Edge

Chapter 7

THIRTY MINUTES LATER-IT was about half past noon-I was eyeing a beige car some distance behind us, moving at about our speed, as we cruised along surface roads in Prince William County, a place with a multiple personality. The populace included politicos, business people, farmers, proud rednecks, entry-level strivers and plenty of recent immigrants.

Most of the meth in the Northern Virginia area got cooked in PW.

I couldn’t tell the make or model of the car but was well aware that it had made the same turn we had a couple of miles back, a pointless trip down a bleak, blue-collar side street, a shortcut to nowhere. You either lived on Heavenly Lane or you detoured along it to see if somebody was trailing you.

Whoever was in the beige car didn’t live there; it was still behind us.

Light sedan. No year, no make, no model…

I guessed that Loving had probably switched wheels. Yet it was possible that he would keep the same car… because it wasn’t what we’d expect. I debated but decided not to radio for assistance, not yet; again, I didn’t want to call attention to us.

I’d just keep an eye on our beige shadow.

The Kesslers were calmer now, not much, but some. In the front passenger seat Ryan was playing lookout and Maree’s pendulum had swung eerily from hysterical back to cute and coy. She kept calling me “Tour Guide,” which I found more irritating than her panicked screaming a half hour before. Joanne had gone into withdrawal again and was staring blankly out the side window. I wondered if she’d always been this timid or if the incident at the deli six years ago-facing her own death and seeing Ryan and the owners shot-had affected her fundamentally. The degree of Joanne’s emotional state might have been extreme but the frame of mind itself wasn’t. The response of principals when a lifter or hitter is after them often follows the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Joanne’s detachment was a form of denial.

Once we’d sped out of the Kesslers’ neighborhood, via an evasive route, Joanne had said only two things. First, she’d made the accurate observation that at least her stepdaughter and Bill Carter were safe, since it was obvious where Loving and any partners had been hiding. Then she offered the speculation that it made sense that Teddy Knox’s wife was all right too. If Loving had killed her, that would lessen the leverage-the edge-he’d have over Teddy to discourage him not to testify against him. That was a possibility, yes. It was also possible, however, that Loving didn’t care what Teddy knew and could testify to and he’d just killed the wife for convenience. That was my opinion but I said nothing.

Ryan asked me to call Freddy and find out if the wife was all right, but it was possible that he, Garcia and the other agents-if they were alive and functioning-had engaged Loving or were in pursuit and I didn’t want to distract them. Freddy would call when he had something to say. I told Ryan this and he nodded, though he seemed irritated I wouldn’t make the call. He returned to his impromptu surveillance.

I made a sudden turn into a Burger King parking lot and paused.

Startling me, Maree said quickly, “Hey, can I escape for a minute? There’s a pay phone.”

“No. Stay in the vehicle.”

“Please?” Sounding like a teenager begging for a trip to the mall.

“No,” I repeated.

“But it wouldn’t be traced or anything. Really, I know all about it.”

“About what?” her sister asked.

“Surveillance. I saw this episode on NCIS? Spies use pay phones to be safe. Off the grid. That’s what they say.”

“Sorry, no calls,” I said.

“Oh, you’re no fun. I demand a lawyer!” She fell into a juvenile pout. It irritated me all the more and I ignored her.

I waited for the beige car to pass us. Which it didn’t do. After ten minutes, I returned to the road and sped up, trying to catch the lights, incurring a horn or two. An extended middle finger, as well. But we saw no beige cars.

My hands-free announced Freddy was calling.

At last…

I asked, “Your guys in the car out front, they’re okay?”

“Yep. Battered. Should’ve had their belts on. They learned their lesson.”

“And how about the shooting at the school?” I’d believed it was fake but I wasn’t sure. I would have been troubled by casualties, certainly; I was, however, more interested to learn if false alarms were a technique Henry Loving was adding to his repertoire. Something else to file away about him.

“You were right, son. Three-dollar bill. Nothing at all. But it kept sixty troopers and agents busy for close to an hour.”

“Okay, Loving?”

“Got clean away. No leads. No vehicle.”

“Anybody see anything beige that was there and then wasn’t? Sedan.”

“Beige? No, and we canvassed. But one of my guys across the street got a look at his partner. In the side yard, the trees, where Garcia was covering. Tall, thin, sandy hair, wearing a dark green windbreaker or army jacket.”

