Wednesday, December 24
Sometimes it’s good police work; sometimes you just get lucky.
This might be a little of both.
The Watch-For was issued around midnight, and just twenty minutes later, Jimmy gets a call from Gig Harbor police officer Triston Mendoza. At around ten-thirty this evening, he’d responded to the Gig Harbor marina for a reported assault. According to Triston, the unknown assailant arrived at the marina in Lorcan’s silver Honda. The altercation began when he pulled a bound woman roughly from the backseat of the car and then strong-armed her down the pier. The victim, who lives aboard his boat at the marina, saw this and decided to intervene in what he assumed was a domestic issue. Without a word, Lorcan punched him three times in the face with an SAP glove—a leather glove with steel shot sewn into the knuckles—and knocked him out. When he woke, Lorcan was throwing off the mooring lines to a boat parked in a nearby berth.
The only other information Triston can provide is that the boat was last seen heading north. This is no great revelation, however, since Gig Harbor lies at the south end of Puget Sound and any other direction quickly leads to a dead end.
Still, north could mean Seattle or Everett, or one of the hundreds of islands in the sound. It could even mean Bellingham … or Canada, which would be very bad.
We’re three hours behind him; time is not on our side.
Before disconnecting the call, Triston tells Jimmy that he knows the marina manager, and despite the hour, he has no doubt that she’ll rush down and dig up the hull number and description of the boat. He promises to call back in fifteen minutes.
We have two choices: Gig Harbor offered up their marine patrol boat, which can be quickly manned and is capable of eighty knots in calm seas. The problem is that it’s late December and the sound is rarely calm in winter. Depending on the waves and the wind, we might be lucky to match the speed of Lorcan’s boat, which means we lose.
Our other option is an air intercept. Betsy is parked at Boeing Field with Marty and Les, but she’s designed for speed, not aerial reconnaissance. A Cessna or something similar would be more suited for what I have in mind.
I dial Les and he picks up on the first ring. After explaining the situation, I ask him if he has any ideas. Low voices on the other end shoot back and forth as he and Marty confer, though I can’t make out what they’re saying.
When he comes back on the line, Les has a slight chuckle in his voice. “What’s your location?” he asks.
“Lakewood,” Jimmy replies, and then gives him the name of the nearby school. “Haiden can drop us wherever you want,” he adds. “We just need to know where to meet you.”
“Don’t worry, we’re coming to you,” Les says in his usual reserved manner. Before Jimmy has time to reply or ask for clarification, the line goes dead.
Triston calls back twenty minutes later with an update. The boat that Lorcan either owns or stole is a Sea Ray 260 Sundancer registered to LC Limited in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar boat that, according to the company’s website, has a top speed of thirty-seven knots, or roughly forty-two miles per hour.
In this weather it’ll be lucky to do twenty.
Once again, my first call is to Diane. I pass on the info about LC Limited, suspecting that it’s another one of Lorcan’s shell companies simply from the initials. For a presumed genius, the guy is surprisingly unimaginative.
I hear Diane’s fingers begin to fly on the keyboard, and she says nothing for the better part of a minute. Then I lose her completely; not because of reception, but because she absently mumbles something that sounds vaguely like, “Call you back,” and disconnects the call.
We’re back to waiting.
Waiting for Les and Marty to tell us where to meet them; waiting for Diane to link LC Limited to a condo in Seattle, or a vehicle registration on the Olympic Peninsula; waiting for justice for nine women who, despite bad choices or bad luck, were still worthy of life and dignity.
Shortly after one A.M., Diane calls back, her voice strained but pleased. “I think I know where he’s going,” she says. “LC Limited owns a chunk of land on Vancouver Island. It’s about halfway up the island and right on the water. The property records list it as undeveloped, but Google Earth shows a short pier and what might be a cabin.”
“That’s it,” Jimmy says, as certain as snow on a mountain. Turning his mouth away from the phone, he yells at Danny, “We have a destination,” and then turns his attention back to Diane. “Can you send the coordinates to my phone—and if you captured any images from Google, forward those as well so we know what we’re walking into.”
“Are you forgetting something?”
Jimmy hesitates. “Thank you…?”
