Edge (28 page)

“Yes, we are. Is Agent Fredericks here?”

“He's about five minutes behind us.”

“All right, tell your agents there're two of them. Loving and his partner, both armed. Loving may be wounded. I don't know where they stashed their vehicle.”

“We'll check it out, sir.”

“I was looking over a map earlier and saw across
the lake there're a dozen houses and some easy routes to the interstate. I'm thinking they may try to row over, hijack a car.”

“I'll get some of the team over there,” the agent said.

I told him, “Can you patch me through to the chopper pilot? I'll give him a description of the property.”

“Chopper?”

“Your tactical air unit.” I gestured toward the sky.

He looked confused. “Well, sir, we don't have a helicopter involved in the operation.”

BILL CARTER SAT
silently beside me and a glance in the rearview mirror revealed Amanda in the backseat, staring out the window at the overcast fall afternoon. We were ten miles from Carter's lake house.

I was not thinking of what had just happened at Carter's property but was wrestling with a difficult memory. Peggy, the boys and I were driving in the country and I spotted a bad roadside accident ahead. I'd stopped to see if I could help the stoic but young and shaken county troopers. They say that mothers are better than fathers at remaining detached around accidents and blood and trauma. Not Peggy. She'd climbed into the back with the boys and clutched them to her. The ostensible purpose was to make sure they looked away from the overturned cars and the mangled bodies, as yet uncovered, but in fact she was hiding her face, as well as the boys'. (Thinking again about another similarity between Maree and my wife: the whipsawing between carefree optimism and edgy distress.)

Back then, at the site of the accident, Sammy and Jeremy had managed to peek, despite their mother's huddle. Jer, the oldest, was horrified at what he saw
and began sobbing uncontrollably. Sam, though, said, “Daddy, that man lying there. He doesn't have a hand. How can he eat ice cream?” Not a tragedy to him; a mystery.

You just didn't know how young people would respond to trauma.

I saw Sam's face, unperturbed and curious, reflected in Amanda's.

“You all right, honey?” I asked, surprised I'd used the endearment.

She looked toward me, nodded and then studied Carter's Beretta shotgun, open and sitting on the seat beside her.

Hitting a speed dial button, I called Freddy.

“Hey,” he said.

“You there?”

“Nice place. I may retire here.”

I hadn't really appreciated the comforts of Carter's summer home.

“Anything?”

“They're gone.”

“The chopper?”

“Had to be.”

“No,” I said. “I know that's how they were extracted. I mean do you have any details on it?”

“Negative. So far. We're still canvassing. Some wits reported hearing a helicopter low and nearby. They thought it was going down, you know, crashing. A couple nine-one-one calls. Nobody—”

“Saw anything?”

“Interesting question, son. They looked but they heard only a ruckus and saw leaves and dust. Landed between two stands of trees thirty feet apart. That takes some skill.”

“More, it takes some equipment. Expensive . . . Find the car?”

“Stolen months ago. Somebody else's tags. We were hoping to get the partner's prints but didn't find a single, solitary swirl.”

“The neighbors?”

“They're fine.”

I told Carter and Amanda about their friends, then turned my attention back to Freddy. I told him, “I'll get Claire tracking down the chopper.” Our organization is always flying our principals around the country, sometimes internationally, so we had good contacts with the FAA and private charter companies. The fact that the craft seemed small, which meant it had a short range and would have to be based somewhere near here, would give duBois some guidance in finding the lessee.

Freddy continued, “Somebody's hurt. We found blood.”

“Where?”

“Roadside. The wall and some bushes. A path too.”

“It's Loving. I got him. He was on his feet afterward. How much blood?”

“Not a lot. Found his footprints and the partner's.”

“I'll have Claire look into medical treatment.”

“Who is this gal of yours, Corte? She Claire-voyant?”

Jokes again.

“Listen, Corte . . .”

“Westerfield,” I said.

