The Killing Place, page 16
A bit of pink in the four-by-four made her glance inside. A plastic laundry basket was filled with folded clothing. Men’s and women’s.
I wonder where she is. Aiming at us from a window?
She didn’t dare take her eyes off Foster for another instant.
“Who sent you?” Foster demanded.
“We’re investigating the murders,” Alexa replied, wondering why she had to repeat this basic information.
“You and the FBI together?” Foster said, studying Stuart. “I’ve heard of you two. Caught Drake Logan. Caught a bunch of people.”
“We’re all on the same side here,” Stuart said.
Foster’s eyes narrowed. “Are we? Care to prove that?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Stuart said. “Our track record should—”
“You’re from D.C.!” Foster screeched. “You could have been sent by them!”
“And who are they?” Stuart asked, keeping his voice level, soothing.
“You know,” Foster snarled, although there was more fear and despair than anger in his tone. “And if you don’t, you should.”
“Tell us,” Alexa said, taking a step forward. Only one. She didn’t dare take more.
“Yours isn’t the first interagency collaboration. They’ve been collaborating before, at the top level, and not for anything good.”
“What do you mean?” Alexa asked. Despite his paranoid manner, something about him made her curious. He had been an officer of the law once, and his disappearance from the records was more than a bit strange.
“Some people are put into Witness Security against their will. They’re forced into it because people in Washington want them to disappear. It’s that or disappear for real.”
Alexa blinked. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The people on top, they—”
Just then, Alexa’s phone rang. Foster’s eyes goggled.
“Who’s that?” he demanded. “Were they listening?”
“How could they be listening?”
“You can do anything with a phone these days. They’re spy devices, every one of them.”
The phone rang a second time.
“Answer it,” Foster said. “Answer it and put it on speaker.”
“I’m not—”
Foster’s face turned red. “Do it! Prove you’re not one of them!”
Alexa raised her hands in a calming gesture. Her phone rang again, a persistent, annoying noise. Why the hell hadn’t she put it on silent?
She pulled it out of her pocket.
“I don’t recognize the number,” she said.
“Yeah, sure you don’t. Answer it.”
She put it on speaker and did as she was told. Better to embarrass some random caller than risk him drawing his gun.
“Hello?” Alexa said.
Stacy’s voice came on. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. You sent like fifty billion messages and I couldn’t answer. My phone broke and my dad’s phone ran out of credit and my mom wouldn’t let me use hers and—”
“Stacy, this isn’t a very good time.”
“—and so I had to borrow Belen’s. Did I tell you about Belen? She’s my new neighbor. My age and totally cool. She’s helping me with my Spanish homework. Maybe I can get a C this year. Anyway, I borrowed Belen’s phone but then I couldn’t remember your number and—”
“Stacy, I—”
“—then I wanted to check my phone but it was out of power and I couldn’t find the charger because the new apartment is a total mess. You should see it. You’d never complain about my room again. So anyway—”
“STACY!”
“What?”
“This is kind of a bad time,” Alexa said as Foster glared at her, his hand poised over his gun and twitching ever so slightly.
“Aw, I thought you’d be glad to hear from me.”
“I am, but you see, I’m at work and kind of in the middle of a conversation right now.”
“Oh. My bad.”
Foster took a step forward, putting one hand on the butt of his gun and extending the other.
“Enough. Hang up and give me your phone.”
Stuart sprang at him and caught him in a perfect tackle.
“Don’t resist!” Stuart said as they fell to the ground and rolled on the grass.
“Is that Stuart?” Stacy asked. “Tell him I’m sorry for not answering his message.”
Alexa tossed the phone aside and stepped forward to help her partner. Stuart had gotten the man in a partial armlock but Foster was still able to struggle, twisting his body and trying to get his weight on top of the FBI agent. He was also reaching with his off hand to try and pull out his gun, but the awkward angle and Stuart struggling with him made it difficult.
Alexa grabbed his free hand, pulling it away from the gun. Foster lashed out with his leg, hitting Alexa straight in the knee. With a cry she fell to the ground, and yet still managed to hold onto his hand.
That earned her another kick, to the side of the head this time.
Stars flared in front of her eyes. For a moment she didn’t know what was going on, but the pain of a third kick to her shoulder woke her up. She rolled to the side to avoid more kicks and got to her hands and knees.
Stuart and Foster were in the same position as before, rocking back and forth on the grass as Foster tried to shake him off and draw his gun, and Stuart trying to get him in a more secure armlock. He was also trying to get his legs around Foster’s middle to pin him.
In the background, Alexa could hear Stacy still chattering away, completely oblivious.
“Enough of this,” Alexa growled, struggling to her feet and pulling out her collapsible baton and whipping it open.
As she wound up for a swing, Foster elbowed Stuart in the ribs and managed to yank out his gun. Alexa swung at his hand.
Just in time to hit Stuart’s hand instead, when he smacked at Foster’s wrist and knocked the gun across the front lawn.
