Josh hung back in the darkness beneath an oak tree while, across the yard, Voss ripped Ed Turcotte a new one. With the chopper noise overhead and the radio static and chatter on the ground, he was pretty sure that the assorted cops and Feds crawling over the grounds of Cait McCandless’s house couldn’t hear the exchange. Josh couldn’t hear any of it, either, but he smiled to himself as he watched the two of them face off, circling each other like dogs about to go for the throat. Turcotte didn’t stand a chance.
Nala Chang and Ben Coogan walked up to join him, both of them distracted by the confrontation, but neither of them daring to get close enough to overhear.
Voss and Turcotte stood at the corner of the house in a patch of shadow untouched by the crime-scene light setups and the strobing blue lights that swept across the house and yard. Their gestures and facial expressions were a visual staccato akin to the flicker of an old-time kinescope, and Josh didn’t have to hear to know the gist.
Rachael wanted to know what the fuck the FBI had been thinking putting out a BOLO suggesting Cait McCandless was a terror suspect. Whatever the Bureau’s rationale—and Josh couldn’t wait to hear it—Turcotte would be bristling at the suggestion that he needed to get Voss’s approval on anything.
“That doesn’t look fun,” Coogan said.
Josh shot him a dark look. “It isn’t.”
Coogan glanced at Chang, disapproval writ large on his face. “Isn’t this Agent Turcotte’s case? Why is he even listening?”
Chang closed her eyes and shook her head at the insult implied in the question. Josh narrowed his eyes, wondering what Coogan could be thinking to outright slam Josh’s agency and partner with him standing right there. Maybe the guy was sick of being stuck in a field office and wanted a more dynamic posting, or maybe he just liked the way Chang’s blouse clung to her breasts and wanted to swing his dick a little. Either way, it was a dumb move.
“You want to take that question?” Chang asked, glancing at Josh.
“No,” Josh said. “You go ahead.”
As Chang started to explain that Voss could take the case away from the FBI anytime she felt the urge, causing all the color to leach from Coogan’s cheeks, Josh tuned out the conversation, watching his partner instead. He wondered if Turcotte would push back hard enough to make Voss burn the bridge, to force her to take the case from him.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Chang asked.
Josh blinked and looked at her, her face bathed in blue light. He had not noticed, but Coogan had marched off. Presumably he intended to try to make himself useful, though he might have come to the realization that he would not be on this case for long. That left just Josh and Nala standing beneath the branches of an oak tree by the sidewalk, waiting to see how it all shook out.
“That depends.”
“On what?” Chang asked.
“On why.” He looked at her. “Do you know why Turcotte had them word the BOLO that way?”
Chang seemed almost hurt by the question. “No. This woman sounds like a target to me. If people are coming after her child and she did this to them, she’s my new hero. So, no, Agent Hart, I don’t know. But I’d like to.”
Josh found himself hoping Voss and Turcotte could keep from killing each other so he and Chang could continue this investigation together. He liked her smile and the way she did her job. Liked the way she could move from grim to amused with easy confidence. Over the past twenty-four hours or so, he had found that he liked her a great deal.
But you can’t go there.
The dilemma of his job had turned out to be that while he had made a rule for himself about not getting sexually or romantically involved with Feds or cops or anyone else who dealt with crime and punishment for a living, finding a civilian who could put up with what that life could do to a person—with the hours and the moods and the nightmares—had proven almost impossible. His blind date with Molly had gone well—right up until it had been interrupted by a quadruple murder in Fort Myers.
“What did you make of what Detective Monteforte was saying?” Josh asked.
“I think we’ve got to look into McCandless’s brother,” Chang replied. “If he’s actually dead, that’s a new wrinkle. None of the other child killings had collateral damage outside the household. And if he was really some kind of spy or what ever …”
“I know. It sounds crazy, right?”
Chang hesitated, then looked up at him. “Maybe not. If someone is really killing these kids because they’re of mixed race and Sean McCandless had the kind of connections and training all this implies, he’d come after them. Taking him out first would be the smart thing to do.”
Josh exhaled loudly. “We’re not talking serial killers now. They’d have to know about him in the first place, be able to track him down, and then kill a government agent and get away with it.”
Chang gestured toward the lawn, which had been turned into a killing ground. “This is way past serial killers, Josh.”
He felt a pang of sorrow as he thought about Grace Kowalik, whose parents had named her after she was already dead. He didn’t want Cait McCandless’s daughter to end up the same way, on the bank of a river somewhere, or killed in her sleep like the Greenlaw twins and who knew how many others.
“I know. I just hate conspiracy shit.”
“You don’t think conspiracies happen?” Chang asked, eyebrows rising.
Josh surveyed the damage to Cait McCandless’s apartment house. Bullet holes. Shattered windows. At some point the poor bastard who lived on the second floor would come home and find his place sealed off by the police. He might even be out there right now, kept back by the police cordon.
