Edge (9 page)

I looked around and ushered Ryan, Joanne and Maree out. We moved steadily toward the Armada, about twenty-five feet away.

Though I was convinced that Loving and any backup were waiting behind the house I checked the garage first. It was clear. We continued on.

Like a hungry wolf, Ryan kept his eye on the far side yard, weapon up and finger outside the trigger of his revolver.

We arrived at the Armada and I got everybody inside and locked the doors.

Maree was still crying and shivering, Joanne was blinking, her eyes wide, and Ryan was scanning for prone soldiers crawling up on our flank.

“Seat belts!” I called. “It'll be rough for a few minutes.”

I skidded in a wide circle through the yard that Ryan had been guarding, then over a neighbor's lawn and into the street, redlining the big vehicle up to sixty, sitting forward and watching carefully for pedestrians, bicyclists and backing-out cars.

I wasn't surprised that I heard no gunshots from either the hostiles or from Freddy and Garcia. The lifter and any associates would have noted the plan didn't work and would get away as fast as they could. Had Loving not called in the fake school shooting announcement, we'd have had more than enough Fairfax County Police in the area to set up roadblocks and interdict them but that wasn't going to happen now.

I slowed the vehicle, to keep attention off us; I wouldn't want Loving to circle around in this direction, flash a fake badge and ask if anybody had seen a gray Nissan SUV.

Ryan sat back and holstered his weapon. “You're sure it was Loving?”

“Yes. That's exactly the kind of strategy he'd choose. There's no doubt it was him.”

I was aware of the corollary to that conclusion: Loving would know too—because of the escape strategy—that
I
was the opponent he was now playing against.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER
—
it was about half past noon—I was eyeing a beige car some distance behind us, moving at about our speed, as we cruised along surface roads in Prince William County, a place with a multiple personality. The populace included politicos, business people, farmers, proud rednecks, entry-level strivers and plenty of recent immigrants.

Most of the meth in the Northern Virginia area got cooked in PW.

I couldn't tell the make or model of the car but was well aware that it had made the same turn we had a couple of miles back, a pointless trip down a bleak, blue-collar side street, a shortcut to nowhere. You either lived on Heavenly Lane or you detoured along it to see if somebody was trailing you.

Whoever was in the beige car didn't live there; it was still behind us.

Light sedan. No year, no make, no model . . .

I guessed that Loving had probably switched wheels. Yet it was possible that he would keep the same car . . . because it wasn't what we'd expect. I debated but decided not to radio for assistance, not yet; again, I didn't want to call attention to us.

I'd just keep an eye on our beige shadow.

The Kesslers were calmer now, not much, but some. In the front passenger seat Ryan was playing lookout and Maree's pendulum had swung eerily from hysterical back to cute and coy. She kept calling me “Tour Guide,” which I found more irritating than her panicked screaming a half hour before. Joanne had gone into withdrawal again and was staring blankly out the side window. I wondered if she'd always been this timid or if the incident at the deli six years ago—facing her own death and seeing Ryan and the owners shot—had affected her fundamentally. The degree of Joanne's emotional state might have been extreme but the frame of mind itself wasn't. The response of principals when a lifter or hitter is after them often follows the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Joanne's detachment was a form of denial.

Once we'd sped out of the Kesslers' neighborhood, via an evasive route, Joanne had said only two things. First, she'd made the accurate observation that at least her stepdaughter and Bill Carter were safe, since it was obvious where Loving and any partners had been hiding. Then she offered the speculation that it made sense that Teddy Knox's wife was all right too. If Loving had killed her, that would lessen the leverage—the edge—he'd have over Teddy to discourage him not to testify against him. That was a possibility, yes. It was also possible, however, that Loving didn't care what Teddy knew and could testify to and he'd just killed the wife for convenience. That was my opinion but I said nothing.

