The Killing Season (30 page)

63

11:57 p.m.

The needle hovered around a safe sixty. The dashboard clock clicked up another digit closer to midnight. Wardell gazed ahead and watched as the broken white lines marking each lane were swallowed up by the hood of his car. He wondered how many of those lines there were between here and Chicago. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands, maybe.

He’d make the Chicago metropolitan area by dawn if he didn’t stop. And he wasn’t going to stop. No more sleep. Never again. He ought to have been exhausted. Instead he felt reinvigorated, utterly alive.

He’d come to a decision after the call to Whitford. Detective Stewart was dead, leaving just one name from his original list. In a perfect world, he’d have liked to go ahead with it, but he had come to realize that that name did not fit the wider plan anymore. He wanted to engage Banner and Blake, to beat them before he killed them. To ensure that could happen, he’d found a new name to replace the old one.

He let his right hand slip from the steering wheel and fall to rest on top of the cheap notebook he’d laid on the passenger seat. It contained all the intel he’d need for the next twenty-four hours.

DAY SIX

64

6:07 a.m.

Mike Whitford opened his eyes. Sluggishly, he came to, realizing that he’d dozed off on the living room couch, still holding his coffee-stained Boston Celtics mug. He’d been working on the latest Wardell story through the night, and it looked like the Irish influence in the coffee had momentarily won the battle against the caffeine. Although it was tech­nically morning, it was still pitch black outside. The story was pretty much ready to go, pending a few important details. Not bad, considering Wardell hadn’t yet been back in touch to give him the details of his next hit.

He supposed that a layman might be surprised by that. That you could write most of a story about a planned event that had yet to happen and for which you had none of the ­details. But that was the way it worked: A story like this, direct contact with a celebrity killer, it was all about atmosphere, setting the scene. Whitford could make up the quotes out of whole cloth. All he needed to do was plug in the details as soon as they were made available to him. Whenever that was.

That Wardell hadn’t gotten back in touch yet really surprised him. He reached for the laptop and opened up the Hushmail account he’d created to send Wardell the information he’d requested. He’d chosen Hushmail for the strong encryption it offered, and picked an utterly anonymous alias—[email protected]—from which to send the documents. In the unlikely event that Wardell’s own anony­mous webmail account was discovered, there’d be nothing leading back to him. Just to be on the safe side, he’d dispose of the laptop as soon as he could. He clicked on his in-box and saw for the hundredth time a pristine screen, unsullied even by spam.

Maybe Wardell had forgotten about him. Or maybe his e-mail to Wardell hadn’t sent right. For the fifteenth time he clicked on Sent Items. There it was, just as it had been the fourteen previous times: a single e-mail with a modest attachment size sent to the Gmail address Wardell had provided him with. The phone at the office was on a redirect to his cell phone, and he’d bought a second throwaway cell after Wardell’s call, the number of which he’d provided in the e-mail. He’d dispose of that too, of course. He had to admit that a part of him was enjoying the clandestine precautions he’d been forced to take as soon as he’d crossed the line and journeyed far beyond a breach of journalistic ethics.

And there was absolutely no mistake about that, about crossing the line. The line was now a distant memory left at the border of a far-off country. Sending that e-mail was obstruction of justice at the very least, possibly even conspiracy to commit murder, depending on how a prosecuting attorney was feeling. And that went way beyond career-­ending. It meant heavy jail time became something of a best-case scenario.

An icy sweat broke out on his brow. Whitford scrunched his eyes shut as though that action could pinch off the perspir­ation and the feeling that came with it, like closing a valve. He reached for the bottle of Scotch and took a good long slug. It did the trick, burned off the sharp edge of anxiety.

But there was nothing to worry about, really. It wasn’t like Wardell would be sticking around to update people on his contact details. Whitford had a hunch Wardell wouldn’t be doing much of anything twenty-four hours from now. It was election day, and that meant Wardell was most likely going for a big political target. Probably one of the candidates for congress or the governorship. And if Whitford was thinking it, then the cops and the
FBI
were thinking it too. Whitford got the feeling—maybe from tracking events with a professional eye, maybe from the steely undertone in Wardell’s voice that last time—that tonight was going to be the big finish. That had to be why he’d contacted Whitford again, right? To advertise the big finale. When you came right down to it, Wardell fucking
needed
him.

So where the hell was his e-mail? Why the fuck wasn’t he calling?

