Devils cure, p.34
Devil's Cure, page 34
“When was that?”
“Same time he talked to you.” She sniffed, as if pleased to surprise him. Kevin felt an unpleasant sandpaper stroke of electricity across the back of his neck.
“I don’t understand.”
“That time he called you early in the morning. Don’t you remember? You talked long enough with him.”
“I remember. He was in Houston.”
She shook her head, almost eager now, maybe finally realizing that she had nothing to lose. Or maybe just glad that she’d done something deserving of attention, of a man’s full and undistracted gaze. “Nope, Lincoln, Nebraska. That was me. I made it so it looked like he was calling from Houston.”
“How’d you do that, Gail?” He tried to keep his voice conversational, admiring, even as he felt a fist closing around his guts.
“From work. At Ameritech.”
“You’re an operator?”
“International directory assistance. I can get pretty much anyone’s number. I gave David lots. His brother’s. Yours.”
There was something almost brazen about her divulgences now, the same kind of loathsome, barely concealed glee he saw on television talk shows when the guests aired their misdemeanors for the nation. I slept with my daughter’s lesbian lover! I slept with my pets! Look at me. Look at me up here. I transmit therefore I am.
“And you could make it look like David was calling from Houston when he was really in Nebraska.” Jesus Christ.
“Well, I needed someone in Houston to place the call first.”
“Who’s in Houston?”
She shrugged. “He never told me names, so there’s no point your asking.”
Nebraska, why the hell Nebraska? He projected a map against the blank hospital wall. From Nebraska, where else could you go? Well, pretty much fucking anywhere, north, south, east, west. But assume he’s not going to backtrack, he’s on a straight trajectory from St. Louis, the last place he was seen. Wyoming, Montana, north across the Canadian border—wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but maybe he had someone waiting for him on the other side. He got mail from Canada, one of the correspondence officers had remembered that much. And if not Canada, then he could always go farther west to Washington State.
Seattle.
Traveling to Seattle to find Rachel and Sean. No, that was bullshit, had to be. But why was he going to all this trouble to misdirect everyone: somewhere he had to get, something he had to do?
“Gail, do you have any idea why he’d be in Nebraska? Were there any other of his followers around there? People who could’ve helped him?”
“He’s going to them, isn’t he,” she said, and her face crumpled again. “He’s going to them and he’s never coming back, never, ever, ever.” Like a child reciting a mantra of heartbreak, thrashing her head from side to side on her pillow, wrenching her tethered arms against the metal rails. He wanted to ask her more, but her weeping seemed unstoppable, and all he could do was pat her arm and lie and tell her it was going to be all right, until the nurse came with a sedative.
“I think he’s heading for Seattle.”
Racing along the JFK, cellular to his ear, Kevin shoulder-checked, pulled into the left lane one-handed, and shuddered alongside the eighteen-wheeler.
Hugh’s voice stuttered over the line, and Kevin squinted to hear him. “Kevin, he’s in Houston.”
“Look, I grilled Gail Newton. She’s an operator for Ameritech. That time Haines called me from Houston, she just made it look that way. He was in Nebraska.”
He passed the truck, and the line cleared so that he could actually hear Luna panting in Hugh’s office.
“Kevin, he killed a doctor three hours ago. In Houston. I just talked to Mitch.”
“You’ve got him?”
“No, but we have an eyewitness who saw him fleeing. Mitch thinks we’ll have him in twenty-four, tops.”
“No. He has an acolyte in Houston.”
“Says who?”
“Gail. The acolyte made the call from Houston, and Gail just patched it through to Haines in Nebraska. He’s the killer.”
“How d’you know Gail’s not lying to you? Come on, Kevin, we have a body down there. We have a witness who described Haines perfectly, down to the bald head. I’m going to go with that over Gail’s story any day. And incidentally, her attorney’s pissed as hell, said you interrogated her in her hospital bed while she was still recovering—”
“I told her she didn’t have to talk to me.”
“He said you harassed her. The guard at the door heard you talking for a long time. It’s all inadmissible, Kevin.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He heard Luna barking in the background.
