Believe No One (42 page)

‘It's Hicks.' Fennimore struggled, but Ellis held him.

‘You'll get yourself shot, you dumb Brit,' Ellis shouted.

Fennimore yelled, ‘Hold your fire – that's Abigail Hicks.'

The deputy stumbled out of the woods moments later with her pistol holstered, flashlight out to the side to show she was hiding nothing. Her chest and left arm were soaked in blood.

It's rarely safe to assume.

N
ICK
F
ENNIMORE

McIntyre residence, near Hays, Williams County, Oklahoma

As the firefighters battled to contain the fire, the sectional door of the garage buckled and fell forwards with a groan of heat-twisted metal. McIntyre's VW Polo was parked inside. Detective Dunlap headed over from a knot of firefighters to where Fennimore was standing with some of the St Louis contingent.

Ellis jerked his chin towards the garage. ‘Did you see that? He switched cars.'

‘Maybe,' Dunlap said. ‘The Fire Chief said they just found a body.'

For a tense microsecond everyone's thoughts flew to Faith Eversley.

‘Male,' Dunlap added fast. ‘A male body.'

‘McIntyre?' Fennimore asked.

Dunlap tilted his head. ‘From what the Fire Chief said, I doubt we'll be able to ID him from his physical description.'

CSI Roper did some preliminary work on the body before the ME took it away to Tulsa for autopsy. While Roper scooted back to the Incident Command Post in Westfield to process what he had, Launer went with Deputy Hicks to the County Hospital, but he was back in half an hour.

He spoke to his deputies and the fire chief, taking his time, then sauntered over to the St Louis detectives.

‘Howie didn't make it,' he said.

‘How is Deputy Hicks?' Fennimore asked.

‘She'll live.' Launer didn't look at him. ‘The house'll be off-limits for a while, yet – you all might want to—'

‘Specifically,' Fennimore interrupted, ‘what is Deputy Hicks's medical condition?'

Launer ran a slow eye over Fennimore before answering. ‘Her
condition
is, she will live. You want me to be more
specific,
she sustained a flesh wound to her upper left arm – a through-and-through – didn't even bleed all that much. Most of what was on her was Howie's.'

‘What happened?' Dunlap asked.

‘Howie stepped into the woods to answer a call of nature. Hicks heard two shots in rapid succession, radioed for backup and ran to help. She saw Howie stagger up onto the roadway and collapse. When she got to him, she couldn't find a pulse. The medics say the shots blew a hole in the main artery in his right leg; he bled out in under two minutes. The bastard must've snuck up behind him, grabbed his pistol, shot him at close range – probably didn't even take it out the holster. Hicks went in pursuit; the shooter turned and fired. She went down. Didn't see the shooter. Heard a vehicle fire up, didn't get a make on
that
either.' Apparently, Launer thought Hicks should have tried harder with a bullet in her shoulder.

Fennimore and Simms returned to the Command Post at the motel with Dunlap's team. Launer remained at the scene, to ‘coordinate operations'; the presence of a growing number of outside-broadcast units for local and state TV might possibly have been a factor in his decision to stick around.

Fennimore rang Josh in Aberdeen – now they had McIntyre's name, it should be easier to search the newspaper archives; it might even be possible to get a fix on their Scottish connection. But Josh's phone was still going straight to voicemail. Fennimore tried his secretary. It was early, she said, tartly, and he knew Josh kept late hours. But if he
really
thought it was necessary, she could see if he was in the staff tea room downstairs? Fennimore told her no – he would email. This done, he settled in a chair to doze.

The mood of the team was tense but subdued, following the news of Howie's death. Dunlap and Valance started working through Tate Trucking's PikePass records for McIntyre's truck. Drifting in and out of sleep, Fennimore was dimly aware of Kate Simms, tucked away in a corner of the room, having a hushed phone conversation. CSI Roper and the British CSI were in the makeshift lab they had set up in a spare meeting room at the motel, working on prints they had taken from the body.

Simms woke him from a doze. She looked sombre. ‘I just had Police Scotland on the phone,' she said. ‘They can't reach Josh – have you spoken to him?'

‘Recently?' he said.

‘I'll take that as a no.' Simms always knew when he was being evasive. ‘Nick, what the hell is he up to?'

