The Blackbird Papers (23 page)

“What are you doing?” Wiley asked.

Sterling counted to three under his breath, and when he looked up, he took a quick step forward and swung an open hand at the gun. A shot rang out, and for a moment, both men froze. Then Sterling jumped on the smaller man and grabbed the hand holding the gun in one motion. Wiley was strong and wiry, but was outmatched by Sterling's power. A second bullet was fired, striking one of the pit windows and sending glass crashing to the floor. They struggled for a few moments until Sterling had control. Wiley released the gun and Sterling turned him on his stomach, jammed his forearm into the back of his neck, and crushed him with his weight.

“I hate to do this, Lieutenant, but you've left me no choice.” Sterling unclasped Wiley's handcuffs and snapped them around his wrists. “Time will prove my innocence but not fast enough.”

“You're going to get caught, Agent,” Wiley said. “You can kill me, but they will eventually find you.”

“Don't be stupid, Lieutenant. I'm not going to kill you, just like I didn't kill Wilson or that Vorscht girl. I just need some time to get this case together so you and everyone else realize that the real killer is walking around free somewhere laughing at how much he's making fools of us.”

Sterling pulled Wiley up and led him out of the pit and down a flight of stairs to a small, dark room of holding cells. Sterling found a paper cup and straw in one of the cabinets. He filled the cup with water from a nearby fountain and set it up on the small desk in the cell.

“I don't want to do this, Lieutenant, but I'm sure you understand.” Sterling slammed the bars shut, then ran for the stairs, stopping to retrieve his gun before racing out the door. For the first time in his life, he was a fugitive.

35

T
he murderer had proven to be a more formidable opponent than Sterling had expected, killing two people in the span of a week, setting up the WLA, and now trying to frame him. Someone was certain to find Wiley soon. Sterling knew he needed to get out of town in a hurry. He drove across Ledyard Bridge and rocketed up River Road, struggling to keep the Mustang from wiping out on the blind curves. He needed to get his bag from the house, but more important, he needed that videotape that was locked in the wall safe. It was a critical piece of evidence that could possibly lead to the capture of the real killer.

Sterling skidded up Dead Man's Curve, then floored the accelerator once he reached an open stretch. He couldn't get beyond the computer image of his face. Had Harry really sent that, or had someone doctored the image and sent it under Harry's name? Either way, an insider was targeting Sterling, and others were sure to believe he had some type of involvement.

Less than a minute from the house, Sterling slammed on the brakes. Strobe red-and-white lights painted the darkness. Sterling looked through the trees toward Deer Run Lane and spotted the source of the light show, a gang of police cruisers huddled at the entrance of Wilson's driveway. Sterling thought back to his arrival at the station. That explained why there were only two cruisers parked outside. It all must have been part of the plan—lure him to the deserted station where Wiley was alone while they searched the house for any evidence linking him to the murders.

Sterling turned the car around on two wheels and flew back down River Road. The tape would be safe for now, as it was unlikely that anyone would find the secret compartment. At least he still had the box of disks and the printed documents from Wilson's computer stashed in the trunk. When he was no longer in danger, he could finally sit down and go through everything, seeing if he could find that important thread weaving through the blackbird deaths and the two murders.

He picked up his cell and let his home number ring precisely three times before hanging up and dialing again. Veronica would recognize the code.

“Hi, baby,” she answered with her bed voice. “Why are you calling so late?”

“Ronnie, I need you to listen to me and not ask any questions.”

Veronica could hear the urgency in his voice and immediately sat up. “I'm listening.”

“Go to my office and look under my desk. You'll find a small black book taped underneath the middle drawer. Got that?”

“Yup.”

“Look on the second-to-last page. There will be a series of numbers. That's the combination to the wall safe.”

“Baby, you never told me you had a wall safe.” She sounded more disappointed than surprised.

“Please, Ronnie, not now. Just listen. The safe is in the kitchen behind the microwave. Open the safe with those numbers and take out all of the money and the gun. There should be $50,000 in small bills.”

“Fifty thousand? What are you doing with so much cash?”

Sterling ignored her. “Take the gun, the cash, and the black book, pack yourself enough clothes to get through the week, and get out of my apartment.”

“Then what?”

“Stop by the store and grab some food that won't spoil. You won't be eating gourmet, but you'll be able to survive for a couple of days. There's a small hotel in the East Village. Not a nice one, but they rent rooms by the hour, mostly for local prostitutes. It's called the Hotel DeWitt. Tell them you want to pay for two days. Give them the cash. If they ask for identification, tell them you don't have any. They won't press the issue once they see the cash.”

