ever to act operationally again, especially in those capacities with which he was formerly associated during his time at the Agency.”
“So how was he supposed to make a living, then?” Janet asked.
“According to Larry Talbot’s notes,” Farnsworth said, scanning a piece of paper, “he’s been teaching remedial math at the Montgomery County junior college. He quit that when his daughter went missing.”
“The point is, Agent Carter,” Bellhouser said, “that Kreiss was not permitted to engage in any activity related to law enforcement: federal, state, or local, or to have anything to do with the security field—commercial, personal, computer—anything along that line.”
Janet nodded.
“Okay, and—” Foster leaned forward.
“The question is, Agent Carter, Do you think Mr. Kreiss is going to actively search for his daughter now that Roanoke here is sending the case to MP?”
Janet remembered telling Farnsworth that she thought Kreiss was going solo. She had to assume he had passed this on.
“Yes,” she said.
“In fact, I think he’s already leaned on one of the potential witnesses, but I backed out before I could really follow up on that. And, of course, I can’t prove any of that.”
Bellhouser sighed. Foster frowned and began tapping a pen against the edge of the table.
“I mean,” Janet said, “I guess I can understand it. From his perspective, the Bureau was backing out. He knows how MP works.” No one said anything.
“It’s his daughter, after all,” she concluded.
Bellhouser gave her a patient look and then got up out of her chair. She was even bigger standing up. The chair creaked in relief.
“Thank you, Agent Carter,” she said.
“I think you’ve told us what we needed to find out.
We will brief our respective superiors. We appreciate your cooperation.”
Janet stood up, looking at Farnsworth.
“Is that it, sir?”
Farnsworth glanced over at Bellhouser and Foster as if for confirmation and then said, “Yes.”
“And if anything else pops up concerning Mr. Kreiss?”
“Inform Mr. Farnsworth here if that happens,” Foster said.
“We will attend to Mr. Kreiss if that becomes necessary. But we don’t anticipate you will have any further interaction with him.”
“Either at his initiative or yours, Agent Carter,” Bellhouser said. All three of them looked at her expectantly to make sure she understood the warning.
“Okay,” she said brightly, as if this all were totally insignificant. She left Farnsworth’s office, shaking her head, and went back to her own cubicle.
Talbot wanted to know what it was all about, but Janet told him only that it concerned Edwin Kreiss and that the matter had been taken care of.
Talbot was clearly dissatisfied, so she said she’d been ordered not to talk about it and that maybe Farnsworth would fill him in. Talbot stomped out and Janet went looking for some coffee. She met with some other agents on the trucking case for half an hour, and when she returned, Billy had surfaced from his midmorning snooze. He asked her what all the fuss was about. Remembering her promise, she told him in only very general terms, concluding that she’d been clearly told to stay away from Edwin Kreiss and all his works. Billy got some coffee and they talked about the way headquarters horse-holders threw their weight around.
When Talbot reappeared, Janet went back to her cubicle. She pushed papers around her desk while she thought about the meeting with the two principal deputy assistant under executive pooh-bahs. What had that woman said—they would “attend to” Kreiss? For God’s sake, the man’s only child was missing. An image of Kreiss’s face surfaced in her mind.
She wondered if the two horse-holders were capable of “attending to” Edwin Kreiss. She thought idly about warning him.
Edwin Kreiss had obtained a county road map at the Christiansburg Chamber of Commerce that morning, and he was now nosing his pickup truck down a dirt road five miles west of the town. None of the land around these first geologic wrinkles of the Appalachian foothills was horizontal, and he had to keep it in second gear on the rough and winding lane. He had found their truck unlocked last night at the rail spur branch and retrieved the registration. The vehicle belonged to one Jared McGarand, whose rural postbox address he’d finally found on a rusting mailbox at the head of the dirt road. He came around a final bend in the trees and saw a double-wide trailer at the end of the lane. There were no other trailers or houses nearby, but there were some large dogs raising hell from what looked like a pen behind the trailer. He had anticipated the
possibility of dogs and had the cure in a plastic bag on the seat. But first, he would see if the dogs’ noise summoned anyone. It was the middle of the day, and the only other trailer he’d seen had been almost a mile back down the county road. It had looked deserted.
He turned around and then parked his truck in front of the trailer, pointed back out the lane. Then he waited. The dogs, still not visible, continued to bark and howl, but after five minutes, they lost interest. The trailer was mounted up on cinder blocks at one end to level it. The place looked reasonably well kept, with some side sheds, a separate metal carport roof, an engine-hoisting stand, and what looked like a rig for butchering deer. The same pickup truck from which he’d obtained the registration was parked under a tree, but there were no junked cars or other hillbilly treasures stacked in the yard, and there was electric power and a phone line attached to the trailer. Whoever Jared McGarand was, he obviously had a job and was not just another member of the Appalachian recycling elite.
Satisfied that no one was coming, he opened the door, grabbed the plastic bag, and went up to the front door of the trailer and knocked on it.
This set off another round of barking from out back. When no one answered, he went around to the back door and tried that, again without result. Then he walked over to the dog pen, which was fifty feet back from the trailer, under some trees. He took out some sugar-coated doughnut holes, into each of which he had put two nonprescription iron-supplement pills. The dogs were some kind of mixed breed, with pit bull predominant, equal parts teeth, bark, and general fury. They were jumping and slavering at the sturdy chain-link fence. He pushed the doughnut holes into the chain link until he was sure each dog had eaten at least one.
Then he went back to the truck and waited. The pills would not kill the dogs, but in about fifteen minutes, they would be feeling ill enough to lie down and whimper for the rest of the day. While he was waiting, his car phone rang. Ever since Lynn disappeared he had made a practice of having any calls that came into the cabin automatically forward to the truck if he was out of the house.
“Kreiss,” he said, visually checking the trailer and its surroundings.
The dogs had stopped their barking.
“Mr. Kreiss, this is Special Agent Janet Carter.”
“You have something on Lynn?” Kreiss asked immediately.
“No. I wish we did, but no. This is something else.” She described the visitation of Bellhouser and Foster.
He listened without comment, wishing he had been able to observe that little seance. Attend to me, would they? He took a deep breath to calm himself.
“Mr. Kreiss? Are you still there?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m on my car phone. I appreciate the heads up, Agent Carter. I really do.”
“You didn’t get it from me, Mr. Kreiss.”
“Absolutely.” He paused for a moment, not sure of what to say next.
He was picturing her face, and, after their last meeting, wondering why she was doing this.