“My voice give that away, son?” Freddy asked.

“What about him?”

“For one he keeps calling. He's calling me. He's calling everybody. What'd you do?”

I said, “He wants my principals in a slammer. He's wrong but I couldn't reason with him. So I basically . . .” I tried to think of a good euphemism.

“Put your job on the line by scamming the attorney general of the United States of America. And pissing off half the federal government.”

I said, “Loving's got too many contacts in D.C. I couldn't risk it.”

“I don't care. That's your business, Corte. It's no skin off my nose.”

“Call me if you find any forensics. Loving went through Carter's house too.”

“Will do.”

We disconnected. As soon as I did, my boss's number came up on caller ID. So did Westerfield's. I rejected both calls and dialed duBois. I explained to her what happened and then told her about the helicopter. “Find it, if there's any way.”

“Okay.” She took down the details.

Then I said, “And Loving's wounded.”

The demure young woman said, “You got a piece of him. That's good.”

“I want you to try to find where he'll go for treatment.”

There's a legal requirement that medical personnel must report gunshot wounds to law enforcement. Gangs and organized crime have doctors or nurses or even vets on call who treat wounds and conveniently forget to dial 911. We knew some of these medicos and routinely monitored them (we didn't arrest them since they were invaluable as sources to find and track wounded lifters and hitters).

Loving, though, would avoid any of these, of course. I told duBois this and said, “He's going to find somebody private, somebody we don't know about. Look through all the files we have on him, checking addresses he's been seen at, phone calls, everything. Public records too.”

She'd use ORC and other data-mining programs.

“I'll see what I can find,” she said. “And, Corte?”

My name again. “Yes?”

“Those images you got at Graham's house? I'm still running the analysis.”

“Good.”

She was pausing. “I thought about it and there wasn't any other way to get the information from him. What you asked me to do. I didn't like it then, I didn't like it later. But it was pretty smart. I'll remember that.”

“There wasn't any other way,” I repeated.

We disconnected and we drove in silence for a half hour. Carter asked to put the radio on and I said, “You don't mind, I'd rather keep it off. Better to concentrate.”

“Oh. Sure.”

I saw that Amanda was looking at me in the mirror.

“Was that all because of me, back there?” she asked. “Because of my blog?”

“Yes. He'd linked your screen name to your real name through a social networking site. He tracked the post to Bill's neighbors and then to his house.”

She closed her eyes. “I'm sorry. I . . . I thought you meant I couldn't use
my
computer. I didn't know he could track us. I used my nic.”

But she was a smart girl. She'd have had an
inkling of the risk but in the oblivion and zeal of adolescence she hadn't thought it through or hadn't cared. Most likely, a little of both.

Amanda then added, “It's just I felt really bad about Susan—this sophomore at school.”

“The one who killed herself?” I asked.

“That's the thing. It was a car crash but she was driving real fast and stupid, like she didn't care if she lived or not. That's a kind of suicide, our counselors tell everybody. I wanted to blog about that, make sure people know that being reckless can be just like taking pills or hanging yourself.”

A curious thought struck me: Here was this young girl devoted to looking out for people. She was, in her own way, a shepherd. I wondered, if I had had a daughter, would she have turned out like Amanda? I would've been proud of her, I knew that.

But that thought, like so many others today, got carted off to the dust bin.

She asked, “He wanted to kill me?” in the monotone of somebody who doesn't really believe they could ever die.

Carter stirred and was about to reassure the girl. I now knew, though, that she required little coddling. “No, he wanted to kidnap you and get your father to tell him something.”

“Tell him what?”

“We don't know.”

She fell silent and stared out the window.

Some lifters have standards. Some won't hurt women or children. Some rely on mental or professional pressure or risk of embarrassment or financial loss. There are some cases they won't take on and some limits to what they'll do to coerce information
out of people. They assess the principals and use the minimum edge necessary to get the information they've been hired to get. At the other extreme are the ones like Henry Loving. They'll take whatever steps they decide are appropriate.