“Conspiracy’s the wiring in the walls, Nala. It’s always there. We’re just not supposed to see it. And unless you’re very careful, you’re never supposed to touch it.”
“We’ll just have to be careful, then.”
Her confidence made him smile but when he glanced at her, something else caught his attention. On the street, a cop bumped his cruiser up onto the opposite sidewalk to let a white box van get past. The van bore no insignia or identifying mark, but it had to be some sort of official vehicle or the cops wouldn’t be letting it out.
“What’s wrong?” Chang asked.
“Maybe nothing.”
Curious, he crossed the sidewalk and moved between two cars into the street, and Chang followed. The van passed them, but Josh only got a quick glimpse of the driver—Caucasian, thirtyish, buzz cut—which told him nothing for certain. Maybe fifty feet farther up the street was a second box van, identical to the first. The rear doors were open and a quartet of men in dark jumpsuits were loading body bags inside. A few cops and a man wearing an FBI jacket stood nearby chatting, ignoring them. Gurneys that had been used to cart the bodies over from the yard were being rolled back to waiting ambulances and a black truck bearing the logo for Suffolk County on the side, obviously from the medical examiner’s office. But the gurneys were going back empty. The M.E.’s truck and the ambulances would leave without their usual cargo.
“Any idea what this is?” he asked Chang.
“Let’s find out.”
They started toward the first white van, walking fast, dark suspicion rising in Josh’s thoughts. “These guys look military to you?”
“My first thought.”
“Shit.”
As they approached, two of the guys climbed into the back of the van. Two others were about to close the doors.
“Hold on a minute,” Josh called.
The two inside the van started shifting body bags around, but the men by the doors turned toward the interruption with guarded expressions. Other than the variance in skin color, they seemed made from the same mold: strong jaw, tightly cropped hair, powerful build, veiled eyes.
“Where are you taking them?” Chang asked.
The man on the left, African-American with coffee-colored skin, cocked his head as he studied them. Then he nodded to the other man and they slammed the rear doors and turned their backs, the white guy starting around the passenger side. The other was apparently the driver.
“Whoa,” Josh said, anger flaring. He started after the driver. “A federal agent just asked you a question. You need to answer it.”
As Josh caught up to him, reaching for his arm, the driver turned and stopped him with a look.
“You don’t want to touch me, sir.”
The sir confirmed all of Josh’s worst fears. They were soldiers. On this case, soldiers meant SOCOM, and SOCOM meant Arsenault.
“Nobody wants this to turn ugly, soldier,” Josh said. “It’s a simple question. Where are you taking the bodies? And I’ll ask another one: Who gave the order?”
In his peripheral vision, he saw Chang a few feet behind the van. The passenger appeared, edging into position in back of the doors, ready to act if something went down. The tension attracted immediate attention, several police officers and techs and a few FBI personnel gathering.
“We’re going to get into the van now, sir,” the driver said. “If you have questions about our orders, I suggest you take them up with your superiors.”
Chang took out her ID, flipped it open, and stepped closer to the jarhead at the back of the van. “You will answer the question or you will be detained.”
A restless shudder went through those who had gathered to watch. One police officer touched the butt of the gun hanging from his belt, eyes shifting back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match. Josh pulled out his cell, rang Voss, and she answered on the second ring.
“Come out on the street right now. White van. Bring Turcotte.”
Voss didn’t ask questions. She knew from his voice there was trouble. Josh killed the call, put away his phone, and looked around to find that every person in the vicinity seemed to be holding their breath. He knew he had to end this confrontation before it erupted into something they would all regret.
But the driver smiled, and it was almost a sneer.
“You don’t have the authority to stop us,” he said.
Josh didn’t like that sneer. “The FBI doesn’t have the authority? All right, then. I’m with ICD—”
“What the fuck is ICD?” the passenger muttered.
“A division of Homeland Security, moron,” Chang said.
The passenger laughed. “So’s the Coast Guard.”
The driver silenced him with a look. Obviously his superior officer, and the one with the brains.
“Where’s Lieutenant Arsenault?” Josh asked. “Let me talk to him and we’ll sort this out.”
The driver’s nostrils flared in alarm—the only sign that he even knew who Arsenault was, or that he was troubled that Josh had figured them out. Now that Josh thought about it, he hadn’t seen Arsenault or Norris for at least twenty minutes, maybe more.
“Sir, if you’ll consult the officers around you, you’ll find that the local authorities have received their orders and have released the deceased into our custody. And now I’m afraid we have to go. We’re expected.”
The driver turned again and started toward the front of the truck. The passenger smiled at Chang and did the same.
Josh drew his gun, the sound of it sliding from the holster strangely loud amidst the noises of the crime scene. Chang muttered a curse and followed suit, taking aim along the other side of the van, where the passenger must be.
“Don’t take another goddamn step!” Josh said.
