He was the ultimate survivor, too — which ran his spook reputation even farther up the flagpole. Intel people everywhere swore up and down they’d seen him die in a hail of bullets or pushed from a plane at twenty thousand feet without a parachute or go below the surface of the water somewhere and not come back up. But then they swore they’d seen him alive after that. So he was like a cat, they’d rant. Except that it seemed he had a hundred lives, not nine.
Maddux knew all this from personal experience, not just from hearsay. He’d been sitting in the back room of a Paris café one night a year ago with two Russians he’d recognized as low-level intelligence officers. They kept telling him about an American Special Forces agent they referred to as “the Ghost” or “Le Fantôme” over and over as he conversed with them in perfect French. And he kept buying them vodka, getting them drunker and drunker and convincing them he was only a boring avocat from the town of Angers who had come to Paris for holiday to enjoy time away from a nagging wife. He told them he was fascinated to hear as much as they would tell him about the wild world of international intrigue. So they’d told him all about Le Fantôme as he’d gotten them drunk. Very quickly he’d recognized that the man they were talking about was him.
When he grew tired of talking, he’d shot each of them in the heart with a twenty-two pistol from point-blank range. He’d done it during a particularly loud song being played by a band out in the main room, after wrapping a thick cloth napkin around the barrel of the gun to make certain no one heard. After shooting them, he’d slipped out the back without anyone knowing.
He’d read about the murders in Le Monde the next morning. And he’d realized from the article that he was completely insulated from discovery. The inspectors were appealing to anyone who might have any information about the killings to come forward. So they obviously had no leads. No one did.
Not even the waitress who’d served them. She hadn’t because she couldn’t. Maddux had killed her later that night as she was walking home, just to be safe. He’d strangled her in an alley and enjoyed it. He was self-aware enough to realize that he was a psychopath. But he believed that sickness only gave him another advantage. He’d justified her murder as simply a necessity for keeping him, and therefore the United States, safe.
Maddux moved into the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs and glanced into the mirror above the sink. He grimaced and looked away quickly. This was the only part he didn’t like. His was a face only a mother could love. He’d gotten over his small stature — but never that face. It was twisted and ugly.
He washed his hands, slipped into a pair of rubber gloves, then moved back out of the bathroom and approached her. She was in her mid-thirties, slightly overweight, and had light brown wavy hair. Two hours ago he’d lashed her to an uncomfortable wooden chair in the middle of this room and left her here to soften up. Apparently it had worked. She was already sobbing beneath the gag and the blindfold.
He ran the backs of his gloved fingers gently down her cheek, and she jumped at the unexpected touch, shocked by his presence — exactly as he wanted. She hadn’t heard him coming, and now he knew that her heart rate had spiked into the stratosphere. And the major shock was still to come.
It was eerie how good he was at sneaking up on people. It was a natural talent he’d possessed ever since he could remember. Since even before high school when, only a few days prior to graduation, he’d snuck up on this one stud who’d been particularly evil to him in the hallways — and killed him at dusk with a knife in the dimly lit parking lot after baseball practice.
That wasn’t his first murder. And even then, he knew it wouldn’t be his last. He liked killing bad people, and that was the key. They had to be evil. As long as they were, he had no conflict. He couldn’t admit to himself in high school how much he enjoyed killing, but he could now.
Maddux moved behind the chair and untied the knot of the bootlace at the back of the woman’s head that secured the gag — an orange practice golf ball. It was made of hollow plastic and had holes in it so it resembled Swiss cheese. He’d run the long lace through two of the ball’s holes that were opposite each other, and the combination had made a perfect gag. The lace had left two raw marks at the corners of her mouth that were probably causing her great discomfort. But that was none of his concern.
“Where will the next attacks come?” he demanded as he put his hands on the arms of the chair, leaned down close, and stared into her almond-shaped eyes from close range. “Tell me, Imelda Smith. Don’t make me ask twice.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Answer my question.”
Tears spilled from Imelda’s eyes as she looked up at him helplessly. “What attacks are you talking about? I don’t know anything.”
Maddux had been torturing people for more than two decades, and at this point he quickly recognized the veracity of the responses — or lack thereof. Based on what he saw in her eyes and what he heard in her tone, she was lying. This woman was directly involved in what was already the worst terrorist attack the United States had ever suffered. And it was still going on.
He’d snatched Imelda yesterday afternoon from the kitchen of her small home in Manassas, Virginia — less than thirty miles from the attack in Tysons Corner. Then he’d transported her two hundred miles to this beautiful, remote home built in the hills of central Pennsylvania. So far she seemed to be quite the actress, and incredibly committed to the cause.
Imelda was going to have that commitment tested this afternoon. She was about to face a sacrifice far more excruciating than her own death.
“Don’t lie to me,” he warned. “I’ll go easier on you if you tell me the truth and you do it quickly. Time is important to me.”
“I’m not lying,” she sobbed. “I swear.”
“Are you telling me you don’t know anything about what happened yesterday?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What happened yesterday?”
Maddux rose up slowly. “All right, if that’s the way you want to play it.”
“I’m not playing anything. Please let me go,” she begged. “What are you going to do to me?”
Maddux walked out of the room and into the next without answering. When he returned he was clutching the hand of Imelda’s five-year-old son. This was the shock factor Maddux had been waiting to spring.
He wasn’t disappointed with her reaction.
Parkview elementary school was nestled into a quiet, blue-collar suburb of Springfield, Missouri, in the south-central part of the state about two hundred miles from St. Louis. The school was attended mostly by the sons and daughters of parents who worked at the Chrysler plant a few miles from the school. Or for the Union Pacific Railroad, which operated a large freight yard close to the Chrysler factory.
It was a few minutes after noon, central time, and the cafeteria was filling with kids. Kindergarten classes let out for the day before lunch, but the first and second graders were in the big room enjoying their brown-bag meals or the hot lunches that had been prepared by the cafeteria staff. Third and fourth graders would be coming in at twelve-thirty to eat, thirty minutes after the younger children, as they always did. It was the next-to-last day of classes before school let out for the holidays.