“Weapon?”

“Black autoloader. Couldn’t tell what kind. He was running out of the woods fast, after you left.”

We were past densely populated areas and were surrounded by fields and houses and some commercial lots with businesses limping along or abandoned to banks. I now eased up the speed of the big SUV steadily.

“Did Teddy Knox ID Loving?”

“Yep.”

Abe Fallow had refused to use that trite line about making an ass of you and me with careless assumptions but he beat into our heads the same principle. Though Loving might have been identified in West Virginia as the man hired to target Kessler, we’d had no independent proof that in fact he was the attacker. Until now.

Freddy added, “We also got some prints on the tape he’d used on Knox and his wife. Just a partial but it’s him.”

My principals, I could see or sense, were all staring at me, wanting information.

“The Knoxes?” I sure didn’t want to deliver the news that the wife was dead.

“Both’ll be okay, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It is.”

I told the Kesslers this.

“Oh.” Joanne exhaled and lowered her head. She whispered, “Thank you.” The household hadn’t seemed religious but I got the impression she herself might be and was sending aloft a prayer.

“And?” I asked Freddy, meaning: Did either of them say anything more?

“Other than the ID, squat. We could put ’em in a room with speakers blaring wall-to-wall Captain and Tennille and they wouldn’t talk.”

“Impression?” I asked, ignoring the pointless quip.

“They really don’t know diddle. We could maybe find out what he’s wearing but how helpful would that be? I submit, not very.”

I asked him if the weapon in Knox’s hand could lead us anywhere.

He gave a sour laugh. “Stolen years ago. Evidence Response’s been over, under and through the car, the yard, compost heaps and recycling bins in the whole goddamn neighborhood. The woods where the partner was spotted too. No leads. Zero, zip. They don’t even know where Loving and his boyfriend parked. Not a single fucking tire tread or fiber. And here I swore he couldn’t be there for another couple of hours. Did I get this one wrong or what?”

I believed I had the answer to Loving’s early arrival in Fairfax. “I’m guessing he got an edge on the clerk at the motel in West Virginia and had him say Loving’d checked out at eight but he’d really left around four or five this morning.”

“You win the cee-gar, Corte. All he had to do was mention the name of the clerk’s daughter and what middle school she was in.”

Loving did the same amount of homework as Claire duBois did. And, as I had years before, I felt a perverse admiration for his methodology and meticulousness.

I continued, “But the light-colored sedan was his, legit, because there were other witnesses at the motel who’d seen it earlier.”

“Yup squared.” He then added that the Charleston field office had gone through the room carefully. “Nothing.”

I looked behind me and then executed another series of evasive turns.

No beige car. Nothing out of the ordinary. Locals doing what they did on Saturday. Driving to stores, fast food restaurants for a treat after errands, movies, kids’ soccer games and tae kwon do lessons.

“What do you think, Freddy? Real or a diversion?” I couldn’t decide what Loving’s strategy at the house had been. Did he really want to kill us and take Ryan and his family hostage? Or was it a feint? Did he have something else in mind, something I couldn’t figure out?

Freddy mused, “Real?… I’d say so. I think he wanted to get in fast, get Ryan and get out. He could’ve pulled it off too. If we’d gone out the back, like he wanted, that’d be it. They’d be writing our eulogies right now and Kessler’d have bamboo under his fingernails. Or more likely his wife’s… Oh, and I’ll give you my opinion about the sister, son. She gives blondes a bad name.”

“Next step?”

“Find the primary.” I’d told Ryan that he’d possibly been targeted by mistake but I didn’t believe it. Henry Loving wouldn’t make an error like that. I wanted to find who’d hired him and what information Ryan had that was so important to him… or them.

I told Freddy I’d start looking into that when we landed and I disconnected the call.

As soon as I did, my phone buzzed and I listened to the numbers read off by the caller ID voice. It was the federal prosecutor, Jason Westerfield. He would have heard the news-that his hero cop, a star witness in a case that didn’t exist yet, had nearly been kidnapped amid a shootout in Fairfax County. Westerfield was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to at the moment. I didn’t hit ANSWER.

I noted Ryan was staring into the side-view mirror.

I said, “Detective Kessler?”

“Call me Ryan.”

“Okay, Ryan. Thanks for covering our flank at the house. Were you ever SWAT?”

