Ms. Archer.”
When the plane was descending into Washington National, the man turned
again to Sidney. “Couple of things, Ms. Archer. When I listened to
the tape of you and your husband talking on the phone, I picked up some
background noise. Like water running. I can’t be sure, but I think
someone was listening on another line.” Sidney’s face froze. “Ms.
Archer, you had better assume the Feds know Jason is alive too.”
A little while later the plane thudded to a landing and the cabin became
alive with activity.
“You said you wanted to tell me a couple of things. What’s the other
one?”
The man leaned down and pulled out a small briefcase from under the seat
in front of him. When he sat back up, he looked her directly in the
eye. “People who can bring down a jetliner can do just about anything.
Don’t trust anyone, Ms. Archer. And be more careful than you have ever
been in your entire life. Even that might not be enough. I’m sorry if
that sounds like shitty advice, but it’s all I have to give you.”
In another few minutes the man was gone. Sidney was one of the last
passengers off the plane. The airport wasn’t crowded at this hour. She
made her way toward the cab stand. Remembering the man’s advice, she
looked carefully around, trying not to be too obvious.
Her sole comfort was the fact that amid all the people probably tracking
her, at least some of them were FBI.
After leaving Sidney Archer, the man boarded an airport shuttle bus that
deposited him at the long-term parking lot. It was almost ten o’clock.
The area was deserted. He carried a bag that he had checked onto the
flight from New Orleans. Its orange sticker proclaimed that it carried
an unloaded firearm. As he reached his car, a late-model Grand Marquis,
he opened the bag to extract his pistol with the intent of reloading it
and placing it in his shoulder holster.
The stiletto blade first hit his right lung, was pulled free, and then
the savage process was repeated on the left one, collapsing both and
forestalling any cry for help he might otherwise have managed.
The third thrust sliced neatly through the right side of his neck. The
bag dropped to the concrete floor, the firearm now useless to its dying
owner. In another moment he was down on the ground, his eyes already
glassing over, staring up at his killer.
A van pulled alongside and Kenneth Scales climbed in. In another moment
the dead man was alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Lee Sawyer sat at the conference table in the FBI building going over
numerous reports. He put one hand through his rumpled hair, tilted back
in his chair and put his feet up on the table while he mentally sorted
through the new facts. The autopsy report on Riker indicated that he
had been dead about forty-eight hours before his body had been
discovered. Because the room temperature had hovered around freezing,
however, Sawyer knew the postmortem putrefaction of the body was not
nearly as accurate as it otherwise would have been.
Sawyer looked at photos of the Sig P229 auto pistol that had been
recovered at the crime scene. The serial numbers on the pistol had been
sanded down and then drilled out. He next looked at photos of the slugs
recovered from the body. Riker had been on the receiving end of eleven
more of the hollow-point projectiles than had been necessary to kill
him. The lead barrage bothered the FBI agent greatly. Riker’s murder
had most of the hallmarks of a professional kill. Professional
assassins rarely needed more than one shot. The first shot in this case
had been instantly fatal, the medical examiner had concluded. The heart
had not been pumping when the other bullets had entered the body.
The blood spatters on the table, chair and mirror indicated that Riker
had been shot from behind while seated. The killer had apparently
dragged Riker out of the chair, thrown him face down in the corner of
the bedroom and proceeded to empty his clip into the dead body from