Heinz Rothmann’s sidekicks. In Washington before the slaughter at the cathedral, we’d made the mistake of letting him go before we knew just how important he was. Here he was, right back in the frame.
I picked up the phone-it only connected to our FBI minders-and told Julie Simms to get Sebastian on the line as quickly as she could. It wasn’t only Alexandra Brown who could make significant discoveries.
Ten
Special Agent Arthur Bimsdale was perplexed. Back in his hometown for the first time since he had been posted to Washington six months ago, he had never seen Philadelphia in a worse light-even on the autumn day that his parents, killed in a car crash three years ago, had been laid to rest in the Episcopalian cemetery. It was then that he had questioned his faith for the first, but certainly not the last, time.
It didn’t help that it was winter and the city’s prevalent color was gray, in a plethora of merging shades, but there was more to his feeling of disquiet than that. A sensitive person would have put it down to his proximity to death, in the forms of Jack Notaro and his predecessors in recent weeks. That didn’t apply to Bimsdale. He might have looked like the Yale scholar he once was, but his few friends knew he had a stainless steel backbone. There was no question that the behavior of the local media had been horrifying-a school of barracuda would have shown more respect to the professor’s mutilated corpse. No, the root of the problem was that his boss, Peter Sebastian, had chosen Philadelphia as the place where he finally showed his true colors.
And those, Bimsdale reflected as he hurriedly downed a cheesesteak at a stall near the university, were blacker than a pirate’s heart. He had suspected from the beginning that Sebastian saw him as a lightweight. His boss had read his personnel file, but quoted only selectively from it. In fact, the special agent in charge at the Butte, Montana, field office had given Bimsdale the best report he’d ever signed off on, commending in particular his aptitude for handling violent crime and his diligence in nailing the most hard-nosed felons. Sebastian seemed unimpressed by that. Arthur knew that his previous assistant was in jail, and he couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong. Maybe his boss had been romantically attached to the mysterious Dana Maltravers.
But all that was in the past. The fact was that Bimsdale hadn’t dropped the ball in the brief period they’d been working together. He had acted as the link between Sebastian and the Bureau’s investigators, both at the Hoover Building and in field offices, as well as dealing with local homicide teams. He had written reports, often in his boss’s name. Sebastian read and signed them, but he had never given him one word of praise. He even kept the media off Sebastian’s back, which had been quite some job since the career of ‘Hitler’s Hitman,’ as the killer was now called by the press, had started in Greenwich Village. Just remembering what information had been made public and what had been restricted in each case required an elephantine memory.
None of that really mattered. Arthur Bimsdale would have been having the time of his life. If his boss had kept him in the loop, he’d have been walking on air. But that wasn’t happening. The worst thing was that Peter Sebastian kept quiet about the details of earlier cases, particularly those which involved the Washington ‘Occult Killer’ and were confined to restricted files. Bimsdale suspected those murders were connected to the Rothmann conspiracy that had targeted the President, but Sebastian refused to discuss that angle. Most of what Arthur had learned, he’d found on the internet. What kind of a way was that to run a high-profile investigation? In fact, the violent crime unit wasn’t even running it-the day-to-day homicide work was being carried out by local detectives. That seemed like an abrogation of responsibility.
And then there was the question of Matt Wells. Why had Sebastian suddenly started visiting the British writer so regularly? Why did he spend so much time on those visits closeted with Dr. Rivers, whose career in mind control had been characterized as ‘highly dubious’ by several researchers and bloggers? Now Matt Wells was doing combat training and firearms practice. What kind of a way was that to treat a prisoner with dubious legal status, one that had tried to kill the President?
Arthur Bimsdale threw the remains of his lunch into a garbage bin. He was going to spend the afternoon in the University of Pennsylvania library, seeing if Jack Notaro had written anything that could have provoked his killer. Meanwhile, his boss had returned to D.C., for a meeting with the Director. At least that showed he had top-level support.
If it were up to Arthur, he’d have busted Peter Sebastian’s hindmost region to Guam, never mind Butte, Montana.
I heard several clicks on the line.
‘Hello? Sebastian?’
‘No, this is Special Agent Bimsdale. Who’s this?’
‘Matt Wells. Listen, I need to talk to him urgently. Is he there?’
‘I’m afraid not. Can I help?’
I thought about that. Obviously Sebastian wasn’t taking calls. I didn’t have any option but to talk to his worryingly young-looking bagman.
‘All right. Are you familiar with the name Gordy Lister?’
There was a pause. ‘Wasn’t he involved in the Rothmann case?’
At least he’d done his homework. ‘Correct. He was the scumbag’s fixer on the Star Reporter.’
‘And he was allowed to remain at liberty.’
‘Thanks for pointing that out, Arthur. Not one of our better calls at the time. The thing is, I just saw him.’
‘What? At the camp?’
‘No, you idiot. On the TV. He’s at the back of the crowd at the scene where the professor’s organs were found.’
‘Really? Give me a description.’
I did so. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yes. Stay on the line.’
The TV was no longer showing the live feed from Philadelphia, so I could only follow what was happening on the phone. I heard raised voices-one of which seemed to call the special agent ‘fuckface’. Bimsdale responded with, ‘Coming through’. He wasn’t so dumb though-he wasn’t shouting, so Lister might not realize he was being approached. I zapped from channel to channel, but there was nothing relevant, not even on the 24-hour news stations.
Eventually I heard Bimsdale’s voice again.
‘I don’t see him, Mr. Wells.’ He was breathing heavily.
‘Shit. Are you sure?’
‘I’m standing on a newspaper dispenser.’ That would have made his tall figure stick out like a lighthouse, but it sounded like it was too late for caution. ‘No. I’m sorry, Mr. Wells, he must have gone.’
‘Circulate the description among the cops.’
‘Okay. I can do better than that. I’ll get hold of the TV footage. He’s bound to show up on at least one channel.’ He paused. ‘If he really was here.’
‘I’m telling you, it was him.’
‘He was wearing a beard, you said.’
‘Yeah, it could have been fake.’
‘So how did you recognize him?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know, Arthur, I just did. It was something about his manner. Lister’s a shifty bastard and that was what I picked up on.’
‘All right, Mr. Wells, I’ll do what I can. The problem is, if his beard was a false one, he could easily have jettisoned it to aid his disappearance.’
He was right. Lister could also have dumped the overcoat he was wearing, or turned it inside out, and he could easily have dispensed with the woolen hat.
I signed off and thought about what Lister’s presence might mean. Could he be ‘Hitler’s Hitman?’ I’d had some run-ins with him and he had played the tough guy, but he usually made sure he had big men present to look after him. I couldn’t see Gordy, who was skinny and below average height, hoisting a body as bulky as Jack Notaro’s onto a hook in the ceiling, nor could I see him killing people and cutting them to pieces.
