Death Match

TWENTY-SIX

What’s this guy supposed to have done?” asked the federal agent sitting behind the wheel.

“Under investigation for four possible homicides,” Lash replied.

Rain drummed on the roof and ran down the windows in heavy streams. He drained his coffee cup, considered ducking into the nearby deli for another, looked at his watch and decided against it. Ten after five already, and human relations records indicated Gary Handerling almost always left work promptly.

He looked down at the glossy photograph of Handerling on the seat beside him, taken that morning by a closed-circuit camera at Checkpoint I. Then he gazed across Madison Avenue toward the Eden tower. Handerling wouldn’t be hard to spot: tall and lanky, save for a softening around the belly, with thinning blond hair and a yellow windbreaker that stood out in a crowd. Even if Lash missed him, one of the other teams was sure to spot him.

Lash’s gaze returned to the photo. Handerling didn’t look like a serial killer. But then again, so few of them did.

The front passenger door opened and a heavyset man in a dripping blue suit climbed in. When he turned to glance into the rear of the car, the scent of Old Spice reached Lash ahead of the face. He’d known another Fed was going to ride with them, but he was surprised to recognize John Coven, a fellow agent he’d worked with on a few early cases.

“Lash?” Coven said, looking equally surprised. “That you?”

Lash nodded. “How you keeping, John?”

“Can’t complain, I guess. Still treading water as a GS-13. Another five years and I’ll be down in Marathon, fishing for tarpon instead of scumbags.”

“Nice.” Like many other agents, Coven was obsessed with the countdown to retirement and a government pension.

Coven looked at Lash curiously. “I heard you were off the Job. In the private sector, making a mint for yourself.”

Coven knew Lash had left the FBI, of course; and he would also know the reason. He was just showing tact.

“I am,” Lash replied. “This is a temporary thing. Moonlighting for some serious change.”

Coven nodded.

“Isn’t this kind of an unusual TDY for you?” Lash asked, politely reversing the line of inquiry.

Coven shrugged. “Not anymore. These days, it’s alphabet soup. What with all the shakeups and reorganizations, everybody’s in bed with everybody else. You never know who you’ll be working with: DEA, CIA, Homeland Security, local law enforcement, Girl Scouts.”

Yes, but not a private corporation, Lash thought. Using the FBI for hired muscle was something new in his experience.

“Only thing strange was that this came down from the chief’s office,” Coven said. “Didn’t go through the normal channels.”

Lash nodded. He remembered Mauchly’s words: We share our information with selected government agencies. Apparently, the cooperation went both ways.

He had seen very little of either Mauchly or Tara Stapleton all day. He’d arrived late, being forced to spend the better part of the morning untangling a hugely complex web of red tape, bank forms, credit agency reports, and bureaucratic mix-ups to correct his mortgage statement and restore various credit cards. Mauchly had stopped by his office just before lunch with a large packet under his arm. Handerling, he said, had picked up his train ticket for the following evening. A phone call he’d made from his desk that morning indicated he was meeting a woman after work. Surveillance was being arranged, and Mauchly wanted Lash to take part. The night before, he’d gently rebuffed Lash’s urgings that they contact the police without delay. “He’s not an immediate danger,” Mauchly had said. “We need to gather more evidence. Don’t worry, he’s being carefully watched.”

He’d dropped the packet — Handerling’s job application, employee evaluation, prior history — on Lash’s desk. “See if this fits your profile,” he said. “If it does, please put together a brief character analysis for us. That could prove very useful.”

And so Lash had spent the afternoon going over Handerling’s records. The man was clever: with hindsight, Lash could see subtle evidence he’d carefully coached himself on psych tests. Questions meant to raise red flags had all been answered neutrally. The validity scales were acceptably low across all tests, in fact equally low, implying Handerling recognized which questions were testing for fakery and answered them all the same way.

Such intelligence and planning were earmarks of the organized killer. And in fact Handerling would be nothing else if he was posing as a model Eden employee. The disorganized elements in the killings, Lash decided, were explained by the unique nature of the victims. It was clear the six supercouples to date were almost cult figures within Eden. But in somebody with feelings of inadequacy or anger — somebody who’d had an abusive mother, say, or bad luck in personal relationships — they might become touchstones for jealousy, even the acting-out of misdirected rage.

It wasn’t that Handerling knew the Thorpes and the Wilners, so much as that he knew of them, through his position at Eden. And that was very interesting indeed. It meant a new subdivision of serial killer, not previously identified: a byproduct of the information age, a killer who trolled databases to find ideal victims. It would make a hell of an article in the American Journal of Neuropsychiatry: an article that would curl the toes of his old friend Roger Goodkind.

