast away at anyone who caught our eye as a candidate. If he successfully defends himself or the gun jams or he’s wounded and recovers—coincidence or supernatural protection? We’d have to try again, and we still couldn’t be sure. I suppose if the man dies and pops back up or the bullets bounce off him, we’d have a definitive answer. But if he dies and stays dead, does it mean he was not Antichrist? Or did we thwart prophecy? Or did we merely postpone the inevitable: will he come again in a new body, a generation later, the soul of Antichrist refusing to rest until prophecy is fulfilled? No one knows, but the consensus is that attempting to murder candidates is imprudent. At least until he is no longer a candidate.”
“Sounds like you’re in a jam.”
“That’s where you come in, Pip. You and Scaramuzzi were childhood friends. You’ve been closer than brothers for thirty years. I believe you know without a doubt that he is not who he claims to be, and you know something—you have some evidence, maybe—that could prove it definitively.”
He watched Pip’s face, perhaps looking for telltale signs of the accuracy of his words. Pip tried to show nothing.
“I said, ‘closer than brothers,’” Hüber went on, “but Scaramuzzi has been cruel, has he not? He treats you like a dog.”
Pip’s jaw hardened. “He’s been good to me.”
“The way a master is good to his slave. You serve a purpose.”
Hüber unscrewed a cap on the side of the nargila’s gummi pipe, next to the smoking tube. He picked up an unused tube from the tray on the table and began screwing it over the hole.
“Instead of living like his hound until the jig is up, and he and you and the rest of his camp are wiped out—come work for me. Give me what I need to expose him. I’ll give you a comfortable position in my organization with a fat salary and, what’s more, guaranteed existence.”
Hüber held up the smoking tube he had just attached, offering it to Pip. In his other hand, he held his own mouthpiece. By adding the second tube, he had made a communal pipe . . . a peace pipe. Accepting it meant accepting his offer to betray Luco.
Pip stared at the tendered mouthpiece. Smoke drifted from it, visible, then not, as the candle flickered on the table under it. He knew that whether or not he reached for it, his life would change. Men like Hüber did not take rejection well. Luco already knew of Hüber’s doubt and desire to bring him down, so Pip could not harm Hüber by divulging the context of this meeting. But once Hüber realized he could not use Pip to get at Luco, he would likely kill Pip, hoping to pull a leg out from under Luco’s operation. If he aided Hüber—for he did indeed have what the German sought—he would require asylum until Luco was dead. Then on to a life he’d never have as Luco’s lackey—if Hüber kept his word. A big if.
The smoke drifted, undulated, wafted into the gloom—much, Pip thought, like my future.
21
Alicia knew the video walk-through Brady was watching had reached the discovery of the severed head when he drew a sharp breath and absently covered his mouth with two fingers. She would have allowed a moment of self-congratulation over the CSD’s ability to pull people in, had the circumstance not been so terrible. Eight minutes later he tore off the headphones as though they had suddenly produced an ear-shattering screech. He was breathing faster than usual. He looked at her.
“I thought I was ready,” he said.
She nodded. “You should have been there.”
“I feel like I was. I could almost smell the blood.”
That’s on my wish list—only tact kept her from saying it.
He punched a key. “I’ll take it more slowly this time. Be more analytical.”
“Too late,” she said. “We’re here.”
She pulled the Taurus to the side of the dirt road in what seemed like the exact spot she had parked last night. Six other vehicles crowded around Cynthia Loeb’s taped-off drive: two police cruisers, two sedans that screamed “department issue,” a white full-size van she suspected had brought more crime scene technicians, and a fire-engine-red Corvette convertible.
She craned to view the house through the trees. “I don’t see anyone. They must all be inside.”
She ducked under the yellow crime scene tape strung between two trees at the head of the drive.
“Beautiful,” Brady said.
Last night she hadn’t considered the aesthetics of the scene, but now she saw that the long curving driveway was a pinkish terra cotta. With the green pines, the azure sky, the hundreds of shades of brown, from bark to fallen needles to clumps of earth, the setting was almost breathtaking in its peacefulness.
The drive arced toward the house and ended at a concrete pad in front of a double-wide garage door. The land on either side of the garage sloped up acutely, as if the house had been built on a hill and dug out on one side to accommodate a basement garage. The front of the house faced the drive. Wood stairs marched in a wide crescent from the driveway slab to the front porch.
As Alicia and Brady approached the house, the front door opened and Detective Lindsey stepped out. He stretched and yawned. No doubt he had been here since last night. He spotted them, and Alicia gave him a little wave. Even from thirty yards away, she could see his frown deepen. Her heart suddenly doubled in weight. If the investigative strategy the CSD had devised for him had proved faulty, it would set the program back months, if not longer.
The detective started down the steps. They reached the concrete slab at the same time, and instead of throwing accusations and insults at her, he locked eyes with Brady and marched up to him.
“Who are you?” Lindsey demanded.
“Detective Lindsey,” she said, “this is my partner, Special Agent Brady Moore.”
“Detective,” Brady said and held out a hand.
Lindsey ignored his hand and planted his fists on his hips. “Partner? Where were you last night?”
