Hunting Time

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

94

Colter Shaw was in the office of FPD detective Dunfry Kemp.

Significantly fewer file folders were present, with the result that more of the walls showed, and the many stains and scuffs on the brown and green surfaces were far more obvious. On the whole, the place looked better with the buffer of files.

Kemp was looking over his statement, nodding.

Shaw noted that the officer accepted the most important line of dialogue in his performance: “In my judgment, Ms. Parker used only the force necessary to protect her own life and the lives of her daughter and myself.”

Always good to have a version of the script ready, in case a firearm and a body were involved.

The police had turned cooperative.

It seemed that the reluctance to pursue Jon Merritt was due not really to the reputation of the Hero of Beacon Hill, but to the fact that Harmon had a captain and two detectives on his payroll. One of these was Dunfry Kemp’s supervisor, who had assigned him the Merritt case, along with the numerous others to hamper the search for the former cop and his ex-wife and daughter. All with an eye to letting the Merritt murder-suicide proceed with as few glitches as possible.

With those on the take suspended, Kemp was unleashed and he’d turned into quite the efficient law enforcer.

“We’ll need you to testify, Mr. Shaw.”

He nodded.

“Bet you’ve done that before.”

“I have.”

“So you travel around the country looking for rewards, do you?”

“That’s right.”

Kemp seemed intrigued, and Shaw wondered if he was going to ask where to submit his resume. But he said, “You like doing that, why don’t you just join up?”

Regulations and a dreaded desk.

“I like traveling.”

“Well, keep it in mind, sir. Fact is, policing’s the best job in the world.”

“I’ve heard.”

“Prosecutor’ll be in touch.” Kemp slid the statement forward to Shaw, who signed it.

The man then asked, “You heard how he’s doing? Need to talk to him too.”

“Better.”

The individual they were referring to was a prior participant in the incident, someone not expected to make a reappearance.

Frank Villaine.

Who was not dead after all.

The Twins had arrived at the man’s house just as he was leaving, intending to torture him into telling where Allison and Hannah had gone. They hadn’t expected him to be armed and he let loose with his Glock and fled into the woods. One of the Twins caught him in the back with a slug and he went down. They assumed he was dead or soon would be, and then found that they didn’t need his cooperation; they noticed that the GPS in the Mercedes was programmed with his destination: the cabin on Timberwolf Lake.

Villaine had been found by a neighbor that evening and rushed to a hospital. Allison Parker was presently with him.

Shaw rose. The men shook hands.

It was then that his phone hummed with a text. He read the words. Debated only a moment and replied.

He stood on the riverwalk, near the Fourth Street Bridge.

Beneath him the mustard-brown Kenoah muscled past.

Shaw inhaled. Harmon’s toxic cocktails were no longer being dumped into the victimized body of water, and it seemed there’d been an improvement in the odor.

Imagination? Maybe.

He was looking across the river, at the famed tourist draw, the Water Clock — the inspiration for the project that father and daughter had tackled for history class. The model of the attraction that Jon Merritt had built in prison had been recovered from the wrecked Buick and returned to Parker and Hannah. It was still in working order and was now sitting on the mantelpiece of their rental home. He wondered what had become of the bolo.

“Hey there,” came the melodic, Southern-laced voice.

Sonja Nilsson was climbing up a stone stairway from a dock twenty feet below. She’d been conferring with two men on a small craft fitted out with a bristle of scientific equipment.

Shaw nodded a greeting.

The woman was in jeans, a work shirt and a leather jacket, a far cry from the stylish outfit she’d worn when they’d first met in Harmon’s office. An orange safety vest too. Her blond hair was done up in a braid that was then swirled into a careless bun and pinned firmly to the back of her head. Looking for all the world like a Saturday morning shopper in Stockholm, about to stop for a coffee. Minus the vest, of course.

“How’s your Range Rover?”

“A couple of weeks. Quite the long pause when I told the insurance examiner that the cause of the damage was an improvised explosive device.”

Shaw peered down at the Kenoah. “And the water quality?”

The workers had been wielding yellow Geiger counters.

“We’re good. Negligible from the point of the spill to here. Downstream, it’s negative.”

So the radiation was no longer a threat.

He glanced at her face and noted her scanning about them. He had just done the same. Her jacket was partly open and he could see the grip of her weapon.

Their eyes met.

Ah, that green... Nature, or not?

He said, “Probably we’re good.” Referring to risk assessment.

True.

Nilsson would always be cautious about being on the watchlist, thanks to the larcenous government contractor. As for individuals involved in the HEP situation, though, there were none left to pose a threat.

At Deep Woods Lake, Jon Merritt had killed Dominic Ryan and one of his Irish crew. The other, wounded, was in jail and fully prepared to gab.

Tan Jacket — Desmond Sawicki — was gone, of course.

And so was his partner, Moll Frain, the man Allison Parker had set free. There was no danger of his making a shocking act-three appearance, like the supposedly dead henchman at the end of a bad movie. He was found this morning in his workshop on the outskirts of Ferrington, dead by his own hand. He was sitting in a chair made of aluminum but painted to look like rich wood. He himself had decorated it. Apparently he was quite the artist. Who would have thought?