“Luna, come here, boy! Lie down, lie down! Sees another dog out the window or something … Look, Kevin, Gail was just feeding you a line, covering for Haines.”
He thought of her tears, the collapsed anguish of her face. He’d known, of course, that she might be lying, but he didn’t think she could do it so convincingly. He hadn’t thought she was so smart. Was it all a show to get him to divert the whole task force to Seattle?
“I don’t know, Hugh. The convenience store in St. Louis, that call from Houston—there was no reason for either of them, except to throw us off.”
“It’s Gail throwing you off. You’re a good interrogator, Kevin, but this woman doesn’t have much to lose lying to you.”
“She’s buying him time to get to Seattle.”
“Why Seattle?”
“The kid’s real,” he said. “That woman, Rachel, from Seattle, she sent hair samples from her and her kid. Donaldson ran paternity tests. I got her a few pieces of Haines’s clothing from the evidence room—”
Kevin almost felt he should pause to wait for Hugh’s indignation, and he wasn’t disappointed.
“You gave her evidence?”
“It was the fastest way, Hugh. She had the samples in hand, she had the equipment, I knew we’d have the results faster than if we sent them down to Crime Lab.”
“You’re saying they’re positive?”
“I’m assuming.”
The first thing he’d done when he’d finished with Gail was call Laura. Again and again he’d tried the lab, her father’s, her own apartment, and got voice-mail each time. She either wasn’t there, wasn’t answering, or wasn’t able to. Through his anger at her, he felt fear, but couldn’t quite believe she’d come to harm. For a moment he’d wondered if the tests were negative, and she’d been plunged into a depression dark enough to hurt herself. It had taken him twenty-five minutes to get to the lab and get security to open it up. Not there. He’d driven back to Gold Coast, to her father’s apartment, and got the superintendent to let him inside. Not there either, and neither were any women’s clothes. She’d packed up.
“I talked to the doorman at her father’s building, and he said an airport limo arrived for her around ten-thirty. If she’s heading for Seattle, it means the tests were positive. The kid’s real.”
“If there are test results, we’ll need our people to look at them first, Kevin. We can’t just take her word for it.”
“I trust her.”
“Yeah, and she didn’t even call to tell you the results. Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ll put a call in to Fred Werner out there. We can try to get her picked up at the airport.”
“I’ve already got Shaughnessy calling airlines, trying to find her reservation. I’m almost at O’Hare.”
“Kevin, I’m sending you down to Houston.”
“What?” He braked suddenly, almost rear-ending a minivan.
“I just talked to the Attorney-General. The President’s going ahead with this amnesty deal. They want Haines alive. And I want you down in Houston, heading up the task force.”
A smile soared across Kevin’s face—nothing sweeter than finally being vindicated, finally being fucking appreciated—and just as quickly contracted. He didn’t know what to say. Twenty-four hours ago, this would have been the best news imaginable, and he would have gladly flown down to Houston. But now …
“Kevin, you hear me? You’re back on the task force. I’ve already talked to Mitch. Haines is all yours. Just bring him in without bullet holes, all right?”
“Hugh, I can bring him in, but I don’t think he’s in Houston.”
“Just get yourself on the next flight down, okay?”
Through the windshield, he could see a wide-bodied jet angle steeply into the sky. Shit. This was not a decision he wanted to make. A chance to head up the task force, take back the position he should have had from the start …
He said, “I’m going to Seattle.”
“This is not a request—”
“The kid’s real, and if David knows where he is, he’s going to kill him, just like he did Rick.”
Hugh sounded openly exasperated now. “But he’s not there, Kevin. He’s in Houston, he’s killed a doctor, he’s been sighted twice, and he’s not getting out. That’s why you’re going.”
Kevin winced. “If I go, I’ll lose David, and I’m not going to do that. I’m sorry.”
“I hope you know there are going to be serious consequences from this—”
“I know, and … sorry, Hugh.”
He hung up, hoping he hadn’t just made the worst decision of his career.
