The Face of Death

  I do not share Cabrera’s beliefs. But I can feel the strength of his faith, the succor it provides him, and it moves me.

  “I came to America,” he continues. “I believed in God, but I was troubled, always troubled. I’m ashamed to say that I did drugs at times. That I saw prostitutes. I contracted the virus.” He shakes his head. “Once again, the despair. Once again, the idea that death might be better than life. It was then, at that moment, that I realized: The virus was a message from God. He had sent me an angel, once, and that angel had saved me. I should have been thankful. Instead, I had wasted many years embroiled in my own sorrows and rage.

  “I listened to God’s warning. I changed my ways, became a celibate. Grew closer to God. And then, one day eleven years ago, my angel returned.”

  Cabrera’s eyes now grow mournful.

  “Still an angel, but no longer one of light. He was a dark angel. An angel made for the purpose of vengeance.”

  The tattoo, I think.

  “He told me that he had gone through terrible, terrible things as a result of helping me escape. I cannot tell you the things he told me. They are too evil. He told me that at times, for moments only, he would doubt God’s love. But then he would remember me, and he would pray, and he was certain again. God was testing him. God would lead him from that place.” Cabrera grimaces. “One day, God did. One day, all of the boy’s faith, all of his prayers, his sacrifice for me, all these things were rewarded. He and the other children, in America now, were rescued by the police, by your FBI.

  “He described it as a glorious moment. It was, to him, as though God had kissed him. His faith and his suffering had been justified.”

  Cabrera goes silent now. A long silence. I have a very bad feeling building inside of me. Something that tells me I know what’s coming.

  “One night, he said, God returned them to hell. Men came to where they were sleeping, and murdered the police that guarded them. Men came and took them away and returned them to slavery. Terrible,” Cabrera whispers. “Can you imagine? To be safe, and then to be snatched away from hope again? And for him, it was the worst of all. They knew that he had been helping, that he had told the police the name of a guard. They didn’t kill him, but they punished him in ways that made his prior existence in hell seem like heaven.”

  I knew it already, someplace inside me, but now it is confirmed.

  I move so I’m standing next to Alan. “The boy’s name was Juan, wasn’t it?” I ask Cabrera.

  He nods. “Yes. An angel named Juan.”

  I don’t know if his picture of Juan as a young saint is the truth, or the overidealized memories of a once terrified and abused child who found a very good friend when he needed one most. What I do know is that this is a story I’ve heard before. It’s a story where no one wins, not even us.

  Killers are killers, and what they do is unforgivable, but there’s a certain tragedy in the ones that were made. You see it in their rage. Their actions are less about joy and more about screaming. Screaming at the father who abused them, the mother who beat them, the brother who burned them with cigarettes. They begin with helplessness and end with death. You capture them and put them away because it must be done, but there’s no savage satisfaction to it.

  “Please go on,” Alan says. His voice is gentle now.

  “He told me that he had come to realize God had another plan for him. That he had sinned in thinking himself saintly, in comparing his sufferings to those of Christ. His duty, he now knew, was not to heal, but to avenge.” Cabrera shifts in his chair, uneasy. “His eyes were terrible to see when he spoke these words. Such rage and horror. They did not look like the eyes of someone touched by God. But who was I to say?” He sighs. “He had escaped from his captors. He told me about returning in later nights to visit blood and vengeance on the men who had tortured him. It’s how he came to understand that it had been two men, an FBI agent and a policeman, who had betrayed him and the other children. These men, he told me, were the most evil of all, the men wearing masks, hiding behind symbols.

  “He had a plan, a long design, and he asked me to help. He couldn’t be captured once everything had been done, because God had revealed to him that his work extended beyond vengeance for just his own suffering. He needed me to become him, in your eyes. I agreed.”

  “Sir,” Alan says to him, “do you know where we can find Juan?”

  He nods. “Of course. But I will not tell you.”

