“I was looking for you, Tess,” he said calmly while she pulled and twisted against his strength. “I’m so glad you found your way.”
CHAPTER 64
Washington, D.C.
Monday, April 6
Maggie couldn’t believe Cunningham had insisted she keep her Monday-morning appointment with Dr. Kernan. It was bad enough that they had to wait for some kind of unofficial permission from the Maryland authorities. How could they be sure Stucky wouldn’t find out? If any of the information leaked, they wouldn’t need to worry about Stucky setting another trap. No, this time he’d be long gone. It would be another five or six months before they heard from him again.
She had made the trip, angry and on edge—an hour’s drive in D.C.’s early-morning rush. And now she had to wait some more. Once again Kernan was late. He shuffled in, smelling of cigar smoke and looking as though he had just crawled out of bed. His cheap brown suit was wrinkled, his shoes scuffed, with one shoestring untied and dragging behind him. He had plastered down his thin white hair with some foul-smelling gel. Or maybe it was the Ben-Gay assaulting her nostrils. The man looked like a poster model for homeless mental patients.
Again, he didn’t acknowledge her as he shifted and creaked in his chair, back and forth, until he decided he was comfortable. This time Maggie felt too restless and angry to be intimidated. She didn’t care what strange insights he might probe from her psyche. Nothing Kernan could do or say would reduce or heal the chaotic storm ticking away inside her chest like some time bomb ready to explode without warning.
She tapped her foot and drummed her fingertips on the arm of the chair. She watched him sift through his mess. God, she was sick of everyone’s messes. First Tully’s, now Kernan’s. How did these people function?
She sighed, and he scowled at her over his thick glasses. He smacked his lips together in a “tis, tis,” as if to scold her. She continued to stare at him, letting him see her contempt, her anger, her impatience. Letting him see it all, and not giving a damn what he thought.
“Are we in a hurry, Special Agent Margaret O’Dell?” he asked as he thumbed through a magazine.
She glanced at his fingers and caught a glimpse of the magazine’s cover. It was a copy of Vogue, for God’s sake.
“Yes, I am in a hurry, Dr. Kernan. There’s an important investigation I’d like to get back to.”
“So you think you’ve found him?”
She looked up, surprised, checking to see if he knew. But he appeared engrossed in the magazine’s pages. Was it possible Cunningham had told him? How else would he know?
“We may have,” she said, careful not to reveal anything more.
“But everyone is making you wait, is that it? Your partner, your supervisor, me. And we all know how much Margaret O’Dell hates to wait.”
She didn’t have time for his stupid games.
“Could we please just get on with this?”
He looked up at her again over his glasses, this time surprised. “What would you like to get on with? Would you like some special absolution, perhaps? Some sort of permission to go racing after him?”
He put the magazine aside, sat back and brought his hands together over his chest. He stared at her as if waiting for an answer, an explanation. She refused to give him any of what he wanted. Instead, she simply stared back.
“You’d like us all to get out of your way,” he continued. “Is that it, Special Agent Margaret O’Dell?” He paused. She pursed her lips, denying him a response, and so he continued, “You want to go after him all by yourself again, because you’re the only one who can capture him. Oh no, excuse me. You’re the only one who can stop him. Perhaps you think stopping him this time will absolve you of his crimes?”
“If I was looking for absolution, Dr. Kernan, I’d be in a church and certainly not sitting here in your office.”
He smiled, a thin-lipped smile. Maggie realized it was the first time she had ever seen the man smile.
“Will you be looking for absolution after you shoot Albert Stucky between the eyes?”
She winced, remembering their last session and how out of control she had been. It reminded her that she still felt out of control, only now the anger gave her a false sense of how close the ledge really was. If she remained angry, perhaps she wouldn’t see the ledge at all. Would she even feel herself slipping or would the fall be abrupt and sudden when it happened?
“Maybe I’ve been around evil too long to care about what I need to do to destroy it.” She was no longer concerned with what she told him. He couldn’t use any of it to hurt her. No one could hurt her more than Stucky already had. “Maybe,” she continued, letting the anger drive her, “maybe I need to be as evil as Albert Stucky in order to stop him.”
He stared at her, but this time it was different. He was contemplating what she had said. Would he have some smart-ass response? Would he try his reverse psychology on her? She wasn’t one of his naive students anymore. She could play at his game. After all, she had played with someone ten times as twisted as him. If she could play at Albert Stucky’s game, then Dr. James Kernan’s would be nothing more than child’s play.
She stared him down, without flinching, without fidgeting. Had she rendered the old man speechless?
Finally he sat forward, elbows on his messy desk, fingers constructing a tent of bent and misshapen digits.
“So that’s what concerns you, Margaret O’Dell?”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she kept the question from her face.
“You’re concerned,” he said slowly, as if approaching a delicate subject. It was an unfamiliar gesture, one that immediately made Maggie suspicious. Was it another of Kernan’s famous tricks or was he genuinely concerned? She hoped for a trick. That, she could handle. The concern, she wasn’t too sure about.
