We flew down the mountain, nearly careening off the road twice as I took a couple curves too fast.
“Careful,” said Lien-hua. “You kill us, and we’ll never catch him.”
She tried the phone again. Still no coverage.
Asheville lay ten miles ahead of us.
I screeched the tires as I rounded another tight mountain curve.
“Easy, Pat. I want to get this guy as much as you do. But let’s do it in one piece.”
“Yeah.” I eased off the gas a little. “OK, sorry.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this guy. Indian legends, kidnappings, cross-contamination, he’s got it all thought out.” She tried her cell phone again. Still nothing.
“Betrayal,” I said.
“What?”
“The missing motive,” I said. “It’s betrayal, isn’t it?”
“Nope. You betray someone because of desire, and you respond to betrayal with anger. Try again.” She set her phone down. No use dialing until we got into flatter territory.
“Curiosity?”
“That’s a form of desire-you desire to know what that crime feels like or how it will affect you.”
I paused. I was running out of ideas. I thought about saying honor or vanity, but they were forms of desire too. Even duty and integrity are desires-the desire to please, the desire to be virtuous. “Hmm. Remorse?” I said.
“Just another name for guilt.”
I shook my head. This was harder than I thought. Maybe if I tried thinking like a profiler, I could do it.
On second thought… we all have our limits.
Lien-hua punched the number into the phone I’d borrowed from Sheriff Wallace. “Finally,” she muttered and then immediately launched into an explanation of everything we knew so far about Grolin. I could tell she was talking to Margaret.
But the more Lien-hua spoke, the more the expression on her face flattened out, became hard. She tried explaining the situation again, more emphatically this time, but once again she was cut off in mid-sentence.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
Lien-hua leaned toward me and whispered through clenched teeth, “Margaret says it’s not enough for a warrant.”
“What? Give me that phone.”
Lien-hua handed it to me.
“Margaret, Jolene might still be alive!”
“Don’t raise your voice at me, Dr. Bowers.” Each word was a carefully crafted stone.
“Listen-”
“Indian legends?” she snapped. “Contact lenses? Just listen to yourself. There’s nothing tying Grolin to these crimes. I’m not calling up a judge to get a search warrant-”
“He was at Mindy’s crime scene, Margaret.”
“So were fifty other people,” she said. “It’s not enough.”
“He leads trips to this cave.”
“You don’t even know he was in that cave. All you have is some mud on the girl’s foot.”
“We have to move on this now!”
“Listen to me carefully, Agent Bowers.” Her voice had turned to ice. “I’ll consider calling it in on Monday when Judge Stephenson gets back from vacation, if you get me some actual evidence instead of just conjecture. Until then-”
“What?” I said. “I’m losing you.”
“Just wait for-” she droned on. I slammed the cell phone shut and threw it to the floor. The battery flew out. Along with a few other things.
“Oops,” I mumbled. “I hate when I do that.”
Lien-hua picked up the various items that used to be Dante Wallace’s cell phone. “Nice negotiation skills.”
“Um, I’ll buy him another one.”
“So what did she say?”
“She told me not to waste any time. She said to bring him in.” I cruised around a corner and accelerated into a straightaway as the road leveled out. “She said saving a girl’s life is more important than jumping over bureaucratic hurdles.”
Lien-hua stared at me. Blinked. “No she didn’t.”
“No,” I said after a pause. “She didn’t.”
I wasn’t sure how Lien-hua would respond. I had to do something. I had to. Jolene had a dad somewhere too, just like Mindy did. Crying. Worrying. Hoping. I couldn’t just sit by and wait while the Illusionist tortured and killed another girl when we might still be able to save her. I hoped Lien-hua was with me on this, I really did. If she wasn’t on board, I didn’t know what I was going to do.
Finally, out of the corner of my eye I saw her nod. “Too bad we lost reception right when she was telling us what she wanted us to do.”
“Yeah,” I said, gunning the motor and flying around another curve. “Too bad.”
Lien-hua picked up her phone. It took three calls to find Grolin’s address. She pulled out a map and called out the directions.
I merged onto Highway 70 and headed toward Billings Road, breaking every traffic law I could think of on the way.