“Never. Just worked the street. You pick things up.” He was subdued-he’d come close to shooting his neighbor. He continued to look behind us. He kneaded the grip of his revolver the same way I held tight to the wheel.

The atmosphere in the car was somber, quiet. I was calmer now too, reflecting on the operation, trying to step into Henry Loving’s mind and determine his next strategy. I noted that in a relatively short period of time he’d made a clandestine trip from another state, found a trusted partner, obtained weapons, successfully masked his travel to the target location, conducted thorough surveillance of the area where his victim lived, targeted the most knowledgeable neighbors and attempted a risky daylight assault after calling in a fake school shooting to divert backup. He had executed a “friendly feint”-getting one of your allies to assault you, either because he’s mistaken or because he’s been forced to, while the real opponent comes at you from another direction. He wasn’t afraid to give up weapons to a potential risk-Teddy Knox.

This analysis was helpful but, like looking over a chessboard in the early stages of a game, gave me only a flavor of his plan; there was still an infinite variety of strategies he could choose.

Joanne was shaking her head, clutching her purse closely, which I’d also noticed happened frequently with principals. Familiar objects gave comfort. She said to me, in a soft voice, “If you hadn’t been there…” She was, I imagined, speaking in general of the family’s fate but then realized, as I did, that the comment was also a criticism of her husband, who’d resisted our help at first, and she fell silent on the subject. If Ryan noticed, he didn’t react.

He looked toward me a moment later. “I want to call Amanda.”

“Sure. Just don’t mention our location.”

He pulled out the cold phone. I explained the unit and he placed the call. He got through at once and, keeping his voice completely calm, asked about her trip. Finally he explained that there’d been a little problem at the house. Whatever she heard on the news stories, everybody was fine.

“Little problem,” Maree said and laughed cynically. “That’s what the captain of the Titanic said.” The young woman opened her large shoulder bag and pulled out and began sorting black-and-white photographs. Good, I reflected. Keep her busy. Count cows. Look for out-of-state plates.

Ryan handed the phone to his wife. Joanne too downplayed the incident to her stepdaughter, though it seemed more difficult for her to put on a cheery face. A pause as she listened. “I don’t know why, honey. We’ll find out. Mr. Corte… Agent Corte’s going to find out…” She listened some more and they fell into a meaningless conversation about high school, some friends, a ski vacation they had planned for Christmas.

I made a fast turn. Another scan in the mirror; nobody was following. I saw too Maree wince and I thought she’d been hurt in the escape. But then I recalled seeing an Ace bandage wrapped around her arm. She rolled up her sleeve and examined it.

“Maree, are you all right?” I asked.

“Just bumped my arm last week.”

“Is it bad?” I sounded sympathetic but I was asking because I needed to know if the injury would affect my guard job. Lifters, like wild animals, go right for the wounded. Breaks take at least six weeks to heal.

“No. The orthopod says it’s just a bad hematoma. That’s a great word. Sounds so much sexier than ‘bruise.’”

“Hurt much?”

“Some. Not too bad. But I milk it for all it’s worth.” She laughed then explained, “I was shooting some images in downtown D.C. and this asshole on his mobile knocked into me and I slipped down some steps. He didn’t even apologize, not really. It was like, oh, what’re you doing taking pictures when people’re trying to get to real jobs?”

I wasn’t interested in the source of the injury, just her state of wellness, but Maree continued, loud and indignant, “I couldn’t take pictures for a few days afterward, I was so dizzy. I should’ve gotten his name. And sued him.” Her voice faded. Then she looked my way. “Hey, Mr. Tour Guide? Can I call my friend? Please? Pretty please?” Singsong again.

“Who?”

“The guy I was going to be staying with. Before the Terminator screwed up my plans. I was going to meet him at six. If I don’t show up, he’ll be worried.”

Joanne asked, “Mar, don’t you think it’s better if you don’t? Andrew’ll figure it out. I mean, Agent Corte didn’t want you to call from that pay phone.”

“No,” I said, “that was just because I didn’t want to spend any time there. But if you want to call, go ahead. It’s not a bad idea. We don’t want him getting curious and coming to the house, now that Loving knows where it is.”

I handed her my cold phone. “Just keep it short. Don’t say anything at all about where we are or what’s happened. Understand?”

“Sure.”

