Sigma Curse - 04 (18 page)

A light-colored Camaro, maybe silver or gray.

Venn gazed off into the distance, trying to remember...

It came to him like a sucker punch.

The parking lot outside his office, earlier that day after the press conference.

He’d left the office with Teller and Rickenbacker, to join them again at their own office to interview the elderly couple. And as he’d headed for his Jeep, he’d seen them get into a silver Camaro.

Rickenbacker had taken the wheel.

“Oh, my God,” he breathed.

––––––––

T
eller said, “I absolutely do not believe it.”

For the first time since Venn had met him, Teller’s hair looked mussed. He ran his hand through it again.

“You’d better believe it,” Venn said. “There’s no other way.”

Venn had called Teller from his Jeep, learned he was still at the FBI office, and told him to stay put. He didn’t even mention that Harmony had been shot.

As soon as he arrived at the office, Venn stormed though the doors and said: “Where’s Rickenbacker?”

Teller, seated at a desk in conversation with one of the other agents, King, looked up, startled. “What?”

“Is she here?”

Teller’s frown deepened. “No. Fran left –” he looked at his watch – “more than hour ago.”

Venn jerked his head toward one of the side-office doors. “I need to talk to you.”

King gazed at Venn in annoyance. “Hey. I’m part of this –”

Venn ignored her. “Just you, Mort.
Now
.”

He closed the door behind them. “What kind of gun does Rickenbacker carry?”

Teller opened his mouth as if to demand an explanation. But he shook his head in resignation.

“A Smith & Wesson Model 15. She’s kind of got a thing for revolvers.”

Venn leaned against the door, drew a deep breath.

Teller said, “Joe, what the hell is going on?”

“Fran Rickenbacker shot Harmony. She may not make it.”

“What?”
Teller took a step forward, utter incredulity stitched onto his face. “Are you out of your mind?”

Venn told him about the Camaro.

“And there’s the absence of shell casings, too,” he said. “Fits with a revolver.”

“Oh, come
on
.” Teller threw up his hands. “You know there’s a lot of ways that could be explained. And a Camaro? There’s got to be thousands of them in this city.”

“I sent the video clip to my guy, Vidal,” said Venn. “He’s enhancing the images as we speak. We’ll find out soon enough if it’s Rickenbacker’s license number.”

Teller turned away, his hand to his forehead. “
Why
, though? Why would Fran shoot her? I know they didn’t get along, but...”

“Because Rickenbacker’s the Sigma killer,” said Venn.

Teller gaped.

“Think about it,” said Venn. “She’s a woman. She’s tall, rangy. She’s an experienced cop, so she can handle herself in a fight. With a little finesse, she could pass for a woman in her thirties, like the soldiers said.”

Teller was shaking his head again. More slowly, Venn thought.

“You know where she was yesterday? At around noon?”

Teller looked at him for a moment. Then he said: “Wait right here.” He pushed past Venn to the door.

Venn said, “Don’t tell anybody else yet.”

“I’m not,” muttered Teller.

He returned in under two minutes.

“She left the office,” he said. “A little after ten. Came back around two to pick up Harmony.”

Venn nodded. “Time enough to stalk peters, kill her, dump the body, wash up and get back here.”

Teller studied Venn, his mind clearly racing behind his eyes. “I need to call her,” he said. “She’d expect me to tell her once I’d learned about Harmony.”

“Tell her to come back,” said Venn. “Make up something about a new lead. Just don’t get her suspicions up that you know something.”

“I don’t
know
anything,” said Teller, as he held his phone to his ear. “I still don’t buy it.”

Venn heard the tiny buzz of the phone ringing at the other end. When it stopped – voicemail – teller said, “Hey, Fran. Give me a call ASAP. Developments here.” He did it well, Venn thought, with nothing in his tone to suggest anything untoward.

Venn felt his own phone vibrate in his pocket. He saw the text message from Fil Vidal.

Here’s the license plate. I’m still working to enhance it further, but you can read it at this point.

Venn looked at the attached image, a close-up of the Camaro’s plate. He held the phone out to Teller.

Teller looked, then closed his eyes.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered.

“Rickenbacker’s?”

“Yeah.” Teller looked at his own phone as if willing it to ring. “She
always
picks up when I call. I think she even showers with her damn phone.”

