T revalian had three hotel towels laid out on the floor. On the first he’d placed a pair of his own socks. On the second, Elizabeth Shaler’s jog bra. And on the third, a pair of Nagler’s shoes.
“Find it!” he commanded, releasing Callie’s collar.
The dog sprang excitedly into action. She jumped up and made two circles in the room, then came across the towels and, nose to the floor, moved one towel to the next. She sat down sharply in front of the jog bra.
Trevalian stepped forward and rewarded her with a small piece of beef jerky, patted her affectionately, and praised her. He rearranged the towels, moving them far apart, and began the process anew. Again, Callie found the jog bra. Again, she won a piece of beef jerky.
“Four out of four,” he told her. “Good dog!”
W alt had awakened to an alarm clock at 6 A.M. Sunday morning, having had four hours’ sleep. He went for a two-mile run to wake himself up, showered, and changed into a fresh uniform. By 8 A.M. he was overseeing Brandon’s leadership in securing Sun Valley Road for the one-mile stretch from Ketchum to the resort, while monitoring the Sun Valley Police Department’s attempts to contain the burgeoning number of First Rights protesters who twice had broken through a barricade trying to get closer to the inn and the C3 gathering, only to be pushed back to the area allotted them.
By 9 A.M. things seemed pretty much in control. They intended to briefly shut down traffic on Sun Valley Road, allowing for Shaler’s motorcade. He had placed Deputy Tilly, his team’s second best marksman, on top of Penny Hill, working with two spotters. Best of all, his two communications with Adam Dryer, whose agents occupied Walt’s Mobile Command Center, had been workmanlike and professional.
Liz Shaler came out her front door, amid camera flashes, surrounded by three of Dryer’s men. She met eyes briefly with Walt through the gauntlet, and to his surprise she seemed to apologize to him. Or maybe he’d taken that wrong. They moved her into one of three black Escalades.
Walt’s Cherokee led the motorcade. Tommy Brandon, in the black Hummer, took up the rear. To the casual tourist, and to Walt as well, this looked like overkill, but something told Walt otherwise. Inside he was thinking: This isn’t enough.
His cell phone rang, and his intention was to ignore it, but old habits die hard, and he checked the caller ID anyway. The number came as Mark Aker. Walt took the call.
“Mark? Kinda busy at the moment,” Walt said.
“You want to hear this.” Walt knew from the man’s tone that it wasn’t a social call.
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve had thirty volunteers working to find our missing animals. As of this morning, we have eighty percent found and most of those returned to us.”
“That’s great. But maybe we could do this later?”
“Among those returned were several dogs, and among the dogs were a pair of shepherds-my Search and Rescue trainees. Or so I thought.”
Walt decided not to interrupt, but he tuned him out slightly to listen in to the running dialogue pouring over the radio. All seemed well with the motorcade-and for some unknown reason that made Walt all the more queasy.
“We tag our dogs. Electronic chips placed beneath the skin in the shoulder. They both came back without collars, so we wanded them just to make sure. One had been picked up at the hospital. One, clear out Trail Creek. Some hikers found her.”
“That’s a long way away.”
“But not so far from the lodge.”
“True enough. Better cut to the chase here, Mark. I’m in the middle of moving Shaler. We’re about there.”
“The ID provided by the chip surprised me. It wasn’t one of mine after all. But I had chipped this dog. It’s Toey, Walt. The service dog we loaned the blind guy. He must have lost her and been too embarrassed to tell us. But what the hell am I supposed to do? Confront him? Return the dog to Maggie? Or what? What do you want me to do?” He added, “Meanwhile-news flash-I’m still missing my twenty-thousand-dollar tracker.”
“The one you planned to sell?” Walt asked. He’d tuned out the police band radio under the dash. He tuned out more than he should have, given that he was leading the motorcade. The Escalade behind him honked, just in time for Walt to cut the wheel sharply and turn into the entrance to the lodge, and avoid the total embarrassment of missing the turn. He felt badly that Nagler hadn’t mentioned losing the dog. He wasn’t sure how to approach this himself.
In his mind’s eye he saw the contents of the unclaimed backpack spread out on the table as Fiona photographed them; he saw the gruesome images of the Salt Lake airport killing: the severed fingers, the pulled teeth, the missing eyes…
“Laundry,” he said, pulling the Cherokee through the lodge’s portico. Shaler’s Escalade pulled in front of the doors.
“Laundry? Walt, it’s Mark,” Aker said, not understanding Walt’s change of subject.
“All the search and rescue we ever do,” Walt said, “the dogs are given a piece of clothing, right? Or some personal item of the missing person’s. A hairbrush. A shoe.”
“Of course they are. Walt…what are you talking about?”
“S and R! The dogs. Your missing dog is a tracker, a sniffer.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“He broke into the laundry,” Walt said, seeing it clearly now. “He broke into the laundry,” he repeated. “Holy shit.”
He was out of the car, the phone already back in his pocket. The phalanx of press, and tourists, agents, and his own deputies jammed the landing outside the hotel’s doors as Liz Shaler was squeezed inside. His moment or two of delay had cost him-he was on the outside looking in.
“Stand aside,” he hollered, but it did no good. Liz Shaler’s celebrity had taken over. Nothing was going to part the crowd. There were too many hotel guests and people from town-faces he recognized-waiting there to be coincidence. Patrick Cutter had arranged a big, splashy welcome for her, and for the sake of the cameras.
He lifted up on his toes to see into the lobby. Liz Shaler and Patrick Cutter were at the center of a knot. A camera flashed. Walt followed its source to a pair of thin arms, and finally, Fiona’s profile. Despite the clamor of Liz’s admirers, despite the shouting of O’Brien and his men for people to get out of the way, despite the chaos and confusion, Fiona somehow turned and looked right at him.
They met eyes and she immediately understood his problem as he pointed inside. Fiona was jostled to the side. She connected with him once again and waved Walt to his left. Walt backed away from the throng, looked left, and saw the door.
A moment later, the exterior door leading to the hotel offices, locked on a Sunday morning, sprang open. Fiona’s eyes sparkled. “What a zoo!”
The door closed, eliminating much of the shouting from the protesters.
“I know who it is,” Walt announced. “He’s here in the hotel.”
T revalian stood in line in the inn’s lobby awaiting his turn at the security checkpoint, just past which were the men’s and women’s bathrooms-a piece of the logistical planning that was already drawing complaint. At the end of the hall: the doors to the banquet hall.
“That’s a beautiful dog you have there,” said a woman behind him.
He thanked her, wondering if she or anyone else had spotted that, to a large degree, he was directing the dog, not the other way around. The line moved steadily forward, everyone accustomed to, and comfortable with, the routine: Women removed their heavy jewelry, the men dumped their phones into plastic bins. Only one woman he saw was also wanded after passing through the metal detector. Trevalian’s turn came next.
“Hello, Mr. Nagler,” said the young, wide-shouldered man feeding the X-ray belt. “I’ll take the dog through first.”
Trevalian turned his head in that direction, but also aimed his face toward the ceiling. He passed the handle of the guide harness in that general direction, making sure not to appear overly anxious or to put the harness squarely into this man’s hands-reminding himself to play the blind man.
The dog was held in check as Trevalian searched his pockets. He came up with a cell phone, some coins, and, in his coat’s side pocket, a device about the size of a garage door opener. He made a good act of feeling for the plastic dish and catching its edge, deposited his belongings.
“What’s this?” the guard asked curiously.
