“Absolutely nothing.”
Whitford cleared his throat again. “That’s right, and I’m sorry. His name was mentioned in relation to some Russian thing a year ago, but the details have been wiped, if it was even the same Blake. There’s a driver’s license, but the address is a dead end — looks like a virtual office in New York. Other than that, there’s no record of him anywhere: no social security number, no criminal record, no nothing. This guy’s a ghost.”
Wardell kept staring at him unblinking.
Whitford thought about continuing to talk, then decided against it.
Finally, Wardell spoke. “I’m disappointed, Mike.”
Whitford opened his mouth to apologize again, but this time his voice failed him, his lips mouthing the words as though somebody had hit the mute button. Wardell smiled.
“I’m disappointed,” he repeated, “but I’m not exactly surprised. Don’t worry about it. I can make sure he’ll be there tonight.”
A surge of relief engulfed Whitford. Five seconds before, he’d been absolutely convinced he was going to die. Like the incorrigible optimist he was, Whitford switched from terror to hope with nothing in between. What did Wardell mean by the last thing he’d said, about making sure Blake would be there tonight?
Whitford’s lips pulled back across his teeth in an uneasy smile that was a little too wide. “So, I still came through for you, right? On Banner? There wasn’t a lot of background on her either, but you got what there is. I guarantee it.”
Wardell seemed to think about it, nodded slowly. “It was enough. The Times article was particularly interesting.”
“Great, great,” Whitford said, not bothering to mention that this had been by far the easiest piece of information to find. The real work had been getting things like her address and unlisted phone number. “So… you’re still going to help me out now?”
Wardell took a step forward. “Help you out? Oh yes.”
“Great… Do you, uh, do you want to do the interview in here? We can sit down in the living room if you’d prefer.”
Wardell had taken three more languid steps forward in the time Whitford had been speaking. They were now within touching distance.
“Here’s fine,” he said, putting a hand on the kitchen worktop where Whitford was standing.
“It is?”
“It’s perfect.”
Whitford didn’t like the sound of that. But of course it was far, far too late. Wardell’s hand brushed against his leg and came back up with some kind of hunting knife. As Whitford was still thinking about moving, Wardell slammed the knife up to the hilt in his chest. The last thing he heard was a sound like somebody punching a watermelon, and then everything went away.
65
Wardell let go of the handle of the bowie knife and let Whitford’s body drop to the tiled floor like a sack of hate mail. It landed awkwardly on its side. A little blood trickled from the wound, but not much. A hard stab directly to the heart like that killed instantly, stopping the heart in the most direct way possible, limiting blood loss.
“No muss, no fuss,” Wardell said mildly as he regarded the dead man’s wide-open eyes. A cheap cell phone lay on the floor beside the body. Wardell supposed it was Whitford’s throwaway. He picked it up, removed the battery, then put both in his pocket. A phone would come in handy for later. Then he drew the knife out carefully and carried it to the sink to wash the blood off.
The killing hadn’t been strictly vital, he supposed, but it tied up a loose end. He didn’t need Whitford or the media anymore. And besides, it would not hurt to have gotten in a little more practice on killing up close and personal.
He had a feeling that was the way it was going to be with Blake.
66
Darkness. And Carol’s voice. Gently teasing.
“Anything you don’t know, Blake?”
Carol couldn’t be asking that. Carol was gone.
I opened my eyes and the light burned into me. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
The midday sun beat down relentlessly from an azure-blue sky, but somehow I was shivering as though in the midst of the longest winter. I’d never felt so cold in my life. And then I realized, with the twisted logic of dreams, that I was cold because someone was blocking out the sun. The silhouette of a man towered over me, and though it was impossible to discern the features or even the type of clothes, I knew it was him: Murphy. And I knew exactly what he was going to say.
“Sorry, hoss. You know this is nothin’ personal.”
And then something shifted and the low, earthy chuckle began and I realized I’d been wrong. It wasn’t Murphy at all, not anymore. It was Wardell. The chuckle rattled itself out.
“Aw, who are we kidding, partner? It’s always personal.”
That was when the explosion began. But instead of a blinding flash bang, it moved slowly. Silky tendrils of flame flowed lazily out to meet me, caressing my skin, burning me slowly…
My eyes snapped open and the hellish vista was replaced by blue moonlight and Banner’s concerned face.
“Jesus, are you okay?”
The here and now ebbed back. Wardell, Chicago, Banner’s place. Banner’s bed. She was sitting up next to me, one arm coyly crossing her breasts.
“What’s ‘Winterlong’?” she asked after giving me a moment to come to.
I looked back at her.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she explained. “Right before you started having what I’m guessing was a doozy of a nightmare.”
I sighed and wiped a sheen of cold sweat from my brow. “It’s nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t exist. Never did.”
She didn’t break eye contact. “You know him, don’t you? Wardell.”
I stared her out for a moment, considered lying, then relented. “I don’t know him. I ran into him once. In Iraq. I could have stopped him.”
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
“I did know. Not about all of this, but I knew. I knew if ever there was a man who needed killing, then it was him.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “You really think the target is the governor?”
I shrugged. “Right now, it’s more of a best guess. I do know one thing though.”
“What’s that?”
“Wardell will want us to be there. The people who have gotten closest to stopping him. The people who have hurt him.”
“So we can see him beat us, right?”
“That’s part of it, yeah.”
“But not all?”
I shook my head slowly. “He’ll want to make sure we’re there to know we’re beaten. And then he’ll want to kill us. Both of us.”
67
The roads were cut off for blocks ahead on the approach, some intentionally by police roadblocks, some merely as a by-product of the early-evening rush hour. We left our cab and walked. The gradual pace gave me time to take in the sheer scale of our destination as it loomed ahead out of the urban sprawl.
The monolithic James R. Thompson Center was planted in the heart of the Loop, the commercial core of downtown Chicago. The JRTC, as it was known, occupied the entire city block bounded by Randolph, Lake, Clark, and LaSalle Streets. The all-glass exterior rose seventeen stories high, sloping upward from street level like some kind of round-edged pyramid. It was an utterly imposing building — dominating its environment, radiating power. I could see why so many of the governors of the past quarter century had chosen to locate their offices here, rather than in the state capital of Springfield.