“You’re worried,” he began again, “that you may be capable of the same sort of evil Albert Stucky is capable of.”
“Aren’t we all, Dr. Kernan?” She paused for his reaction. “Isn’t that what Jung meant when he said we all have a shadow side?” She watched him closely, wanting to see how it felt to have one of his students contradict him with his own teachings. “Evil men do what good men only dream of doing. Isn’t that true, Dr. Kernan?”
He shifted in his chair. She should have counted the succession of eye blinks. She wanted to smile, because she had him on the ropes, so to speak. But there was no victory in this truth.
“I believe—” he hesitated to clear his throat “—I believe Jung said that evil is as essential a component of human behavior as good. That we must learn to acknowledge and accept that it exists within all of us. But no, that doesn’t mean we’re all capable of the same kind of evil as someone like Albert Stucky. There’s a difference, my dear Agent O’Dell, between stepping into evil and getting your shoes muddy, and choosing to dive in and wallow in it.”
“But how do you stop from falling in headfirst?” She felt an annoying catch in her throat as the inner frenzy threatened to reveal itself. Her thoughts of revenge were black and evil and very real. Had she already dived in?
“I’m going to tell you something, Maggie O’Dell, and I want you to listen very closely.” He leaned forward, his face serious, his magnified eyes pinning her to the chair with their unfamiliar concern. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jung or Freud when it comes to this evil crap. Remember this and only this, Margaret O’Dell. The decisions we make in a split second will always reveal our true nature, our true self. Whether we like it or not. When that split second comes, don’t think, don’t analyze, don’t feel and never second-guess—just react. Trust. Trust in yourself. You do that—just that—and I’m willing to bet you end up with nothing more than a little mud on your shoes.”
CHAPTER 65
Tully punched at the laptop’s keyboard. He knew the computer down in his office was much faster, but he couldn’t leave the conference room. Not now that he had had all the calls forwarded, and every l
ast file on the case was spread out over the tabletop. Agent O’Dell would be furious about the mess. Though he doubted she could get much angrier. He hadn’t seen or talked to her since she had stormed out of his house yesterday.
Assistant Director Cunningham had informed him that O’Dell would be spending the morning in D.C. at a previously scheduled appointment. He didn’t elaborate, but Tully knew the appointment was with the Bureau psychologist. Maybe it would help calm her down. She needed to keep things in perspective. She needed to realize that everything that could be done, was being done, and as quickly as possible. She needed to get past her own fear. She couldn’t keep seeing the bogeyman in every corner and expect to handle it by running after him with guns blazing.
Although Tully had to admit, he was also having a tough time waiting. The Maryland authorities were hesitant to go storming onto private property without just cause. And no government department seemed willing to admit or confirm that the metallic mud could have come from the recently closed and sold government property. All they had was Detective Rosen’s fishing story, and now that Tully had repeated it over and over to top government officials it was beginning to sound more and more just like a fish story.
It might be different if the property in question wasn’t miles and miles of trees and rocks. They could drive down the road and check things out. But from what he understood, this property had no road, at least not a public one. The only dirt road available included an electronic gate, a leftover from when the government owned the property and had allowed no unauthorized access. So Tully searched for the new property owners, hoping to find something that would tell him who or what WH Enterprises was.
He decided to use a new search engine and keyed in “WH Enterprises” again. Then he sat, elbows on the desk, his chin resting on his hand as he watched the line crawl along the bottom of the screen…3% of document transferred…4%…5%…This would take forever.
The phone rescued him. He wheeled his chair around and grabbed the receiver.
“Tully.”
“Agent Tully, this is Keith Ganza—over in forensics. They told me Agent O’Dell was out this morning.”
“That’s right.”
“Any chance I could get hold of her? Maybe her cell phone? I was wondering if you had the number.”
“Sounds important.”
“Don’t really know for sure, but I figure that’s up to Maggie to determine.”
Tully sat up straight. Ganza’s voice was a constant monotone, but the fact that he didn’t want to talk to him alarmed Tully. Had O’Dell and Ganza been on to something that she wasn’t letting him in on?
“Does this have anything to do with the luminol tests you did? You know Agent O’Dell and I are working on the Stucky case together, Keith.”
There was a pause. So he was right. There was something.
“Actually, it’s a couple of things,” he finally said. “I spent so much time analyzing the chemicals in the dirt and then the fingerprints that, well, I’m just getting to that bag of trash you found.”
“It didn’t look too unusual except for all the candy bar wrappers.”
“I might have an explanation for those.”
“The candy wrappers?” He couldn’t believe Ganza would waste his time with those.
“I discovered a small vial and a syringe at the bottom of the trash bag. It was insulin. Now, it could be that one of the previous owners of the house has diabetes, but then we should have found more. Also, most diabetics I know are fairly conscientious about properly disposing of their used syringes.”
“So what exactly are you saying, Keith?”
“Just telling you what I found. That’s what I meant about Maggie determining whether or not it was important.”
“You said there were a couple of things?”
