Hell Bent (29 page)

I hung up his coat beside Horowitz’s, then the three of us—four, actually, including Henry, who came trotting along beside me—trooped into the kitchen. Horowitz and Greeley sat at the kitchen table. Henry curled up under it. I poured coffee for the three humans, put out plates and napkins, and sat down.

We all plucked doughnuts from the box, took bites, dropped little surreptitious hunks down to Henry, sipped our coffee, wiped our mouths with our napkins. Then Greeley reached into his attaché case and took out a manila envelope. From the envelope he slipped an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph. He laid it on the table, looked at it for a minute, then turned it around and pushed it toward me. “Do you recognize this man?” he said.

The photo was a waist-up shot of a young guy—late teens, early twenties, I guessed. He had suspicious eyes and a small mouth, with a scruffy pale beard and long blondish hair held back in a ponytail. He was wearing a T-shirt that showed a building in flames along with the words
VIOLENCE IS AS AMERICAN AS CHERRY PIE. H. RAP BROWN.

I looked up at Greeley and shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this person. Who is he?”

He didn’t answer me. Instead, he took another photo from his envelope and showed it to me. It was a head-and-shoulders shot. “How about him?”

This photo showed an older man with an angular, creased face and thinning gray hair combed straight back. I stared at the face for a minute, then looked up at Horowitz. “You know, this
could be Philip Trapelo’s brother. There’s something about his eyes.” I turned to Agent Greeley. “Who are these guys? What’s going on here?”

Greeley put the first photo of the young ponytailed guy beside the second photo. “This,” he said, poking the first one with his forefinger, “is a man named John Kinkaid. And this”—he tapped the photo of the older man—”is how our computer aged him thirty-five years.”

I looked at Horowitz. He shrugged. I looked back at Greeley. He shrugged, too.

I took another look at the two photographs. Then I got it. “Your computer has the right idea,” I said. “The shape of the face, the eyes, the set of the mouth.” I tapped the computer’s rendition of the older John Kinkaid. “Phil Trapelo’s face isn’t quite this wrinkled, and he wears his hair in a kind of military brush cut.”

“You see it, then,” said Greeley.

“I do, yes,” I said. “You’re telling me that the man I know as Phil Trapelo is somebody named John Kinkaid. And this”—I tapped the photo of the young guy with the ponytail—”this is Kinkaid when he was a young man.” I stopped. “Wait a minute.” I looked at Horowitz. “When Pedro Accardo called me that night? Right before he was killed? He mentioned the name John Kinkaid. I even Googled it. Got dozens and dozens of hits. So Accardo figured out who Phil Trapelo really is, huh?”

Horowitz nodded. “You got it. Trapelo is Kinkaid,” he said. “Agent Greeley here has been on his tail for over thirty-five years.”

“They extended my retirement from fifty-seven to sixty,” Greeley said, “so I could keep at it. I’ve got less than a year left, and I’ve never been this close.”

“A lifetime’s work,” I said.

Greeley nodded. “Go ahead and say it. It’s been an obsession.” He cleared his throat. “John Kinkaid was a brilliant student. Graduated high school in Keene, New Hampshire, a year early. Scholarship to Princeton. Double major, history and philosophy. Like a lot of young, um, idealists at the time, he dropped out at the end of his sophomore year and enlisted. So let me ask you something. You know this man calling himself Phil Trapelo, right?”

I nodded.

“How tall would you say he is?”

I shrugged. “Not very tall. Five-eight, I’d say.”

Greeley nodded. “Does he walk with a limp?”

I frowned for a minute, then nodded. “Yes. He said he had a bad knee.”

“Which leg?”

I tried to picture Trapelo the night I’d met him at the VFW hall. “The right leg,” I said.

“Eye color?”

“Brown, I’m pretty sure.”

