Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (3 page)

She froze. She turned. “This is going to happen again, Lieutenant, and soon. With all the effort you’ve put into your investigations, the expertise you have developed, we believe you can help us prevent the next crime. So to answer your question, we’ll be going wherever we need to go, and it’s going to take however long it takes.”

She left.

He stood staring at the door. What the hell had just happened? As he walked out into the squad room, he saw her striding toward the front lobby.

Guys were being careful, pretending not to be absolutely fascinated with whatever had just gone down.

“I don’t know,” he said into the silence. “I have no idea.”

Eddie burst out of his office. His neck was pulsing, his face was crimson. This was not a man with a temper, but he was on full burn right now.

“What in goddamn hell’s the matter with you,” he snarled.

“Nothing.”

He held up a fax. “They’re telling me you’ve requested an indefinite leave. Thanks for this, ole buddy, ole pal. Next time just damn well tell me. Discuss it with me. Because we’ve been friends for years, jerkoff that you are.” As he talked, he waved the fax.

Flynn snatched it from him. And his jaw nearly sank out of sight.

“I didn’t know about this.”

“You didn’t ask for a leave?”

“’Course not. Why would I? I like to put creeps in jail. It’s my damn vocation.”

“So if I tear this up, you’re back here in the morning?”

At that moment, his phone vibrated with an incoming text. He read it. “You have a chance to catch the man who kidnapped Abby.”

Her timing was excellent, he had to say that.

“No, Eddie, actually the request is good.” He could hardly believe what he was saying, but he was doing it and as he did so, his conviction was growing. “The request is good.”

“I can’t pay you. I’d like to but I can’t.”

He didn’t spend much money, hadn’t since Abby. So he could handle the absence of a salary. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I have to do this.”

“Yeah, I get it. But clean out your locker. If the janitor has to scrape any rotted doughnuts outa there, you’re gettin’ a bill.”

Their eyes met. His friend was there for him and nothing more needed to be said. Eddie turned away and Flynn did the only thing left for him to do. He gathered up his few personal items and left the way cops always left on their last day, with a cardboard box in their arms and a few good-byes. A police force is like a lake. When you get out, you don’t leave a hole.

By the time he was unlocking his car, another guy would already have his current cases. But not the Abby Carroll case, of course. Not the Boyne case, and not any of the other missing persons cases that had gone cold.

He drove home in the quiet of the midday. This was all insane, of course. He never should have done this.

“Abby,” he said into the rattling of his old Malibu, “I’m coming, babes, I’m coming.”

CHAPTER THREE

As soon as he got home, Flynn texted Diana Glass that he was ready to go, but received no reply. He did an Internet search on her and found nothing. No Facebook page for a Diana Glass that looked like her. No Twitter account. A check of the National Law Enforcement Roster also turned up no Diana Glass, meaning that she’d never been in a local or state police force. His access to FBI records was limited, of course, but he’d emailed their personnel department a verification check on her from the office. Usually, you got an answer in a few minutes, and usually it was “verified.” FBI creds were not easy to come by and not easy to forge. If hers had been false, he would have gotten an urgent call, he felt sure. They would investigate an imposter immediately.

So she was for real, but for whatever reason, they weren’t going to be releasing any information about her.

He went into the Abby Room. He’d spend the rest of the day looking over his cases. Of course, there had been many thousands of adult missing persons in the years since he’d lost her, but only twelve fit the precise criteria that interested him: an apparent walkout without any sign of forced entry, and a spouse or loved one who insisted that there had been no motive for the person to leave, and had credible support for the assertion.

It was a surprisingly rare situation, so rare that to Flynn it was an M.O.

On the walls were pictures of Abby, of the house as it was then, photographed in methodical detail, of the neighborhood, all the cars, all the houses.

There were maps of the other cases, blueprints of each house from which a victim had been abducted, with all the information from every crime scene intricately cross-referenced.

