‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said.
‘De nada.’ He took her suitcase without preamble and wheeled it out towards the car. ‘Where are you flying off to?’
‘Just the next stop on my never-ending End of the World Tour,’ Caitlin replied.
If Special Agent Colvin was sufficiently alert to have noticed she hadn’t answered him, he was also good- mannered enough to make nothing of it. He took care when hoisting her luggage into the back of the Suburban. Although there was nothing breakable in there, Caitlin appreciated the thought nonetheless. She couldn’t help noticing a number of foreign-language books piled up in a plastic bin in the trunk, among them
She indicated the collection with a tilt of her head. ‘How many languages do you speak?’
He didn’t seem the type to puff up his chest and brag about himself. ‘Oh, three if you count Arabic. How about you?’
‘None,’ she lied. ‘I have a hard enough time with English.’
She picked up a manila folder from the passenger seat, Miguel Pieraro’s name handwritten on its cover in thick black ink. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked as they strapped themselves in.
‘Sure, knock yourself out, ma’am.’
He put the Suburban into gear, before navigating his way around the potholes, following a route that took them east towards the Chouteau Trafficway. There was no light to wait for at any of the intersections. He simply stopped long enough to avoid a pair of Hummers leaving the militia substation at the Chouteau Bridge, before proceeding north to the ramp for Highway 210.
Traffic was pretty thin on 210, with a few people on horseback as they turned westbound. On her right the Cerner Campus was a hub of activity, with soldiers running their morning PT and vehicles moving out into the city. Towering over the campus, a short way from the road, was the rechristened North Kansas City Federal Medical Center. An army Black Hawk emblazoned with the Red Cross lifted off from a helipad beyond her line of sight, to travel to points unknown.
As they moved closer to North Kansas City proper, the already-light vehicular traffic began to thin out further. KC didn’t really have a peak hour anymore. Most people seemed to get about by bus, the service for which was regular enough that there were always one or two commuter shuttles in view. The remainder of the traffic consisted of government and military vehicles, and a hefty spread of civilian ones featuring the logo of Cesky Enterprises, the biggest reconstruction contractor in town.
‘Now, what you’ve got there,’ said Colvin, nodding towards the folder in her hands, ‘is basically everything the accident investigators and Homicide guys have so far.’
‘This Aronson woman,’ she asked, turning over a page, ‘what shape is she in?’
‘She’s seen better days, poor woman. She’s in a coma up at the hospital. Doctors can’t say yet whether she’ll come out of it. So she’s not going to be much help.’
Caitlin grunted, already distracted by the details in the file. The accident investigation squad had concluded very quickly that the hit-and-run was no accident. The assailant’s vehicle, a blue Toyota pick-up, had accelerated quickly from a standing start, driven in an almost perfectly straight line, until a few metres out from where it had struck the victims; at that point, it had swerved to line them up with the centre of its bull bars. Pieraro had been struck first, and his body flew into Aronson, protecting her from the worst of the impact. The Toyota had stopped in a controlled fashion a little further down the road, the report went on. There, it picked up a passenger - a large male, judging by the boot prints he’d left preserved in the snow. The investigators had been able to track the vehicle for a short distance because of the same snowfall that had provided them with such a rich haul of evidence at the site of the incident.
Caitlin looked up to collect her thoughts as they passed by an old burnt-out McDonald’s on the right-hand side of the road. The familiar feel of suburban sprawl, with a slight edge of the End Times. She couldn’t help thinking, given his effectiveness when steering his charges to safety amid the road-agent gangs of Texas, that Miguel Pieraro would somehow have sensed a vehicle approaching in this environment.
‘I seem to recall hearing that Thursday was blown out by a blizzard,’ she said eventually.
‘It was, later on,’ explained Colvin. ‘But we got lucky with the weather. There was a light fall on Thursday morning. And then an hour-and-a-half hiatus during which the temperature really fell away, but before the big dump came on. One of the first people onto the scene was a city road worker. He’d cleaned up after a few accidents in the past and knew to preserve the scene at this one. Accident investigators got there inside of ten minutes when he called it in. Sometimes the stars align.’
‘Not for Pieraro.’
‘No,’ said Colvin quietly. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Any sign of the vehicle?’
‘Yeah, you’ll find something about three-quarters of the way through.’ He waved a hand, indicating the file again. ‘Doused with gasoline and burnt down to its axles, about thirty miles outside of town.’
‘Oh, that’s not suspicious.’
‘Nope. Happens all the time.’
She fell silent again, hurrying to absorb all the information before they reached her destination. She was hoping for something about the identity of the driver and the man - they were all assuming it was a man - who had got into the vehicle further down the road. The Chevrolet passed under I-35 as Highway 210 transformed itself into a four-lane thoroughfare. Not too far down the highway, she could make out a nine-storey, red-brick building. It dominated the local landscape. The perfect place for a sniper, if you had good intel ahead of time …
‘How’s cell phone coverage in KC, Colvin?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Like, for normal folk.’
He shook his close-cropped, rather boxy head as the tall brick building swept by. ‘If you don’t have access to the federal network, you’re pretty much fucked. Capacity is very limited. But having said that, demand is low. Most people do hard, physical work, from sun-up to sundown, usually on the government dollar. Sitting on their butt all day, surfing around on the net, or calling a friend to meet up for coffee at Starbucks, just isn’t that common anymore. Why d’you ask?’
Caitlin held up a couple of crime-scene photographs. ‘Somebody’s probably thought of this already,’ she offered up-front, ‘but the second man looks like a spotter to me. You know - like a second pair of eyes for a sniper. Or a forward air controller.’
‘I do,’ said Colvin, glancing over. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘The angles. If I had time, I’d drive over there and take a look for myself, but from these photographs it seems to me like the guy on the street had a good angle to watch Pieraro and Aronson as they approached. The driver of the vehicle didn’t. But the tyre marks, the almost perfect timing, even the way he veered just a little bit at the end to line them up with his hood ornament - it all looks like somebody was
The FBI man shook his head uncertainly. ‘I’m not sure. I have to confess, I’m not fully up to speed on this one. I just picked this up because it was flagged as being of interest to Jed Culver’s office. But if there’s no note there about cell phones, I’m sure I could get the local guys to look into it. Or I could probably pull the logs myself, if you want. Is there some way I can contact you when you leave KC?’
She could see Colvin was intrigued. She had to admire the guy. He was an investigator; it must’ve been driving him bat-shit. Particularly why she’d been interested in the homesteader
‘Thank you, Agent Colvin,’ she said as graciously as she could manage on three hours’ sleep. ‘I’m in transit for the next few days but I’ll have Mr Culver’s office get in contact with you. They can handle anything you turn up about those phone logs. I really do appreciate your help on this.’
‘I’m a people person.’ He gave a shrug, accompanying the movement with a goofy grin. ‘I live to help
