Blind Spot Page 19

“It’s really August. He told me to call him Augie.”

  Garcia blinked. “Must have been another Murrick who moved in. August Murrick is—”

  “Maybe I got it wrong,” Bernadette interrupted. She just wanted to drop it. She didn’t want to hear about any bad blood between her boss and Augie. She was already in turmoil over sleeping with the guy.

  She kept her mouth shut and didn’t say anything else until they were steering onto Highway 110 in Mendota Heights. “Should we try calling the lab again?”

  “Go for it. My cell’s on the seat between us. Pharmacy’s the last number I punched in.”

  She picked up his phone, flipped it open, and hit redial. She put the phone to her ear and listened to a male voice giving the pharmacy’s address and asking callers to leave a name, phone number, and account number. Then the voice gave an after-hours phone number: “If this is an emergency, call me—Noah Stannard—on my cell at…” She snapped the cell shut. Her hand—the hand that held the phone—grew cold. The chill spread up her arm, crawled down her throat, and landed in her gut like a deep drink of ice water. She knew the man in the recording was the one she’d witnessed getting beaten. Dropping Garcia’s phone on the seat, she asked: “Can’t you go any faster?”

  “I’m already flying.”

  She believed what she’d seen was in real time, but she couldn’t be sure. There’d been no clock or watch. She wondered if she should pull off her gloves, whip out the ring, and give it another go right there in the car. An instant later, she told herself she’d never get a decent result; she didn’t know why she’d bothered bringing the jewelry with her. She was exhausted and wired at the same time. She wished she was driving; she wanted something to do. “Should we call for backup? Clue in the cops?”

  Garcia steered around a station wagon. “Let’s wait and see what we come up with here. At this hour, could be there’s nobody at this lab place.”

  “You think this is a wild-goose chase.”

  He passed a Volkswagen Beetle that seemed to be standing still. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re thinking it.”

  “So you’re a mind reader, too,” he said dryly.

  She snapped her head back and forth, looking to the right and left along the highway. “Did we miss our turn? I think we’re headed in the wrong direction.”

  “Taking a back way in.” He hung a squealing right at the next intersection, sped down the street, and hung another right.

  The collection of commercial buildings running along Minnesota 110 was deceptive. Behind the businesses were nice homes surrounded by old hardwoods, massive pine trees, and empty fields. The suburb resembled a patch of countryside. As if to reinforce that impression, a deer suddenly stepped into the middle of the road in front of the car. She pointed through the windshield. “Tony!”

  “I see it.” He braked, and the car skidded to a stop ten feet from the animal. The deer stared into the headlights and then finished its trip across the road, disappearing into a stand of trees between two houses. Garcia took his foot off the brake, and the car rolled forward a yard.

  “Wait,” said Bernadette, searching the darkness around them. “There’s gotta be more.”

  He stopped the car again and eyed both sides of the street. Sure enough, two more deer galloped across the road, following the first. He waited a few more seconds and then applied the gas, continuing on a little slower.

  As they approached the next intersection, the car lights shone ahead to an expanse of mowed land. “Golf course?” she asked.

  “Graveyard,” said Garcia.

  “Now I see the headstones,” she said. The largest monuments—towering crosses and statues—seemed to glow with their own light.

  He braked at the corner and looked up and down the road. No cars. No surprise. It was late on a work night in a quiet suburb. He hung a right. “Pharmacy should be coming up on the left, after the cemetery. At the top of the hill.”

  As they shot up the incline, Bernadette glanced back over her shoulder. The higher vantage point gave her a view of a cemetery pond, a spot of water circled by tall grasses. Where had she seen that pond before?

  She turned her head back around. Her eyes followed the fencing on the left as it went up the hill. On the other side of the chain-link, she saw row after row of chunky headstones, boxy soldiers standing guard over the dead. At the far end of the cemetery, near where the fencing stopped, she saw a stone figure standing alone at the top of the incline. A statue perched on a pedestal.

