Using his shoe, Carl shoved the body into the scummy water. Immediately, an alligator erupted, snapping at the head, jerking the body under the surface. A second alligator fought for the corpse's right leg. Blood swirled amid the green scum.
"When I set up the camp," Carl explained, "I drove here once a day, urinated into the water, then threw raw steaks in. After a while, the alligators learned to identify food with the sound of the truck, my footsteps, and urine streaming into the water. Now those signals bring them here for dinner."
The turmoil in the water subsided. After the frantic splashing of jaws and tails, birds again sang.
Pleasing Carl, Raoul picked up his empty cartridges.
"Get rid of his duffel bag," Carl said.
Raoul took a chain from the back of the truck, shoved it into the bag, and hurled it into the water.
"Quick. Sharp. Obedient," Carl said.
Raoul's eyes brightened.
"I'm going to pull you from the group," Carl decided.
"No. What did I do wrong?"
"The reverse. You and a select few are coming with me."
"To do what?"
"Hunt an old friend."
6
Waking slowly, Cavanaugh felt as exhausted as when he'd gone to sleep with Jamie next to him. He reached to put his arm around her, discovered that she wasn't there, and opened his eyes, focusing on where she sat at the cigarette-burned table in their seedy motel room's corner. She wore a T-shirt and boxer shorts, her brunette hair hanging over her shoulders. She didn't notice that he'd wakened, too preoccupied re-reading the documents Rutherford had given them.
"You talked in your sleep," she said.
So I'm wrong, he thought. She did notice I was awake.
"Oh? What did I say?"
"'How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?'"
"Well, that's a relief. For a second, I was afraid I said another woman's name."
"You did mumble something about 'Ramona'."
"My third-grade math teacher." Cavanaugh pointed toward the documents. "Have you learned anything?"
"Didn't you tell me Carl's father died from alcoholism? Liver disease?"
"That's what Carl said in a phone call to me when I was still living at home."
"According to this police report, his father stumbled while he was drunk, fell on a knife in the kitchen, and bled to death in the middle of the night."
Numbed, Cavanaugh didn't react for a moment. He got out of bed, ignored the cold air on his bare legs, and went over to her. She indicated the bottom of a page.
Cavanaugh read the passage and felt colder. "The police report says Carl found the body in the morning. Since he knew for certain how his father died, why did he tell me it was liver failure?"
Jamie looked up. "You think Carl finally got tired of his father picking on him? He might have told you the cause of death was liver disease because that was an easy explanation. But bleeding to death from a knife wound… Knowing Carl's obsession with knives, you might have started wondering. How old were you when he made that phone call?"
"I was still in high school. My senior year."
"Young to start to be a killer."
"If his father was his first," Cavanaugh said.
The room became silent.
"What do you mean?"
"Thinking about those days, I suddenly remember things. But I'm seeing them in an entirely different way."
"What things?"
"Our neighbor had an Irish setter named Toby. My stepfather was too buttoned down to allow a pet in the house, but the neighbor didn't mind if I played with Toby, so I sort of had a dog. The summer before my senior year, the dog ran away. The neighbor phoned the pet shelter. No sign of the dog. Nobody ever found him. A couple of neighborhood cats ran away that summer, also."
"Didn't anybody think there might be a pattern?"
"If anybody did, I never heard about it. Anyway, there was a lot going on that summer. Carl's dad was fired. In August, the family needed to move. Meanwhile, I was excited about beginning my senior year at West High, and to tell the truth, Carl demanded I spend so much time with him that I was relieved to see him go."
"So he practiced killing animals before he graduated to killing his father?"
"Or maybe…"
"What are you thinking?" Jamie asked.
"Do you suppose Carl killed other people before he mustered enough rage to go after his father?"
7
"Nashville, Tennessee?" Rutherford asked.
"That's where Carl's father took the family after losing his stock broker's job in Iowa City," Cavanaugh explained. "Can you arrange for someone to investigate a rash of missing animals or stabbings while Carl was there?"
They sat at a corner table at a truck stop near Alexandria, Virginia. Cavanaugh and Rutherford drank coffee while Jamie dug into a cheese-and-ham omelet with hash browns.
"Stabbings?" Rutherford frowned.
"Homeless people. Drifters. Back-alley drunks. The sort of victims who wouldn't be missed and didn't look like they could defend themselves."
"This guy sounds scarier and scarier," Rutherford said.
"Maybe you should check Iowa City, too." Jamie looked up from her omelet. "And any other place Carl lived."
"And where he was stationed in the military," Rutherford decided.
"What about Ali Karim?" Cavanaugh asked. "Did you find anything?"
"Still seems squeaky clean. But Global Protective Services lost another operator last night."
Jamie set down her fork.
"Frank Tamblyn," Rutherford said.
"I know him." Cavanaugh's voice was stark. "A former Army Ranger. Eight years with GPS. Wife. Two children. Dependable, always ready to be the first operator out the door to check if it's okay for a client to leave a building."
"Apparently, he loved to bowl."
"Why is that important?"
"Last night, he got in his car to drive to a bowling tournament. Afterward, around midnight, he returned to his car. He probably checked it for explosives. Not that it matters. When he got behind the steering wheel, a spring-loaded knife burst from under the dash and hit him in the groin. There weren't any trip wires, so he wouldn't have spotted the device. It was rigged to a vibration switch. Death was so rapid, the blade must have been coated with poison."
8
Greenwich Village, New York.
Kim Lee stepped out of a martial-arts studio and turned left on Bleecker Street. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes intense after two hours of practicing aikido. She wore jeans and a blue sweater, and carried a gym bag. Around the corner, she came to a cafe that, on this not-yet-chilly October evening, still had tables on the sidewalk, although most of the customers were inside. She sat, ordered tea, removed a magazine from her bag, and settled back to read.
But she seemed more interested in her surroundings than in her magazine. The tea came. She tasted a few sips, looked around again, reached under the table, detached something, concealed it within her magazine, and put the magazine in her bag. She paid for the tea and continued down the street, glancing behind her as she turned a corner. No one followed, and she soon fell into a comfortable pace, her cheeks no longer flushed.
At her brownstone, she took the elevator to the third floor, unlocked her apartment, stepped in, closed the door, locked it, flicked the light switch, and turned toward the living room, only to freeze at the sight of Cavanaugh and Jamie.
"How did you get in here?"
"Picked the lock," Cavanaugh said. "Maybe you're like a physician who forgets to have a yearly medical exam or an accountant who's too busy to balance her own check book."
"What are you talking about?"
"For someone who works at a security company, you don't pay much attention to your personal security," Cavanaugh said. "You should phone GPS and order a technician to install an intruder-detection system."