Believe No One (41 page)

It took a little longer than fifteen minutes, but by the time the Task Force had reassembled, they had a recent photograph of Weaver, and FBI recognition software confirmed that the facial characteristics matched their previous driver's-licence image. Thomas Holsten was Bill Weaver. They also had the ISO Marks of the two shipping containers that were missing, as well as the licence number and a photograph of the red Peterbilt 387 truck Weaver was driving when he vanished. The address on the driver's licence was another dead end – an empty property on the edge of Joplin, Missouri. It had recently been bulldozed.

‘The firm pays for the PikePass,' Hicks explained, ‘so statements go to them. We've got everything, from the minute they put him on the payroll.' This would tell them Weaver's favoured routes, and where and when he passed through the tollbooths along I-44 on regular trips.

The new name meant they had to start the canvass over, but at least now they had a photograph that they could rely on.

Launer paired up one deputy with every St Louis detective. They began in Hays and Westfield, radiating outward. By now, it was 3 a.m., so the grocery stores and restaurant outlets would have to wait till later, but gas stations and bars around the towns were worth a try. Hicks was teamed with Valance, but the young detective was taken off the roster last minute, when images started coming in from I-44 tollbooths. Dunlap had requested any truck of the same make, model and year as the one their man had checked out, not realizing how many red Peterbilt 387s were out there. They needed a team to get right on it, and Valance got volunteered.

Fuelled on caffeine and adrenaline, Hicks pulled into QuikTrip gas station and convenience store at the intersection of Main Street and Hays Road. It was dark and hot and she was in serious need of sleep. The canopy lights dazzled, and she squinted up at them. Moths buzzed and circled, butting their heads against the lamps, and she knew how they felt. While she took a few breaths, getting her head back together, a man wearing a dark windbreaker came out of the store. He went to a silver-grey SUV and took his time sliding his billfold into his pocket. She kept her eye on him as she walked inside and let the cool of the air conditioning revive her for a moment. A kid of about nineteen was restocking shelves. He stood up and wiped his hands on the seat of his pants. A door stood open into the stockroom at the back of the store, and country music drifted out.

‘Is the manager back there?' she asked.

‘Uh, no, ma'am, you just missed him,' the boy said.

‘You can call me Deputy,' she said, looking through the window. ‘That him?' The SUV was still on the lot.

‘Yes, ma'am, uh, Deputy,' the kid said.

She stepped back out and the man with the billfold came forward. He was mid-forties, going a little soft around the middle, and now he was facing her, she could see he wore the company's red uniform polo shirt.

‘I help you, Deputy?' he said.

She showed him the picture, explaining that the man she was looking for might drive a semi tractor-trailer or a small European car. He took the picture, like three others had in the last hour, studied it, just like they did, handed it back.

She was ready to turn away, go ask the kid, but he said, ‘Yeah, I know him. He's a regular customer, was in yesterday or day before.'

She felt a jolt of energy; a dozen questions flew to her lips, but she held back.
Just shut up and let him talk, Abigail. You do not want to spook him into forgetting something important.
She said, ‘Uh-huh,' and nodded slowly like it was no big thing.

‘Will … something,' he said. ‘Never saw a truck. He drives a VW Polo, ice-blue metallic.'

Which was very exact. She raised her eyebrows in question.

‘My daughter just passed her driver's test,' he said. ‘First time, too. I asked him what he thought of it. He said it was a thrifty car to drive, and he was looking to sell his. I wasn't sure – that car must be eight years old – but he offered to let Amelia try it out on a no-strings test drive …'

‘He give you a number to call him back?' she asked.

The manager shook his head. ‘He said he'd be away a few days, he'd drop by the store when he got back.'

‘Did he use a credit card, or cash?'

‘Credit card.'

‘That's good,' she said. Credit cards left a nice, easy-to-follow electronic payment trail and if they were lucky, a current address. She glanced up at the security cameras. ‘They work?'

‘Sure,' he said. ‘Hard drive stores about three weeks' worth.'

‘We're going to need your recordings,' she said.