Greeley looked at Horowitz. “It’s him.” He turned to me and smiled. “John Kinkaid was responsible for the explosions of two campus buildings in the early seventies,” he said. “The first, in 1970, was at the University of Wisconsin, the second a year later at the University of Massachusetts. Several people died. These were supposed to be anti-war protests. Kinkaid was the leader. He was a young Vietnam vet. He lost three toes to a booby trap over there. He was radicalized by the war, and then by poor care in the VA hospital, and then by some people he fell in with when he was discharged. Nowadays we’d diagnose him with PTSD. Back then, they called it shell shock and didn’t know how to treat it, so instead they tended to stigmatize those
who suffered from it. Needless to say, that tended to radicalize them. The army had trained Kinkaid in demolitions. He was an expert. The Wisconsin blast was crude, though quite powerful—fertilizer and fuel oil loaded in a vehicle—but the second one at UMass was quite a bit more sophisticated. Plastic explosive and remote electronic detonation.” Greeley looked at me and shook his head. “I never for one minute believed that Kinkaid died in that explosion. We found a young man’s body in the rubble of that building. He was wearing Kinkaid’s dog tags, and he had Kinkaid’s driver’s license in his wallet. There wasn’t much left of him, but he was about the right size, shape, color, and age, so officially John Kinkaid was dead. Everybody was happy to believe he was dead and wouldn’t be blowing up any more buildings.” Greeley shook his head. “I never bought it. Kinkaid was smart and meticulous. I’d been studying him and hunting him for a year, since he got away with the Wisconsin explosion. He’d never screw up a detonation like that. But he was perfectly capable of murdering somebody and setting up his explosion to look like an accident.” Greeley smiled. “For most of my career I’ve been known as a crackpot obsessive by my colleagues. I’ve traveled to England and Canada and Argentina and Mexico, not to mention all over the United States, tracking down reported John Kinkaid sightings. I’ve never come close to him until now.” He looked at Horowitz and nodded. “Now I can taste it.”

“You haven’t found him, then,” I said.

Greeley shook his head. “In our computers, Philip Trapelo simply doesn’t exist. And we have very good computers.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I met him that one time at the VFW hall in Burlington. Everybody there seemed to know him. And then
last night he apparently followed me to the Croydens’ place, shot Herb in the shoulder, and disappeared. I gave you his cell phone number. That’s all I know.”

“Did he say anything about killing Shaw or Accardo?” said Greeley.

I shook my head. “Not really. But I’m sure he did it. I think Gus and Pedro figured out what he was up to with the suicide bombs. Pedro evidently even figured out that Trapelo was really John Kinkaid.”

“So last night in the garage,” said Horowitz. “What did he say?”

I shook my head. “The man was holding a gun on us. There was a carton of plastic explosive on the floor. You expect me to remember what he said?”

“Damn fuckin’ right,” said Horowitz. “Think, Coyne. Come on.”

“Did you talk with Herb?” I said.

“They’ve got him on some big-time painkillers,” he said. “His shoulder got ripped up pretty good. He’ll be useless for another forty-eight hours.”

“I’m not sure we’ve got another forty-eight hours,” said Greeley.

“It’s Veterans Day,” I said. “That’s when Trapelo plans to do whatever it is he’s got in mind.”

“Help us out, Mr. Coyne,” said Greeley.

“You’re thinking he’s still going to do this?” I said. “Some kind of suicide-bombing demonstration?”

Greeley nodded. “We have to think that way.”

“But he left all his supplies in Herb’s carriage house.”

“John Kinkaid would never store all his supplies in just one place,” said Greeley. “Decentralization is one of the first principles of terrorist warfare. My guess is he’s got small stashes of
ingredients scattered all over eastern Massachusetts.” Greeley looked at me. “We’ve got to track this man down, Mr. Coyne.”

“I’m trying to help,” I said. “Trapelo was ranting about how somebody needed to take the initiative—fire the first shot, was how he put it—and then he said …” I shut my eyes, trying to remember. “Actually,” I said, “what he said was ‘Let it begin here.’”

“Fire the first shot,” said Greeley. “He said that?”

“He used the term ‘the first shot,’” I said. “Yes.”

“And he said, ‘Let it begin here’?”

I nodded.

Greeley turned to Horowitz. “Ring any bells with you?”

Horowitz narrowed his eyes. “Sounds kind of familiar, but …” He shrugged. “Nope. Sorry. No bells.”

“The Lexington village green,” said Greeley. “April 19, 1775. Remember Paul Revere’s ride? Remember the Shot Heard ‘Round the World? The first musket shot of the American Revolution was fired on the Lexington green. And the leader of the Minutemen, Captain Parker, said to his troops, ‘Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.’ They do a reenactment there around sunrise every April 19. Remember?”

Horowitz shrugged again. “I must’ve slept through that history lesson.”

