Hunting Season (16 page)

“I think it is,” she said.

“Do I have your word?”

Janet looked again to the RA, but his face remained a study in neutrality.

He’d told her all about Kreiss, but now he was acting as if he’d never

heard of the guy. She wasn’t quite sure what the game was here but if they wanted to play games, well, hell, she’d play.

“Whatever,” she said.

“Yes.

Fine.”

“Very well. For many years prior to the current administration, there was tension between the Counterespionage Division at the Agency and the Foreign Counterintelligence Division in the Bureau. This administration determined that it would be constructive to break down some of those bureaucratic barriers. Edwin Kreiss was selected to be sent on an exchange tour of duty with the Agency, and one of their CE operatives was sent to Bureau FCI.”

She paused to see if any of this meant anything to Janet, but Janet pretended this was all news.

“Kreiss’s assignment to the Agency represented a dramatic step toward defusing those tensions. He trained under and worked with some of the best man-hunters in the business. It’s fair to say that he participated in some operations that took place, shall we say, out on the less well-defined margins of national policy, with respect to who works where. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I assume you’re talking about the rule that the Agency technically can’t work inside the country.”

“Yes, precisely, just like the armed forces can’t chase criminals inside the borders of the United States. Posse comitatus. The problem is that sometimes the bad guys take advantage of this.”

“And sometimes the good guys turn out to be the bad guys,” Janet said, just to throw some shit in the game.

Bellhouser blinked, looked at Foster, and then they both looked over at Farnsworth.

“Um, yes, well, when I received orders to back out of the Kreiss matter, I told her about the Glower case,” he said, looking uncharacteristically nervous.

“Correction: I told her what I’d heard about the Glower case—I, of course, have no personal knowledge of what happened there.”

Foster’s eyebrows went up.

“Really, Mr. Farnsworth. This is a surprise.

Assistant Director Marchand was of the opinion that you knew nothing about the Glower incident.”

Foster might be a principal deputy, but Farnsworth was still in charge of an operational office, and as such, he didn’t have to take very much static from headquarters assistants, especially when they invoked their boss’s power. He looked at Foster with an avuncular smile.

“When something gets fucked up as badly as that situation got fucked

up,” he said, “everybody knows a little something about it, Mr. Foster. You need to remember that if you ever go back to the field.” Janet felt a smidgen of relief that Farnsworth hadn’t been entirely cowed by these two.

“Let’s get back on point,” Bellhouser said.

“Which is: When Kreiss was forced out of the Bureau following the Millwood incident, he was given some very specific guidance in return for getting retirement instead of outright dismissal. And that was that he was never, ever to act operationally again, especially in those capacities with which he was formerly associated during his time at the Agency.”

“So how was he supposed to make a living, then?” Janet asked.

“According to Larry Talbot’s notes,” Farnsworth said, scanning a piece of paper, “he’s been teaching remedial math at the Montgomery County junior college. He quit that when his daughter went missing.”

“The point is, Agent Carter,” Bellhouser said, “that Kreiss was not permitted to engage in any activity related to law enforcement: federal, state, or local, or to have anything to do with the security field—commercial, personal, computer—anything along that line.”

Janet nodded.

“Okay, and—” Foster leaned forward.

“The question is, Agent Carter, Do you think Mr. Kreiss is going to actively search for his daughter now that Roanoke here is sending the case to MP?”

Janet remembered telling Farnsworth that she thought Kreiss was going solo. She had to assume he had passed this on.

“Yes,” she said.

“In fact, I think he’s already leaned on one of the potential witnesses, but I backed out before I could really follow up on that. And, of course, I can’t prove any of that.”

Bellhouser sighed. Foster frowned and began tapping a pen against the edge of the table.

“I mean,” Janet said, “I guess I can understand it. From his perspective, the Bureau was backing out. He knows how MP works.” No one said anything.

“It’s his daughter, after all,” she concluded.

Bellhouser gave her a patient look and then got up out of her chair. She was even bigger standing up. The chair creaked in relief.

