He heard nothing — or that is to say, nothing he wouldn’t have expected to hear. The wind whispering around tree trunks and between the denuded branches above. The small sounds of woodland animals moving restlessly some way off. Among these the intrusive, alien sounds of the dying vehicle: warped metal ticking and sighing as it cooled in the night air. Williams told himself to ignore the shiver that crept the length of his spine. He reminded himself how ridiculous his fear would seem later, under the cold fluorescent lights of the station. There was nothing to be afraid of here, just a quiet spot in the woods and an abandoned and destroyed piece of some hapless sucker’s property.
He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and started toward the vehicle again. As he got closer, he could see it had been on the bigger side: some kind of truck or van. Yes, a van by the looks of things. A Ford.
Williams brought the flashlight up and clicked it on, bathing the wreck in a cone of white light. Yes, a lot of the paint had been charred away, but there was enough left around the sills to identify it as a red Ford E-Series van, just like in the APB. A different kind of shiver ran back down his shoulders and settled in his gut. Different, and not entirely unwelcome. The missing vehicle in a multistate manhunt, and the odds were looking pretty good that Abel Williams had found it.
Or were they?
Highway patrol troopers weren’t exactly at the top of the pecking order in such matters, but from the limited intel Williams had picked up, the consensus seemed to be that Caleb Wardell was heading east. That would take him back toward Illinois, not hundreds of miles south to the bottom end of Missouri. And why would he, having somehow eluded the dragnet, choose to abandon his car out here, ten miles from the nearest town—small town, at that?
Williams made a slow circuit of the burnt-out husk, keeping his feet just outside the blackened radius on the ground. Sweeping the beam of the flashlight over the almost unrecognizable remains of the driver’s seat didn’t reveal much, but made him pretty sure there wasn’t a corpse in there. Not up front, at least. He slowed as he reached the rear doors of the van, reluctant now to bring the speculation to a close. Stepping inside the charred circle, he holstered his weapon and reached a cautious hand out to test the surface of the rear door. He withdrew his fingertips instinctively, then put them back on. Hot, but not dangerously so.
He hitched up the sleeve of his jacket to use as an improvised oven glove and pulled at the handle. The lock was not engaged, but the door was warped and wouldn’t give more than an inch at first. He placed the flashlight on the forest floor, covered his left hand as well, and wrenched. A little later and it would have been futile — he’d have had to call it in and request that Toby or Dave bring a crowbar up here — but as it was, the metal was still just hot enough to be slightly malleable, and the door pulled open with a bereft scream.
He stumbled back, exhaling a long cloud of air after the exertion, and then put his hand down to retrieve the flashlight. He teased it over the open door, then put a boot on the bumper to reach inside and angle the beam over the interior.
Whoever had torched the van had started the blaze in the front seat, so the back wasn’t as badly damaged as the front. The body of the vehicle was burnt out, too, but there were identifiable traces of things in the back as opposed to the blackened slag up front. A melted triangle of blue plastic that looked like it might once have been the corner of a sleeping bag. The smoking steel hub of the spare wheel. And something just as unmistakable: the warped barrel and charred stock of a rifle.
Williams hadn’t realized there was a wide grin on his face until it was wiped off by the sound of something moving behind him. He spun around, cursing out loud as the flashlight connected with the doorframe and dropped to the ground. He fumbled at his holster, asking himself why in Christ he’d buttoned it. He got the gun out after five or six seconds that felt like a week and a half.
He heard it again, a noise like something moving not too far away. A man-sized something, not some foraging animal. His eyes were still adjusting back to the darkness, so staring ahead was getting him nowhere; it was like standing in a dark room and staring into a closet full of old clothes.
Slowly, aware of his own rapid breathing, he stooped to pick up the flashlight. When he brought it up to bear on the direction from which he’d heard the noise, he saw nothing but trees.
But somehow, he felt the eyes on him. On some primitive, reptilian level, he knew they were there as surely as he’d known the metal doors had been hot.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, returning the invisible gaze, but after a time he felt that his watcher had gone. He gave it some more time, then started to back away slowly. Stopping every couple of paces to splash light around, it took him ten minutes to get back to the car. When he picked up the CB to call the station, his hands were shaking like he’d just spent a night outside in February.
28
“It doesn’t make any goddamn sense,” Banner said, kicking a loose branch aside.
“Of course it doesn’t, Banner,” Castle said abruptly. “He’s a grade-A nutcase. You expect him to check in with us? File an itinerary each morning so we can keep in touch?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. She was looking back down the hill in the direction of the burnt-out van. Both of them were assiduously avoiding the unblinking gaze of the news helicopters hovering overhead. Blame either the cold or the frustration, but Banner had a longing for a cigarette almost unequalled in the time since she’d kicked the habit when she and Mark had decided to try for a baby. God, was it really eight years already?
“I know it wasn’t,” Castle said. The hint of a smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. “For what it’s worth, I was starting to think he was headed for Lincoln too. Your boy Blake made a good case.”
Immediate evidence to the contrary, Banner thought he still was heading for Lincoln, sooner or later, but she kept that to herself for the moment. Of greater note was the fact that Castle was speaking to her almost like a normal human being. She wondered if it was brought on by remorse over his Ashley Greenwood crack the day before. Banner knew Castle’s opinion on the Markow case all too well, but he’d crossed a line with that comment, and she suspected he knew it.
“He’s my boy now?” she said.
Castle shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to be Donaldson’s boy anymore. He’d gone cold on him big-time when we spoke. Reminded me he’s just an adviser, not to let him distract us too much.”
“So pretty much the opposite of what he said two days ago.”
“Pretty much.”
Banner smiled. “I hear selective amnesia becomes a real issue above a certain pay grade.”
Castle didn’t return the smile, but he didn’t dispute the point either.
“It’s the rifle, too,” Banner said, returning to the previous discussion. “Why discard a perfectly good weapon?”
“This is America. It’s never difficult to lay your hands on another perfectly good weapon when you need one.”
“Still, it’s too neat. Like he’s signposting.”
“That may be, but we have to take a look at where the signs point anyway.” He checked his watch and changed the subject. “How far did you get? Last night, I mean.”
It had taken Banner an hour to stop back at the house to pack an overnight bag, another forty minutes to grab Chinese for dinner, and she’d made good time after that. There wasn’t a direct flight to Lincoln until eight forty-five the next morning, so she’d opted to drive. She’d been on I-80, a few miles outside Des Moines, at six a.m. when Castle had called her with the news.