At her departure gate, Laura called the Tijuana clinic, but Sandra wasn’t picking up her phone. She was just having some routine tests, the nurse at reception told Laura. Call back later, please.
Routine tests. Laura didn’t even want to imagine what the resident alchemists down there considered routine. A little bleeding with leeches maybe, or the application of dead pigeons. For a few more moments anger coursed through her, then spent itself, leaving only a sickening worry for Sandra. She’d have to call from Seattle—she didn’t feel like having a conversation on the plane, wedged between other passengers.
In the lounge she took a seat and stared blankly at one of the many television monitors. Shifting restlessly, unable to get comfortable. Who the hell designed these chairs, the Marquis de Sade? She crossed and recrossed her legs, foot pumping. She felt jittery, like some infernal wind-up toy, and didn’t know if it was the spiteful withdrawal of the speed or some aftereffect from the Taser. Her fingers reached up to the gauze pad on her right cheek. When it healed a bit she could lose the pad and at least mask it with foundation. She wondered if it would leave a scar. She must look a sight. Self-consciously, she scanned the lounge, but everybody’s attention was fixed on the televisions. She looked.
Swirling lights, yellow police tape, a shattered dining-room window. Houston. Another doctor … oh my God, it was Vikram Chaudhuri, a hematologist she’d worked with briefly back in grad school. She stood, moving closer, face rigid with disbelief. He was shot through his window, early this morning, having breakfast with his wife and daughter. Right there, in front of them. Laura shut her eyes, afraid they might show his family, not wanting her imagination to start recreating the horror of that moment. It was David Haines, she heard the television reporter say. A paper delivery boy saw him fleeing the scene.
She sat back down, mouth parched. Well, she knew one thing at least. Haines was in Houston. Nowhere near Seattle, nowhere near Rachel. She was safe.
But how long did it take to drive from Houston to Seattle? Two days? Much less if you drove without sleep. The fact was, Haines didn’t know anything about Rachel, or her child, or where they lived. So what was the risk?
But she remembered Rick Haines, his throat opening up from that single rifle shell.
She remembered the weariness of Kevin’s face, asking if there was a note from Rachel inside the envelope. He’d made good on his promise. He’d got her Haines’s clothing, didn’t stop her from finishing the paternity tests. But if she told him about her rendezvous with Rachel now, how did she know he wouldn’t shunt her away from it, swoop down with some paramilitary team and make Rachel vanish? The only thing stopping the FBI was that they didn’t know Rachel’s real name or address or phone number.
And neither did she, yet. And the only way anyone was going to get it would be if she checked into the Sea-Tac Airport Hilton and waited for Rachel to call.
What if Rachel’s wrong? What if Haines does know about the boy?
She looked at the clock. Her flight would start boarding in a few minutes. If she called … could he simply notify the airport and have security come and detain her? Maybe she should wait and call him from the plane, or even better, once she was in Seattle.
She took out his business card, flexed it between two fingers, then slid it back into the Filofax, clamping it shut with both hands. Don’t think about it. Just get on the plane and do what you need to do.
Shit. She couldn’t. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair to Kevin. Worst of all, if she didn’t tell him, she might be putting Rachel at risk.
At the pay phone she dialed and heard the crackle of his mobile as he picked up.
“It’s Laura.”
“It was positive, wasn’t it?”
She sniffed, surprised. “How’d you know?”
“I’m thinking there was probably a note in that envelope, with her address in Seattle.”
She was already sorry she’d called. “There was a note,” she confessed hurriedly. “But she didn’t give an address or phone number. She just told me to check into a certain hotel and wait for her to call.”
“Okay, listen to me. There’s a chance Haines is heading for Seattle. I caught the woman who tried to kill you. Now, she might be lying to me, but I doubt it. Haines was in Nebraska about twenty-four hours ago. That’s plenty of time to get to Seattle.”
“But Rachel said there was no way—”
“He had an Ameritech operator as an accomplice. If he knew Rachel’s real name … he could have found anyone on the goddamn continent with a phone.”
