The Prophet (6 page)

Inside the workshop in his garage, Harrison Schofield routed his Internet access through three proxy servers. He was relatively certain that the police would never be able to trace anything back to him. The cameras had no access logs, and he had taken precautions to mask his digital identity. He had installed a wireless range extender in a set of trees behind his home and had connected to the unsecured wireless network of one of his neighbors. Even if they could trace him back to the source IP address, they would end up at his neighbor’s house, not his. As always, he had considered all the possibilities, calculated all the variables. At least, he hoped he had.

Being sure that he was fairly anonymous, he accessed the feed for the cameras and cycled through the different views. There she was, Jessie Olague, the next sacrifice. She was going through her nightly routine. A routine that he had been studying for over six months.

She was playing music, and although he couldn’t hear it, he could feel the beat through the rhythm of her body. The subtle bobbing of her head. The gentle sway of her hips. She seemed so happy, so at peace with the world around her. He wondered how she managed to feel that way. Through his research, he had learned everything about Jessie Olague. Her parents had been drug addicts. Child welfare had stepped in, and she had spent the remainder of her youth bouncing from foster home to foster home. She had no children. Repeated ovarian cysts had scarred her reproductive organs beyond repair and made her infertile. Her husband was an abusive drunk when he was actually home. Luckily for her, the husband worked nights, and she rarely saw him. They met only in passing, but even those moments were tense and potentially violent. Jessie had only a few close friends and worked a dead-end job at a local coffee shop in the mall where Schofield had first taken notice of her.

Despite all this, she was rarely without a smile. She volunteered at a local soup kitchen every Sunday and at an animal shelter on the second Tuesday of every month. She seemed to brighten every room she entered. Jessie Olague had a good soul.

Schofield wanted what she had.

He needed it.

That kind of joy and contentment was so elusive and rare. He had been born without a soul. But soon he would steal a piece of hers. He would feel what she felt. He would taste her happiness and make it his own.

Schofield parked in the alley behind Jessie Olague’s home and slipped the black balaclava over his head, leaving only his eyes and mouth exposed. He scanned the area one last time and then stepped from his vehicle. There was no hesitation in his stride. He had visualized and choreographed his every movement.
Slip past the garage, follow the walkway, bend down to retrieve the key to the back door hidden beneath a pot containing a withered Cajun Hibiscus that Jessie should have brought inside for the winter, up the steps to the sliding glass door, insert the key, twist, slide the door gently to the side, step into the house, slide the door shut.

He scanned the interior of her kitchen. It was odd seeing the room from this angle and in full color. He had become accustomed to the grainy black and white of the video feed. Red and white Americana decorations adorned the walls and countertops of the kitchen and the connected dining room. A meager Christmas tree—bedecked with home-made ornaments—sat in the living room beside the front window. The blinds were drawn but light from a passing car seeped through the cracks and ran along the ceiling. He listened for movement but heard nothing beyond the creaks and groans of a house in winter.

His eyes closed, and he took in the scent of the house. She had been burning a candle. The sweet smell of butterscotch still floated through the air.

Schofield stepped through the living room and up the stairs toward Jessie’s bedroom. The second and fifth steps had developed nasty creaks with age. He avoided those altogether, skipping over them and stepping straight to the third and sixth steps. At the top of the stairs, he clung to the side wall in the shadows and made his way down the hall to the door at the end.

The door would be locked from the inside by a common chain latch. He took out and unfolded a wire tool with a magnet on the end that could easily bypass the simple lock. He pulled open the door just a centimeter and slipped the wire through the crack at the top of the frame. Then he positioned the magnet to catch the slide and gently eased it free. He kept hold of the latch, not letting it fall, as he crept inside the bedroom.

With cautious and quiet steps, Schofield moved to the side of the bed.

He stood over Jessie for a moment and watched her sleep. She wore a long T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. The gray donkey from Winnie the Pooh adorned the front of the shirt. A stray strand of hair had fallen across her cheek and mouth. He resisted the urge to brush it away.

