The Killing Kind (34 page)

And he was very good at waiting.

41

The torrential rain against the leaves reminded Engelmann of the hiss of white noise through a listening device. The tree trunks he braced himself against were spongy from the damp. Fallen leaves and pine needles were slippery beneath his feet. His injured knee protested with every step as he limped through the thick Virginia forest toward Evelyn Walker’s house, and his sodden clothes stuck to his frame.

But he did not falter. He did not slow.

At thirty thousand feet, the sun was shining—the sky a clear, fine blue. Engelmann had watched the clouds flicker like paper lanterns beneath the morning’s United Airlines shuttle—tiny, distant, insubstantial. His fellow passengers had seemed insubstantial to him, too, so heady was the afterglow of his time with Lester Meyers. Though Engelmann had washed up since, he’d been certain he could still detect the faint whiff of violence—of death—upon his clothes and skin. When he discovered it, he’d breathed deep, savoring the taste. It restored him. Invigorated him. It marked him as superhuman, as a killer of men. And as he grudgingly released it from his lungs—a profound sense of purpose settling over him—he’d wondered if the others on his flight could sense it, too.

When the plane descended toward Dulles, the foul weather had enveloped it. A dark portent of things to come, he’d thought. Perhaps his arrival had been foretold.

The notion fueled Engelmann as he pressed onward through the forest.

Occasionally, as he cut a rough diagonal from the turnaround at which he’d parked his rental car to Evie’s house, he spied other homes through the trees. He saw TVs tuned to the weather, to cartoons, to morning news programs; couples reading the paper over cups of coffee; families eating pancakes in their pajamas. In every house he passed, lights blazed to dispel the rainy Sunday morning gloom. But when he finally spied the Walker house, he saw no movement, no light, no sign of life—and not a sound could be heard over the constant roar of the rain against the leaves.

He broke from the tree line, rain soaking him to the bone, and slinked along the perimeter of the house, staying low so as not to be seen—clinging to the foundation, the bushes, the latticework that framed the base of the deck, only popping up long enough to peek into the occasional window. But the curtains on the windows were all drawn, and those low enough to climb into were boarded shut.

His quarry, he realized, had beaten him here.

The realization angered Engelmann. He didn’t understand how Hendricks had outflanked him. He thought he’d been so careful—so clever. Perhaps he should not have left that cripple to die slowly, but Engelmann had enjoyed the notion of prolonging his suffering too much to kill him outright. Still, his miscalculation mattered not a whit. He wanted his quarry to come, and come his quarry had.

Now the killing time was near.

Engelmann drew his weapon, a knockoff Ruger purchased not twenty minutes before from a less-than-reputable pawnshopafewmilesfromtheairport.He’dboughtaknifeas well—this one designed for gutting deer—which he wore inside his boot. He knew it would perform admirably on human game should the need arise.

Though the storm clouds blotted out the sun, and sheets of rain blurred everything around him, intermittent lightning blazed—brief snapshots clear enough to navigate by. On his second circuit around the farmhouse, he noticed the front door. Open, but only a crack, the darkness showing at its right-hand edge an invitation.

Engelmann grinned. Bold, he thought. Too bold. Hendricks must think him a fool, an amateur. He bypassed the open door in favor of the bay window farther down—not nailed shut like the others on account of its shape, but instead barricaded with a large piece of furniture.

He broke three panes with the butt of his gun and climbed onto the cushioned built-in bench inside. Then he placed both feet onto the heavy wooden piece—a hutch, or entertainment center perhaps—that barred his entrance to the room and kicked it over. His knee flared with pain. The hutch toppled inward with a crash of breaking plates.

Engelmann stepped low and light across the room, taking up a position behind one couch arm. The house reeked like a landfill—alcohol and vinegar and a thousand other smells combining to turn Engelmann’s stomach and set his head reeling. He wondered if disorientation was Hendricks’s intent when he unleashed this olfactory horror upon the world. If so, it was hardly enough to dull the diamond edge of his focus.

He held his breath and listened. From somewhere deep in the house, he heard a woman’s cry and the low growl of a dog, both quickly silenced—the former by a short, harsh “
Shhh,
” and the latter, it seemed, by a muffling hand. The dog whined quietly, mouth held closed. The woman and the man who shushed her said nothing.

Engelmann smiled luxuriously. “I confess, Michael, I’m impressed,” he said, hoping to draw Hendricks into the darkened room. “I didn’t expect to find you here when I arrived. Very kind of you to extend an invitation, by the way,” he said, referring to the open door. “You’ll forgive the impertinence of my declining your proffered method of ingress. And if I might be so bold, you could have
cleaned.
”

“There’s no need to bring Evie into this,” called Hendricks from somewhere deeper in the house. “How about you let her leave so we can settle this just you and me.”

Engelmann, realizing his quarry was not nearby, scampered low across the room, ducking into the next one down the farmhouse’s main hall just long enough to call, “My pleasure! The front door’s still open, if you’d like to send her out that way. I only hope something unpleasant doesn’t befall her—the forest is quite dangerous.” Then he ducked into the room across the hall and waited to see if his misdirection would bear fruit in the form of Hendricks chasing after.

It didn’t. But Engelmann’s words did have an effect on Evelyn, at least, as he heard her wail in fright. Her terror gave him a quiver of satisfaction—not least because he realized it wasn’t coming from the same location as Hendricks’s calls. That meant he’d stashed her somewhere—along, he assumed, with both her husband and her dog, if the photos on the walls revealed by the lightning strikes were any indication. And unless he was much mistaken, that somewhere was not far from the spot where he’d taken refuge—closer, it seemed, than Hendricks himself.

