Corrector (26 page)

“Come in,” he said awkwardly.  After their brief discussion he didn’t know if he should reach for her, embrace her, or keep his distance.

“Jake,” she said somewhat coolly.  She stepped past him and walked back to where the others could be heard.

Jake followed behind her after closing the door.

Karin and Cheryl were hugging when Jake entered the room, and then they all sat.  Zack turned down the sound on the television, but left the picture running in case there were new developments they might want to see.

“So you told them about your special ability,” Karin said when he sat down in the large padded chair adjacent to where she sat.

“I had to.  I needed their help.”

“And now you’ve implicated them in one of your killings.”

“There was little choice.  You were at risk.  I had to stop him from killing you.”

Karin winced at his words.  “Cheryl told me a little about that, but no details.  But she told me you had been able to stop that by calling the police.  Why didn’t it end there?”

“Because others, people who hadn’t been involved at first, would have died as a result of my actions.  That had to be corrected.”

Jake took twenty minutes and went through the full set of events that had led to him drafting his friends.  He explained the multiple back-tracks that had resulted.  He was blunt about what had happened the first time and what Karin’s fate would have been.  She was a bit pale when he finished.

“It still ended up with you murdering someone.  Just like before.  Just like we argued about.  And now Nate is an accomplice.”

“He’s right,” Cheryl said unexpectedly.  Karin looked shocked, expecting an ally in the other woman.  Jake was taken aback as well.

“Zack and I talked about it half the night.  It isn’t a pretty option, but it is the best one available.  Sometimes you can’t have things the way you would like.  The world isn’t always fair.  It was those two men or a bunch of innocent people.”

“Jake still murdered them,” Karin objected, but with a trace of doubt after Cheryl’s words.

“Killed them.  There’s a difference,” Zack disagreed.  “You don’t claim a soldier murdered the enemy or a cop murdered a criminal.  At times you have to take a life to save a life, or in this case many lives.”

“He stalked them and killed them without warning,” Karin objected.

“Much like a military sniper,” Nate said.  “The goal is to stop them, not engage in a fair fight.  It’s not racquetball where sportsmanship is paramount.  The goal is to win and walk away alive.  Anything else is stupid.  Jake had special intelligence about the situation which he applied to correct the situation and, and this is important, survive the encounter.”

“Who would you rather died?” Cheryl asked softly.  “Those two men who planned to murder innocents, or the dozens of men, women, and children who were out enjoying their day with no thought to the risk they were under?”

“But why Jake?  I don’t want Jake to have to kill people.  There should be another way.”

“This situation clearly showed that sometimes there isn’t much in the way of other options,” Nate said.  “Jake tried.  Look what happened.  I’m still uneasy about it all, but I’m glad we did it.”

“I don’t like it much either,” Jake added softly.  “But I wouldn’t feel right letting it happen without doing anything.”

“At least you now have a support team,” Cheryl said.  “Perhaps we can help you somehow.  Maybe there is a way for a group to help handle this.”

“That won’t work.  The people and the secret would be at risk.  It would only work if my secret was exposed, and I fear what that would mean.  It would also be hard for those involved.”

“Why?” Zack asked.

“Generally, you wouldn’t know if anything had really happened.  Suppose there was a mass killing.  We all agree that it should be stopped.  So, I go and stop it.  Afterwards I tell you we agreed, but all you would know was that someone had been killed and there had never been a mass killing.  Unlike me, none of you would have the before and after memories.”

“That would be weird,” Cheryl admitted.

They talked about the situation for more than two hours.  Jake agreed he would coordinate with the others for any future events and see how it worked.  It would be good to be able to talk with someone about his plans, but he suspected over time it wouldn’t work out.  He was also uneasy that so many knew his secret, but they were all his closest friends, and there was no changing that at this point.  It was the cost of saving Karin, a cost he was more than willing to pay.

Jake walked Karin to the door while the others waited in the living room.  She was quiet and subdued.

“Jake, I owe you my life.  Don’t think I don’t appreciate that.  I still feel all crawly when I think about what you said happened.  But I don’t know about all of this.  I’ve missed you, but what you do still feels wrong to me somehow.”

Jake felt hollow. He was afraid where it was going to end up.  With all his control he managed to hold himself together.

“Think about it.  Talk to Cheryl.  Better yet, call me and we can talk.  I promise I won’t press, as much as I want to.  I can’t say I’ll simply stop what I’m doing.  I can’t let people die when there is a way I can help.  I wouldn’t be me.  It wouldn’t be right in my eyes.  I’d be letting them be killed so I could have what I want.  Can you understand that?”

“A little maybe.  Cheryl has made me wonder.  Be patient, please!”

They hugged.  It was a step forward.  He walked her to her car where they hugged again.  Then he watched her drive away.

“You are convinced the shooting in San Francisco is related to the earlier cases, aren’t you?” asked Special Agent Jim Laney.

Special Agent Susan Carlson nodded in response.  They were meeting in Carlson’s office at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. along with agent Shaun Hansen to review the status of the open investigation into the string of shootings spanning the past few years.

“There’s a great deal that appears different in this instance,” objected Laney, “at least on the surface.  For one thing there were two of them this time.  That’s something that has never happened before.”

