Kill Fee (3 page)

T
he dead man’s name was Spenser Pyatt, and he was very rich.

“Media conglomerations,” Detective Parent told Stevens and Windermere. “Satellite TV. Built an empire from a radio station out in the hinterlands.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Stevens said. “Fergus Falls. That’s where he started.” Windermere looked at him funny, and he shrugged. “Kind of a state treasure, I guess. Made a billion dollars with his own two hands.”

“I get it,” said Windermere. “This guy here’s the state hero.”

“Hero’s a bit strong,” said Parent. “He’s just a good story.”

Windermere looked across the driveway to where the Ramsey County medical examiner was loading Pyatt’s body into the back of the van. “Not so much with the happy ending, though.”

Stevens and Parent followed her gaze. Then Stevens cleared his throat. “You need anything else?” he asked Parent.

“Not unless the BCA wants to take this thing off my hands.”

“Not on your life.” Stevens shook the detective’s hand. Turned to Windermere. “Guess I’ll head home.”

Windermere looked at him. “Really?”

“Told Nancy I’d be home for dinner. And JJ’s got soccer tonight.”

“It’s not even four, Stevens. You don’t want to see how this plays out?”

Stevens glanced back at Parent, at the medical examiner’s van, at the big silver Bentley and the spattered blood on the sidewalk. He pictured the killer, saw the little Chevy slip away into traffic, and, yeah, maybe he wanted to stick around a little. But he shook his head. “Not our case, Carla.”

“Maybe not technically,” she said, “but we saw this guy, Stevens. We know what he looks like. We know who he is. Maybe we can help somehow.” She caught his expression and laughed. “Don’t even try to pretend you’re not feeling this, partner. You’re as pumped up about this whole thing as I am.”

Stevens was trying to think up an answer, something diplomatic that wouldn’t paint him as some boring has-been, when a uniform broke through the line and came running at Parent.

“Detective,”
she said, huffing and puffing, cheeks red. “Word from dispatch. They found the shooter’s car.”

Stevens swapped glances with Windermere. Turned to listen.

“A gray Chevy hatchback,” the uniform told them, “as advertised. It’s a rental, Liberty Cars. They found it at the airport.”

Parent frowned. “They get a name off it?”

“Name, flight, everything. Guy took off out of state in a hell of a hurry.”

Windermere grinned at Stevens. “Out of state, partner. You know what that means.” She started back toward Parent, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. “Mathers,” she told the phone. “Hold up one second.”

She turned to Parent. “Maybe the FBI can help, after all, Detective. What’s our shooter’s name?” She raised her phone again before Parent
could answer. “Mathers,” she said. “You there? What are the odds we ground every flight at MSP within the next fifteen minutes?”

She listened. “Yeah, well,” she said. “Try it anyway. There’s a killer on the loose.”

She hung up the phone. Turned back to Parent. Parent opened his mouth. Windermere held up one finger. Turned back to Stevens, still grinning. “Sure you don’t want to stick around?”

P
arkerson took a late-afternoon break to check the news on his computer. He found what he was looking for and read with interest, a satisfied smile growing on his face. When he’d finished the article, he closed his Internet browser and reached for his phone. Then he paused.

He stood and walked to the door of his office, closed and locked it. It was Saturday afternoon; the plant was nearly empty. Still, you couldn’t be too careful.

Satisfied, Parkerson sat down again and reached for the phone. He dialed the number by heart and waited.

A man picked up. “Is this line secure?”

“As it ever was,” Parkerson told him. “The job’s done.”

There was a pause. “You’re sure?”

“Check the news. The job’s done.”

“Okay.” The man exhaled. “Okay.”

“I’ll be expecting payment,” said Parkerson. “You know what to do.”

“He’s dead,” the man said.

Parkerson sighed. “Dead and gone. Your wish came true. Now you pay me.” There was another long pause.
“Okay?”

“Okay,” the man said. “Okay. I’ll get you your money.”

Parkerson hung up the phone. Opened a spreadsheet file and settled back in to work—or tried to, anyway. Within five minutes, the phone was ringing again. Parkerson answered.
“What?”

“I killed him.” The man moaned like a wounded animal. “Christ, they’ll hang me for this.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Parkerson said. “I told you, you’re clean. No ties to the job whatsoever. You’re safe. Now settle your tab.” He hung up the phone again and sat in the stillness of his office for a minute or two. Stared at the phone, thinking.

An amateur, the guy was. A ticking time bomb. A liability. Parkerson studied the phone a minute longer. Then he picked up the handset again.

T
he visions came back. They always came back.

Lind stayed awake for as long as he could. He sat on the couch with every light on around him, the TV blaring movie previews until the neighbors beat on the walls. The rain drizzled down outside and the night slowly passed, and Lind sat on his couch and drank coffee and didn’t move.

