We drove to the Aero Services International terminal, where we stood behind plate glass and watched Benton Wesley descend turbulently in a Belljet Ranger. The helicopter settled neatly on a small wooden platform as a fuel truck glided out of deep shadows. Clouds slid like veils over the full face of the moon.
I watched Wesley climb out and hurry away from flying blades. I recognized anger in his bearing and impatience in his stride. He was tall and straight and carried himself with a quiet power that made people afraid.
‘Refueling will take about ten minutes,’ he said when he got to us. ‘Is there any coffee?’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ I said. ‘Marino, can we bring you some?’
‘Nope.’
We left him and walked to a small lounge tucked between rest rooms.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ Wesley said softly to me.
‘We have no choice.’
‘He knows that, too. The timing is no accident.’ He filled two Styrofoam cups. ‘This is pretty strong.’
‘The stronger the better. You look worn out.’
‘I always look that way.’
‘Are your children home for Christmas?’
‘Yes. Everyone is there – except, of course, me.’ He stared off for a moment. ‘His games are escalating.’
‘If it’s Gault again, I agree.’
‘I know it’s him,’ he said with an iron calm that belied his rage. Wesley hated Temple Brooks Gault. Wesley was incensed and bewildered by Gault’s malignant genius.
The coffee was not very hot and we drank it fast.
Wesley made no show of our familiarity with each other except with his eyes, which I had learned to read quite well. He did not depend on words, and I had become skilled at listening to his silence.
‘Come on,’ he said, touching my elbow, and we caught up with Marino as he was heading out the door with our bags.
Our pilot was a member of the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT. In a black flight suit and watchful of what went on around him, he looked at us to acknowledge he was aware we existed. But he did not wave, smile or say a word as he opened the helicopter’s doors. We ducked beneath blades, and I would forever associate the noise and wind caused by them with murder. Whenever Gault struck, it seemed, the FBI arrived in a maelstrom of beating air and gleaming metal and lifted me away. ‘
We had chased him now for several years, and a complete inventory of the damage he had caused was impossible to take. We did not know how many people he had savaged, but there were at least five, including a pregnant woman who once had worked for me and a thirteen-year-old boy named Eddie Heath. We did not know how many lives he had poisoned with his machinations, but certainly mine was one of them.
Wesley was behind me with his headset on, and my seat back was too high for me to see him when I glanced around. Interior lights were extinguished and we began to slowly lift, sailing sideways and nosing northeast. The sky was scudded with clouds, and bodies of water shone like mirrors in the winter night.
‘What kind of shape’s she in?’ Marino’s voice sounded abruptly in my headset.
Wesley answered, ‘She’s frozen.’
‘Meaning, she could’ve been out for days and not started decomposing. Right, Doc?’
‘If she’s been outside for days,’ I said, ‘you would think someone would have found her before now.’
Wesley said, ‘We believe she was murdered last night. She was displayed, propped against. . .’
‘Yo, the squirrel likes that. That’s his thing.’
‘He sits them up or kills them while they’re sitting,’ Wesley went on. ‘Every one so far.’
‘Every one we know about so far,’ I reminded them.
‘The victims we’re aware of.’
‘Right. Sitting up in cars, a chair, propped against a Dumpster.’
‘The kid in London.’
‘Yes, he wasn’t.’
‘Looks like he was just dumped near railroad tracks.’
‘We don’t know who did that one.’ Wesley seemed certain. ‘I don’t believe it was Gault.’
‘Why do you think it’s important to him that the bodies are sitting?’ I asked.
‘It’s his way of giving us the finger,’ said Marino.