Trevalian could see the man was holding the other device. “My cell phone?”
“A garage opener?” the man asked.
The dog was led through a metal detector and sounded an alarm.
“Don’t push it, please!” Trevalian said a little too sharply. He reached out and found the man’s hand and returned the device to the plastic tray. “Shock collar. She’s still in training.”
“We’ll have to X-ray that collar. The harness, too.”
“No problem. Of course,” Trevalian said. “Just don’t lose her, please.”
The guards removed both and ran them through the X-ray. Trevalian waited anxiously as the collar and harness were imaged by a third guard behind a TV monitor. Finally, he was waved through the metal detector and passed without incident.
The bulky collar was reattached to the dog, as was the harness. Once through he returned his belongings to his pockets, grabbed hold of the guide handle, and moved forward.
He was inside.
T he crowd had thinned, the gawkers following Liz Shaler’s procession toward a private reception held in her honor, prior to her talk. Walt spotted Chuck Webb, the hotel’s house detective.
“Sheriff?”
“Chuck, I need a room number from you. And I need you to put any of your guys you have left over on radios by all the exits. I needed this to happen about five minutes ago.”
Webb didn’t question any of this. The urgency in Walt’s voice had convinced him. He reached for a handheld radio. “Guest’s name?”
“Nagler.” He racked his memory. “Strange first name I can’t remember.”
“The blind guy. I know who you mean.”
“Yes.”
Chuck spoke into the radio, “Christopher Robin,” he announced.
“It’s Nagler,” Walt repeated.
“That’s our internal code to block all doors. Kids missing. That sort of thing. My guys’ll lock them down.”
Walt spotted one of O’Brien’s men approaching fast. Cutter intended to throw him out, which wasn’t going to happen-but it would delay him.
“The room number,” Walt hissed at Webb. “And your passkey. I need both right now!”
Webb fumbled for a small hub clipped to his belt from which hung a retractable string attached to a plain white plastic card. He stuffed it into Walt’s hand. He saw O’Brien’s man as well, and knew trouble when he saw it.
His radio chirped and Webb put it to his ear. “Three-twenty-seven,” he said.
Walt didn’t want to initiate a chase with O’Brien’s guy. But it seemed either that, or confrontation. That was when someone stepped between them and raised a camera. A pulse of white light exploded in the face of O’Brien’s soldier. Fiona.
Walt took off for the stairs.
The security man cleared his eyes and looked around quickly. “Where’d he go?” he asked Webb.
“Who?” answered Webb.
The guard spun around. The sheriff was gone. And so was the photographer.
D anny Cutter was on borrowed time. The police were after him for Ailia Holms’s murder-and his brother was acting strange. His fears, along with the financial repercussions of her death, had kept him up all night. He knew he looked beleaguered and beaten down. That wouldn’t help him any.
The reception for Elizabeth Shaler was held in a private dining room. Danny looked around for Stuart Holms but knew he wouldn’t find him.
Conversation quieted in the direction of Liz Shaler. Patrick escorted her through the room, making introductions. Danny tagged along and listened in. Those in this room had already made campaign contributions. The brush with fame was payback.
He heard someone in the group ahead address the attorney general. “We’d love to give more, if only we could, Your Honor, but as much as we’d like to see you in office, we’re not willing to go to jail for it.” His bellowing laugh followed.
Patrick piped up, saying, “You might consider her as a speaker for a company event.”
Liz looked noticeably uncomfortable.
At that moment, Danny understood his brother’s determination to make sure Liz gave her talk. He was overpaying her, setting a market value for others to match. Never mind the tax implications, money was money, and candidates were allowed to spend their personal wealth on the campaign trail. Patrick had found a way around the rules, and by doing so had made himself invaluable to Liz Shaler.
Dick O’Brien appeared out of nowhere. He caught Patrick’s eye. As O’Brien shook his head side to side, a ghostly pallor swept across Patrick’s face. Danny knew intuitively this had something to do with Walt Fleming and the fact that Doug Aanestad had spent the early morning in private with Patrick.
Something was horribly wrong.
W alt, out of breath, stopped in front of 327, Fiona right behind him. “You can’t be here,” he told her.
“Yeah? Well, guess what? I am.”
A plan formed in his head. “Okay…There’s a hotel phone back by the elevator. Call room three-twenty-seven. A man’s going to answer. Say you’re housekeeping or something. But keep him holding that phone.”
“Yes, of course. Now?”
“Now.”
She ran down the hall. Walt followed her with his eyes.
He waited. And waited.
The phone started ringing on the other side of the door. Walt waited for the ringing to stop, Webb’s passkey hovering over the card slot. But it kept ringing.
Walt slipped in the card. The electronic lock’s LED showed red, not green. Webb’s card should have been the equivalent of a master key. He tried it again: red. The only explanation he could come up with was that the privacy dead bolt was thrown from the inside. He tried the next door over: 325.
Webb’s card opened it. The room was pitch-black, the blackout curtains pulled. He called out, “Hello? Minibar.” His weapon was drawn and aimed at the carpet in front of him. Switched on the lights. The room was empty. There was a connecting door, locked from this side. He worked through the pulled curtains, headed out onto the balcony, and crossed to 327. Locked, and the blackout curtains drawn there also.
He debated breaking the room’s plate glass window, but its tempered glass would explode, and that would bring the cavalry. That, in turn, would mean a confrontation with Dryer or his men, and his father’s warning remained forefront in his thought.
He returned to 325. Fiona stood in the doorway.
“You cannot be here,” he hissed.
“We’ve been over that.”
“Shut the door. Lock it, and stay right there.”
She did so.
He unlocked the dead bolt to the connecting door. Connecting doors were paired-each lockable from its respective room-and he’d prepared himself to have to break down the second of the two doors.
But it hung open a crack-unlocked.
He raised his weapon. His chest was tight; his mouth dry. He eased open the door, but his eyes weren’t adjusted and he couldn’t see a thing in the dark room. He reached down for the Maglite at his belt, and the first thing he saw as the light flooded the room was a dog kennel, its door open.
Empty.
T revalian was led by a volunteer to his assigned seat at a table that still had empty chairs. He introduced himself and awkwardly shook hands with the four already there, making a point of Nagler’s insecurity and timidity. One of the women stared. It took a thumping from her husband to break her trance. There was an attempt at small talk, but Trevalian put a quick end to that. The dog lay on the carpet to the right and slightly behind his chair. From behind his dark sunglasses he stole a look at the program laid out on his plate. It opened with:
JUICE, COFFEE, TEA, PASTRIESI
MELON
THE HONORABLE ELIZABETH SHALER
ATTORNEY GENERAL NEW YORK STATE
THREE EGG OMELET, CAVIAR, AND CRÈME FRAÎCHE
or
MANGO AND STRAWBERRY BELGIAN WAFFLE
AND YOUR CHOICE OF
NORTH SEA SMOKED SALMON, IRISH BACON, BLOOD SAUSAGE
ROASTED TOMATOES, QUICK-FRIED KELP, CARAMELIZED APPLES
He was amused by Shaler’s listing as part of the menu. She appeared to be the second or third course.
This was not the program he’d been told to expect. Originally, her talk had been scheduled to follow the main course, not precede it. This accelerated schedule affected his planning. He had to arm the explosive now, well ahead of his original plan. He reached down and reassuringly touched the bulge in his coat pocket: the shock collar’s remote control.
“Oh my God,” the woman two seats away gasped. She moved her chair back. “It’s bleeding!”