She looked helplessly at the television. “But what about the news? They’re saying he’s in Houston.”
“I know, and maybe they’re right, but it’s not a chance I’m taking.”
Over the PA system, she heard her flight called for boarding, and the announcement seemed to reverberate bizarrely over the phone.
“I’m going out there,” she said.
“I was counting on it,” he replied. “I’m going to need you in that hotel to take her call, and then I’m going to go get her.”
“With me.” He said nothing.
“You need me,” Laura reminded him, “you need me to take that call. She’s only going to talk to me. Anyone else answers and she’ll hang up.”
“It won’t matter once we get a trap-and-trace. She calls, we know where she lives.”
“Not if she calls from a pay phone. Also, I haven’t told you what hotel she wanted me to check into.”
A weary chuckle was not what she’d expected. She was braced to withstand a flare of anger and a stern rebuke, even a promise of criminal charges.
“Laura, I’m trying to protect you.” She felt herself soften. He sounded so worn-out. “We don’t know if Haines is on his way. Maybe he’s already there, and killed his son. Maybe Rachel’s his devotee, and they’ve cooked this thing up together to kill you.”
“I believe her.”
“You believe her because you want to.”
“Fine.”
“You’ve got to help me protect you.”
“I don’t want protection. I want you to help me meet her so I can take her son’s blood. You promise me that, and I’ll tell you the name of the hotel.”
“How do you know I won’t break my promise?”
“You didn’t last time. Look, I’ve got to board now.”
“Look to your left.”
She turned and saw him walking towards her, one hand holding the cell phone to his cheek, the other holding a boarding pass.
“We’re on the same flight,” he said.
He’d be in Seattle in twenty minutes.
After he’d joined the New Apostles, he’d seen less and less of Rachel. Day by day his fervor had grown. Why have you been so unhappy? they asked him. Why doesn’t your life have any meaning? As if they could see inside him some vast tundra of despair, and they were right.
Rachel seemed to spend most of her time in the city, recruiting and fundraising, while he stayed up at the farm, learning: the Bible flooded him, a baptismal deluge. They made him a Shepherd within a year. Soon enough he saw Rachel for what she was. The church used her as a fisher of men, and she was good at it, connecting with people, showing them all that they could have if they only left the world behind.
Yes, he’d been jealous at first, had seen, at the weekend retreats, how she spent time with these wary young men, and he could guess what they did in their stolen time together. But already he felt a distance from it all. She was the channel that had brought him onto the path of glory; the means seemed not very important.
He’d been there a little over a year when he started having misgivings about Father Abraham’s doctrines. The megalomania of his claims grew and grew until they were so transparently idolatrous that David was amazed the others could respect him. Abe preached that he was the Holy Spirit enfleshed, come to prepare them for the New Jerusalem. He preached that the New Jerusalem was located not on this planet, but another, and at the end time the souls of the faithful would be shuttled there. He preached that he must father the children of a new and final tribe of Israel.
Rachel was one of the women chosen for this task. David remembered how, during dinner up at the farm, Abe would come and summon her openly to his bedroom, and she would bow her head in humble consent, finish her meal in silence, and go to him. Each time, he tried not to watch as she left the room, tried not to imagine what was to follow.
Was it a desire to attack Abe’s authority, or merely a reawakening of his old, violent lust that made him do it? It was fall, and one night, he waited outside the farmhouse until she emerged and began walking back to the women’s quarters. Up until that moment he hadn’t known what he would do.
But seeing her, he’d been seized with a terrible, rapacious hunger.
She submitted to him in the grass, her arms loosely twined around his neck, but without any signs of either pleasure or indignation. How quickly she’d become a whore. As soon as he was spent, a glacial shame filled him. He’d worked so hard to free himself of these hideous appetites, and he’d fallen. He started to sob, and she touched his cheek with a kind of detachment that maddened him all the more, and told him it was all right. Sounding so tired. She’d been turned into a whore, and she hadn’t protested, just submitted to it from Abe. From him. He slapped her hard, turned, walked away.
