“Maybe not even one, Mike.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“The man I killed today was Edward Nolan. The technical term for what he was to me is ‘biological father.’”
Whitford stopped cold. It could be a bluff, but that was Wardell’s father’s name, and your average crank might not even know that much. The name was fresh in his mind because he’d tried — unsuccessfully — to track him down for an interview yesterday. And the Nebraska victim’s name hadn’t yet been released; the feds were keeping a tight lid on it for some reason. He didn’t hang up. His mouth hung half open as he considered what to say next.
“Still there, partner?”
“Still here, still skeptical.”
“You won’t be tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
“Do you know who John Hatcher is?”
“Sure I do. If you are who you say you are, he’s the guy who nailed your sorry ass to the wall last time.”
There was a pause, and Whitford wondered if he’d gone too far and touched a nerve, but when the voice returned it betrayed no emotion.
“I’m going to put a bullet in John Hatcher’s head tomorrow night. Let’s say around midnight.”
The cool certainty of the voice chilled Whitford to the marrow. It sounded like the caller was simply stating an inevitability, like the sun coming up. He cleared his throat. “Why would you tell me this?”
“Because you’ve got a big mouth, Mike, and I can trust you to tell the FBI and their little helper. You’ll remember the message though, won’t you, partner? You need a minute to write it down?”
Helper? What did he mean by that? “Wait a minute…” Whitford began.
“You had your minute. Now I got one question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your favorite color, Mike?”
Whitford was caught off guard. “My favorite…?” he heard himself answer before he had time to think about it. “Blue. I guess it’s blue.”
The line went dead, and Whitford realized everybody around him had stopped what they were doing to stare at him.
38
Wardell replaced the receiver of the pay phone and had wiped the prints off with his sleeve before he remembered that there was really no need. He turned and looked across the empty highway at the thick woods he’d be heading into soon enough.
Hatcher was a good target, one that the authorities would find all too plausible. Wardell had been mildly irritated by the way the sheriff had loudly claimed credit for his capture in Chicago, but he was betting some of the guys who’d done the real work were a good deal more irritated. He’d take Hatcher out if he had the chance, of course, but he was more interested now in the chance to engage his current pursuers on his own terms. And particularly the man from the cabin.
The call to Whitford would ensure that they’d focus their efforts properly this time and not on another distraction like the red van. Now they knew where he was going to be tomorrow at midnight. The stage was set.
Tomorrow at noon, however, was a different story.
DAY FOUR
39
The second voice sounded like it had come a long way, and not just in distance.
“What’s your favorite color, Mike?” it said, an eerie crackle on the vowels.
A startled pause and then: “My favorite…? Blue. I guess it’s blue.”
And that was all there was, save a couple of seconds of dial tone as the little ball at the bottom of the Media Player window completed its journey to the end of the bar that signified the length of the audio clip.
Castle was hunched over behind the technician at the laptop. As the recording of Mike Whitford’s phone conversation ended, he straightened up and looked down at the tech, who was rake thin with curly red hair. Although Castle had known about the existence and content of the recording since the previous night, this was the first time he’d actually heard it.
“Perfect match, sir,” the tech said.
“It’s him, all right,” Castle agreed. He’d spent long enough watching the interview tapes to be able to say for certain.
They were set up in the living room of Hatcher’s house, a sprawling faux-rustic executive cabin built on the slopes overlooking Pactola Lake, nestled deep within the Black Hills National Forest. The house was about twenty miles outside of Rapid City, and the thick, dark pines that gave the Black Hills their name encroached on the structure like a hostile crowd.
The owner of the house was in one of the other rooms berating Dave Edwards about the way the manhunt had been carried out so far. Former Cook County Sheriff John Hatcher had a deep, booming voice and a propensity to repeat himself, so Castle had been grateful for the respite. He turned to the other man in the room, Special Agent Eric Wetherspoon. Wetherspoon had more than thirty years with the Bureau, but had openly disdained the quest for promotion, happy to keep working on the front line.
“What did you have to give Whitford to sit on the recording?” Wetherspoon asked. His arms were folded, and he was leaning against a tall bookcase packed with beautifully bound tomes with pristine spines.
Castle sighed. “A lot more than I wanted to. If it were up to me, we’d just take the little prick into protective custody and lose the key. He gets a one-on-one with me tomorrow.” He said it like he wished the one-on-one could be held with the reporter’s mic switched off, in a locked room with no windows.
Wetherspoon changed the subject. “Is Agent Banner joining us for the main event?”
“A couple of hours,” Castle replied. “She was held up in—”
“Leave my house? Leave. My. Fuckin’. House? ” The conversation died as Hatcher bulled through the door into the living room, a pair of exasperated agents in tow, plus Dave Edwards. Hatcher was tall, barrel-chested, and bald. He wore slacks and a slate-blue short-sleeved shirt. “You pencil dicks have got a lot to learn about the law of the jungle.”
Castle cast his eyes across the tropical hardwood floor to the triple-glazed French doors and the Japanese reflecting pool beyond, then saw the skinny technician doing the same thing. Some jungle.
“This motherfucker knows I beat him first time around, so he’s gotta bring it to my house now. He’s makin’ it personal now. You askin’ me to back down from that, Agent Wetherspoon?” He used the word “agent” like it was a racial slur. To a certain type of cop, that was exactly what it was.
Whether it came naturally or he’d mellowed with age, Wetherspoon was a man who seemed utterly unprovokable. It was a quality Castle couldn’t help but admire, mainly because it was one he lacked. He responded to the question with characteristic calm: “If that’s the way you want to dress it up, Mr. Hatcher, that’s fine with me.” His voice betrayed no irritation, just matter-of-fact. “We just wanted to explain to you how this operation is going to run.”
“This operation? Let me tell you something about—” Hatcher stopped, sighting Castle, and strode over to him. He placed his palm between Castle’s shoulder blades, as though bringing an ally into the debate. “Steve, you know what I’m talking about. You got half a brain at least, not like these pen pushers. You got some real cop in you.”
Castle pushed back from the desk, turning to slide Hatcher’s hand from his back. He drew himself up to his full height, which was an inch or two taller than Hatcher, and looked him in the eyes for a moment. Count to ten, he thought. If Wetherspoon could do it, so could he.