“Well,” said Greeley, “I can assure you, John Kinkaid was wide-awake.” He turned to me. “Mr. Coyne, I wonder if we can impose on your good nature a bit more this morning.”

I shrugged. “It’s Sunday. I have no plans.”

“I’d appreciate it,” he said, “if you’d come to our field office with me and consult with our computer-imaging expert. I’d like to be able to have a dead-on picture of John Kinkaid circulating ASAP.”

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever I can do.”

“Great,” said Greeley. “Thanks.” He turned to Horowitz. “The other celebration they do on the Lexington village green every year happens at 11:00
A.M.
on the November Monday closest to the eleventh, when they officially celebrate Veterans Day. That’s a week from tomorrow. We haven’t got that much time.”

W
hen we went out the front door of my house, a big black van was parked at the curb puffing clouds of exhaust into the chilly November air. Greeley got in front beside the driver, whom he introduced as Agent Neal, and immediately started talking on his cell phone. Horowitz and I climbed in the back.

The Boston field office of the FBI was housed at One Center Plaza, a big curved government office building just on the other side of Beacon Hill from my house. We probably could’ve gotten there faster by walking over the hill than Agent Neal managed by negotiating the one-way streets and obeying the traffic lights in the FBI van.

Greeley ushered Horowitz and me through a metal detector in the lobby, onto an elevator, up half a dozen floors, and into a small windowless room that held two rectangular metal tables, some leather-padded wooden chairs, and several computers and other high-tech equipment. A young guy—midtwenties, I guessed—wearing a dark blue suit and a tightly knotted tie sat at one of the computers.

Greeley told me his name was Eric. Eric looked up and nodded at me but did not offer his hand or say hello, so I didn’t, either.

“We want you to work with Eric,” said Greeley. He gestured at an empty chair in front of Eric’s computer.

I took the seat next to Eric and looked on his monitor. It displayed the computer-altered version of Phil Trapelo’s face derived from John Kinkaid’s face at age twenty. It was the same image Greeley had showed me at my kitchen table.

“We created this image from a photo of this guy when he was about thirty-five years younger,” said Eric. “You know what he really looks like, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you’re the only person we’ve got who’s actually seen him in the present time. We want to create a dead-on image of him to work with. So take a look at this and tell me what you think. Okay?”

I nodded. “Sure. Okay.” I studied the computer-generated image for a minute, then said, “It’s not bad, but the hair’s all wrong, for one thing. And Trapelo’s eyebrows are way bushier than that. His ears stick out a little more, and his nose is bigger and not quite so hooked. Also, his chin—”

“Slow down,” said Eric. “This is good. Let’s start with the hair and work our way down.”

While Greeley and Horowitz watched over our shoulders, I suggested tweaks and refinements, and Eric did his magic with his mouse, and the lines and shapes on the computer monitor began to resemble the man I knew as Philip Trapelo, right down to his liquid brown eyes and his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows.

I sat back in my chair. “That’s it,” I said. I looked up and nodded at Greeley. “That’s exactly him. That’s Phil Trapelo. It could be his photo.”

Then, as abruptly as I’d been invited, I was thanked and dismissed. Horowitz stayed up there on the sixth floor, but Greeley rode the elevator down with me and walked with me out to the curb, where the black van was waiting with Agent Neal behind the wheel.

When we shook hands, Greeley said, “This has been a huge help. Again, many thanks. We may be calling on you again in the next week or so. Please be available.”

“I’ll either be home or at my office,” I said. “In any case, I’ll have my cell phone with me.”

He nodded. “I don’t mean to belabor the obvious,” he said, “but I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that you say nothing of any of this to anybody.”

“I understand.”

“Not your spouse, not—”

“I don’t have a spouse,” I said.

He nodded. “I’m sorry.” He opened the back door of the van for me.

“I’d just as soon walk home,” I said. “I live right over the hill.”

He looked at me for a minute, then shrugged. “Just be careful, okay?”

That afternoon Henry and I shared a bowl of popcorn and watched the Patriots clobber the Jets. When the game ended, I called Alex’s room at the Best Western hotel in Concord. When she didn’t answer, I tried her cell phone.

She answered on the third ring. “I’m trying to get through one day uninterrupted,” she said. “Was that you who just rang my room phone?”

“That was I,” I said.

“I’m actually quite busy.”

“Sorry. Tell me when you can you talk. I’ll call you back.”