Moving to the foot of the bed, he gently raised the covers to expose her bare feet. From a pocket of his jacket, he slipped out the Lidocaine, a powerful topical anesthetic, and applied it to the area between her toes. He watched for another few minutes as he waited for the Lidocaine to deaden the skin sufficiently. Then he inserted and emptied a syringe filled with a cocktail of Demerol, Valmid, and Valium into the deadened section of flesh.

Schofield checked his watch and waited another few minutes. After which, he stepped to the side of the bed and brushed away the strand of hair. She didn’t move. He bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

“I’m sorry, Jessie. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

Maggie Carlisle stepped down the metal stairs into the garage bay. A single roll-up door opened to the outside world but the large open bay contained their unit’s entire vehicle pool—a black GMC Yukon, a cream panel van, a white Ford Escape Hybrid, a silver Buick LaCrosse, and a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z28. It was black with red racing stripes and all the trimmings and served as Marcus’s personal vehicle. She often wondered if Marcus had conned the Director into buying it for him like some kind of signing bonus.

The walls around the vehicles were faded brick. The floor had once been smooth concrete but had cracked and split in certain spots to the point where they had been forced to bust it free and replace whole sections with gravel. Some type of vegetation had taken root in one corner and climbed up the brick.

Above her head sat the nerve center for their unit that housed the offices and training areas. The building, an old textile-manufacturing facility, had sat empty for over ten years. It had been scheduled for demolition. To say that the accommodations were modest was an understatement, but Marcus had found the place and had fallen in love with it. At least it was in a good location. The brick building sat nestled within a group of trees on a dead-end road near Rose Hill, Virginia. Which placed them only a short drive from I-395 that could take them north over the George Mason Memorial Bridge and into the heart of Washington DC in a little under half an hour.

Maggie reached the bottom of the rusty metal stairs and stormed across the garage bay toward the Yukon. The doors of the black SUV stood open, and Marcus and Andrew were piling the vehicle up with equipment. She could hear them bickering.

Andrew opened up the top of an ammo box and said, “Why in the hell do we need this much firepower?”

Marcus’s reply echoed across the cracked and patched floor. “It’s the condom principle.”

“Huh?”

“You know, I’d rather have one and not need it, than need one and not have it.”

“We have two fully auto KRISS Super Vs and 5,000 rounds of .45 ACP ammo. Plus multiple sidearms. What are you expecting, zombie apocalypse?”

“You never know. But the next time we go close-quarters, I want the firepower on our side.”

“I’m coming with you,” Maggie said as soon as she reached them.

Marcus dropped a duffle bag back to the gravel and turned toward her. His eyes were unreadable behind a pair of dark Oakley sunglasses. “I need you to stay here, Maggie. We may come up with additional leads that we’ll need you to investigate outside the Chicago area.”

She looked to Andrew for support, but he only raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders in a way that told her she was on her own. “Dammit, Marcus. You can’t do this to me. This is the third case where you’ve stuck me on the sidelines doing paperwork. Ever since Harrisburg you’ve been coddling me like I’m some kind of child that needs babysitting. I made a simple mistake that could have happened to any of us. I don’t deserve to be benched over it.”

“A simple mistake? You disobeyed my orders, and you were almost killed. But that’s beside the point—it’s not why you’re hanging back. We may need you here. End of discussion.”

She reached out and grabbed his arm. She whispered, “Is this because of what’s been happening between us? I’m a professional. I would never allow our personal relationship to affect my performance.”

Marcus closed his eyes for a second and then said, “It has nothing to do with that, either. I really just need you here. Okay?”

Maggie sensed some emotion in his voice. Fear. Shame. Regret. But regret over what? Was he sorry for the way he was handling their relationship or that they had a relationship at all? She didn’t know how to respond, and so she said nothing.

Heavy footsteps slapped the concrete at her back, and she turned to see Stan Macallan, their unit’s technology guru, approaching. Stan said to Marcus, “I emailed you those statistics and files you wanted on Chicago.”

