Kill Fee (21 page)

T
he plane shuddered, some minor turbulence. Stevens barely noticed. He was too wired. He hadn’t slept much the previous night, had had Ojeda dig him up a stack of unsolved assassination-type murders from around the country over the last year or so. Had the junior agent pare down the obvious drug killings, the gang shootings. Focused on victims
who looked like they associated with people who could drop two hundred grand on a murder.

He’d flipped through the file all night. Hadn’t gotten far. No reports of zombie-eyed killers. No gray Cadillacs. Just bodies, lots of them, and no answers.

He’d tried calling Nancy, too. Got Andrea. “You catch the killer yet, Dad?”

Stevens caught himself grinning at the sound of his daughter’s voice. “Not yet, kiddo,” he told her. “In fact, we might need you for this one.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” Stevens nodded. “It’s all computers and websites and the like. Too complicated for your old dad.”

“What about Windermere? She’s younger than you.”

“Smarter, too.”

Andrea laughed. “
I
didn’t say it.”

“This stuff is too tough even for Windermere,” Stevens said. “We need someone whip smart. Of the new generation.”

“Fly me down,” Andrea told him. “I’ll solve your case in the morning and spend the rest of the day at the beach.”

Stevens grinned. “Not much of a beach in Philadelphia, I’m afraid.”

“Mom said you were in Miami.”

“Heading north in the morning.”

“Oh.” Andrea paused. “Never mind, then. Solve the case yourself.”

Stevens laughed. “Tell your mother I called, would you?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Love you, kiddo.”

“You, too.” She paused. “Be careful, Daddy. I mean it.” Then she hung up the phone. Stevens sat in the hotel room for a while, thinking about his daughter. His son. His wife. He wondered if people got used to the absences, the cops who did this full-time, and their families. Or maybe, he thought, glancing at Windermere now, maybe they just stayed alone.

Windermere shook her head and looked longingly out the plane’s
window. “Didn’t even get to take you for ceviche,” she said. “Best thing about Miami.”

Stevens smiled. “Best thing?”

“That and the nightlife,” she said. “Salsa dancing. You dance?”

“Not since prom.”

Windermere clucked. “Your poor wife.” She exhaled and stared up at the ceiling. “Mathers is going to meet us in Philly. We’ll get half the goddamn Eastern Seaboard looking for this guy, Stevens. Full statewide manhunt. New Jersey, too, and Delaware. FBI, state police, the works.”

Stevens nodded. “Good stuff.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just tell me we catch him.”

“We’ll catch him,” said Stevens. “We’d better. Something tells me Killswitch isn’t packing it in yet.”

L
ind watched TV in his apartment and waited for the man to call with instructions. Stayed hidden and tried to fend off the visions. It was what he’d always done between assignments. This time, though, something was different.

The visions still came. Lind woke up every few hours on his couch, sweating, screaming, heart pounding. He closed his eyes and saw Showtime and Hang Ten and the targets, the man in Miami reeling from the gunshot. Saw blood and bone. Heard the screams.

He couldn’t escape them. They followed him everywhere, every night. He thought about what the man had said before he boarded the train, what the man had promised. Just a few more assignments. Then the man would save him.

Lind ate what remained of Caity Sherman’s dinner. He stared out his vast picture windows to the street and wondered what she was doing. He’d kept her phone number. He tried to imagine what it would be like to call her. He couldn’t. Every time he looked at the phone he felt the panic.

He knew he should call the man and tell him about the girl. He knew that the man would be angry, and that he’d tell him to kill the girl. So he didn’t tell the man. Somewhere inside him, for some reason, he didn’t want the girl to have to die.

He sat in his apartment and tried to fend off the visions, and he waited for the man to call with new instructions.

M
athers was waiting when Windermere and Stevens stepped off the plane. He wore a cocky grin and a raincoat. “April showers,” he said, leading them out of the airport and into the parking garages. “You guys get sick of Miami?”

Windermere shook her head. “We’re headed back to the beach the minute we find O’Brien,” she said. “Harris finally let you off-leash, huh?”

“Figured you all could use a little assistance.” Mathers stopped in front of an unmarked Crown Victoria sedan. “Forgot to tell me to pack my umbrella, though.”

Windermere climbed in the front seat. “Wasn’t any rain in Miami.” She grinned wickedly back at Stevens. “You dance, Mathers?”

