Most Wanted

43

THEY EAT LUNCH EARLY IN COW TOWN, MELANIE thought grimly, taking a seat on a red leatherette stool at the counter of the metal-sided diner. It wasn’t even eleven-thirty, and all the tables were occupied, the patrons an odd mix of farmhands and flamboyant city types in fashionable outfits. The smell of frying bacon hung in the air, overpowering and unpleasant on a scorching day. A tired-looking waitress with bluish hair slapped a menu down in front of Melanie. Having just been shot at, Melanie was hardly in the mood to eat, but she didn’t think the waitress would take kindly to her sitting there without ordering. Her handbag was where she’d left it, on the floor of Dan’s car. If he didn’t come back for her, she’d be stranded with no money and no identification.

She ordered egg salad on whole wheat toast and an iced tea, then sat waiting for it to come, spinning back and forth on her stool like an anxious child. She could barely keep her body still. The possibility that the informant might shoot Dan flooded her thoughts, making her crazy with worry. She’d seen so much tragedy in the space of a few days-Jed Benson, then Rosario, then Jasmine, now Amanda. She’d kept going by focusing on getting Slice, on locking him up for the rest of his life. But now, thinking of Dan O’Reilly lying broken and bleeding on the ground, she came undone. Even if he was-maybe, possibly-involved in a string of brutal murders. Even if he’d lied to her. Even if nothing more ever happened between them.

She checked her watch again. How long should she wait before she asked to use the diner’s phone to call 911? He’d been gone only ten minutes. Dan was an FBI agent, after all. Presumably, if he needed reinforcements, he’d have the sense to call them in. Then again, maybe not. She knew him well enough to imagine he’d be touchy and secretive about soliciting help. The Bureau bred that in its agents, playing things close to the vest. Plus, she thought grimly, there was always the chance he wouldn’t call the police because he was really one of the bad guys.

The sandwich, when it finally came, looked decent enough, so she forced herself to eat it. Food might seem repellent, but she needed to maintain her strength. She chewed mechanically, barely tasting it, still hearing the sound of bullets whizzing past her ears, still seeing that vicious dog lunging for her. Dan said it was Slice’s dog. How could he know that? Had the snitch told him? Was the story about the snitch even true? Dan had protected her, put his body between her and the bullets. Surely that meant he was on her side. Or was it a show? Designed to convince her he was still on Team America when he wasn’t?

This diner brought out the child in her, or maybe anxiety was making her regress. She used her straw to slurp the remaining iced tea from the bottom of the glass, her mouth puckering at the tart bite of juice from the lemon slice. She swung her stool around backward, dangling her feet, looking through the plate-glass window. To her astonishment, as she watched, Dan’s G-car pulled into the parking lot. He was alone, and he’d been gone only twenty minutes.

HE WALKED INTO THE DINER HOLDING HER HANDBAG, and she’d never felt so happy to see anybody in her whole life. But the next second, all the doubts rushed back in.

“Your phone just rang, but I felt funny answering it,” he said, handing her the bag.

“What happened? Where’s the informant?”

He slid onto the stool next to her. “I missed him. But I got some other leads instead.”

“What do you mean, you missed him?” she asked sharply.

He avoided her eyes. “He was gone by the time I got back. Win some, lose some, I guess.”

She searched his face apprehensively. His nonchalance at the informant’s escape seemed like an act. She felt certain he was hiding something.

“What’ll it be?” asked the blue-haired waitress, shoving a menu at Dan.

“Nothing, thanks.” He waved the waitress away and turned to Melanie. “Listen, your car’s safe enough sitting in the lot at Otisville. You can deal with it later. We need to get back to the city and find Slice.”

“I agree completely. Let’s go.”

Once they were on the highway, Melanie pulled out her telephone and checked her voice mail. The missed call had been from Sophie Cho.

“Uh, Melanie, it’s Sophie. I’m in the park with Maya and we’re having a slight problem. Can you call me on my cell phone please? Oh, it’s just after eleven on Thursday.”

