Fontaine thought about the timing, it was too coincidental not to be related to the casket invasions of the past few weeks. Considering what he did know, the odds were ever increasing that whoever sold the lost paintings to the museum also recovered them from the robbed graves.
He stood and stretched and then he heard the beeping of an incoming alert. The computer was back online. He started the trace as his server resumed the download. He scanned through the data as it downloaded and compared what he saw to the news article he had just read. Both art paintings from the news articles were listed in the journal. Now he had confirmation instead of theory.
Another alert sounded signaling the completion of the IP trace.
Fort Collins, Colorado.
Fontaine smiled. "Gotcha."
43
The lack of windows at the Katzer Funeral Home made it impossible to locate Wiley from the outside.
After walking the perimeter with Francesca, Jake realized the only way to locate the Old Man was to enter the building. What he would give to have the RTI unit now. One of Wiley's many toys, using strategically placed sensors, the enhanced radio tomographic imaging unit would have allowed him to use radio waves to scan through the walls of the funeral home, locate, and track the movements of every occupant inside. He'd used it successfully a year ago in Yemen on a rescue mission and knew it would come in handy now.
Jake and Francesca met at the side door where Katzer's van was parked. Jake tried the double glass doors but they were locked. He motioned to Francesca who pulled out her lock-picking tool and unlocked the door.
"How do you think Wiley got in?" He asked.
"Same way we did, I guess," she said, "he picked the lock."
"That doesn't make sense. Why would he lock it back? He knew we were coming."
"Maybe he didn't lock it." She paused. "Maybe someone else did."
"In that case." Jake pulled out his handgun. Francesca followed suit. "They might be expecting us." He eased the door open hoping no chime would sound alerting the Katzers of their intrusion. None did. The receiving foyer was a fifteen-foot wide hallway that extended for twenty feet before it ended. Two opposing narrower halls extended perpendicular to the landing, one toward the front of the funeral home, and one toward the back.
The one to the front was dark.
"It's got to be this way." Jake motioned to the rear of the building.
Francesca nodded.
The hallway stretched all the way to the back of the building before making a ninety-degree turn. The lights were off in the hall but Jake could see the glow from an illuminated room coming from around the corner.
Two doors on the right. One on the left. All empty. The doors on the right were offices, the one on the left was the preparation room. A vast assortment of makeup and applicators lined the racks and shelves. An exit door along the rear wall of the building was labeled Crematorium.
Jake took a quick glance around the corner. The hallway was empty. A door at the end of the hall was open and the room occupied. He heard voices. He turned to Francesca, she was holding her finger in front of her lips. She'd heard them too.
He reached the doorway and glimpsed inside the room, almost everything was stainless steel. The room glistened under the bright overhead lights. Three white tables were pushed against a far wall with what looked like huge vents hovering over each one. On one table was a woman covered in a blanket. He assumed she was Abigail Love.
The table next to her — Elmore Wiley.
A tall thin man paced the floor muttering to himself. Had to be Scott Katzer, Jake thought. There was no sign of the old woman.
Jake signaled Francesca and they entered the room, guns drawn.
The man looked at Jake.
"You."
Scott Katzer was shocked when the man and the woman walked in the room pointing their guns at him. He didn't recognize her, but the man's face he knew. He was the man who brandished the gun in Charleston and kicked in the front door of Ashley Regan's house. The man whose presence prompted him to call 9-1-1.
"Guess I know why you're here," he said.
The man nodded at the woman. She walked over and freed the old man from the embalming table.
"Mr. Wiley, you okay?" She asked him.
"I'm fine."
"Why didn't you wait for us?" The younger man asked the older man.
"I thought I'd storm the Castle."
"What was all that talk about knowing the lay of the land first?" The younger man rebuked.
"Things didn't exactly go as planned." The old man pointed. "This woman is very sick."
"Is that Abigail Love?" The younger man asked.
"Who is Abigail Love?" Katzer asked. "All I know is this is the woman who followed you from Ashley Regan's house in Charleston to Butler, Tennessee. How she knew to go there is anyone's guess."
"She's an assassin," the young woman said. "She was paid to locate and acquire the book." She pointed to the young man. "And then kill him."
"She won't be killing anybody anytime soon," Katzer said. "I don't know what's wrong with her but whatever it is, she's getting worse."
"She has the bends," the younger man said. "Decompression sickness. If she doesn't get to a hyperbaric chamber soon, she will die. It might be too late already. She was deep underwater for too long when something startled her. She ascended too fast with no decompression stops. She has excess nitrogen bubbles in her bloodstream which have lodged throughout her body."
The younger man walked over to the embalming table where the sick woman was lying. He checked her vital signs. "Her real name was Deborah Layne." He pulled the blanket over the woman's head. "And she's dead."
"Good riddance, I say." Scott Katzer recognized his mother's voice.
She was standing in the doorway pointing a gun at the three intruders.
"Drop your weapons," the old woman shouted. She had the leather journal clutched in one hand.
Jake made a quick assessment of their predicament. He nodded and dropped his handgun to the floor. Francesca did the same.
"Now. Both of you use a foot and kick the guns to me," she ordered, "and don't try anything. I may be old but I can still pull a trigger."
Jake and Francesca did as she requested. Jake instinctively brushed his arm against his waistband. The pocketknife Wiley gave him last year was concealed there. Jake always carried his knife. Just like Francesca always had a dagger strapped on the inside of her right leg. He looked at her. Her eye blink was imperceptible to anyone but him.
"Scott, get over here and collect their guns."
Scott Katzer collected the weapons, tucked one behind his belt and held the other on Jake, Wiley, and Francesca.
"All of these women have been difficult." She pointed at a table with the barrel of the gun. The table with the dead Abigail Love lying on it. "This one always groaning and wouldn't shut up. Then there was that Ashley Regan woman who took my book," the old woman held up the journal, "and gallivanted all over the countryside stealing what was rightfully mine."
"Rightfully yours?" Jake said.
"Yes." The woman shook the gun at him. Her face flushed. "Rightfully mine." She looked at Scott. "There was also that woman you grabbed by mistake."