  The robed woman who’d visited her dreams days earlier, while she was unpacking at the office.

  “Tony.”

  “What?”

  “Pull over.”

  They were nearly at the crest of the hill. He slowed but didn’t stop. “Where?”

  “Here. Now.”

  Garcia jerked the Pontiac over to the right, parked on the shoulder, and punched off the headlights. He yanked the keys out of the ignition and shoved them in his pocket. “Where’re we going?”

  She pointed at the statue, straight across the road from the car. A nearby streetlight illuminated that end of the cemetery, as well as the edge of a swatch of woods that ran between the graveyard and the business park. “That’s where we want to be.”

  “You sure? Did you see something?”

  “Yeah.”

  Garcia reached under his seat and fished out a flashlight. He held it up and clicked it on and off. “Want it?”

  “You take it. I’ve got great night vision. Plus, there’s plenty of light from the street.”

  “Okay.” He shoved the flashlight in his coat pocket. He threw open his door and hopped out. He closed the door and stood next to the Pontiac, waiting for her to come around to his side. Together, they jogged across the street and went down into a ditch that ran between the road and the cemetery. They crouched in the tall grasses. Garcia peeked over the tops of the weeds and took stock of the area immediately around the statue. The ground was mowed and clear of shrubs and trees. The monument was flanked by its own lighting—Roman columns topped by white globes as big as beach balls and as bright as floodlights. No place to duck unless someone was huddled against the statue’s pedestal. He tipped his head toward her and asked in a low voice: “What’re you thinking? Our guy’s hiding behind the statue of the Virgin Mary?”

  She squinted into the night. “Not behind the monument. In the woods next to it.”

  “What’re we going to find?”

  Was he expecting some sort of instant psychic reading? No. He still doubted her. More likely, he was just thinking out loud. She gave him her best guesses. “Fairy-tale ending: Quaid is standing over the dead guy, admiring his handiwork while he wipes his ax off in the grass. We’ve got him cold. Real-life ending: Quaid’s long gone, and all we’ve got is the dead guy. No fingerprints. No weapons. A shoe print. Maybe. If we’re lucky.”

  “There’s no possibility there’s a live guy?”

  She thought about the beating. Quaid picking up the rope and ax. Even if what she’d seen had been in real time, they were too late. “No possibility.”

  He pulled out his piece. “I’ll go into the woods from the street side.”

  She took out her gun. “I’ll go in from the back of the commercial buildings.”

  Garcia crawled out of the ditch and headed for the woods. Bernadette stayed in the weeds and ran through the ditch, following the road up to the business complex. Climbing out of the ditch, she jogged onto a narrow strip of mowed grass that ran between the business center and the woods. She stopped and took a breath. She was grateful for the yard lights mounted against the one-story building behind her. They and the streetlight helped her search for a gap in the greenery, a likely entrance for a man dragging another man. Spotting what she was looking for, she dashed between some trees.

  She followed a dirt path that sliced a straight line toward the graveyard. She guessed business-park workers had worn the trail when they’d trekked to the cemetery for lunc
htime walks. As she ran, she scanned the wall of trees on either side of her. To her right, she saw a narrower trail forking off from the main one, and took it. The secondary path spilled into a clearing that would have been big enough to accommodate a picnic table. In the middle of the circle of dirt and flattened weeds was a hump of clothing.

  Noah Stannard.

  Thirty-three

  She holstered her gun and went over to him.

  Like the judge, the pharmacist was bound with rope and missing a hand. Packaged as tight as he was, and on his back with his legs straight out, he resembled a mummy laid to rest in the woods. As she went down on her knees by Stannard’s left side, it struck her that her run through the woods had been too well illuminated. The yard lights and streetlights alone couldn’t have shone her way so brightly. She looked up. Her view traveled above the tree line and stopped at the cemetery’s edge. She saw the tops of the lamps planted next to the Virgin Mary. Twin globes. The twin moons from her dream. The chill started creeping back into her body like a virus trying to wear her down. She shook it off and returned her attention to Stannard.

