“This is a warm-up,” I said. “He’ll move on to specific hits soon. His enemies. People who he thinks have wronged him.”
Banner was still crouched next to the body. Her eyes flicked up to me, and for the first time I heard irritation in her voice. “Were you paying attention to the file? That’s completely inconsistent with the established MO.”
“It’s not inconsistent at all,” I said. “And the conditions on the ground have changed. He’s a soldier. Soldiers adapt.”
“Wardell’s an indiscriminate killer,” Castle said. “We won’t catch him with who; we have to think about where. Maybe you need a little more time to catch up, Blake. I’m sure we can find you someplace quiet to study.”
I glanced at the body again. “The last thing Wardell is,” I said, “is indiscriminate. You believe that, you’re making a big mistake.”
Castle took a step forward. “Excuse me?”
Banner sighed and stood up, smoothing the front of her skirt down and subtly moving between us. “So what do you think?” she asked me. “Is he still in the area?”
I looked at the corpse again. It partially obscured the phrase no parking, painted on the ground in white foot-high letters. “I don’t know,” I said slowly, thinking. I knew I was missing something, something potentially important.
Castle was looking at me with open contempt. “Wonderful.”
“So for now,” Banner said, “we focus on the thirty-mile radius.”
“All we can do,” Castle agreed. “We’re looking in every backseat and trunk of every vehicle leaving the area. No reports of any stolen cars anywhere in the vicinity this morning. We’ve got people making house-to-house inquiries, roadblocks, air support. In the meantime, if anyone has any idea how we get the media to not notice a fucking state-wide manhunt, I’m all ears.”
That was when I realized what was wrong. It was right there in front of me, painted in white foot-high letters.
“Has anybody talked to the stores?”
“You mean for witnesses?” the young agent asked.
I shook my head. “About their employees. Did anybody not show up for work today?”
Castle was losing patience. “I think they might have a little more on their minds than one of the bag packers taking a personal day. Have you seen those people?” He waved a hand in the direction of the crowd. “It’s like the goddamn circus is in town.”
“I’ve seen them,” I said. “And they’re standing over by the staff-only bays, right by what is literally the only empty space in this lot.”
“Meaning?” Castle snapped.
“Meaning there’s a good chance that spot was vacated around the time of the killing, right before the police locked everything down. And meaning there’s a good chance that whatever vehicle was in that spot belonged to a member of staff, one who hasn’t reported — or who hasn’t been able to report — their car stolen.”
I half expected Castle to shut me down, but in this I was pleasantly surprised. Castle thought it over for a couple of seconds. Beneath it all, maybe he was too much of a professional to discount a possible lead, however much he might dislike its source. His voice was cautious when he spoke. “Not necessarily.”
“No,” I said. “But possibly.”
Castle turned in Banner’s direction, mouth open to say something. But she was already gone.
11
“Got it.” I looked up at Banner as she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. She was smiling, carrying two steaming cardboard coffee cups. I had left the tent and the body of the deliveryman to gather my thoughts and was sitting against the hood of a silver Toyota, watching Castle pace back and forth a hundred yards away, talking animatedly on his cell phone.
“Must be good coffee,” I said, taking the cup she offered.
“Sandra Veldon. Assistant manager in the doughnut place. Didn’t show up for work today.”
“Habitual absentee?”
Head shake. “More like employee of the month: every month. She calls if she’s going to be five minutes late. Today? Nothing.”
“Car?”
Nod. “Dark blue 2009 Ford Taurus. Got the plates from the DMV already, got the BOLO out.”
I nodded and looked at my watch, impressed. “All this and coffee.”
Banner shot me a warning look, rebuffing the pat on the head. “I can hold up my end. But you helped us along. She might not have been reported missing until tonight. Maybe you’re not as much of a waste of time as I thought you were, Blake.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I said ‘maybe.’”
“It’s a hunch,” I cautioned. “Looks good so far, but it might not pay off.”
Uninvited, Banner moved closer and took a perch next to me on the hood, taking a sip of her own coffee. “Good at finding people,” she said. This time she said it like it was a world-famous corporate motto: like good to the last drop, or king of beers, or something. “So what makes you so sure he’ll pick specific targets this time?”
“What makes you so sure he won’t?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t fit with what we know about him. With what he did before.”
“It fits,” I said, thinking about Mosul. “I know the type.”
Banner said nothing for a minute, then she asked, “Anything you don’t know?”
I smiled, because that exact phrase and the expression on her face brought back a memory of someone else. A far more pleasant memory this time.
“Plenty of things,” I said.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“You just… reminded me of someone for a second.”
I looked back in Castle’s direction again. He was still on the phone, still pacing. The young agent was approaching him, a pained look on his face. I lip-read “I gotta go,” saw Castle hang up.
The agent began talking to Castle, his hands held out defensively like he was negotiating with an aggravated suspect armed with a chain saw. Banner had been looking at me, but now followed the line of my gaze.
The young agent was pointing in the direction of the mobile command center. After he finished speaking, Castle took off at a run.
Banner and I both slid off the hood of the car and jogged after the two men. My mind was racing, trying to predict what had happened. Another shooting, almost certainly. Maybe they’d found Sandra Veldon’s body. Whatever it was, the urgency meant one thing: Somebody new was dead.
But this time, I was wrong.
We reached the door to the command center and stepped up and inside. There was a bank of flat-screen monitors on one wall, all eyes fixed on the one that was tuned to CNN. Nobody had thought to turn up the volume, but perhaps that was because they didn’t need sound.
The screen was split into panels, like a comic book page. Two small squares on the left, one long vertical rectangle on the right. Top left: aerial footage of our current position. Bottom left: a county cop manning the barrier in a field somewhere, almost certainly the scene of the prison escape. Right-hand side: Caleb Wardell’s mug shot.
Bottom of the screen, two words, white on red: breaking news.
12
To my surprise, Castle took the latest development pretty well. After the initial shock, after the questions about who had leaked the story and why, he, Banner, and everyone else seemed to be able to let it go and get back to the task at hand. I decided that made sense — the media blackout was not a natural facet of the manhunt, but rather a complication that had been imposed from above. From that perspective, the media getting ahold of the story was almost a blessing. It took unnecessary pressure off, meaning the task force no longer had to operate with one hand tied behind its collective back.