Nemesis (26 page)

“I’ve heard Walter has no memory of killing Sparky, no memory of why he did it in such a public place. If this is true”—she raised raised her eyes to his face—“it’s quite terrifying.”

“Yes,” Savich said, “it is.” He pointed to a collection of small square cloth bags piled in a basket on the floor beside the sofa.

“Those are plackets.” She fell to her knees and picked one up. “Yes, I know, it sounds like the name of our town, but it’s a coincidence. I’ve already prepared a placket with Walter Givens’s name on it. I will use that placket as well to help me
.”
She gently set the placket back in the basket and rose. “Please, sit down, Agent Savich, and tell me how I can help you.” She pointed to the white sofa. She sat in the single white chair facing him, placed her small hands on her jeans-covered legs.

“Tell me how Tammy is doing.”

“She’s a wreck, as you would expect. She’d been married four months and her husband didn’t simply die, which would have been horrible enough, he was viciously murdered. In public. She refuses to come back home, though. She wants to stay where she lived with Sparky.” Mrs. Stacy fell silent.

“Did Mrs. Deliah Abbott give you an Athame collection that belonged to her husband?”

“Why, yes, she did.” She rose and walked to a glass cabinet, opened it, and lifted out a beautifully carved wooden case. She brought it back to the sofa and opened it. Savich looked at a dozen Athames, some similar to the Dual Dragon, others also with incredible carved figured handles.

“It was soon after Mr. Alcott died—well, Arthur was killed, too, wasn’t he?” She sighed. “Deliah gave them to me about three months after he died, said he would have wanted me to have them.”

“Do you know if there were any Athames missing from the collection when Mrs. Alcott gave it to you?”

She wasn’t stupid. She swallowed. “You mean you believe Walter may have used one of Mr. Alcott’s Athames to kill Sparky?”

He nodded.

“If it was one of Mr. Alcott’s Athames, it wasn’t in this collection. It’s possible Deliah kept some of the Athames. I don’t know. She never said and I never asked.”

“Do you and Mrs. Alcott practice Wicca together, or in a group, to celebrate ceremonies like this Litha coming up?”

“No. Not for many years. I’ve become what Wiccans call a solitary practitioner.” She nodded toward a book on the shelf. “I imagine Deliah still shares the circle with her own family.”

“But she thought enough of you to give you Mr. Alcott’s collection.”

“Yes. Arthur Alcott and I got along very well. I thought he was a gentleman, a kind man. My husband liked him, too, trusted him. He was never mean about money like some folks get when they’re lucky enough to come into a windfall like the Alcotts did. No, Arthur always was down-to-earth and generous with what he had. I guess you could say my husband and I both loved him.” She sighed again. “We considered poor Sparky’s father a friend to us, too, until he started drinking so much. I don’t remember Arthur ever drinking alcohol at all.”

“I understand Sparky’s father, Milt Carroll, owned the catering company that Sparky inherited?”

“Yes. Eat Well and Prosper—rather silly, but both Milt and Sparky liked it. Now, Milt was a big drinker.”

“I understand Deputy Lewis was quite a drinker as well? Did they often drink together?”

She nodded. “Kane was an alcoholic; why, I don’t know. He and Milt became drinking buddies, you could say. No one minded enough to get Kane in trouble for it. He never drank on the job, and most everyone liked him.” She looked toward the small wood-burning stove in the far corner of the room. She raised her eyes to his face. “They’re both dead, too. Like Sparky. Agent Savich, what is happening here in Plackett?”

MAPLE LEAF INN

COLBY, LONG ISLAND

Saturday, noon

E
veryone’s eyes were on the large TV on the wall behind the counter in the main dining room, where the news was reporting at the scene of the horrific TBV train wreck hours before, thirty miles north of Lyons, France. A massive explosion had ripped through five first-class cars and derailed them, hurling flaming debris over a mile of countryside, some of it still burning and smoking. As the camera panned over some of the wreckage, a reporter was saying what incalculable loss of life and property might have resulted if a bomb that size had exploded under the train in a town or city. So far forty-eight people were confirmed dead, more than a hundred injured. The count would continue to rise.

Pip Erwin raised his head from his bowl of vegetable soup, pointed his spoon at the TV. “I’m waiting for someone from the French government to even acknowledge that carnage was another terrorist attack. They’ll have to, eventually. I’d be willing to bet the rest of my minestrone it’s the same people who attacked us, that it was part of their Bella project. Not a cathedral this time, but certainly a national treasure, the famous French high-speed train. They were so proud of having built the fastest train in the world for the past thirty-five years.”

Cal said, “They said the train was traveling at three hundred kilometers an hour, not anywhere near as fast as the TGV can travel—but that’s a hundred and eighty miles per hour, fast enough to make that bomb a thousand times more effective. Can you imagine sitting in one of the last cars on that train and watching the front of it get blown off the track at that speed?”

Kelly’s BLT and the lovely pile of french fries cozied up to it lay untouched on her plate. On even a mildly bad day, she still loved her french fries, but not today, not watching the horror unfold in France. She agreed with Pip, knew everyone else at the table did, too. It was terrifying. “Maybe someone in the group will take credit? Maybe this Strategist? We still have no idea who they are.”