“Maybe she’s hurt,” said Venn. “Harmony got off three shots. Maybe she hit Rickenbacker before she drove off.”

Teller said, “I need to put a trace on Fran’s phone.”

“We need to get word out,” said Venn. “Every available resource to find her. Don’t mention the Sigma thing yet, whatever you do. It’ll cause chaos. Just let it be known that Rickenbacker needs to be located in connection with Harmony’s shooting.”

Venn knew cops would cancel their leave to help out. A fellow cop was down. That always united the force.

Venn followed Teller out into the main office, where he made the announcement about Rickenbacker to King and Abbot, the other two agents. The third, Leonard, had already left.

They looked as disbelieving as Teller had. But they got to work quickly.

Venn said, “Did Rickenbacker say where she was going when she left here?”

“No,” said Teller. “Just that she’d see us tomorrow, and to call her in the mean time if anything came up.”

“Where does she live?”

“She has an apartment just off Washington Square.”

Venn said, “Any reason you can think of that she’d be near Gramercy Park tonight?”

“No.” Teller seemed to remember something. “She took a call this afternoon around five p.m. It came through on the number the public’s been asked to call if they have any information on the Sigma case.”

“She say what it was about?”

“Not really,” said Teller. “But the reason I remember it, is that the caller asked specifically for her. For Special Agent Rickenbacker. So it got put through to her. She said afterwards that it was a crank, some pervert who’d seen her on TV at the press conference and had the hots for her.”

“Do you have a recording of the calls that come through?”

“Of course,” said Teller. “It’s SOP.”

“Let’s take a listen.”

Teller opened up a program on his computer and found the sound files from between 4.30 and 5.30 that afternoon. They had to wade through around thirty calls. Some of them featured Teller’s voice as he asked questions of the caller. Most of them had been taken by the junior agents, King and Abbot and Leonard.

Then, at 5.05, Rickenbacker’s voice came through the speakers: “This is Special Agent Frances Rickenbacker.”

A second’s pause, followed by a man’s voice. “Are we alone on this line?”

Rickenbacker said, “”Excuse me?”

“Is there anybody else listening in?”

An edge of impatience crept into her voice. “Sir, if you’d like to state the nature of your –”

“I have information critical to your hunt for the Sigma killer,” the man growled. He sounded around forty years old, though his voice had a rasp which may or may not have been put on. “But I’ll speak only to
you
. So I want you to call me on the number I’m about to give you. If you call back and I know that somebody else is listening in – and I
will
know, believe me – then I’ll hang up on you and you’ll never hear from me again.”

Venn listened intently. The man was bluffing, of course. There was no way he could tell if anybody else was eavesdropping.

Rickenbacker said, “Sir, you’re wasting the FBI’s time.”

The man recited a cell phone number, once, very clearly.

Teller looked round, saw that King and Abbot were listening in nearby, waved frantically:
write this down
. King’s fingers flew over her keyboard.

Then the connection was cut.

Venn and Teller looked at one another.

“She must have called him back,” said Teller. “Gone off to the bathroom or something and used her cell.”

“And he arranged a meeting,” said Venn. “Which doesn’t make sense, if she’s the killer. Unless he’s her accomplice and it was some kind of code. But why didn’t he just call her on her cell in the first place?”

Within ten minutes, King had results on the two cell phones. “That number on the voice recording isn’t traceable,” she said. “It’s an unregistered phone, pay as you go. It’ll have been destroyed. We got a fix on Fran’s phone, though. It’s up in Harlem, on East 116th, near the corner of Madison.”

“Is it moving?” said Teller.

“No,” said King. “Stationary.”

“It’s been ditched,” said Venn. “Probably find it in a trashcan or on the sidewalk.”

“I’ll put a call out for any units in the vicinity to close in,” said King.

Venn said, “Tell them not to touch the phone if they find it. Bag it as evidence.”

For a moment, he considered heading out to the spot and looking for the phone himself. He had an idea, one that was half-formed but coalescing. But he decided to stay put.

Teller turned toward him, puffing out his cheeks and exhaling sharply. “What a mess.”

“Yeah.”

Teller said: “I never asked, and I should’ve. How’s your partner? Harmony?”