  “Why?” Alan asks him. “You have to know that he’s not doing God’s will, Gustavo. You know that. He’s murdered innocent people. He’s ruined a young girl’s life.” Alan locks eyes with him. “‘Thou shalt not kill,’ Gustavo. You’ve killed for him. Innocent young men in that FBI lobby died, good men who never hurt a child or did anything less than their job.”

  Pain fills his face. “I know this. I do. And I will pray to God for forgiveness. But you must understand—you must! He saved me. I cannot betray him. I cannot. I am not doing this for what he is now. I’m doing this for what he once was.”

  It should be melodramatic; his total sincerity just makes it agonizing.

  Alan goes at him again and again, retrieves the sweat and the cheek-twitch, but it’s like running into a wall.

  Cabrera had been saved from a fate that some would argue was a lot worse than death. Juan had helped him to escape, not just his physical prison, but his despair. Cabrera’s own life had been ruined, to some degree, by the evil done to him, but his faith still promised an ultimate salvation, a door Juan had left open for him.

  As for Juan…well. That was a horror story that I just couldn’t take in. The most terrible, terrible, terrible thing was that we had helped create this monster. Someone corrupt had sold him down the river and had ruined the gentle boy with the unshakable faith. Juan had fallen, but not without the help of those he trusted most.

  Everything here was about either the absolute worst or the absolute best in people, and I didn’t see Cabrera budging.

  “There is one good thing I am allowed to do,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  He inclines his head toward the left side of the home. “In the den, on the computer. You’ll find the location of the girls. Jessica and Theresa. They are alive.” He sighs again, sadder this time “Placed in hell by an angel. They have had a difficult time.”

  “Where are they?”

  I’m asking this of Alan. He’s already told me, but it’s not sinking in.

  “North Dakota,” Alan says. “In what used to be a missile silo. Ten thousand square feet, all of it underground, and the ground it’s under is in the middle of nowhere. The government cleaned out a number of silos and underground bases over the years. They sold them, most often to real estate companies who fixed them up and resold the properties to individuals.”

  “And that’s legal?” I ask, dumbfounded.

  Alan shrugs. “Sure.”

  As Cabrera had promised, we’d found the location where Theresa and Jessica were being held on the personal computer in the den, along with grainy photos of what I assumed to be the girls themselves. They were nude and they looked drawn and unhappy, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Get in touch with the field office up there. Let’s get the girls out and bring them here. Do we know how to enter the place?”

  “An electronic combination lock with a thirty-digit code. I’ll make sure they have it.”

  He heads toward the front door of the house. The air outside is filled with the sound of TV news helicopters. Just them, so far; it was one of the nice things about the home being on land behind gates and walls. Brady has men guarding the entrance to the estate until the local cops take over. No one in, period. Boone and one other member of the SWAT team are in a coroner’s wagon, escorting Cabrera’s “body,” ostensibly to the morgue. In reality, Cabrera will never make it to the morgue. He’ll be held under guard at a safe house.

  I take a moment to look around.

  He came here, but he didn’t
live here.

  I hit a number on my speed dial and put the phone to my ear.

  “What?” James asks, preamble-less as usual.

  “Where are you?”

  “Signing myself out. These morons want me to stay here. I’m going home.”

  “Not nice, James. The ‘morons’ you’re speaking about patched you up.”

  “That part wasn’t stupid. Keeping me here is.”

  I let it go. “I need another viewpoint.”

  “Go ahead,” he says without hesitation.

  This is what keeps the rest of us from strangling James. He is always ready to work. Always.

  I fill him in on everything that’s occurred.

  “Cabrera says he knows the identity of The Stranger. He’s not going to reveal it.”

  James is silent, thinking.

  “I’m not coming up with anything.”

  “Me neither. Listen, I know you said you were going home, but I need you to get back to Michael Kingsley’s computer. He wouldn’t have made it unsolvable. He wants us to crack it.”

  “Dakota is on it,” Alan says, startling me from my thoughts. “They’re sending agents and a SWAT team. Local bomb squad too, just in case The Stranger decided to be cute.”

