Steven James - The Queen

This week Lien-hua was on-site in Cincinnati profiling a case of three missing women.

I was about to tap at the phone to speed-dial her but then had second thoughts. It would probably be best to think through how to delicately broach the subject of Amber first, before getting on the line with Lien-hua.

I held the phone for a moment, staring at it, thinking about why the shooter might have returned up the stairs a second time after the murders.

The phone. Hmm.

Yes, check on that first, then call Lien-hua.

Using my laptop I logged into the Federal Digital Database, found that Donnie and Ardis Pickron had only one cell phone between them, registered in her name. I entered my federal ID number again and pulled up Ardis Pickron’s mobile phone records.

Elk Ridge, Wisconsin

From his vantage point in the log cabin nine hundred meters from the Schoenberg Inn, Alexei Chekov monitored the entrance using the US military issue night vision binoculars he’d purchased last month on the black market in Afghanistan.

He didn’t like surprises, and he wanted to have at least a cursory idea of how many people he would be dealing with at the meeting at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. He’d been told three, but he anticipated a lot more had to be involved, at least at some level.

Through his sources, he knew that the team would be arriving tonight.

To monitor them, he’d taken the liberty of accessing this cabin. It’d been empty when he arrived, and he was hoping the owners wouldn’t return or he’d be forced to make sure they would not be a problem. That might get messy, and that was a situation he would prefer to avoid.

So far he’d seen nine people arrive at the Schoenberg Inn, a sprawling, stylish hotel that looked out of place here in the northwoods.

All of the people he’d seen had parked in locations that allowed the lights from the front of the Schoenberg to illuminate their faces from more than one direction as they entered-an indicator that told Alexei they were either innocent civilians or, if they were operatives, they were inexperienced.

Using an infrared camera, he’d photographed all nine and was currently running their photos through the Federal Digital Database’s facial recognition to confirm their identities. So far he’d identified four people from Eco-Tech-three men and one woman.

Because of their carelessness while entering the hotel, Alexei was surprised someone as meticulous and careful as Valkyrie was working with them.

Already, $2,000,000 had been wired to their account: Valkyrie had informed him of this. Alexei was here to deliver $1,000,000 more as well as the access codes he’d gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg that morning. The final payment of $1,000,000 would be delivered upon completion, after the message had been sent to and received by the US government at 9:00 p.m. Saturday night. That was all he’d been told-a message sent to the government.

He would pick up that money from a drop point tomorrow prior to the deadline.

When his phone rang and he saw who it was, he quickly answered.

Nikolai Demidenko, his contact at the GRU.

“In reference to Valkyrie, all I have found, my brother,” Nikolai said, “are some suspect ties to an Islamic charity based in Pakistan. But that is all.”

“Pakistan?”

“Yes.”

“Send me the details and keep looking. I will forward the usual amount to your account.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Islamic charities?

Informative.

Alexei had been on a few cases in Pakistan himself over the years. Perhaps he and Valkyrie had associations with some of the same people. Something to keep in mind. Wait and see what else Nikolai could dig up.

Alexei had grown used to getting very little sleep but decided he would watch the Inn for two more hours and then go to bed.

Until then he would observe the premises, doing the job he had been hired to do.

Simply.

Professionally.

To the best of his ability.

The phone records confirmed my theory.

At 1:54 p.m. an incoming call had reached Ardis Pickron’s cell phone.

The conversation hadn’t ended until 1:58 p.m.

Before the state troopers left, one of them had driven to Mrs. Frasier’s house and found out that the oven clock she’d looked at when she heard the last shot was six minutes slow, so the murders would actually have occurred at 1:54 rather than 1:48.

Someone had called Ardis’s cell almost immediately after the murders.

And yet, now, the phone was charging in the master bedroom.

So the killer went back upstairs to answer the phone?

Possible.

The call had come from an unknown, unregistered number from someone in Egypt, one that had never called, or been called from, this phone before.

Although the country of origin appeared on the phone company’s records, no actual number did, which meant someone knew what he was doing when he covered his tracks.

I took a moment to go tell Natasha to dust for prints on Ardis’s phone, then I returned to the study for some privacy.

If the killer didn’t talk for four minutes on the phone, who did?

Was more than one offender present? After all, there were two sets of boot impressions in the snow outside the laundry room door.

Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident. Be always open to the unlikely.

Considering both the location of the phone in the master bedroom and the timing of this call, it seemed at least possible that it had rung shortly after the murders, and that the shooter had gone upstairs to answer it.

If so, he or she would’ve had to have been expecting the call. Why else answer the phone at the home of a person you just killed? Why else have a four-minute conversation?

Unless it was Donnie after all.

When you’re working a case, you arrange the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle, and I had the feeling I was looking at a straight-edged piece that might help frame in part of the perimeter. But how it related to the other facts of the case was still a mystery.

It’s getting late, Pat. Call Lien-hua, tell her about Amber.

I hadn’t really taken the time to collect my thoughts like I’d hoped, and I still wasn’t sure exactly how to tackle this, but I knew I’d better call her now, tonight, get it off my mind.

I speed-dialed her number.

When Lien-hua picked up, she promptly told me she was busy going over case files with one of the local detectives. At first I thought it seemed a little late in the day for a business meeting like that, but then remembered I was the one calling her from a crime scene.

With the ambient noise in the background it sounded like she might be at a restaurant.

“I’m sorry to cut this short,” she said, “but I really have to go, Pat. Ashton’s got some notes we need to go over.”

“Ashton.”

“Ashton Rivera. The detective I’m consulting with.”

“Of course.”

I was quiet, searching for what to say, for a way to gracefully bring up Amber. “I had to drive up here to Woodborough. Margaret handed me another case.”

“I heard.”

I gave Lien-hua the rundown, and when she spoke again her tone had softened. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sending a surprise up there for you. It should arrive tomorrow.”

Lien-hua’s surprises were always intimate and always memorable. “Hmm. I suppose it won’t do any good to ask what it is?”

“If I told you what it was, it wouldn’t be-”

“Sure, I know-a surprise-but I won’t hold full disclosure against you this time. I promise.”

“Nope. You’re going to have to wait. But I have a feeling you’re really going to like it.”

Okay, now my curiosity was getting piqued.