Trevalian looked. There was indeed blood beneath the dog. His plan unraveling, right before his own blind eyes, he steadied his voice. “She was just spayed. I’ll go check on her.”
“Let me be your eyes,” the woman offered. “I love dogs.”
“I can handle it!” Trevalian said sharply. He excused himself. The dog stood, unbothered by her problem, and Trevalian headed out of the banquet room.
Moving against the crush of incoming guests cost him precious minutes. He worried that the woman was going to spring up behind him. Finally he was in the hall and headed for the men’s room.
As he made it inside, two men were just washing up at the sink. Both caught Trevalian’s reflection in the mirror and both made a point of saying, “Good morning.”
“Morning,” Trevalian returned, leading the dog into the tight stall and closing the door with some difficulty.
He sat down on the toilet, pulled Callie to face him, her tail swishing back and forth outside the stall door, and he waited to hear the two men leave. Another man entered and urinated, but Trevalian had no time to wait. He removed his sunglasses and, holding the dog’s collar tightly, reached into his outside coat pocket and withdrew a pair of tweezers. With no more metal content than a ballpoint pen, the tweezers had passed through security undetected, and he used them now, lowering himself awkwardly to one knee in the cramped space to where he had a good view of Callie’s chest. He spread the dog’s hair until the pink incision appeared-a string of fine-looking hook-and-knot stitches running in a straight line ten inches up her abdomen. Blood seeped from the middle, but he dabbed it with tissue and it seemed to stop.
He carefully guided the tweezers between the second and third stitches, whispering, “Good girl,” into the dog’s ear. She tensed with a quick spark of pain. But it was over quickly as the tweezers bit down onto a length of wire and extracted it from her chest. Eighteen inches in all, extremely thin, aluminum, picture-frame wire. He wiped it clean with a piece of toilet paper. Running it up between her front legs, he opened the shock collar’s battery pack and twisted this wire to a second wire inside the shock collar. With this connection made, the remote device in his coat pocket was now live. Callie was a four-legged bomb.
He pulled her to standing. The wire was all but invisible. He dabbed her slight bleeding one more time. It would have to do.
He heard a tremendous burst of applause from out in the hall. Elizabeth Shaler was being introduced.
He reached into the small of his back, pulled out the bag hidden there, and opened it. He slipped the jogging bra out and held it closely to the dog’s nose.
“Remember this game?” he said, a wan smile forming on his lips.
As he stood off the toilet, the bomb went off. He barked out a gasp of surprise, heat flooding through him. Then he realized it was only the toilet’s automatic flush. And he began laughing. A dry, morbid laugh that resonated and rang out in the small marble stall.
F iona came into the room behind Walt as he threw the curtains back.
“I told you to wait,” he said.
“And I didn’t listen.”
He inspected the closet. Clear.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s the dog,” he said. “Not now,” when he realized he couldn’t explain.
He tried the bathroom door. It was locked. He knocked and peered beneath the crack with his flashlight. There was no one standing on the bathroom floor. He stood, reared back, and kicked it open. The door bounced off the stop and came back at him. He blocked its return.
Empty. But there was a bloody towel on the floor next to the toilet, and a mess on the counter: a syringe, meds, suture, a bloody razor blade.
“Walt…” She was scared.
“I see it.” He caught sight of the trail of blood leading to the tub. He pulled back the shower curtain, revealing a blond woman, her eyes fixed, her limbs twisted and contorted unnaturally. She was covered in blood.
Fiona tried to speak, but stepped back and threw up on the carpet. She apologized immediately, the vomit still coming from her.
On the floor by the trash can he spotted several bloodied bandages and a pair of bloodied latex gloves. He saw the corner of a cardboard box beneath a bloody towel. The box read: ESS FENCE. Another piece of trash caught his attention: EverTyed Surgical Suture 3.0.
“You all right?”
“Yes, I think.”
“Call downstairs for Chuck Webb. Tell him what we found. Then tell him I’m on my way over to the inn. There’s a shooter at the brunch. A blind guy. He may or may not have a dog. I need backup. His backup. Not the feds. Have you got that? Hey! Fiona!”
“Got it,” she whispered.
“Keep your cell phone free. I may call back here. I may want details.”
“Details…,” she mumbled.
“Hey!” he shouted, to break the trance. “Do you have your cell phone?”
She looked up at him and nodded.
“Okay?” he said.
“Okay.”
Walt hurried down the long hallway to a set of fire stairs. A minute later he was outside and running.
Light and sounds blurred. The art fair. Kids playing. People shopping. Another day in paradise. He heard nothing but his own quickened pulse.
People turned to watch the red-faced sheriff at an all-out run.
He was passing through the outdoor mall when his cell phone rang. “Fleming,” he said.
“Walt.” Fiona’s voice. “It’s not her blood. She’s not cut anywhere I can see. Can you hear me? It’s not her blood.”
“Three-point-oh,” Walt said. “Large-animal suture.”
“The dog? He hurt the dog?”
He pushed himself faster. A teenage kid went by on Rollerblades.
Bursting through the doors, he alarmed the inn’s desk clerk. He turned the corner and ran smack into the security station.
“Sheriff,” he spit out breathlessly.
He walked briskly through the metal detector, tripping the alarm. A meaty hand grabbed him by the upper arm, spinning him around. Walt wrestled to break the grip.
“No weapons inside,” the man said.
“No time,” Walt said, out of breath. “The shooter’s in there. Where’s Dryer?”
“No weapons.” The two men faced each other. Walt knew where this was going. His father had warned him. He removed his gun, held it out, and broke the man’s grip. The gun fell. He took off, an agent close behind him.
P atrick Cutter watched from behind Elizabeth Shaler, savoring the moment. He saw a room of captivated faces and the unblinking eyes of the five television network news cameras given permission to record.
Liz Shaler spoke with authority and passion, animating her talk with her beautiful hands. “There is a growing abyss in this country, a divide between haves and have-nots that must finally be addressed. Those of us here today are fortunate to be in the former category, but that also puts us in a position of responsibility to have a critical impact on this country’s future. An obligation for improvement. I see a need for moral certitude, yes, but administered with a compassion promised by the present administration but never delivered. It is time we stand up and say, ‘If not me, who? If not now, when?’”
The audience erupted into applause. A good number jumped to their feet. Patrick allowed himself a smile.
Then he spotted a red-faced and out-of-breath Walt Fleming at the back of the room, and he knew he had trouble.
Walt paused only briefly at the door. Dryer’s men were likely on orders to keep him out of this room. He searched for Nagler, for the dog, as he walked away from the doors and toward a corner where he could get a look back at the faces. Much of the crowd rose in applause, blocking his view of the room. Then he spotted his father straight ahead. His father spotted him and shook his head as if to say, “You’ll never make it.”
W e stand at a threshold,” Shaler said from the dais, “a turning point where we can elect to go back or push forward. The choices have never been more clear…”
Cutter watched as some heads turned with the sheriff’s quick movement. Here was the very distraction he’d hoped to avoid-Dick O’Brien would hear about this! Shaler, too, took notice of the sheriff, angling her head slightly-looking for a possible sign. Now Dryer’s two agents, flanking the stage, picked up on him as well.
Liz Shaler pressed on: “We will find solutions with friends from both sides of the aisle. But find them, we will! The best days still lie ahead.”
More applause rippled through an increasingly divided crowd.
“It is no easy task what I propose. But I believe I am up to the challenge. Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of the United States, I come here today to humbly offer you my services, as a fellow, concerned citizen, a former educator, a litigator, and yes: as a woman.” She paused and studied the crowd. “I offer you my candidacy for the president of the United States of America.”