“Sterling, why do you know about a hotel like this?”

“Goddammit, Ronnie! It's a long story and I don't have time to get into it right now. I need you to do exactly as I've said. Don't leave the hotel and don't use the phone. Wait until I call you. Do you understand?”

“I'm scared, Sterling.”

And so was he, but admitting it to her would only make things worse. “There's nothing to worry about, sweetie, as long as you follow my instructions.”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Now go and get the hell out of my apartment as fast as you can.”

“I'm already in your office.”

“And one last thing. Don't go directly to the hotel. Someone might be following you. Make sure you take a cross-town subway to the West Side, then take the shuttle back. Take a cab downtown once you get back to the East Side, but make sure he drops you off a few blocks away from the hotel. The DeWitt is on the corner of Avenue B and Tenth Street, upstairs over a florist. There won't be a sign. It has a faded blue door.”

“Be careful, Sterling.”

He could hear the tremble in her voice. “Just do as I've said, and everything will be all right.”

S
terling finally weaved his way to I-89 and opened the car's engine. He knew it wouldn't be long before they put out an APB, if they hadn't done so already. He drove west for thirty minutes, then took an exit marked with a gas station and lodging sign. He pulled into the brightly lit station and bought a bottle of water, a packet of Tylenol for the explosions ricocheting through his head, and a Rand McNally street map of upstate New York. The young attendant behind the counter asked where he was going so late at night, and Sterling, realizing the kid could be a potential witness, explained that he was going to Canada to visit his dying mother.

Sterling drove down a few more exits before turning off at a rest stop and mapping out the fastest route to Harry Frumpton's cottage in the Adirondacks. Sterling couldn't recall the exact address, but he remembered the name of the street—Moody Road. The houses were few and far between, and most of them had been built around Tupper Lake. Harry's cottage was the last house at the southernmost point. It had been in his family for three generations. As a rambunctious child, he had hated the house's remoteness, but in his adult years it had become a great source of relaxation and spiritual fulfillment, allowing him to escape the intense pressures of his Bureau work and vacation anonymously in the wilderness.

Sterling pushed through the two-hour journey, trying to make sense of this sudden turn in the case. He kept repeating to himself that there had to be a connection between Wilson's and Heidi's murders. There had been a lot more to this innocent-looking foreign graduate student than he had first thought. At the very least she hadn't been up front with him that afternoon in Mrs. Potter's house. At the very worst she had been deceitful. She knew a lot more about Wilson than that he walked the property and watched birds. She was the one, according to Kanti, who had brought Wilson to him when both had independently noticed dead blackbirds in the mountains. Heidi Vorscht had her hands in everything from Wilson's lab to President Mortimer's office. But no one could really define what she did in either place or the kinds of friends she had kept. Kelton had actually called her a loner, which seemed to contradict everything else Sterling had learned about her. Now she, too, was dead, murdered in such a way as not to leave a single clue why someone would kill her so savagely. They must have wanted more time. The decapitation was a perfect way to obscure her identity and give them a chance to plan their next strike or to get away.

As the exits flew by, Sterling shifted thoughts to the last e-mail. He and Harry had been friends since Sterling joined the Bureau. Harry had been an instructor for one of the evidence collection trainee classes. He and Sterling started chatting one afternoon and once they discovered each other's interest in anatomy, they'd spend hours after class discussing forensic pathology and the exciting new world of DNA that was making it easier to identify and capture criminals as well as prove the innocence of the wrongly convicted. Harry Frumpton was the classic middle-aged bachelor with little interest in activities that involved large numbers of people. Fishing was perfect for him.

Sterling's heart wouldn't let him believe that after all these years Harry would try to implicate him in a murder. He thought about the message, then picked away at a small inconsistency he had previously ignored. If Harry was trying to set him up, why had he included such a friendly message about fishing and suggested that Sterling call him?

He pressed on through the darkness, scaling the steep mountain roads before descending into their lifeless valleys. The roads were narrow and bumpy, at times almost sending the Mustang skidding off the embankments. He thought about Veronica. It had been almost an hour, more than enough time for her to be checked in.

He dialed her cell phone.

“Hey, sweetie,” she answered. She must've seen his number on her caller ID.

“Everything all right?”

“This place smells like an armpit,” she whined. “And there's all this knocking into the walls and strange noises.”

