Enigma (FBI Thriller 21)

Savich heard Mayer shout his name. He rose and turned to see Fireplug charging him like an enraged bull. He didn’t want to have to deal with Mayer now, with everyone’s adrenaline still running high, with violent emotions still boiling below the surface. He didn’t want to have to punch him out, say something he’d be sure to regret later. Then again, maybe not. No, he had to keep a lid on it. Where was Ben Raven when he needed him? Savich straightened, looked at Mayer straight on, and kept his voice calm. “Detective Mayer, you’ll be pleased to know Ms. Moody is all right.”

“I don’t care if you live here, or if a neighbor called you! It doesn’t matter. You had no right to enter her house!”

Savich imagined hurling Mayer through the window, watching him land on his face in the rosebushes. But that wouldn’t do. Savich turned his back on Mayer and helped Kara Moody stand up. She sagged against him, and he held her up, began rubbing her back. Her belly was as big as Sherlock’s had been right before Sean was born. He realized he’d rubbed Sherlock’s back just that way.

He heard Mayer’s furious voice. “I’m going to see you brought up on charges, you pushy bastard, you interfered in a police matter. You’ve got no defense.”

Before Savich could figure out how to answer Fireplug, he heard Detective Ben Raven’s voice shouting, “It’s all right, Aldo! Pull yourself together. Savich checked with me first!”

Savich thought that sounded good, even righteous.

Mayer whipped around, his face red, his pulse pounding in his neck. “Don’t try to protect him, Raven! He shouldn’t be here and neither should you! I was over on Wisconsin when the call came in, I was first on scene. I don’t even know how he got into the house without any of us seeing him.”

Savich said, “Dr. Janice Hudson, whose house is directly next door, called me because I live on the next block. She was a psychiatrist for nearly half a century, and she was certain he was on the edge, that there wasn’t time to wait. She knew a back way into the house.”

Raven grabbed Mayer’s arm before he could move on Savich. “Use your brain, Aldo, calm down! The hostage is okay. The shooter is down. We won. We all won. Isn’t that victory enough?”

There was stone silence from Mayer. He sucked in a breath and stepped back, shook off Ben’s hand. “This isn’t over, Savich.”

“It should be, Detective,” Savich said. He sent a nod to Raven and said to Kara Moody, who’d been staring at Mayer, obviously confused. “When’s the baby due?”

She looked at the man’s blood on the oak floor, knew she could have so easily died, Alex could have died. But they hadn’t. She gave Savich a big smile. “Well, actually, soon now. I’ve been in labor for the past ten minutes.”

2

NEAR PENNINGTON GAP, VIRGINIA

MONDAY MORNING

U.S. Federal Marshal Chan Michaels was chair-dancing to “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots to keep himself alert as he drove the marshals’ big black van. He liked the pounding rhythm, liked the video even more because all of it was shot in jail. He wondered if Liam Hennessey, who actually preferred to go by his moniker, Manta Ray, knew that. Sure he did; the dude wasn’t stupid, anything but, from what Chan had heard. When the Pilots finished, Chan turned down the sound to listen through the wire cage to whatever it was his fellow marshals Otter and Benz were saying.

They were talking sports, of course, this time, basketball. He heard Manta Ray laugh at something Otter said, a nice, inviting laugh. Amazing, really, coming from a psychopath. Chan had dealt with enough of them to know they could make you forget how seriously scary bad they were when they laid on the charm. The federal prosecutor must have done a happy dance when Manta Ray accepted a plea bargain rather than wait a year for a jury trial. Who knew what would have happened if there were women on the jury? Even men seemed to be drawn to Manta Ray until they found out who and what he was. If he wasn’t out to kill you, you had to like the guy.

Otter said something Chan couldn’t make out, probably more basketball talk, even though it was baseball season, and he tuned them out. He was happy enough to let the Warriors rule the basketball kingdom as Otter insisted, but he didn’t really care. With him, it was always all about football and the Redskins. He heard Benz say to Manta Ray, “You’re what, thirty-three?”

Benz knew better than that. The less said to a prisoner while being transported, the better. But Benz was nearing retirement, and he didn’t pay much attention to the rules anymore. He’d transported thousands of prisoners over his long career, seen about everything, and now, he did what he wanted.

Manta Ray said in his smooth voice with its hint of the Irish from County Cork, his birthplace, “I turned thirty-four in jail last week. One of the lady guards brought me a chocolate cupcake with a candle on top. She couldn’t light the candle, it was against the rules, she said, as if I’d stick it in her face and try to escape, and she rolled her eyes. Her name was Monica. She was cute, and she liked me. I told Monica to take the candle off the cupcake and lick it.” Manta Ray gave them a big white-toothed grin.

Otter snorted out an embarrassed laugh. Benz said, “I saw a prisoner stick a lighted match in a guard’s ear once, all he could reach. No one knew how he’d gotten hold of it.”

“Did he manage to hurt him?” Manta Ray asked.

Benz said, “The guard outweighed him by fifty pounds. He punched him in the ribs a couple of times, put him in the infirmary. After he got out, he spent two weeks in solitary.”

“A good story.” Manta Ray lowered his voice. “Me? If that guard had tried that on me, I’d have stuffed my birthday cupcake up his nose and held his mouth closed. Imagine, death by cupcake.” He gave an easy laugh, only this time Chan felt gooseflesh rise on his arms. He heard Otter take a sharp breath. Manta Ray freaked him out. He was young, new to the federal marshal’s service. Chan imagined he hadn’t heard a lot of talk like this before.

“Now there’s a visual,” Benz said, and yawned. Nothing a prisoner said could touch Benz. “I hear you have a big-time lawyer. Why’d he plea bargain you out?”

Chan was surprised Benz would ask that. That was over-the-top even for him. Sports talk was one thing, maybe even the cupcake story, but talking about his case, that was just plain unprofessional. Chan started to say something when Manta Ray said matter-of-factly, “Bowler, my lawyer, was afraid I’d get the death penalty, even though it was Marvin who killed the bank teller, not me. But hey, if you’re there to play, you have to pay. Me? I don’t believe in violence.”

Benz said, “Yeah, right. One of your priors was for stomping your girlfriend. You broke three of her teeth and her jaw.”

Chan pictured Manta Ray shrugging. “Bitch hit my kid. I didn’t like it.” He fell silent. Chan had heard the federal prosecutor say the guy had three or four kids with different women. No wives. How would those kids grow up carting this guy’s genes around?

There was silence in the back of the van. Chan didn’t think it would last. Benz was shooting off his mouth because he was bored, and Otter was only following his lead.

Sure enough, Benz picked it up again. “Your buddy Marvin Cass got his brains blown out at the bank, but you got away, even with a bullet in your side. I was impressed reading that, even if the FBI found you later in that flophouse in the warehouse district in Alexandria. They didn’t find any of the jewelry or money you stole from the bank safe-deposit boxes, did they? You had the grit to hide it first. That impressed me, too. Tell me something. Now that you’re about to spend the next thirty years in lockup, maybe you want to change your mind, clear your conscience? Tell us where you hid all that fine stuff you stole?”