‘I understand your need to protect yourself,’ I said to her from behind the shut door of a pay phone booth inside Signatures terminal. ‘But please reconsider. Two more people have been murdered since Claire Rawley was.’
There was a long silence.
Then Dr Chris Booth said, ‘Can you come in person?’
‘I was planning to,’ I told her.
‘All right then.’
I called Teun McGovern next to tell her what was going on.
‘I think Carrie escaped from Kirby in the same white Schweizer we saw flying over Kenneth Sparkes’s farm when we were working the scene,’ I said.
‘Does she fly?’ McGovern’s confused voice came back.
‘No, no. I can’t imagine that.’
‘Oh.’
‘Whoever she’s with,’ I said. ‘That’s the pilot. Whoever helped her escape and is doing all this. The first two cases were warm-ups. Baltimore and Venice Beach. We might never have known about them, Teun. I believe Carrie waited to drag us in. She waited until Warrenton.’
‘Then you’re thinking Sparkes was the intended target,’ she stated thoughtfully.
‘To get our attention. To make sure we came. Yes,’ I said.
‘Then Claire Rawley figures in how?’
‘That’s what I’m going to Wilmington to find out, Teun. I believe she’s somehow the key to all of this. She’s the connection to him. Whoever he is. And I also believe that Carrie knows I will think this, and that she’s expecting me.’
‘You think she’s there.’
‘Oh yes. I’m betting on it. She expected Benton to come to Philadelphia, and he did. She expects Lucy and me to come to Wilmington. She knows how we think, how we work, at least as much about us as we know about her.’
‘You’re saying that you’re her next hits.’
The thought was cold water in my stomach.
‘Intended ones.’
‘Not a chance we can take, Kay. We’ll be there when you land. The university must have a playing field. We’ll get that arranged very discreetly. Whenever you land to refuel or whatever, page me and we’ll keep up with each other.’
‘You can’t let her know you’re there,’ I said. ‘That will ruin it.’
‘Trust me. She won’t,’ McGovern said.
We flew out of La Guardia with seventy-five gallons of fuel and an unbearably long flight to look forward to. Three hours in a helicopter was always more than enough for me. The weight of the headsets and the noise and vibration gave me a hot spot on the top of my head and seemed to rattle me loose at the joints. To endure this beyond four hours generally resulted in a serious headache. We were lucky with a generous tail wind, and although our airspeed showed one hundred and ten knots, the GPS showed our ground speed was actually one hundred and twenty.
Lucy made me take the controls again, and I was smoother as I learned not to overcontrol and fight. When thermals and winds shook us like an angry mother, I gave myself up to them. Trying to outmaneuver gusts and updrafts only made matters worse, and this was hard for me. I liked to make things better. I learned to watch for birds, and now and then I spotted a plane at the same time Lucy did.
Hours became monotonous and blurred as we snuggled up to the coastline, over the Delaware River and on to the Eastern Shore. We refueled near Salisbury, Maryland, where I used the bathroom and drank a Coke, then continued into North Carolina, where hog farms slaughtered the topography with long aluminum sheds and waste treatment lagoons the color of blood. We entered the airspace of Wilmington at almost two o’clock. My nerves began to scream as I imagined what might await us.
‘Let’s go down to six hundred feet,’ Lucy said. ‘And lower the speed.’
‘You want me to do it.’ I wanted to make sure.
‘Your ship.’
It wasn’t pretty, but I managed.
‘My guess is, the university’s not going to be on the water, and is probably a bunch of brick buildings.’
‘Thank you, Sherlock.’
Everywhere I looked I saw water, condominium complexes, and water treatment and other plants. The ocean was to the east, sparkling and ruffled, oblivious to dark, bruised clouds gathering on the horizon. A storm was on its way and did not seem to be in a hurry but threatened to be bad.