There was a sickening crack as her baton hit flesh.
Stuart’s flesh.
Her partner cried out. Foster tore free and tried to stand. Stuart managed to trip him, making him stumble, and Alexa hit him a good one with the baton right on the back of the head.
Foster fell flat on the ground.
Alexa wasted no time handcuffing his wrists behind his back. The former Deputy Marshal was conscious, but too stunned to put up more than a feeble struggle. He was cuffed and subdued in less than five seconds.
Filled with dread, Alexa turned to her partner. He sat on the grass, gritting his teeth and clutching his hand.
“Is it broken?” Alexa asked, heart thumping in her chest and her body aching from the brief struggle.
“No.” He tried to move his fingers. “Ow. Maybe.”
“Let me get the First Aid kit from the car.”
“Check the house first. The girlfriend’s got to be here somewhere.”
“You leave her alone!” Foster shrieked.
Alexa could still hear Stacy chattering away, so she picked up her phone.
“What’s going on over there?” the girl asked.
“I have to go. I just made an arrest.”
“Coooool.”
Alexa shook her head and turned off her phone.
By now several neighbors had come out to stare.
“Go back in your homes!” Alexa ordered.
Some of them did. Others stayed put like zombies.
“NOW!”
The rest fled.
Stuart had gotten to his feet, holding his Glock in his wrong hand and holding his injured one above his heart to reduce the swelling Alexa could already see distorting its shape.
“I’ll guard Foster and radio this in. You check the house,” he said.
Alexa nodded and moved toward the house, putting away her baton and pulling out her gun. She got to the open door, staying to one side of it, fully expecting someone to fire out of the open space.
“U.S. Marshal. Identify yourself!”
No answer.
She looked back at Foster, who remained on the ground but was now staring at her with a terrified expression.
“Make your presence known and then come out with your hands up!” Alexa shouted.
Silence.
All right. We’ll do this the hard way.
She rushed into the front hall, gun leveled. A small living room opened on the right with a big flat screen TV tuned to the local news. No one was in there. She moved on.
In a minute she had cleared the house. No woman. No baby. She did find evidence of a woman staying there, though. Some makeup in the bathroom. A few items of clothing. Most of it had been packed away, the same as with Foster’s possessions. In the back of his four-by-four she found his laptop, clothing, camping gear, a hunting rifle with scope, and a shotgun.
Alexa walked over to Foster, who had struggled to a sitting position. Stuart was on the radio.
“Where are they?” Alexa demanded.
“Who?” Foster asked.
“Don’t even try that. Where’s your girlfriend and the baby you kidnapped?”
She realized she didn’t even know the baby’s name. None of the officers or neighbors down in Tubac knew it. It was probably in the report they had sent her that morning, but she hadn’t had time to read it.
“We didn’t kidnap anyone.”
“Yeah, sure. You liberated the baby from evil people or some kind of nonsense like that. Where’s the kid?”
“There is no kid.”
Alexa yanked out her baton, a haze of red falling over her vision. Her exhaustion, pain, and frustration had reached a boiling point. She had no time for games with a serial killer.
She took a step toward him, raising the baton.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Alexa towered over Foster’s hunched figure, handcuffed and helpless on his own front lawn.
But not helpless, because his girlfriend was out there somewhere, with a baby they had stolen from a dead woman.
And the only thing Foster could do was look up at her with a mixture of defiance and fake innocence.
Alexa’s hand gripped her baton, ready to bring it down hard on this murderer’s skull.
“Damn it, tell me—”
“Alexa!”
She turned. Stuart was staring at her, his swollen hand cradled in his other one.
The red haze in front of her eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by embarrassment and a deep shame. In her mind, she could hear Drake Logan laughing, right as usual.
Damn it.
“How’s your hand?” she asked.
“How’s your head?” he shot back.
Alexa looked away. Taking a deep breath, she looked down at Foster.
“You killed those people. We came on you just as you were about to run. Then you attacked us. Are you trying to tell me you’re innocent? Come on. The only one innocent here is that baby who’s been snatched. If you got any decency left in you, you’ll tell me where your girlfriend took it.”
“We didn’t kidnap anyone. If you want to throw me in some gulag, I can’t stop you, but leave her out of this. She’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Then why is she running away with you?”
“She knows what the federal government turned into,” Foster grumbled.
“Where is she? We’ve got her footprints at the scene. We know you did the murders together.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, but if you want to pretend, fine. Just don’t expect me to point the finger at the woman I love. Come on, take me to Siberia, you damn KGB agents.”
Alexa cocked her head and studied him for a second. Something struck her as strange.
“You left-handed?”
“Yeah. Can’t you tell by my holster?”
Dr. Whitaker had said the killer was only pretending to be left-handed, that the imprecision of the stab wounds showed he was using his off hand. Would Foster carry his firearm on the wrong side just to preserve the illusion, even when he wasn’t expecting trouble?
Alexa wasn’t sure. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure about a lot of things in this case.