Sophie’s voice sounded quiet and anxious, giving Melanie a moment’s worry. Darn, Sophie didn’t leave her cell-phone number, and Melanie didn’t have it with her. She wished she were one of those people who programmed every number she ever came across into her phone. What could the problem be? Was Maya not feeling well? She’d been in perfect form a few hours earlier. Had Sophie gotten locked out of the apartment? Melanie’s mother had keys, and she should be arriving within an hour. But even though Melanie was sure it was nothing serious, Sophie’s message weighed on her mind. Without a way to reach Sophie, though, there was nothing Melanie could do except hope she would call back.

She closed her phone and leaned over to put her bag in the back. A large green trash bag sat on the backseat. It had not been there earlier when they drove from Otisville to Millbrook.

“What’s in that bag?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dan said offhandedly, like it had slipped his mind, “I opened the trap.”

“What?”

“The Road Runner trap? You know, in Benson’s car? I managed to get it open.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re gone for maybe twenty minutes total. In that time you manage to search the entire Benson estate, figure out the snitch is gone, and open the Road Runner trap? How is that possible?”

“Hold your horses, princess. I’ll tell you the whole story.”

To hear Dan tell it, his return to the Benson property had been largely uneventful. He drove back up the driveway to find the dog’s carcass gone and an eerie silence pervading the whole property. He drew his gun and kept his eyes open, moving stealthily around to the rear of the large house, until he found a sliding glass door on the terrace, already jimmied open by somebody else. Then he did a quick room-to-room search for the informant. He didn’t find him, but he found plenty of evidence that he’d been there. The place was ripped apart. Every drawer, every cabinet, every closet had been emptied, its contents scattered wildly across the floor. Furniture was upended and pictures torn off walls, presumably in search of hiding places. Sofa cushions and mattresses bled stuffing where they had been savagely slashed open.

“He was looking for something. Probably what I got out of the trap,” Dan said.

“I don’t get it. How the hell did you figure out how to open it?”

“Dumb luck. My specialty.”

The search of the house had taken no more than ten minutes, start to finish. Once he was confident the informant was no longer around, Dan, unwilling to give up on the Road Runner trap, sat down at the wheel of the SUV and fiddled with the controls, searching for the magical sequence that would pop it open.

“In the trap-recognition course I went to, they told you which vehicle functions can be used as triggers. You know, wipers, signal light, whatever. They said the Road Runner likes sequences of six, so I sat there and tried every sequence of six I could think of.”

“That’s practically an infinite number. I can’t believe you hit it-and so fast.”

“Fortune was smiling on me. I knew I got it right when I heard the hydraulic lock release. The sound came from under the backseat, so I got down on all fours and felt around in there. I found this little opening, maybe eight or ten inches across. You woulda never noticed it, it was carpeted so good. But I was able to get my fingers along the top and yank it open. The trap went back at least two feet under the rear compartment. And I found a lot of nice goodies inside. Three handguns-two Tec-9s and a Glock, all with defaced serial numbers. A pair of metal handcuffs, a bag with about fifteen grand cash in it. Oh, and some blueprints. You know, like architectural drawings? Those, I don’t really know what they’re doing in there.”

“Are you being straight with me?” she asked, eyes wide, mouth open with pure astonishment.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“How did you possibly manage to accomplish all that in the twenty minutes you were gone?”

“Fast hands, sweetheart.”

Coming from Dan, she almost believed an answer like that. Almost, but not quite.

Curious about what he’d found in the trap, she reached behind her and felt around inside the trash bag, extracting a long, shiny red cardboard tube. She pried off the inset plastic lid with her fingernails and held the tube up to her eye. A ream of grayish white onionskin paper lay coiled inside. Working it out with her fingertips, she unfurled it. There were at least twenty sheets of thick, spongy paper, smelling of ink and toner, bearing delicate blue elevations of the interior and exterior of a town house. In the lower left-hand corner was written Jed Benson’s address and the legend “Sophie Cho, architect.”

“Hmmm. These look to me like the blueprints for the renovation of the Bensons’ town house. A good friend of mine was their architect. I can ask her to take a look and verify that’s what they are. But isn’t that strange? Why would Benson hide blueprints in a trap?”

“Beats me. That one I can’t answer.”

She put them in her handbag, where they protruded from the top. The thought of Sophie made her anxious. She pulled out her phone again and called home. If her mom had arrived, she could find Sophie’s cell-phone number in the address book and read it to Melanie. But nobody picked up.

