“It’s not Donnie,” Ellory told me.
“Talk to me.” Holding my cell against my ear with one hand, I collected the time cards and personnel files with the other.
“Twenty minutes ago we got an anonymous call to look for prints on a knife at the Pickron residence, and that it would point to a man named Neil Kreger-but that ‘Neil’ was just a name he was going under. They gave us the tag numbers for his rental-”
“Hold on. An anonymous caller told you all this?”
“Yes. Natasha was in the area. She checked the knife, found the prints, and apparently this guy’s real name is Alexei Chekov.”
“Who is he?”
“A ghost. No one really knows. She said the Bureau has a name, but no photo, no background. But he’s a person of interest in half a dozen murder investigations worldwide.”
I was on my way to the door. My next course of action clear: call Quantico, get Angela Knight in Cybercrime on it. She can find out anything about any “And,” Ellory went on, “we have a location on his rental car.”
“What? Where is he?”
“That’s the thing. A state trooper pulled him over, then we lost radio contact with him. I sent a car and I’m on my way myself. The GPS signal on the officer’s cruiser just went off the grid.”
I stepped outside. Snow shot crazily past me into the room. The storm was picking up. I was really glad Tessa wasn’t on the roads.
“Where exactly was the cruiser’s last known location?”
“Two miles south of the river.”
About six miles away.
“I’m at the sawmill,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Close. Only a couple minutes out. Just south of you.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“Still at the sheriff’s department in Woodborough.”
A quick calculation. “All right. Swing by. Pick me up. Put out an APB on the rental car and the cruiser.”
“Already done.”
End call.
In the white fury of the storm I could just make out the snowmobiles across the yard, near the entrance to the sawmill. I contacted Angela to get her started pulling everything she could on Chekov, then jogged through the stinging curls of snow toward the sleds.