Marcus nodded. “Thanks.” To Maggie, he said, “I’ll call you tomorrow morning with an update on the case.”

Andrew had finished loading the Yukon and raised the door to the garage. He gave Maggie a little wave as he climbed behind the wheel. Marcus glanced at the SUV and back to her. It looked as if there was something more he wanted to say, but as usual, he held his tongue. With a nod, he walked over to the Yukon and climbed inside.

As Maggie watched the big black vehicle pull away from the building and down a dirt path dotted with alternating patches of grass and gravel, she wondered why the man she loved didn’t reciprocate her feelings. And if he did, why did he push her away?

Special Agent Victoria Vasques thanked the pale-faced young man at the Starbucks drive-through for her coffee and pulled the gray Crown Victoria out into traffic on Route 30. The Jackson’s Grove PD crime techs had already cleared the second abduction scene, and the woman’s husband was down at the station answering questions. She wanted to get another look without all the distractions, and tonight would be her best opportunity. It was only a short drive across Lincoln Highway and down Division Street to reach the young woman’s house on Hickory.

The Chicago Metropolitan Area consumed over ten thousand square miles of land and had a population of 9.8 million people. The suburbs stretched out as an interconnected series of towns and villages, each almost filled with wall-to-wall houses and businesses. All of them had their own quaint little names and self-contained police departments with jurisdictions defined by street names rather than geography. The actual city of Chicago was the epicenter, but it was all Chicagoland.

As Vasques traveled through the peaceful suburban neighborhood, she couldn’t help but consider how the residents would never expect such a thing to happen here. No one ever did. But she knew that the Anarchist could live in any one of the houses she passed, a wolf nestled unseen among the sheep.

She followed the path the killer would have taken and pulled into the alley behind the cream two-story house. From the passenger seat, her little Yorkie puppy yapped and hopped onto her lap. The pink dog tag on its collar jingled like a bell when it moved. It sniffed her face and licked her on the nose. She recoiled and patted it lightly on its head, still not used to its affections. Her brother, Robbie, had given her the dog as an early Christmas present, commenting that if she was never going to find a man she should at least have a dog. Luckily, she had an elderly neighbor who could care for it while she was away at work. Robbie was impulsive. He never considered things like that.

“Okay. That’s great,” she said as the little dog’s tongue lapped at her cheeks. She pressed its head down, away from her face. “Okay, enough. I’ve got work to do. If you crap in this car while I’m gone, I’ll buy a big snake and feed you to it.”

She looked at the back of the house and thought of the missing woman, Jessie Olague. The poor girl was still out there somewhere at that very moment. Terrified, alone, waiting for someone to save her, wondering what would happen if no one came, brooding on the fact that her own death might be approaching.

A cigarette craving attacked Vasques as it usually did when she was stressed. She popped in another stick of gum and chomped on it frantically. She had picked a hell of a time to quit smoking.

As she worked on the piece of gum, she noticed something strange about the house. The lights were still on in several of the rooms. The crime-scene techs surely would have turned off all the lights when they left, and the husband was still at the station.

She reached for her phone and dialed Belacourt’s number. “Hey, Trevor. I figured you’d be questioning the husband.”

The tinny voice on the other end of the line said, “We’re taking a break. Letting him get it together. He’s pretty torn up about the whole thing.”

“So you don’t think there’s any chance of him being involved?”

“Too early to say for sure. But if he is, he’s trying for an Oscar. So what’s up at your end?”

“Do you have any units still at the house?”

“The Olague house? No, they buttoned it up a couple hours back.”

She was afraid that she was just being paranoid, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “The lights are still on.”

“I guess they might have forgotten to turn them off. It was still daylight when they left, but those guys are obviously pretty detail-oriented individuals. Tell you what, you stay put, and I’ll send over a couple units to give you backup.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Vasques ended the call and then watched as another light flipped on in the home’s second story. Her hand flew to her .45 caliber handgun, and she stepped out of the Crown Vic, leaving a yipping Yorkie behind.

Someone was inside the house, and she didn’t have time to wait for backup.