Kill Fee Read online

  14

  Stevens was at his desk at the BCA headquarters in Saint Paul when his phone started to ring. He was typing a report, hunt-and-peck style, a cold case he’d just closed on Friday. It seemed to be taking forever.

  Distraction, he thought as the phone rattled beside him. Thank God. He reached for the handset.

  “Stevens?”

  Stevens sat up straight. “Carla.”

  “The one and only.” Windermere paused. “Listen, I hate to take you away from whatever it is you BCA people do over there, but I need you in Brooklyn Center for a while.”

  Stevens frowned. Looked around the Investigations department. It was pretty quiet for a Monday. Not much going on. “What’s up?”

  “Long story,” said Windermere. “Anyway, listen, I’ll get you back to work in an hour or two, tops. Just come on in, would you?”

  Stevens looked at the report on his desk, and then across the office to Tim Lesley’s door. Lesley was the Special Agent in Charge of Investigations, and he’d be waiting on the report. Right now, though, Stevens figured he could use a break. “Sure,” he said. “On my way.”

  “Good. And, Stevens?”

  Stevens paused. “Yeah?”

  “Bring lunch.”

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Stevens parked his Cherokee in front of the FBI’s regional headquarters in Brooklyn Center. An imposing, five-story structure ringed with high fences and security checkpoints, the building was markedly more secure than the Bureau’s old offices, housed as they were in a commercial skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis. The FBI had just moved in a month or so prior, and Stevens was halfway into the city before he realized his mistake.

  Was a hell of a time finding the place anyway. Stevens missed his exit off I-94, had to retrace his route along surface roads, past a couple truck-stop motels and light industrial warehouses before he found the place. He parked, showed his badge to a couple security guards, navigated the metal detector, and rode the elevator up to Criminal Investigations and cut through the office to Windermere’s cubicle. Set a paper bag of takeout Thai on her desk and grinned at her. “Brand-new building and they still can’t get you a real office, huh?”

  Windermere scowled. “Nope. I took down Arthur Pender and Carter Tomlin and I still can’t get any privacy, Stevens.”

  “Wait a second,” said Stevens. “We took down Pender and Tomlin. I think I helped a little.”

  “You got an office yet? I rest my case.” Windermere eyed the bag. “What’d you bring me?”

  “Pad Thai,” said Stevens. “It’s decent.”

  Windermere rolled her eyes. “It’s Minnesota, Stevens.”

  “Better than Taco Bell. What’s the story?”

  “Yeah.” Windermere unpacked the bag. Set a foil takeout plate on her desk and removed the cardboard top. Studied the contents for a moment, her face impassive. Then she glanced at him. “Pull up a chair.”

  Stevens pulled a chair over. Sat down and listened as Windermere explained the situation in between bites of pad Thai.

  “So the rental car guy, Salazar,” she said, chewing, “he’s not the shooter. Omaha brought him in, flew him back here. He had a little tantrum in the interview room. Broke an FBI chair, but he never killed anyone.”

  “But he rented the car.”

  Windermere shook her head. “He didn’t even. And he got pretty mad when I had the gall to suggest he would ever rent from Liberty. Apparently he’s an Emerald Club member, whatever that means.”

  “National?”

  “Rented a white Chrysler 300C,” said Windermere. “Had it all week. Brought it back a half hour before our shooter returned his Chevy hatchback.”

  Stevens reached into the bag and pulled out a second foil container. Cashew chicken. “A half hour.”

  “A half hour, Stevens. Right about the time our shooter was giving me the cold shoulder in the parking lot.”

  “So what’s Salazar’s play? How does he fit?”

  “He doesn’t,” she said. “He swears he’s innocent. Right now, I have no reason to suspect otherwise.”

  “You account for his whereabouts on Saturday? Do a background check, all that? Look for any ties to Spenser Pyatt?”