Cal’s eyes were glued to the TV screen. “A couple years ago I rode on one of those from Paris to Geneva.
Train à Grande Vitesse
, they call it. They’re amazing, some can travel up to nearly half the speed of sound. I remember we were hardly out of the station when the train was passing cars on the highway. It was better to be sitting as it picked up speed, one hundred kilometers before it even left the station, I heard. The French who rode the train already knew that, so only a couple tourists ended up getting slung into someone’s lap.

“What was amazing to me was you couldn’t tell you were moving that fast because the ride was smooth, and it was quiet, until you looked out the window and saw the world going backward. Eat your lunch, Kelly.”

She picked up half of her BLT, studied it, set it back down. “Terrorist groups want to take credit. It brings them credibility, more support. I can understand not hearing from anyone after they failed to blow up Saint Pat’s, but this”—she waved a hand toward the TV—“vicious act was a massive success.”

Sherlock was listening to a reporter interviewing a bystander who’d witnessed the explosion, and a passenger traveling second-class who’d survived it. An English newscaster interrupted him. “A French government spokesman has confirmed that French economic minister Marcel Dubroc was aboard the train and is presumed dead. President Dumas is expected to arrive at the scene shortly and to make a statement.”

Cal said, “Dubroc had to be in first class, where all the cars were blown off the tracks. I wonder if that was by design or accident?”

Pip said, “At that speed, the timing would require great precision. They had to have wired an electronic detonator set off by the passing train itself. No way would you do that remotely by hand. A fraction of a second off and it would have been the second-class cars instead. They’d have to dig down deep under the ballast—”

Kelly shook her head. “The what?”

Cal said, “Ballast is simply the thick layer of gravel beneath and beside the train tracks. It’s the bulk support for the train tracks, used for stabilization. For the TGV, I’d guess it would go deeper under the tracks than most, probably at least a foot beneath the tracks, and a foot and a half at the shoulders. The hard part would be digging down without being seen, without tripping any sensors, and plant what must have been a heavy load of explosives.”

Sherlock frowned into her bowl of vegetable soup. Vice President Foley had been in St. Patrick’s, as had a great many politicians and their rich and powerful friends. Was it people who were being targeted, as well as buildings and trains?

Kelly was picking the bacon out of her BLT when her cell rang. More bad news?

Pip, Cal, Jo, and Sherlock stopped eating and looked at her when she thumped her fist on the table. “That’s amazing! Yes, by all means. We’ll arrange air transport, be there as fast as we can— you’re in operational control, Chris. If there’s an imminent threat, it’s your call. Otherwise, get your perimeter established and get those snipers in place, and wait for us.”

She gave them a thumbs-up. “The Boston Field Office came through, they found Nasim’s family.” She turned back to her phone and punched in another call.

Pip said, “We’ll get us a chopper in no time, knowing Kelly.”

She punched off. “Yep, right now. Let’s get to the SUV.”

Fifteen minutes later, the five of them were strapped into their seats on an FBI Bell helicopter, and lifting off from the Jameson Mall parking lot. Maybe an hour, the pilot told them, and he’d set them down as close as possible to Lake Pleasant.

Kelly stayed in radio contact with Special Agent Chris Tyson from the Boston Field Office during most of the ride. Her voice was tinny through the headsets when she said, “Even though there wasn’t any trace of the Conklins at Abdul Rahal’s house, the Boston agents followed up with his phone calls, credit cards, bank records. Turns out the Rahal family spends a couple of weeks every summer at a rental house on Lake Pleasant, thirty minutes from Plover, on the Connecticut side. They tracked down the rental home’s owner, learned the house was being rented right now by a James Lockerby and his family. They checked the name, found the address they gave didn’t match. They positioned a drone over the house, eyes and ears, and saw three armed men patrolling the grounds outside the house. They dropped in a surveillance team and actually saw Mrs. Conklin and at least one of her children inside the house through their scopes.

“By now they’ve got a perimeter, but I imagine it’s slow going getting the snipers in place without alerting the terrorists. They’ll wait for us unless they’re seen, or if it’s too dangerous to the Conklins to wait.”

Sherlock felt a surge of hope. She said into her mike, “They’ve got a good chance now, because of Nasim. I hope I can keep my promise to him.”

LAKE PLEASANT, CONNECTICUT

T
he helicopter set them down a half mile from the lake and the cabin, after flying in low to keep them out of sight. Agent Chris Tyson met them next to a stand of pine trees. He was wearing combat gear, Kevlar, a H&K slung over his shoulder. “We have vests for you at the operations site. As of two minutes ago, we’ve identified three targets, one of them moving in and out of the house, the other two stationed outside, patrolling. The family has been seen inside, eating, and that’s very good news. We’ve got three snipers positioned overlooking the house in the surrounding oak trees. Two of them have eyes on the targets outside. I’ve kept most of the team well back. We’ll be ready when the third one comes out of the house.” And he grinned at Pip Erwin. “Long time no see, Pip. All of you look ready to rock and roll.” He stuck out his hand to Sherlock. “It’s a pleasure, Agent Sherlock. Okay, guys, let’s get this done.”

They jogged after him through the thick pine forest, thinning enough in places so they saw flashes of the lake through the branches. They all quickly broke into a sweat. It had rained earlier, leaving the air pregnant with moisture in the unexpected late spring heat. Tyson stopped, held up his hand, listened to his comm, and moved quietly forward to look through the trees. After a couple minutes, he jogged back to them. “All three targets are outside again, but they’re not clear of the cabin and the Conklins. They’re talking, arguing, in a combination of Arabic and accented English. We’re trying to run facial recognition. Stay down, the command center is up ahead.”