Walt continued searching the room for sight of Nagler. The crowd jumped to its feet. He saw nothing but frantic waving and excited faces.
He risked a look back: two of O’Brien’s men, closing fast.
Walt reached Jerry and raised his voice over the thunderous cheering. “It’s the blind guy…maybe the dog is concealing a piece. This is for real, Dad. You’ve got to go with me on this.”
Walt met his father’s questioning look with absolute conviction and confidence.
“You were right,” Walt said. “They’re coming to get me. And they took my piece.”
“I’m with you,” Jerry said.
“Okay. Sorry about this,” Walt said. He reached inside his father’s sport coat and took his gun.
As he spun around, there were Nagler and the dog, on the opposite end of the cavernous room.
A s the audience rose to its feet, Trevalian knelt and once again slipped the jogging bra in front of Callie’s snout. As he did so, he spotted the sheriff immediately. Both men knew what was going to happen next.
Trevalian let go of the guide harness. He said, “Find it!” The dog took off into the thunderous crowd. Shaler stepped away from the lectern and began a series of bows. It was, for her, a beautiful moment.
He looked behind him: The cameras rolled. He plunged his hand into his coat pocket, his thumb hovering over the remote’s button.
L iz Shaler waved and bowed, her moment of glory upon her. Cameras flashed brightly. A news cameraman tried to part a seam down the standing crowd to get a better shot of the candidate. O’Brien’s men hurried to cut this off.
Then one of the agents shouted, “GUN!” He pointed at Walt.
His counterpart dove to take down Elizabeth Shaler. But she had had her eye on Walt for the past few seconds. When she saw him with a gun in hand, she knew he’d been right all along. “W…A…L…T!” she screamed.
Walt took a step toward Nagler just before he heard someone else cry, “GUN!”
It never occurred to Walt that warning was in response to his gun. Somehow Nagler had sewn a gun inside the dog as a means to secret the weapon through security-that was the picture in Walt’s head. By now Nagler had removed the gun and intended to use it. Obviously, one of Dryer’s men had been alert enough to see Nagler reach for it in his coat pocket.
What threw him off this notion, in those slow split seconds, was Nagler’s calm composure, his keeping his hand in his pocket, and his uninterrupted attention out ahead of him-not looking at Shaler, but at something much lower in the room.
The dog…
At that moment, his father’s profile entered his peripheral vision, coming in front of him. The man was running-a rare enough sight. He shouted, “Nooooo!” as he threw himself in front of Walt, who recoiled to avoid a collision.
A loud report of a gun.
Blood sprayed across Walt’s face. His father was spun around by the force of the gunshot. He’d taken a bullet to protect Walt, and the two met eyes briefly as Jerry went down. He coughed out roughly, “Go!”
Screams and cries as the crowd panicked. Walt checked the stage: Liz Shaler was pinned down by two agents.
As men and women stampeded toward the exits, he caught one last glimpse of Nagler: The man was still as a statue, his attention locked on the dog.
And there was the dog, nose to the carpet, as it roamed in illogical loops.
Sniffing…
Another look in Nagler’s direction, but he was obscured by the crowd. His father, bleeding at his feet. The dog hot on a scent. And now he knew…
“BOMB!” he shouted.
T he dog shied around a fallen chair. Walt danced through a field of people lying on the floor and crawling under the tables. He lunged for the dog, caught a back leg. She snarled, snapped at him, and rolled away. But Walt got a piece of her collar, lost his purchase, and found his fingers wrapped tightly around something firm and thin. The dog yelped and threw Walt off, her legs in the air as she rolled away from him.
Walt saw a hastily stitched incision running up the dog’s abdomen. Saw that he’d been holding a piece of lamp wire that ran from the incision to the dog’s collar.
An image of the discarded box in Nagler’s bathroom: ESS FENCE. He completed the crossword: Wireless Fence. A shock collar; a battery carrying enough voltage to trigger a blasting cap.
Trevalian’s hand inside his coat pocket…
Walt rose and dove again. A woman screamed, and the dog changed directions. Walt fell forward and hooked his fingertips around that wire. He pulled down hard. The dog cried out, twisted its neck, and bit Walt’s arm. The wire broke free.
Walt dropped his father’s gun and picked it back up.
Pandemonium as the two agents dragged Liz Shaler off the stage.
But for Walt there was only Nagler in the room as the man feverishly pressed a remote device that failed to answer.
A group of fleeing guests obscured his view.
He glanced over at his father, balled up in pain on the carpet.
He looked back for Nagler.
Gone.
T revalian’s plan had been to escape out the service corridor, but being so close to the main doors, as the stampede of terrified guests approached, he went with the flow, using it as cover.
He was carried out and past the metal detector. The service corridor would be to his right. He turned in that direction, separating from those headed for the exit. He peeled off the facial hair and ditched the sunglasses, worked his arms out of the sport coat and dropped it into a chair. Now in the bar, he spotted an unmarked door to his right and turned toward it. The bartender shouted, “You can’t go there!” But he did go there: through the door and a small room of two sinks and shelving, and from there, directly into the service corridor.
He headed out the first door marked EXIT.
The braying of angry protesters filled the air. They stood in the blinding sunlight behind sawhorse barriers marked SUN VALLEY POLICE DEPARTMENT. If there had once been cops there to support that line, they’d left at the sound of a gunshot.
He caught sight of black vehicles speeding off: Shaler and the Secret Service. The protesters charged forward, knocking down the barriers. Trevalian briefly stayed with the group, then broke away, hurrying across a patch of lawn toward his rental car, parked behind the adjacent dormitory.
He cut across the grass to the shouts of the protesters. “Free trade equals child slaves!”
He glanced back once instinctively. A man jumped from the loading dock. A blue uniform.
The sheriff.
I f Nagler reached the art fair, already crowded with shoppers, Walt knew he’d lose him.
He considered taking a shot, but the man had wisely put himself between Walt and the fair.
Lose him to the art fair, or risk hitting an innocent bystander?
Following the man through a crowded parking lot, Walt ran hard to keep up. To his right, a line of trees blocked the parking lot from the inn. To his left: tennis courts. Straight ahead, the art fair.
His only hope was to drop the man ahead of the art fair. He angled to his right, through a line of parked cars, a wall of evergreens, and out onto a wide strip of lawn cloistered between the inn and the parking lot. In doing so, he lost sight of the suspect. Nagler had started out of the blocks at an incredible pace, but that was not sustainable at six thousand feet above sea level. Not without weeks of training. Walt paralleled him.
At the end of the parking lot, also the end of the line of evergreens, was an access road that headed out of the lot to the southeast. It dropped down a hill. A shot taken in that direction presented the least chance of wounding a civilian.
He’d have one shot, maybe two.
Ten trees…nine…eight…
He envisioned each step, each motion. two…one…
He turned and slid on the grass. Lowered his right knee. Bent his left knee for support. Braced his left elbow on his left knee. Hunched forward to sight the weapon. He picked up the target, a running blur, led him slightly, and squeezed the trigger.
T revalian felt a burning in his right knee and then heard the shot. Too late. His right leg collapsed and he tumbled forward in an ungainly and painful somersault. His head dulled. He rolled, pulled himself up toward standing. He went down again. Blood everywhere. His leg on fire. He heard screaming.
Then the sole of a boot stomped down on his blown knee, and the pain darkened his vision.