“I never said it was the Plaza, Ronnie, but the most important thing right now is that you're safe.”

“I don't feel safe.”

“Did anyone follow you?”

She exhaled loudly, out of frustration and exhaustion. “Impossible. I took ten trains and two cabs.”

“That's my girl. What name did you use to check in?”

“My high-school English teacher, Maureen Bierbower.”

“Nice touch. What room did they give you?”

“Five seventeen. At least I have a view of the park across the street.”

“Are you near the window right now?”

“The room's so small, everything's near the window.”

“Well, pull down the shades and get as far away from the window as possible.” Sterling could hear the creaking of the shade's cylinder as she pulled. “Now sit tight. I'll be there tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“I don't know. Just wait for me to call.”

“Are you in trouble, Sterling?”

“I don't know right now. Something strange is happening and I'm trying to make sense of it all.”

“I'm getting scared.”

“Don't panic, Veronica. Sit tight and don't leave your room or answer the door. And don't use your cell phone. Understand?”

“Yeah. Hurry up, sweetie. Being away from you is making me sick.”

“Don't worry. I'll be there.”

Sterling hung up the phone and looked down at the map. If the route had been marked properly, he'd be at Harry's in less than twenty minutes. His mind drifted back to the e-mail. Maybe Harry had been coerced into sending that picture. What had he really been trying to say in that message? He made a point of telling Sterling that he'd be fishing in the Adirondacks for a few days. He also said that the number hadn't changed. Why hadn't he included it with the message just to be sure Sterling had it? Maybe he knew that someone else would be looking at the e-mail before he sent it and didn't want them to see the number. Was he reaching out to Sterling for a face-to-face meeting? It made a lot of sense. Harry knew the phones in his office would be tapped, but not the cottage. He had been around long enough and had witnessed firsthand the Bureau's internal surveillance of its own agents, so he had his line in the cottage configured so the number couldn't be traced. And if the line did get tapped, the number automatically rolled over to a scrambled line that changed on an hourly basis.

Sterling had all of Harry's numbers programmed into his cell. He started dialing the cottage, but hung up before it rang. It had been almost two hours since he left Hanover. Certainly they had found Wiley and were out looking for him. If they hadn't already, soon they'd be tracing his cell phone calls. He pulled off the highway and found a small shopping center not far from the exit. He pulled up to a pay phone in front of a pharmacy. He dialed Harry's number and waited. The answering machine kicked on after five rings, so he hung up and tried again. No answer. It was two o'clock in the morning. Sterling couldn't remember if Harry had a phone in his bedroom. Maybe he just couldn't hear the ringer.

Sterling got back into the Mustang and found his way onto the main road. There were almost no streetlights and the farther he traveled into the wilderness, the fewer street signs he passed. People in this small lake community had lived here long enough to know their way not by street names but by landmarks like the old synagogue in the center of town that had been founded more than a hundred years ago by Yiddish-speaking peddlers from Eastern Europe. There was also the no-frills Rotary Track and Athletic Field behind the L. P. Quinn School, which had been paid for partially by the 140,000 pennies collected in one week by the elementary-school students.

Sterling had visited the cottage only once, but the quaint charm of the village had left a deep impression. The streets slowly started coming back to him, especially the long road with a hundred-yard stretch of perfectly manicured tall hedges. Harry had told him that the adjoining property had been owned by a German industrialist by the name of Volgezang. The family had been a pillar of the small community until the father had an affair with a maid half his age. She eventually had his child, and when he told her that she would have to leave, she poisoned his wife. Harry had played with the children, but once the scandal hit and the maid had been convicted, the father packed up their bags, moved the family back to Germany, and sold off the estate in smaller parcels.

Sterling turned at the end of the Volgezang hedges and found the small dirt road that weaved around the lake. Harry's cottage was hidden beneath an arcade of evergreens and tall birches. He slowed the car once he approached the driveway and could see the house. All the lights were off. He drove closer, parking the Mustang fifty yards from the house. Harry had left his old station wagon with the chipped wood paneling in front, something he did only when he was home. Sterling scaled the front steps and looked into the living room windows. Darkness. The porch wrapped around the entire house, so Sterling quietly slipped to the back, lifted a window, and let himself in. Once inside, he pulled his gun from his waistband and tiptoed into the kitchen.

“Harry,” he called out. “Are you here?”

No answer. The floorboards creaked under his steps. “Harry Frumpton,” Sterling called again. He stood inside the doorway between the kitchen and small living room. Silence.