The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,76
of that,” Tucker said with a certain flourish, “he joined a rescue team only fifteen days after the Andrews murders in Galveston. It’s a nonprofit called Rescue Me that puts together teams of firefighters, police officers, and specialists from all over the country to help at disaster sites. Anywhere in the United States. I’m scheduled to talk to the administrator in half an hour. I’m going to get the details of Nelson’s participation, especially dates and places.”
“Sounds like a good guy,” Johnson said.
“Agent Tucker,” Amaia interjected, “I have a good photo of Lenx and a facial recognition program. It can compare images and detect similarities even when the individual’s features have been altered by plastic surgery. I’m going to need a headshot of Detective Nelson.”
“I sent you one by email, but I don’t know if it’ll be of much use.”
“In fact, I’ll need photos of his whole family. And their names.”
“Emerson will take care of that.”
Dupree took command, speaking into the console but keeping his eyes on Johnson. “We urgently need to establish beyond a doubt whether Nelson was at any of the disasters where other families were killed. A volunteer quick-response team would be a perfect cover to travel anywhere in the country, but whatever we find will be circumstantial at best. There’s lots more work to do, but maybe this explains why Captain Reed sent us the original file on the Andrews killings. I think we need to have a chat with him. Good work, Agent Tucker, Agent Emerson. I’ll call you as soon as we have news. You do the same.”
Johnson held up a hand. “Agent Tucker, you didn’t say anything about Nelson’s religion. Martin Lenx was deeply religious. We all agree that his bizarre concept of sin drove him to murder his family. Does Brad Nelson go to church?”
Tucker didn’t answer immediately. “We’re still working on that, haven’t had the time. But everything I’ve seen suggests that he doesn’t.”
After they hung up, Amaia was convinced she saw a smile hiding behind Johnson’s bushy mustache.
Special Agent Stella Tucker used her ballpoint pen to underline the names of each locality the Rescue Me administrator dictated over the phone. She was comparing them with the list of Nelson’s leave requests she’d obtained from HR.
“Brooksville, Oklahoma; Texas, in a crossroads near Alvord; Miami, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana,” she recapped. “And you’re sure, absolutely sure, that Nelson was at every one of those places?”
“We make up our teams from volunteers in the vicinity, but if necessary, we’ll move people all the way across the country. Nelson just put in for New Orleans. Our team leader there is Michael Meigs, a great guy, firefighter from Boston.”
“Right, Detective Nelson’s personnel officer told me he’d left for there, but we do need to consult with him. It’s not terribly pressing,” she lied. “And if he’s doing urgent rescue work, we don’t want to bother him. I just wanted to confirm he actually is in New Orleans.”
“Well, I won’t know until I can talk with the chief. I can confirm that Nelson accepted the invitation, but something could have come up. I can give you Meigs’s number. The last we heard, they were in Kenner at the fire station at Armstrong Airport. They were scheduled to move from there to Charity Hospital.”
Tucker thanked the administrator and took down the team leader’s number. She hung up and tried to reach him.
“The number you have dialed is not in service at this time.”
“Goddamn hurricane,” she muttered.
Tucker drew circles around Cape May, New Jersey, and Killeen, Texas, on the map. She had no confirmation Nelson had been in those locations in February and March. He was still on the Galveston police force at the time, as he had been in December when the Andrews family was killed. Dupree had mentioned needing to talk to the Galveston police chief; if she contacted Galveston, there’d be a risk that someone would pass it up the line and the chief would tell Dupree. Tucker was pretty sure the Galveston force would wonder what was up if the FBI called twice in the same day, but it was equally risky not to give it a try.
She knew the others’ opinion of her, but she didn’t care. She’d learned long ago that the only unforgiveable errors she’d ever made had come from failing to follow her own convictions. She was intelligent, which had given her insight into two things early on: first, an institution like the FBI wasn’t particularly willing to mentor a