Mathers shrugged. “I could learn.”

Windermere laughed. “Good answer,” she said. “Guess we should have brought you along, after all.”

THE FBI’S PHILADELPHIA OFFICES
were housed in the monolithic William J. Green Jr. Federal Building downtown. Mathers led them up to the eighth floor, where he’d found himself an office and promptly filled it with every phone book and telephone registry in the Delaware Valley. “Here it is,” he said, gesturing through the door. “Home sweet home.”

Windermere turned up her nose. “Looks like a dorm room,” she said. “Smells like one, too. Your mother still picking up after you, Mathers?”

“Ha ha.” Mathers shook his head. “You sent me on a paper chase, Supercop.”

Stevens looked around. “Looks like you caught it.”

“Don’t
you
start.” Mathers ducked out of the office and came back with a couple of rolling chairs. Shoved them into the room and cleared a spot on the desk. “Welcome to my world,” he said, settling behind a precipitous stack. “Come on in.”

Stevens and Windermere swapped glances. Stood at the doorway and looked in at the mess. Then Windermere waded in and sat down. “We gotta solve this case, Stevens,” she said. “I can’t stay here for long.”

Stevens laughed. “We’ll find O’Brien.”

“Might be tough,” said Mathers. “I’ve pretty much cleared through metro Philadelphia. There are fifteen Richard O’Briens in the metro area. Five or six Ricks, and forty O’Brien, Rs. None of them have ever heard of our guy.”

“I’ve got O’Brien’s sketch out to local law enforcement,” said Windermere. “We’ll start working outside the city. Cover as much ground as we can. Maybe this kid has a brother or something, a grandmother.”

Mathers nodded. “And if not?”

Stevens rummaged in his briefcase. Found Ojeda’s folder, the thick stack of unsolved murders. “Assassinations,” he told Mathers. “The whole country, the last year or so.”

Mathers’s eyes goggled. “That’s a lot of murders.”

“We can cross-reference them,” said Windermere. “Get a list of the days O’Brien flew, the destinations. I’ll call the FAA.”

“Every Richard O’Brien over the last year? We’d get about a million hits.”

“Narrow it down to Philadelphia departures,” said Stevens. “Quick trips. If we know where this guy flew, I can start paring down murders in the destination cities. Maybe we find something that gives him away.”

Windermere nodded. “Good thinking, Stevens,” she said, looking out at the rain. “I just wish you’d thought of this in Miami.”

P
arkerson spent the week in constant motion. He had projects at the office to maintain. He had to create new identities for the assets. Order new weapons, take delivery, file off the serial numbers, and hide them at the lake house. He had to check on the asset morning and night, feed him, and continue his training. He stayed late at work, monitoring the Killswitch database, double-checking that the FBI hadn’t somehow found its way inside. He spent his evenings in his office at home, poring over paperwork for his day job and vetting new applications for Killswitch.

He hurried Gray’s training, pushed him hard. There were too many assignments in the pipeline for Lind alone. Parkerson itched for Gray to be ready. Itched to set him loose into the world. Itched to count the money the kid was going to earn.

So far, the asset’s training was progressing smoothly, at least. Gray kept his room clean. He obeyed simple commands. Parkerson had used the sap only a couple times since that first troublesome day. He could
almost
see
the asset’s will breaking, watched as he became more and more dependent on Parkerson’s daily visits to maintain his thinning veneer of sanity. The fire was dying in the kid’s eyes. He was losing his grip. He didn’t know where he was, or what happened to him when Parkerson left the room. All he knew was that Parkerson’s presence meant relief. Soon he would be ready for his first real test. Another week, maybe.

So far, there was no sign the FBI had made further inroads into Killswitch. Parkerson spent the week worrying, nonetheless. He’d labored for years on the database, struggling to get the business off the ground. It was a delicate undertaking; you couldn’t just put an ad in
Guns & Ammo
touting your services as a killer for hire. You had to be subtle. You had to put the word out and hope that it spread.

You also had to work for cheap, at first. It was like dealing drugs; the first hit was free, or close to it. Parkerson hadn’t made enough on the first scores to recoup his expenses. It had been a tough slog. A huge undertaking. Parkerson’s head swam at the prospect of having to tear it down. The project was too lucrative now to quit.