  She yanked off her right glove, reached over, and felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. His face—or what was left of it—was turned toward her. She could see he wore glasses; they’d fallen off and were in two pieces on the ground, next to his head. She didn’t know why, but the sight of the busted frames appalled her more than the spectacle of all the blood. “What did you do to deserve this?” she whispered.

  She withdrew her hand from his neck and sat back on her heels. Scanning the ground around the body, she didn’t see a weapon or a footprint or any other piece of evidence. The crime-scene guys—be they from the bureau or a local agency—would have to go through their routine. Did she have the time and the energy and the power of concentration to do her thing before Garcia stumbled across her and the body? What could she hold? The ring again, or something from this murder? Then she remembered: Quaid had wised up and worn gloves. Too bad. Something from Stannard’s slaying would have felt right, would have brought her closer to this victim. No matter. She reached inside her pocket and pulled out the bag.

  In the woods behind her, she heard a crunching noise. Bernadette quickly shoved the bag back in her jacket, stood up, and pulled out her gun. Garcia ran into the clearing with his flashlight in one hand and his Glock in the other. “Cat!”

  “Real-life ending.” She holstered her weapon and stepped to the side so he could get a full view of the body on the ground behind her.

  “That’s what I figured. Almost stepped on his hand in the woods.” He shone the beam at the name embroidered on the front of the jacket. Stannard Pharmaceuticals. “You really did see something,” he said, a hint of awe in his voice. He shoved his flashlight in his jacket but held on to his gun. Looking past her and the corpse, Garcia peered warily into the trees.

  She knew what he was thinking. “Forget it. He’s long gone.”

  “Let’s make sure.” He nodded toward the business park. “Let’s check out the dead guy’s office.”

  She took out her gun and followed him out of the woods. While they ran, Garcia called for assistance.

  They circled the business center and found nothing. All the entrances were locked; the guy had closed up shop before Quaid took him.

  The two agents hunkered against the side of the building. “Now what?” asked Bernadette.

  Garcia pointed toward the parking area. As the two of them jogged toward the lot, sirens could be heard in the distance. “Here comes the gang,” said Garcia. As he and Bernadette stepped onto the tar, he ran his eyes up and down the highway, searching for flashing lights.

  “Which gang? Whose case is this, boss man?”

  “You shouldn’t have to ask. With all the weirdness in this case? The way it crosses jurisdictions all over the place. Dead judges and dead businesspeople. It’s yours, lady.”

  She pointed to a car sitting alone in front of the building, under a lot light. “Victim’s vehicle.”

  “Mercedes. Nice.”

  They went up to the sedan, locked as tight as the building. On the ground next to the driver’s side were a set of car keys and a scattering of paperwork. Garcia and Bernadette crouched next to the papers for a closer look. “Bank statements,” she said. “Stannard’s name is all over them.”

  “Think the killing’s connected to money?”

  “Only marginally—if at all. This rampage ain’t about getting rich. It’s about getting even the Old Testament way.”

  Garcia stood up and put away his gun. “An eye for an eye.”

  She stood up and holstered her Glock. The sirens were closing in. She glanced in the direction of the woods. “Let’s get back to our pharmacist before the Marines land. I want to show you something strange in the eye-for-an-eye department.”

  She knelt by Stannard again. “Check out the hiccup in Father Quaid’s MO.”

  Garcia went down next to her, took out his flashlight, and trained the beam on the stump. “Wrong hand.”

  “Yup.”

  Garcia shrugged. “Maybe it’s because he’s left-handed.”

  “Could be.”

  He clicked off his flashlight and shoved it in his jacket pocket. “Another unpleasant question for the guy’s wife. Was he left-handed?”

  “Stannard’s definitely married?”

  Garcia nodded. “He had a band on his finger.”

  “Wonder if they’ve got kids,” she said.

