Jericho's Razor (26 page)

I lit another cigarette, knowing that realization was a grasp away and all I had to do was reach in the right place. Sleep would certainly have been an asset in coming to the conclusion I felt mocking me. But the past week had been a dizzying carnival ride that kept me chasing after shadows and engaging in high-speed pursuits, and nearly killed me on more occasions than I cared to count.

Why did Eli call Alyssa and Torrez to the mall? And why was he so obsessed with killing Alyssa? Torrez was the lead detective. He was the more experienced—and quite frankly, the scarier—of the two. Trying to kill the detectives who were trying to catch you made sense. So why not Torrez? Or better yet, why not kill both of them?

My eyes went to the concrete floor. They fixated on the spot where large bloody footprints had traced a path of death and mayhem. Now scrubbed clean with pressure washers and covered with industrial-grade paint, I could nonetheless still see them. Those prints had been bothering me. They were not just on the floor; they existed on a plane in my subconscious and nagged at me like an irritating fly buzzing around your head that won't leave you the hell alone no matter how many times you swat it.

And just like that, I had it. The picture came into focus. I understood why the footprints had bothered me. Why they seemed too wrong to fit into any explanation I could come up with. All it took was Doomsday shitting on my new girlfriend's department-store pumps.

Armed with the answers that had eluded me, determined to face the full consequences those answers would bring and resolved to face the fallout, I stubbed out my smoke on the floor and hurried upstairs to my loft.

Just as it did when I was writing books, the conclusion felt like a freight train bearing down on me, speeding with all the weight of the events that carried it down the tracks. The end of the story was in sight.

I just needed to talk to somebody first.

But I was going to need some firepower.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I knew from my time with Katrina that Preston was a runner. He was pretty annoying about it, always calling her when she and I were together, boasting about the eight miles he just logged and urging her to join him next time. His speeches usually ended with a lecture about smoking. “You never used to smoke before you started seeing
him
,” Preston would say, loud enough that I could hear it from her phone. Either he knew his sister very little or was highly capable at self-deception, because Kat started smoking when she was sixteen.

Thanks to Preston's compulsion to brag, I also knew his routine. At 7:30 every night, he would leave his house in the hills overlooking the Illinois River and jog through the only neighborhood he considered upscale enough to live in. His neighbors were surgeons and attorneys and judges. Not a blue collar for miles. If one ever tried to infiltrate their ultraconservative, foreign-car-driving clique, they would throw him out.

Halfway along his route, Preston would cut through a dog park, where, oddly enough, you were no longer allowed to bring your dog, due to complaints about land mines being left by negligent pet owners. By day, it was a place for residents to picnic and practice puts. By night, it was a shortcut Preston used to shave some distance off his “eight-mile run.” On this night, it was the perfect place for an ambush.

My truck was parked a mile away in the lot of a gastropub favored by the younger and trendier locals. I stood with my back pressed against an elm tree, listening to the quiet afforded to the rich and waiting for the steady beat of running shoes.

Preston arrived like clockwork. Peering around my hunting blind, I saw him coming down the path wearing green and gold sweats. Despite not knowing the difference between Vince Lombardi and Vincent van Gogh, Preston pretends to be a Packers fan.

Yet another reason to hate him.

As he rounded the turn that would bring him within ten feet of my tree, I stepped out onto the jogging trail, blocking his route. Preston stopped short when he saw me. He spun around and ran the way he had come, knowing that I would never be able to beat him in a foot race.

Luckily I didn't have to.

“Doomsday! Blitz!”

From across the path, my dog leapt from the bushes. He charged Preston like an outside linebacker looking to make a highlight reel hit and brought his target down on the turf. Doomsday stood atop one of the most powerful men in the state, snarling, growling, and waiting for the slightest indication from me that it was okay to bite his head off. It was tempting.

“Hi, Preston. Nice night, huh?”

“Nice night? Are you crazy? Have you finally lost your last tenuous grip on reality? I demand that you call off your mutt at once!”

Doomsday's eyes seemed to roll in the back of his head like a great white shark before it strikes.

“I really wouldn't call him a mutt. He's pretty sensitive about that.”

Preston turned his head, as much as the weight of Doomsday pressing down on him would allow, and yelled for help. We were far enough away from the nearest house, and his lungs were constricted enough that I was reasonably certain that nobody would hear his meager yell. But I didn't want to take any chances. Kneeling down, I took out my gun and pressed it against his temple.

That shut him up.

“Now, Preston. Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to ask you some questions. You are going to answer them truthfully and completely. Got it?”

Desperation began to pour off Preston in a cold sweat. As he so enjoyed pointing out whenever somebody stuck a microphone or TV camera in his face, I was a killer. In truth, there was no way in hell I was going to follow through on my threat. But letting him think otherwise made this easier.

“We can fix this, Sands. Really. However much you want—”

“This isn't about money, Preston. Believe it or not, I could afford to buy a house in this neighborhood just fine. I just don't care for the riffraff.”

