Steven James - The Queen

A glance at my watch.

4:46 p.m. I could hardly believe it was just over twenty minutes since we’d moved on the trailer.

From my infrequent visits to my brother’s house, I knew that from here most of the drive to Woodborough would be on county roads rather than interstate, so depending on how icy the roads were, we might not get up there until 8:00. And only then would I be able to start looking over the scene.

This was going to be a long night.

But then there was the matter of Sean.

I’d only be fifteen miles from his house.

Yesterday when I met up with Jake in Madison and drove over here, I’d convinced myself that Merrill was far enough away to justify not getting together with Sean. But now that I’d be just minutes away, I couldn’t come up with a way to politely avoid at least inviting him out for coffee. And I imagined that Amber, his wife, would also want to see me.

And seeing her would be even harder than meeting up with my brother.

I took one more look around the trailer, then stepped outside.

The sun had dipped below a silo nestled on the horizon, and the Wisconsin countryside was draped in one long winter shadow. In the day’s fading light I could see the SWAT guys moving methodically through the trailer park, stopping at one door after another.

Until I had a chance to assess the situation in Woodborough, I wouldn’t know how much time I’d actually have available to see Sean, so I decided to put off calling him for the time being. However, since I’d been planning to meet my stepdaughter, Tessa Ellis, here in Merrill tomorrow afternoon so I could show her around some of the areas I’d lived in as a child, I figured I’d give her a shout right away to tell her about my change of plans.

This week she was visiting the University of Minnesota for a special weeklong three-credit winter session for academically gifted seniors considering attending in the fall. After seeing her SAT scores, the U of M was so bent on recruiting her that they’d sent an admissions officer to meet with her at our home in Denver in October, before her dramatic grade point slide this last semester.

With her academic record, I doubted she needed a class on research methodology, but since her parents had attended U of M, I wasn’t surprised she’d agreed to sign up for the class, at least to check out the campus.

Of course, maybe now that both her mother and father were gone, it could have simply been a way for her to honor their memory.

Four members of the Bureau’s Evidence Response Team entered the trailer, and I walked toward the driveway to get some privacy for the call. Last weekend I’d decided my investigation took precedence over chauffeuring Tessa around the Midwest, so I’d arranged for a rental car for her, and though someone her age wasn’t officially supposed to drive one, the Bureau has an arrangement with rental car companies at every major airport. With my credentials I was able to swing it.

She didn’t answer, so I left her a voicemail explaining what was going on. “If this storm hits early, I may need you to stay in the Cities for another day or two. Talk to you soon.”

Then I returned the body armor to the SWAT guys, and by the time I arrived at the car, Jake was waiting for me.

“Well,” he said, “I guess this is another case we’ll be working together.”

“Yes.”

Being over six feet tall I had to stoop to get into the rental car. I slid into the driver’s seat, Jake climbed in the other side. “Director Wellington says you have a brother in the area.”

“Does she?” I started the engine.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yes.” I turned the car around and headed for the highway. “I have a brother.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sean-but if you don’t mind I’d rather stick to the case right now than talk about-”

“Right. Of course.” He overdramatized the words. “Didn’t mean to pry.”

A moment passed. “It’s all right. Did Margaret mention which ERT agent she was sending up to process the scene?”

“Natasha Farraday. She had a few things to wrap up here; should get to Woodborough around 8:30.”

What Natasha lacked in experience, she made up for in persistence. A good choice.

Jake positioned his iPad 2 on his lap. “Director Wellington had the deputy who sent in the photos of the snowmobile tracks to the Lab, guy named Bryan Ellory, send us the crime scene photos of the house.”

“So, preliminary police reports?”

He tapped the screen. “Looks it, yeah.”

“Read me what we have.”

Jake opened the files, I found the highway and headed north as the glow along the western horizon drained slowly into night.

Alexei collected his baggage from carousel 6 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and headed to the Avis reservation desk. He was traveling under the name of Neil Kreger and had a midsized sedan waiting for him.

Neil Kreger.

He mentally reviewed this identity’s family history, work experience, previous residential addresses, habits, interests. The sum of a life never lived.

It was just over a four-hour drive to Elk Ridge, Wisconsin. He’d hoped to arrive earlier, but as it turned out, the day’s work schedule had not allowed for that.

It’d been a busy morning, first chatting with Rear Admiral Colberg and then setting everything up for his regrettable fatal car accident near Cedarville State Forest in Brandywine, Maryland, not far from his home.

Before boarding his plane to the Twin Cities, Alexei heard that, unfortunately, Dashiell Collet had not survived the night. Erin had, however-awakening just as Valkyrie predicted she would-only to learn of her father’s death. Situations like that were one of the painful downsides of Alexei’s line of work, and though he tried not to dwell on them, he could not help but feel sympathetic toward the girl’s plight.

Ideally, arriving tonight would give Alexei enough time to look into the background of the three Eco-Tech members before his 1:00 meeting with them tomorrow afternoon at the Schoenberg Inn, famous as one of the northwoods locations gangsters used back in the early 1900s when they traveled up from Chicago to northern Wisconsin to elude the law.

With the hidden prohibition-era poker rooms and underground escape routes into the neighboring national forest, the Schoenberg had served John Dillinger and his men well. As far as Alexei knew, Valkyrie had arranged to use it for the meeting, no doubt paying the manager more than enough to obtain full access to the parts of the hotel no longer open to the public.

Alexei’s GRU contact still had no leads on Valkyrie. Nikolai was well connected and even had ways of getting into the US government’s federal agency databases, but so far had come up empty.

That surprised Alexei.

And intrigued him.

He arrived at the Avis desk. “Neil Kreger,” he said with a smile. He handed his license to the frizzy-haired, baggy-eyed woman behind the counter. “I’ll be the only driver.”

As we passed the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest on the way to Woodborough, Jake gave me his thoughts about the information contained in the police reports.

“Looks like we have a single EAMD,” he said, referring to the four locations every murder includes-the site of the initial encounter between the killer and the victim, the attack (which might include abduction), the murder itself, and the dump site.

When all four occur in a single location, it makes it harder to develop a geoprofile since you have only one site to work with. On the other hand, when a body is found in a home like this, evidence is preserved, making the site an ideal crime scene from a forensic standpoint.