Abby smiled down at him, her hand shielding her eyes. The shot had been taken at Kitty Hawk in 1999, the summer of their courtship. She had been wearing her blue shorts and tank top. She’d been laughing and you could see it in her face. Later, back at their rental, he would unsnap that tank top and slip it off and stand on the tan carpet in the bedroom. She would seem, when she came close to him, to move with the lightness of a woman made of air, and the moment he had looked down into her eyes on that warm afternoon would remain engraved in his memory forever.

Sitting in meditation, he closed his eyes. “To study the self is to forget the self,” he whispered into the silence. That was where he always started. Then he took his attention out of his mind and placed it on his body.

He felt his heart rate slowing until the beating seemed almost to stop. The cool of the room touched him so closely that it felt as if fingers were caressing him, fingers that were both intimately alive and as stiff as death.

He had understood the deep message of martial arts training: you cannot gain the freedom to fight at your best until you make friends with your death.

Beyond fear lies the balance that enables the blow to be perfectly struck, or deflected with perfect grace.

You never quite reach that spot, but you never quite fail.

He sat among his records, a naked man in a cold room.

He sat for a long time, letting go of his thoughts, his concerns, his questions.

As the stars made their nightly journey, he traveled deep within himself, sitting and flying at the same time. His heartbeat was now little more than a memory.

Other names and other faces came back to him: Claire Marlow, Hank Feather, Lucinda Walters, Gail Unterwager, George Nathan Chambers, Kimberly Torgelson—the list that haunted his dreams.

All had disappeared at night. All had taken a small number of personal belongings. Gail Unterwager left three young children and a devastated, uncomprehending husband. So had Lucinda Walters. George Chambers had two sons and a seven-figure bank account, a wife that loved him and a flawless life. Kimberly Torgelson’s little boy had been two and her husband had been completely shattered.

Yeah, buddy, I get it. Welcome to hell.

Three o’clock came. Outside the wind whipped the big old trees that surrounded the house, causing skeletal shadows to dance on the lawn. In the distance, an owl hooted, its voice flying in the gale.

When the hour grew late and still sleep did not come, he did what he always did at times like this, and walked through the house thinking and remembering, trying to understand how somebody could have come in and taken her out of bed like that and then carried her off, and all without her police officer husband noticing a thing.

Flynn was not a heavy sleeper now and he hadn’t been then. So how had it been accomplished? To this day, he didn’t even have a theory, not for any of them and especially not in Abby’s case.

Once or twice, he had dreamed of her so vividly it was as if she was back. Once, the kitchen door had opened and he’d heard her voice calling up, “I’m home,” her tone bright. He’d run downstairs, run like the wind, to find her standing in the dining room. “I’m all right,” she said, and there had been a mixture of sadness and love in her face that had made him ache.

He had woken up, then, still in his bed.

Just before dawn his cell rang, startling him so thoroughly that he almost dropped it and lost the call.

It was Diana Glass.

“Can you come to a meeting?”

“Now?”

She gave him an address in the warehouse district near the grain elevators. He agreed to go and ended the call.

He called Eddie. It rang. Again. Again.

“Whassa matter?”

“It’s me. Glass just called. She wants me to meet her on Avenue Twenty.”

Silence.

“A warehouse, Eddie, at four in the morning.”

“So you called to wake me up?”

“I did.”

“You want a squad car? Protection?”

“I want you to know where I went and when.” He gave him the address.

“Okay, got it.”

“In other words, if I disappear, it is not voluntary. You got that?
Not
voluntary.”

“If you have reason to be suspicious of this woman, don’t go alone.”

“I ran a verification check on her and I’m not sure what to think. The Bureau never came back to me.”

“That is odd.”

“Yeah, and she said eight in the morning. It’s four in the morning.”

“I noticed.”

“So don’t send anybody, but watch my back for me.”

“You’re gonna carry, I assume.”

“Oh, yes.” He headed upstairs, pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt, then strapped on his gun and threw a jacket over it. He splashed his face, but didn’t take the time to shave. Then he took an equipment pack off its shelf in the closet and took it with him. It was all stuff he’d put together himself, a manhunter’s kit.

