Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) Page 11
“No, but what—”
“Just turn here, okay?”
Bender turns onto the street. “What are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” she says, scanning from side to side. “But why would Flint’s mother get all sentimental about her wedding to Flint’s dad? I mean, she’s re-married, so what’s up with that?”
Bender drives along slowly while he studies one side and she studies the other. “I don’t see anything. Besides, Mrs. Pratt has already been investigated, and I’m sure the bureau has—”
“Look there!” She jabs a finger toward a building and Bender hits the brakes.
“Church Street Storage?”
“Yes, and see the street signs? We’re at the corner of Church and April. Couldn’t that be code for a wedding date?” She leans far forward, trying to see inside the facility. “I’ll bet they’ve got units big enough for a car.”
He turns into the driveway, saying, “Well now, let’s take a look.”
TWENTY-TWO
Church Street Storage
For the first time since his retirement, Milo Bender could really use a badge.
The scruffy man in charge of the storage facility refuses to show his records to a civilian. He’s within his rights, of course, so Bender has no choice but to excuse himself and call Stuart Cox, who practically bellows, “You’re what? Investigating a lead with that LeClaire girl? Are you kidding me?”
“Calm down and listen. No guarantees, but I think we’ve got something.”
He keeps talking until Cox sees the larger picture.
“All right, Bender, I’ll send an agent. Wait right there while we get a warrant.”
When Bender climbs back into his vehicle, Reeve is biting a knuckle. “This makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m not crazy, right?”
“It makes sense to me. And I’ll tell you what, it must make sense to the bureau, too, or they wouldn’t be scrambling to get a warrant.”
“But what if there’s nothing here?”
“Welcome to Investigation 101: Waiting to be wrong.” He drums his fingers on the dashboard, then says, “Excuse me, but I need to call Yvonne,” and he reaches across to get his cell phone out of the glove box.
Her eyes go wide. “That’s your cell phone? Can you even text on that thing?”
Bender gives her a look. “You sound just like my son.”
“Then your son is right, because you clearly need a new phone.”
“I don’t need to text, and I don’t need another fancy gadget.”
“You can’t text? Seriously?”
“Sure, I can, but they make the keypad so damn small, and with these fat fingers?” He wiggles his extra-large digits for emphasis. “Besides, I don’t need to text. I’m retired.”
He phones his wife to tell her they’ll be late for dinner. And he cringes when he has to admit that he forgot to bring his evening dose of pills with him. Yvonne scolds him, like she always does, before promising to have a nice dinner ready for them when they arrive.
While they wait, Reeve pulls out her smart phone, which seems to keep her busy while Bender thinks about the things he has no intention of sharing, things that he can’t get out of his head.
While she was out on the basketball court, tromping around in the rain, Bender had made a point of interviewing another patient, a rat-faced guy named Sven, who had apparently been Flint’s closest buddy behind bars. Sven was a fellow sex offender, and Sven and Flint had spent time together in art therapy.
Most of Flint’s drawings had been seized as evidence, but Sven showed Bender two drawings that Flint had given him. Bender recognized the patterns in those drawings and immediately resolved that Reeve would not see them. She doesn’t need to know about Flint’s artwork. It’s bad enough that she’s wearing so much of it on her skin.
He pulls at an ear, worrying that Flint’s artwork reveals a man who is perfecting his designs, a man planning for his next victim.
He glances at Reeve and feels a familiar tug of regret. If he’d found a way to nab Flint, he could have saved her from years of abuse. He was the case agent, the lead investigator, and his failures still pain him far more than any medical condition.
Flint’s name had popped up on a list of potential suspects because of a complaint that was filed against him when he was a student at the University of Washington. Bender had questioned Flint briefly and found nothing. The guy didn’t smell right, but Bender had to follow procedures. So he’d gone through the guy’s trash. He’d parked outside Flint’s house and watched his comings and goings. But Bender had found nothing suspicious, and he’d never been able to rally enough to persuade any judge to issue a warrant. All the while, young Reggie LeClaire had been chained in that monster’s basement.
Yvonne tells him he shouldn’t blame himself, but he can’t help it.
The other thing he’s not going to discuss with Reeve is that Flint’s going to be hard to catch. It’s the methodical criminals who will, given enough time, reveal themselves. But the longer Flint is off his meds, the more peculiar his behavior might become. Their best chance to catch him is long gone, and who knows what his plan will be tomorrow?
It seems a long wait before Bender spots a black SUV coming around the corner. “I’ll bet this is our man,” he tells Reeve.
She stops checking e-mail and puts away her phone as the SUV pulls up. Everyone gets out of their vehicles. They ignore the rain and stand bareheaded as they exchange introductions.
The agent looks fit and serious, as Bender expected, with an unsmiling mouth, a pointy nose, and a prominent shining slope of forehead.
“Pete Blankenship,” the agent says, extending a hand.
Bender shakes his hand, recalling that this is the very same agent who botched Reeve’s first phone interview.
Upon introduction, Blankenship frowns at Reeve. “What are you doing here? I thought you were a student at Berkeley.”