Ryan asked me to call Freddy and find out if the wife was all right, but it was possible that he,
Garcia and the other agents—if they were alive and functioning—had engaged Loving or were in pursuit and I didn't want to distract them. Freddy would call when he had something to say. I told Ryan this and he nodded, though he seemed irritated I wouldn't make the call. He returned to his impromptu surveillance.

I made a sudden turn into a Burger King parking lot and paused.

Startling me, Maree said quickly, “Hey, can I escape for a minute? There's a pay phone.”

“No. Stay in the vehicle.”

“Please?” Sounding like a teenager begging for a trip to the mall.

“No,” I repeated.

“But it wouldn't be traced or anything. Really, I know all about it.”

“About what?” her sister asked.

“Surveillance. I saw this episode on
NCIS
? Spies use pay phones to be safe. Off the grid. That's what they say.”

“Sorry, no calls,” I said.

“Oh, you're no fun. I demand a lawyer!” She fell into a juvenile pout. It irritated me all the more and I ignored her.

I waited for the beige car to pass us. Which it didn't do. After ten minutes, I returned to the road and sped up, trying to catch the lights, incurring a horn or two. An extended middle finger, as well. But we saw no beige cars.

My hands-free announced Freddy was calling.

At last . . .

I asked, “Your guys in the car out front, they're okay?”

“Yep. Battered. Should've had their belts on. They learned their lesson.”

“And how about the shooting at the school?” I'd
believed
it was fake but I wasn't sure. I would have been troubled by casualties, certainly; I was, however, more interested to learn if false alarms were a technique Henry Loving was adding to his repertoire. Something else to file away about him.

“You were right, son. Three-dollar bill. Nothing at all. But it kept sixty troopers and agents busy for close to an hour.”

“Okay, Loving?”

“Got clean away. No leads. No vehicle.”

“Anybody see anything beige that was there and then wasn't? Sedan.”

“Beige? No, and we canvassed. But one of my guys across the street got a look at his partner. In the side yard, the trees, where Garcia was covering. Tall, thin, sandy hair, wearing a dark green windbreaker or army jacket.”

“Weapon?”

“Black autoloader. Couldn't tell what kind. He was running out of the woods fast, after you left.”

We were past densely populated areas and were surrounded by fields and houses and some commercial lots with businesses limping along or abandoned to banks. I now eased up the speed of the big SUV steadily.

“Did Teddy Knox ID Loving?”

“Yep.”

Abe Fallow had refused to use that trite line about making an ass of you and me with careless assumptions but he beat into our heads the same principle. Though Loving might have been identified
in West Virginia as the man hired to target Kessler, we'd had no independent proof that in fact he was the attacker. Until now.

Freddy added, “We also got some prints on the tape he'd used on Knox and his wife. Just a partial but it's him.”

My principals, I could see or sense, were all staring at me, wanting information.

“The Knoxes?” I sure didn't want to deliver the news that the wife was dead.

“Both'll be okay, if that's what you're asking.”

“It is.”

I told the Kesslers this.

“Oh.” Joanne exhaled and lowered her head. She whispered, “Thank you.” The household hadn't seemed religious but I got the impression she herself might be and was sending aloft a prayer.

“And?” I asked Freddy, meaning: Did either of them say anything more?

“Other than the ID, squat. We could put 'em in a room with speakers blaring wall-to-wall Captain and Tennille and they wouldn't talk.”

“Impression?” I asked, ignoring the pointless quip.

“They really don't know diddle. We could maybe find out what he's wearing but how helpful would that be? I submit, not very.”

I asked him if the weapon in Knox's hand could lead us anywhere.

He gave a sour laugh. “Stolen years ago. Evidence Response's been over, under and through the car, the yard, compost heaps and recycling bins in the whole goddamn neighborhood. The woods where the partner was spotted too. No leads. Zero, zip. They don't
even know where Loving and his boyfriend parked. Not a single fucking tire tread or fiber. And here I
swore
he couldn't be there for another couple of hours. Did I get this one wrong or what?”

I believed I had the answer to Loving's early arrival in Fairfax. “I'm guessing he got an edge on the clerk at the motel in West Virginia and had him say Loving'd checked out at eight but he'd really left around four or five this morning.”