Curiously, I respect these hitters and lifters more than the others. They're as true to their standards as I am to mine. They determine their goal and achieve it in the most efficient way possible. This makes them more predictable.

Amanda asked, “Is Jo totally freaked?”

“Not really,” I told her.

“Are you sure?” The question was wry.

“Okay, she's freaked. But she's safe, with your father and aunt.”

“Good. . . . I'm sorry, Uncle Bill. I kind of messed things up.”

She didn't hesitate to accept responsibility for what had just happened.

“Everything's going to be fine.”

I slowed, then signaled and turned. Amanda frowned, looking at the low stone building we were now approaching. She said quickly, “I . . . Are you taking me here because of what I did? I mean . . .”

I couldn't help but smile. “No, no, it's just a safe place for you and Bill to spend the night.”

I pulled up to the entrance gate of Northern Virginia Maximum Security Federal Detention Center.

“
WHAT'S GOING ON
?
Where have you been?”

My boss's voice clattered urgently through my earbud. Irritation and anger—any emotion—always seemed muted when filtered through Chinese plastic and metal but there was no mistaking his mood.

“Loving got a lead to the Kesslers' daughter. She's safe. Loving's wounded.”

Ellis asked, “How bad?”

“We don't know. Didn't lose a lot of blood . . . Aaron, he had a helicopter extraction.”

“He
what
?”

“Claire's tracking it down, if she can. You ever hear of a lifter having a chopper on call?”

A thoughtful moment. “No, I never have.”

“Means his primary's rich or got professional access to choppers you don't need paperwork on.”

“What's your next step?”

“I just stashed the daughter in a slammer. It's safe. She's under a Jane Doe, a material witness to a drug hit. If Loving's got anybody inside, I doubt he'll pay attention and I've had the warden cut all outgoing communication for the day. We're still looking into Kessler's two main cases to find the primary. Claire's tracking down doctors off the grid Loving might use to get stitched up.”

Ellis said, “Listen, Corte, I'm doing the best I can—”

“About Westerfield.”

Hence, my boss's mood, of course.

“About Westerfield. Why didn't you just ignore him? Why'd you lie about the slammer in D.C.?”

“To buy time. If I'd ignored him, Aaron, he might've tried to find me. I was in the field. I can't afford to be detained when I've got principals. Not in a case involving Henry Loving.”

Ellis said, “He could still get you fired.”

“I thought we'd have an answer by now. The primary.”

Or Loving in a body bag. Had he stood up when I'd hoped at the lake house in Loudoun County, the case might well be over.

“But we don't.”

“No. Please, just keep him off my back for the night, Aaron. Tell him we've got a delicate operation going.”

“To find Loving?”

“No. That's gas on the bonfire. Tell him I've got some leads to the primary. Tell him the terrorist connection is panning out.”

“For real?”

A legitimate question, considering how deceptively I'd been running the job so far.

“Yes. There's money going into the Middle East. Some of it's ending up in Saudi Arabia, a dozen shell companies.”

“Now that's interesting.”

“Westerfield'll love it. A good federal case for his cap.”

“Cap?”

“Feather in his cap. Claire's checking out some reconnaissance I did at Graham's place—the Department of Defense guy with the forged check. We're moving ahead. But I'm keeping the Kesslers. Make me out the heavy. I'm fine with that. But I can't let them go.”

A sigh. “I'll do what I can.”

We disconnected and I made the turn to head back to the Great Falls safe house. I'd called Ahmad, briefed him and learned everything was quiet there, though apparently Joanne and her husband had been squabbling. It was over something petty. The fights among principals invariably were, I'd noticed. I spoke to Ryan, who sounded sober, and told him that there'd been an incident at Bill Carter's but everybody was all right. Amanda and he were in federal protection. I ended the call before an alarmed Joanne could get on the line.