“Okay. This is obviously about Katrina, then.”

I shook my head.

“Strike two. This isn't about Kat, either.”

“Then what, dammit?”

“Why did you have a gun in your desk?”

Of all the possible avenues Preston expected me to take, I had led him down a path he hadn't expected.

“What?”

“You're not the kind of guy who keeps a loaded handgun in his desk drawer. That's me. Guys like you don't keep guns in your desk, because guys like you grow up believing that your money and your family connections will always keep you safe. But something changed that. Or rather, some
body
. I want to know who.”

“You're a madman.”

“Yep. So, just so you fully appreciate your current situation, you are currently looking down the barrel of a gun being held by a madman. A madman who could tell the homicidal dog sitting on your chest to make sure I'll never see you in the governor's mansion.”

Hope that somebody would come and save him was vanishing like a flickering light behind his eyes. He was on his own and scared, facing the one person he knew he wouldn't bullshit.

“Look,” I said, “you don't have to worry about incriminating yourself, okay? Stop being a politician for thirty seconds. Stop worrying about covering your ass. This is just you, me, and the dog.”

“Fine. But tell him to get off me because I'm having trouble breathing.”

I was opposed to granting his request. Mainly because he was still playing politics. You make a request. If the person you are negotiating with grants it, you just scored a victory. It gave you some footing and got your adversary comfortable with making concessions. It was a tactic I was in no mood for rewarding.

On the other hand, he
was
starting to turn blue.

“Okay, buddy,” I said. “Get off him.”

Doomsday turned back to look at me. His tilted head to ask if I was sure. I nodded, and he climbed down. Preston sat up and brushed himself off just as he did in the hospital, trying to restore some of his dignity. Once again, he failed.

“I was contacted a few weeks ago by someone,” he said.

“Who?”

“I don't know. That's the truth. Our correspondence was strictly via email.”

“So you corresponded with this person?”

“I had no choice. Whoever it was knew … a lot.”

“Like the fact that you were working with Sean Booker to inflate the crime rate in the parts of town you want bulldozed? Like the fact that Booker never seemed to interest the police, even though he was frequently at the epicenter of a crime spree? Things like that?”

Preston looked over his shoulder to the jogging path he had just recently come down. It was still deserted, but he acted like he expected a camera crew to have suddenly appeared.

“I'll ask you keep your voice down.”

“And I'll ask Doomsday to pee on you. Now answer the fucking question.”

“Yes. Okay? That, and more. He was very descriptive.”

“I'm sure. And I guess they also knew that you were the one who made sure that the police always let Booker walk. Which had to mean that Booker was working for you. That it was all your idea.”

Preston grimaced. It was like I was pulling his teeth out with vice grips.

“Yes.”

“What did they threaten you with?”

“Exposure. Bodily harm. It was typical,
you will pay or we will come after you
nonsense.”

“If you really believed that it was nonsense, you wouldn't be packing a gun.”

I held out the picture Eli had taken of him outside the courthouse. It was the one with “Who is he talking to?'' written at the bottom.

“Care to answer that question?” I asked.

“I was talking to Booker. He was becoming increasingly agitated. He was certain that somebody was following him. I would have normally thought he was paranoid, but it coincided with the emails and the threats.” Preston tried to stand, but I waved him back down with the gun. He looked around for help. Once again, he found none.

“You never had any idea who this person was?” I asked.

“For a while, I suspected that it might be you.”

He looked up at me with venom and hatred. Still trying to be smug. Still believing that he could use his powers of debate to gain the upper hand.

“I know now that it was your brother. Now that he is dead, I guess the problem is solved.”

I shook my head.

“No. It wasn't Eli. None of it was ever Eli.”

I shook my head, feeling the full weight of the mistake I had made. The hunt for a killer had been one misstep after the next. One diversion after another. I'd fallen for all of it, allowed myself to believe that my kid brother was a monster. When the real monster was right in front of me.

Preston swiveled his head, looking impatient and wanting to get back to his house and his privilege.

“Then who? Who is he?”

Her otter
, I thought, seeing the bloody footprints on the floor of my garage, the crime-scene gear bag in Alyssa's car, and the rubber boots on her feet when I last saw her.

“She,” I told him. “Who is
she.
”

One of the first things I noticed about Alyssa was her eyes. They triggered something inside me, like I knew them. And maybe I did.

After returning home and rewarding Doomsday with a steak, I called Tanner and asked him how thoroughly he had checked out Alyssa Jagger.

“Just her service and personnel records,” he said. “I shouldn't have been able to look at those, but a friend did me a favor.”

“Could your friend do you another favor and go back even further? Like maybe into records that would be sealed?”

Gus was quiet for a few moments. When he spoke again it was in his cop voice.

“That will be delicate. Those records are protected. It would help if I knew what you were looking for.”

“I'd rather not say. But if I'm right, I won't have to explain. You'll know.”

Tanner told me to give him some time, and hung up. It took him a half hour. His voice was more shaken than I had ever heard.