“When did you know about me?”
I was ready with an answer. “From the start.”
“Bullshit.”
“You asked too many questions. You took too many chances. You called the morgue Albany Street. Cops do that, not civilians. When you showed me the driver’s license in your sock, you made a move toward the other sock first. Your FBI creds were in that one, right?”
We shared the front seat of an old Ford four-by-four parked on the verge of a narrow gravel road. Leland Walsh—I was having trouble calling him by his real name, Leonard Wells—was behind the wheel and I rode shotgun. The deep green of the truck blended into the nearby pine woods. Mist covered the windshield and fogged the side windows, which was okay because that way no one could see inside. We were north of Derry, New Hampshire. It was an hour before dawn, and icy cold. I stifled a yawn and a shiver, drew my jacket closer. More than anything else, I’d found it hard to believe Walsh was Kevin Fournier’s friend.
Walsh—Wells—was supposed to confine his activities to discovering whether minority and woman-owned businesses were truly represented on the Dig, or whether blacks and women had been brought in as figureheads to get around federal contract regulations. He wasn’t supposed to go sneaking around at night, getting his head beaten in. I’d been right about who he was, and I’d been right about the fact that he hadn’t submitted a report detailing his midnight escapade.
And that’s why I was sitting in the truck instead of twiddling my thumbs at home or calling my lawyer from jail. I wasn’t here because I’d given the feebs Kendall Heywood’s fingerprints and they’d sent up every red flag in Washington from the IRS to the Secret Service. Kenny Heywood, devout soldier of the Texas Republican Army, had vowed on tape and in print to blow up the White House, torch the Capitol, machine-gun senators and representatives racing for the exits. I wasn’t here because he was currently pretending to be one Jason O’Meara, night watchman, or because I’d been able to steer the FBI to Rogers Walters and his crew, or because I’d unveiled the plot to dig beneath the Dig, using a huge tunnel as a blind for a small one. I was part of this operation because I was blackmailing Walsh. My involvement was the price for my silence.
I rubbed my hands over my eyes. Walsh-Wells gunned the motor to give us a little heat. My FBI all-nighter had been divided into three stages, indignation, disbelief, and finally, planning, with disbelief taking up way too much time. Dunfey couldn’t credit the fact that an organized cell had infiltrated security for the Faneuil Hall extravaganza. Ken Heywood was probably a windbag; no one would dare to blow up ex-presidents. The Bureau couldn’t take a tour of the secret tunnel, and since I hadn’t exactly seen it either, they preferred to imagine it couldn’t exist. Walsh and McNamara brought in a Dig engineer and a Department of Utilities supervisor who backed me up. The tunnel might not be there, but it could be there; it was possible. An old sewer line, a hell of a big one, long abandoned, ran parallel to Chatham Street.
Once the feebs wrapped their minds around the necessity for action, once the bureaucracy ground into motion, the wheels spun quickly. The manpower, the money, the persuasive force of the FBI was impressive. The New Hampshire Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, eager to cooperate even in the middle of the night, identified the strip mall parking lot from which the Jaguar had been stolen. It became the first pin in the large map someone tacked to a wall. A vice president at Fleet Bank identified the small Concordia Bank branch in Derry as the place where Alicia Smith or Smithe had endorsed and cashed Dana Endicott’s check. Another pin. The red diamond logo Marian had noticed on a dump truck led to Hastings Hauling, a small trucking firm, also in Derry. Pin number three.
By this time, half the special agents in New England were in New Hampshire, waking district attorneys, contacting judges, preparing warrants. Since the operation would be carried out across state lines, it was necessary to fix jurisdiction. The District Attorney’s Office for Racketeering and Terrorism, the Secret Service, FEMA, had to be talked on board.
Roz came through with a lead, producing the tattoo artist who’d done designs six months ago on three dudes who gave their address as River Ridge Farm. One was a girl of twenty or so who fitted Veronica’s description to a T. The tat man was currently combing through files of known and suspected terrorists.
The tattoo, he explained, was a hybrid, part Montana State Prison—where agents immediately began checking files in the hopes of finding either Rogers Walters or Harold, his incorruptible underling—part homage to various Texas-bred militia groups. The star was straight from the stars and bars, the Confederate flag.
