Paul Summers lived off the beaten path, in a farmhouse about three miles off the old Highway 51. Banner and Paxon missed the turnoff the first time. On the second pass, they saw that the sign for Whitecart Farm had been obscured by bushes.
Paxon was driving, so Banner had been the one to answer the call from one of the other agents chasing up the Summers lead. It turned out his bank account had been credited with a hundred thousand dollars from a bank in the Caymans the previous Friday afternoon. That made it officiaclass="underline" The escape hadn’t simply been a matter of the Russians getting lucky.
Not that it really mattered anymore: Caleb Wardell had personally tied up virtually every loose end on that particular case by killing Mitchell and his would-be assassins. Running down Summers and whoever else had been involved in downgrading the transfer was a side project. The real issue was the genie they’d inadvertently let out of the bottle.
As Paxon negotiated the narrow, rutted dirt track that led up to the house, Banner ejected the magazine in her Glock, checked the load, then slapped it back in.
“Expecting trouble?” Paxon asked.
“No guts, no glory,” she replied. “But I’ll be happy to be disappointed.”
They knew something was wrong as soon as they heard the barking. They heard it a good thirty seconds before the house came into view. It got louder as they approached. Paxon steered through a wide-open security gate and into the yard in front of the house.
It was a conversion that must have been done twenty or thirty years before, and on a tight budget. The farmhouse itself was ramshackle, with a roof that buckled in places. White paint peeled from every wall. There was an extension on the south end that wasn’t in much better shape: a one-story timber structure that tapered off to a covered deck area. The dog was tied by a length of chain to one of the posts supporting the roof over the deck.
It was a big German shepherd, virtually wolflike in proportions. It had been pacing from side to side, but angled itself toward the interlopers as they opened the car doors. The barking increased in intensity, and the chain stretched tight as the animal strained to get at them.
“He’s starving,” Paxon said, a lilt of sympathy in her voice.
Banner was focused on the spot where the chain had rubbed against the wooden post, noticing that it had worn down an inch deep or more. “Why do I get the feeling he’s visualizing a couple of roast chickens in office wear?” She was glad she had the Glock in her hand. “Come on.”
They headed for the front door, giving the dog a wide berth. Banner kept a wary eye on it as Paxon rapped on the door. She wasn’t a dog person at the best of times — her parents had told her that, when she was a toddler, some idiot’s rottweiler had gotten off the leash in the middle of the street and had tried to get to her in her stroller. Thankfully, her father had beaten the dog off before it could savage her, receiving a couple of nasty bites for his trouble. Banner had no memory of the incident, but she didn’t doubt it was the reason behind her aversion to canines.
Paxon knocked again, harder. They waited another thirty seconds. Banner shrugged and reached for the handle. It twisted down and the door swung open.
“Unlocked,” Paxon said.
“No,” Banner said slowly. “It was ajar. Right?”
“Of course. My mistake.” Paxon drew her own gun, and they stepped through the doorway and into a hallway. It was warmer than outside, but not by much. There was a stillness, a silence that spoke of uninhabitation. The only sound was the muted barking from outside, which suddenly sounded much farther away than it was.
The hall was narrow, with two closed doors on the right-hand side, a steep flight of stairs to the left, and a glass-paneled door at the far end that looked like it would lead to a kitchen. A light was burning in the room beyond, visible through the frosted pane.
“FBI agents,” Banner called out. “Be advised we are armed.”
There was no response. They advanced down the hall, and Banner noticed there was a slight incline, probably indicative of the house settling. A breeze from the top floor whispered past them, and Banner looked up the flight of stairs to where it ended in a half landing. She was considering ascending the stairs when they heard it.
It was a low, intermittent scratching sound. Quiet and tentative. It was coming from the kitchen.
“What the hell was that?” Paxon whispered.
Banner didn’t answer. She changed direction and moved to the far end of the hall. The carpet was so old and so cheap that she could feel the lines of the floorboards through the soles of her shoes. One of the boards creaked loudly as her hand touched the kitchen door handle, and the scratching stopped. They exchanged a glance, and Paxon raised her gun to cover the door.
Banner let out a tiny breath and pulled the handle.
A dark shape flashed out of the kitchen, glancing off Paxon’s calf. She let out a restrained yelp, and they both turned to see the German shepherd puppy as it scampered the length of the hall and out into the yard.
Paxon let out a nervous laugh and put her free hand over her heart. “Jesus.”
“Look,” Banner said, indicating Paxon’s leg. There was a smear of blood on her right thigh, just below the hem of her skirt.
Paxon looked down, confused. She touched a hand to the crimson stain and withdrew it as though she’d touched something hot. Something told Banner that it was the exact opposite of that. They exchanged another glance and both looked toward the open door to the kitchen.
A sweet, decaying stench emanated from within.
The kitchen was a square, low-ceilinged room. At the far end was a long rectangular window and a wooden back door. Grimy venetian blinds were drawn shut along the length of the window, but anemic gray daylight peeked through here and there where the slats had warped. There was a worktop along the entirety of one wall, from which a wooden service island jutted like a peninsula. There was blood spatter on the worktop, more of it on the cupboard doors above, dark and congealed. A shoeless foot protruded from the other side of the service island.
Banner stopped and let her eyes read the room, confirming there was no immediate danger, nothing important she could miss in her urge to find out who was attached to that foot. When she was satisfied, she approached the service island, gun level on the foot as her line of sight changed to reveal a leg and a body. When she saw the rest, she knew positive identification would be a job for the experts.
She turned at the sound of a stifled noise that was pitched midway between a gasp and a gag. Paxon’s free hand was tight over her mouth. “Jesus Christ,” she said. It came out muffled by her fingers.
“Messy,” Banner agreed, holstering her weapon. “At least we know why the puppy wasn’t hungry.”
She turned back to the body, concentrating on what could be seen below the neckline. The body was that of a Caucasian male, probably of early middle age. He was dressed in plaid pajama pants, no shirt, an open blue terry-cloth robe exposing a pale, lightly haired chest and paunch. He was on his back. Presumably, the Colt .45 lying a foot from his right hand had fired the fatal shot. The postmortem injuries also spoke vividly for themselves.
“Summers?” Paxon asked after a few moments, reluctantly pulling her hand from her lips.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Banner said. “He’s the right age and build, and given that he’s in Summers’s house wearing his pajamas…”
“So where does that leave us?”
Banner reached for her phone and thumbed through the recent calls to dial Castle. “At a very definite dead end, I’m afraid.”
15
It didn’t take long to work out why the FBI file I’d been given that morning had seemed so condensed. If Donaldson’s file on Wardell had been the CliffsNotes, what Banner and her people had dug up for me was more like the Library of Congress. Thousands of pages of notes from the original sniper case, crime scene pics, interviews with hundreds of witnesses and suspects, police interviews with Wardell. Psych interviews with Wardell. Documents from the trial. Wardell’s Marine Corps record. Medical records. Dental records. Everything back to his high school reports.