“You win the cee-gar, Corte. All he had to do was mention the name of the clerk's daughter and what middle school she was in.”

Loving did the same amount of homework as Claire duBois did. And, as I had years before, I felt a perverse admiration for his methodology and meticulousness.

I continued, “But the light-colored sedan was his, legit, because there were other witnesses at the motel who'd seen it earlier.”

“Yup squared.” He then added that the Charleston field office had gone through the room carefully. “Nothing.”

I looked behind me and then executed another series of evasive turns.

No beige car. Nothing out of the ordinary. Locals doing what they did on Saturday. Driving to stores, fast food restaurants for a treat after errands, movies, kids' soccer games and tae kwon do lessons.

“What do you think, Freddy? Real or a diversion?” I couldn't decide what Loving's strategy at the house had been. Did he really want to kill us and take Ryan and his family hostage? Or was it a feint? Did he have something else in mind, something I couldn't figure out?

Freddy mused, “Real? . . . I'd say so. I think he wanted to get in fast, get Ryan and get out. He could've pulled it off too. If we'd gone out the back, like he wanted, that'd be it. They'd be writing our eulogies right now and Kessler'd have bamboo under his fingernails. Or more likely his wife's. . . . Oh, and I'll give you my opinion about the sister, son. She gives blondes a bad name.”

“Next step?”

“Find the primary.” I'd told Ryan that he'd possibly been targeted by mistake but I didn't believe it. Henry Loving wouldn't make an error like that. I wanted to find who'd hired him and what information Ryan had that was so important to him . . . or them.

I told Freddy I'd start looking into that when we landed and I disconnected the call.

As soon as I did, my phone buzzed and I listened to the numbers read off by the caller ID voice. It was the federal prosecutor, Jason Westerfield. He would have heard the news—that his hero cop, a star witness in a case that didn't exist yet, had nearly been kidnapped amid a shootout in Fairfax County. Westerfield was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to at the moment. I didn't hit
ANSWER
.

I noted Ryan was staring into the side-view mirror.

I said, “Detective Kessler?”

“Call me Ryan.”

“Okay, Ryan. Thanks for covering our flank at the house. Were you ever SWAT?”

“Never. Just worked the street. You pick things up.” He was subdued—he'd come close to shooting
his neighbor. He continued to look behind us. He kneaded the grip of his revolver the same way I held tight to the wheel.

The atmosphere in the car was somber, quiet. I was calmer now too, reflecting on the operation, trying to step into Henry Loving's mind and determine his next strategy. I noted that in a relatively short period of time he'd made a clandestine trip from another state, found a trusted partner, obtained weapons, successfully masked his travel to the target location, conducted thorough surveillance of the area where his victim lived, targeted the most knowledgeable neighbors and attempted a risky daylight assault after calling in a fake school shooting to divert backup. He had executed a “friendly feint”—getting one of your allies to assault you, either because he's mistaken or because he's been forced to, while the real opponent comes at you from another direction. He wasn't afraid to give up weapons to a potential risk—Teddy Knox.

This analysis was helpful but, like looking over a chessboard in the early stages of a game, gave me only a flavor of his plan; there was still an infinite variety of strategies he could choose.

Joanne was shaking her head, clutching her purse closely, which I'd also noticed happened frequently with principals. Familiar objects gave comfort. She said to me, in a soft voice, “If you hadn't been there . . .” She was, I imagined, speaking in general of the family's fate but then realized, as I did, that the comment was also a criticism of her husband, who'd resisted our help at first, and she fell silent on the subject. If Ryan noticed, he didn't react.

He looked toward me a moment later. “I want to call Amanda.”

“Sure. Just don't mention our location.”

He pulled out the cold phone. I explained the unit and he placed the call. He got through at once and, keeping his voice completely calm, asked about her trip. Finally he explained that there'd been a little problem at the house. Whatever she heard on the news stories, everybody was fine.