The squawk of a radio came from the front seat. “Unit 709. In position.”

Coven picked up the radio, holding it low so it would not be visible outside the car. “Roger.” He turned toward Lash. “We didn’t get much of a briefing. What’s the setup, exactly?”

“This guy Handerling’s supposed to meet a woman after work. Beyond that, we don’t know much.”

“How’s he traveling?”

“Unknown. Could be foot, subway, bus, whatever. And—” Lash stopped suddenly. “There he is. Coming out the revolving door now.”

Coven switched on the radio. “This is 707. All units, be advised suspect is exiting the building. White male, about six foot two, wearing a yellow windbreaker. Stand by.”

Handerling stopped to gaze up and down Madison Avenue. His windbreaker flexed as he raised a large umbrella over his head. Lash resisted the urge to stare at his face. It had been years since he’d last been on a surveillance, and he found his heart beating uncomfortably fast.

“That’s our man, there,” said Coven, nodding his head in the direction of a corner newsstand.

“The one with the red umbrella and the cell phone?”

“Yup. You wouldn’t believe how much easier cell phones have made surveillance. These days, it’s normal to see someone on the street talking into their hand. And these Nextel devices have walkie-talkie features built in, so we can broadcast to the entire group.”

“Other foot surveillance resources?”

“At the subway entrance and that bus stop, over there.”

“This is 709,” came a voice over the radio. “Suspect in motion. Looks like he’s going to hail a cab.”

Lash allowed himself a sidelong glance out the window. Handerling had moved toward the street with a long, loping gait. The man darted out an arm, index finger extended, and a cab nosed obediently to the curb.

Coven grabbed his radio. “This is 707. I’ve got the eye; 702, 705, we’re rolling.”

“Roger,” came a chorus of voices.

The driver swung the brown sedan out into traffic, a few vehicles behind the taxi.

“Suspect turning eastbound onto Fifty-seventh,” Coven said, still holding the radio in his lap.

“How many takeaway vehicles?” Lash asked.

“Two others. We’ll sit on him a while, take it a block at a time.”

The taxi moved slowly, fighting the rain and the crosstown traffic. One wheel splashed through a deep pothole, sending a brown spray over the sidewalk. At Lexington Avenue, it turned again, brusquely cutting off a minivan.

“Turning south on Lex,” Coven said. “Maintaining twenty-five miles per hour. I’m going to relinquish. Anybody?”

“This is 705,” came the voice. “I’ve got the eye.”

Lash glanced out the rear window and noticed a green SUV pulling up in the adjoining lane. Through the rain, he could make out Mauchly sitting in the front passenger seat.

Coven’s driver pressed on the gas, accelerating smoothly past the taxi and down Lexington Avenue. It was standard surveillance practice, Lash knew: have as many vehicles as possible involved so the suspect won’t think he’s being followed. In a few blocks, they’d make a turn, circle back, and join the rear of the line.

“Seven-oh-five, roger,” Coven glanced back. “So, Lash, what’s it like in the private sector?”

“I can’t get speeding tickets fixed anymore.”

Coven grinned, told the driver to turn onto Third Avenue. “Ever miss the Bureau?”

“Don’t miss the pay.”

“I hear that.”

“Unit 705,” the radio squawked. “Suspect turning east onto Forty-fourth. Vehicle stopping. I’m going to pass him, who’s picking up the eye?”

“This is 702. We’ve pulled over at the far corner. Maintaining visual contact.”

Coven’s driver pushed the sedan forward now, bullying his way through first one intersection, then another.

“Seven-oh-two,” came the voice. “Suspect has exited the vehicle. He’s entering a bar called Stringer’s.”

“Seven-oh-seven,” Coven replied. “Roger that. Keep a visual on the entrance. Seven-fourteen, we need you at Stringer’s. Forty-fourth between Lex and Third.”

“Roger.”

Minutes later, their sedan nosed into a no-parking zone on Forty-fourth. Lash glanced out the window. Judging by the garish awning and knots of twenty-somethings outside, Stringer’s was a pickup bar for young professionals.

“Here they come now,” Coven said.

Lash looked at an unfamiliar young couple coming down the street, holding hands and sharing an umbrella. “Is that foot surveillance?”

Coven nodded.

The couple disappeared inside the bar. A minute later, Coven’s cell phone rang.

“Seven-oh-seven,” he said.

Lash could hear distinctly the voice that came through the tiny speaker. “We’re at the bar. Suspect is at a rear table. He’s with a white female, heavyset, five foot six, wearing a white sweater and black jeans.”