Whitford hit refresh on his e-mail screen again. Checked his phone. Checked the throwaway cell. Each was as empty as his Celtics mug. He tucked the new cell phone into the pocket of his sweatpants and got up on rubbery legs. He lifted the mug from the arm of the couch and pointed himself at the kitchen. He’d make another coffee. By the time he got back, Wardell would have called. Or e-mailed. For certain.

He reached for the light switch. His fingers made it halfway before they were frozen by a single-syllable utterance.

“Don’t.”

Whitford didn’t drop the mug. He felt a nanosecond of inane self-congratulation for that. There was a man standing in his kitchen. And not just any man. He knew that without having to turn the light on. All of a sudden, Whitford’s mouth seemed drier than the inside of a toaster oven.

“Mr. Wardell?”

“My, haven’t we become formal.”

“I thought . . .”

“I know, partner. But isn’t a home visit so much more . . . personal?”

Whitford cleared his throat and swallowed. The saliva tasted like copper.

“I did what you asked me to,” he said. When Wardell said nothing, Whitford felt the urge to keep talking, to fill the terrible silence. “As I said in the e-mail, it was kind of a tall order. Gathering intel on a federal agent is difficult enough, but with this other guy, this . . . Blake, I got—”

“Absolutely nothing.”

Whitford cleared his throat again. “That’s right, and I’m sorry. His name was mentioned in relation to some Russian thing a year ago, but the details have been wiped, if it was even the same Blake. There’s a driver’s license, but the ­address is a dead end—looks like a virtual office in New York. Other than that, there’s no record of him anywhere: no social security number, no criminal record, no nothing. This guy’s a ghost.”

Wardell kept staring at him unblinking.

Whitford thought about continuing to talk, then decided against it.

Finally, Wardell spoke. “I’m disappointed, Mike.”

Whitford opened his mouth to apologize again, but this time his voice failed him, his lips mouthing the words as though somebody had hit the mute button. Wardell smiled.

“I’m disappointed,” he repeated, “but I’m not exactly surprised. Don’t worry about it. I can make sure he’ll be there tonight.”

A surge of relief engulfed Whitford. Five seconds before, he’d been absolutely convinced he was going to die. Like the incorrigible optimist he was, Whitford switched from terror to hope with nothing in between. What did Wardell mean by the last thing he’d said, about making sure Blake would be there tonight?

Whitford’s lips pulled back across his teeth in an uneasy smile that was a little too wide. “So, I still came through for you, right? On Banner? There wasn’t a lot of background on her either, but you got what there is. I guarantee it.”

Wardell seemed to think about it, nodded slowly. “It was enough. The
Times
article was particularly interesting.”

“Great, great,” Whitford said, not bothering to mention that this had been by far the easiest piece of information to find. The real work had been getting things like her address and unlisted phone number. “So . . . you’re still going to help me out now?”

Wardell took a step forward. “Help you out? Oh yes.”

“Great . . . Do you, uh, do you want to do the interview in here? We can sit down in the living room if you’d prefer.”

Wardell had taken three more languid steps forward in the time Whitford had been speaking. They were now within touching distance.

“Here’s fine,” he said, putting a hand on the kitchen worktop where Whitford was standing.

“It is?”

“It’s perfect.”

Whitford didn’t like the sound of that. But of course it was far, far too late. Wardell’s hand brushed against his leg and came back up with some kind of hunting knife. As Whitford was still thinking about moving, Wardell slammed the knife up to the hilt in his chest. The last thing he heard was a sound like somebody punching a watermelon, and then everything went away.

65

6:14 a.m.

Wardell let go of the handle of the bowie knife and let Whitford’s body drop to the tiled floor like a sack of hate mail. It landed awkwardly on its side. A little blood trickled from the wound, but not much. A hard stab directly to the heart like that killed instantly, stopping the heart in the most direct way possible, limiting blood loss.

“No muss, no fuss,” Wardell said mildly as he regarded the dead man’s wide-open eyes. A cheap cell phone lay on the floor beside the body. Wardell supposed it was Whitford’s throwaway. He picked it up, removed the battery, then put both in his pocket. A phone would come in handy for later. Then he drew the knife out carefully and carried it to the sink to wash the blood off.

The killing hadn’t been strictly vital, he supposed, but it tied up a loose end. He didn’t need Whitford or the media anymore. And besides, it would not hurt to have gotten in a little more practice on killing up close and personal.