He found himself looking up into the barrel of a gun. The sheriff was out of breath and looking down on him.
A t 2 P.M. Jerry’s eyes opened.
Walt sat in a formed fiberglass chair facing his father’s hospital bed. Like his nephew before him, Jerry was hooked up to every kind of wire and tube.
“You’re in recovery,” Walt said, not sure his father heard him. “They operated on you. Got the bullet. Cleaned you up. Your lung’s collapsed and your right shoulder’s going to need some physical therapy, but all in all you should be pretty happy that those private security boys can’t shoot for shit.”
He thought he saw the twinge of a smile and he realized Jerry had heard him, had understood. Jerry tried to say something, but it came out as more of a dry wheeze. Walt slipped an ice chip between his father’s lips. He’d never seen Jerry sick, had never seen him incapacitated. It felt as if this had to be someone else.
His father croaked out, “The shooter?”
Walt nodded. “Liz Shaler is fine. I’m fine. No guests were killed.”
His father shut his eyes. A moment later he was asleep.
“Sheriff?”
Walt turned to see Special Agent in Charge Adam Dryer’s acne-scarred face. “Suspect is out of surgery and has been moved to his room.”
“Thanks.”
“Doc says no visitors for four to six hours. But we’ll get a crack at him later tonight. FYI.”
“I’ll be here,” Walt said. “I’m going to stick around.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
“Hell of a thing your father did.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Maybe saved us all.”
“Maybe so.”
An apology hung between them, but it didn’t come.
“Later,” Dryer said. The door hissed shut behind him as he left.
“What a prick,” his father said, one eye creeping open and finding his son.
Walt laughed, surprised at how good it felt.
T revalian opened his eyes to the sound of beeping.
He noted the IV tubing and the finger clip monitoring his vitals. The bedside curtain was pulled back, revealing a private room, its wall-mounted television dark. No phone. Blackout curtains pulled. He wore a hospital gown, white with little blue daisies. They had a catheter in him.
Alive, he thought. This was followed immediately by: escape. He knew how this would go down, because he’d done a few of these jobs himself. Eighty thousand patients died unnecessarily in U.S. hospitals each year. Not all of those deaths were the hospitals’ fault. His being in federal custody was now somebody’s worst nightmare. Phone calls were being made. Arrangements. He’d be dead by morning.
Escape, he thought for the second time, taking in all the medical equipment, his wrapped leg, the elevated bed, the room. The temporary absence of handcuffs suggested the nurses needed to move or monitor him during this early going; it wouldn’t last long. He was no doubt heavily guarded from the outside. With a bum leg and no weapons, he was his own biggest obstacle. A sitting duck. If he didn’t make a phone call within a few hours…
He looked around the room. So little to work with. Some tubes, a few machines. Too many pillows to count. He had several IV stands to work with, but they weren’t going to measure up against Tasers and semiautomatic weapons.
He strained to retrieve the purple plastic tub sealed in stretch film from the adjacent end table. There was a washbowl within the tub. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A comb. No razor.
He wasn’t going to win any footraces. For all he knew he couldn’t put weight on the knee. He was trapped. They’d caught him.
He couldn’t begin to accept that.
If he asked, they would never bring him a razor. He needed for them to bring him one without his asking. He spent twenty minutes lying there contemplating this dilemma before spotting the communications jacks in the wall marked EKG.
He reached for and pushed the button clipped to the stainless steel side rail, summoning a nurse. Three minutes later, his room door opened, and a matronly woman in blue scrubs appeared. Behind her, looking in briefly, was one of the sheriff’s men.
Trevalian told the woman, “My chest…I’m having this pain…” He tapped his sternum. “Right in here.”
“Okay,” she said kindly, though both concerned and afraid of him. “I’ll let the doctor know. We’ll take care of it.”
She knocked to leave the room. This was a twist he hadn’t expected: The door locked from the hallway side.
H is name is Milav Trevalian,” Agent Dryer said to Walt from the other side of the front booth of the Mobile Command Center, currently parked twenty yards from the emergency room. “We have very little on him at present. U.S. Attorney’s office is stalling us, basically because it’s a Sunday and everyone in Washington is out on a yacht or a golf course. My guess is nothing much happens until tomorrow morning.”
“But we question him later tonight,” Walt said. It was pushing eight o’clock.
“With the doctor’s permission, yes.”
“I’ve got him on capital murder charges-the singer, the woman we found in his bathtub. Boise is sending up forensics to process that scene.”
“That’s between you and the AUSA. I have no idea how they’ll want to charge him. Listen, I gave you a shout because the AG wants to see you. If you’re going to do that, it has to be right now. She’s at the house.”
“I can’t leave,” Walt said.
“Understood. I’ll pass it along.” Dryer pushed some papers aside. “How is he?”
“Going to be okay.”
“He saved your life.”
Walt lowered his head, the man’s words resonating. His uniform shirt was speckled with his father’s blood. At one time he’d thought he’d spend his life hating the man. How quickly that had passed. He needed time to decompress.
“Hell of a thing you did, too,” Dryer said.
“It came together. It was a group effort.”
“The hell it was, but it’s good of you to say so.”
Walt motioned to the back of the bus. “You mind? I’ve got some clean shirts back there.”
“Help yourself. It’s your vehicle, Sheriff.” He grabbed hold of Walt’s arm as Walt passed. “The dog…how the hell’s the dog?”
“We’re awaiting a bomb squad tech from Salt Lake.” He checked his watch. “Probably here by now. He’ll work with our vet.”
“A fucking dog…,” Dryer said, sounding exasperated. “Right through our checkpoint.” Knowing he had failed and that at some point this was coming back onto him, knowing Walt’s earlier warnings would come back to haunt him.
“Yeah,” Walt said. “How about that?”
A different nurse-young and overweight, in loose-fitting blue scrubs-wheeled in the EKG trolley.
She maintained a professional air as she asked some questions, explained the EKG, and then helped him to sit up. She got his arms out of the nightgown and folded it across his lap. Trevalian scanned the contents of the cart.
He had a chest thick with brown hair, but it was his nine scars that caught and held her attention. Her eyes jumped clinically one to the next, and he could imagine her explaining them to herself. Two bullet wounds, three stabbings, and four lacerations. She dispensed some shaving cream from a can and applied it to several areas on his chest. She then shaved him, rinsing the razor between strokes in the purple tub of warm water that she’d filled in the washroom.
When she was done, she took a towel to him and told him they’d wait a minute for the skin to dry completely.
“Could I trouble you for a refill?” He handed her the plastic pitcher of ice water from his bedside.
“No problem.” She headed into the washroom.
Trevalian slipped his hand through the side rail and snatched a disposable razor from a box on the lower shelf of the EKG trolley. He slipped it under the covers, between his legs-let her find it there-and lay back on the pillows. He’d spiked his heart rate and pumped up his adrenaline, wondering if that might skew his EKG.
The nurse returned with the water, poured some, and actually held the cup for him as he sipped from the straw. Like taking candy from a baby, he thought.
T revalian waited for the dinner tray to be removed and the hospital room door to shut, and the clicking of the dead bolt in the doorjamb. He checked the clock: 8:06 P.M. The nurses had been checking on him every two hours.
