successful in his chosen career, which, as you may have already guessed, is assassin.
“I would have to say that as a professional assassin, it wasn’t bright of him to try for you a second time, Mrs. Ransom, since it turns out your initial police sketch was right on and there was already an APB out on him. If he moves again at all, this picture should nail him.”
“The problem,” Sherlock said, “is that this man’s got a good deal of pride in his work, doesn’t accept failure easily. Oh yes, I’m Agent Sherlock, Dillon’s wife. That’s Agent Dillon Savich.”
“You’re married?”
“Yes, we are,” Savich said. “Cheney, what have you got?”
“There haven’t been any alerts yet from local doctors or hospitals and no sighting of Makepeace as of yet. I agree with Sherlock. This guy may not be ready to give up. Being bested by an amateur and a woman—that sure wouldn’t look good on his resume. And Julia actually shot him.”
Sherlock said, “Steve in Behavioral Sciences believes what he did is out of character. He should have left the city by now. He thinks Makepeace might be taking this personally now, seeing her as his nemesis, that he’s not about to turn tail and head out of town. He’s got to see her die. Sorry you had to hear that, Mrs. Ransom.”
“But I shot him,” Julia said. “I had to shoot him. Shouldn’t he be as afraid as I am?” She paused a minute, sighed. “Well, isn’t that a stupid thing to say? He’s about as afraid of me as he is an ant. Sorry, I feel like I’m on Mars here. Do you have any idea who hired him?”
Savich said, “Captain Paulette is the man to keep you posted on that. Maybe if they can catch Makepeace, they can find out.” But Savich didn’t believe that for a minute and neither did Cheney or Sherlock. Xavier Makepeace was a professional. Even if the cops managed to capture him, he wouldn’t talk.
Cheney said, “You said Makepeace’s dad is a Brit. Does the son have an English accent?”
Savich said, “We don’t know. But he’s worked all over the world. He could probably manage whatever accent he wants. And he seems to have no particular loyalties. We think he’s worked for the Israelis, for the mullahs, even for MI6 on one occasion. He has no standard M.O.—well, he does prefer to garrote when he can, using wire—but he uses what’s expedient to him in the given situation, he’s very thorough in his planning, at times even bizarrely complex, and he’s been at it for nearly fourteen years. Very few have gotten close to him, and no one close enough to catch him.”
Julia said, “August was garroted.”
“Yes, we know; soon so will the SFPD,” Savich said.
Julia said in a small voice, “He’s very scary.”
“Yes, he is,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly. “But you’ve got Cheney with you. He’s a rottweiler.”
Savich said, “Mrs. Ransom—”
“Please, call me Julia.”
“Julia, do you remember your husband having a client by the name of Thomas Pallack?”
“Yes, of course. He and Mr. Pallack were together for a very long time, more than ten years, I believe. Why?”
They heard Savich draw a deep breath. “We just might have some overlap with another case. I think Sherlock and I are going to come over to San Francisco along with a sheriff from Virginia and another FBI agent from Headquarters. A pleasure to speak to you, Mrs. Ransom—Julia. We’ll probably see you tomorrow.” When Cheney hung up the phone, he turned to Julia. “Yep, think of me as your rottweiler. Nothing’s going to happen to you on my watch. You ready to see Wallace Tammerlane?”
CHAPTER 25
Cheney kept his eyes on the green Camry weaving around in front of him on Lombard Street. When the Camry driver was finally off his cell, Cheney said to Julia, “The videotapes we watched—I swear I wanted to tell you it was all a load of crap, but your husband, he was very good, Julia, very believable. The others too, but August Ransom was the one who really drew me in completely, despite my being the skeptic from hell. How much do you think was excellent performance and how much was real? It was hard for me to tell.”
Julia laughed. “I felt the same way before August was with me in the hospital. I remember rolling my eyes when the editor initially gave me the assignment to interview August. I was thinking all he wanted was a lovely positive fluff piece after I found out his wife had used August to contact her dead father and wouldn’t stop singing his praises.
“He changed my mind, I’ll admit it. I saw him in action, saw how he worked, how he dealt with grieving people, how he eased them into accepting the continual presence of their dead loved ones. He spoke openly to me about how many charlatans there are in the field, that some of them would do anything to earn a buck, and if someone had the talent—the charisma, I guess, the verbal facility, and the ability to make people buy into them—then only God knew many times who was for real and who wasn’t. Grieving people, he said, were the most vulnerable people in the world. As I already told you, I still wasn’t certain until Linc.”
“But you were grieving, deeply.” She nodded.
He turned his Audi off into the Presidio to weave smoothly through the immense former army base, and came to a stop next to the cemetery. He turned to face her. “But you believed he was really in communication with your son?”
“Yes. There is no doubt in my mind at all. Don’t you want to go see Wallace?”
“We have time.” He wanted to ask her why she had no doubts, but instead, he said, “All right, why don’t you tell me what you think of Wallace Tammerlane.”
“You already know that both he and Bevlin Wagner are fond of me, that they admired August, that they’ve grieved at his loss with me. I remember when the police kept pressuring me to give them names of people who could have killed my husband—other than myself, of course—I couldn’t say Wallace or Bevlin, I simply couldn’t. They’re both my friends. But—” She stopped, turned her face away from him. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