Carlson had brought Laney onboard just over a week ago as someone who could afford to be out of Washington more often than herself.  Carlson was of the opinion they had finally managed to get a break in the case, and she wanted someone who would be free to pursue the investigation more aggressively than her current workload would allow.  There were lots of other cases demanding her attention, many with real clues to follow.

“That indeed is something we haven’t seen before although it’s possible the second lawbreaker has been there all along, but has been silent and in the background.  The previous cases have all involved a single victim, so perhaps he wasn’t needed in an active role.  It might explain how the suspect has always been able to surprise his victims.  Remember, one of the two men was killed with a 9mm Sig-Sauer as before.”

“Granted, one of them used the same kind of pistol, but the rifling didn’t match anything, and the other was a Glock.  It could be simple coincidence.”

“It never matches,” Carlson reminded Laney.  “It just means he uses a different gun, or at least a different barrel each time.  I think it’s the same guy.  The situation is too similar to the other cases.”

“You’re referring to the fact the men killed appeared to be engaged in something of their own.  In fact it seems as if our killers prevented a major catastrophe by their actions.  How could they know?  It’s clear they were waiting and ambushed the two brothers.  That means they knew when and where.  What is their source of intelligence that they can be aware of these planned attacks scattered all over the country?  We could use some of their insight.”

“It’ll be one of the things we ask them once we have them in custody,” Carlson said.

“At least we have one of the fired cases this time,” Shaun Hansen said.  “If he simply changes the barrel, we’ll still have a chance of a match if we can get our hands on the pistol.”

“What about any hits to our databases?” Carlson asked Hansen. 

“Nothing anywhere.  He didn’t use the same credit cards or the same name this time.  None of the car rentals or the hotels have provided anything.”

“You’re thinking he lives in the area, or close enough that he could drive and use his own car, and maybe his real name,” Laney said.  “You’re thinking about the plane again.”

Carlson nodded.  Hansen had done an excellent job with the private plane idea.  It had taken a lot of time, but they had a likely match.  Of the nine cases they had tentatively linked together, in five instances an upscale private plane was registered at a nearby facility around the time of the killings.  Since the killings were spread over a large fraction of the country, it was a surprising coincidence.  Knowing where the plane was based had provided a reasonable reason why the plane might not have been present in the remaining instances.

“The plane wasn’t used for the San Francisco attack,” Laney reminded Carlson.

“It could have been flown VFR (Visual Flight Rules), in which case there wouldn’t be any record of its flight, although we would have expected to locate it at one of the nearby airports.  I tend to agree that it wasn’t used, but look at the distance.  The plane is based in Reno, and San Francisco is only a few hours drive away.  That would be consistent with several of the other cases where the plane appears not to have been involved.”

Once they had a tail number it was straightforward to determine where it was based.  One of the FBI’s agents based in Sacramento a couple hours’ drive away named Bob Thomas, who was himself a private pilot, had made a stop at the FBO [Fixed Base Operator] where the plane was supposedly based pretending to be looking for long term storage of his own plane.  During the tour of the facility, he had been able to spot the sleek Cessna, and ask a few casual questions about it.  Agent Laney would be leaving in the morning to fly out to Reno where he would question the operators of the FBO about the plane and its pilot or pilots in far greater detail.  There should be records of when it was present at the facility and when it had been gone, and hopefully the name of the pilot.

Once they had discovered the plane and decided it was likely the means the killer had been using to travel to and from the site of the crimes, they’d thought they were almost there.  Unfortunately, a detailed search had shown the plane was owned by a private corporation, not an individual, and one with the ownership carefully masked by offshore companies.  Despite Hansen’s best efforts, they had been unable to trace back the ownership.

Carlson wanted Agent Laney to link up with Agent Thomas and drop in on the operators of the FBO.  Hopefully the local records would reveal a lot more than they knew at the moment.  With luck they could get the flight history based on when the plane was taken out from the local facility and the name of the pilot, which he expected would be known by the operators of the facility.  The plane had apparently been based there a number of years, so it would be reasonable to assume a certain familiarity between the pilot and the operators of the facility.  It wasn’t that large a facility after all.

“We should know a lot more in a couple of days,” Carlson said.  “Once you and Thomas have had your talk with the folks at the Reno Airport, a lot of our questions might be answered.  I’ll be ready to fly out there if we have a name and are prepared to make an arrest.”

“Is there anything I should be doing in the meantime?” Shaun Hansen asked.

“Yeah.  Our elusive killer might have a new identity.  We think he’s made a change in the past, so maybe he felt the need to do so again.  I don’t know how you look for something like that.  You might also have the computers sort through all of the hotel reservations for a couple of days on either side of the shootings in San Francisco.  Have them sort out anyone who lists a Reno or Sparks home address.  Maybe something will stand out.”

“What area should I search?”

“I don’t know.  Start with anything within fifteen miles of the city and see what pans out.  Anyone who used a credit card with a mailing address located in Reno or Sparks would be of interest.”

“How about Lake Tahoe?”

“Why Tahoe?”

“It isn’t that far from the Reno airport, and this guy seems to have money.  There are a lot of people with money who live up there.  Just a thought.”

“Go ahead and add Tahoe.  The computers work cheap.  It’s really a long shot anyway.  If they even stayed anywhere in the area, they might have paid their bill with cash, in which case the only record would be at the hotel.  We simply don’t have the ability to hit every hotel in that kind of area for their old records.”