He administered one last dose of painkiller from the electronic box attached to his bed and went to work disconnecting the IV tube. They had removed the catheter in the late afternoon and were no longer monitoring his vital signs, so he had little concern of alerting the nurses’ station to his activities. He lowered the side rail, unhooked his leg, swung it over the bed, and waited for the rush of blood and pain to his head to subside. Then, one-handing the IV stand, he prodded the ceiling tile, and to his relief, it moved. He was reminded of placing Rafe Nagler’s body bag into just such a hiding place at the Salt Lake City airport. How interesting, he thought, that things should come full circle like this.
He moved the panel out of the way and slid it to the side, but only far enough to look vaguely out of place. The key to any ruse was psychology-to push and pull the adversary, allowing him his own discoveries. Trevalian wasn’t going to make this too obvious.
He covered the disposable razor with a towel and crushed it against the vinyl tile floor, making sure to pick up every last speck of broken plastic. He then removed a piece of adhesive tape from his arm and taped one of the razor’s two narrow blades to the end of a pen that read “St. Jude’s Community Hospital.” He tested it and added yet another piece of tape for reinforcement. Now it behaved like an X-Acto knife, the blade holding strongly to the end of the pen. A tool. A weapon.
He listened carefully for any indication his crushing of the razor had been overheard. Silence.
He checked the clock one last time, and then continued his work.
T ommy Brandon sat across from room 26 at St. Jude’s Hospital. “Furnishings compliments of Christopher Guest and Jamie Lee Curtis” read a plaque immediately below the door number.
“You ever see her in that one with Arnold?” Brandon asked the Secret Service agent, who had the chair closer to the hospital room door. This man was technically in charge. He was also unresponsive. Brandon continued, “True Lies? Jamie Lee. That little dance she did. Funny. Really funny. And sexy? Come on!”
Still the agent failed to acknowledge him.
“This is what they call the technical integration of law enforcement agencies, right?” Brandon said sarcastically. “The politicians are fucking brilliant.”
“Put a sock in it, will you?” said the agent. “We start out like this, it’s going to be a long night.”
Both agents saw a nurse approaching. Brandon immediately looked away, keeping his eyes on the exit door at the end of the hallway; the two men had the entire hallway covered.
“He had an EKG not an hour ago,” the agent said to the approaching nurse. “How often are you going to check on him?”
“Just doing my rounds, Officer. Doing my job, same as you.”
“It’s Special Agent,” the man corrected. “I was just making conversation.”
“And I was just making conversation back.”
“We’ve got to search you,” the man advised her.
“I know.”
Brandon did not take his eyes off the far door. “He just came on shift. You’ll have to forgive him. He doesn’t realize you’ve already been through this three times, Maddie.”
“It’s all right. Let’s get it over with, please.” She raised her hands out like wings. She told the agent, “You get fresh with me, and your senior officer will hear about it.”
“Special Agent in Charge,” the man said, correcting her again.
“He’s still going to hear about it.”
He patted her down-gently and carefully-and cleared her. “Okay. You can go inside.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said.
She waited for the agent to unlock the door. She went inside, and he relocked it behind her.
“It’s Sunday,” Brandon told him. “No one likes getting a call on a Sunday.”
“Every day’s the same to me,” the agent said.
“That’s kind of sad, you ask me,” Brandon fired back. With the room door shut, Brandon was free to look in whatever direction he wanted. He chose to stare down the agent.
“But no one did ask you,” the agent said, determined to have the last word. Brandon could have kept playing, but decided against it. It was going to be a long night, and the sheriff seemed determined to keep him here-and away from his trailer-for as long as possible.
O nly seconds after the nurse entered the hospital room there was a pounding on the door-not the casual knock that Brandon had grown used to but a frantic, full-fisted effort. Her voice barely made it through the thick door, but it sounded as if she was in a panic.
Brandon and the agent took positions, both with their weapons drawn, and the agent unlocked the door. He stepped back, prepared for a hostage situation where Trevalian was using the nurse to startle them.
She was red-faced, wide-eyed, and overly excited.
“He’s gone!” she said. “The bed…I checked the bathroom…”
Brandon glanced at the agent, then punched his radio and rattled off several codes, relaying an emergency. It was quickly worked out that the agent would go in, but without his weapon.
Brandon pulled the nurse out of the doorway. “Get gone,” he said.
The agent pulled open the door. The bed was empty. He edged toward the closet and slid the door across. Empty. Glanced under the bed. Nothing. Moved cautiously toward the bathroom, the door standing open. Checked the reflection in the mirror first-the bathroom appeared empty. He yanked the shower curtain back. No one. Then he caught it out of the corner of his eye: a ceiling panel over the bed. Slightly askew. Not like the others.
“Clear!” he shouted. He returned to the hallway, where several more deputies had gathered. He used hand signals to direct Brandon to follow. Together they entered the room. He pointed to the ceiling panel. Brandon climbed onto the end table and popped the ceiling panel out of its frame. He poked his head inside and squeezed a flashlight past his chin.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, his voice dampened. “Looks like a panel over the bathroom goes up into a crawl space or something.” He jumped down and repeated the procedure from the countertop in the bathroom. He broke away several of the flimsily hung ceiling tiles, stretched onto his toes. “Affirmative. There’s egress here.” He ducked out of the ceiling and looked down. “He could be fucking anywhere by now.”
W alt had spent the last hour in the Mobile Command Center writing up a summary of events. His eyes strayed to a seating chart thumbtacked to a corkboard.
It was a large sheet, showing tables and seating arrangements for the Shaler brunch. Of all the seats, one was marked with an X.
Dryer felt his presence. “What?”
“That’s the seating plan for Liz Shaler’s talk,” Walt suggested.
“Yes it is,” Dryer agreed.
“Why the X on Stuart Holms?” Walt asked.
“We were reaching. On the off chance the contract on the AG came from someone attending the conference, we looked at who failed to attend. His was the only empty seat.”
“And the initials by his name?” Walt asked. “Explain it to me.”
“Exactly what it says: meal preference. Do you want a regular meal, vegetarian meal, do you have your own personal chef, are you allergic to wheat…You know how these people are.”
Walt referred to his notebook and flipped back through the pages. He asked, “And what’s that date printed down there by the file name? Bottom of the sheet?”
Dryer leaned closer. “Six-six. June sixth. What is it, Sheriff?”
“Stuart Holms uses a personal chef. Name of Raphael,” he said, consulting his notebook. “Won’t eat a bite if it’s not prepared by Raphael. He’s fanatic about it.”
“Well, that’s Stuart Holms’s seat, and he’s down for a regular meal. What’s it matter? I think you need some rest.”
“What it means, I think, is that six weeks ago-on June sixth-Holms already knew he wouldn’t be attending Liz Shaler’s talk.”
“And so, why bother with meal preference if he’s not going to be there?”
Walt nodded. “Maybe. Yeah.”
Dryer did a double-take, first looking at the seating plan, then back at Walt. His brow creased, tightening his eyes. “Naa…” But he didn’t sound as convinced as a minute earlier.
A knock on the coach’s door was followed by the big head of Dick O’Brien. “Sheriff, you got a minute?”
W alt climbed out of the Mobile Command Center wearing a fresh black T-shirt that read SEARCH AND RESCUE on the back.
O’Brien apparently never stopped sweating.
“Hey there,” O’Brien said.
“Hey there, yourself,” Walt answered.
“How is he-your dad, I mean?”
“Came through the operation with flying colors.”
“Good to hear.”
“Yes, it is,” Walt said.
“My guy…who shot him…It was meant for you: the gun and all.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I just mean he was doing his job. If you can go easy on him…”
“We could make a trade, you and I,” Walt proposed.
“Could we?”
“Must have steamed him, her taking to his brother all over again.”
