Blood List (5 page)

He enveloped her with his arms, careful not to crush her tiny form. She smelled like butterscotch. "You'll never disappoint me, Mo. Never. You're my rock."

"I love you, too, Doug."

They lay together a while, listening to the sounds of nature. An owl hooted in the distance. Some critter foraged in the brush. Song birds chattered in the trees.

Doug realized he'd been dozing, Maureen draped across him like the world's loveliest blanket, her head on his chest. He squeezed her, gently. "You awake?"

"Yeah," she said, but didn't look up. "I'm telling Branson when I get back next week. The firm has a great maternity leave program, and they'll cover my clients while I'm gone."

He chuckled. "Right. As if they could stop you from working at home. You'll go nuts in two weeks without badgering some bank or another into a multimillion-dollar deal." He moved his hands down her body and gave her a playful double-squeeze.

"Quit," she said.

He jerked his hands up to her lower back. "Sorry."

"Not that." She paused. He waited. "I want you to quit. Transfer. Something, anything, as long as it's safer and doesn't take you away from me. From us. I make enough money to support a family. You could do anything you want."

He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

"Not now. After. Catch this guy first. You don't have it in you to leave in the middle of a job. I know that. But nail this guy, then quit. Transfer to another department, leave altogether, whatever. We can move anywhere you want. I don't care. But quit. Be a dad to our babies."

Doug tried again. "I'll talk to Gene," he said. "But right now I need to go."

She squeezed him. "I know. Come home safe, or I'll kill you."

"Love you, too, babe," he said.

She let him go.

*   *   *

October 20th, 8:04 AM MST; FBI Field Offices; Salt Lake City, Utah.

"Here we go, people," Gene said as he flipped open his phone. He read the message.
Salt Lake City
. "Go figure. We're already in the right city."

"Great," Marty said. "Now all we need to do is interview everybody in the city and see who's feeling homicidal." Jerri rolled her eyes and looked at Carl. Doug waited for Gene to continue.

Gene gave his brother a grim smile. "Well, we can do a little better than that. Sam, tell them what you've got."

"Well, kids," Sam said through the speaker phone, "one of the new toys we've been working on for some years is face-matching software. DHS first field-tested it at an Oakland Raiders game back in '01, comparing football fans with mug shots."

"I remember that," Jerri said. "Almost a quarter of the Raiders fans were ex-cons, but only five percent of the 49ers. It was totally a Big Brother play. Really irked the civil libertarians."

"That's the one," Sam said. "It was pretty accurate, and they've been refining it since. We've got the traffic camera data and several phone shots from the Jenny Sykes murder, which we can compare to the security tapes from both SLC and Des Moines airport terminals. We got great shots of everyone as they boarded and exited the plane, and we know that D Street's phone was on that plane.

"DHS has some guys vetting the passengers as we speak. Once we know what he looks like, we can search for him on Salt Lake traffic cameras and maybe pin him down. It's needle-in-a-haystack work, but we might get lucky."

Marty grunted.

"We've been through this before," Gene said. "A city simply isn't enough to go on. We give the face-matching program a chance to work, and, failing that, we work like the dickens when we get the neighborhood and the initials. Any other ideas?" Nobody replied. "Questions?"

After a moment, they all shook their heads.

"All right," Gene said. "Keep your thinking caps on. Marty, Jerri, you're on liaison work with the Municipal PD. Carl, Doug, you're with the local Feds. I'll cover the State Police. Go."

He closed his notebook and left the room.

*   *   *

October 22nd, 10:20 AM MST; FBI Field Offices Training Facility; Salt Lake City, Utah.

Gene grunted in pain as Jerri ducked the jab and delivered a solid kick to his ribs. He grabbed her ankle and twisted, hard. She dropped to the ground and spun free, sweeping his legs out from under him in the process. He hit the mat and rolled left as she flipped to her feet. She hit him four more times when he tried to stand. In theory she was pulling punches, but her fists felt like cast iron. He stumbled to his feet and backed up.