“Not so good,” said Venn. “She took a bullet in one lung, and another in her neck. She’s in surgery. But she may not pull through.”

“I’m sorry.” Teller sounded like he genuinely meant it. “Truly.”

Venn had called Beth from the Jeep on his way to the FBI office. She was on duty at the hospital, but had a moment to talk.

When he told her about Harmony, she said: “Ah, Venn. Ah, no.” She and Harmony had always liked one another.

“Can you keep me updated?”

“Of course. I’ll head down there now,” she said.

Beth called him back after he’d left the Jeep in the parking lot and was headed up in the elevator. “I spoke to Jim Freeman. He’s the ER chief resident who caught Harmony,” she said. “It looks like both bullets are still in her. One lodged in the top of the scapula - that’s the shoulderblade - and another in the lower ribcage on the right. That one went through her lung. She’s got a hemopneumothorax, and possible damage to the diaphragm. Missed her heart by a couple of inches.”

“How bad is it?” said Venn. He knew Beth wouldn’t sugarcoat it.

“She got lucky with the neck one,” said Beth. “But her lung’s collapsed, and she’s lost a hell of a lot of blood. She’s in hypovolemic shock. On the plus side, she’s young and in good shape. But her heart showed an arrhythmia. Ronald Katz is operating. He’s good, believe me. One of the best. But it could go either way, Venn. I’m so sorry.”

“Okay. Thanks,” he said. “Any developments, let me know.”

“Love you.”

“Yeah. Love you too.” He suddenly felt the desperate power of the words.

*

K
ing’s voice dragged Venn back out of his recent memories. “A couple of patrol cops found Fran’s phone,” she said. “It was on the sidewalk. Pretty beat up, smashed, like it had been thrown.”

“From a car, maybe,” said Venn.
Not methodically disposed of.

To Teller, he said: “Can you get some kind of rapid forensic examination of an object? Like this phone?”

“For sure,” said Teller. “But we’d check the calls made anyhow -”

“No,” said Venn. “I mean, the phone itself. The outer casing. Fingerprints, DNA, whatever.”

“No problem.” Teller nodded at King and Abbot. To Venn: “What are you thinking?”

Venn said, “I’m thinking Rickenbacker isn’t alone in that car. That somebody’s abducted her.”

––––––––

A
s a child, an adolescent, and more recently a young woman, Sally-Jo had never been given to uncontrollable rages. She was what other people would describe as remarkably even-tempered, and what she would call prone to sublimating her anger in a slow-burning resentment. Which was the more toxic in the long run - periodic high-pressure outbursts or simmering, chronic fury - was a question she’d never found a satisfactory answer to.

But right now, the urge to simply stop the car and beat Special Agent Frances Rickenbacker into a bloody, mewling pulp was so overwhelming that Sally-Jo was glad she was gripping the steering wheel and having to concentrate on the road ahead.

Frank was going to be mad at her. Oh, boy, was he ever.

The trouble was, the FBI woman was smart. Sally-Jo had chosen her precisely for that quality. But it had backfired on Sally-Jo, spectacularly.

She’d gotten Frank to make the call, reasoning that it couldn’t be her who did it. A woman’s voice would have immediately raised Rickenbacker’s hopes, and she’d probably have told her colleagues that she’d just been contacted by somebody who may well be the Sigma killer, as the news outlets were referring to her. That would have meant a full-scale police and FBI dragnet around Gramercy Park, and the game would’ve been up.

By getting Frank to call, Sally-Jo had introduced uncertainty into the proceedings. He’d asked to speak with Rickenbacker personally, and when she’d called him back on the cell number he’d recited to her, he’d mentioned the ligature marks that had been found on Dale Fincher’s wrists and ankles. It was a detail that hadn’t been disclosed to the media. It was also something that a person looking to make a malicious call might have guessed at, with a reasonable chance of accuracy. Ambiguity was Frank’s weapon. He’d further told Rickenbacker that he would meet with her, and her alone, to impart further information. But she had to come on her own. If there was even the slightest hint that she’d brought backup with her, he’d call the whole thing off and disappear. When she arrived at the rendezvous point, he would search her. If she was wired, or even if she had a cell phone on her, he’d refuse to cooperate further, even if her lurking associates swooped on him and arrested him.