  “Where’s Kirby?”

  “Gone. She said she was going back to the safe house.”

  “We have a problem, Alan. We have no evidence. Not a shred of forensic data that we can hold up. Even if we knew who he was, everything is circumstantial. At best.”

  He spreads his hands. “Only one thing to do, then.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Work the scene. Get Callie and Gene and whoever over here and let them go to town. I’ve been through this before. So have you. Sometimes there’s no substitute for down and dirty police work.”

  “I know that. The problem I have with it is conceptual. When I look at this case, do you know what I see? That none of the breaks have been forensic. They’ve all been about outthinking him. About understanding him. He doesn’t leave things behind.”

  “But he does leave things out. Like with Theresa. He couldn’t control that, and he missed the fact that Sarah omitted it.” Alan shrugs. “He’s smart. He’s not superhuman.”

  I know that Alan is right. I know it in all the deep-down places inside of me. It still chafes me. To feel so close and realize that, really, we’re no closer than we were before.

  “Fine,” I say, giving in to the truth. “Let’s get Callie and Gene here.”

  “You got it.”

  I wander into the den, trying to walk off my frustration, as Alan alerts Callie to her coming task. Like the rest of the home, the den is all about dark wood, dark carpet, brown walls. Old-fashioned and trying for sumptuous; to me it’s just ugly.

  The desk, I notice, is immaculate and ordered. Too ordered. I move closer and nod to myself. Cabrera has some obsessive-compulsive going on. There are three fountain pens on the left side of the desk. Each one is aligned perfectly straight in relation to the other and with the right angles of the desktop itself. Three more pens are on the right side of the desk and a cursory glance confirms that they align not just with each other but with the pens on the left. A letter opener lies horizontally at the top of the desk near the computer screen. Its placement is equidistant between the two arrangements of fountain pens. Curious, I open the middle desk drawer. I see exact arrangements of tacks, paper clips, and rubber bands. I’m not going to count them, but I’m guessing the quantity of each matches the other.

  Interesting, but unhelpful. I grimace, still frustrated.

  I stare at the computer screen. One of the icons catches my eyes: Address Book.

  I bend over and use the mouse to double-click it. A list of phone numbers and addresses opens up. There aren’t many of them, and they are a mix of business and personal. I scroll through.

  Something flickers in my head. I frown.

  I scroll through the names again. Another flicker.

  Omissions…

  Something is missing. What?

  I scroll through the list five times before I see it.

  “Son of a bitch,” I say, standing up straight, shocked. I cover my eyes with my hand, dismayed at my own stupidity. “You moron,” I mutter, chastising myself.

  It’s not the evidence that points to him, but the lack of it.

  “Alan!” I bark.

  He ambles in, eyebrow raised in question.

  “I know who The Stranger is.”

  59

  “THEY GOT THE GIRLS OUT,” ALAN SAYS TO ME. HE’S JUST FINISHED

  a conversation on his cell phone. “Jessica and Theresa. They’re physically healthy, but we’re not sure of anything else yet.” He grimaces. “Jessica’s been inside that place for the last ten plus years. Theresa for five. He gave them ten thousand square feet of room, he fed them—hell, he even gave them satellite TV and music. But they were never allowed outside. And they weren’t allowed to wear any clothes. He told them…” Alan pauses, sighs. “He told them if they tried anything—like escape or suicide—that he’d kill someone they loved. They’re both pretty withdrawn and uncommunicative. He might have beaten them.”

  “He probably did,” I say. I’m glad the girls are alive, but the thought of their ordeal, like everything else about this case, makes me feel tired and angry.

  We’d been in the car, waiting for Callie, when the call came in. A thought occurs to me.

  “Call them back,” I tell him. “Have the agent in charge ask the girls if they ever saw his face.”

  Alan dials, waits. “Johnson?” he asks. “It’s Alan Washington. Need you to ask the girls something for me.”

  We wait.