He blocked an open-hand slap and threw himself at her, trying to wrap her in a bear hug. She dropped to her knees and delivered a one-two punch right to his groin. The cup absorbed most of the damage, but the impact knocked him off-balance. He stumbled sideways, twisted, and fell on his rear. Jerri stood and leaned casually against the post on the side of the ring.

"That wasn't right, Jerri!" Marty said from the other side of the ropes.

She smiled, took out her mouth guard, and put out a hand to Gene. "We done?"

He removed his own guard. "I think that's enough getting my butt kicked by a girl for today." She helped him up. "That last move wasn't very sporting."

"Jujitsu isn't sporting. It's about putting the hurt on people."

"That would've done it." 

"My turn! My turn!" Marty cried from the sidelines, hopping up and down to get his adrenaline flowing. On the floor next to him, the phone in Gene's duffel bag rang.

"Give me that, would you?" Gene asked Marty.

Marty dug into Gene's duffel, peeked at the phone, and walked over. "It's Sam." He handed it to Gene.

He hit "talk."

"Gene."

"Hey. We got a hit."

"What kind of hit?" 

"Traffic camera, last night. Seven-thousand block of Eagle Crest Drive. Physical description looks right, and it matches a face ID'd on both the airport cameras and two of the crowd shots from the Sykes murder at ninety-two and eighty-six percent probabilities. Statistics says it's the same guy. Here are the pictures." Gene's phone beeped and an image appeared. Marty stopped hopping and peered over his shoulder.

The first black and white photograph showed a Caucasian male with dark hair driving a dark Nissan Sentra. The next was a full-color shot of the same man boarding the plane in Des Moines. The third showed him dressed in a nice suit, hurrying away from the Rodeo Drive car bombing. The fourth was the same scene shot at a different angle.

"Tags?" Gene asked.

"Rental," Sam said. "Rented ten days ago by a Paul Renner, paid with cash but with a credit card on file. Hertz doesn't have a security camera at their counter, but the name's too much of a coincidence to think it's not our guy. I can't find a good reason for the alias. The only vaguely famous 'Paul Renner' was a twentieth century German typographer. Nice fonts. Anyway, his social security number belongs to an eighty-three-year-old named Bruce Hutchinson, who lives in a nursing home in Houston. I haven't notified them of the identity theft yet, and I've got a passive credit alert on the card. If he uses it, we'll get him."

"Sweet," Marty said, eavesdropping.

"Great, Sam," Gene said. "Put out an APB on that Sentra and on 'Paul Renner,' but under no circumstances should law enforcement apprehend. If they see it, tail him, but only if they can do it covertly, and notify me. And get a warrant for that rental paperwork. We might be able to confirm prints off it."

"Got it," Sam said.

"Look into that typographer. The alias might not be a coincidence. It might tell us something about him."

"Sure thing."

"And Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Carl and Doug to be ready to move at a moment's notice."

"Will do."

He hung up the phone and looked at Jerri. "Shower up. If they find him, we go get him."

Jerri sized up Marty. "Next time, Marty."

Marty grinned. "It'll be my pleasure."

October 24th, 8:08 AM MST; Sheila Jones' Apartment; Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sheila smiled and stretched languorously on the bed, listening to the shower as last night's e-date got ready for the day. Some kind of business meeting or something. She ran her hands down her naked body and shuddered in remembered pleasure. She fought back the cloud of Ecstasy and alcohol of the previous night to grasp at his name.
Pete? Pat? Something like that.

Good fuck, whatever his name was.
She'd have to ask for his number. She got up and strolled to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge for some milk. As she reached in, she noticed a small scratch on her wrist.
Now where did I get that?
she thought, mentally reminding herself to get some Neosporin once the guy got out of the shower.
Or maybe I should join him?
She frowned.
Maybe I won't ask for his number
, she thought, glaring at the half-gallon as if it were the milk's fault that she had bad taste in men.

She chugged a couple of gulps from the carton and was putting it back when the front window shattered. Her mouth open in an "O" of shock, she stared at the little hockey-puck-like object that skittered across the floor. Her brain had just enough time to register that she should probably duck or hide or at least close the fridge door or something when the flash-bang grenade went off.

