TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after watching Livermore kill seven men, I was standing at his doorstep.
The apartment they had found was on the north side of town, in one of a dozen tall, gleaming buildings that rose thirty stories above the street. His was two blocks from the ramp to I-17. The perfect place for a man to stay anonymously comfortable, with a quick escape if he needed it.
Madison badged the security guard at the welcome desk, taking the passcard from him and leading Larkin and me to the elevator. He slid the card into the slot, and we rode up to the top floor. When the door opened, I saw a private vestibule, with access to only one apartment.
Martin T. Livermore lived in the goddamned penthouse suite.
The door was propped open, and I saw half a dozen agents already moving around inside. They were all wearing crime scene gloves and shoe covers. Madison grabbed a pair of each from the cardboard box outside the door and gave them to me, then to Larkin. The two men slipped theirs on quickly and waited for me to do the same. Then we stepped inside.
“We’re just starting our work here,” Madison said to me. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you not to disturb anything.”
There were two agents setting up a floor grid, long white strings that would run parallel across the hardwood floor, with another set of strings running perpendicular. The result would be a perfect set of one-foot-by-one-foot squares covering the entire apartment. They would use this to catalog any trace materials found on the floor.
As Madison and Larkin went to talk to one of the other agents, I looked the rest of the place over. Everything was sleek and modern, with an open plan that provided a sight line all the way through the kitchen. There were granite countertops with brushed-steel side plates. White cabinets with European-style handles. The living room was bigger than my entire cabin back in Paradise, with black leather furniture on chrome frames. There were two huge Japanese prints on the walls, a crane standing in a pond, and a twisted tree in fog with a pagoda in the distance. No human figures anywhere. No television.
Another agent was busy setting up a series of numbered yellow evidence tags, small tents that would be placed next to anything of possible interest. He’d already put one next to a neat stack of mail on the dining room table, and another tag next to the newspaper, carefully folded next to the mail. I went to the big picture window and looked out over the city of Phoenix. The Superstition Mountains rose in the eastern distance.
As I went into the living room, I scanned the bookshelf. There were thirty or forty engineering reference books, a few books on Japan. Nothing else.
I stepped around another agent who was putting an evidence tag next to a slight indentation in the hardwood floor. Probably just an old dent in the wood, but I knew they’d run DNA tests on everything they could find, trying to determine if anyone else had been here. They’d also dust for prints, and they’d spray luminol under a black light to test for blood.
My gut told me they’d find nothing. As luxurious as this place was, there was something oddly sterile about it. Something almost impersonal.
This is where he lives, I said to myself, but he doesn’t really live here.
When I went down the hallway, I saw that the first door was closed. I could hear voices coming from behind it. I continued down to the bedroom, to the bathroom, back to the kitchen. Everything was just as immaculate. Just as sterile.
“McKnight,” Agent Madison said. I turned to see him standing before the first door, which was now open. “In here.”
I followed him into the room. It was Livermore’s home office. Filing cabinets, a computer station, and a separate writing desk stacked with papers.
“Give us one moment,” Madison said to Larkin and the other two agents in the room. His voice was all business.
The three men left the room. I stepped closer to the desk and looked at the papers. It took me a while to process what I was seeing. On top was a large map of San Francisco, then beneath that a set of blueprints with neatly drawn red arrows pointing to several different parts of the building.
“This is the classified information you were talking about at the meeting,” I said. “I don’t understand why I couldn’t—”
“This is national security, McKnight.”
I looked up at him. “Are you kidding me?”
As I carefully lifted the blueprints, I saw another map below it, this one of the larger Bay Area, and beneath that I saw the corner of a brochure, with a list of times and what looked to be names of events. Welcome Cocktail Party. Opening Ceremony.
I put everything back in its original place. “You don’t believe this bullshit, do you?”
“Give me a reason not to.”
“What’s he going to do?” I said, reading the text on the blueprints. “You think he’s really going to blow up the Moscone Center?”
“This evidence points that way. We have to take this seriously.”
“He’s a killer,” I said. “He’s not a terrorist.”
“You don’t know what he is, McKnight. You don’t even know why he brought you here, remember?”