“No,” Diane practically snaps. “Vancouver Island is in Canada. If he crosses into Canadian waters, he’s out of our reach.” She takes a breath, and in a softer tone adds, “In case you’ve forgotten, Canada is not very cooperative with extraditions that might carry the death penalty.”
Jimmy nods, though Diane can’t see this. He glances at me for ideas, but I just shrug. I’ve got nothing.
Lorcan has a three-and-a-half-hour head start. We’ve got to get ahead of him somehow, but he’s probably halfway up the sound by now—as far as Everett, at least. An even more frightening proposition is that he could be a lot farther north than we imagine. It depends on how hard he’s pushing the boat, how many risks he’s taking.
“What about Utah?” I ask.
Utah is the call sign for the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter assigned to Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations, or AMO, in Bellingham. It’s stationed at the airport not far from Hangar 7 and has an array of border security equipment that includes night-vision goggles, FLIR Safire cameras, and, of course, a Nightsun spotlight that’ll cut through the darkest of dark. All three will be a godsend on this snowy winter night.
Jimmy is intrigued, but asks, “How will they stop him?”
“They don’t have to. You get Utah in the air and see if AMO can spare some boats. Then contact Naval Air Station Whidbey and see if their search-and-rescue helicopter is available—they owe us one, if I remember correctly. Also, the Coast Guard station in Bellingham might have assets they can deploy quickly.”
“You want to throw up a blockade?”
“Well … yeah. It won’t be much of a blockade, but if we get searchlights sweeping the water at all the chokepoints, we might drive him to ground. Maybe he’ll hole up somewhere.” I shake my head, as if all this is obvious. “It buys us more time.”
Jimmy likes it. “Did you catch all that?” he says into the phone.
“Got it; working on it,” Diane replies. “You want me to contact Canadian Border Services Agency and see if they have any boats out?”
“Do it,” Jimmy replies. “And I think the sheriff’s office has a marine patrol boat, so see if they want to play. Frankly, I don’t care if it’s deputies in their private boats with flashlights.”
“Deputies … flashlights…” Diane says, as if writing it down.
“Need anything from me?” Jimmy asks.
“Nope,” Diane says, and the line goes dead.
Ten minutes later the phone rings again. This time it’s Marty.
“We’ll meet you at the elementary school in five minutes,” he says, his voice seeming to vibrate as he speaks.
“What’s the plan?” Jimmy asks.
“No worries, man,” Marty says in a horrible Jamaican accent. “We got you covered.” We hear Les chuckling in the background. Normally, a chuckle from Les is like a belly laugh from anyone else, so I’m a little curious … and a bit concerned.
There are now twenty-seven officers, deputies, and special agents combing through Lorcan’s house and the rooms and passages below. With no victims on the premises, their focus is now on locating anything that will help us find and convict the monster. Eight members of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team arrived an hour ago. Five of the eight were with us at Murphy’s cabin, but I only know one of them by name, and that’s George, the young tech who helped me photograph the death masks.
The crime scene is in good hands, but it’s still hard to leave.
Danny gives us a ride to the school in one of the FBI’s ubiquitous black SUVs. As usual, Jimmy sits in front while Nate, Jason, and I pile into the back. It’s considerably more comfortable than the Volvo.
The drive is short, and a minute later Danny pulls to the curb outside the dark school. The parking lot is deserted, with not a soul or vehicle in sight. After a few minutes, Jimmy starts checking his watch and glancing up the street.
I don’t know when I first notice it. I suppose it’s like dogs before an earthquake: they know something is coming, they just don’t know what.
A minute later, the once-imperceptible sound takes voice, hailing its approach; a growl growing into a roar. There’s a change in the air, a familiar pulse as the sound now comes on fast. As it draws near, it fills my senses: I see it, I feel it, I hear it.
We step out of the SUV and watch with boyish delight as the sound consumes us, throbbing in the night and reminding us that we’re alive.
It’s Marty.
Of course it’s Marty.
And as he comes to rest in the middle of the parking lot, he throws open a door and waves at us, a foot-wide grin on his face. Despite my surprise and wonder, I can’t help but notice the nicely painted logo on the panel behind him. It reads MICROSOFT.
“Oh, my God,” I say. “He stole Bill Gates’s helicopter.”