‘Okay.' He looked a little nervous. ‘What'd he do?'

She regarded this kindly looking family man, proud of his little girl passing her driver's test first time around, and felt a tremor run through her.

‘Sir,' she said. ‘You do not want to know.'

Incident Command Post, Westfield,
Williams County, Oklahoma
Wednesday, 3.45 a.m.

They got the car's tags from the CCTV recordings at the gas station. The VW Polo was registered to William McIntyre, Junior. William McIntyre Senior died in a car crash eight years before, leaving a widow and a son. The property, a seventies ranch-style house, was inherited by the widow. William Jnr was thirty-five, no criminal record. The McIntyres were immigrants from Scotland, settled in the area for fifteen years; it looked like a bona fide home address. Shona McIntyre, mother to William Jnr, had died two months previously. They had their emotional trigger. They had a genuine name, and now they knew where he lived.

A BOLO was sent out to law enforcement, with the photograph of William McIntyre Jnr. It went out simultaneously on the Crime Alerts section of the FBI website, Fox News and CNN. It was a risky strategy, but their best chance of finding Faith and Ava Eversley alive was to find them soon.

‘If McIntyre knows we're onto him, there is less of an imperative to silence them,' Detmeyer said. ‘But all of this puts him under greater pressure, and if Faith and Ava
are
in that house, the last thing we want is a hostage situation.'

‘And if they're
not
at the house,' Dunlap said, taking up the baton, ‘We need him alive.' He looked around the room, then began again, cautiously, still watching them: ‘So … with this in mind, we've asked for tactical support from the FBI.' He had to raise his voice over groans and grumbles from both contingents. ‘A SWAT team is flying in from the FBI field office in Oklahoma City as we speak. It will be
our
collar,' he said. ‘They'll do what they need to, and get out.'

‘Our job is to lock down the property and surrounding area till they get there.' This was Launer. He was as reluctant as the rest to allow in ‘the Feds', as he called them, and as compensation for his forbearance, it was agreed he would take point on the organization of local ops. ‘Here's how it will go.' He lifted his chin, and Valance pulled up a Google Earth satellite image on the data projector.

The McIntyre residence was on the outer fringes of Hays in a mix of brick-built houses and single-storey modular homes on a street grid that straggled out into open countryside. A strip of woodland lay between the houses and a railway line, running north to south on the westerly edge of the development. Interstate 44 was five miles to the north, across unfenced, pancake-flat fields.

Another jerk of Launer's chin, and Valance zoomed in closer.

‘The older house plots are marked out by fences or hedges,' Launer said. ‘But as you can see, the majority got no more'n a patch of grass between the front stoop and the pavement. We
will
be conspicuous, so we need to keep our distance.

‘My guys will set up road blocks on US Highway 69, north and south,' he said, indicating strategic points on the map overlay on the satellite image. ‘Craig County Sheriff's Office will watch I-44 ramps heading north out of Williams; we'll take the ramps south. Hicks, I want you over by the railway line – you can take Howie. ‘You and you—' he pointed to two of his deputies ‘—sit tight on the dirt roads to the north side of those fields in case he decides to take a short cut, but keep out of sight.'

‘There's not much cover out there,' Hicks commented.

‘Which is good if he makes a break for it,' Launer said. ‘But bad if he hunkers down, 'cos we do not have a clear line of sight to the house.'

Valance switched from aerial to street view; the yard was overgrown with bushes and trees and the windows were shuttered. ‘The satellite images could be years out of date, Sheriff,' the young detective advised.

Launer nodded. ‘Okay. St Louis Police SUVs are unmarked, so they will move in closer to the house. I want to emphasize, our job is containment,' he said. ‘We lock it down until the Feds arrive, and keep the public out of harm's way after they go in.'

He gave the nod to Dunlap; he was finished.

‘Right now, we don't know if he's in there or not,' Dunlap said. ‘So we watch for McIntyre coming
in
as well as going out.'

