get to him. She flies down, goes to him with her bureau credentials and gets inside the house to do it. It brings her peace again. Fills that void. Only thing is it doesn’t last. Soon she is empty again and she has to do it again. And then again and again. She follows the killer, Gladden, and kills those who are after him, using him to cover her tracks before she had even made them.”
Backus was staring blankly at some vision as he spoke.
“She knew all the touches, all the moves,” he said. “Wiping the lubricated condom off inside Orsulak’s mouth. The perfect deflection. It was true genius.”
I nodded and took it from there.
“She had seen Gladden’s cell and knew there was a photograph in the files that could be found one day,” I said. “She knew the books about Poe were in the photos. It was all a setup. She followed Gladden around the country. She had a sense. She knew from the cases coming in for profiling which were the ones he did. She had an empathy. She’d follow him. She’d go out and kill the cop that was after him. She made each one look like a suicide, but she had Gladden to put it on if someday someone came along and it unraveled.”
Backus looked at me.
“Someone like you,” he said.
“Yeah. Like me.”
49
Backus said the story was like a sheet hanging on a clothesline in high wind. Barely held on by a few clothespins, it was ready to fly away.
“We need more, Jack.”
I nodded. He was the expert. Besides, the real trial had already been held in my heart and the verdict was in.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m thinking. You had—you were beginning a relationship with her, weren’t you?”
“It was that obvious?”
“Yes.”
Then he didn’t say anything for a full minute. He paced the room, not really looking at anything, all interior dialogue and thought. Finally, he stopped moving and looked at me.
“Would you wear a wire?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I’ll bring her back here, put her alone with you and you draw it out. You might be the only one who could.”
I looked down at the floor. I remembered our last phone conversation and how she had seen through my act.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I could pull it off.”
“She might be suspicious and check,” Backus said, discarding the idea and searching the floor with his eyes for another. “Still, you’re the one, Jack. You’re not an agent and she knows if need be she can take you.”
“Take me where?”
“Take you out.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. You won’t have to wear a wire. We’ll put you inside the wire.”
“What are you talking about?”
He raised a finger as if to tell me to hold on. He picked up the phone, wedged the receiver into the crook of his neck and carried it with him while he tapped in a number and waited for an answer. The cord was like a leash, containing his pacing to only a few steps in any direction.
“Pack your things,” he said to me while waiting for the call to be picked up.
I got up and slowly began to follow his order, putting my few things in the computer bag and the pillowcase while listening as he asked for Agent Carter and then began issuing directions. He told Carter to call Quantico communications and to relay a message to the bureau jet with Rachel on it. Call the plane back, Backus ordered.
“Just tell them something’s come up that cannot be discussed on the air and that I need her back here,” he said into the phone. “Nothing more than that. Understand?”
Satisfied with Carter’s reply, he pressed on.
“Now, before you do that, put me on hold and call the SAC’s office. I need the exact address and key combination for the earthquake house. He’ll know what I mean. I’ll be going there from here. I want you to grab a sound and video tech and two good agents. I’ll fill you in there. Call the SAC now.”
I looked at Backus with a curious expression.
“I’m on hold.”
“Earthquake house?”
“Clearmountain told me about it. It’s in the hills over the Valley. Top to bottom it’s wired. Sound and video. It was damaged in the quake and the real owners just left it, didn’t have insurance. The bureau leased it from the bank and used it for a sting on local building and safety inspectors, contractors and