“Agent Moore just arrived from Quantico.”
Lindsey finally turned toward her, flashing a wicked grin. “Quantico? So you boys do think this is yours to solve.” He nodded back over his shoulder at the house.
“Detective, I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought I contributed something worthwhile to your investigation.”
His demeanor softened minutely. “Agent Wagner, you did. The CD . . . CRD thing is an amazing piece of work. I’d love to have one myself. Like I said last night, thank you for your assistance. Now good-bye.”
Couldn’t be much clearer than that.
“Detective,” Brady said pleasantly, “I’m not an advance man for the FBI. You need not be threatened by my presence.”
Lindsey inched closer to Brady. “Do I look threatened to you?”
“No, it’s just that—”
“What exactly is it you do, Agent Moore? Are you a Robocop too?”
“Have you ever used the Bureau’s criminal investigative analyses?”
“Profiles? You a profiler?” Lindsey rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah, I’ve used ’em. Besides making me fill out a twenty-page questionnaire, you guys want a fax of every scrap of paper on the case, ’cept maybe the t.p. the investigators use in the john. Autopsy reports, interview notes, ballistic results, maps, theories, photographs. And I gotta beg the local liaison for the privilege of putting all that together before I can even talk to an almighty profiler. Should I genuflect now?”
“Maybe later,” Brady said. “The reason we need so much is you never know what’s going to be the one thing that brings it all together, like the key word in a cipher. Does the perp play chess, checkers, or Dungeons & Dragons? Does he drink milk or beer? Is he a ladies’ man or does he wear ladies’ clothing? And while we don’t give a rat’s butt what t.p. your investigators use, we may be able to tell you what kind your offender uses.”
Without taking his eyes off Lindsey, he pointed to Alicia.
“The Crime Scene Digitizer—that’s C-S-D, by
the way—that Agent Wagner developed can make at least half of that truckload of paperwork you mentioned go away. What’s the turnaround for Bureau profiles these days, a week, if we get to yours at all? That’s an eternity when a little kid is missing or a killer keeps killing and the press and the public and your bosses are all over your back. The CSD can cut turnaround in half and free up manpower for cases we wouldn’t have had time to blow our noses on before.
“Now, I don’t know if Agent Wagner offended you in some way, other than being female and superb at her job. You said the work she did last night helped you out, and I’d be willing to bet it helped you out a lot. I understand territorial rivalry, but that’s not what this is about. Believe it or not, we’re here to help you, and the last thing we need is to get slapped down for something we haven’t done.”
Brady had leaned forward while he spoke until the two men’s noses were inches apart. Lindsey took a step back, pretending to adjust his waistband. He looked from Brady to Alicia and smiled.
“You two are a pair. I think I’ve just been told off, but I’m not sure.”
“Did your parents have this much trouble getting through to you?”
Lindsey stared uncertainly at Brady.
Brady’s smile came slow as a tide.
“Ah . . . !” Lindsey laughed. “You’re funny. I hear you, but I can’t let you keep sniffing around my crime scene. You screw something up, I’m the one—”
A man’s voice bellowing from the house stopped him. Something about showings and escrow.
“Hold on.” Lindsey held up a finger and trotted up the steps toward the front door. Alicia and Brady heard the door open—the bellowing rose a decibel—and then slam shut.
“Nice speech,” she said.
He made a face. “I thought it would work.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s got a bug up his—”
Lindsey came down the stairs again, followed by a uniformed cop who was escorting a balding man in his forties.
“Now, just a minute, just a minute . . . ,” the man was saying.
Lindsey reached the slab and gestured for them to give the man and the cop some room.
As they passed, heading down the drive toward the road, the man was saying, “I have a camera in the car. Just let me snap a few shots.”
Lindsey said, “Sorry. Talk about abrasive personalities.”
“Who is he?” Alicia asked.
“Jeffery Loeb. Victim’s husband.”
“Husband? I was under the impression they were divorced.”
“Separated. Divorce hadn’t gone through yet. We made the mistake of asking him to look at the house, see if anything obvious is missing or out of place.”
Alicia nodded. Standard procedure.
“Did he spot anything?”
“Just a house he’d like to sell. You could almost see it dawning on him as he walked around: We’re not divorced yet. This is mine, all mine. He wanted to get a Realtor out here today. Didn’t like the idea of our seizing it as evidence for a week or two.”
Brady said, “Detective, I’d like to talk to him.” He took a step toward the two men receding down the drive.
Lindsey touched his arm to stop him. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, we don’t want to spook him.”
“What do you mean, spook him?”
“Right now, he’s our primary suspect.”
“You’re kidding. Based on what?”
Lindsey leaned his head back to look at Brady down the bridge of his nose. “Well, I guess you’ll have to excuse me for treading in your territory, but there’s evidence the killer made a sandwich.”
“Uh-huh.” That was on the CSD walk-through. Bread crumbs on top of the blood on the counter.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that usually point to an assailant who knew the victim, who was comfortable in the house?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Usually, but—”
“And aren’t most violent acts perpetrated by a relative, a so-called loved one?”