They left in convoy, Sheriff's Department cruisers peeling off at the agreed points, no emergency lights, no sirens. The St Louis contingent turned left, off Main Street, driving parallel to the railway line. The cruiser carrying Deputies Hicks and Howard remained at the railway line. Simms and Fennimore were in the second car with Dunlap. Everyone wore tactical vests; no one spoke. The woods stood between them and the houses for the first fifty yards. A right turn brought them to the entrance into the development. The McIntyre residence lay two rows over in NE 1st Street, on the edge of the muddle of houses and modular homes. Most of the houses were in darkness, and Dunlap and the lead vehicle killed their headlights as if by an agreed signal. As yet, they had no clear line of sight to the house. Dunlap radioed through to the lead SUV and they made another right to go around the three sides of the grid and park up at the far end of the street.

An amber glow lit the far side of the rows as they approached.

‘We'll stick out like a nun in a whorehouse under those street lights,' Ellis said.

‘I don't remember seeing street lights on the satellite images,' Fennimore said.

Dunlap's eyes widened. ‘Aw, hell.'

He put his foot down, turning the corner at the same time as the second SUV.

Smoke poured from the house, flames shooting up from a breach in the roof tiles, and a dead pine between the house and the garage was lit up like a torch, its dry branches raining down fire onto the garage roof, while flames licked under the door from inside the garage.

He called the fire department. ‘A neighbour already called it in,' he said, unfastening his seat belt. ‘They got two trucks on the way.' An elderly couple huddled at the edge of the property opposite the burning house. Seconds later, two fire engines blasted into the street, horns blaring.

Lights came on along the street, and people started to come out onto their porches and driveways to watch.

‘We need to get those people back, establish a perimeter and keep this road clear for emergency services to get through,' Dunlap said.

Detective Ellis and a few men from the second SUV began moving the residents to a safe distance. Dunlap's phone rang; it was Launer.

‘Sheriff, we'll deal with the situation here,' Dunlap said. It seemed that Launer was eager to move to the centre of the action, but Dunlap stood firm. ‘McIntyre could be on his way out,' Dunlap said. ‘Your people need to stay focused, intercept him if he makes a break for it.'

An EMT ambulance arrived and the paramedics parked out of the way of the engines and stood watching the spectacle with the rest. For a few minutes, all they could hear was the drone of the pumps and shouted instructions between the firefighters.

A second later, two loud cracks turned heads.

‘Gunfire,' Dunlap said. A police siren whooped and was quickly silenced, then a message burst from Dunlap's radio: ‘Shots fired – officer down! Unit Four requesting assistance – repeat: Unit Four requesting assistance. Officer down!'

As the paramedics clambered into their ambulance ready for action, a third shot rang out. Fennimore broke through the cordon and was off and running.

‘Where the hell d'you think you're going?' Ellis yelled.

He didn't answer. Those shots came from the railway line, and Abigail Hicks was in Unit Four.

Fennimore cut through properties, crossing two roads at a sprint, reaching the scrubby woodland in under a minute. The after-image of the house fire still danced at the back of his eyes and he blinked them away, scanning the roadway for the police cruiser. His breathing ragged, heart hammering, at last he saw something. It was rolled into a shallow trough off the road, partly hidden by brambles and saplings.

He ran to the car. It was empty. Reaching inside, he turned on the light bar and headlights. Ahead, on the roadway, he saw a deputy's hat. He swept it up; Hicks's name was inked along the sweatband. Desperate now, he scouted the length of the ditch, saw a dark form.

‘Oh, Jesus …'

A police SUV roared towards him, bumping over the uneven road surface, blinding him in its headlights and behind that, the ambulance. Shielding his eyes, Fennimore kept running towards the stricken form. Blood pooled on the asphalt spreading from under the body.

It was Howie, the deputy who had spent his night shift drinking coffee and folding campaign flyers for the Sheriff. A police cruiser skidded to a halt behind him and he was dimly aware of doors opening.

Fennimore turned to the woods and shouted Hicks's name.

A flashlight bobbed in the dense thicket of trees and underbrush. Someone tackled Fennimore to the ground; simultaneously eight police began yelling a barrage of orders to the figure emerging from the trees.