Mortal Fear

“They’re obsessively private about the place. Why do you need that anyway?”

No one answers.

“You’re not gearing up for some kind of Waco thing, are you? This is nothing like that. There’s a reason for all the secrecy. We have very famous clients.”

“Relax,” Baxter says. “We’re not the ATF.”

“You’re all initials to me, Mr. Baxter.”

“We can arrest your ass right now!” yells Mayeux’s partner, finally losing control. “I don’t know why the hell we haven’t already!”

“Go ahead!” I shout back, my anger boiling over. “You want to arrest me for linking these homicides for you? The Press might be real interested to hear a story like that. In fact, my wife knows one of the TV news anchors here from her school days. Maybe I should give her a call.”

“Let’s everybody just calm down,” Chief Tobin booms. With his department under fire from all quarters for corruption, the last thing he needs is more press scrutiny.

“Now can I go home?” I ask again.

The chief looks hard at Baxter, who in turn looks to Lenz. Lenz finally gives a reserved nod. Baxter reaches into his inside jacket pocket and passes me a card. “This is the number of our headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. I want you to check in once a day for the next few days. Obviously we’ll need to speak with you again. Possibly at some length.”

Mayeux’s partner looks like he just swallowed a cigarette butt with his coffee, but Chief Tobin’s hard gaze keeps him muzzled.

“I’d like to study your EROS printouts on the plane,” says Lenz. “You are going to leave them with me?”

I open my case, lift out the thick stack of pages, and drop it at the center of the table. “They’re all yours. But when Jan Krislov lands on me with both feet and a dozen lawyers, I’m going to expect some payback from you guys.”

“Leave Krislov to us,” says Baxter.

Measuring Daniel Baxter against my mental image of EROS’s cold-blooded CEO, I stifle a retort and turn to go. One foot is outside the doorway when Lenz says, “Mr. Cole?”

I turn back, expecting some Columbo trick just as I taste freedom. Lenz smiles oddly. “What instrument do you play?”

The question throws me off balance. Is this some bullshit Barbara Walters question? What kind of tree would I like to be? But of course it’s not. I do play an instrument, and somehow Lenz knows that. “Guitar,” I answer blankly.

The psychiatrist nods, a trace of disappointment in his eyes. “Do you sing?”

“Some people think so. I never did.”

The rest of the group looks from me to Lenz, then back again, trying to understand this odd coda to our meeting. My bewilderment holds me in place until the psychiatrist says, “Calluses, Mr. Cole. You have well-developed calluses on the fingertips of your left hand.”

The hand closes involuntarily. I squint at Lenz, imprinting his face in my memory, then turn and step into the hall.

On my way out of the station, I pass a knot of middle-aged men in sweat-stained suits. They are obviously waiting for something. Their angry voices mark them as anything but Southerners, and before I am out of earshot I realize they are waiting for me.

I quicken my steps.

Once outside, I reflect on Dr. Lenz’s little performance. He’s an observant man. But is he smart? A smart man would simply have noted the calluses and bade me farewell. Unless he felt that quickly discovering what instrument I play was important. But even then, a smart man would have remained silent after I answered his question, leaving me mystified by his deductive skills. Yet Arthur Lenz insisted on doing a Sherlock Holmes impression for his captive audience of Lestrades. Why?

The doctor was showing off. I don’t know why, but this is somehow important. I cannot escape the feeling that the entire low-key meeting was a carefully orchestrated interrogation designed to look and feel like anything but that. Baxter and Lenz playing good cop while the NOPD played the heavy. Or maybe it’s more complicated than that. But if they really suspect me, why not arrest me and give me the third degree? Or throw me to the out-of-state wolves who were waiting for me?

One thing is certain. The FBI controlled that meeting. I am free because they want me free. Why do they want that? Could the FBI—like Chief Tobin—be afraid of the media? It’s possible. After seven murders—eight including Strobekker—the Bureau’s elite serial killer unit has managed to link exactly none of the crimes. Wrongly accusing the good citizen who connected the murders for them might make their precious Unit an object of ridicule on Nightline, not to mention Hard Copy, which is already feeding on the case.

I have only intuition to go on, but the voiceless voice in my head has rarely failed me. As I pull the inevitable parking ticket off the windshield of my Explorer and drop the crumpled ball into the gutter, that voice is saying one thing loud and clear: You have more problems today than you had yesterday.

SIX (#ulink_c25f71d2-e3e4-591c-8074-afeb6b483e83)

One of my office telephones is ringing when I turn the key in the front door of the farmhouse. Thinking it’s Drewe, I race to catch it.

“Hello, snitch.”

This is not Drewe. The voice in the earpiece is at once strange and familiar. It belongs to Miles Turner.

“You’ve really shaken things up, haven’t you?” he says.

“What have you heard?” I ask, shocked at the sauna-level heat that has accumulated inside the house during the day.

“Jan is very upset with you.”

“I figured. Did the FBI call her?”

I hear a faint tsk. “Did they phone her? No, Harper. That would be much too easy for the Federal Bureau of Incompetence. They showed up at the door of our offices with a search warrant.”

“What? At EROS? When?”

“Two hours ago. Special agents from the New York office.”

“What did they see?”

“Not much. Jan locked the master client list in the file room the minute Reception buzzed her and said the FBI was in the building. She refused to give them a key, and that room is like a vault. Actually, it is a vault. It reminds me of your grandfather’s bomb shelter—Eisenhower chic. It’s got a time lock. Seventy-two hours before that monster opens. I guess the FBI could blow it open or cut it with a blowtorch, but they haven’t tried. They just posted two men outside it. They didn’t even confiscate our servers. Jan thinks the raid was pure intimidation.”

“I don’t think so, Miles. All six of those women I told you about were murdered this year. Karin Wheat makes seven. And David Strobekker, the man I thought was the killer, makes eight.”

“So says the FBI.”

“Come on, man. Wake up and smell the fucking coffee! I overheard one guy whispering about phone traces, bringing in the NSA, George Orwell stuff.”

“As a matter of fact, Jan is about to give the FBI permission to set up tracing equipment right here in the office.”

This stops me. “But you just said she hid the master client list from them.”

“She did. But Jan’s no fool. She knows she’s walking a fine legal line. There is apparently some question of a duty to warn. Warn the subscribers, I mean. She feels that by cooperating with the FBI in tracing Strobekker—or whoever he is—she demonstrates that she’s not obstructing the FBI merely for the sake of doing it.”

“At least somebody up there is thinking straight. How long do they think it will take to trace Strobekker if he does log on again?”

“If he’s stupid, no time at all. Personally, I don’t believe they have a chance in hell.”

“You sound glad about it, damn it!”

Miles laughs softly. “I haven’t heard you this excited in a while. Did Karin’s death affect you so deeply?”