It was still deep night, and colder than he’d thought it would be, with wind coming steadily down from the north. As he opened the garage, the rattling of the door echoed through the silent neighborhood. No lights came on, though. Everybody knew that he kept irregular hours.

The predawn air was icy silver, and the tires crunched on frost as he backed down his driveway. The Malibu’s heater screamed.

Cold, hot, his body could absorb whatever came its way.

He had worked himself into a new man, as hard as stone, as quick as the air, a man too silent inside to feel fear. He’d practiced with his pistol until it seemed an extension of his body. He did not push, he did not heel, and hours of exercise ensured that his wrist would never break in anticipation of recoil. He was comfortable with the standard issue Glock, but also with the .357 Magnum, and, of course, with the old Colt Positive, known as the Police Special.

He did not go straight to the warehouse—never that—but rather made his way through the streets of Menard, the pretty, average city that had been his born home and would always be his home.

He passed Abby’s girlhood house, now owned by the Dickson family. Along with Eddie and half the other guys in town, he’d courted her on that porch. He’d come to it at midnight, his adolescent body filled with desire, and swung alone on the old porch swing until her dad had come out and swung with him. Bill Baumgartner had understood a lot of things. When he gave Abby away, tears had touched his eyes as a smile had wreathed his face.

Good people, Abigail and her folks.

Bill and Amy were in Menard Memorial now, and when he went to see them on Sundays, he always told them the same thing, “I am searching.”

For the kidnapper and killer.

For Abby’s soul.

For the unlived life of the child she might have been carrying.

For the truth, cold and clean.

The warehouse was one of the tin-siding jobs that looked like a gigantic barn. On its side was a faded sign, unreadable.

He pulled his car up and got out. There were no other vehicles around.

This was looking more and more wrong. Very wrong. But if she wasn’t law enforcement, who could she be? Surely the kidnapper wasn’t a woman—this woman.

He been a detective long enough to know that the unexpected is usually the thing most to be expected.

He walked up to the door, which was unchained, the locks thrown back.

There was danger here, no question.

He went in.

CHAPTER FOUR

The air was cold and thick, smelling of mold and wet cardboard. His eyes were good in darkness, but not this good, so he put on the infrared glasses he had designed himself, cutting the lenses from a couple of Hoya RM9s. Then he pulled out his infrared illuminator and methodically swept his surroundings. A sodden mass of cardboard boxes appeared like a distant mountain range. Closer, he saw a jumble of ruined bicycles. Behind them were rows of dead Christmas poinsettias in plastic pots, also dry aquariums.

There used to be light manufacturing here in Menard, little factories that used wetback labor to make cheap goods that would be sent out to California on the railroad. No more.

Debris was what he had expected. It was what he did not see that was troubling him. The sense of abandonment had changed. Now, he felt the presence of watchers. So far, he hadn’t spotted them, but he knew that this was only because he hadn’t looked in the right place.

With a movement as smooth and natural as taking a breath, he slipped his gun into his hand. Out of habit, he’d brought his Glock. Should have taken the Magnum instead. He was off duty and officially on leave, so it had been his choice.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Flynn Carroll. You asked me to come here.”

Then he knew that somebody was behind him. It wasn’t a hunch this time, or an instinct. He’d heard the whisper that jeans make when they rub against each other.

Sucking in breath, then slowly releasing it, he went deep into himself, blanking his chattering mind by concentrating his attention on the sound. In another moment, he was going to need to move very, very fast. He would have one chance only.

Another sound came, this time off to his right. So there were at least two of them, and they were maneuvering to place him in crossfire.

“Let’s stop this right now,” he said aloud. His words were followed by a silence. Were they surprised? He thought not. He thought they were very far from surprised, because he could see a third one off to his left, a figure that was more slight than the other two. Could be Diana. “Look, I’m gonna end up using this thing if somebody doesn’t show themselves real soon.”