“Okay,” she said, turning back to Dan, “next question: Why was your snitch up here trying to open the trap in Benson’s car?”

“I wondered that myself. Why drive all the way to Buttfuck just for a couple of guns and some cash? They got plenty of that stuff in Bushwick. He musta been looking for something else.”

“Who the hell is this guy anyway?”

Her cell phone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” Dan said.

She answered it, hoping it would be Sophie calling back to tell her all was well.

“Hello?” she said.

“Melanie? Butch Brennan.”

“Butch! Are you still at the hospital? I’m just sick over what happened to Amanda.”

“No, we wrapped up a while ago. The bodies were discovered first thing this morning, couldn’t’ve been more than an hour or two after it happened. Real clean MO this time. One shot each, smack in the middle of the forehead.”

“Did you recover the bullets?”

“Yeah, in fact we got preliminary ballistics already. Gives us a ninety-nine percent probability the bullets were fired by the gun that killed Jed Benson. I’ll have final confirmation in a couple days. But it looks like the same killer.”

“No surprise there,” she said, then held the phone away and placed her hand over the mouthpiece. “Butch Brennan,” she told Dan. “He says the bullets that killed Amanda and Bill Flanagan came from the same gun that killed Benson. Presumably Slice’s.”

“But, hey, Melanie,” Butch called.

She put the phone back to her ear. “Yeah?”

“Why I’m calling is about your message last night. You know, about those latents on the accelerant can? The ones come back to Rommie Ramirez?”

“Oh, yes, right. What can you tell me about that?”

“Are you alone?”

“No.” She forced herself to keep her face blank, not to look over at Dan. She cupped the phone closer to her ear so Dan couldn’t hear Butch’s end.

“Who you with, O’Reilly?” Butch asked.

“Yes.”

“Look, nothing against O’Reilly. But I’d keep this to myself for now if I were you. Till you follow up and check it out more.”

“Of course,” she said.

“I never been one to drop a dime on another cop. O’Reilly’s an organization man, and he don’t like guys ratting each other out either. This is real sensitive information.”

“I understand,” she said. Dan was listening intently to her end of the call, but she didn’t think he could hear Butch.

“Here’s the deal, okay? No way Ramirez’s prints got on that can legitimately,” Butch said. “It couldn’t have happened when Ramirez was working the crime scene. You see, my boys got to the scene first, before any other cops. The initial call came from the fire department. Ramirez only showed up afterwards. Frankly, I have no idea who the hell called him, but it wasn’t us.”

“So what does all that mean, Butch?”

“We had total control of that crime scene before Ramirez ever set foot in it. We already collected the can before he got there. If those are really his prints, maybe he thinks he can explain them away, but I gotta think they were there from before.”

“Before when?”

“Before. Like during the crime. Unless the fingerprint report is wrong, Ramirez was there when Benson was killed.”

“WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?” DAN ASKED when she hung up.

She’d never been so aware of the muscles in her face. How could she arrange her expression so she didn’t look like she was in complete shock?

She met Dan’s gaze. “Oh, just ballistics stuff,” she said, trying to sound casual.

Dan’s eyes bored into hers. She marveled once again at their exquisite clarity. The eyes of an innocent man. They demanded the truth, made her feel treacherous for deceiving him. She told herself it was merely a physical thing, that she shouldn’t be swayed by it.

“You’re lying, I can tell,” he said. “Are you holding something back from me on our investigation?”

“Of course not,” she said, but her voice came out small and uncertain.

He smashed the heel of his hand on the steering wheel, making her jump.

“What was that for?” she said, annoyed. If he was going to act threatening, she would feel no compunction about misleading him. But he looked over at her with terrible hurt in his face.

“I can’t believe you just looked me in the eye and lied to me,” he said. “I thought we trusted each other. I thought we had something, that we were a team.”

“Hey, pal, let me tell you something,” she said, anger coursing through her veins. “Team is a two-way street. Who’s the one who won’t give up the name of his informant? Who’s the one with his own agenda to protect? On the day you come clean with me, you’ll be justified in acting self-righteous. But today you’re out of line.”

He looked back at the road, shaking his head, whistling through his teeth.

“Well?” she said.

“You’re tougher than you look, you know that?”

“Never doubt it.”