Angel Killer (12 page)

The Warlock appears to be a black swan. A thing so rare, there’s nothing to compare it to. On the far wall overhead projectors flash images of the cemetery crime scene and the Avenger bomber. The forensic team is talking about doing radiocarbon and chlorine-36 testing on the pilot to prove he was born after World War II, and possibly isotopic testing to determine where he was born.

I was reminded by one of the techs of the fun fact that because the U.S. and Soviet governments freely tested nuclear weapons in the 1950s, different isotopes made it into the food chain and effectively gave us all internal timestamps based on bomb blasts.

We can measure the rate of decay of certain radioactive elements given off in an atomic blast and find them in your teeth and bones from when you consumed said elements at some point.

This approach is made more complicated, however, because of what happened when the bomb squad decided to test the plane for radioactivity in case it was some kind of dirty bomb Trojan horse. That’s how paranoid we are now. The plane had negligible radioactivity, but the pilot was red-hot.

It could be proof that he was tampered with to hide his actual date of birth, or evidence that his body experienced some kind of cosmic trauma from teleporting through time and space.

The Warlock is playing all the angles.

Chisholm motions me over to a table where he’s talking to the head of the Miami field office, Robert Jensen, who we met briefly on the beach. Jensen has neatly combed gray hair and the look of a principal who’s decided he hates children. He gives me a moment’s glance, then turns back to the conversation. Absentmindedly, he pulls a chair out between him and Chisholm for me to sit. I keep my mouth shut until Chisholm asks me a question.

“How’d he do it, Blackwood?”

Again, I’m being put on the spot, frustrating me. “I don’t know.”

Jensen rolls his eyes. “Heck of an expert you got. I don’t have to guess why she’s really here.”

I speak calmly. “Maybe I should come back later.” I step away from the table.

“Please have a seat, Blackwood. Jensen is just a bit rattled because he doesn’t like not knowing,” replies Chisholm diplomatically.

I sit back down on the other side of the table, across from them. Chisholm asks me to elaborate.

I can only lay out my inner monologue. “I guess my point is that all I have is a theory. I don’t presume to know how he did it. I just have Occam’s razor. That tells me he didn’t pull the thing through time and space and drop it on our doorstep. He’s covered his tracks enough with the pilot to confuse things. A DNA test won’t help because we have no tissue from the original pilot. Even next of kin might be doubtful if there’s no match. Failure to show a match between the body in the plane and a family member only means they didn’t share any genes. Somebody could have been fooling around and nobody knew.” I point to a group of forensic techs. “According to them, we can’t even use dental records because looking at tooth fillings would help, but his are all gone and the teeth have been washed with an abrasive that would take away any tool marks inside cavities. No matter how much we insist the Warlock tampered with the body, we can’t prove he wasn’t born in the 1920s. That’s what people will remember. Either way, the real trick here is the sense of wonder. The plane. It’s an artifact out of time. Where did it come from?”

“How did he do that?” asks Jensen.

I can tell he’s not expecting much of an answer but I surprise him. “I have an idea. You’re not going to like it.” It makes the most sense out of everything.

I’d been thinking about it before they called me over to the table. “It’s the real thing,” I explain.

“What?” Jensen almost spits out his coffee.

There’s a trace of a smile on Chisholm’s face. I think he can read me more than I care to be read. I ignore him and turn to Jensen. “If I wanted to really impress you, there are two advantages that I can use to make that happen. The first is planning. When a magician steps onstage, he has years of practice going into the things you’re only going to have a few seconds to ponder. The Warlock has been planning these stunts for a very long time. So much so, like a good magician, he’s tried to think of every contingency. That’s why the Chloe’s double caught on fire when we wanted a closer look. That’s why our fake pilot is setting off Geiger counters.”

Jensen shakes his head. “How do you arrange for the appearance of an airplane that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle over fifty years ago?”

“You don’t. It’s the second thing you hope to have happen as a magician. Opportunity. I think he tipped his hand more than he wanted to with this plane stunt. But it was too good of a chance to pass up. If you know it’s a trick, but the plane is real, then answer is obvious.”