“Don’t go there, Walt.”
“Jealousy is a powerful motivator. A man like Patrick gets anything he wants, right? But when your rival turns out to be your own brother, what then?”
“This is a big mistake.”
“Was a big mistake. His mistake,” Walt said. “You helped me. On the bridge. Why’d you do that?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Let’s say your boss killed her-some kind of accident. Lost his temper. But who took her down there and put her in that cage? Who did that to her? Who was it carried her up the Hill Trail and dumped her?” He studied O’Brien, who seemed to be sweating more profusely. “It was his trying to implicate Danny that pushed you over the top, wasn’t it? Danny was a good fit for it, and you knew that’s how I’d see it. That Danny would go down for it.”
O’Brien remained tight-lipped.
“You must have also known there wouldn’t be near enough evidence to prove any of this-it would come down to a jury trial. And if Danny went down for it, he’d go down and that would be that.”
“I wish I had the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”
“The thing I don’t get is the workout clothes. She’d already run that day. She wouldn’t have gone running again. So you-or someone else-had to get her into running clothes. It had to be running clothes to sell that she’d been out Adam’s Gulch. But where’d they come from, those running clothes? Did she keep some clothes at Patrick’s? Was that it? Something she could jump into if his wife came home early? I don’t get the clothes.”
“I’m glad your dad is doing better.” He turned to break off the conversation, then turned back again. “I’ve been within an arm’s reach of Patrick for four solid days, Walt. That’s the God’s truth.”
“You give me Cutter, and any of your guys involved in the cover-up will walk.”
Brandon ’s frantic voice called out a series of codes over the radio.
Walt went running right past O’Brien, clutching his gun belt to keep it from slapping, wishing he’d had more time to see if the man had been ready to make a deal.
W alt paced Trevalian’s empty room, Brandon standing in the doorway, watching. He checked the windows-all fixed glass, none broken. He wandered into and then back out of the bathroom. He approached the closet and slid open the doors. Walt had only glanced in there the first time. Now he returned for a more thorough look. They’d been searching the grounds for the past hour, with no sign of the suspect.
“There’s a ceiling hatch leads up into the joists,” Brandon said, breaking the silence. “Up over the bathroom. Three of the rooms on this floor have similar access.”
“Climbing with that knee of his. You think?” Walt said.
He squatted and looked beneath the raised bed. He turned over a pillow, then another. He lifted the bedding and peered under the sheets. “This guy is seriously wounded, and he’s clever. If we’re thinking he climbed out through the roof, then you can bet he didn’t.”
He touched another pillow, then spun around sharply on his heels, facing the closet again. “You went through all this?” he asked, indicating the closet.
Brandon answered, “There’s nothing in there, unless he’s hiding in a drawer.”
Walt reached up into the closet and pulled out the pillows. As he did so, he said, “Did you happen to notice that three of the pillows on the bed-the ones that were under his knee-were stripped of their pillowcases? Do you pay attention to anything other than the nurses?”
Brandon fumed but knew better than to answer.
Walt opened the end of one of the pillowcases taken from the closet, then looked up disapprovingly at Brandon and shook its contents onto the floor, discovering big chunks of foam and fabric. A section of a zipper. He hurried now and shook out the other pillowcase as well, spilling out similar contents. “Help me out,” Walt said, spinning back around and lowering the hospital bed’s side rail. The two dragged the mattress off the bed and flipped it over, upside down, onto the floor.
The bottom of the mattress had been cut away with something sharp into a human form-head, shoulders, legs, arms. Three sections of clear tubing had fallen to the floor.
“He was in the room all along,” Walt said, “faceup, under the mattress. Breathing tubes,” he said, picking them up. “In here the whole time we were out there looking for him.” Furious at him now, Walt shouted, “One officer always protects the crime scene! Jesus Christ, Tommy.”
He stormed out of the room, already putting himself into the contrarian mind of Trevalian. Where would he go? How could he hope to escape the valley? Was there someone helping him?
Then it came to him: Dryer’s men and most of his deputies had been deployed to search the hospital, top to bottom.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.
T revalian had found his way into town on the most direct route available, and one he was quite certain the cops wouldn’t think to search or roadblock: the bike path. He’d stoved in the head of a deputy who stood guard outside the bottom of the hospital fire stairs, and had left him unconscious and stripped of his clothes, a sock down his throat, his hands cuffed behind him. He had the man’s cell phone and now wore his uniform, though the shoes were a size small and his feet were killing him. A wheelchair had gotten him most of the way into town along the bike path, while fifty yards to his right cop cars raced up and down the highway. He’d ditched the chair at the turn to the ski slopes. When the painkillers wore off, he was going to be in serious trouble.
From somewhere near the center of town, he called the memorized number and left a page when the recorded message told him to do so. He hoped he wasn’t too late. If a contract had gone out on him, it might not be rescinded.
He waited. Five minutes passed. Ten.
Finally the phone rang and he answered the call.
“Go ahead,” a male voice said.
“The engagement was broken off,” he said.
“So I heard. Most disappointing.”
“I had a little problem getting away from the church, but that’s behind me now. I’m free.”
“Free?”
“Yes. But my in-laws are never going to let me out of this town. I could use a place to stay.”
“That’s the problem with being single,” the man said. “You’ll think of something.”
“I need your help with this.”
“I’m afraid not. You failed to consummate the marriage.”
At that moment, a helicopter passed overhead. At first Trevalian had trouble hearing, and hoped the contact hadn’t hung up. But then, much to his surprise, the same sound of the helicopter was in his other ear: the ear pressed to the phone.
He scanned the sky and spotted the flashing red and white lights as it flew to the far end of town. It hovered and then landed halfway up Knob Hill. It looked to be a private home the size of a country club.
In the phone he heard nothing. The call had disconnected.
A moment later it rang again and he answered. There was no sound of the helicopter in the receiver, and he wondered if he’d actually heard it coming from the phone, or not.
“The bride is still in town,” the voice said. “Her father’s place. Try to work things out with her. If you’re successful, contact me again. I’ll see what I can do to assist you.”
Trevalian hung up wondering if he could walk any farther.
W alt reached the emergency room at a run. A Secret Service agent guarded the door.
“Dryer?” Walt asked, not slowing.
“Special Agent in Charge Dryer is in the Command Center.”
“Tell him it’s Shaler. He’s going for Shaler.”
“I’m not your message boy!” the agent shouted after him.
Walt jumped into the Cherokee-and sped away. Five minutes later he was negotiating the streets of Ketchum. He parked uphill a block from Shaler’s house, pulled the shotgun from the dashboard, and double-checked its load. He realized too late that his protective vest had come back from cleaning and was still in his office.
The crickets chimed. A dog barked in the distance. The smell of wood smoke lingered in the air. He moved stealthily in shadow, avoiding the streetlight, quickly closing the distance to Shaler’s house. This was the identical route he’d ridden as a pedal patrolman eight years earlier, and for some reason he thought of his brother and how much he missed him. He snuck down a driveway and past a neighbor’s house. He slipped over a rail fence that bordered Shaler’s driveway, his heart tight, his breath short.
Procedures called for him to wait for backup: Dryer’s men couldn’t be far behind. His earpiece carried the monotonous prattle of his dispatcher’s voice. He needed silence. So he called in his location and went off-air.
He approached Shaler’s kitchen door stealthily but not wanting Dryer’s sentries to mistake him for an intruder. He paused and studied the layout, looking carefully for signs of the agent guarding the back door.