  Windermere pointed across the office to a young kid bent over a computer. “Mathers’s on it,” she said. “We’re working this case. So far, we have nothing. Salazar spent the whole week selling manure at some trade show. Has witnesses putting him at the RiverCentre all Saturday morning. And then he was in transit at the time of the shooting.”

  “Guy’s got a clean background.” Stevens looked up to find Windermere’s new partner standing beside him. Mathers, she’d called him. The kid was clean-cut and damned tall. He nodded at Stevens and then turned to Windermere. “No criminal record anywhere. No ties to Pyatt, at least not superficially. Maybe there’s something in his background.”

  “Keep looking,” said Windermere. “A Minnesota TV billionaire and a fertilizer salesman from Iowa. Who the hell knows?”

  Mathers nodded again and walked back to his workstation. Stevens watched him go. “Your new partner?” he asked Windermere.

  Windermere grinned at him.

  “Where’d you find him, the Bureau day care?”

  “He’s a good kid,” she said. “Kind of goofy, but he saves me the grunt work.” Her smile faded. “Anyway, Stevens, this damn case is starting to give me a headache. I can’t hold Salazar, and I’m not sure I want to.”

  “You think he’s clean.”

  She nodded. “My instinct says yes.”

  “You check out the airport? Maybe they have something on tape.”

  “Just about to,” she said. “Was just waiting on you.”

  Stevens stared at her. “That’s why you called me in? To ride out to the airport?”

  Windermere shook her head. “No,” she said. “I need a statement. You witnessed the shooting, remember?” She grinned at him. “I just figured maybe I’d take your statement in the car.”

  15

  Lind returned to Minneapolis on a Delta Airlines A319. It was sunny when the plane landed, early afternoon. Lind barely noticed. He walked off the plane and through the terminal to another gate, where he boarded a Delta regional jet for the quick flight northeast to Duluth.

  He walked off the small plane when it touched down in Duluth and found the Liberty counter inside the terminal. Rented a blue Kia Rio and asked for a map of the city, which he studied in the driver’s seat of the Kia outside the terminal. When he’d found his destination, he folded the map closed and drove east from the airport, toward Lake Superior and a quiet, tree-lined street in Congdon Park. It was a posh neighborhood north of the city, the houses large and set back from the road.

  The house Lind was looking for was nearly hidden amid the trees that surrounded it. It wasn’t nearly as large as many he’d passed; it looked old and dark, neglected. Lind drove past the house to the end of the block, parked the Kia around the corner, and waited until he was sure the street was deserted. Then he climbed out of the car and set out through the trees toward the house.

  It was quiet in the forest. Very still. Lind’s footsteps cracked twigs and rustled the underbrush. Above him, birds called to one another. A car passed in the distance, unseen. Lind kept walking.

  He found the house and crouched in the brush, surveying the building across the vast lawn. There was a car in the driveway, a dented Mercedes, but the house looked empty. There were no signs of life—of potential threats—anywhere.

  Lind waited until the birds stopped calling above him. Until the whole forest seemed to forget he was there. He knelt in the brush, and from his pocket removed a pair of black gloves, which he pulled over his hands before crossing the lawn, fast and low, to the house.

  The back door was locked. Lind punched out a small window and the glass made a tinkling sound on
the carpet. He opened the door from inside and slipped into the house and waited. Heard voices, tinny music: a television somewhere. He crept through the house, room to room.

  The television was playing in the living room. There was a man watching from a worn couch. There was an empty plate beside him, a half-empty bottle. The man didn’t hear Lind come into the room.

  Lind crept behind the man, quickly, his shoes making whispers on the carpet. He reached down and took the man’s neck in his hands. The man stiffened. He fought. Lind squeezed his neck tighter. The man thrashed on the worn couch, clawing at Lind’s shirt. Lind let him fight.

  The man was much older than Lind. He was weaker. He fought, and then he stopped fighting, and when he went still, Lind eased him back down to the couch.

  The man’s eyes were wide open and sightless, his mouth wrenched in a last gasp for air. He’d kicked at the table, knocked over the bottle. Its contents had spilled onto the carpet.

