25

The Green Man had misjudged a seventeen-year-old girl. The mistake had been that simple, even if the consequences of the mistake had not been simple.

He understood how he had made the mistake. He had violated his basic operational principle: anticipate all possible outcomes and be prepared to respond to any possible outcome.

He also understood why he had violated his basic operational principle. After years of planning operations that had brought down sovereign governments, that had eliminated clients’ personal and political enemies, that had resulted in the deaths of international terrorists, that had foiled complex trade restrictions—a request to eliminate a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl had seemed like an afterthought.

Andrea Bergstad hadn’t even been a target he considered worthy of his skills. He had agreed to take on the assignment for two reasons. First, Campbell was an established client. It was always a good idea to maintain a relationship with past clients. Second, Campbell was likely to become a U.S. senator. Political connections were as important as established relationships.

So he’d agreed to take on the job, allowing himself four days to complete the necessary surveillance, do the job, dispose of the body, and disappear.

In plain terms, he had underestimated his target.

At the time, four days had seemed like more than enough. More than enough right up to the moment when Andrea Bergstad stopped cold as he led her to his car, parked outside the One-Stop.

“He’s not in the car,” she said.

He reached for her quickly, but not quickly enough. She ran from him, inches away from his hands, then out of sight.

She made a mistake as well. She didn’t go back into the store where there was a phone. No doubt she viewed going back into the store as a dead end. What she hadn’t considered was that to follow her, he would have come within range of the security camera. He wouldn’t have done that. But she hadn’t known he wouldn’t have done that.

So she ran.

In the instant when Andrea disappeared into the night, he weighed his choices. Follow her without the rifle or take time to get the rifle out of the trunk. The idea of physically capturing her, having to kill her with his bare hands, wasn’t how he wanted things to work. Having that much physical contact with a target was too risky. And it wasn’t something he did. He killed with his rifle, not his hands.

So he traded time for having the gun. A mistake he’d spent the past nineteen years regretting.

*   *   *

He had monitored the Bergstads’ phone records after that night in 1984. Three years after Andrea disappeared, a number that had never appeared on their records turned up repeatedly over a two-month period. He traced the number to a pay phone at a convenience store in Vermillion, South Dakota. He knew as soon as he saw the place that she’d be there. And she was. He’d sat in a car across from the store for several nights before just the right opportunity presented itself.

It had satisfied him that he’d shot Andrea Bergstad at a convenience store. Mission accomplished. He’d regained control. The most important thing.

And now this.

Campbell had called him as soon as he heard that Andrea Bergstad’s disappearance was being reopened by Minnesota’s Cold Case Unit. What the Green Man knew of the angle being investigated hadn’t worried him. He had watched The Get List program and felt more confident. Let them spin their wheels looking for a convenience-store predator. It would keep them from spending their time on more troubling possibilities.

He’d told Campbell to offer the reward as a way of keeping a hook into what The Get List turned up. Not because he expected The Get List to turn anything up, but because, this time, the Green Man wanted to be sure. Underestimating this assignment had gotten him in trouble nineteen years ago. It wasn’t going to happen again.

And now this.

Another goddamn teenager. And potentially a much more dangerous link between Campbell, Andrea Bergstad, and himself.

The Get List had supplied Campbell’s office with a copy of the tip sheets forwarded to the Cold Case Unit. One of the ninety-eight tips had come from a nineteen-year-old girl named DeeDee Kipp. The tip had been innocuous: her childhood babysitter resembled the photo of Andrea Bergstad.

What hadn’t been innocuous was that the girl lived in Vermillion, South Dakota. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe not.

Coincidence or not, he didn’t like it. It wasn’t immediately obvious how that tip could tie back to Campbell or to him. But if the Cold Case Unit followed up on the tip, who knew what they might turn up?

Another thing he didn’t like was the girl’s age. Nineteen. Meaning she would have been born in 1984. Andrea Bergstad hadn’t looked pregnant in October of 1984. But if she’d been four months’ pregnant then, a premature delivery in late December wasn’t out of the question. What he knew of Campbell’s relationship with Bergstad was that it was possible that Bergstad could have been four months’ pregnant in October of 1984.

He needed to do a record’s search on DeeDee Kipp’s birth. But that wouldn’t satisfy him. He had personal knowledge of how easy it was to falsify birth records. He needed something more than a document. He needed to see DeeDee Kipp with his own eyes. To assure himself that the girl in the flesh could not have been Alan Campbell and Andrea Bergstad’s daughter.

He was preparing to leave for Vermillion, South Dakota, to track down DeeDee Kipp when he noticed that her phone number area code was 507, not South Dakota’s 605.

Using an untraceable cell phone, he dialed the 507 number and got a three-voice message that changed with each name.

“Hi. You’ve reached Amanda … and DeeDee … and Cheryl.” Then the three separate voices said in a chorus: “You know what to do when you hear the tone.” Another voice piped in, “If you don’t, you’re too dumb to talk to us.” Laughter in the background.

He hung up before the beep. Then he checked a map. Mankato State University was in the 507 area code. He went to his laptop and found Mankato State’s Web site. There was a listing for Deandra Kipp in the student directory that matched the number on the tip sheet. What she must have done was given the name of her hometown where she’d known the babysitter she’d mentioned in her tip. Then she’d given her current phone number in the contact information.

The Green Man stared at the name on the directory. Deandra. Except for the second “d,” the same letters as Andrea. He continued to stare. It was too close for comfort. He needed to go to Minnesota. He needed to see her.

*   *   *

Forty-eight hours later he returned from Minnesota. He didn’t need to bother with birth records. He had known on sight that DeeDee Kipp was Andrea Bergstad’s daughter.

He’d hardly had time to take a position across from the tall, narrow Victorian frame house that had been converted to a duplex when a young woman who could have been Andrea Bergstad wheeled away from the house on a bicycle. Dark hair, soft, pretty features, a lithe body, sparkling brown eyes.

The resemblance was so strong that his first impulse had been to cover his face for fear that she would recognize him. She had looked right at him as she turned her bike from the driveway onto the street. If she had been her mother, she would have recognized him, he was sure of that.

After that single encounter he had left Mankato. There was no question about who her parents were. The only question that remained was, what was he going to do about DeeDee Kipp?

*   *   *

It was getting dark when he returned to his home base. He purposely did not turn lights on. The dim room suited his purpose. He sat back in a chair and considered his choices.

He had known before he’d left for Mankato that eliminating DeeDee would only complicate his problems as long as there was a possibility that she was a subject of the investigation. He looked again at Kipp’s tip sheet. Her tip was so ambiguous it was possible—maybe likely—that nothing would come of it. To act now, to take preemptive action now would only cause more problems.

What he couldn’t get out of his mind was DeeDee Kipp’s resemblance to her mother. The real risk was that the investigators would see DeeDee Kipp. They had photos of Andrea Bergstad. If they saw DeeDee the connection would be made immediately. At that point, the investigation would spin out of control.

What he needed to do was track the investigation more closely. He needed to know if the Cold Case Unit investigators went to Mankato.

At that point, his only option would be to eliminate the investigators and DeeDee Kipp.