The FBI located the the Hastings truck driver and rooted him out of bed. Urged to do his civic duty and prompted by the name River Ridge Farm, he’d recalled delivering dirt to a small compound off a gravel road in a quiet area that would be bustling with summer camps in three months’ time. He’d drawn a map, showing how many gates he’d driven through, exactly where he’d dumped the dirt.
Postal inspectors were awakened and questioned about the number of people receiving mail at the Jasper Pine Road address. The town clerk brought in a platte map. The gas company and phone company gave details about the service.
There were no landline phones, but no one knew how many cells. No one knew how many guns. Three women had been seen and a couple of kids. Two men, a mail carrier thought. A neighbor, the brother-in-law of the mailman, said it was a religious retreat house and the folks were very nice and respectful. Two families, he thought.
“Shit. If it weren’t for the kidnapping.” Walsh-Wells didn’t go any further because we’d been there before. If it weren’t for the kidnapping it would be simple. Disarm the bombs and round up the crooks.
Tandy, borrowed from Dana Endicott, nudged my shoulder, and made soft inquiring noises. I patted her head and she wagged her tail, eager and alert. In the end, I’d gotten the two things I wanted most: participation, and an agreement that the conspirators wouldn’t be grabbed until an attempt had been made to rescue both Krissi Horgan and Veronica James.
They’d keep Kristal alive until after her daily call to mom and dad, because if mom and dad talked, the entire operation was at risk. The Horgans had never received a phone call before noon. I thought we could count on Veronica as an ally in Kristal’s rescue. I’d gone over my reasoning with the FBI, and by and large, they’d scoffed. She was the sister of a Waco victim, and their faces had gone still at the mention of the Texas town.
I ran through the sequence in my mind. She’d said she’d be gone for a weekend. She hadn’t made the phone call explaining her disappearance. I wasn’t sure what Walters had told her, how he’d conned her into helping, but I didn’t think she’d grasped the enormity of the plan until it was too late. At some point, I thought, romance had turned to reality and the idea of revenge had been personified by a real girl, a bright and sympathetic girl who loved dogs.
When push came to shove, I thought Veejay would help Kristal, but I wasn’t a hundred percent on it. I wasn’t even a hundred percent on Kristal. Kidnapping does funny things to people. We could have two little Patti Hearsts in there, armed with AK-47s waiting for the glorious revolution to begin. But if I was right, if I could get Kristal out alive … If I could grab Veronica James, give Dana Endicott the chance to hire the best attorney money could buy …
“You awake?” Walsh asked softly.
“Yep.”
“Almost time.”
I ticked off details in my mind. The black Jeep’s stolen plate was known to law enforcement. Charles River Dog Care was under careful watch. No one had been arrested; surveillance was deliberately loose. Better to lose someone than to let them know the game was over.
If the game was over, they’d kill the hostage and blow the hall. It might not be as satisfactory to kill teens and tourists and lunching secretaries as former heads of state and a senator who’d helped clear the FBI of wrongdoing at Waco, but demolishing the Cradle of Liberty on the anniversary of Waco would be a coup in itself.
At Faneuil Hall, they could do nothing. They couldn’t sandbag; they couldn’t shut down. The National Parks Service was in an uproar. A quiet uproar, I hoped.
Walsh-Wells poured a cup of coffee from a thermos and passed it my way. I drank it black, that’s how much I needed it.
“We ought to get our vests on,” he said.
“Right.”
“You don’t have to go. We got guys can do this.”
“Hey, you don’t have to go, either.”
“It’s my job,” he said.
“Mine, too. I’m getting paid.”
“Jesus, let’s not get into it again.”
“Good idea.”
He chuckled softly. “You went through my stuff, didn’t you? That’s how you knew what was in the other sock.”
“While you slept like a baby.”
He touched my hand. “Let’s do it again, when this is over.”
It was time; if we waited any longer the darkness would dissolve into pale gray mist, into the dawn of April 19. I unwrapped one of Veronica’s old shoes, held it at arm’s length for Tandy to sniff.
“Take it, girl,” I whispered. “Take it, Tandy.”