“Same time he talked to you.” She sniffed, as if pleased to surprise him. Kevin felt an unpleasant sandpaper stroke of electricity across the back of his neck.
“I don’t understand.”
“That time he called you early in the morning. Don’t you remember? You talked long enough with him.”
“I remember. He was in Houston.”
She shook her head, almost eager now, maybe finally realizing that she had nothing to lose. Or maybe just glad that she’d done something deserving of attention, of a man’s full and undistracted gaze. “Nope, Lincoln, Nebraska. That was me. I made it so it looked like he was calling from Houston.”
“How’d you do that, Gail?” He tried to keep his voice conversational, admiring, even as he felt a fist closing around his guts.
“From work. At Ameritech.”
“You’re an operator?”
“International directory assistance. I can get pretty much anyone’s number. I gave David lots. His brother’s. Yours.”
There was something almost brazen about her divulgences now, the same kind of loathsome, barely concealed glee he saw on television talk shows when the guests aired their misdemeanors for the nation. I slept with my daughter’s lesbian lover! I slept with my pets! Look at me. Look at me up here. I transmit therefore I am.
“And you could make it look like David was calling from Houston when he was really in Nebraska.” Jesus Christ.
“Well, I needed someone in Houston to place the call first.”
“Who’s in Houston?”
She shrugged. “He never told me names, so there’s no point your asking.”
Nebraska, why the hell Nebraska? He projected a map against the blank hospital wall. From Nebraska, where else could you go? Well, pretty much fucking anywhere, north, south, east, west. But assume he’s not going to backtrack, he’s on a straight trajectory from St. Louis, the last place he was seen. Wyoming, Montana, north across the Canadian border—wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but maybe he had someone waiting for him on the other side. He got mail from Canada, one of the correspondence officers had remembered that much. And if not Canada, then he could always go farther west to Washington State.
Seattle.
Traveling to Seattle to find Rachel and Sean. No, that was bullshit, had to be. But why was he going to all this trouble to misdirect everyone: somewhere he had to get, something he had to do?
“Gail, do you have any idea why he’d be in Nebraska? Were there any other of his followers around there? People who could’ve helped him?”
“He’s going to them, isn’t he,” she said, and her face crumpled again. “He’s going to them and he’s never coming back, never, ever, ever.” Like a child reciting a mantra of heartbreak, thrashing her head from side to side on her pillow, wrenching her tethered arms against the metal rails. He wanted to ask her more, but her weeping seemed unstoppable, and all he could do was pat her arm and lie and tell her it was going to be all right, until the nurse came with a sedative.
“I think he’s heading for Seattle.”
Racing along the JFK, cellular to his ear, Kevin shoulder-checked, pulled into the left lane one-handed, and shuddered alongside the eighteen-wheeler.
Hugh’s voice stuttered over the line, and Kevin squinted to hear him. “Kevin, he’s in Houston.”
“Look, I grilled Gail Newton. She’s an operator for Ameritech. That time Haines called me from Houston, she just made it look that way. He was in Nebraska.”
He passed the truck, and the line cleared so that he could actually hear Luna panting in Hugh’s office.
“Kevin, he killed a doctor three hours ago. In Houston. I just talked to Mitch.”
“You’ve got him?”
“No, but we have an eyewitness who saw him fleeing. Mitch thinks we’ll have him in twenty-four, tops.”
“No. He has an acolyte in Houston.”
“Says who?”
“Gail. The acolyte made the call from Houston, and Gail just patched it through to Haines in Nebraska. He’s the killer.”
“How d’you know Gail’s not lying to you? Come on, Kevin, we have a body down there. We have a witness who described Haines perfectly, down to the bald head. I’m going to go with that over Gail’s story any day. And incidentally, her attorney’s pissed as hell, said you interrogated her in her hospital bed while she was still recovering—”
“I told her she didn’t have to talk to me.”
“He said you harassed her. The guard at the door heard you talking for a long time. It’s all inadmissible, Kevin.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He heard Luna barking in the background.
