your life’s in danger and you’re not afraid,” he said, “you’re just a freakin’ moron, and you’re a liability.”
Right now I was not a liability.
I knocked. “Travis, are you home?”
No answer.
“Mr. Reiser,” I said. “Please open the door.”
Still no reply. No movement inside the trailer.
A nod from Torres and we drew our weapons. He carried a Glock 23, I unholstered the. 357 SIG P229 I’ve carried with me ever since starting in law enforcement fifteen years ago. Reliable. Accurate. An old friend. It felt at home in my hand.
I tried the doorknob. Locked.
We had a warrant to search the premises, but if you break down a door, you run the risk of contaminating evidence or inciting adversarial action, so it’s always better to find an alternative. However, in this case, that wasn’t going to happen. I signaled for Torres to move aside, then positioned myself in front of the doorway.
I kicked the door hard, holding nothing back, planting my heel directly next to the lock. It blistered apart, the door flew open, and Torres whipped through the entrance. I followed closely on his heels.
The living room was dark, lit only by the muted daylight that managed to seep through the heavy curtains drawn across every window. The trailer smelled of mold, of cigarette smoke, of stale beer.
No sign of Reiser.
Torres hooked left toward the bathroom, I moved right, down the short hallway to the bedroom.
The door was closed.
“Travis?” Gun ready, heart racing, I pressed it open.
The room was strewn with dirty clothes and discarded Michelob cans. A mattress lay flopped on the floor, covered with a crumpled mess of sheets and blankets. An old TV sat on a wooden crate in the far corner. To the left, a small dresser was pressed against the wall near the closet, which I now approached.
I raised my SIG just below eye level. High ready position.
Opened the closet door.
Clothes, shoes, boxes. That was all.
I let out a small breath then looked around the room one more time. Nothing.
He wasn’t here.
Just moments ago, I’d been amped with anticipation, but now I felt the all-too-familiar plummet of disappointment that comes from running into an investigative dead end. Highs and lows. The roller-coaster ride of hot adrenaline and cold letdown. Story of my life.
When I returned to the kitchen I found Torres waiting for me.
“Place is empty, Pat.”
“Right.”
Dirty dishes filled the sink. Beside them I noticed a wooden block bristling with knives. Basque and Reiser typically chose scalpels and knives rather than guns, and I tried not to consider the grisly thought that these blades had been used for something other than cutting vegetables or fruit here in the kitchen. The Bureau’s Evidence Response Team would find out. “Have your team check the rest of the park,” I told Torres.
Based on what I knew about Basque and Reiser, it would’ve been unlikely for Travis to bring a body back to his home, but still, I found myself carefully sniffing the musty air. I caught no hint of the odor of human decomposition.
It wasn’t my job to process evidence, the ERT would do that, but I didn’t want to contaminate anything before they arrived. I holstered my SIG, turned on my phone, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Then I went to the ashtray beside the couch and inspected the burnt ends of the butts. All cold.
Torres spoke into his mic. “Sweep the rest of the park. Cordon it off. You know how much is riding on getting this right. No mistakes.”
Then he called in for local PD to send marked cars to the roads leading from the park.
I studied the room. Cheap cabinets, a Formica kitchen table, countertops strewn with unopened mail-two bills, a paycheck from the factory, two credit card offers. The most recent postage was stamped on Tuesday.
Yet he entered the trailer last night.
According to the eyewitness.
Something to follow up on.
Just as I started looking through the bathroom cabinet, my phone rang. This cell was a temporary replacement for a prototype of a new smart phone the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency had been letting me use. Last week I hadn’t been quite gentle enough when I slammed it onto my kitchen table after a rather big setback on a case. So now, for the time being, I was left without my 3-D hologram projector for mapping crime scene locations. I don’t have a very good history with phones. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson.
Probably not.
When I checked the screen I saw that FBI Director Margaret Wellington was on the other end of the line.
Oh, this day was just getting better and better.
3
I let the phone ring.
Six years ago when Margaret and I were both on staff at the Academy I’d noticed some discrepancies in a case and, not knowing who was responsible, I’d brought it up to the Office of Professional Responsibility. After an inquiry, she was discreetly transferred to a North Carolina satellite office-not a career move in the right direction for her-and she’d blamed me for it. But then, a little over a year ago, after landing back in the good graces of the administration, she rose quickly through the ranks, looking for a reason to fire me every step of the way.
It rang again.
Last summer, Margaret’s predecessor, Gregory Rodale, found himself caught in the middle of an insider trading scandal. Shrewdly, Margaret, then the Executive Assistant Director, had positioned herself to be on the short list for the director position even before he was asked to resign.
The approval process in the Senate went astonishingly smoothly, and now a woman I’d never gotten along with and never really trusted was at the helm of the most powerful law enforcement and domestic counterterrorism agency in the world.
Mid-ring, I finally answered. “Pat here.”
She bypassed a greeting, got right down to business. “What do we know about Reiser?”
“He’s not here, but his car is parked outside. We’re working from the premise that he’s not far. Torres and the team are searching trailer by trailer.”
“All right.” She didn’t sound dismissive, just perfunctory. “In the meantime, there’s another matter to attend to. There’s been an accident not far from you. I need you to have a look around.”
“What accident?”
“An ice fisherman found snowmobile tracks leading to a stretch of open water. Law enforcement didn’t find any footprints to or from the break in the ice. Whoever was driving the snowmobile went down.”
“Where?”
“Tomahawk Lake. Just outside of Woodborough.”
A chill swept over me. That was only fifteen miles from my brother Sean’s home in Elk Ridge.
He’s a snowmobiler.
The moment went deeper. “Who? Do we have a name?”
“It’s not Sean, Pat. Don’t worry.”
Her words caught me by surprise. I couldn’t remember ever mentioning Sean’s name to Margaret, or even indicating to her that I had a brother, so unless she’d been reviewing my personnel files I was at a loss as to how she made the connection so quickly.
A random snowmobile accident would be an issue for local law enforcement to look into, not something for