Sheila found herself sprawled naked in a widening pool of milk, staring at the ceiling. Her head felt like a popped balloon, and she tasted blood. The milk felt cold on her back and soaked her hair. She hadn't realized there were so many cobwebs in the corners of her kitchen.
Maybe I ought to dust more
.

She tried to clear her thoughts as sound rushed back in. Boots thumped everywhere, and she heard a man shout, "CLEAR!" Only then did she realize that a short black kid stood over her with some kind of machine gun. He had
F.B.I.
emblazoned on his bulletproof vest and jacket.

"Can you hear me?" His eyes were cold. She nodded. "Sheila Jones?" he asked again, wasting no time on superfluous talk. She nodded again. She felt like a marching band was drumming its way around her skull. "Where's Paul Renner?"
Fuck, that was his name. Paul.

"Um. Shower." She pointed toward the bathroom. He took off at a dead run. Sheila fainted.

The bathroom door was ajar. Carl pushed it open with his left hand while Jerri covered him. Fog billowed from the muggy room. Condensation covered both the tiny window and the large mirror. Hot water streamed down in the shower. Carl crept forward, both hands tight on the fully automatic MP5. The safety was off. He inched forward. One hand on the trigger, he reached with the other and yanked back the shower curtain. The water sprayed on empty porcelain.

Carl stepped back. "Master bath's clear," he said over the COM. "Jerri, check the bedroom closet."

"Got it," she said from behind.

Carl took a doubtful look at the window, cracked to let in a breeze.
No way a guy could fit through there, even if it were wide open.
He peered out, his weapon raised and ready to fire.

The burst of pain as his elbow dislocated was the first indication that he wasn't alone. Carl tried to cry out, but a strike to the throat silenced him. His mouth worked like a fish’s, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. D Street wrenched his arm behind his back. Carl felt ligaments tear and tendons rupture even as the killer plucked the MP5 from his hand.

Ah, shit, this guy's fast,
was the last thing Carl had a chance to think before another blow dropped him like a sack of meat. He squirmed on the ground but couldn't summon the mental energy to do anything else. His eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Paul Renner inspected the submachine gun while Special Agent Carl Brent twitched at his feet. There was a round in the chamber, a fully loaded magazine, and the safety was off. He kicked the downed man in the temple, hard, with his steel-toed boot.
Should have looked up,
he thought. With an amused smile, he stepped through the doorway and into the bedroom.

Special Agent Jerri Bates had a fantastic ass. Paul took a moment to admire it as she rifled through the closet, pounding on the walls with the heel of her hand. His grin got bigger as she called out to her partner, her voice muffled by the clothes.

The closet was a dead end. There weren't any secret hidey-holes, nowhere for the perp to go, nowhere to hide.
I hope Marty and Gene are having more luck in the front.
Jerri banged around a bit more just to be sure, then called out, "Carl, he's not in the closet. There's no escape route here!"

"I know," said a man's voice. It wasn't Carl. "Nice guns, these HKs."

Jerri's fingers twitched on her weapon, and she readied herself to turn and fire.

"Don't," the killer said, his voice full of contempt. She froze. "Slowly, drop the gun and put your hands in the air." In spite of herself, she did so.
Oh, God, who's going to tell my mom that I'm dead?

She turned around, a tear forming in her eye, and looked at the killer. The D Street Killer was so ordinary that he would blend into any crowd. Almost six feet tall, black hair, brown eyes, handsome but not enough to stand out in any given company.
Jesus,
she thought,
I could walk right by him a thousand times and never recognize him.
Even so, she scanned him for anything that might be useful later. A tiny scar on his right eyebrow. A slight asymmetry to his smile.
Not that it matters. I'm already dead.
She glanced at the boots protruding from the bathroom door.
Poor Carl.

Images flashed through her head. Her mother, laughing as she tried to blow out the five candles on her first real birthday cake. Her friend Angela pushing her on the swing set in third grade. Her first kiss. Her last kiss, only two weeks before. She closed her eyes, filled only with regret. The killer's voice was as soft as silk. "There's no money in this," he said, almost sadly, and her world went black.