  Lind waited until he was sure the man was dead. Then he turned and retraced his steps through the house and out onto the lawn. He hurried back through the forest to the little blue Kia, climbed in, and turned the key. Then he stopped. Across the street, in front of a bungalow, a little boy chased a large rubber ball toward the road. The boy caught up to the ball, picked it up. Then he noticed Lind.

  Remove yourself from the scene without being detected. Don’t attract undue attention. Secondary objective.

  The boy studied Lind intently, and Lind held the boy’s gaze, wondering if he’d have to kill him. Then the boy looked down at the ball. Turned and threw it back toward the bungalow and gave chase, laughing, on stubby legs. Lind watched the boy play until he was sure the kid had forgotten him. Then, slowly, he pulled away from the house.

  He drove back to the airport, stopping along the way at a gas station, where he stuffed the gloves and his sweater into a garbage bin, just as he’d been taught. Then he drove the Kia back to the Liberty rental lot, returned the keys to the woman at the counter, and walked into the terminal and through the security checkpoint to the lounge, where he waited to board the next flight to Minneapolis.

  16

  Parkerson was going over last month’s reports with his secretary when he felt his burner phone start to ring. He’d pulled it from his pocket, a cheap pay-as-you-go flip phone, before he realized what he was doing.

  Jamie frowned from the door. “Thought you had a BlackBerry.”

  “In the shop,” he lied. Flashed the burner phone, rueful. “This is the piece of shit they gave me as a loaner.”

  “Phone companies.” Jamie shook her head. “The worst. I’ll leave you alone.” She ducked out of the room, closing the door behind her. Parkerson waited until he heard the lock engage.

  Shit, he thought. That was close. He brought the phone to his ear. “Yeah.”

  There was a pause. Parkerson could hear breathing. Then: “I’ve completed the assignment.”

  Done. Parkerson felt his whole body relax. He stared at his computer and exhaled, long and slow. “Good.”

  There was no answer.

  “You’re on your way home?”

  Another pause. “I’m in transit.”

  “Good,” Parkerson said. “Thanks for calling. We’ll be in touch soon.”

  “You’re welcome.” Nothing else. The call disconnected. Parkerson put the phone down and leaned back in his chair. Swiveled around until he was staring out his vast picture window at the forest beyond, feeling the tension dissipate.

  Parkerson replayed the Saturday phone call in his head and wondered again if the job had been worth the risk. The client had sounded desperate, unhinged. Parkerson hadn’t liked the way his voice had wavered. He’d sounded irrational, barely clinging to sanity. He’d sounded like he was on the verge of making a mess.

  Parkerson hated messes. He dealt with numbers, with absolutes. Coordinates. Code. Dollars, in and out. He preferred the cleanliness that numbers offered. The perfection. One or two. Yes or no. Paid or unpaid.

  Humanity, with its tendency toward imperfection, made him uncomfortable. The client had purchased a kill. Parkerson had completed the contract. The job should have been over. Finished. No headaches. No messes.

  The client, though, was unable to see the contract with Parkerson’s clarity, though he’d shown an appealing lack of remorse when he’d ordered the kill. Parkerson had no time to deal with remorse, or morality, or any other human imperfection. This was numbers. Money, in and out. A contract fulfilled.

  It had personally cost Parkerson to terminate the client. He’d had to allocate his own capital to fly the asset to Duluth, rent the car, finance the kill. Not an insignificant cost, but in the end, a necessary investment. Better to pay up front for security than to risk the program on one man’s crippling weakness. Besides, Parkerson thought with a smile, the client had already paid his fee. The money had been transferred. The numbers made sense.

  Parkerson heard his door open behind him. He turned in his chair and saw Jamie peering in at him. “Everything okay?” she asked him.

  Parkerson smiled at her, wide, genuine. “Everything’s fine.” He winked at her. “Just some kind of crank.”

  17

  Well, god damn it.” Windermere threw up her hands. “That was useless.”