Parkerson trained the asset. He managed the database and supervised his own projects at work. When he was lucky, he caught a few hours’ sleep. Then, midway through the week, the pressure compounded.

One of the two pending clients logged in to the Killswitch database. Sent Parkerson an urgent message, wanting the kill he’d already partially paid for moved up on the calendar. A hundred-thousand-dollar bonus if completed this weekend. Time-sensitive. ASAP. Parkerson mulled it over that night. “Fine,” he replied finally. “But you pay me up front.”

The client accepted quickly. Within an hour, the money was transferred. Parkerson stayed late that night at the office. Left Wendell Gray starving and scared catatonic in the lake house basement as he worked overtime. He had flight arrangements to make. Hotel reservations. A weapon to put in the mail. Killswitch was back in business and humming. It was time to get the Philly asset on line.

T
hey chased paper for days. Made a long list of O’Briens who’d flown from Philadelphia. Narrowed it down to a handful of likely candidates and took the list to Stevens’s stack of murders. After a couple late nights and far too much fast food, they hit something.

“New York City,” said Stevens. “Manhattan. February. Maria Nadeau and Johnny Thorsson, her lover. Found shot to death in a suite at the Carlyle. No trace of the killer.”

“O’Brien was in New York that night,” said Mathers. “Took a shuttle to La Guardia that evening. Left in the morning.”

“Here’s another,” said Windermere. “Los Angeles. Benjamin Arnaud, the movie producer. January, you remember? O’Brien was there, too.”

“New York,” said Stevens. “And L.A. Which do we check out first?”

“I can take Carla to L.A.,” said Mathers. “Hit up the LAPD and take a look at Arnaud’s case. That’d leave Stevens to check out Manhattan. Sound good?”

Stevens studied the file. “Sure,” he said, “except I’m not sure my BCA badge will open any doors in New York City.”

“Shit.” Mathers glanced at Windermere. “Can we get him a badge?”

Windermere shook her head. “Doubtful.”

“I could take Carla with me,” said Stevens. “Probably easier than trying to deputize me. God knows what I’d do with FBI power.”

“Wouldn’t fly anywhere, that’s for sure.”

Mathers frowned. “Okay,” he said. “So you want to take Windermere?”

Windermere looked at Stevens, a twinkle in her eye. “Or you could take Mathers.”

Stevens looked away. “Whatever works.”

He could feel Windermere’s eyes on him and wondered if she’d push it. Finally, she nodded. “You’ve suffered enough, Mathers,” she said. “Check out Los Angeles. Stevens and I, we’ll take New York.”

“YOU’RE JEALOUS,”
she said later, as she and Stevens walked down Arch Street toward their hotel.

Stevens looked at her. “Pardon?”

“Of Mathers. You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Windermere grinned at him. “It’s because he asked me out, isn’t it?”

“Heck.” Stevens frowned. “I’m not jealous. It’s a valid point. Nobody’s even going to give me directions if I show them a BCA badge.”

“Uh-huh. You have a terrible poker face, partner.”

They walked a block and a half as Stevens tried to figure out a rebuttal. The downtown streets were crowded; businesspeople and tourists. Finally, Stevens looked across at her. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Windermere cocked her head. “What, Stevens? For you to be jealous?”

“You wouldn’t have told me he asked you out if you didn’t want me to feel something,” he said. “Right?”

Windermere looked away. She didn’t say anything until they reached the hotel, a Sheraton Four Points across from the convention center. Then she stopped on the sidewalk and looked out into traffic, her expression unreadable. “You’re a married man, Kirk,” she said slowly. “Why would I want to make you jealous?”

Stevens took a breath. “Am I wrong?”

“We’re friends,” she said. “You tell me about Nancy, I tell you about Mathers. No big deal.”

“It feels like a big deal,” he said.

“I’ve met your wife, Stevens. I like her. You think I want to ruin your marriage?”

“No. Jesus, no. Of course not.”

“Do you want to ruin your marriage?”

Stevens shook his head. “Carla, I was making a joke. You told me I was jealous; I was pushing back.” He paused. “I’m not one of those assholes who cheats on his wife.”

Windermere looked away down the street. “Good,” she said. “Then don’t do it.”

She turned and walked to the hotel doors. Disappeared inside. Stevens stared after her, his heart pounding. He waited until he was sure she’d cleared the lobby. Then he went inside. Rode the elevator to his room and called Nancy.