The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel (26 page)

E
llen Lee appeared from the woods behind the house. She looked to be in her early fifties, but unless the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles records Chay had accessed were mistaken, she was sixty-six. She was trim, her features were sharp; her sea-glass-green eyes radiated intelligence. Both her sleek ski parka and her horse-riding breeches contributed to a windblown vitality. She looked as though she’d just finished a morning ride or hike.

Yet something was off. Fisk couldn’t put his finger on it, beyond the parka—if in fact she were sixty-six, she wouldn’t be the first senior citizen with circulatory issues. Maybe it was that, at the sight of strangers, she continued her approach without any sign of circumspection. Then again, this was rural Connecticut, where people still left their front doors unlocked.

If Lee were unaware of Merritt Verlyn’s death, as context suggested, Fisk hoped to keep the news from her until after he’d learned what he could. Catching Chay’s eye, he pointed to himself, intending to communicate,
I got this
. She nodded.

“Ms. Lee, I’m Detective Jeremy Fisk of the New York Police Department and this is Chay Maryland, a journalist who is reporting on an ongoing investigation.”

Her eyes widened. “Well, that is not something I hear every day.”

“We were hoping to ask you a few questions, just for background.”

“That would be my pleasure.” She came off as too eager. “Would you like to come inside the house?”

If Yodeler were waiting inside, Fisk thought, he could probably kill them several ways. Because of the distance from civilization, he could use one of his Colt AR-15 Sporter assault rifles and no one would be the wiser. On the other hand, Fisk had his own gun, and going inside promised additional information.

“That would be great,” he said.

Lee led them around the house, past shutters that actually shut, installed back in the day when they were a defense against storms.

“Who was it that you were expecting?” Fisk asked.

“Oh, I wasn’t expecting anyone.” Lee climbed the slate steps to the back door. “Every once in a while, the previous residents come by.”

They proceeded into the living room via the mud room, old floorboards whining with each of their steps. The place was tidy, and done in the minimal New England rustic style—solid, simple pine furniture, framed nature watercolors of ducks, braided rugs—but it was oddly lacking in contemporary amenities like a microwave, TV, or air-conditioning.

Lot of nooks and crannies to hide in here, Fisk thought. He inched his hand closer to his holster.

Lee gestured them onto an antique Chesterfield sofa. The cushions spouted dust when they sat down. After they said thank you but no thank you to her offer of iced tea, she took the wing chair across from them.

“I can see why the previous residents come by,” Chay said. “It’s a lovely house.”

“Thank you, dear. I do what I can.”

Chay said to Fisk, “Don’t let me sidetrack us, but I’m interested in this.” She returned her focus to Lee. “It’s not often that you hear of previous residents coming by.”

“It’s not often in life that you get to know such lovely boys,” Lee said. “They’re just wonderful.”

Fisk and Chay discreetly shared a quick look that asked,
What the hell?

Maybe Lee also didn’t know that Boyden had died, he thought. “How often do you get to see them?” he asked her.

She smiled. “Every now and then. Sometimes they keep me company on the holidays—I used to think they just felt sorry for me that I had no one else, but over the years, I feel as though we’ve become like family. I bought this house from the estate of their father, who’d passed away, and they too had no one else.”

“When was that?” Fisk asked, although he knew.

“Oh, a long time.” Lee counted on her fingers. “Eleven or twelve years now.”

Actually it was closing in on twenty years, Fisk thought. Dementia would explain a lot of things here. “When was the last time?” he tried.

“They come fairly often. It was a turnkey sale—the house came with most of the furniture and a good deal of their father’s possessions. Mind you, nothing valuable—nothing with monetary value, I should say, but a good deal in terms of sentimental value. Merritt, the older one, loved to read the adventure novels from his father’s boyhood collection that was still in the attic. And I was delighted to have his company.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Fisk asked.

“I haven’t heard from him in a while—he said he was going away, but he hasn’t written me. But he’s involved in complex computer-science work for the government.”

She seemed unaware that he’d recently been featured in every major publication in the United States, more often than not on the cover.

“Do you two e-mail?” Chay asked.

“I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never made the transition to computers,” Lee said. “Merritt has always been good about sending me postcards when he’s traveled, though not this time. But Boyden was just here recently.”

“How recently?” Fisk struggled to make it sound like just another question.

Lee paused to count again. “Last month.”

“So June of this year?” Chay asked.

Lee nodded. “Boyden is such a dear; he made a trip over just to help me fix the shutters.” She pointed toward the windows Fisk had noticed on the way in. “The rains this spring were particularly brutal, did a number on this old place.”

Fisk thought back to the driving rain on the May night the Cartel team drove him out his apartment window. But what spring didn’t have rain? Might she be remembering a particularly brutal spring a decade ago?

Chay said, “I wish I had someone to call when I need repairs.”

She was angling, Fisk suspected, for the contact information for Boyden—or whoever was posing as him. The key was to get it in such a way that Lee wouldn’t be spurred to call him and, effectively, warn him.

