“Mr. Hatcher,” he said. “Agent Wetherspoon has apprised you of the situation. We’ve identified a credible threat against you from—”
Hatcher’s face creased into disgust. “Aw, don’t give me that shit.”
Castle continued as though there had been no interruption. “A credible threat that became even more credible when Wardell confirmed it personally. We’re asking you to leave this location for your own safety.”
“Asking me,” Hatcher repeated. “But you can’t make me.”
Castle briefly wondered whether they could tie Hatcher to a tree out front and hang a bull’s-eye around his neck.
Dave Edwards chipped in. Castle was unsurprised: Edwards hated to have his authority questioned. “In point of fact, we can make you, Mr. Hatcher,” he said. “We’d just rather you went of your own free will.”
Hatcher ignored Edwards, stared back at Castle for a good twenty seconds before turning away. “Fine. Piss on you assholes,” he said over his shoulder as he walked back across the living room and slapped the door open with his palm. Edwards’s face reddened, and for a moment he looked unsure of what to do. Then he just nodded his head, as though the exchange had gone exactly as planned.
He turned to Castle. “Donaldson wants a sit-rep at one thirty. And where the hell is Banner?”
“He’ll get it, and Banner’s on her way.”
Edwards reenacted the imperious nod and exited the room in the same direction Hatcher had gone.
Wetherspoon moved to Castle’s side of the room and leaned back against the mahogany desk on which the equipment had been set up. “Well, that went better than I expected.”
Castle turned to stare out at the reflecting pool, thinking about Hatcher’s display. “Why do I get the feeling he was open to persuasion?”
“I don’t know,” Wetherspoon said, pretending to give the matter some thought. “Maybe because he’s a chickenshit asshole who was looking for the excuse?”
Castle cracked a smile for the first time that day. “Might be onto something there.”
40
It was twelve o’clock: high noon. But instead of a blazing sun at its apex, the skies overhead were dull, and coal-black thunderheads were building above the imposing hills on the western horizon. There was an old man at the far end of the lunch counter. He was staring out of the window at the clouds, over the rim of his coffee cup. The man was in his eighties at the very least. His skin was yellowed and scattered with liver spots, and he wore a checkered shirt and thick black-rimmed glasses. He shook his head in disapproval, as though taking the incoming weather as just one more screwup of somebody else’s doing that he’d just have to grin and bear.
“Those clouds look like Satan’s workin’ real hard,” he said. He turned to Wardell and nodded grimly.
Wardell’s lips curled into a wide grin, exposing two perfect rows of teeth. He returned the nod, fully approving of the old man’s homily. “He’s about to be,” he agreed.
The old man gave Wardell a quizzical look and then returned to looking at the gathering storm.
A twenty-eight-inch flat-screen television was fixed to the wall behind the counter, something that would have seemed luxurious at the time Wardell went inside, but that had apparently become commonplace in the interim. Despite the proximity to the congressional elections, the news was all about one subject: Caleb Wardell. That was one thing that hadn’t changed: A good serial killer story trumped just about anything, except maybe terrorism.
They’d announced the identity of the man killed in Nebraska in time for the breakfast news, and that had given the pundits and the criminal psychology experts and the psychics plenty to chew over all morning. Every so often they’d flash up Wardell’s mug shot, but he wasn’t concerned about being recognized. For one thing, he looked almost nothing like he did in the picture; for another, he had always found that, unless you acted guilty and drew attention to yourself, people were by and large pretty unobservant. You had to signpost something for them to take notice.
Wardell listened to some rent-a-shrink speculate about his Oedipus complex while he finished his brunch: steak, rare, with two eggs and fries on the side. The news cut to yesterday’s interview with the FBI agent who seemed to be in charge, the one with the gray hair and the permanently pissed-off expression. Castle, wasn’t it? And the pretty brunette occasionally by his side was Banner. The camera liked her.
He swallowed the last bite of steak, positioned his knife and fork vertically in the center of the plate, and nodded over at the waitress. She was quite a looker herself: twentysomething, five two, 110 pounds, wearing painted-on black jeans and a navy blue halter top. A small and tasteful silver cross hung from a chain around her neck, nestling in her generous cleavage. She tucked a strand of blond hair that had strayed from her ponytail behind her ear as she smiled and sauntered over. A name tag reading suzie was pinned to the blue halter top. Blue: that reminded him. He had a color, but he still needed a number.
“Get you anything else?”
Wardell looked in her green eyes and remained silent for just a second longer than could have been mistaken for an innocent pause for thought. He didn’t leer or anything, didn’t look her up and down. He didn’t want anyone to think he was some kind of pervert, no matter what the news said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “What do you have?” He smiled. Not the grin he’d just shown to the old man, but the one that women liked.
Suzie glanced away coyly and cocked an eyebrow. Feigning disapproval but with a half smile to show she didn’t really mean it. Light flirtation, the kind any good waitress masters in her first week on the job. “Just what’s on the menu, pal,” she said.
“Pity,” Wardell said. He looked beyond her at the television screen. “Serial killers,” he said with a shake of his head. “You ever wonder if anything else is happening in the world right now?”
She gazed back at the screen at the exact moment that Wardell’s picture flashed back up, staring impassively down at her. She didn’t flinch.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing that gets this kind of ratings, I guess. My boyfriend says that’s why they do it.”
Wardell was momentarily confused. “The networks?”
She looked back and grinned, thinking he was kidding. “No, the killers. Like this Wardell guy. They dig the attention. That’s how they get their kicks. That’s what my boyfriend says — if we didn’t give them all this attention, they’d just go away.”
Wardell smiled again, playing along that he’d been kidding. Only the smile was a little frozen this time, a little off center. “You think so?”
“Don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe some of them. The ones who want to be famous and can’t think of any other way.”
“Isn’t that all of them?”
“No,” he said sharply, and something in his voice must have unnerved the girl, because the breezy good humor seemed to drain from her face.
“So, uh, just the check?” she said, suddenly in a hurry to clear his dishes away. As she stacked Wardell’s coffee cup on top of his plate, he saw her steal a glance back up at the television screen. The photo wasn’t there anymore; they were showing an old interview with Eddie Nolan now.
Sometimes, Wardell reflected, you could signpost without exactly meaning to. He continued anyway, as though nothing had changed.
“That’s not all of them, Suzie. Some of them just like to kill. It’s what they’re good at.”
Suzie was avoiding his eyes now. Staring straight down while she lifted his plate with her left hand to give the counter a wipe with a cloth in her right.