True Evil

Kaiser felt a chill of suspicion. 'You've been inside Rusk's house?'

Alex fell silent, obviously aware that her passion had carried her into dangerous waters.

'You stay where you are, Alex. That's an order.'

'I hear you. Damn it.'

'I'll call you as soon as I know anything.'

'You'd better.'

Kaiser hung up.

One hour later, Alex pulled her rented Corolla into the mass of law enforcement vehicles parked outside the Rusk house. She knew Kaiser would be furious, but after six weeks of blood, sweat, and tears, she could not sit idle while others picked up the baton and went forward. Besides, she rationalized, Kaiser can't give me orders if I'm no longer an FBI agent. He was only a few pay grades above me, anyway. And SAC Tyler won't come out here…not in a million years. He likes that air-conditioned office downtown.

Alex fell into her official stride and walked past a cordon of sheriff's deputies. A couple of FBI agents gave her the eye, but nobody challenged her. In less than a minute, she had worked her way into the study where what remained of Andrew Rusk was still taped into his chair. Crouched behind him were two men, one of whom Alex recognized as John Kaiser. A strange blue glow emanated from behind them. Then she recognized the roar of a cutting torch. After about a minute, she heard a grunt of triumph, then Kaiser stood up and turned.

'Goddamn it,' he said with genuine annoyance. 'Don't you ever listen?'

'This is my case,' she said doggedly.

'You don't have any cases! Do you get that?'

Alex said nothing.

'Obviously you don't. I'm lucky to be in here myself. I told the sheriff that there might be biological weapons in this house, and that we needed to check it before they do the usual homicide investigation. Webb Tyler's going to have my ass, if not my job.'

'What's back there?' she asked. 'A safe?'

Kaiser nodded reluctantly.

'What's in it?'

'We're about to find out.'

The man with the torch had finally got the door open. He backed away for Kaiser to examine the contents.

'You haven't been inside this safe before, have you?' he asked Alex.

'No.' But not for want of trying. 'What do you see?'

'Stay back there, Alex. I mean it. You're JAFO today.'

Just Another Fucking Observer. 'I can't observe anything from over here.'

'Take a look at the notepad on the desk.'

She did. It was a miniature legal pad, and scrawled on it in pencil was what looked like a man's handwriting-mostly numbers. 'What is this?' she asked. 'It looks like GPS coordinates.'

'I think they are. And a time and date.'

She read the numbers again. 'Jesus, that's today.'

'Yep. Two p.m. I think your lawyer friend was about to bug out of town.'

'Where are these coordinates?'

'I'm not sure yet. Hank Kelly thinks they're on the Gulf Coast, if not actually in the Gulf of Mexico. He's a GPS hobbyist. Plays those games where they track down planted clues. On his off time, of course. What a world.'

'There's a name here. You saw that?'

'Looked like Alejo Padilla to me,' said Kaiser, still peering inside the safe.

'Me, too.'

'Sounds Cuban.'

'Uh-huh. And this writing after that?'

'C-P-T? It could mean ‘captain.''

'You think Rusk was headed south of the border?' Alex asked.

'I do.'

'By boat?'

'Probably. Or maybe seaplane.'

'Why would he flee the country in a boat?'

'If you need to take out contraband, it's the best way. A large amount of cash, say.' Kaiser shifted on creaking knees and laid some papers out on the floor.

'Anything good?' Alex asked.

'Would you call two Costa Rican passports good?'

'Holy shit!'

'They're not valid yet, but they look legit.'

'Costa Rica,' she said thoughtfully. 'We have an extradition treaty with them now.'

'Yes, but these passports aren't in the Rusks' names.'

'But they have the Rusks' photos?'

'Yep. Take a look.'

She moved forward and leaned over his shoulder. Kaiser was right. She took one of the passports and compared the smiling photo of Andrew Rusk to the bloody corpse in the chair to her left. God, he died bad. She looked back at Kaiser, who was wading through the usual financial papers of any affluent family. Insurance policies, wills, deeds, Social Security papers…

'What else have you got?'

'Looks like a boat to me,' Kaiser said, holding up a photograph.

Alex looked at the four-by-five snapshot. 'That's not a boat, that's a yacht. You could sail around the world in that.'

'Did Rusk sail?'

'Rusk did everything. All the hobbies of the rich and shameless.'

'Is this boat out at the local marina?'

'I've never seen it before. He owns a powerboat, but it usually sits on a trailer out behind this house.'

Kaiser looked up from the papers. 'There's no powerboat out there now.'

Alex looked down at the legal pad where the coordinates had been scrawled. 'What if he was planning to meet someone at sea? Power out past the twenty-four-mile mark, board that yacht, and then take off for Costa Rica?'

Kaiser was staring at a sheet of paper in his hand. He gave a long, low whistle.

'What is it?' she asked, sensing his excitement.

'This piece of paper grants safe passage through Cuban territorial waters, and ensures permission to dock at the marina in Havana.'

'What?'

'And it's signed by Castro himself.'

'No way.'

Kaiser stood and held the document up to the light. 'Not Fidel. His brother, Raul. The defense minister. And this document isn't made out in Rusk's name, either. It's made out to Eldon Tarver, MD.'

Alex took the paper and read it line by line, her pulse beating faster with every word. 'This is a photocopy.'

'What it is,' Kaiser said, 'is inarguable proof that Andrew Rusk and Eldon Tarver were working together.'

Alex swallowed hard and handed the paper back to Kaiser. Having finally discovered what she had worked so hard to find, she felt oddly disconnected from herself. Then she realized why: she had really been working to prove that Bill Fennell murdered her sister. Until she possessed evidence that proved that, she could not save Jamie from his father, as Grace had charged her to do.

'Why would Raul Castro give Tarver permission to emigrate to Cuba?' she asked.