“I don’t call him,” Lee said.

It had been too much to hope for, Fisk thought.

Lee laughed. “I text him!” From her riding pants pocket, she drew a late-model iPhone. “The boys gave me this mobile phone for my birthday.”

“Oh, is that the new iPhone?” Chay asked.

“Yes, it is,” Lee said proudly, showing it to her.

F
isk rushed through the attic tour, the key features of which were a Verlyn family hope chest as well as their dresser, a Victrola record-player cabinet, four camelback steamer trunks brimming with documents and photo albums, and many more packed bookshelves than could be seen. It didn’t help that the dusty attic was hot enough to roast a turkey, but Fisk had a strong feeling that Boyden Verlyn’s death had been fabricated, and he wanted to act on it ten minutes ago.

As the Ram left Lee’s house in the rearview, he said to Chay, “If Intel had instant access to phone records, it would be useful to have Ms. Lee’s right now.”

“I’ve never had any doubt about the utility of data. But I think you can get the number she believes is Boyden’s.”

“With an NSL, sure, we’ll look at her call logs, but by the time we get it . . .”

“I just happened to get a look at the text when I was ‘admiring’ her phone.”

She relayed the number to Fisk, who could have kissed her if he weren’t turning the car out onto the road.

They drove five miles to downtown Norwalk while R2 ran the number Lee had entered in her contacts as
Boyden
.

When R2 called back, Fisk and Chay were waiting at Starbucks, sitting at an outside table, under an umbrella, nursing iced coffees—or,
in Fisk’s case, going through the motions of picking up a cup, sipping, and replacing the cup. His thoughts were on Boyden Verlyn.

“The phone belongs to a Darren Draco,” came the tech’s voice. Fisk put him on speaker. “Does the name Darren Draco mean anything to either of you?”

Chay’s mouth fell open. Fisk thought he knew why. “Isn’t Darren Draco the former Princeton student who’s in an institution now?”

“Permanently brain-damaged as a result of Boyden’s nerve-agent experiment,” Chay said. “The institution is in New Mexico.”

“Near Santa Fe,” R2 chimed in. “According to the staff, he’s there right now, and hasn’t left once since his admission in 2009. But that evidently hasn’t stopped him getting a Southern New England Telephone account, or taking up residency in Connecticut in 2010.”

“Wasn’t Boyden’s suicide in 2010?” Chay asked.

“The empty rowboat with his suicide note taped to the bench was found in Long Island Sound on August third, 2010,” R2 said. “That was three weeks to the day after the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles issued a driver’s license to Darren Draco, or at least to someone who had successfully posed as Darren Draco.”

In Fisk’s experience, people who had been institutionalized with permanent brain damage were often targets of identity theft because they seldom complained. “I don’t suppose we have the address on that Connecticut driver’s license?”

“We do. It’s 2308 Connecticut Avenue, which is just two blocks from where you are now. If you’re going there, will you be wanting backup?”

“Why not?” Fisk was already on the move to the parking lot, with Chay behind him, her iced coffee in hand. He looked back, confirming that he’d left his on the table. Not worth going back for it, he thought as he clicked the Ram unlocked. He ripped the driver’s door open and clambered in, still on the phone, then thrust the key into the ignition, twisted it, and started the car. Chay didn’t immediately follow, her door not unlocking maybe?

“Did you somehow get Darren Draco’s phone?” came R2’s voice over the phone.

Fisk wondered if the tech had become distracted, uncharacteristically, as he simultaneously messaged the FBI and the Norwalk PD. “How would we have it?”

“That’s weird,” said R2. “I show you as having it in the Starbucks parking lot.”

“Must be a glitch,” said Fisk, reaching across the center console to manually unlock and open the passenger door for Chay, then realizing there had been no glitch.

Darren Draco’s phone was indeed in the Starbuck’s parking lot. The man who’d assumed Draco’s identity, Boyden Verlyn, was standing in the shadows of a tree on the grassy strip dividing the lot from the street, holding a pistol to Chay’s head.

M
r. Verlyn, please don’t shoot Chay,” Fisk said through the Ram’s tinted passenger window, largely for the benefit of R2, who was still on the phone. “Please put the gun down, Boyden.”

A single Norwalk patrolman on the scene could tilt the scales in Chay’s favor, Fisk thought. She appeared steeled, by adrenaline or otherwise. But that wouldn’t help if Boyden snapped the trigger of what Fisk took for a Colt model 1911, with a glossy black barrel, wood-tone checkered grip, and .45 ACP bullets sufficient to take off a good deal of her head.

With his free hand, Boyden gestured for Fisk to roll down the passenger window. Fisk complied by toggling the window switch on the driver’s-door console. With the tinted glass no longer between them, he saw Boyden’s complexion as much paler, to the point of anemic. The onetime robust Princeton University chemist was also much, much thinner than in the most recent photos Fisk had seen. Of course those had been taken five years ago. Boyden appeared prematurely old beyond the scope of cosmetics. His face was drawn as though he’d just swigged lemon juice, with the frown lines of a man twice his age.