“Oh yeah…” Ganza hesitated again. “Maggie asked me to do a search of prints for a Walker Harding, but it’s been taking me a while. The guy has no criminal record, never registered a handgun.”
Tully was surprised Maggie hadn’t stopped Ganza after they had read the article and discovered that Harding was going blind. He couldn’t possibly be a suspect. “Save yourself the time,” he told Ganza. “Looks like we don’t need to check.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t able to find anything. The cold search just took a bit longer. The guy had a civil servant job about ten years ago, so his prints are on file after all.”
“Keith, I’m sorry you went through all that trouble.” Tully only half listened to Ganza as he watched the computer screen. The search engine must be accessing something on WH Enterprises if it was taking this long. He started tapping his fingers.
“Hopefully, it was worth the trouble,” Ganza went on. “The prints I lifted from the whirlpool bath were an exact match.”
Tully’s fingers stopped. His other hand gripped the phone’s receiver. “What the hell did you just say?”
The fingerprints I lifted off the bathtub at the house on Archer Drive…they matched this Walker Harding guy. It’s an exact match. No doubt about it.”
The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, but Tully didn’t like the picture they were forming. On an obscure Web site designed to look like some clearinghouse run by the Confederacy, he found computer video games for sale. All were wholesale priced, and the search could be completed by clicking on the tiny Confederate-flag icons. The games were available though a company called WH Enterprises. Most of them guaranteed graphic violence and others promised to be of pornographic nature. These were not the types of games kids could pick up at Best Buys or Kids “R” Us.
The sample that could be viewed with a simple click of the mouse included a naked woman being gang-raped, with the player being able to gun down all the assailants, only to be rewarded by raping the woman himself. Despite the animation, the video clip was all too real. Tully found himself sick to his stomach. He wondered if any of Emma’s friends were into this sort of garbage.
One of the Web site’s features was the “Lil’ General’s Top Ten List,” including a note from the CEO of WH Enterprises. Tully knew what he’d find before he scrolled down to see the message ending with, “Happy hunting, General Walker Harding.”
Tully paced the conference room, walking from window to window. Walker Harding may have been going blind, but he sure as hell could see now. How else could he run a computer business like this one? How else could he be at each crime scene, helping his old pal, Albert Stucky?
“Son of a bitch,” Tully said out loud. O’Dell had been right. The two men were working together. Maybe they were still competing in some new game of horror. Whatever it was, there was no denying the evidence. Walker Harding’s fingerprints matched those found on the Dumpster with Jessica Beckwith’s body. They matched the umbrella in Kansas City, and they matched the prints left on the whirlpool bath at the house on Archer Drive.
Earlier, the Maryland authorities had finally confirmed that there was a large two-story house and several wooden shacks on the property. All government buildings had been bulldozed before the sale. The rest of the property, Tully was informed, was surrounded on three sides by water and covered with trees and rock. There were no roads except a dirt path that led to the house. No electrical lines or telephone cables had been brought in from the outside. The new owner used a large generator system left behind by the government. The place sounded like a recluse’s dream come true and a madman’s paradise. Why hadn’t he realized sooner that, of course, WH Enterprises would belong to Walker Harding?
Tully checked his wristwatch. He needed to make some phone calls. He needed to concentrate. He took several deep breaths, dug the exhaustion out from under his glasses and picked up the phone. The waiting was over, but he dreaded telling Agent O’Dell. Would this be the final thread to unravel her already frayed mental state?
CHAPTER 66
Tess woke slowly, painfully. Her body ached. Her head throbbed. Something held her down. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t open her
eyes again, the lids were too heavy. Her mouth felt dry, her throat was raw on the inside as well as the outside. She was thirsty and ran her tongue over her lips, alarmed when she tasted blood.
She forced her eyes open and strained against the shackles that clamped her wrists and ankles to the small cot. She recognized the inside of the shack, could feel its dampness and smell its musty odor. She twisted, trying to free herself. She felt a scratchy blanket beneath her and that’s when she realized she was naked. Panic rushed through her insides, shoving against the walls of her body. A scream stuck in her throat, but nothing came out except a gasp of air. That was enough, however, to send a scrape of pain down her throat as though she were swallowing razor blades.
She settled down, trying to calm herself, trying to think before terror took control of her mind. She no longer had control over her body, but no one would control her mind. It was a painful lesson she had learned from her aunt and uncle. No matter what they did to her body, no matter how many times her aunt had banished her to the dark cellar or how many times her uncle had shoved himself inside her, she had retained control over her mind. It was the ultimate defense. It was her only defense.
Yet, when she heard the locks to the door clicking open, Tess felt the terror clawing at the flimsy barricades to her mind.
CHAPTER 67
Maggie swerved around slower-moving traffic, trying to keep her foot from pushing the accelerator to the floor. Her heart hadn’t stopped ramming against her chest since Tully’s phone call. All the anger she had accessed in Kernan’s office had been converted to sheer panic. It no longer ticked quietly like a time bomb. Instead, it pressed against her rib cage like some heavy weight being lowered, little by little, threatening to crush her.