And until I hear back from Alexei Chekov about a meeting time.
She looked at me oddly. “Sure.”
“All right.” I set her phone on the desk beside me. “What do we know?”
“You were going to tell us why we were searching the motel for Alexei Chekov,” Jake said pointedly.
“In a sec.” Although earlier, while I’d been speaking on the phone with Alexei and then typing up the conversation, there hadn’t been much time for them to work, I said, “Quick update. Tell me what you found.” Being evasive like this wasn’t characteristic of me, and by the looks on their faces I could tell they were surprised, but for the time being they didn’t challenge me.
Natasha went first. “There hasn’t been any chatter regarding terrorist threats concerning our nuclear subs. The DoD is working on the deployment route analysis.”
Jake spoke up. “The profile on Reiser and Basque doesn’t overlap with what we know about Chekov. Lien-hua concurs. Two completely different behavioral and psychological makeups.”
Admittedly the connection had been a long shot.
“We took another look at Reiser’s background, though,” Lien-hua said. “His work history, the locations of the victim residences.” I already knew Reiser had lived in La Crosse, Oshkosh, Superior, and South Chicago before moving to Merrill; some of those locations were near where victims had lived, some were not. She went on, “One of the videos found at his trailer contained news coverage of the murder of Aleste Norkum from WKOW in Madison. But Reiser was living in La Crosse at the time.”
“And we have newspaper clippings from the Rockford Register Star and the Business Courier,” Jake added.
Hmm.
We discussed Reiser briefly, then, switching gears, Lien-hua asked, “Did you set up a visit to the ELF site?”
“Still a few details to nail down.”
“So what about the motel search, Pat?” Natasha cut in. “C’mon. What’s going on?”
It’s time. Let’s see how this goes…
“Okay. I analyzed the topography and road layout of the area, taking into account the known locations relative to Alexei’s movements: the snowmobile trails he chose on the way to the Chippewa River, the roads that led from the bridge where he killed the truck driver to the parking lot where he left the semi, and-”
“It showed you his familiarity with the region,” Natasha observed.
I nodded. “And it gives me an idea of the way he forms cognitive maps of his surroundings. I was also able to use the location on Highway K where State Trooper Wayland pulled him over.”
All of this was true. However, the data I was working from was by no means comprehensive, and when I’d run the numbers I’d gotten a bimodal result of two likely hot spots. The motel was actually on the fringe of the northeastern one.
The only real hiccup here was that I’d done the data analysis after, not before, our motel search.
“Using the same journey-to-crime models I use when I’m tracking serial offenders, I worked backward to identify the most likely places Alexei might be using as his home base while he’s in the region-”
“And this was one of them,” Jake finished my thought.
“Yes, and-”
“Wait a minute, Pat.” It was Lien-hua. “You mentioned a moment ago that Alexei killed the truck driver. That hasn’t been established yet.”
“I…” Don’t lie, but be careful with the truth. “I was assuming he did.”
“No,” Jake said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t assume. Not during an investigation.”
Lien-hua studied me with her dark, knowing eyes.
“Call it a working hypothesis,” I said.
No one looked particularly satisfied with my answer.
I felt conflicted.
Of course I wanted to tell them about the phone call from Alexei, but I honestly believed that Kayla Tatum’s life was on the line. Somehow Alexei was monitoring us, and I didn’t feel I could take the chance that he would find out I’d told them and then kill her.
On the other hand, even though I wanted to buy time until I heard from Alexei about a meeting place, I couldn’t risk progress on the investigation solely on the word of an internationally wanted assassin.
There was one option that would both give me a little time to see if he’d contact me again and also move the investigation forward.
“There’s only so much we can do from here,” I said. “We need to get out there to get eyes on the ground at the old ELF site.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Jake asked me. “We don’t have any snowmobiles, the roads are still closed, and I can guarantee the national forest service access roads haven’t even been plowed out yet.”
“When I was at the sawmill I noticed a snowmobile trail groomer. Those things are beasts and can plow through almost anything. There’s probably only room in the cab for two or three of us, but it’s a start. It’ll get us to the site no matter how much snow has drifted across the roads and trails.”
Nods around the room. “Good idea,” Lien-hua said.
Natasha flagged my attention. “I still have plenty of work to do processing the physical evidence from the Pickron house and a lot to follow up on with the Lab. If there’s only room for a couple people, I’ll stay here.”
“Perfect.”
While it was true that the trail groomer was probably our best bet, it would likely take a while for Windwalker or one of his crew to deliver it here, especially if no one was at the sawmill today, and in this weather, I thought that was a real possibility.
Hopefully you’ll hear from Alexei by then.
I looked at my watch. “It’s close to noon. Get whatever you can round up to eat, it might be a long day-Lien-hua, I saw you had some granola bars, maybe we can dive into your supply.”
“No problem. I brought plenty.”
None of the people stuck here at the motel had access to food either, and the roads still weren’t open to civilians. “Natasha,” I said, “why don’t you see if you can reach Tait, have him get a snowplow up here to deliver some food to the motel guests. Or at least someone on a snowmobile with a few bags of groceries.”
“Got it.”
“Good.” I stood. “Jake, call the sawmill, get the foreman on the line. Just ask for Windwalker. If the place is closed-”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay. Let us know as soon as you find out. In the meantime, let’s see how much progress we can make from here.”
53
Cassandra gazed at the ten people gathered with her around the dusty pool table in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn: four military-trained operatives, three hackers, and the three Eco-Tech ideologues she’d allowed Chekov to meet.
Donnie Pickron was still chained to the steel work table in the neighboring room.
Earlier, Becker, true to his Eco-Tech loyalties, had suggested that the team members choose environmental code names for this mission. It’d seemed a little sophomoric to Cassandra, but she’d finally acquiesced and allowed him to go ahead with the idea.
So now, she was Solstice, he was Hurricane-wait, Cane for short. Around the table were Tsunami, Eclipse, Cyclone, Equator, Typhoon, Squall, Cirrus, Gale, and Tempest. A little tough to keep straight, but manageable.
Solstice’s computer sat in the middle of the billiards table.
She tapped her remote control, and a hologram appeared, hovering about two feet above the table. The light-blue, three-dimensional image showed a labyrinth of tunnels fingering out from a multilevel control center buried deep beneath the earth. Although she was familiar with the location of one entrance to the base, her sources told her that there were two others, miles away from the station itself, connected only through these extensive tunnels. Once inside the base, she would discern which was which. She planned to use one of those to escape when all this was over.