“You haven’t caught Flint yet, have you? I thought you might need some help.”
There’s a brief, clipped exchange between the two, but Bender smooths it over and shepherds them into the manager’s office. It’s a small room with a stale odor. A TV mounted on the wall blares a reality show.
Agent Blankenship takes charge, showing the manager his badge and the warrant. The manager, a scruffy man with heavy jowls, makes a show of rolling his eyes before complying. While he’s pulling up the records on an old desktop computer, Reeve steps over and switches off the TV.
The man looks up sharply, and she raises her eyebrows, as if daring him to say anything.
He looks back at the computer and says to Blankenship, “Yeah, so what time frame are you looking for?”
Blankenship peers over the manager’s shoulder at the screen. “The past couple years.”
Reeve compresses her lips to a thin line, and Bender knows what she’s thinking, but figures it’s best to let the agent proceed at his own pace.
While Blankenship and the manager scroll through names, Reeve stands off to one side, massaging her left hand and studying a chart on the wall. Bender steps up beside her, and she points toward the row of twelve-by-fifteen foot units. “Those are the biggest ones,” she says. “Building three.”
It takes a few minutes for Blankenship to check the list for matches to any of Flint’s known associates. No surprise, he comes up empty.
“How about we target the units large enough for a car?” Bender says. “And may I suggest focusing on those rented within, say, the past year?”
The scruffy manager scrolls and grumbles and comes up with four units. One is promptly ruled out because it’s vacant. “These other three are locked,” he states, as if that finishes the conversation.
Blankenship scowls. “We’ve got a warrant. Have you got a bolt cutter?”
“Man, I hate to do that.”
“I’ve got one,” Bender volunteers.
Shooting him a sour look, the manager says, “Hold on, I’ll do it. Shit.”
Bender and Reeve exchange a look while Blankenship gets on his phone to summon an evidence response team.
Back inside the stale-smelling office, the manager’s horse-faced wife has joined him, and the couple seems energized. Bender has seen this before. People drag their heels until something is found. Then they perk up, knowing they’re going to have something juicy to tell their friends.
“Okay now, let’s just find out who rented that unit,” the manager says. “Let me check for you. . . . Oh, yeah, here it is. That one’s on the annual plan. Prepaid. Cash. Five months ago.”
“What’s the name?” Blankenship says, turning the computer screen so he can see better.
“Ted Springs, it says.”
Reeve says something under her breath while Agent Blankenship mutters a curse.
“Do you remember anything about this man?” Blankenship asks.
The manager scratches his chin. “No, but maybe if I saw a picture.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a woman?” Blankenship pulls out a photo of Flint’s mother and shows it to the manager. “Do you recognize this woman?”
The jowly manager and his wife peer at the picture, shaking their heads.
“What if she’d been dressed up as a man? Try to picture that. Did the man who rented the unit look anything like her?”
“You kidding? I can damn sure tell the difference between a man and a woman.”
“Look again. Maybe in disguise, with different hair?”
The manager shakes his head in disgust. “Nah, if someone came in here trying to pull something like that, I’d remember for sure.”
Bender notices that the man’s wife has slipped outside, where she cups a cell phone to her ear, its glow on her cheek. He sees the woman talking excitedly and gives Blankenship a nudge, but the case agent remains preoccupied with questions about the man who rented the storage unit.
The significance of the woman’s phone call doesn’t fully register until later, when a big van rolls up and a news team spills out. Bender grabs Reeve’s elbow to pull her aside, but not before they’re both caught in the camera’s glare.
TWENTY-THREE
Bear’s Den Sports Bar
Sorry, buddy. No smoking inside,” the bartender says.
Flint’s first impulse is to argue, but he stops himself, wary of causing a scene. Instead, he drops the match into his empty glass and orders another beer, discreetly scratching beneath his wig.
No one pays him any notice. He blends in with the other flannel-clad men, who are mostly focused on beer and burgers and the televisions flickering overhead. None of the women in the bar warrant his attention, so he takes a cold French fry and drags it through a glob of catsup on his plate, creating a swirl. Nice. He doodles another swirl, then another, embellishing the design into something arty, which he admires while sucking the foam off his fresh glass of beer.
He’s feeling much better now that he has locked up the cabin and come partway out of the mountains. It’s been seven years since he last enjoyed the ordinary pleasures of civilization, and this seedy sports bar is just the ticket. He feels much more relaxed.
He glances around. The bar is decorated with silly skeletons. “Halloween, Hallo-week, Hallo-Wertz.” Flint smirks into his beer.
He can almost hear Wertz reminding him to get a costume. “Because Halloween is the one day of the year, more than any other time, Daryl, that provides cover and opportunity. The hunter’s necessities.”
He touches the horn-rimmed glasses, thinking that he’s already in costume, thank you very much. Once he gets set up in Wertz’s house in Olympia, Plan B can become fully operational. Daryl Wayne Flint will cease to exist—as long as he keeps his fingerprints to himself—and he can slip into the man’s big shoes.