“Is HEP shut down?” Shaw asked.

“For a spell.”

The Mason-Dixon phrase, and appropriate accent, coming from the mouth of a Swedish fashion model both jarred and was oddly appealing.

She continued, “We’ve got EPA, NRC and AEC inspectors on the way. But—” She glanced down at the boat. “They’ll find the same things we just did. And we’ll get the green light to start up again.”

Then Shaw told himself: Stop it.

Referring not to his government regulators or corporate operations but Shaw’s own debate about her eye color.

“Who’ll replace him?” he asked.

“The board’ll be meeting to make a pick. There’s talk that Allison Parker’d be a good choice. No management experience but she knows the product better than anybody. And” — a smile — “the business of atomic energy’s been a man’s world forever. It’d be good for a female to be the face of HEP. But nobody’s asking my opinion. I’m like you, Colter. Just hired help.”

Shaw noted, across the street, an FPD Crime Scene van parked in front of a gloomy alleyway on Manufacturers Row. A plain-clothed detective was interviewing some men who appeared to be homeless.

“What happened there?”

“Drug deal gone south, I heard.”

Shaw said, “Thought maybe that serial killer resurfaced. The Street Cleaner.”

“No, she’s still at large.”

Shaw’s brows furrowed.

“Oh, didn’t you know? It’s a woman. So says the DNA. Rare. But we girls can get up to bad business too, you know.”

Shaw laughed. For a brief time, he’d wondered if Jon Merritt himself might be the Street Cleaner, taking his job as Vice officer one step over the line. But he’d given the theory only thirty percent and then discarded it entirely.

“What about the bait?” he asked. “The fake S.I.T. trigger?”

“Went live last night. In Dubai. That’s an international hub. It’ll be going elsewhere. We’ll find it.”

Then Nilsson was saying, “Now. About my text.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“We owe you some money.”

He’d forgotten that finding and guarding Allison Parker and her daughter was a job. The man hiring him was in jail, as was the keeper of the petty cash purse, Marianne Keller. Shaw supposed, though, that there was somebody in accounting who could arrange payment.

But Nilsson had another agenda.

“How’d you like to triple it?”

“Hm.”

“I’m in touch with somebody in Interpol.”

Shaw knew the organization. It was not, as many people thought, a law enforcement agency itself. It was an intelligence clearinghouse sharing information about crime and criminals among overseas law enforcement departments.

“They caught some intel from a source in Eastern Europe. Money went into a secret account in Siberia.”

Though obviously not all that secret.

“The recipient was supposed to steal a proprietary component from a manufacturing company in the U.S. The Midwest.”

“In the nuclear reactor business, by any chance?”

She continued, “The thief blew the job. But his bosses gave him a second chance. If he couldn’t get the part this time, he was to — quote — ‘significantly disrupt’ the company. He would not be given another opportunity.”

“Abe Lincoln.”

She frowned.

Shaw said, “Lemerov.”

“Right.”

He pictured the lanky man and recalled the meeting in the motel not far from where the two of them stood now.

But don’t pat back too fast, Mr. Colter Shaw. More rounds to come. More rounds to come...

Tom Pepper had said that the Russian had been deported — put onto a plane bound for London — but had then disappeared.

She asked, “You read military history?”

“Some.”

“I’m fascinated by tacticians. I think the top five are Stonewall Jackson, Erwin Rommel, Sun Tzu, Alexander the Great and Hannibal Barca — that’s, yes, the Carthaginian Hannibal.” She shook her head. “His command at the Battle of the Trebia? The Carthaginians lost a few thousand men, the Romans more than twenty thousand — half their army.”

Both their eyes were on the Water Clock.

She said, “You strike me as a bit of one yourself. I’d like to hire you to step into the shoes of our Russian. Figure out how he’d strike the company. Where, when, how. And help me stop him.” She cocked her head. “Legally, of course.” Her smile appended the word probably.

“So what do you say, Shaw? Until you have to hit the road again?”

He turned to her, just as a cloud parted and her face was bathed in brilliance.

Suddenly, the answer was clear:

She wasn’t wearing contacts.

95

Colter Shaw pulled his Avis sedan, a not-bad black Malibu, into the driveway of Allison Parker’s rental house on Maple View Avenue.

Hannah was sitting cross-legged on the porch, rocking slowly in a hanging swing, wearing jeans, a pale green knit stocking cap, and a bulky maroon sweatshirt whose sleeves were far too long. The girl was waving goodbye to a lanky teenage boy, who had lengthy blond hair and was dressed similarly to her. Like a natural athlete, he dropped his skateboard, hopped on and wove down the sidewalk balletically, then out of sight.

Kyle. Wasn’t that the name? From the look he shot her upon departing, Shaw assigned him a slot far higher than ten percent.

He collected the bag beside him and climbed from the car.

“Hey, Mr. Shaw!” Hannah smiled. Then surprised him by climbing from the swing, stepping forward and hugging him hard. He reciprocated gently.