No one.
Adding to his confusion, the interior lights were out. This went against protocol. The place should have been lit like a Christmas tree. He carefully made his way to the back door. His shoe hit something slippery right as his nose picked up the metallic smell of blood.
He one-handed the shotgun and checked the shrubbery with his Maglite. Twin soles faced him. The agent had been clobbered. His head was bleeding-a good sign. He was out cold.
Walt moved quietly through the door and into the kitchen. The all too familiar hallway stretched before him.
Trevalian would have taken the agent’s gun. No vest, he reminded himself.
He crept down the hallway, the flashlight off but held beneath the shotgun.
The first door hung open: a small bedroom. Empty. The study door, to the right, also open. The room empty.
His eye caught a glint on the carpet. He reached down and touched it: sticky. Blood. It could have been an agent’s, or Shaler’s, but something told him Trevalian’s stitches had popped. He worked down the hallway, passed a bathroom and a linen closet.
One door remained: Shaler’s bedroom. Consumed by his memory of eight years earlier, his courage waned as his scar pulsed with pain.
He twisted the head of the flashlight, kicked open the door, and stood to the side, expecting a shot.
Then, an enormous crash of glass. Someone-something-going out a window. He dove into the bedroom, the shotgun pressed tightly against his shoulder. Looked left…right. Clear. Belly-crawled to the louvered doors of the closet. Clear.
Walt got to his knees. Shaler lay in the bed, absolutely still. But then the flashlight caught her: It wasn’t Shaler but a mannequin.
A safe room? A panic room?
He kicked some errant glass from the broken window and climbed outside.
A man in uniform-a sheriff’s deputy-was well up the hill, keeping to shadow. He dragged a leg behind him.
Walt heard sirens approaching.
“Halt!” Walt yelled out at the top of his lungs.
Trevalian ducked into shadow.
Police cruisers and sheriff’s vehicles slid around both street corners nearly simultaneously-behind Walt and in front of him. They stood off, aware of the limited range of the shotgun. Their overhead racks threw off colors as two searchlights were aimed onto Walt from opposite directions-each blinding the other car and leaving Walt a fuzzy, glowing image between them.
Walt was no longer wearing his uniform shirt, and the word was out that a sheriff’s uniform had been stolen.
“Hands in the air!” a megaphone voice called out.
Walt dropped the shotgun, shouting, “It’s me!” He turned to face his own sheriff’s vehicle.
“Stand down!” Brandon ’s voice called out to the Ketchum police car. “It’s Sheriff Fleming!”
Amplified shouting back and forth, with Walt caught in the middle. He knew the quickest way to resolve this was to lie down on the asphalt until the Ketchum cop got it right.
Doing so now, Walt peered into the shadows, wondering if they’d lost Trevalian. Again.
T revalian arrived at the mansion’s front door sweating, bleeding, and out of breath. A man on the run. He pounded hard on the twin doors, pushed the intercom button repeatedly, and then pounded on the door again. He looked behind him, back toward the gate, then returned to pounding on the door.
A man came from the side of the house. He wore a blue blazer and a scowl. He held a gun and was backed up by a second man behind him. Who now appeared to Trevalian’s left.
“Hands on your head. Step away from the door. Good. Hands where I can see them. Okay…on your knees-”
“I can’t. My knee…Listen,” Trevalian said frantically, “you gotta get me out of here. We’ve got to do this someplace else. You know who I am? I’m being pursued.” He lay down on the driveway. “We have to hurry, fellas. The owner of this house…Ask him. But make it quick.”
Less than a minute later he was loaded into a golf cart and driven around back-through a gate in a ten-foot-high fence-and escorted into what appeared to be a guesthouse. It was all hardwood floors and Stickley furniture. Indirect lighting and lots of glass. The city of Ketchum spread out below, just past the silhouette of the helicopter sitting on its concrete pad on the edge of a vast lawn. Four security guards kept their distance. The man to speak to him wore a Tommy Bahama floral shirt and pale trousers. He offered Trevalian a bottle of water. Trevalian gulped it down.
“So talk,” this man said.
“Not to you,” Trevalian said. “With all due respect. Him, or nobody. And if you kill me, then the three letters that are in a mailbox in town get picked up in the morning and go to the sheriff, the newspaper, and CNN. They contain all the details about this job-the e-mails, the payments. You think anything is totally untraceable? You want to take that chance? I get what I want out of this, and I give you the location of the mailbox and you put a little lighter fluid down it, and no one’s the wiser. And if you think you’ll beat the mailbox’s location out of me-give it your best shot.”
He chugged some more water, draining the bottle.
Tommy Bahama left the building. He returned more than ten minutes later with yet another security guard-that made five-and a man in his sixties wearing a white terrycloth robe and leather slippers.
“Mr. Holms,” Trevalian said. “I’d stand, but the knee’s a little worse for wear.”
“I believe you’ve made a mistake,” Stuart Holms said, waiting as Tommy Bahama helped him into a seat.
“The mistake was yours-or whoever called me back. The package was not at home. You had bad intel. There was a mannequin in her bed.”
“You’ve got the wrong man,” Holms said.
“I’m a little short on time, Mr. Holms. The sheriff is out there looking for me. Secret Service. Police. We haven’t got long. Elizabeth Shaler cost you. Payback is payback. I understand that. If I’ve made a mistake, then turn me over to them. If, on the other hand, I’ve not, then we should be talking about me spending a few days in your panic room, or catching a ride in your helicopter.”
Stuart Holms regarded him with contempt. “Then we wait for the police.”
“Hide me until they drop the roadblocks,” Trevalian said. “Use your position, your power, your attorneys-whatever you’ve got-to keep me well hidden. Get me to someplace like Reno or Portland. That’s it. No money. No extortion. I have a reputation to protect. We both do.”
Holms exchanged a look with Tommy Bahama-impossible to read.
“The location of the mailbox,” Tommy Bahama said.
“Not yet,” Trevalian said.
“How do you know we won’t kill you once you’ve given us the location of the mailbox?” Holms asked.
“How do you know I’ll give you the right mailbox? What if it’s a UPS drop box that doesn’t get picked up until six P.M. tomorrow night? They can’t keep roadblocks up indefinitely. I don’t intend to be here past six P.M. tomorrow.”
“You didn’t post any letter,” Holms said.
“You can play that card if you want.”
“Thought it all through, have you?” Holms could no longer sit still. He came out of his chair and paced.
“That’s what you hired me for. Tell me otherwise.”
He stopped in front of Trevalian, glaring.
“It was the helicopter that got you,” Trevalian explained. “I heard the helicopter over the phone. How many guys have their own helicopter in this town?”
“More than you’d think.”
“Six P.M. tomorrow, and then you’re gone,” Holms stated. “And I’ll want those letters.”
The security guys all touched their ears at once.
“Perimeter alarms,” one of them said.
With his finger to his ear, Tommy Bahama nodded. “It’s a fucking army.”
Stuart Holms growled at Tommy Bahama. “Tell me you searched him for a wire.”
Bahama grimaced and looked over at the lead security guard, who stared back vacantly, dumbstruck.
Trevalian casually unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing the tiny microphone taped to his shaved chest. “I was a little slow on this bum leg. Business is business. Am I right, Mr. Holms?”
“Shoot him!” Holms shouted to the paralyzed Tommy Bahama.
The door crashed open and in charged a SWAT team, all shouting at once for hands in the air.
The third man through the door was Sheriff Walt Fleming. He was grinning.