Thunder shook the house like battle drums, in perfect synch with the many lightning strikes. The storm was precisely overhead. Engelmann’s face tingled with excitement.

As the storm outside raged, Engelmann rose and headed down the hallway, drawn like the hungry predator he was to the quiet, muffled sounds of Abigail’s frightened whining.

Charlie Thompson pushed the needle of her Ford Escape past ninety, her wipers sluicing back and forth at top speed but making little headway against the driving rain. Dim yellow spots jittered in her rearview as she struggled to stay on the winding country drive. Her backup’s headlights, she hoped. She couldn’t stomach the thought of facing two stone-cold killers by herself.

Diane had told her she’d call back in twenty minutes. It took her over seven hours—but she’d come through with the intel Thompson had asked for. Turned out Hendricks sent letters every week for most of his deployment to a woman named Evelyn Jacobs. Girlfriend or fiancée, Diane wasn’t sure. She’d married since—her last name was Walker now—and settled down in rural Virginia, about an hour from DC.

Thompson was certain that’s where Garfield’s perp was heading—and that her ghost would follow. Which meant she had to follow, too. For the bodies carted out of Pendleton’s. For her dead partner. For herself, no matter the cost.

Her GPS piped up with a flat, monotone command, instructing her to turn, and informing her that her destination was four-tenths of a mile away. She took the turn at speed, nearly one-eightying in her haste. She thanked God when the headlights in her rearview did the same.

Whenever she allowed her attention to wander from the task at hand, no matter how briefly, the crime-scene photos of Lester Meyers’s ruined flesh haunted her. Shook her resolve. Whispered at her to turn around before it was too late.

And every time that happened, she reacted the same way: by putting the pedal to the floor and moving forward—ever forward—her headlights slicing through the storm.

In the kitchen, Engelmann rose to his full height and cocked his head in puzzlement. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a portable radio, probably thirty years old, of the type associated with break-dancers and the like. Ghetto blasters, he thought they called them. He hadn’t seen one like it in ages. It was practically an antique. And as he looked at it, a strange sound emanated from its speakers: a dog’s whine, accompanied by a woman, quietly crying.

“Disappointed?” Hendricks asked. Engelmann looked up to find him framed by the arch that separated kitchen from dining room, some fifteen feet away, backlit by the lightning flickering through the sheet that covered the French doors. He was dripping wet and panting—the former perhaps from time spent in the torrential rain, the latter no doubt from playing the same game of call-outand-double-back that Engelmann had. “She’s not here,” he said, his right foot inching forward to distribute his weight evenly between the balls of his feet. “I got them out hours ago. You want to get the drop on me, you’re not going to do it flying commercial.”

“Disappointed?” echoed Engelmann as he shifted his own stance, too. “Quite the contrary—I’m
impressed.
Our encounter in Kansas City left me wondering if perhaps I’d overestimated your abilities. Had we not been interrupted, I think I might have gotten the best of you.” Hendricks shrugged as if to say
We’ll never know.
“But now, it seems, you’ve rallied nicely. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to this.”

Lightning showed blinding white through the gaps in the drawn curtains, a clap of thunder on its heels. Evie’s house trembled at the sound of it.

“Is this the part of the movie where you say ‘We’re not so different, you and I’?”

Engelmann laughed. “Oh, no, Michael. You and I are little alike. You require a reason to kill, a motivation, one sufficient to allow you to soothe your conscience—to overcome your hesitation. And you’re prone to forming attachments, to people such as Evelyn, or dear Lester. For me, the killing is in itself enough. How
is
Lester, by the way? Dead, by now, I should think. If you like, I’ll arrange to have you buried alongside him, so your guilt for the pain you’ve caused him may sustain you for all eternity.”

“Sometime, you’ll have to tell me how you tracked him down,” said Hendricks, jaw clenched. He said it more to keep Engelmann talking long enough for him to regain his composure than because he expected any answer.

“Oh, it’s hardly a secret—I asked a lovely Federal employee named Garfield for your file, and he was more than happy to oblige. I’d say it’s funny your tax dollars pay that turncoat’s salary, but then, he’ll no longer be drawing one— and you don’t pay taxes anyway, do you?”

“I’ve paid my share,” Hendricks said.

“While we’re chatting,” said Engelmann, “what is the story behind this wretched stench? It’s as if you left a grocery store to rot in every room.”

“Place was like that when I got here,” Hendricks deadpanned.

“You’re a fool to’ve come, you know—a slave to your own sentiment.”

“I would have been a coward not to.”

“Perhaps. Tell me, how did your dear, sweet Evelyn and her husband react to your return? I understand that she’s with child.”

Hendricks said nothing.

“A shame, that—but if it’s any consolation, you won’t be around to wallow in regret much longer.”

Hendricks held the kitchen knife in his right hand at the ready. It glinted in the storm’s flickering light. “Maybe,” he said. “Either way, I say let’s get on with this.”

Engelmann raised his pistol. “Oh,” he said, his grin seeming in the near dark to take up half of his rain-slick face, “I think we’ve tested one another’s knife skills to my satisfaction. And my knee, unfortunately, still troubles me; I’m afraid close-quarters combat would place me at a disadvantage. So please forgive the anticlimax, but...”

Engelmann’s knockoff Ruger spat.

In the millisecond before it did, Hendricks cracked the faintest smile.

And prayed.

Thompson spied the Walkers’ mailbox, and beside it, a dirt drive disappeared into the trees. She yanked the wheel, spraying twin tails of mud behind her as her tires sunk in and finally bit. She only made it fifty yards up the winding driveway through the rain-driven muck before the night was torn asunder by a fireball four stories high, which spread warm across her face and buffeted her car with debris.