She focused her attention on Paige, drawing a deep breath, concentrating. “And you, young lady… you’re worried about someone. Someone close to you. Yes, I can sense the concern in your thoughts, but you’re trying to cover it up.”
Embarrassed, Paige turned away, her cheeks flushing. “Yes, I am concerned about someone.” She looked at Craig. “It’s Uncle Mike. He’s really withdrawn since he lost his wife… and when my dad died a year later, he lost his best friend, too. Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do, now that he’s all alone.” Paige shook her head, then glanced up at Maggie, blinking her blue eyes. “You sure scored a point with me,” she said.
Craig smiled. “Maggie does seem to be an astute judge of character.”
“Damn straight,” Maggie said with an amused expression on her face. “I think you’re just skeptical about everything, Sweetie. Is that the reason your old girlfriend…” she held her hand out, concentrating again, “Trish, was that her name? Is that why she left you?”
Craig blinked in astonishment, and Paige laughed. “Even I haven’t been able to get him to talk about that.”
“Well, Maggie, to tell you the truth, I am with the FBI,” Craig said, wanting to divert the subject away from Trish. “And we’re here on a case.”
Maggie seemed intensely interested. She lowered her voice. “Is it a gambling investigation, a sting operation for money laundering? Can I help? We hear about those things all the time in the casinos.”
Craig decided to take a chance; maybe he could at least help Goldfarb and Jackson. “In truth, Maggie, maybe we could use your help. Do you know about the bomb planted at Hoover Dam Tuesday?” Craig asked. Paige looked over at him, perplexed.
The wrinkles deepened around Maggie’s lips. “If those militia morons think they’re going to gain public support like that, they don’t understand human psychology at all.”
“But you understand human psychology, Maggie — probably as well as a professional psychiatrist does. I’ve watched how you read people.” She beamed at the compliment. “You also keep your eyes open.”
“It’s my job,” she said firmly. “I spend my whole day listening, reading faces, checking how they dress, how they act. You can draw a lot of inferences.”
Craig nodded. “And you pick up on things nobody else knows you’ve even noticed.”
“Damn straight,” she said.
Craig looked over at Paige with a shrug. “At this point, I don’t suppose we’ve got anything to lose.”
He gave her a bit of background, just what had been on the news — then Maggie told him what she knew.
CHAPTER 23
Craig drove down the unpaved road in the dark. The turnoff to Antelope Trail had taken him a good twenty minutes off the main highway, but the view was worth every minute of the drive.
The mountains bounding the beautiful valley were black bulwarks in the night, siege walls thrown up against the lights of Las Vegas. Pahrump was a small town that had burst its seams with burgeoning housing developments and strip malls. Fast-food restaurants replaced old diners that had been called simply “EAT.”
He planned to meet Goldfarb and Jackson early the next morning to exchange information, but before then he hoped to have a long talk with the forklift driver, Carl Jorgenson.
Following the address Sally Montry had given him, he found a dirty mailbox with the number 26. Craig had tried to call Jorgenson first, rather than showing up unannounced, but the phone had rung and rung. Maybe Jorgenson was asleep — or drunk, as Sally had suggested.
Craig turned into a rutted driveway that led to a white house trailer. A red pickup was parked at the front next to a pile of discarded tires. POSTED: KEEP OUT signs were tacked to a ragged split-rail fence; an old posthole digger, rakes, and uncut firewood lay scattered in the yard. A porchlight looked like a sullen yellow eye over the front door, while a mercury yardlight blazed from an old telephone pole at the corner of the trailer.
Around back Craig could see a rotting wooden storage shed and a home-made shooting range, bales of straw with paper targets — human silhouettes rather than simple bullseye circles. Apparently, Jorgenson could sit inside his living room and practice with a rifle.
Craig could see the winking streetlights of Pahrump in the valley below, but they served only to point out how isolated he found himself up here. The night remained silent, smelling faintly of ozone — he remembered the old-timer Jerome Kostas and his prediction of an impending thunderstorm in the next day or so.
He heard nothing, not even night insects. Jorgenson’s place gave him the creeps. Pulling out his cellular phone, he saw the indicator blinking red — out of signal range.
He suddenly wished he had called Goldfarb or Jackson for backup. Paige might not remember he had gone out, since he had mentioned it only briefly. No one else knew he had driven out here. Bad idea. Even Sally Montry hadn’t expected him to speak with Jorgenson until the following day.
He wondered if the man was watching him even now, peeking through a gap in the curtain, readying his rifle to shoot a nighttime trespasser.
Recalling the booby-trapped home of Bryce Connors, how his two partners had nearly perished in the blaze, Craig felt a gnawing pain in the pit of his stomach. The man who lived alone in this isolated trailer had already admitted to causing the “accident” that had crushed Nevsky. But only Craig, Paige, and the killer himself knew the accident had actually been a murder.
He stood by his rental car and considered returning to Las Vegas. He could come back with Goldfarb and Jackson the next morning. As he had originally planned to do.
But the other two agents were busily crunching through the Eagle’s Claw case, working against their own intense deadline. Two more days until October 24 — Craig couldn’t pull them away from their work because he heard a bump in the night. Besides, just because one contract worker out of thousands at NTS had been a member of the Eagle’s Claw, he had no real reason to connect a DAF forklift driver with the violent militia group. Craig couldn’t waste time either — he had his own deadline to meet.
Focusing his concentration, vowing to keep on his toes, Craig remembered lessons he’d learned while shadowing people as a stringer for Elliot Lang, Private Investigator. One time, while watching a mark’s apartment to catch him cheating on his wife, the man’s lover showed up and caught on to Craig immediately, scuffling with him, succeeding in dumping the film in his camera. From that embarrassing incident, Craig had learned that anything could happen in a high-pressure situation.
He patted his shoulder holster, comforted by the Beretta’s weight. He didn’t dare draw the handgun as he approached. He didn’t want to look suspicious. Late-night visitors already carried their own baggage of distrust.
He slammed the car door, careful to make plenty of noise to announce his arrival. “Mr. Jorgenson? Hello, sir? This is Agent Kreident, FBI.” He walked past the posthole digger toward the front door. “I’m investigating the accident at the DAF. I have a few questions to ask you before I close out this case — just some things to clear up.”
Craig scanned the area as he spoke, taking in the trailer’s drawn curtains, the piles of debris around the outside. The bright mercury light washed out the colors, sharpened the shadows. He heard nothing louder than the soft whir of a refrigerator from inside, no TV, radio or phone.