Fennimore felt he owed it to Josh to give him the benefit of the doubt, even though he really should have been in touch hours ago. But before he could frame a reply, CSI Roper straight-armed through the double doors into the main office. The CSI made for the front of the room; the look on Roper's face said this was important. Dunlap raised Sheriff Launer on his cell, and they gathered around the speakerphone to confer.

‘It's McIntyre,' Roper said.

‘You're sure?' Launer asked down the line. ‘That body was pretty burned up.'

‘The firefighters found him face down on the kitchen tiles; the ceiling collapsed on top of him, hand under his body – saved it from the fire,' the CSI said, the fingers of his free hand dancing up and down the seam of his chinos. ‘We didn't get a full tenprint, but we got enough to match to Will McIntyre's work locker at Tate Trucking.'

‘It's good to confirm his identity,' Fennimore said. ‘But that doesn't prove a link to Sharla Jane.'

Roper locked gaze with Fennimore. ‘You remember the right thumb and index we got off of the rail bracket at Sharla Jane's place?' he said, excitement crackling off him.

‘You got a match to Will McIntyre?'

A quick nod from Roper. ‘
And
an eight-point match to the partial palm print on the receipt for propane we got from Laney Dawalt's last address.'

Fennimore experienced a surge of fierce joy.

‘
And
,' Roper said, as if this wasn't enough, ‘the decedent's boots are the right size. The soles are heat damaged, but we got a good class match to the footwear mark we found at Sharla Jane's trailer. Wear pattern looks similar too, but the lab will need to confirm.'

‘Score one for the good guys,' Launer said. ‘But I don't need to tell you all that McIntyre being dead means we got zero leads on Faith and Ava.'

‘We also know that McIntyre is dead, so whoever shot Howie and Deputy Hicks, it
wasn't
McIntyre,' Ellis said. ‘Obvious next question: who
are
we looking for?'

‘Not our problem,' Dunlap said.

Ellis wasn't listening. ‘I mean, are we just
assuming
it was the Professor's pest-control expert?'

‘It's rarely safe to assume,' Fennimore said. ‘But in this case, the odds do stack up.'

‘For, or against?' Well rested, Ellis could be prickly. Add in lack of sleep, caffeine intake, high humidity and poor air con and he was a grizzly bear with a bad case of hives. ‘I mean, how do we know he didn't just piss someone off?'

‘We don't,' Dunlap said. ‘But it's
not our problem.
The Professor's bug-killing Scot
is
a person of interest in the shootings, and if he really is travelling on a UK passport, that makes him a fugitive foreign national, which is FBI territory.'

‘The FBI and the Marshals' Service are on it,' Dr Detmeyer said.

‘They already checked flight manifests at Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Houston, Texas,' Dunlap went on. ‘He didn't fly into Oklahoma. They're looking at car-rental companies in Chicago, in case he came overland. The FBI will keep us in the loop.'

Ellis gave a cynical laugh. ‘Come on, Greg, the FBI's a black hole – it just sucks information in and gives back a big fat nothing.'

The atmosphere was hot with embarrassment, but FBI Special Agent Detmeyer eyed Ellis with cool composure.

‘I guess we'll just have to hope the Marshals are more effective communicators than the Bureau.' He kept his calm gaze on Ellis, and finally the detective shuffled uncomfortably and glanced away. Everyone seemed to breathe easier.

‘But what if McIntyre's killer knows where Faith and Ava are?' Fennimore said into the silence.

‘Then we'd better move fast,' Dunlap said. He looked around the room. ‘Where do we start?' Ellis opened his mouth to speak, but Dunlap raised a finger. ‘Not you,' he said. ‘You had your say.'

Ellis ran a hand over his buzz cut. The skin of his scalp looked pink and hot.

‘McIntyre came home,' Simms said. ‘He was selecting victims from within his comfort zone. Laney Dawalt, Sharla Jane Patterson, Faith Eversley – all within thirty miles of Hays.'

‘So … we focus our search around his house over in Hays?' Valance suggested.

‘Actually, he had at least
two
anchor points,' Detmeyer said. ‘His family home in Hays, and wherever he stashed the shipping container – now that
might
be near his home, and it certainly needs to be somewhere he knows well.'