  “If they’ve got kids, they’re minus one parent.”

  Her jaw tightened. If Quaid were in front of her at that moment, she would have cut his head off. “I’d like to pick up the scumbag now, but on what grounds do we hold him? The evidence I’ve collected is…um…usually inadmissable in court. Otherwise, all we’ve got is a shoe print. I suppose we could interview the husband of that Fontaine woman and—”

  Garcia interrupted her. “Let’s drive over to Quaid’s place right now and see if he’s got anything we can use.”

  She got up off her knees. “We know where he lives?”

  “After I left your place this afternoon, I went back to the office and dug into the driver’s-license database. Tapped some of our massive federal resources.” Garcia pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket.

  Bernadette watched him tipping the square this way and that so he could read it by the shine of the cemetery- and streetlights. While she’d been searching for Quaid her way, Garcia had been doing some digging using his own tools. They’d make a good team, if only he could learn to take her seriously before the bodies started turning up.

  “It’s a St. Paul address,” he announced. “Cathedral Hill neighborhood, I think. Could be a bogus address. Old address. Father Pete said he’d heard the guy had moved back to the sticks after he left the priesthood. But who knows? We could get lucky. There are those rare occasions when you ring the doorbell and the one you’re looking for is the person who answers.”

  “Happens every day on television,” she said.

  They heard what sounded like a bull barreling through the woods. Overhead, a helicopter hovered. “Our crew’s here,” Garcia said. He stuffed the address back in his jacket and took out his car keys. “Let’s brief the gang and then hit the road.”

  “What if he doesn’t come to the door when we ring? We don’t have a—”

  He raised his hand and interrupted her. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Bernadette: “Because we’re the fucking FBI.”

  Thirty-four

  Startled by the tap on her apartment door, Chris Stannard almost dropped her drink. Had Cindy forgotten her key again? She checked the clock on the microwave oven. The numbers were out of focus. She squinted and concentrated on the glowing digits until she could read them. Too early for Cindy to be showing up.

  The voice on the other side of the door: “Reg Neva. Open up before I wake the neighbors.”

  “Okay, okay.” She took a fortifying gulp of liquor, set her glass down on the
kitchen counter, and tightened the belt around her robe. Opening the door, she peered through the gap. “What do you want?”

  “We agreed to meet here tonight.”

  “Gimme a minute.” She closed the door, went over to her nightstand, and reached inside her purse. Taking out her perfume, she dabbed a dot on her throat and rubbed a line of scent between her breasts. She went back to the door, moving her hand to unlatch the security chain. She hesitated. Had she agreed to get together with him tonight? Could be. She couldn’t remember. She took down the chain and let him inside. She closed the door after him, quickly combed her hair with her fingers, and turned around to face him. Resting her back against the door, Chris took in his figure. Through her dizzy, whiskey eyes, he looked even better than before. He smelled good, too. Sweat and the outdoors. Too bad he didn’t want her. She wished she still had that whiskey in her hand.

  He folded his arms in front of him. “I just came from your castle in Sunfish Lake.”

  She didn’t like hearing that. “What the hell were you doing there?”

  “Looking for you.”

  Two questions swam through the alcohol and floated to the top of her head. If we’d agreed on meeting here tonight, why had he tried the house first? How did he find the house? She blurted the second question out loud: “How’d you find my house?”

  “The address was all over your husband’s business papers. Sunfish Lake’s down the highway from Mendota Heights.” He smiled. “Easy to find.”

  “Excuse me a second,” she said numbly. She really wanted that drink. She went back into the kitchen and retrieved her tumbler. The ice was melted. She opened the freezer, pulled a handful of cubes out of the plastic bag, and dropped them into her glass.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “So talk.” She eyed her glass. Too much ice; now she needed more whiskey. Chris snatched the bottle off the counter and poured.

  “Come out here and look at me.”

  “Did you do it?” Resting one hand against the edge of the counter, she waited motionless in the kitchen for the answer.