“Often, but everything points to this crime being linked to at least four other murders in two states. Did Cynthia Loeb’s husband commit them all?”
“I suppose you never heard of copycats?”
Brady just stared at Lindsey. Alicia was equally stunned. Surely Lindsey knew that only scant information about each of the previous Pelletier killings had been released to the press. In every case, major details had been withheld, including the best evidence linking the crimes: that dogs participated in the murders. How would a copycat, one, know that; and two, mimic it? Did he just happen to own dogs trained to restrain victims?
“I’d still like to speak with him.” Brady said. “You can’t stop me from talking to a witness.”
“I can while he’s on my crime scene.”
As if on cue, a big engine roared to life on the road.
“That’d be his midlife-crisis-mobile,” Alicia said flatly.
Sure enough, a flash of red identified the rumbling, revving sound as belonging to the ’Vette. Gravel sprayed out from under tires moving entirely too fast.
Brady turned to Lindsey, disgusted. “Did you at least interview him?”
“No. I invited him to my wife’s Tupperware party.”
“Could we get a transcript e-mailed to us?” He was trying hard to be nice.
“I’ll see what I can do. What’s the address?”
Brady produced a card from his jacket’s inside pocket. “I’d appreciate it.”
“Least I can do.”
“Detective,” Alicia said, “Agent Moore really needs to look around. It’s the reason he got up at three this morning to fly here.”
Lindsey’s expression reminded her that he’d been up all night and that he cared as much for Brady’s sleep schedule or the Bureau’s budget as he did whether Pavarotti ever sang opera again. But he surprised her again by asking, “What is it you want to do?”
Brady spoke up quickly. “My job is to make sure the CSD recorded everything a profiler would need to make an accurate analysis of the crime scene. I’ve studied the recording Agent Wagner made last night. What I need to do is tour the crime scene as though you asked for a profile and the case warranted my coming out. I’ll be looking for anything that may be important that Agent Wagner didn’t capture on the CSD. That’s it. Very straightforward.”
Lindsey skewed his face and looked up at the sky. You’d have thought he was contemplating bungee jumping for the first time.
A tech in a white lab coat appeared partway down on the stairs leading from the front door. “Detective,” he called. “We need you.”
Lindsey pointed his voice at the officer coming up the drive, having safely escorted Prime Suspect Number One off the property. “Vasquez!”
“Yeah!”
“Got another tour for you!”
Vasquez held up his thumb: no problem.
Lindsey headed up the stairs.
“Thank you,” Alicia called.
“Be outta here in forty, okay?” He climbed out of sight.
Brady turned to her. “What are you smiling about?”
“I can’t wait for the Bureau to establish jurisdiction.”
“Can’t mix field testing and field investigations, you know. You ready to leave the case?”
“It would almost be worth it to see his face when we take over.” She thought about it a moment. “Almost.”
22
Back in the Taurus, Brady began fleshing out the notes he’d made during their tour of Cynthia Loeb’s house.
Alicia nosed into the property’s drive and backed onto the road. They had seen evidence in the dirt of the Corvette’s spinning one-eighty. Brady asked her not to attempt the same stunt.
Now she glanced at his hand, drawing quick lines from one observation to another. She said, “Forty minutes isn’t long to study a crime scene.”
“I think I got what I needed.”
“So . . . how’d I do?”
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes but flipped forward and backward through his note pad, making connections, scribbling new ideas. Occasionally he would lift the digital camera to check the pictures he had asked her to shoot during the tour. Finally, he nodded.
“You did well. Only a few suggestions.”
“I’m listening.”
She had driven them out of Palmer Lake and through the town of Monument. Now she pulled onto the ramp for northbound I-25. They had agreed to visit the crime scene in Ft. Collins, where three days ago Daniel Fears, the high school coach, had become victim number four. When Alicia had come to Colorado yesterday, it was to make a CSD recording of the Fears crime scene and be ready to record a fresh scene, should the UNSUB—unknown subject—strike again soon in Colorado. The night she arrived, before she’d had a chance to get to Ft. Collins, he murdered Cynthia Loeb. Brady and Alicia were hoping to find some references to repeated patterns there. The more clues they had, the more detailed the picture of the killer would become. It was like creating a mosaic: the first few pieces revealed nothing; clarity came from studying many fragments.
“Tool markings at the point of entry,” he said. “There were scrapes where it appeared the UNSUB used a tool to remove the screen. Close-ups of them would be nice, both on the window frame and the screen outside.” He consulted his notes. “Speaking of outside, next time follow the officer who tracks them. Vasquez said they were unable to trail back farther than a hundred yards or so, but if they had found where the UNSUB had parked or waited, that would be invaluable.”
“For tire impressions?”
“That, and if the assailant waited, it would show a high degree of planning. What was he waiting for? Other people to leave? Darkness? A time that means something to him? What did he do while he waited? Smoke? Carve something in a tree? Stand there with the patience of a Beefeater? If you find where he parked, the location might tell us something about who he is. If it’s a long way from the crime, for example, we’d know the guy is pretty good at finding his way through the woods, that he’s healthy enough to trudge that far. If it’s someplace only a four-wheel drive can get to . . .”