“Luna, come here, boy! Lie down, lie down! Sees another dog out the window or something … Look, Kevin, Gail was just feeding you a line, covering for Haines.”
He thought of her tears, the collapsed anguish of her face. He’d known, of course, that she might be lying, but he didn’t think she could do it so convincingly. He hadn’t thought she was so smart. Was it all a show to get him to divert the whole task force to Seattle?
“I don’t know, Hugh. The convenience store in St. Louis, that call from Houston—there was no reason for either of them, except to throw us off.”
“It’s Gail throwing you off. You’re a good interrogator, Kevin, but this woman doesn’t have much to lose lying to you.”
“She’s buying him time to get to Seattle.”
“Why Seattle?”
“The kid’s real,” he said. “That woman, Rachel, from Seattle, she sent hair samples from her and her kid. Donaldson ran paternity tests. I got her a few pieces of Haines’s clothing from the evidence room—”
Kevin almost felt he should pause to wait for Hugh’s indignation, and he wasn’t disappointed.
“You gave her evidence?”
“It was the fastest way, Hugh. She had the samples in hand, she had the equipment, I knew we’d have the results faster than if we sent them down to Crime Lab.”
“You’re saying they’re positive?”
“I’m assuming.”
The first thing he’d done when he’d finished with Gail was call Laura. Again and again he’d tried the lab, her father’s, her own apartment, and got voice-mail each time. She either wasn’t there, wasn’t answering, or wasn’t able to. Through his anger at her, he felt fear, but couldn’t quite believe she’d come to harm. For a moment he’d wondered if the tests were negative, and she’d been plunged into a depression dark enough to hurt herself. It had taken him twenty-five minutes to get to the lab and get security to open it up. Not there. He’d driven back to Gold Coast, to her father’s apartment, and got the superintendent to let him inside. Not there either, and neither were any women’s clothes. She’d packed up.
“I talked to the doorman at her father’s building, and he said an airport limo arrived for her around ten-thirty. If she’s heading for Seattle, it means the tests were positive. The kid’s real.”
“If there are test results, we’ll need our people to look at them first, Kevin. We can’t just take her word for it.”
“I trust her.”
“Yeah, and she didn’t even call to tell you the results. Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ll put a call in to Fred Werner out there. We can try to get her picked up at the airport.”
“I’ve already got Shaughnessy calling airlines, trying to find her reservation. I’m almost at O’Hare.”
“Kevin, I’m sending you down to Houston.”
“What?” He braked suddenly, almost rear-ending a minivan.
“I just talked to the Attorney-General. The President’s going ahead with this amnesty deal. They want Haines alive. And I want you down in Houston, heading up the task force.”
A smile soared across Kevin’s face—nothing sweeter than finally being vindicated, finally being fucking appreciated—and just as quickly contracted. He didn’t know what to say. Twenty-four hours ago, this would have been the best news imaginable, and he would have gladly flown down to Houston. But now …
“Kevin, you hear me? You’re back on the task force. I’ve already talked to Mitch. Haines is all yours. Just bring him in without bullet holes, all right?”
“Hugh, I can bring him in, but I don’t think he’s in Houston.”
“Just get yourself on the next flight down, okay?”
Through the windshield, he could see a wide-bodied jet angle steeply into the sky. Shit. This was not a decision he wanted to make. A chance to head up the task force, take back the position he should have had from the start …
He said, “I’m going to Seattle.”
“This is not a request—”
“The kid’s real, and if David knows where he is, he’s going to kill him, just like he did Rick.”
Hugh sounded openly exasperated now. “But he’s not there, Kevin. He’s in Houston, he’s killed a doctor, he’s been sighted twice, and he’s not getting out. That’s why you’re going.”
Kevin winced. “If I go, I’ll lose David, and I’m not going to do that. I’m sorry.”
“I hope you know there are going to be serious consequences from this—”
“I know, and … sorry, Hugh.”
He hung up, hoping he hadn’t just made the worst decision of his career.
