The Killing Kind

39

As Hendricks raised a hand to close his dead friend’s eyes, there was a banging on the door. He rose from his crouch beside Lester’s wheelchair and headed for the window. Parting the blinds slightly, he saw a pair of unmarked black sedans parked just outside-one blocking the alley through which he’d entered. Two men in dark suits were at the door. Two more hung back a little-weapons drawn, eyes darting all around. FBI, he guessed.

He ran into the bathroom and shut the door. It was dark but for the streetlight through the window. The window frame was painted shut, so he wrapped his sweatshirt around his hand and knocked out the lower pane. He climbed out as the men out front kicked in the door and stormed the place. Then he strolled as nonchalantly as he could around the corner-his mind reeling, his stomach in knots-and plucked his cell phone from his pocket, punching in a number from memory.

“Hello?” The word was high and thin and tinged with fear.

“Hello, Edgar.”

“You,” Edgar Morales spat. “Do you have any idea what my involvement with you has put me through? Some psychotic motherfucker damn near killed me in my own bed because of you! I’ve barely slept since, and when I do, it’s with a gun under my pillow. I’m goddamn terrified he might come back.”

You wouldn’t have been alive long enough for Engelmann to visit you if it weren’t for me, Hendricks thought but didn’t say. Instead, he said, “Actually, Edgar, that man’s precisely why I’m calling. See, I’ve got a bead on where he’s headed, and I aim to deal with him-permanently. But he’s got a head start on me, which means I’m gonna need a favor.”

“Yeah?” asked Morales. “The fuck is that?”

“You own a fleet of charter jets, don’t you?”

There was a pause on Morales’s end, as if he were weighing a decision. Then he sighed and said, “I’ve got planes on ready at every airport in the country. Just tell me where you need to go.”

It took eleven minutes from the moment Thompson put out the order to get eyes on all their Lester Meyerses for the Portland, Maine, office to call her back. Turns out, Portland’s Lester Meyers was the Lester Meyers they were looking for. Emphasis on was.

Seems he ran a bar in some touristy section by the water. The first agents on the scene found the place empty, save for Lester Meyers’s mangled corpse. They would have assumed him dead for hours but for the fact that he was still warm. Only a coroner could say for sure, but it seemed they’d missed saving him by minutes at most-assuming he could have been saved at all. Given the pictures of his injuries they’d forwarded to Thompson’s cell, that was one hell of an assumption.

How he’d managed to survive the trauma he’d endured for as long as he had, Thompson hadn’t a clue. But one thing she did know was Meyers wasn’t L’Engle’s big play. If he’d meant to use Meyers as bait to draw Hendricks out, he wouldn’t have tortured him and left him for dead-he would have taken Meyers and left behind a grisly message like the one on the ambulance for Hendricks to follow. No, the evidence suggested the killer had extracted information from Meyers, which meant he had bigger bait in mind-and that Meyers himself was the message.

Thompson had no idea whether Hendricks had received that message, but still, she thrilled at the prospect of catching the two of them at once. First, though, there was the matter of discovering what it was L’Engle was onto.

Whatever it was, it must be somewhere in Hendricks’s file, hidden beneath the black redaction bars.

Thompson scrolled through her cell-phone contacts, dialed up an old friend in the DOD.

“Charlie Thompson. I never would have guessed I’d hear from you today. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Thompson said. “Did I wake you?”

“Nah, I was up,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“Actually, Diane, I need a favor. Got a file on one of your guys by the name of Michael Hendricks. Real cool customer, from what little I’m allowed to see. File says he’s dead, only it turns out, not so much.”

“What do you need, Charlie?”

“Someone’s hunting this guy. Someone bad. I think he’s got a bead on some major bait to draw him out. Guy’s an orphan-no siblings, either-so I’m thinking it’s a partner. He wasn’t married, so this partner could be male or female.”

“And you need my help in finding said partner?”

“Yeah. Anything you can give me. His death benefits. Where his checks were sent. Whatever you can think of.”

“Files like these are sealed for a reason, Charlie. I do this, I could lose my job.”

“You don’t do this, that partner of his might just lose their life.”

Diane sighed. “Hell,” she said. “I never could say no to you. Keep your phone handy. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes. And Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s good to hear from you. We should grab a drink sometime. Catch up.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. But she knew they never would.