  She’d just emerged from the airport police department at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International. Stevens and Mathers waited for her in the crowded terminal building. Even from twenty feet away, Stevens could tell his former partner was frustrated. “Dead end?”

  Windermere snorted. “They have security tapes for the whole building. Rental car offices to the departure gates.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And we can’t see them. It’s a TSA situation, they said. And the TSA doesn’t want to play nice.”

  Mathers shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “We could have full coverage of this guy walking into the airport, dropping off his rental car, and boarding a plane. We could figure out where he landed and work the tapes from his arrival airport as well. Hell, we might get lucky and get another license plate number, or a positive ID. But unless I come correct with TSA approval from on high, boys, we’re not seeing those tapes.”

  Stevens scratched his head. “So how do we get TSA approval?”

  Windermere sighed. “I don’t know, Stevens,” she said. “Maybe if we write our congressman.”

  NOBODY AT THE LIBERTY RENTAL DESK proved to be of any help, either. “Saturday, right?” the manager said. “Busy day. Heck, they’re all busy. Some brown-haired kid isn’t going to make an impression.”

  “The Chevy Aveo.” Windermere read off the license plate. “Who rented it?”

  The manager frowned. “Thought you knew this already.”

  “Humor me, Bob.”

  The manager typed something into his computer. Read it. “Here it is,” he said. “Allen Bryce Salazar. Council Bluffs, Iowa.”

  Windermere swapped glances with Stevens. “You ever deal with this guy before? He rent from you guys in the past?”

  The manager squinted. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “What about credit card information?”

  The manager squinted some more. Leaned down and peered at his screen. “Looks like a corporate card.” He looked up at Windermere. “Triple A Industries. That sound familiar?”

  Mathers shook his head. “Salazar calls his company Wrong End Incorporated. I’ve never heard of Triple A before.”

  Windermere looked at Mathers. Then she looked at Stevens. Stevens shrugged. “Triple A Industries,” she said finally. “I guess it’ll have to do.”

  18

  It was dark when Lind landed in Minneapolis. He walked off the plane and through the terminal to the Delta lounge, where he ate three packets of cheese and crackers before he boarded his flight back to Philadelphia.

 
He sat on board the big Delta airliner and stared at the seat back in front of him, trying to keep from thinking about Showtime and Hang Ten and that big Army C-17 as the plane taxied and took off into the night. Every flight was the same. Every stomach-lurching launch down the runway and every turbulent shuck and jive. If he closed his eyes, he’d be back on that transport plane with the rest of the lucky ones.

  There was an older woman in the aisle seat beside him. Lind could feel her eyes on him. He stared at the seat back and tried to ignore her. She kept staring. “Business or pleasure?” she said at last.

  Lind exhaled, long, and turned slowly to face her. She was a white-haired woman, mid-sixties or so. She smiled at him, friendly. Lind tried to calm the racing thoughts in his head. Tried to maintain some illusion of normalcy.

  “I’m visiting my son,” the woman said. “He’s a doctor, or he will be. He just finished his residency.”

  Lind kept the smile pasted to his face. He nodded politely. He’d been trained for situations like this. Be civil, the man had told him. Don’t volunteer information. Extricate yourself from the conversation as quickly as you can.

  Lind looked around the airplane. Every seat was full. The canned air seemed suffocating, the atmosphere unbearable. He wished he were back at his apartment. He wished the man was there to help him.

  “He’s a surgeon, my son,” the woman continued. “A general surgeon, but a surgeon nonetheless.” She looked at him. “I bet he’s probably about your age.”

  Lind nodded again. He was gripping the armrests tight, so tight he could have wrenched them loose if he’d tried. “My name is Richard O’Brien,” he said at last.

  “Glenda.” The woman held out her hand. “Glenda Regis.”

  Lind looked at the woman’s hand. He unpeeled his own hand from the armrest and gripped hers. The woman winced a little, but her smile stayed fixed on him. “Nervous flier?”