“Look at this apartment,” I said. “Think about the man who lives here. Everything you know about him so far. Would he really leave all his master plans out here for you to see? Unless he wanted you to?”
“So what are we supposed to do? Ignore this?”
“Yes, you’re supposed to ignore it. You know why? Because you’re too smart to fall for this. You’re supposed to go back out there and find him.”
“We’ll find him. I promise you.”
“Not in San Francisco you won’t.”
He took a beat, then nodded to the wall behind me. “Look at that time line.”
I turned and looked at it. Several sheets of paper neatly stapled to the wall, with carefully drawn lines in a dozen different colors, each labeled with the name of a convention event. Another line read Travel time, Moscone to San Mateo. Another, Enter and exit building.
“The only thing missing is ‘Dear FBI,’” I said.
“In five days, there’ll be twenty thousand people there. How many—”
“But not Livermore.”
“Listen to me. Twenty thousand people. God knows how many more in San Mateo. All in the same weekend. He can hit both venues within five hours.”
“No,” I said. “That’s the diversion. You’ll be in San Francisco while he’s off killing ten more people somewhere else.”
“If this is all fake, why did he keep this place a secret?”
“He didn’t,” I said. “Come on. He knew you’d find this place.”
“I don’t know about that. He kept his computer pretty damned secure. We took a heavily encrypted hard drive out of his computer, and as soon as we crack it—”
“Don’t you understand what’s going on here? He’ll tie up your computer people for a week. Along with every agent you’ve got. You’re going to spend all this time, all this manpower . . . On what? On an illusion.”
“Maybe,” he said, looking me in the eye. “But I’m not going to have fifty thousand deaths on my hands. This is the same man who killed seven cops yesterday.”
“I know,” I said, “I was there, remember?”
“We have no idea what he’s capable of, McKnight. We have an obligation to—”
“You have an obligation to catch him,” I said. “Nothing else matters. How many more people does he have to kill before you realize that?”
“We’re going to catch him,” Madison said, after taking a beat. “But this isn’t just a manhunt anymore. It’s a potential massive casualty disaster.”
I took a beat of my own, looking down at the pile of papers on the desk.
You’re not going to win this argument, I said to myself. They’re going down the wrong road, but you can’t stop them. They’re going to throw everything they’ve got at this, because after 9/11 you can’t be the one person who didn’t take a threat seriously.
Which is exactly what Livermore is counting on.
“So just tell me one thing,” I said, looking him in the eye again. “What does he get out of this?”
“Whatever a psychopath gets out of anything. Revenge. Fame.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not the man I sat across the table from. He doesn’t need any of that.”
“Then what does he need?”
I took a moment to think about it. “I don’t know yet,” I finally said, looking around the rest of the room. “But none of this is real. He’s not here.”
“So where is he?”
“Somewhere else,” I said. “Somewhere he doesn’t want us to see.”
“Well, until you figure that out, we’re going to follow the evidence we actually have. Agent Larkin will take you back to the office.”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“McKnight—”
“You can go chase your terrorist if you want,” I said, taking off the gloves and handing them to him on my way out of the room. “But I’m going to go find Livermore.”
A few minutes later, Larkin and I were alone in the car. His face was red, and he was gripping the steering wheel like he was about to tear it right off its column.
“If you were him,” I said, “where would you go to be alone?”
Larkin didn’t look over at me. He kept driving.
“You need to be able to work. Maybe make some noise. Someplace clean. That’s important to him.”
Still nothing.
“A storage unit,” I said. “Think about it. Metal walls, concrete floor. Electrical outlets. Plenty of privacy. And best of all, you can pay for the place with cash.”
“We’re going back to the office,” he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead.
“Take me somewhere I can rent a car,” I said. “I’ll do this on my own.”
He shook his head.
“Or you can come with me. Actually help me find this guy.”
“Mr. McKnight, I’m already—”
“Call me Alex. I’m not that old.”
“Alex . . .”
“It’s time to decide,” I said.
He let out a breath and shook his head again.
“You either tell them I walked away,” I said, “or you tell them you helped me find out where this guy really lives. It’s up to you.”