“Thank you, Agent Carter,” she said.

“I think you’ve told us what we needed to find out.

We will brief our respective superiors. We appreciate your cooperation.”

Janet stood up, looking at Farnsworth.

“Is that it, sir?”

Farnsworth glanced over at Bellhouser and Foster as if for confirmation and then said, “Yes.”

“And if anything else pops up concerning Mr. Kreiss?”

“Inform Mr. Farnsworth here if that happens,” Foster said.

“We will attend to Mr. Kreiss if that becomes necessary. But we don’t anticipate you will have any further interaction with him.”

“Either at his initiative or yours, Agent Carter,” Bellhouser said. All three of them looked at her expectantly to make sure she understood the warning.

“Okay,” she said brightly, as if this all were totally insignificant. She left Farnsworth’s office, shaking her head, and went back to her own cubicle.

Talbot wanted to know what it was all about, but Janet told him only that it concerned Edwin Kreiss and that the matter had been taken care of.

Talbot was clearly dissatisfied, so she said she’d been ordered not to talk about it and that maybe Farnsworth would fill him in. Talbot stomped out and Janet went looking for some coffee. She met with some other agents on the trucking case for half an hour, and when she returned, Billy had surfaced from his midmorning snooze. He asked her what all the fuss was about. Remembering her promise, she told him in only very general terms, concluding that she’d been clearly told to stay away from Edwin Kreiss and all his works. Billy got some coffee and they talked about the way headquarters horse-holders threw their weight around.

When Talbot reappeared, Janet went back to her cubicle. She pushed papers around her desk while she thought about the meeting with the two principal deputy assistant under executive pooh-bahs. What had that woman said—they would “attend to” Kreiss? For God’s sake, the man’s only child was missing. An image of Kreiss’s face surfaced in her mind.

She wondered if the two horse-holders were capable of “attending to” Edwin Kreiss. She thought idly about warning him.

Edwin Kreiss had obtained a county road map at the Christiansburg Chamber of Commerce that morning, and he was now nosing his pickup truck down a dirt road five miles west of the town. None of the land around these first geologic wrinkles of the Appalachian foothills was horizontal, and he had to keep it in second gear on the rough and winding lane. He had found their truck unlocked last night at the rail spur branch and retrieved the registration. The vehicle belonged to one Jared McGarand, whose rural postbox address he’d finally found on a rusting mailbox at the head of the dirt road. He came around a final bend in the trees and saw a double-wide trailer at the end of the lane. There were no other trailers or houses nearby, but there were some large dogs raising hell from what looked like a pen behind the trailer. He had anticipated the

possibility of dogs and had the cure in a plastic bag on the seat. But first, he would see if the dogs’ noise summoned anyone. It was the middle of the day, and the only other trailer he’d seen had been almost a mile back down the county road. It had looked deserted.

He turned around and then parked his truck in front of the trailer, pointed back out the lane. Then he waited. The dogs, still not visible, continued to bark and howl, but after five minutes, they lost interest. The trailer was mounted up on cinder blocks at one end to level it. The place looked reasonably well kept, with some side sheds, a separate metal carport roof, an engine-hoisting stand, and what looked like a rig for butchering deer. The same pickup truck from which he’d obtained the registration was parked under a tree, but there were no junked cars or other hillbilly treasures stacked in the yard, and there was electric power and a phone line attached to the trailer. Whoever Jared McGarand was, he obviously had a job and was not just another member of the Appalachian recycling elite.

Satisfied that no one was coming, he opened the door, grabbed the plastic bag, and went up to the front door of the trailer and knocked on it.

This set off another round of barking from out back. When no one answered, he went around to the back door and tried that, again without result. Then he walked over to the dog pen, which was fifty feet back from the trailer, under some trees. He took out some sugar-coated doughnut holes, into each of which he had put two nonprescription iron-supplement pills. The dogs were some kind of mixed breed, with pit bull predominant, equal parts teeth, bark, and general fury. They were jumping and slavering at the sturdy chain-link fence. He pushed the doughnut holes into the chain link until he was sure each dog had eaten at least one.

