“Isn’t it? It’s by the new artist I told you about. Simon Doyle.”
Fiona grumbled all the way to the truck.
In his cell in Washington State Penitentiary, George Allen Perry read his Bible. While his crimes had earned him a maximum-security cage for the rest of his life, he was considered a model prisoner.
He joined no gangs, made no complaints. He did the work assigned to him, ate the food served him. He kept himself clean, spoke respectfully to guards. He exercised regularly. He did not smoke or swear or use drugs, and spent most of the endless days reading. Every Sunday he attended services.
Visitors came rarely. He had no wife, no child, no staunch friends outside, or inside, the walls.
His father had long ago deserted him, and his mother, who the psychiatrists agreed was the root of his pathology, feared him.
His sister wrote him once a month, and made the long trek from Emmett, Idaho, once a year, considering it her Christian duty.
She’d given him the Bible.
The first year had been a misery that he’d borne with downcast eyes and a quiet manner that had disguised a raging fear. In the second year he’d lost fear in depression, and by the third he’d accepted that he would never be free.
He would never again be free to choose what to eat, and when to eat it, to rise or repose at his own whim. He would never again walk through a forest or glade or drive a car along a dark road with a secret in the trunk.
He would never again feel the power and the peace of a kill.
But there were other freedoms, and he earned them carefully. Meticulously. He expressed regret for his crimes to his lawyer, to the psychiatrist.
He’d wept, and considered the tears humiliation well spent.
He told his sister he’d been born again. He was allowed private consultation with a minister.
By his fourth year, he was assigned to the prison library, where he worked with quiet efficiency and expressed gratitude for the access to books.
And began his search for a student.
He applied for and was granted permission to take courses, both by visiting instructors and by video feed. It gave him an opportunity to interact with and study his fellow inmates in a new setting.
He found most too crude, too brutal, too lacking in intellect. Or simply too old, too young, too deeply entrenched in the system. He continued to further his education—he found it interesting—and he held to the thinning hope that fate would offer him the spiritual freedom he sought.
In his fifth year in Walla Walla, fate smiled on him. Not in the guise of a fellow inmate, but an instructor.
He knew instantly, just as he’d known the woman he would kill the moment he saw her.
This was his gift.
He began slowly, assessing, evaluating, testing. Patient, always, as he outlined and refined the methods by which he would create his proxy, the one who would walk outside the walls for him, hunt for him and kill for him.
Who would, in time, in good time, correct his single mistake. One that haunted him every night in the dark cage where silence and comfort were strangers.
Who would, in time, kill Fiona Bristow.
That time, Perry thought as he read Revelation, was nearly here.
He glanced up as the guard came to the cell. “Got a visitor.”
Perry blinked, carefully marking his place before setting aside the worn Bible. “My sister? I didn’t expect her for another six weeks.”
“Not your sister. FBI.”
“Oh, my goodness.” A big man with thinning hair and prison pallor, Perry stood meekly as the door clanged and slid open.
Two guards flanked him, and he knew others would search his cell while he was gone. No matter, none at all. They’d find nothing but his books, some religious tracts, the dry, God-fearing letters from his sister.
He kept his head down, repressed the smile that strained to spread over his face. The FBI would tell him what he already knew. His student had passed the next test.
Yes, Perry thought, there were many kinds of freedom. And at the thought of gaming with the FBI again, he took wing and soared.
Six
Grateful for the bright, brisk morning and work that demanded her full attention, Fiona studied her advanced special-skills students. Today was a very big day for dogs and handlers. They’d attempt their first blind search.
“Okay, the victim’s in place.” She thought of Sylvia, three-quarters of a mile away, sitting cozily under a forked-trunk cedar with a book, a thermos of herbal tea and her radio. “I want you to work as a unit. We’re going to use the sector system. You can see I’ve set up the base.” She gestured to a table she’d placed under a pole tarp and the equipment on it. “For today, I’ll handle base and stand as operational leader, but by next week I want you to elect your officers.”
She gestured to the whiteboard under the tarp. “Okay. The local authorities have notified the operations officer—me, in this case—and asked for assistance in the search and rescue of an adult female hiker who’s been lost approximately twenty-four hours. You see on the board temperatures last night dropped to forty-three degrees. She has only a day pack, and little experience. The victim is Sylvia Bristow.”
That brought out some grins as the class knew Sylvia as Fiona’s sometime assistant. “She’s age-deleted for my own well-being, Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, five feet, five inches, and about a hundred and thirty pounds. When last seen she was wearing a red jacket, jeans, a blue baseball-style cap. Now, what do you need to know before being given your sectors?”
She answered with details from the scenario she’d devised. The subject was in good health, had a cell phone but often neglected to charge it, had been expected to hike two to four hours, was not local and had only recently taken up hiking.
She called the unit to the map and the log she’d already begun. Once she’d assigned sectors, she ordered everyone to load on their packs.
“I have items worn recently by the subject. Take a bag, give your dogs the scent. Remember to use the subject’s name. Refresh the scent whenever you think your dog may be confused, or if he or she becomes distracted or disinterested. Remember the boundaries of your sector. Use your compass, check in by radio. Trust your dogs. Good luck.”
She felt their excitement, and the nerves, as well as a sense of competition. Eventually, if they made it as a unit, the competition would shift into cooperation and trust.
“When you get back, all dogs who didn’t find our victim need a short find, to keep up morale. Remember, it’s not just your dogs being tested. You’re honing your skills, too.”
She watched them spread out, separate, and nodded in approval at the way each gave his or her dog the scent, the command.
Her own dogs whined as the others scented the air, began to roam.
“We’ll play later,” she promised them. “These guys need to do it on their own.”
She sat, noted the time, wrote it in the assignment log.
They were a good group, she thought, and should make a solid unit. She’d started with eight, but over the past ten weeks three had dropped out. Not a bad percentage, she mused, and what was left was tight, was dedicated. If they pushed through the next five weeks, they’d be a good asset to the program.
She picked up her radio, checked the frequency, then contacted Sylvia. “They’re off and running. Over.”
“Well, I hope they don’t find me too soon. I’m enjoying my book. Over.”
“Don’t forget. Sprained ankle, dehydration, mild shock. Over.”