Jensen’s face is a mask. Chisholm had asked me over to the table to show the local field director that we weren’t as clueless as we seemed.

I raise up my hand and show it’s empty. I snap my fingers and a silver pen appears. “Opportunity.”

Jensen is dismissive. “Neat trick. But I don’t see your point.”

I toss the pen onto his notepad. “Look familiar?”

His nostrils flare as he realizes that I took his pen. He picks it up and tucks it into his jacket pocket. “Okay. So you’re a kleptomaniac.” He gives Chisholm another eye roll. “My grandson could pull that off.”

Chisholm holds up a finger. “Would your grandson see a hard-ass skeptic a mile away and find an opportunity beforehand to make a point? I think Agent Blackwood is telling us that the Warlock has been waiting for something like this.”

I continue my demonstration, even though I can see it’s not getting through to Jensen. “The Warlock probably cast a pretty wide net searching for something to exploit. Who knows what else he was looking for or hoping to find. Amelia Earhart? Who knows. My point is Flight 19 has been a pervasive mystery, partly because nobody has ever spent the resources using modern technology to find the planes. The Navy stopped looking half a century ago. What would it cost? Time more than anything else. Maybe a little luck, but not as much as it seems. This tells us a lot about him. It also suggests he has other things planned.” I reach into my purse and toss Jensen’s watch on the table in front of him.

His jaw hangs open. I keep talking without missing a beat. “Planning and opportunity.” I look over at Chisholm. “For what it’s worth, the Warlock might have a background in drug running. Maybe he’s not a smuggler himself. Possibly a chemist. But someone who could have had the opportunity to find the plane and a reason not to tell anyone. He could be one of those treasure hunters too. This state is filled with people searching the ocean for lost Spanish galleons and gold. Boats and planes are the connection I’d make.”

Jensen snatches the watch from the table and shakes his head.

Chisholm gives me a smile. “That’s what we think. Anything else?”

“Well, he could also be a guy that really wanted to find Flight 19 and spent a lot to do that. I wouldn’t rule that out. Either way, if this is like the last stunt, he’s left us a clue in there somewhere. The website told us where to look for Chloe. The sand in Chloe’s coffin came from here. If it hasn’t already been matched to this beach yet, I’m sure it will be. There’s got to be another clue to direct us to his next performance.”

I leave out telling him what he already knows; that the next victim could still be alive.

J
ENSEN GRUMBLES SOMETHING
that sounds like a compliment and walks over to a table of his agents who are going through a database of images of the crowd on the beach. They’re looking for anyone who stands out in the files of the Miami field office.

Chisholm thanks me for the demonstration I gave Jensen. I’m clearly part of a little power game between D.C. and the local bureau that I can only guess at. I get the feeling I was just shown off as a pet freak. If that’s what it takes to stay on the case, then I guess I’m okay with that.

On the far wall, a video feed from the beach shows a crane getting ready to move the Avenger to a flatbed truck. A forensic team is doing a last-minute pass on the plane before they wrap it in plastic for transportation.

I count all the different law enforcement personnel in the hotel conference hall. There are more than fifty people working on this case while it’s hot, not counting the ones back at D.C., Quantico and the field office in Michigan. Most of these people will be back to their normal workload in a day or so, but that’s still a lot of human resource hours being spent on this.

Chisholm goes over to a side of the conference hall where his people are reviewing the profile they’re creating of the Warlock. He’s one of the most important people in the FBI, and yet he’s in the field trying to scrape together something to give us a lead. I respect his dedication.

I think it’s the black swan factor that has drawn him in. The Warlock is just so atypical. Since leaving the behavioral analysis unit for sciences, Chisholm spends more of his time teaching and on research. Back out here he’s in the presence of something real. Something immediate.

My phone rings. It’s Ailes. I walk over to a quiet corner of the hall.

“Anything exciting to report, Agent Blackwood?”

“You’re the mathematician. What are the odds that someone would find a missing Avenger bomber in the middle of the Atlantic?”