Then he went back to the truck and waited. The pills would not kill the dogs, but in about fifteen minutes, they would be feeling ill enough to lie down and whimper for the rest of the day. While he was waiting, his car phone rang. Ever since Lynn disappeared he had made a practice of having any calls that came into the cabin automatically forward to the truck if he was out of the house.

“Kreiss,” he said, visually checking the trailer and its surroundings.

The dogs had stopped their barking.

“Mr. Kreiss, this is Special Agent Janet Carter.”

“You have something on Lynn?” Kreiss asked immediately.

“No. I wish we did, but no. This is something else.” She described the visitation of Bellhouser and Foster.

He listened without comment, wishing he had been able to observe that little seance. Attend to me, would they? He took a deep breath to calm himself.

“Mr. Kreiss? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m on my car phone. I appreciate the heads up, Agent Carter. I really do.”

“You didn’t get it from me, Mr. Kreiss.”

“Absolutely.” He paused for a moment, not sure of what to say next.

He was picturing her face, and, after their last meeting, wondering why she was doing this.

“Mr. Kreiss?” she said.

“We asked you not to go solo on your daughter’s disappearance, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Well, let me reiterate that request. And of course, if new information does turn up, let me say again that you need to bring it to us.”

How would two guys skulking around at night on a closed federal ammunition plant, setting man traps and shooting at people, strike you?

he wondered.

“Of course, Agent Carter.”

“Yes. Of course, Mr. Kreiss.”

“Thanks again for the heads up. I owe you one, Agent Carter.”

“Hold that thought, Mr. Kreiss.”

He grunted, clicked the phone off, and got back out of the truck. He positioned a small motion detector on the hood of the pickup, pointed down the lane in the direction of the county road. It would start beeping if anything came down the dirt road toward the cabin. He took a canvas tool bag out of the passenger side and went behind the trailer. The dogs were circled on the concrete floor of their pen. One was drinking lots of water, while the other two were nipping at their flanks.

Fifteen minutes later, he was driving back out onto the county road.

On the front seat beside him, he had some personal documents he’d lifted from a desk inside, enough to confirm that the occupant was Jared McGarand, a telephone company repairman. He also had taken a .357 Magnum he’d removed from the bedroom bureau’s top drawer. He had found a .45 auto in Jared’s night table but left that alone. The man liked big guns. He’d refilled the dogs’ water buckets before he left; they were going to be very thirsty later on. He had mounted a cigarette carton-sized battery-operated box on the roof of the trailer, out of sight behind two vent pipes, and installed a listen-and-record device on the lone telephone.

He turned onto the county road and headed back toward Blacksburg.

He had been tempted to tell Carter about the Ramsey Arsenal, except that he thought he could do a better job of finding Lynn than some posse of semi hysterical feds, at least until he knew what the connection was between these two midnight gomers and Lynn’s hat. He would have to find a way to pay Carter back for the favor of that warning; she absolutely did not have to do that, especially after having to take a meeting with Bambi Bellhouser and Chief Red in the Face. She’d probably called him because they pissed her off. He almost hoped they would be stupid enough to come out to his cabin, although he doubted a couple of horse holders like that would ever venture too far away from an office. In the meantime, he had some preparations to make before returning to the arsenal tonight. He wanted to get into the industrial area just at twilight, because those two had shown up the last time about an hour after sundown.

This time, he wanted to be closer to that far end of the main street.

Maybe he would be able to track them into a specific building.

That evening, Browne and Jared were delayed by a traffic accident on the Route 11 bridge over the New River. It was almost eight o’clock before they got to the entrance of the arsenal. Jared was in a bad mood, having found his three hunting dogs sick in their pen when he got home from work.

“Dog crap all over the place,” he complained.

“Had to hose it for half an hour. Dogs sick as babies.”

“All three? Must have been bad feed.”