With that, Maree dropped the giddy persona and suddenly grew reluctant-because, I guessed, she realized the conversation would be overheard by us all. Or maybe she just really didn’t want to change plans. Finally she called. I glanced into the mirror and saw that her shoulders were knotted with tension. After a moment, though, her body language changed-she relaxed-and I deduced she’d got Andrew’s voice mail. Her voice became that of a teenager again: “Hey, it’s me… Um, I feel so bad. I really, really want to see you but I can’t come over after all… Like, something’s come up. Kind of serious. With the family. It’s totally important, so I can’t make it tonight. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Okay, have a good day. I’m sorry.”

She disconnected and handed the phone back to me. Her hand seemed to be trembling. She asked Joanne something about plans for Thanksgiving, a non sequitur, and they had a conversation that I stopped listening to.

Traffic thinned and I sped up-but now that we weren’t being pursued I kept the needle no more than six miles an hour over the limit. My organization doesn’t use government license plates-all the vehicles were registered to one of a dozen corporations, commercial and nonprofit-so if a cop were to speed-gun us, he’d pull us over, which could be inconvenient and dangerous.

A whisper from Ryan: “Ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“It was two of them there at the house? Loving and his partner?”

“Probably. Could have been three or even more but Loving’s profile is working mostly with one partner.”

“Well, it’s just that… there were five agents there, plus me. We could’ve taken him.”

He was thinking of the plan I’d laid out earlier, to nail Loving.

I gave him a knowing look, then back to the road. “The agents in the car? They were out of commission.”

“True. But…”

I continued, “I considered a takedown but it wasn’t an advantageous playing field. I was worried he’d involve Mrs. Knox or maybe some other hostages from the neighborhood. He puts innocents into play all the time. It’s one of his trademarks.”

He said slowly, “I guess. I didn’t think about that.”

Ryan went back to riding shotgun. I glanced his way and concluded that he had no clue he was being conned.

As my mentor taught me and I teach duBois, you always ask yourself: What’s my goal and what’s the most efficient way to achieve it? Nothing else matters. That’s the rule in the business world, medicine, science, academia. And it’s the rule in the protection field, which is a business like any other, Abe Fallow regularly had said. Frustration, hurt feelings, vindictiveness, elation, pride… they’re all irrelevant.

You disappear. You don’t have feelings, you don’t have lust, you don’t get insulted. You’re nothing. You’re vapor.

Part of being efficient as a shepherd was calmly picking the best strategy to get your principals to do what you wanted. Some you have to order around; they’re more comfortable that way. Some you reason with.

Others you just plain trick.

The story I’d given Ryan Kessler about having him help me capture Henry Loving was nonsense. Though rooted in the truth-of course, I wanted Loving collared-it was just a strategy I was playing to win Ryan over. I’d decided on my approach after meeting him and learning, from duBois, details of the incident at the deli, from which he’d emerged a hero. The rescue of the customers and the ensuing love story were in themselves irrelevant to me; what was important was how the event had affected Ryan. A formerly active man, he was now off the street he loved, with a bad leg and relegated to investigating financial crimes, mostly from a desk, I supposed, and poring over balance sheets. I needed to play to where his heart was: his macho, cowboy side.

So I’d given him the role of partner. Since I’d make sure he’d never have to act out that part, you could make the argument that my strategy was condescending, even mean. In a way it was.

But: What’s the goal, what’s the most efficient way to achieve it?

I had to make him believe that I couldn’t take Loving on my own. I thought I’d been overacting but apparently he’d bought the whole story. This trick-exploiting the desires and weaknesses of the principals to get them to do as we wish-was called bait-and-switch. Abe Fallow had taught me the technique. It was, of course, inconceivable to enlist a principal to help us engage a hostile but the difference between the Detective Ryan Kessler I’d met at the front door just an hour and a half ago and the man sitting beside me was significant.

Just then I sensed him tense. I glanced in the rearview mirror. The, or a, beige car was behind us once again. It was going about our speed, which was only three miles over the limit now.

Maree saw us both looking backward as much as toward the road ahead. “What?” she asked, her addled voice resurrected as she sat up, eyes wide.

“There was a car that might have been following us earlier. Vanished for a while. It’s back now.”

Ryan was regarding me impatiently.

It was time for a decision.

I made one. Easing off the gas, I slowed, so that the beige car moved closer. Then, glancing behind me, I said firmly, “Go ahead, now! Shoot!”