“Roger. Stay in touch.” Coven put the phone aside, then looked into the rear of the sedan. His eye landed on Lash’s empty coffee cup.

“Another?” he asked. “I’m buying.”

Within half an hour, Lash was completely caught up on Bureau gossip: the Lothario who was playing around with the section chief’s wife; the annoying new red tape out of Washington; the weak leadership in the upper echelons; how unbelievably green the latest batch of new jacks were. Infrequently, reports came in from the agents watching Handerling from the bar.

Then came a moment when talk faltered, and Coven glanced at his driver. “Hey, Pete. How about getting us a couple more coffees?”

Lash watched the agent get out of the car and trot toward a deli down the block.

“Caught a break with this rain,” Coven said.

Lash nodded. He looked in the rearview mirror: on the far side of the street and half a block back, he could just make out the dim form of Mauchly’s SUV.

Coven was shifting restlessly in the front seat. “So tell me, Chris,” he said after a moment. “This place you’re moonlighting, Eden. What’s it like?”

“Pretty remarkable,” Lash replied guardedly. If Coven was getting curious about the tail, fishing for more information, he’d need to be careful what he said.

“I mean, can they really do it? Are they as good as everybody says?”

“They’ve got a great track record.”

Coven nodded slowly. “There’s this guy in my golf foursome, an orthodontist. Something of a Gloomy Gus, never married. You know the type. We were always trying to fix him up with somebody, but he hated the singles scene. It became a running joke on the links. Anyway, he went to Eden about a year ago. You wouldn’t know him now, he’s a different person. Married to a really nice woman. Great body, too. He doesn’t talk about it much, but any idiot can see how happy he is. Even the bastard’s golf game has improved.”

Lash listened without comment.

“Then there’s this chief I know, over in Operations. Harry Creamer, remember him? Anyway, his wife died in a car accident couple of years back. Good guy. Well, he’s remarried now. Never seen anybody happier. Rumor is, he went to Eden, too.”

Coven turned around again, and Lash could see a kind of desperate eagerness in his eyes. “I’ll be honest with you, Chris. Things aren’t so hot between me and Annette. We’ve been drifting apart ever since we learned she can’t have kids. So I look at my golf buddy, I look at Harry Creamer, and I start thinking twenty-five thousand bucks isn’t all that much money. Not in the long run, it isn’t. I mean, why live a half-assed life? It’s not like you get a second chance if you fuck it up the first time.” He paused a second. “I was wondering if you knew whether—”

The cell phone chirped. “Seven-oh-seven, this is unit 714, you read?”

Instantly, the professional veneer settled back over Coven. He reached for the phone. “This is 707, go ahead, 714.”

“Suspect’s having some kind of argument with the woman. They’re on their way out.”

“Roger, 707 out.”

At that moment, the door of Stringer’s opened and a woman emerged, walking quickly, shrugging into a raincoat as she went. Then Handerling pushed his way through the doors and went after her.

“All units, suspect on foot,” Coven said into his radio, cracking open the car window as he did so. The woman was shouting at Handerling over her shoulder: Lash made out the words “fucking low-life snoop” before the rest was drowned in the passing traffic.

Handerling put out a hand to stop her and she brushed it away. When he reached out again she turned, raising her arm to slap him. Handerling dodged the blow and pushed her roughly toward a shop front.

“Let’s take him,” Coven said.

Lash quickly ducked out the back and followed Coven across the street. From the corner of his eye he saw the agent named Pete come out of the deli, a cup in each hand. When he saw Coven on the move, he dropped the coffees in a trash can and joined the pursuit.

Within seconds, Handerling was surrounded. “Federal agents,” Coven barked, showing his shield. “Back off, mister. Hands at your sides.”

The anger on the woman’s face was replaced by fear. She retreated a few steps, then turned and ran.

“You want secondary surveillance on the girl?” Pete asked.

“No.” It was Mauchly who answered. He stood behind them in the rain, Tara at his side. “Mr. Handerling, I’m Edwin Mauchly of Eden. Will you come with us, please?”

Handerling had gone white. His lips were working silently, and his eyes darted left and right. Half a dozen more men in suits were trotting toward them now, whether federal agents or Eden security Lash did not know.

“Mr. Handerling,” Mauchly said again. “This way, if you please.”

Handerling straightened. For a moment, he gathered himself to bolt, and the circle tensed.

Then all at once he seemed to deflate. His shoulders drooped visibly. And he nodded, stepped forward, and allowed Mauchly to escort him to the waiting SUV.