Morning came. The rain didn’t stop. The sky turned light in the east and gradually the day came, a miserable, dripping, tarnished-steel day. Lind hardly noticed the bleak light. He waited for the phone to ring and prayed the visions wouldn’t come back.

They came back. They always did.

He held them off as long as he could. Felt his eyelids grow heavy and, with the fatigue, the rising panic. He fought it. Drank more coffee. Stood
and paced the room. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. The visions always came back.

He fell asleep around noon. Lay down on the couch and curled himself inward and surrendered, gave in. Then, just like that, he was out.

HE WAS THERE AGAIN.
Over there.
He was riding with Showtime and Hang Ten and the rest. The heat was unbearable; he was sweating through his gear, big, itchy drops of sweat trickling down to the small of his back. The truck barreled through the desert. The sun, high above, was relentless. The place was like hell without the fire.

He could hear the big engine rumbling. Could feel the vibrations. He could see Showtime beside him, at the wheel, laughing about something. Hang Ten’s girlfriend, probably. She’d sent a picture that morning: a white sandy beach, a bikini. Showtime got a hold of it.
“Jee-sus,”
he said, laughing, fending off Hang Ten. “Why the hell’d you ever come over here, man?”

Hang Ten was up top, in the turret. Mini-Me and Slowpoke in the back. Through the front windshield, Lind could see Rambo’s Humvee ahead, and he knew there was a third truck behind. There was a journalist back there, some wannabe hard-ass. A taste of the shit for all the readers back home. A routine patrol through the wasteland.

He could see it all. He could hear it. He was
there
. The trucks rumbled along, kicking up dust and sand, jostling over uneven terrain. The convoy motored past civilians, kids who stopped kicking soccer balls to run over and wave at the trucks, dark-eyed older men in white robes and head scarves—
ghatra
—who glared at the convoy, suspicious. The city shimmered in the heat in the distance.

They were halfway through the city when the world disappeared. On some narrow, misbegotten street. Showtime was still needling Hang Ten. Took one hand off the wheel and made a rude gesture. Hang Ten leaned down to see it. Lind was laughing despite the tension. Maybe
because
of
the tension, the whole goddamn scenario. Every damned patrol was the same, a 450-day game of Russian roulette.

Then it happened.

In the visions, it only came back in fragments. An explosion. Screaming. The truck shaking like a child’s matchbox toy. Showtime holding up a stump of arm, laughing, manic. Fire, everywhere fire. An unbearable heat.

He felt himself dragged away from the truck. Someone grabbed him by the back and hauled him away on his ass. He watched his legs trail behind him, making twin tracks in the dirt. He watched the truck burn as other soldiers swarmed around it, Rambo pounding on Mini-Me’s door, Hang Ten slumped over his turret.

He didn’t feel any pain.

Then he was in another truck, rumbling back across the desert. Someone was yelling at him, shaking him. Rambo. The truck jostled. Rambo disappeared.

He was in a room somewhere. Doctors everywhere. They stared at him. Talked to him. He tried to reply. He still felt no pain.

They loaded him onto a plane, a big C-17. Wheeled him on board with seventy-five other soldiers, and he lay there and stared at the roof as the plane rumbled down the runway and took to the air. He stared at the roof until the plane landed somewhere, somewhere the air was cool and the sun wasn’t so harsh, somewhere with more white rooms and more doctors. He stayed there for months, and every day they talked to him and asked questions and he didn’t say much. They looked at him with concerned eyes and whispered to one another. Still, he didn’t feel any pain.

Then he was on another plane. This time, he sat upright, in a jump seat, and stared at the jump seat across from him and saw the desert and Showtime and Hang Ten and Mini-Me burning, and he must have cried out or said something, because a medic came with a needle and then Showtime and Mini-Me and Hang Ten were gone. And then he wasn’t there anymore, either.

He was in another room, a doctor’s office inside a large hospital. Couches and comfortable chairs. A woman watched him from across a coffee table, her eyes friendly, concerned. She spoke to Lind, but Lind didn’t hear her. She watched him stand, followed him to the door. She called out to him as he walked away.

There was a man waiting outside the hospital. He stood in the sunny parking lot in a blue baseball cap and sunglasses, and he straightened as Lind approached. Smiled at him. Talked to him. Took his arm and led him to a big gray car, buckled his seat belt and said something and laughed.

Lind went with the man. He tried to listen. He still hadn’t felt any pain.

A
ccording to the Saint Paul Police Department, the suspect’s name was Allen Bryce Salazar, and he had boarded a Delta regional flight to Omaha, Nebraska, just after the shooting. Windermere passed the information back to Derek Mathers in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, along with instructions to ground the plane, if possible. Mathers called back a few minutes later.

“No can do,” he told Windermere. “Flight’s in the air, and they won’t turn around. I have agents in Omaha waiting on the tarmac.”