  “Yeah?” Alan shakes his head at me. They hadn’t seen his face.

  Damn.

  Alan frowns. “Sorry—can you repeat that?” His expression sobers. “Oh. Tell her Sarah’s fine. And, Johnson? I need you to break some news to Jessica Nicholson.” He explains, then hangs up. “Theresa asked about Sarah.”

  I don’t reply. What am I supposed to say?

  Callie and Gene are here. Callie hops out and strides over, smiling. She’s cleaned herself up and looks perfect again, of course. She nods toward the front of the house, taking in the broken windows, the burnt, bullet-chewed lawn.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Hey, Smoky,” Gene says. He doesn’t look perfect. He looks tired.

  “Hi, Gene.”

  I’m about to fill them in when I see another car coming toward the house. Brady appears from nowhere as it approaches.

  “AD Jones,” he says.

  “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Callie murmurs. “By the way, Smoky, Kirby seemed to be disappointed that she didn’t get to shoot anyone.”

  “She did good,” Brady says, giving Callie a thoughtful once-over.

  I watch Callie return the gaze, recognize the semi-lustful spark in her eyes. She holds out a hand.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” she purrs.

  “Brady,” the SWAT commander says, taking her hand and shaking it. “And you are?”

  “Callie Thorne. But you can call me Beautiful.”

  “Not a stretch.”

  Callie grins at me. “I like him.”

  The car arrives next to us, cutting the banter short. AD Jones gets out. He reminds me of both Callie and Brady, tireless and energized, his suit un-rumpled, not a hair out of place.

  “Brief me,” he says without preamble.

  I fill him in on the assault, and on the subsequent interview with Cabrera. About the girls in North Dakota.

  “Any recent update on the girls?” he asks Alan.

  “No, sir. But soon.”

  I tell him about Juan. Watch as his eyes go wide, then sad. His face falls. He looks off. His mouth moves.

  “Christ,” he says. “We did this.”

  I wait, let him gather himself.

  “So,” he continues, “we know who he was. Do
we know who he is? Do we have a name?”

  I tell him. Alan knew already. This is the first time Callie’s heard this, and her look of shock matches AD Jones’s.

  “Gibbs?” AD Jones asks. “The trust lawyer? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “I wish I was, sir. It makes sense, and we should have considered it before. It’s a huge misstep on my part. He’s right there. I just didn’t see it until I was going through the contact list on Cabrera’s computer. It wasn’t what was there, but what was missing.”

  He stares at me, frowning. His face clears as he gets it. “Gibbs wasn’t on the list. Jesus Christ.”

  “That’s right. A quick search through the office didn’t turn up anything relating to Gibbs or the trust. Nothing. But Cabrera isn’t just meticulous—he’s obsessive-compulsive. His contact list wasn’t huge, but what was there was very complete. He had numbers for everyone from the woman who cut his hair to the trash company. Home phones, cell phones, e-mail addresses, fax numbers, alternate numbers—but not his lawyer? No way he’d leave that out by accident. That, combined with something else Cabrera mentioned while he was talking.” I squint at AD Jones. “Juan was fair-skinned, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. He almost looked white. It didn’t occur to me to mention it.”

  “Gibbs is white. Cabrera called Juan a ‘white angel.’ I thought it was a figure of speech, but I put that together with the missing piece of the address book and realized that he meant white-skinned.”

  “It’s not a lock,” Alan says, “but it feels right. Hiding in plain sight. It’s simple, it’s smart, and it fits his MO.”

  AD Jones shakes his head once, a gesture encompassing disbelief, frustration, and anger. I know just how he feels. “So what’s the problem?” he asks.

  “Aside from the slight chance I’m wrong about this? No evidence, sir,” I say. “No one besides Cabrera has seen his face. None of the scenes we’re aware of have turned up anything probative or useful. Short of a confession, we have nothing to tie him to a crime.” I point to Callie and Gene. “I’m going to have them scour this place from top to bottom, and hope something turns up.”