‘A shipping container is fairly conspicuous,' Simms said. ‘It has to be somewhere it won't arouse interest or suspicion.'

‘So … what?' Dunlap said. ‘Derelict warehouses, empty lots …'

‘Truck stops,' Valance said. ‘He picked Faith up at a truck stop.'

Ellis spoke up: ‘He could just as easy be hiding in plain sight at a shipping dock or storage depot.'

Fennimore shook his head. ‘He would have to've checked the container in if it was a functioning depot, wouldn't he?'

Dunlap nodded. ‘The state-wide alert would've found it by now.'

Fennimore strode to the map on the wall. ‘He's working close to home, so we're looking at a stretch of Interstate 44 from, let's say … Claremore to Vinita. That's what – forty miles?'

Valance checked it on his computer. ‘Close enough.'

‘We know that he recorded the last murder inside a freight container. We have the serial number of the two missing freight containers. We know the make, model and licence-plate number of the tractor-trailer he stole. We know he didn't drive the truck home, so he must've used the Polo; we have a description and licence-plate number of his car. We also have PikePass records with times and dates going back eight months. Do we have CCTV for the hours around Faith and Ava's abduction?'

‘Yessir.' Valance again.

‘I think you have Automatic License Plate Readers at toll-booths?'

‘We do in Missouri, but Oklahoma?' The young detective shrugged.

‘We have ALPR at tolls, some intersections, too – and all Oklahoma licence tags are licence-plate-reader compatible.' The observation had come from the back of the room. Deputy Hicks was standing by the doors; she was in a fresh uniform but her left shoulder looked bulked up, and she had hooked the thumb of her left hand into her belt.

Fennimore said, ‘Abigail, are you—'

‘I'm good,' she said, though she was pale and obviously in pain. ‘Go ahead.'

‘Okay …' Fennimore said, picking up the thread. ‘So, we look for McIntyre as he shuttles between home and the truck, and the truck and Sharla Jane Patterson's trailer. We plot as far as we can
forward
to the truck's final stop and also
backward
as he switches vehicles and drives the car back to the trailer park. Any sightings should bring us closer to where the truck is hidden.'

Dunlap looked at Valance. ‘I'm on it,' he said.

The St Louis detective turned his attention to Hicks. ‘Deputy, you really need to go home and rest.'

‘Respectfully, sir,' she said, ‘you are not my boss.' She flushed slightly, perhaps shocked at her own rudeness, but pushed on. ‘Anyways, don't you want to know why McIntyre is so obsessed with blood?'

‘Was,' Fennimore said. ‘He's dead.'

‘Shoot,' she said. ‘That poor mother and child.' Then, ‘Who killed him?' Another moment of realization, then, ‘Was that his kill-buddy out in the woods, shot Howie and me?'

‘We don't know,' Dunlap said, and Ellis snorted.

‘You implied that you'd discovered something about McIntyre's past?' Detmeyer said.

‘I talked to the ER staff while they were fixing me up,' she said. ‘They remembered Will Junior. The McIntyres immigrated to the US from Scotland sixteen years ago; Will was fifteen. Soon as he graduated high school, he took a job as an orderly at County General. He was always mooching around the ER, wanting to know how they did things – intubations, transfusions – said he wanted to train as a paramedic. He had a knack for showing up when they got a real gory accident.'

‘A disturbed and disturbing young man,' Detmeyer said.

Hicks shrugged. ‘I'd call it darn creepy. One of the ER nurses said she felt sorry for him. He told her he'd got real sick as a kid; had leukaemia, aged nine – this was when they were still in Scotland. His sister donated her bone marrow – she was sixteen, then. Then
she
got sick with … uh wait a minute, I wrote it down.' She dipped into her shirt pocket. ‘Haemochromatosis,' she read carefully. ‘It's an iron overload in the blood. Their mother blamed the bone-marrow procedure.'

‘Rubbish,' Fennimore said. ‘It's an inherited condition.'

‘I guess Mom wasn't a scientist,' Hicks said, giving him a dusty look. ‘Anyway, they treat it by bleeding the patient once a week until the iron levels get back to normal, then every couple of months to keep it under control. Now, his sister had an awful phobia of needles. So, Mom made nine-year-old Will sit with Big Sis and talk to her while she was bled. Told him it was the least he could do, being his fault and all.'