At her departure gate, Laura called the Tijuana clinic, but Sandra wasn’t picking up her phone. She was just having some routine tests, the nurse at reception told Laura. Call back later, please.
Routine tests. Laura didn’t even want to imagine what the resident alchemists down there considered routine. A little bleeding with leeches maybe, or the application of dead pigeons. For a few more moments anger coursed through her, then spent itself, leaving only a sickening worry for Sandra. She’d have to call from Seattle—she didn’t feel like having a conversation on the plane, wedged between other passengers.
In the lounge she took a seat and stared blankly at one of the many television monitors. Shifting restlessly, unable to get comfortable. Who the hell designed these chairs, the Marquis de Sade? She crossed and recrossed her legs, foot pumping. She felt jittery, like some infernal wind-up toy, and didn’t know if it was the spiteful withdrawal of the speed or some aftereffect from the Taser. Her fingers reached up to the gauze pad on her right cheek. When it healed a bit she could lose the pad and at least mask it with foundation. She wondered if it would leave a scar. She must look a sight. Self-consciously, she scanned the lounge, but everybody’s attention was fixed on the televisions. She looked.
Swirling lights, yellow police tape, a shattered dining-room window. Houston. Another doctor … oh my God, it was Vikram Chaudhuri, a hematologist she’d worked with briefly back in grad school. She stood, moving closer, face rigid with disbelief. He was shot through his window, early this morning, having breakfast with his wife and daughter. Right there, in front of them. Laura shut her eyes, afraid they might show his family, not wanting her imagination to start recreating the horror of that moment. It was David Haines, she heard the television reporter say. A paper delivery boy saw him fleeing the scene.
She sat back down, mouth parched. Well, she knew one thing at least. Haines was in Houston. Nowhere near Seattle, nowhere near Rachel. She was safe.
But how long did it take to drive from Houston to Seattle? Two days? Much less if you drove without sleep. The fact was, Haines didn’t know anything about Rachel, or her child, or where they lived. So what was the risk?
But she remembered Rick Haines, his throat opening up from that single rifle shell.
She remembered the weariness of Kevin’s face, asking if there was a note from Rachel inside the envelope. He’d made good on his promise. He’d got her Haines’s clothing, didn’t stop her from finishing the paternity tests. But if she told him about her rendezvous with Rachel now, how did she know he wouldn’t shunt her away from it, swoop down with some paramilitary team and make Rachel vanish? The only thing stopping the FBI was that they didn’t know Rachel’s real name or address or phone number.
And neither did she, yet. And the only way anyone was going to get it would be if she checked into the Sea-Tac Airport Hilton and waited for Rachel to call.
What if Rachel’s wrong? What if Haines does know about the boy?
She looked at the clock. Her flight would start boarding in a few minutes. If she called … could he simply notify the airport and have security come and detain her? Maybe she should wait and call him from the plane, or even better, once she was in Seattle.
She took out his business card, flexed it between two fingers, then slid it back into the Filofax, clamping it shut with both hands. Don’t think about it. Just get on the plane and do what you need to do.
Shit. She couldn’t. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair to Kevin. Worst of all, if she didn’t tell him, she might be putting Rachel at risk.
At the pay phone she dialed and heard the crackle of his mobile as he picked up.
“It’s Laura.”
“It was positive, wasn’t it?”
She sniffed, surprised. “How’d you know?”
“I’m thinking there was probably a note in that envelope, with her address in Seattle.”
She was already sorry she’d called. “There was a note,” she confessed hurriedly. “But she didn’t give an address or phone number. She just told me to check into a certain hotel and wait for her to call.”
“Okay, listen to me. There’s a chance Haines is heading for Seattle. I caught the woman who tried to kill you. Now, she might be lying to me, but I doubt it. Haines was in Nebraska about twenty-four hours ago. That’s plenty of time to get to Seattle.”
“But Rachel said there was no way—”
“He had an Ameritech operator as an accomplice. If he knew Rachel’s real name … he could have found anyone on the goddamn continent with a phone.”