The driver froze, put up his arms, turned to face him, then slapped the side of the white van twice. The back doors popped open and the two soldiers who’d climbed in with the body bags held small semi-auto pistols aimed at Josh and Chang.
Cops swore and drew their weapons. Shouting erupted. Some of the onlookers couldn’t seem to decide who they should be aiming at. The driver opened his door and slid behind the wheel, slamming it shut behind him.
“Fuck!” Josh snapped. He lowered his gun as he raced alongside the van. One of the soldiers crouched in the back tracked him with a sweep of his semi-auto but didn’t pull the trigger, and then Josh was out of sight.
He tried the door, found it locked, then stepped back and aimed at the driver through the half-open window.
“Don’t let this go any further!” he barked.
“Whatever happens is on you,” the driver said, cranking the engine to life. “But it seems to me you’ve got a lot of people in the line of fire back there.”
Then he put the truck in gear and it started rolling forward. Josh swore at him again, his finger twitching on the trigger, knowing there were a dozen armed men and women behind the van wondering if they were supposed to open fire, knowing a lot of them would get shot if any of them did.
Josh followed, running after the van. The cop who’d moved his car to let the first white van out hadn’t moved it back into place. At the cordon down the street, they would have no idea what was going down and would let the bastards out. They had their orders.
“Goddammit!”
He stopped running, turned around to a sea of clueless expressions, and stalked over to the nearest Medford cop.
“Radio the cordon. Do not let that van get by them!”
The dough-faced, fortyish cop gave him a dubious look. “Why? I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it!” Josh yelled. “Those bodies are about to vanish—including your dead Detective Jarman—and then none of us will ever know what really happened here. Stop the fucking van!”
The bit about Jarman got the guy moving.
“Josh!”
As the cop whipped out his radio, Voss came running up with Turcotte and Chang. Monteforte and Coogan weren’t far behind, and they were followed by a coterie of agents and cops. Josh started to shout to his partner, but he swallowed his anger and hurried to meet her instead. Too many people to overhear, too many potential leaks.
“We’ve gotta move!” Josh said, grabbing Voss’s arm and running for their car.
“What the hell?” Turcotte called, he and Chang racing after them.
Monteforte kept pace, racing for her own car, blue bubble flashing on the roof. She flung the door open and shouted to them, “Get in!”
Josh didn’t hesitate, diverting Voss to Monteforte’s car. She ran around to get into the passenger seat and Josh climbed in back. Turcotte caught the door before he could close it.
“It’s my goddamn case, Hart. Tell me what’s going on!”
“It’s being pulled out from under you, and not by us. Get in the car!”
Turcotte took an angry look around, then turned to Chang and Coogan, who were waiting behind him.
“Lock it all down,” he snapped. “No one in or out. I’ll call you in two minutes.”
As Turcotte climbed in, Monteforte put it in gear and hit the gas, the car leaping forward. She swerved around the nose of a patrol car, nearly hit an unmarked FBI vehicle, and then they were rocketing up the street toward the police cordon.
Voss turned around in the front seat. “Talk to me, Josh!”
“Those guys were SOCOM,” he said quickly. “Arsenault and Norris are gone. All of the bodies were just taken out of here in unmarked vans and the cops did nothing. They were all acting under orders.”
“Orders we didn’t get,” Voss said, glaring at Turcotte. “Did you know about this?”
The fury in his eyes said it all, but Josh knew he wouldn’t admit he had been made a fool.
“All the bodies?” Monteforte said, knuckles white on the steering wheel. “They’ve got my partner’s body?”
“I don’t think they made exceptions,” Josh said.
“No,” Monteforte said, pain ravaging her face. “No more of this!”
She floored it, hit the siren, laid on the horn. Up ahead a cop was just pulling his patrol car back into place—they had let the van through—but he reversed and pulled back out of Monteforte’s path.
The detective skidded the car to a halt. “Which way?” she shouted out the window.
Several of the cops pointed straight across the traffic circle.
“Headed toward Route 16!” one of them called.
Siren screaming, Monteforte floored it, tearing through the traffic circle and nearly hitting a woman out walking her dog. The car hugged the road as it raced along a narrow street with cars lining both sides. The light ahead was red but Monteforte barely tapped the brakes before she shot through.
“This is insane!” Voss said. “SOCOM’s not even supposed to operate on U.S. soil. Why would Arsenault do this?”
Josh glanced at Turcotte but neither of them answered.
Monteforte didn’t hesitate. “Obviously he’s got something to fucking hide!”
Turcotte had pulled out his cell phone, apparently to call Chang as he’d promised. Now he leaned forward.
“What’s this direction, Detective? Where do you think they’re headed?”
But even as he asked they came to another light, and beyond it they could see the interstate. Josh spotted the van off to the right on a road parallel to the highway.
“If they get on 93 going south, my guess is the airport!” Monteforte said.
Josh stared at Voss. “We can’t let that happen.”
“No,” Turcotte agreed. “We can’t.”