Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

Then it came to him: Plan C. C for Combination. A little of Plan A, a little of Plan B-but not in that order. Slowly Simon lowered the Colt’s hammer, then the gun, then his head.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m so sorry-and I’m so ashamed. Maybe you should turn me in. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Nothing matters to me anymore-not since Missy died.”

Is there someplace I can sit down? It was not a rhetorical question-you couldn’t just plop down in the middle of a crime scene. Buchanan led Linda to the kitchen, which the evidence response techs had vacated after picking up a good set of latents from a dirty glass and sending the thumbprint to IAFIS, the CJIS Division’s high-speed Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

He brought her a glass of water, sat down next to her at the glass-topped tubed-steel kitchen table-not across from her, so it wouldn’t seem like an interrogation. Linda appreciated the courtesy. She wasn’t sure what to expect when she finished telling him about Skairdykat. Would he turn away from her in disgust? Notify OPR? Ask for her badge?

None of the above. Buchanan was a field agent, and as such, a practical man. He waited, he listened, he nodded, and when she was done, he asked the only question of immediate practical interest: “How much does Childs know?”

For the next twenty minutes, they spitballed all the possible scenarios. Had Childs simply assumed Gloria was Skairdykat and acted accordingly? Both the manner of her death and the fact that Childs had left the coral behind (they were still assuming it was the coral the HRT had spotted on the way in) certainly argued for that scenario, suggested Buchanan.

“I wish I could buy it,” Linda said, almost wistfully. “But he could have more than one snake. And it just doesn’t make sense that Childs would never have told them what he was doing there, why he’d broken into their house, or that Jim and Gloria, who are both very intelligent people-” She interrupted herself. “- were very intelligent people, that neither of them would have figured out how it was that somebody named Skairdykat ended up contacting the PWSPD through their computer.”

“Let’s take Jim out of the equation,” said Buchanan. “He has a skull fracture you can see gray matter through-let’s say he got it in the initial attack. That leaves Gloria. She was your friend-she might have covered for you.”

“You think? When did they first tag the Volvo?”

“Ten-thirty.”

“And what’s her estimated time of death?”

“Reilly says sometime between midnight last night and dawn this morning. What with her in the water and all, they won’t be able to narrow it down any further until they get her on the slab.”

The slab. Runnels for the blood. They’ll open her up right down the middle like a-

No. Not there, Linda ordered herself-don’t go there. Stick to your job while you still have one. “Okay, say a minimum of two hours. If it was me, I’d have spilled my guts in two minutes.”

“And she had your new address?”

“Yeah-I’m staying at Ed Pender’s place.”

“Out by the canal?”

“Yeah.”

“Think he’ll come after you?”

“If she told him I was Skairdykat, definitely. If she also told him I was FBI, probably not.”

“It might be worth a shot, though,” said Buchanan eagerly. “I know that place-it’d be perfect for an ambush. One road in, one road out, plenty of cover for the snipers-he comes after you there, his ass is ours.”

Buchanan’s excitement was contagious. “He’d probably come around back,” Linda offered. “I could be up on the porch. Then when he-What?”

Buchanan was shaking his head. “As my daughter would say, that is so not happening.”

“C’mon, I could-”

Another agent interrupted them. “Okay if I check the redial now?”

“Did you dust it yet?”

“No, Joe, I’m a complete idiot,” the man said, taking the wall phone off the hook. “Of course I dusted it, what do you think?” He pushed a button on the handset, listened for a second or two, then asked whoever had picked up: “Actually, operator, I need to know what city you’re in…. No, this is Special Agent Stroud with the FBI. I’m redialing from a phone at a crime scene-we’re trying to ascertain…Right, right…I’ll hold.”He turned back to Buchanan with his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s directory assistance for Atlantic City-she’s getting a supervisor.”

“Atlantic City?” Linda’s head jerked around so swiftly she almost gave herself another Lhermitte’s.

“Yeah, I-”

“Never mind, I know who he was calling.”

“Who?”

“His mother lives in Atlantic City-he was calling his mother.”

Buchanan already had his cell phone out; he punched a speed-dial number. “This is Buchanan. Get me the R.A. in Atlantic City. If nobody’s there, track ’em down-this is crash priority.” He looked over at Buchanan, who was still on hold. “When the supervisor comes back on the line, get a phone number and an address for…?”He looked back to Linda.

“Delamour,” said Linda. “Rosie Delamour.”

“How much does she know?”

“As of four o’clock yesterday, diddly-squat.”

“Well, let’s hope she’s still blissfully-” Then, into the phone: “Yeah? Yeah, okay…LaFeo, this is Buchanan from Washington. We think Simon Childs might be heading your way.”

After taking care of a few minor housekeeping details (yes, the patio door of 1211 Baja Way had been unlocked; no, Pender hadn’t broken in; yes, Pender had had reason to believe Mr. Carpenter might have been in immediate physical danger; no, Miss Bell hadn’t intentionally misled the mailman into thinking she was a federal agent-that sort of thing), Pender and Dorie drove back to Carmel.

He didn’t offer any details as to what had been in the bathroom; she didn’t ask. But that wasn’t the real elephant-that-nobody’s-talking-about in the car on the drive down; the real elephant for Dorie was that this was going to be their last night together-Pender had booked an eight o’clock flight out of San Francisco tomorrow morning.

So it took her completely by surprise when he asked her, hypothetically speaking of course, how long it would take her to pack.

“For what?” she asked suspiciously.

“Hypothetically? Call it a little vacation.”

“How long?”

“I dunno, a week or two-that’d be up to you.”

“Leaving when?”

“Tomorrow-with me; I got us two tickets.” Then, before she could mount a protest: “Look, scout, the hardest part is the anticipation, right? By not telling you, I’ve already pared that down to the bare minimum. We pick up a pizza on the way home, you pack, ask Mrs. Whatsername next door, Mrs. Tibsen, to keep an eye on the place. Four-thirty in the morning, bing, we’re on the road, and this time tomorrow we’re sitting on my back porch eating crab cakes and watching the sun go down over the canal. And your aviophobia’s a thing of the past, like your prosophono-your proposono-whatever the hell you-”

“Okay.”

“-call it. What?”

“I said okay. I’ll do it. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s my girl,” said Pender. “Heart of a lion, guts of a burglar, cornflower blue eyes to die for, and a rack that won’t quit.”

“Pender.”

“What?”

“Shut the hell up before I change my mind.”

Once again, time demonstrated its essentially elastic nature for Linda, as she and Buchanan waited for the callback from Larry LaFeo. Fifteen minutes, he said-it would take him fifteen minutes to get to Rosie Delamour’s apartment. That was at eight-thirty, but the Danish Modern clock in the Gees’ kitchen might as well have been a Dali watch, as slowly as time seemed to be passing.