She looked helplessly at the television. “But what about the news? They’re saying he’s in Houston.”
“I know, and maybe they’re right, but it’s not a chance I’m taking.”
Over the PA system, she heard her flight called for boarding, and the announcement seemed to reverberate bizarrely over the phone.
“I’m going out there,” she said.
“I was counting on it,” he replied. “I’m going to need you in that hotel to take her call, and then I’m going to go get her.”
“With me.” He said nothing.
“You need me,” Laura reminded him, “you need me to take that call. She’s only going to talk to me. Anyone else answers and she’ll hang up.”
“It won’t matter once we get a trap-and-trace. She calls, we know where she lives.”
“Not if she calls from a pay phone. Also, I haven’t told you what hotel she wanted me to check into.”
A weary chuckle was not what she’d expected. She was braced to withstand a flare of anger and a stern rebuke, even a promise of criminal charges.
“Laura, I’m trying to protect you.” She felt herself soften. He sounded so worn-out. “We don’t know if Haines is on his way. Maybe he’s already there, and killed his son. Maybe Rachel’s his devotee, and they’ve cooked this thing up together to kill you.”
“I believe her.”
“You believe her because you want to.”
“Fine.”
“You’ve got to help me protect you.”
“I don’t want protection. I want you to help me meet her so I can take her son’s blood. You promise me that, and I’ll tell you the name of the hotel.”
“How do you know I won’t break my promise?”
“You didn’t last time. Look, I’ve got to board now.”
“Look to your left.”
She turned and saw him walking towards her, one hand holding the cell phone to his cheek, the other holding a boarding pass.
“We’re on the same flight,” he said.
He’d be in Seattle in twenty minutes.
After he’d joined the New Apostles, he’d seen less and less of Rachel. Day by day his fervor had grown. Why have you been so unhappy? they asked him. Why doesn’t your life have any meaning? As if they could see inside him some vast tundra of despair, and they were right.
Rachel seemed to spend most of her time in the city, recruiting and fundraising, while he stayed up at the farm, learning: the Bible flooded him, a baptismal deluge. They made him a Shepherd within a year. Soon enough he saw Rachel for what she was. The church used her as a fisher of men, and she was good at it, connecting with people, showing them all that they could have if they only left the world behind.
Yes, he’d been jealous at first, had seen, at the weekend retreats, how she spent time with these wary young men, and he could guess what they did in their stolen time together. But already he felt a distance from it all. She was the channel that had brought him onto the path of glory; the means seemed not very important.
He’d been there a little over a year when he started having misgivings about Father Abraham’s doctrines. The megalomania of his claims grew and grew until they were so transparently idolatrous that David was amazed the others could respect him. Abe preached that he was the Holy Spirit enfleshed, come to prepare them for the New Jerusalem. He preached that the New Jerusalem was located not on this planet, but another, and at the end time the souls of the faithful would be shuttled there. He preached that he must father the children of a new and final tribe of Israel.
Rachel was one of the women chosen for this task. David remembered how, during dinner up at the farm, Abe would come and summon her openly to his bedroom, and she would bow her head in humble consent, finish her meal in silence, and go to him. Each time, he tried not to watch as she left the room, tried not to imagine what was to follow.
Was it a desire to attack Abe’s authority, or merely a reawakening of his old, violent lust that made him do it? It was fall, and one night, he waited outside the farmhouse until she emerged and began walking back to the women’s quarters. Up until that moment he hadn’t known what he would do.
But seeing her, he’d been seized with a terrible, rapacious hunger.
She submitted to him in the grass, her arms loosely twined around his neck, but without any signs of either pleasure or indignation. How quickly she’d become a whore. As soon as he was spent, a glacial shame filled him. He’d worked so hard to free himself of these hideous appetites, and he’d fallen. He started to sob, and she touched his cheek with a kind of detachment that maddened him all the more, and told him it was all right. Sounding so tired. She’d been turned into a whore, and she hadn’t protested, just submitted to it from Abe. From him. He slapped her hard, turned, walked away.