He sips his beer, wondering if, after all this time, Wertz will have left the same systems in place. He smirks. It doesn’t really matter because now that he’s on his own, he’ll be the one in charge. He can pick and choose his targets. Sure, he’ll look closely at the ones Wertz has mapped out, but now he can improvise. And who says he has to wait until Halloween? If he wants, he could be cruising the streets as early as tomorrow.
“Will that do it for you, buddy?”
Flint nods at the bartender and asks for his check. He sets aside the last of his beer and glances at the television screens. One shows robust men in suits talking on ESPN. Another shows a frenetic music video, but without the sound. A third screen features the local news.
And there, suddenly, is his little cricket. His eyes widen in astonishment.
The old footage shows her just as he remembers, small and feisty as she swats at the camera. He gawks at the screen, remembering how pretty she looked for him during his trial. He itches to ask the bartender to turn up the volume, but doesn’t dare draw attention to himself.
Now the image is slashed with red type declaring Breaking News, and he recognizes a picture of Church Street Storage.
They’ve found it already.
He spits a curse, trying to read the newscaster’s lips, but the face abruptly disappears, replaced by a video that fills the screen. The camera zooms out from a man wearing an FBI vest and pans and . . .
What? Can he trust his eyes? Off to the side, scowling at the camera before disappearing from the frame, that was her. She’s not in San Francisco, she’s here!
TWENTY-FOUR
Seattle, Washington
Hot water beats down on her head and steamy air fills her lungs. She closes her eyes and lingers in the shower, soothed by this reprieve. But a stream of water is a slim tether to comfort, and mere soap and water cannot clear her head of the day’s jumble, or wash off the sensation of having spent hours rolling in Flint’s muck.
She steps from the shower and as she towels off, glimpses her back in the mirror.
She tends to shy away from mirrors, particularly those that offer a view of her back, but now pauses. The scars have faded some. The ones from the whip still crisscross her spine, long strips resembling feathers. She lifts her hair and squints at the small design at the nape of her neck, the intricate one Flint created with thin, sharp blades.
Dropping her hair, she wants only to crawl into bed and sink into forgetfulness. Instead, she dresses in clean clothes and blow-dries her hair. She’s not hungry, but Milo Bender’s wife has a hot meal waiting, and common courtesy requires an appearance at the dinner table.
She walks down the hall toward the kitchen, dreading an onslaught of questions. The day’s events have left her feeling bruised, but she promises herself that, if she can just make it through the next hour with some semblance of good manners, she will get to bed early and then go for a nice, long run in the morning. At least she can hang onto some sliver of her routine in the midst of all this chaos.
Just outside the kitchen, she overhears Milo Bender telling his wife about their discoveries at the mental hospital and the storage unit. It now occurs to her that the former agent has the gift of seeming open while withholding information. She has no idea, for instance, what he was doing inside the hospital wards while she was outside, tromping around the basketball court in the rain.
“I hope I didn’t keep dinner waiting,” she says, as a means of announcing herself, and they both smile as she enters the kitchen.
“Just in time. Come and sit down,” says Yvonne Bender, a husky, no-nonsense woman whose short stature makes her seem the reverse image of her long-limbed husband. “I’ll bet you’re exhausted after everything you’ve gone through today.”
Reeve takes a seat, murmuring something polite while wondering how she might satisfy any questions about this difficult and complicated day. But before Yvonne can ask a single question, her husband says, “Let’s set all of today’s business aside and simply enjoy this wonderfu
l meal.”
Reeve smiles at him and spoons gratefully into a cup of minestrone.
She has just rediscovered her appetite when a side door opens, and a taller, younger version of Milo Bender enters. Without a glance their way, he sets a canvas bag on the floor and hangs his denim jacket on a peg, saying, “Well, it took longer than I thought, but—” then he turns and sees Reeve. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had company.”
Yvonne is already at his elbow. “Come in, JD. Let me get you a plate.”
“No, Mom, don’t let me interrupt.”
“I’d like to introduce you to Reeve,” Yvonne says. “Reeve, this is our son, JD.”
He cocks an eyebrow at her. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so,” she says, feeling heat rise up her neck.
They had not been introduced, but she remembers him clearly from the day he came to the trial to watch his father testify. JD had sat with the other spectators just behind the railing, but he’d been hard to miss. And Reeve’s sister, who was about his age, had gushed about his Nordic good looks for days afterward.
“I’d shake your hand, but . . .” He holds up smudged palms.
“What on earth have you been doing?” his father asks.
“Didn’t Mom tell you? I fixed that bathroom floor for you. New tile, new baseboard, the works.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
JD grins. “Yeah, well, now you owe me big time.” He glances at the canvas bag, adding, “But I had to borrow your power drill. Mine crapped out.”
Yvonne takes control, directing her son to set the tools inside the garage and insisting that he join them for dinner. “Go take a shower. I’ll find some clean clothes of your dad’s that will fit, and I’ll keep a plate warm for you.”
As soon as he’s out of the room, Yvonne settles into her seat and puts a hand on Reeve’s shoulder. “You’d think he had nothing else to do but help out. The truth is, our son just won’t sit still.”