Jeffery Deaver - Edge

“Westerfield,” I said.

“My voice give that away, son?” Freddy asked.

“What about him?”

“For one he keeps calling. He’s calling me. He’s calling everybody. What’d you do?”

I said, “He wants my principals in a slammer. He’s wrong but I couldn’t reason with him. So I basically…” I tried to think of a good euphemism.

“Put your job on the line by scamming the attorney general of the United States of America. And pissing off half the federal government.”

I said, “Loving’s got too many contacts in D.C. I couldn’t risk it.”

“I don’t care. That’s your business, Corte. It’s no skin off my nose.”

“Call me if you find any forensics. Loving went through Carter’s house too.”

“Will do.”

We disconnected. As soon as I did, my boss’s number came up on caller ID. So did Westerfield’s. I rejected both calls and dialed duBois. I explained to her what happened and then told her about the helicopter. “Find it, if there’s any way.”

“Okay.” She took down the details.

Then I said, “And Loving’s wounded.”

The demure young woman said, “You got a piece of him. That’s good.”

“I want you to try to find where he’ll go for treatment.”

There’s a legal requirement that medical personnel must report gunshot wounds to law enforcement. Gangs and organized crime have doctors or nurses or even vets on call who treat wounds and conveniently forget to dial 911. We knew some of these medicos and routinely monitored them (we didn’t arrest them since they were invaluable as sources to find and track wounded lifters and hitters).

Loving, though, would avoid any of these, of course. I told duBois this and said, “He’s going to find somebody private, somebody we don’t know about. Look through all the files we have on him, checking addresses he’s been seen at, phone calls, everything. Public records too.”

She’d use ORC and other data-mining programs.

“I’ll see what I can find,” she said. “And, Corte?”

My name again. “Yes?”

“Those images you got at Graham’s house? I’m still running the analysis.”

“Good.”

She was pausing. “I thought about it and there wasn’t any other way to get the information from him. What you asked me to do. I didn’t like it then, I didn’t like it later. But it was pretty smart. I’ll remember that.”

“There wasn’t any other way,” I repeated.

We disconnected and we drove in silence for a half hour. Carter asked to put the radio on and I said, “You don’t mind, I’d rather keep it off. Better to concentrate.”

“Oh. Sure.”

I saw that Amanda was looking at me in the mirror.

“Was that all because of me, back there?” she asked. “Because of my blog?”

“Yes. He’d linked your screen name to your real name through a social networking site. He tracked the post to Bill’s neighbors and then to his house.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I… I thought you meant I couldn’t use my computer. I didn’t know he could track us. I used my nic.”

But she was a smart girl. She’d have had an inkling of the risk but in the oblivion and zeal of adolescence she hadn’t thought it through or hadn’t cared. Most likely, a little of both.

Amanda then added, “It’s just I felt really bad about Susan-this sophomore at school.”

“The one who killed herself?” I asked.

“That’s the thing. It was a car crash but she was driving real fast and stupid, like she didn’t care if she lived or not. That’s a kind of suicide, our counselors tell everybody. I wanted to blog about that, make sure people know that being reckless can be just like taking pills or hanging yourself.”

A curious thought struck me: Here was this young girl devoted to looking out for people. She was, in her own way, a shepherd. I wondered, if I had had a daughter, would she have turned out like Amanda? I would’ve been proud of her, I knew that.

But that thought, like so many others today, got carted off to the dust bin.

She asked, “He wanted to kill me?” in the monotone of somebody who doesn’t really believe they could ever die.

Carter stirred and was about to reassure the girl. I now knew, though, that she required little coddling. “No, he wanted to kidnap you and get your father to tell him something.”

“Tell him what?”

“We don’t know.”

She fell silent and stared out the window.

Some lifters have standards. Some won’t hurt women or children. Some rely on mental or professional pressure or risk of embarrassment or financial loss. There are some cases they won’t take on and some limits to what they’ll do to coerce information out of people. They assess the principals and use the minimum edge necessary to get the information they’ve been hired to get. At the other extreme are the ones like Henry Loving. They’ll take whatever steps they decide are appropriate.

Curiously, I respect these hitters and lifters more than the others. They’re as true to their standards as I am to mine. They determine their goal and achieve it in the most efficient way possible. This makes them more predictable.

Amanda asked, “Is Jo totally freaked?”

“Not really,” I told her.

“Are you sure?” The question was wry.

“Okay, she’s freaked. But she’s safe, with your father and aunt.”

“Good… I’m sorry, Uncle Bill. I kind of messed things up.”

She didn’t hesitate to accept responsibility for what had just happened.

“Everything’s going to be fine.”

I slowed, then signaled and turned. Amanda frowned, looking at the low stone building we were now approaching. She said quickly, “I… Are you taking me here because of what I did? I mean…”

I couldn’t help but smile. “No, no, it’s just a safe place for you and Bill to spend the night.”

I pulled up to the entrance gate of Northern Virginia Maximum Security Federal Detention Center.

“WHAT’S GOING ON? Where have you been?”

My boss’s voice clattered urgently through my earbud. Irritation and anger-any emotion-always seemed muted when filtered through Chinese plastic and metal but there was no mistaking his mood.

“Loving got a lead to the Kesslers’ daughter. She’s safe. Loving’s wounded.”

Ellis asked, “How bad?”

“We don’t know. Didn’t lose a lot of blood… Aaron, he had a helicopter extraction.”

“He what?”

“Claire’s tracking it down, if she can. You ever hear of a lifter having a chopper on call?”

A thoughtful moment. “No, I never have.”

“Means his primary’s rich or got professional access to choppers you don’t need paperwork on.”

“What’s your next step?”

“I just stashed the daughter in a slammer. It’s safe. She’s under a Jane Doe, a material witness to a drug hit. If Loving’s got anybody inside, I doubt he’ll pay attention and I’ve had the warden cut all outgoing communication for the day. We’re still looking into Kessler’s two main cases to find the primary. Claire’s tracking down doctors off the grid Loving might use to get stitched up.”

Ellis said, “Listen, Corte, I’m doing the best I can-”

“About Westerfield.”

Hence, my boss’s mood, of course.

“About Westerfield. Why didn’t you just ignore him? Why’d you lie about the slammer in D.C.?”

“To buy time. If I’d ignored him, Aaron, he might’ve tried to find me. I was in the field. I can’t afford to be detained when I’ve got principals. Not in a case involving Henry Loving.”

Ellis said, “He could still get you fired.”

“I thought we’d have an answer by now. The primary.”