Boyden prodded Chay, moving them both sideways to place the tree trunk between himself and Fisk. Boyden said, “Now raise your right hand where I can see it, and use your left hand to toss the phone
out the window, Detective.” His was a nasal, higher-pitched version of Merritt’s lilt, with, at least right now, an edge of hysteria.

Without disconnecting the call to R2, Fisk leaned across the seat, ready to drop the phone out of the car.

“Toss!” Boyden said, punctuating the command by drilling the muzzle into Chay, who swallowed a cry.

Fisk flicked his wrist and the phone flew out the window before landing with a crack on the asphalt two or three feet away. Boyden lowered his gun, meanwhile gathering the hair that fell down Chay’s back and yanking it back with such force that, as her head followed, it was a wonder that her neck didn’t snap. Her cry was devoured by an earsplitting blast from the Colt. The phone jumped like a frog, landing in two pieces, the faceplate detached. Possibly still transmitting, though.

Boyden fired twice more, two good shots, leaving the device in pieces. The third shot pinged off the sidewalk and cracked through the rear window of a station wagon hurriedly backing out of a parking spot behind Fisk’s. The driver hit the brakes, sending the car rasping on the asphalt. Fisk thought he smelled burning rubber.

The driver’s door opened, and a young woman jumped out, tears striping her mascara. “Please, please, don’t shoot again!” She threw her hands in the air. “I have a baby in the backseat.” Her claim was substantiated by the infant’s wail heard over her idling engine.

“I won’t shoot the baby,” Boyden said. He raised the gun, and keeping Chay in front of him—whether or not it was his intent, she was shielding him from Fisk—he snapped the trigger.

The Colt boomed, its barrel jumped, and the young mother dropped to the asphalt as though she’d been hit by a truck. If she were still alive, she didn’t show it.

“What do you want, Boyden?” Fisk called out.

“For starters, for you to get out of your car, keeping your hands above the window line, where I can see them, at all times. If I so much as suspect you of trying anything, I will shoot Ms. Maryland in the head.”

“Don’t, Jeremy,” Chay said, before doubling over from the impact of one of Boyden’s sharp elbows to her jaw.

“It’s going to be okay.” Fisk kept his hands above the window line, working the door lever with his left elbow, opening it and rising slowly out of the car. Slowly was key. Because whatever Boyden wanted, delaying increased the likelihood of a better outcome.

With the barrel of his gun, Boyden gestured for Fisk to step in front of the hood of the car, over the tire curb, and onto the grass, where he would be completely exposed.

“Don’t worry,” Boyden said. “I want you to have a clean shot at me.” Jerking Chay sideways, he stepped out from behind the tree.

Was he trying to commit suicide-by-cop? Suicidal individuals sometimes acted in a threatening way or harmed other people with the objective of provoking a lethal response from a law enforcement officer. In this instance, it made no sense to Fisk. None.

No matter. He wanted Boyden alive.

Delay
.

“Why would you want to die now?” he asked Boyden. “You’re not really suicidal.”

The killer shook his head. “True, I faked it last time. This time, I imagine I won’t get the opportunity. And as you’ve taken my brother, I don’t want to live. Not that I have any intention of obtaining your blessing here. Just do what I say. Shoot me now, or I’ll shoot her.” He shook Chay for emphasis. She only gritted her teeth.

In the Ram’s windshield, Fisk saw the reflection of a Norwalk policeman, blocked from Boyden’s view by the Starbucks. The guy was muttering into a phone, probably a call for more assistance. Anyone else around, wisely, stayed out of sight.

“Boyden, is there any alternative?” Fisk asked. “Is there anything at all that you might want?”

“Just for you to move close enough that you won’t miss.”

There were twenty feet between them. Fisk could take him down now. Easy. He took a step forward to appease Boyden, a slow step,
to prolong his life by that many seconds. Then another. “Let Chay walk now, and you’ll get what you want.”

“What I want is a bullet before I count to five. Otherwise she gets one.”

“Let me just ask you one thing?”

“No. Draw your goddamned gun.”

Fisk drew his Glock, keeping the barrel pointed at the ground.

“Just one question, regarding Ellen Lee?” Fisk didn’t know what he’d ask, but hoped the topic would move Boyden enough to say something.

“One,” Boyden said. “Two.”

“Why Yodeler?”

“Random. Three.”

But Fisk saw the beginnings of a grin. Boyden’s ego remained intact.

Play it.

“How in the world did you make it seem you were posting from Loch Ness and—”

“Four.” Boyden’s finger tightened on the trigger.

He might have pointedly pressed the gun closer to Chay’s head, again. Instead he backed away. To make sure of receiving a lethal shot, Fisk believed. He raised his own gun and fired. The round sent Boyden staggering backward. The tree trunk then batted him the opposite way. He crumpled onto the grass and lay still, eyes unblinking, a purple-black cavity between them.