A hiss of pain made her turn back to Stuart. He’d activated an instant cold pack from the First Aid kit and put it on his hand. Just the pressure of applying it had felt painful.
“The police will be here in two minutes,” Stuart said.
“Is it broken?” Alexa asked.
“No, just hurts like hell.”
“I’m sorry.”
Stuart grinned. “I made it through two tours of duty without catching friendly fire. I was due.”
“Can you guard him?”
Stuart pulled a taser out of the vehicle. “He’s cuffed, so he can’t do much. If he tries to run I’ll zap him. What are you going to do?”
“Take another look at his house.”
“All right.”
Alexa entered, not sure what she was looking for but sensing she had missed something. First off? Hiding places. She could find none. She checked under the beds and in every closet. The girlfriend wasn’t in here. Second, maps or lists or anything that would indicate he had been hunting the witnesses. Nothing visible, and a quick rummage through the office desk as a police siren approached outside yielded nothing.
She did notice that the pen holder was on the left side of the desk, and a few notes written on a pad showed handwriting that indicated left-handedness, with a few smudges in the ink from where his hand had passed over the writing. Next she looked at the words themselves. Something about a divorce case he was investigating, where a female client had hired a private investigation firm in Phoenix to check if a husband was cheating.
A bit more rummaging yielded the name of the firm, presumably Foster’s employer. She’d have to check with them.
She made a quick rummage through closets, the bathroom, the spare room. Nothing to indicate a baby was here. Of course, if the girlfriend had taken it so recently, what few baby supplies they might have would be with her.
Wherever she was.
Alexa stood in the bedroom, looking around for evidence that this was their man and finding none. The only thing she had found was evidence that he really was left-handed.
Could they have gotten it wrong again? And if so, why was he acting so obviously guilty? Attempting to flee, refusing to cooperate, resisting arrest to the point of trying to draw a gun. Those weren’t the actions of an innocent man.
And why had his records been erased? Had he done that, or whoever had fired him?
Just what the hell was going on here?
The siren shutting off and voices outside told her the police were on the scene. Let Stuart handle it. She continued to search the house.
After another several minutes, she had still come up with nothing.
She emerged from the house to find Foster cuffed and sitting in the back of a patrol car. Stuart, still cradling his hand in the cold pack, was talking to one of the officers while another stood by the patrol car talking on the radio.
“Find anything?” Stuart asked as she walked up.
She locked eyes with him. “Nothing. Except that he was left-handed.”
Stuart’s face grew troubled.
The officer next to him laughed. “Well, lefties can be killers too. Jack the Ripper was left-handed.”
“I’m going to speak to him for a moment,” she said.
“Do what you like,” the officer replied. “But all he’s been doing is ranting. Forgot to wear his tinfoil hat.”
Alexa went over to the police car.
“You really are left-handed,” she said. “The killer we’re hunting is right-handed.”
Foster sat slumped, looking defeated.
“Well, I’m the killer now.”
“Can you vouch for your whereabouts for the last four days?”
“I’ve been following a man in a divorce case for United Private Investigative Services.”
“Got any proof of where you were?”
“No.”
“Does your car have GPS?”
“I removed it.”
“What about your phone?”
“I don’t carry a phone. Too easy to track.”
Alexa blinked. She was old enough to remember life without cell phones, and young enough not to be able to imagine going back to that time. How did this guy do his job?
“What are you hiding from?” she asked, her heart beginning to beat faster.
Foster remained silent. Alexa leaned in closer.
“Look, someone is killing people in the Witness Security Program and I have to find them before they kill again. If you know anything, you need to tell me. You say you were unjustly terminated. I don’t know what happened or if your termination was right or wrong, but in your heart you’re still an officer of the law.”
Foster turned to her, frowning. “Who’s law?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who are you working for?”
“The U.S. Marshals Service. The federal government.”
“And who runs that?”
“Look, if you’re going to give me the standard conspiracy theory, I don’t—”
Foster shook his head impatiently. “It’s not the Jews or the Freemasons or aliens or anything stupid like that. It’s just normal human greed and desire for power. The federal government, and every federal agency, is full of factions all trying to grab what they can get. You must know that.”
“What’s this about people being put into the program against their will?”
“People they want to disappear but don’t want to take out. People who might be useful later on.”
“And the victims were those sorts of people?”
“No. At least not Beachy and Running Wolf. I remember those two. Small-time druggies. Not important. But Irene Rollins? Yeah. She was probably one of them. During her induction I remember her complaining about being stuck in the program.”
“I thought she copped a plea,” Alexa said, unconvinced. “She got caught red-handed with a bunch of trafficked women.”
“Their trafficked women.”
“Excuse me?”
Foster gave her a bitter smile. “Come on. You never heard of dirty cops before? Or dirty politicians?”
“You trying to tell me that this secret cabal of federal employees are trafficking women and when some cops caught Irene Rollins they made her join the Witness Security Program? That doesn’t make any sense. Her testimony sent a dozen people to jail.”