He had a feeling that was the way it was going to be with Blake.

66

6:16 a.m.

Darkness. And Carol’s voice. Gently teasing.

“Anything you don’t know, Blake?”

Carol couldn’t be asking that. Carol was gone.

I opened my eyes and the light burned into me. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

The midday sun beat down relentlessly from an azure-blue sky, but somehow I was shivering as though in the midst of the longest winter. I’d never felt so cold in my life. And then I realized, with the twisted logic of dreams, that I was cold because someone was blocking out the sun. The silhouette of a man towered over me, and though it was impossible to discern the features or even the type of clothes, I knew it was him: Murphy. And I knew exactly what he was going to say.

“Sorry, hoss. You know this is nothin’ personal.”

And then something shifted and the low, earthy chuckle began and I realized I’d been wrong. It wasn’t Murphy at all, not anymore. It was Wardell. The chuckle rattled itself out.

“Aw, who are we kidding, partner? It’s always personal.”

That was when the explosion began. But instead of a blinding flash bang, it moved slowly. Silky tendrils of flame flowed lazily out to meet me, caressing my skin, burning me slowly . . .

My eyes snapped open and the hellish vista was replaced by blue moonlight and Banner’s concerned face.

“Jesus, are you okay?”

The here and now ebbed back. Wardell, Chicago, Banner’s place. Banner’s bed. She was sitting up next to me, one arm coyly crossing her breasts.

“What’s ‘Winterlong’?” she asked after giving me a moment to come to.

I looked back at her.

“You were talking in your sleep,” she explained. “Right before you started having what I’m guessing was a doozy of a nightmare.”

I sighed and wiped a sheen of cold sweat from my brow. “It’s nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t exist. Never did.”

She didn’t break eye contact. “You know him, don’t you? Wardell.”

I stared her out for a moment, considered lying, then relented. “I don’t know him. I ran into him once. In Iraq. I could have stopped him.”

“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

“I did know. Not about all of this, but I knew. I knew if ever there was a man who needed killing, then it was him.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “You really think the target is the governor?”

I shrugged. “Right now, it’s more of a best guess. I do know one thing though.”

“What’s that?”

“Wardell will want us to be there. The people who have gotten closest to stopping him. The people who have hurt him.”

“So we can see him beat us, right?”

“That’s part of it, yeah.”

“But not all?”

I shook my head slowly. “He’ll want to make sure we’re there to know we’re beaten. And then he’ll want to kill us. Both of us.”

67

5:49 p.m.

The roads were cut off for blocks ahead on the approach, some intentionally by police roadblocks, some merely as a by-product of the early-evening rush hour. We left our cab and walked. The gradual pace gave me time to take in the sheer scale of our destination as it loomed ahead out of the urban sprawl.

The monolithic James R. Thompson Center was planted in the heart of the Loop, the commercial core of downtown Chicago. The
JRTC
, as it was known, occupied the entire city block bounded by Randolph, Lake, Clark, and LaSalle Streets. The all-glass exterior rose seventeen stories high, sloping upward from street level like some kind of round-edged pyra­mid. It was an utterly imposing building—dominat­ing its environment, radiating power. I could see why so many of the governors of the past quarter century had chosen to locate their offices here, rather than in the state capital of Springfield.

A harassed campaign worker in short sleeves led us across the marble floor of the impressive atrium, already filling up for the evening’s event. The atrium acted as the focal point of the building, all seventeen floors of government offices layered around the open space beneath an immense glass-paneled ceiling. Although I was glad the governor’s rally would be taking place inside, and theoretically under more controllable conditions, I wondered about those open balconies on each floor. Seventeen floors, thousands of feet of open space. All of a sudden, I felt more exposed than any time I could remember.

We rode up to the fifteenth floor in one of the glass elevators. The campaign worker led us to the governor’s office, knocked briskly on the door, opened it, and then shooed us in, not entering himself. My first thought on entering was that Governor Ed Randall looked like a pale shadow of his former self. Watching the press conference the other day, I had noticed he’d lost weight, but the difference was more dramatic away from the cameras.

Randall had been a first-term governor at the time of Wardell’s original spree, and he’d appeared with some regularity in the news reports from that time. In common with others who had found brief national fame during that heated four-week span, he was a larger-than-life figure. He’d spoken in a deep baritone and had favored Armani suits and expensive hair dye, judging by the way that his convin­cingly jet-black hair belied his sixty years.