Steven James - The Bishop

“Tie that in with the in-vitro testing…” Margaret’s words about society’s changing views on the right to life came to mind.

Justice reform.

Congressman Fischer’s policy: a more progressive approach to curbing criminal behavior.

And the pieces slid into place.

“Lien-hua, here it is. Test the unborn, find out who’s going to grow up to exhibit psychopathic behavior-”

“And abort them,” she said softly, echoing my conclusion.

Motives.

That can change everything.

“Get rid of serial killers,” she said, “before they ever kill. Cut down on crime by eliminating potential criminals.”

“Preemptive justice.”

The death penalty. For crimes that had never been committed.

“If you agree that abortion is morally tenable,” Lien-hua said sensitively, knowing how tender a subject it was because of how close Christie had come to aborting Tessa, “and assuming you concur with the verdict that the courts have started giving-that in some cases we’re not morally responsible for our behavior because it is, for lack of a better term, instinctual, then the reasoning makes perfect sense. Tell a mother her child is going to grow up to be another Jeffery Dahmer or Sevren Adkins and who wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy?”

“But it wouldn’t stop at psychopathology,” I said.

“No.” Her voice was soft, strained. “It would not. Pedophiles. Rapists. Where do you draw the line? Maybe people who’ll grow up to be manic depressive or inclined to drug addiction-”

“But if there is no free will, there is no line.” I thought of the countries that pressure women to abort their baby girls-the most lethal kind of sex discrimination in the world. “Get rid of anyone whom those in power don’t feel would be good for society.”

“No.” Lien-hua shook her head. “This is crazy. You can’t determine what someone will do, only what they might be prone to do. We’re free to choose, to act or not to act.”

“Not if you interpret Dr. Libet’s findings as some people are.”

“The neurological tests could never be that conclusive.”

“They’ve already been conclusive enough to get people off for first-degree murder. I don’t think this is much of a jump. It’s just social engineering in the name of justice reform. And as the house minority leader, Fischer is powerful enough to actually push something like this through Congress.”

A pause.

Then she said, “Aren’t people supposed to have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? We have a right to make our own choices. To determine our own future.”

“But what if we can’t? If free will and moral responsibility are only illusions?”

“Then pursuing happiness would be an illusion too.”

“And so would liberty,” I said.

The comment brought a stretch of palpable silence.

I took the exit to the Academy.

Earlier, when I was at the command post, I’d tracked the relationships forward in time. Now with a renewed sense of urgency, I mentally did so backward.

Rodale to Lebreau.

Lebreau to Basque.

Basque to Lansing.

Lansing to Vice President Fischer.

Vice President Fischer to…

“During the assassination attempt,” I said, “there were two rooms on the eighth floor that were used-do we know if they were both paid for by Hadron Brady?”

“Remember? The hotel didn’t keep the records that far back.”

Who would?

Who would keep the “No,” I breathed, thinking aloud. “We don’t have records of the rooms, but there are records of the payments.”

“No, Pat, they’re all gone. They-”

“But yet they exist.”

She looked at me curiously. “What are you thinking?”

“At six hundred dollars per room most people wouldn’t have paid for their stay in cash.”

Then it hit her. “Credit cards.”

“Yes.”

“Aha.” A slight smile. “Since 9/11 the government has required all credit card companies to keep records of all transactions for ten years to help track terrorism suspects.”

“Exactly. We won’t be able to tell who stayed in which room, but we can find out the names of people who charged a room at the Lincoln Towers Hotel on March 15 or 16th six years ago.”

“And we can see if a person from the suspect list used a card to pay for a room,” she finished my train of thought.

“Yes. Or someone named Patricia E.”

She tugged out her phone. “Pat, I have to say, the way you string things together sometimes… I don’t know, you remind me of Sherlock Holmes.”

“Don’t tell that to Tessa. She might just agree with you.”

“There you go.”

“Trust me. From her it would not be a compliment.”

“We’ll need warrants.”

“Then we’ll need Margaret,” I replied.

1 hour left…

8:29 p.m.

Margaret came through for us.

It’d taken her less than five minutes to call a judge and get the warrants needed to contact the four largest credit card companies and begin the process of pulling up the credit card charges on the dates we were looking at.

I turned onto the road that led to the Academy. The security checkpoint lay a quarter mile ahead.

Lien-hua phoned Angela to get her team started on the project and found out she was in the middle of reanalyzing Mollie Fischer’s laptop-apparently, another technician had failed to follow up on the emails sent and received, and Angela was left picking up the pieces.

When Lien-hua hung up, she said to me, “She sounded a little overwhelmed.”

“Imagine that.”

I drove up to the gate, only one car in front of me.

Sergeant Eric Hastings, the young Marine who’d been working Tuesday evening when I’d arrived with Tessa for the panel discussion, and had also noted the discrepancy with Annette Larotte’s plates, was finishing checking the driver’s license of a man in the Toyota minivan just in front of us.

As he waved them through, I eased forward.

“Evening, sir,” he said as he approached my window.

“How are you, Sergeant.” It was more of a greeting than a question.

“I’m good, sir.”

He finished verifying our creds, and as Lien-hua and I were putting them away, I realized Hastings looked slightly disappointed as he inspected the inside of the car. I wondered if it was because my cute stepdaughter wasn’t with me. The father in me didn’t like that possibility, but for the moment I held back from commenting. Now wasn’t the time.

Not now, but later. Eric’s gotta be at least three years older than she is…

He opened the gate, told us good-bye, and I drove through.

“I’m concerned,” Lien-hua said. “About Angela.”

I was still caught up in my thoughts about Hastings. “I’m sure she’s okay.”

“Her office is just down the hall from the evidence rooms.”

It was an obvious hint, and I took it. “All right. We’ll swing by and check on her on the way.”

I parked near the FBI Lab’s east wing, and we headed inside.

Brad parked the car.

In one sense, Bowers was right about motives-the offender in this case had more than one. The game wasn’t just about revenge, it was about revealing the bigger picture.

About stopping people from playing God, stopping them from tampering with the fabric of human nature he had designed.

He stepped out of the car.

Brad figured it would be about a fifteen minute walk through the woods to the house, which meant he’d get there just as dusk was deepening into night.

Good. Because he needed it to be dark for the climax.

He sent the text message that would put everything into play, and, carrying the third and final license plate, he entered the forest.