“Shit,” said Windermere. “Wanted to bring him down myself. Tell Omaha to ship him back our way so I can get my hands on him.”

Mathers laughed. “I feel sorry for this guy already.”

Windermere pocketed her phone and surveyed the crime scene. The crowd had diminished, now that the body was gone. The news trucks had
filed their reports. There were a few cops, and a few crime-scene techs, and the hotel’s concierge peered out from the door. Windermere wondered how long it would take for business to return to normal. Before the whole tawdry affair was a tourist attraction. Stevens caught her eye. “Get your man?”

“Just about.” She checked her watch. “Give it an hour or two. Then he’s mine.”

“Poor bastard.”

Windermere cocked her head. “Mathers said the same thing, Stevens. Am I unpleasant to deal with or something?”

Stevens laughed. “You?” he said. “Nah.”

STEVENS SURVEYED
the Landmark Center from the crime scene. They’d found the suspect’s rifle in an empty room overlooking 5th and Market Streets, a clear shot at the Saint Paul Hotel. The gun itself was unremarkable; a Remington 700 bolt-action hunting rifle with a scope, it would have had no trouble covering the eighty-yard range between window and target. Still, it was a skilled shot. Not exactly amateur work.

Windermere elbowed Stevens. “You’re trying to figure out the why again, aren’t you?”

Stevens glanced at her. Laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “I mean, it’s the most interesting part, isn’t it?”

“You know how I feel about motive,” she said.

“Sure do,” Stevens said. “Heard it all before. We know the who and the how, so who cares about the why?”

“Exactly. I just want to catch the bastard, Stevens.”

“I just think it’s interesting.” He gestured back at the empty Bentley. “This was a targeted killing. The shooter knew our man would be here. He camped out and waited and sniped him. Then he walked. Didn’t run. He
walked
to his car, got in, and drove back to the airport. Boarded a flight home. Why?”

“Guess I’m going to find out.” Windermere grinned at him. “You want I should keep you posted? Or maybe you’d like to come over and see the new headquarters. You can ask Salazar yourself why he done it.”

Stevens shook his head. “Any chance you can get, huh?”

Windermere kept her smile pasted. Didn’t say anything.

“I’m too old for your FBI work and you know it,” he said. “I’m not G-man material.”

“So you keep saying.”

“So my wife keeps saying,” Stevens said, and instantly regretted it. He sighed and checked his watch. “Speaking of which, I’d better go.”

“I’ll keep you posted.” Windermere punched his arm. “First thing I’ll ask Salazar is why.”

STEVENS LEFT WINDERMERE
and walked back through Saint Paul until he found his old Cherokee parked by a curb. He fired up the engine and drove west and out of the city center. His route took him past Rice Park again, a few blocks to the south, and he caught himself glancing up Market Street for another glimpse of the excitement.

Stevens had been a BCA agent for more than seventeen years now. Before that, he’d been a Duluth city cop. He liked police work, liked untying the knots, the impossible riddles. Mostly, he worked cold cases, spent his time in an office. It was a quiet existence, or it had been until Windermere came along.

That first kidnapping case with Windermere had been the most action Kirk Stevens had tasted in years, and though he was loath to admit it, he’d enjoyed the excitement. Hell, he’d even enjoyed some of the notoriety, the press attention that followed. It was nice to get a little recognition. An adrenaline rush. The whole case had been a heck of a lot of fun.

It had also been very dangerous.

Stevens knew Windermere thought he was wasting his talents at the BCA. “Come join the FBI,” she told him after the Tomlin case was over.
“Work with me. We’ll partner up. We’ll eat takeout and chase bad guys full-time. You’ll love it.”

A part of him
would
love it, Stevens knew, as he piloted the Cherokee west along the interstate toward his home in Lexington-Hamline. A part of him longed for more of that excitement. It was the same part, maybe, that felt an electric little thrill whenever Windermere turned those big bewitching eyes on him. It was a dangerous urge to indulge.

Stevens turned off the interstate and navigated along the surface roads, the streets getting quieter and the rush of the city fading into the background. He slowed in front of a tidy green craftsman home and pulled into the slim driveway, climbed out of the Jeep and walked around his small patch of lawn, and surveyed the house before climbing the front steps to the door.

Stevens paused on the porch, his hand on the doorknob. Through the front window he could hear his daughter laughing with her friends in the kitchen. He could see his young son in the hallway, chasing his big German shepherd up the stairs. And he didn’t need to look in the living room window to imagine his wife spread out on her favorite chair, brow furrowed as she worked through a mountain of paperwork, as pretty now as the day he’d married her.

This was the other part of his life. This was the part that didn’t need the excitement, the adrenaline rush, the profiles in the
Star Tribune
. This was reality. This was what was important. Stevens paused at the front door, indulging the moment. Then he turned the doorknob and rejoined his family.