“Higher than you might think. Jennifer looked into this and noticed all the previous documented searches fell into the classical search pattern mistakes.”

“What are those?” I ask.

“Giving too much weight to one data point and ignoring the fact that at least some of your data points are going to be manufactured.”

“You mean somebody lying?”

“No. Not exactly. Go to a high school science fair where kids are measuring the height of daisies or size of diatoms in ocean water and you’ll notice a strange effect. Scientists do it too. If someone measures something that’s exactly one centimeter, or some other number that sounds too perfect, they change it to .9 or 1.1. The same thing happens with coordinates. We ran a test on some naval log books and found that you almost never get an exact coordinate like ten degrees mark ten degrees. Nobody wants to look lazy. I’ve got a bet with Gerald that I can predict something about the signatures on the logbooks when those kinds of numbers do come up, the round ones.”

“What’s that?”

Ailes lowers his voice. He must be calling from the bullpen and not want Gerald to hear. “There will be two signatures with the nice round numbers. If two people witnesses it, then they’re not as worried about appearing dishonest by using what they imagine is an overly convenient number. The positions for Flight 19 smell of very scared people trying to cover their own asses and not be asked why their numbers are too round. I bet a search that takes this into account might be more fruitful.”

“You think the Warlock knows this?”

“Maybe. If we can figure it out in a few hours, a man as smart as him, who seems intent on showing how clever he is, might come to the same conclusion. Or maybe he got lucky. Maybe both. What’s it like down there?”

I describe the scene in the conference room. He’s getting the live feeds at Quantico too. “I see a lot of clever people trying to pick up the pieces after the fact.” It reminds me of an observation my uncle shared. “You know the difference between a comedian and a magician?”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“A comedian waits for the laughter and applause to die down before moving on to his next bit. A magician uses it as a distraction to start his next one. I think we’re very distracted.”

“What do you think we should be doing?”

“I’m not in charge. I’m out of my element here.” The room feels busy. But that’s not the point.

“So are the rest of us. Indulge me,” replies Ailes.

He knows something is bugging me. I let it out. “I guess what it comes down to is the victims. The deceptions are incidental. If we found their bodies in a forest, no dramatic staging, we’d focus mainly on trying to find out who they are.”

“Their faces have popped up on every television so far. We’re getting hundreds of calls, but no missing persons.”

“I know. I know,” I reply. “But doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, these people didn’t come from Mars. The other Chloe and the man in the plane don’t look like drifters. I didn’t see any signs of heavy drug addiction. As harsh as it sounds, they look like people who would be missed.”

“What are you getting at?”

I’m trying to put my finger on it. “This is the real deception. Or at least the one nobody in this room wants to pay attention to just yet. We’ve got two victims nobody says are missing. The Warlock has given us impossible explanations for their deaths. If we don’t figure who they really are, the mystery is going to remain and we’ll even have failed them in giving them some sense of peace. They’ll remain a Jane and John Doe as long as we buy into the illusion.”

“A good point. You mention this to Chisholm or the field supervisor there?”

“No. Knoll seems like a sharp guy, but I don’t think Jensen was impressed with my demonstration.”

“You need to be mindful, Jessica. You have two strikes going against you when you walk into a room.”

Two? I can only think of one. “I’m a woman.”

“The worst kind. You’re attractive, which wouldn’t be an issue if you didn’t have the burden of usually being the smartest person in the room. They know you’re smarter than they are. It’s in your eyes.”

“I don’t feel so smart.”

“Trust me. I spend all day around people smarter than me.” He holds the phone aside. “Except you, Gerald. I keep you around to feel smarter than someone.”

It’s comforting to hear him kid around with his subordinates like that. I get the feeling that all they want to do is impress him and be impressed by each other.

Ailes adopts a sympathetic tone. “Well, unless you want to dig around down there, you’re welcome to come back to the brain trust up here and bounce ideas around. Maybe we can figure out the next one before it happens.”

I look over at the chaotic room and realize that there’s really no place for me. Everyone has their task. Maybe if I’m with Ailes and his geeks we can make some headway.