“Mom’s at the hospital. Think she’ll be here soon.”

Shaw said, “I know. You doing okay?”

“Yeah, it’s cool.” Spoken more like somebody who’d just dodged the flu, not been the target of professional killers.

They continued onto the porch.

He handed her the bag.

She extracted the slim book that was inside.

“Oh, hey. What you were telling me about.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance.

“Dope! Thanks.” Her face grew earnest. “I’ll read it. Not like the way I tell my teachers I’ll read something. I mean I’ll really read it. Oh, hey, Mr. Shaw, there’s something I want to show you.” She picked up a notebook sitting on the swing. It was nearly identical to the ones that he used on his reward jobs. She offered it to him. “I wrote a poem.”

He read the lines.

Colter Shaw, a man of percentages and careful assessments, not a man of the arts, nonetheless felt his pulse accelerate with every word. “It’s good. Very good.”

“Do you like it? Really?” It was clear his judgment was important.

He nodded.

“I’ve been working on it nonstop.”

“The meter, it’s good. The rhythm.”

Her eyes shone. “I tried to get that down. I didn’t want it to rhyme. That’s lame. You know, singsongy.”

“Like your selfies — unconventional.”

Beneath her modest smile, the girl was beaming.

A car pulled to the curb. The brakes squealed.

Instinctively Shaw reached for his hip.

A pointless gesture as he had no weapon to reach for.

Pointless too because the driver was Allison Parker. She climbed from her 4Runner and walked toward Shaw and Hannah, limping only a little. She winced slightly as she climbed the stairs to the porch.

He lifted an eyebrow.

“It’s good. Some physical therapy for a few weeks.”

“How’s Mr. Villaine?” Hannah asked.

“He’ll be fine. They’re discharging him tomorrow. I was thinking he should stay here, with us, for a few days, until he recuperates.”

“Definitely,” Hannah said.

Parker then told her, “Your grandmother Ruth’s flying in to TRA in an hour. We’ll go pick her up.”

“And Noonie?”

Merritt’s mother, Shaw guessed.

“She’ll be here tonight. You’ll have to sleep on the couch.” A smile. “I saw that look.”

But the girl did not appear seriously put out. And her face brightened when Shaw said to Parker, “You know your daughter’s quite the poet.”

“Han’s a woman of many talents: photography, poetry.” She eyed the girl. “And differential equations.”

“Mom...”

Parker nodded at the notebook in the girl’s hand. Hannah started to show it to her, but Parker said, “No, Han. You read it. Out loud.”

“Uhm, I don’t know.” Was the girl blushing?

“Please.”

After a moment. “I guess.” She bent to the notebook.

“Oh, my, Han. It rocks. Just beautiful.”

“You like it?”

“Really.” Parker hugged the girl.

Hannah stared at the page and then asked in a soft voice, nearly a whisper, “Do you think he’ll hear it?”

Shaw asked, “ ‘He’?”

“Yeah, my dad. You know, who I wrote it for.”

Oh...

“I’m going to read it at his memorial service. You believe in that kind of stuff, Mr. Shaw?”

“What?”

“You know, that he might be there at the church? Like a ghost? I saw this show on TV, that spirits sometimes hang around after we pass. So we can say goodbye.”

He said nothing about his views on the occult, which he’d spent virtually no time considering. The subject does not appear in the survivalist canon. He told her, “Some things we just can’t know.”

Hannah took this as validation and nodded.

She stuffed the notebook back into her book bag, along with the Emerson. Her eyes went wide suddenly. She said to him, “Oh, and I have something for you!” She bounded off the swing, leaving it to rock vigorously, and pushed inside, the screen door slamming loudly behind her.

Shaw said, “She’s doing okay, it looks like.”

But Parker didn’t respond. Her eyes on him, she was offering a shallow smile. “I’m sorry.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“You thought the poem was about you?”

He was that transparent? “We connected at the lake house.”

“A mom, a dad, they live in their children’s souls. No one else admitted to the inner sanctum. Whatever the bullshit, the anger, the words between them, they finally let us come back in, for good or bad. And Freud got one thing right: the tug’s just a bit stronger with mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters.” Parker glanced at the bag, where the notebook containing the poem rested. She smiled. “I got snubbed too, you’ll notice.”

Then Parker said, with a schoolmarm’s firm tone, “But don’t think what you’ve got with her’s superficial. It’s real and important. You affected her. What you taught her, and showed her, that’ll stick.”

Before Shaw could respond, Hannah appeared, holding a small brown paper bag in her hand.

With a grin, she handed it to him. “Here.”

He opened it. Inside was a jar of cayenne pepper.

“Until you get your gun fixed.”

He laughed. He said goodbye to both of them and started for the car.

Hannah called, “Hey, Mr. Shaw, I thought up another rule.”

He turned. “And what’s that?”

“Never lose touch.”

He gave her a nod and climbed into the rental, then pulled onto Maple View, the GPS directing him along the route that would take him eventually to the red-brick enclave of Harmon Energy Products.