Greg Iles - True Evil

Kaiser stepped toward Dodson. "Agent Morse has a service record-"

"Of losing control of her emotions during stress," finished Dodson. "Don't overstep the mark, Agent Kaiser. You don't want to throw away your career trying to save hers. That's a lost cause."

Kaiser went pale. "Sir, I happen to know that the disposition of her case is not yet final. And-"

Dodson held a piece of paper up to Kaiser's face. "This is an interview with one Neville Byrd of Canton, Mississippi. Byrd was apprehended in a downtown hotel with both laser and optical surveillance equipment in his possession. He had been surveilling the office of Andrew Rusk. When asked who hired him, Byrd stated that one Alexandra Morse had hired him at double his normal rates."

Alex gasped in disbelief.

Kaiser turned and looked at her. Seeing the doubt and pain in his eyes, she shook her head in denial. Kaiser looked around at the audience of field agents, hungry for the denouement of this battle.

"Sir, I want to state for the record that it was Agent Morse who first uncovered a connection between Andrew Rusk and Eldon Tarver. Six weeks ago, she suspected criminal collusion between them, and she proceeded to investigate them despite active resistance by the SAC of the Jackson field office and by yourself."

Dodson laughed scornfully. "You've just defined insubordination. You can testify against Morse at her final hearing."

"I don't think so," Kaiser said in a voice so commanding that a glimmer of fear came into Dodson's face. "I don't think there's going to be any such hearing." He held up a plastic evidence bag that he'd been holding alongside his right leg. "I'd like you to examine this evidence, sir."

A wary look from Dodson. "What is it?"

"A document. It's self-explanatory."

The ADD took the Ziploc bag and tilted back his head so that he could read it through the bottom of his no-line bifocals. His skeptical expression didn't change until he reached the bottom of the document. Then his mouth opened like that of a fish gasping for air.

"You noted the signature, sir?" Kaiser asked.

Dodson's face had gone slack with horror, the horror of a bureaucrat realizing he has backed the wrong horse. "Where was this found?" he asked in a scarcely audible voice.

"In the victim's safe. That document is absolute proof of criminal collusion between Rusk and Tarver and may well prove espionage against the United States."

"Not another word," said Dodson, his eyes blinking. "Agent Kaiser, join me in my car."

Kaiser glanced at Alex, then followed Dodson down to a dark Ford in the driveway. Alex stood on the porch, trying to contain her glee at seeing Dodson taken down a peg, and so publicly. But what truly warmed her heart was the way Kaiser had stood up for her, and at great personal risk. She looked down at the Ford, but its windows were too darkly tinted for her to see what was going on inside.

Two minutes passed before Kaiser and Dodson got out. Dodson's face was red, but Kaiser looked cool and composed. He motioned for Alex to join him. As she walked, she caught encouraging looks from three different FBI agents, two of them women. When she passed Dodson, the deputy director didn't even acknowledge her. Kaiser took her hand and led her to the Suburban he had driven up in.

"What about my car?" she asked quietly.

"Drop your keys on the ground. I'll have one of my guys bring it."

"What?"

"Drop them."

Alex dropped her keys on some pine straw and let herself be pushed into the backseat of the Suburban. She settled into the deep leather while Kaiser climbed behind the wheel.

"What happened in the car?" she asked.

"Nothing's decided yet. You are so goddamned lucky that piece of paper was in Rusk's safe."

"And you're not? Thanks, by the way."

Kaiser sighed heavily, then began to laugh. "You don't get many paybacks like that in this life."

"Did you tell Dodson about the GPS coordinates?"

"Had to. There's no holding back anything now. It's all going to be kicked upstairs to Director Roberts. We only won a skirmish, not the war."

"It still felt good."

Kaiser started the engine, backed around, then stopped and waited for a coroner's wagon to come through the long line of law enforcement vehicles.

"Where are we going now?" Alex asked.

"You're going back to the hospital. Don't even think about arguing. I'm putting out a statewide alert for Rusk's powerboat, as soon as I can get a description of it. Then I'm going to see this Neville Byrd character, the one who claims you hired him to watch Rusk." Kaiser cut his eyes at her. "You didn't do that, did you?"

"I've never even heard of the guy. I swear to God."

Kaiser nodded. "I'm hoping Tarver hired him. To make sure his partner wasn't crossing him, you know?"

"Absolutely."

As the coroner's wagon rolled by, something occurred to Alex. "Did you tell Dodson about the writing on the floor? ‘A's number twenty-three'?"

Kaiser said nothing.

Alex suppressed her delight. "I thought you weren't holding anything back anymore."

"Screw that precious little bastard."

"Amen."

A young FBI agent rapped on Kaiser's window. Kaiser rolled down the glass. "What is it?"

"They sent me to get you, sir. The AD, I mean. They found something in the garage."

"What?"

"I don't know. But they're pretty freaked out."

Kaiser put the Suburban in park and got out. "Stay here, Alex."

She slammed the dashboard with her hand as Kaiser ran back to the house. Then she counted to five, got out, and sprinted after him.

Alex stood outside Chris's room, wiping her eyes with Kleenex given to her by a nurse. She had been trying for five minutes to summon the courage to walk in and tell Chris that his wife was dead, but for some reason, she couldn't manage it. The irony was unbelievable. She had butted into Chris Shepard's life because she'd believed that his wife was trying to kill him. Now his wife lay on a table with a pathologist cutting a Y-incision into her chest.

When Alex crept into Andrew Rusk's garage behind John Kaiser, she hadn't had the slightest inkling that she would find a body there. Lethal biological agents, maybe, or bags of gold coins-anything but Thora Shepard. The woman Alex had always seen wearing only the finest clothes had been rolled in a paint-stained drop cloth and folded into the rear compartment of an SUV. At least it was a Porsche, Alex had thought at the time. But the condition of Thora's corpse banished even black humor from her mind. Thora's silky blond hair had been matted with what looked like pints of blood-a blessing since it covered the shattered skull beneath-and her once-flawless skin looked like the grayish white underbelly of a frog. When Kaiser saw Alex behind him, he lifted the matted hair and asked her to identify the body. Thora's eyes were open. Those beautiful sea-blue orbs that Alex remembered from the photo in Chris's house were the deadest things she had ever seen-dull, cloudy marbles already shrinking into their sockets.

"May I help you, ma'am?" asked a passing nurse.

"No, thank you." Alex stuffed the Kleenex into her pocket and walked into Chris's room.

When she saw him shivering in the bed, she told herself that this was the wrong time to tell him about Thora. What good could it possibly do? It would surely harm his chances of winning his battle against an unknown illness. Dr. Clarke had warned her that Chris might be suffering. At the suggestion of Peter Connolly, Clarke had administered yet another antiviral drug-this one experimental-and Chris's reaction had been yet another fever.

"Alex?" he whispered. "Come closer. I don't think I'm contagious."

She walked over to his bed, took his shaking hands in hers, and kissed him on the cheek. "I know."