ON THE WAY TO QUANTICO
Friday morning
Savich carefully steered the Porsche around an eighteen-wheeler, accelerated, and seamed back between two cars. Traffic would lighten later as they approached Quantico. It was a day you were happy to be alive. The sky was a clear blue, no summer heat yet to blanket Washington, but it would come. He wished Sherlock were with him, especially this morning, but she’d been pulled back to New York to interview Conklin. He’d promised her he’d take another agent with him to Quantico for Brakey’s hypnosis, and she’d known it would be Griffin for the simple reason that Griffin would believe what had happened to Savich the previous night, without question. She’d known he’d take the leap of faith. He himself was gifted.
Savich looked over at Griffin sitting beside him. Not only was he gifted, he was very smart, ferocious in his dedication, and intuitive, some of the reasons Savich had asked him to transfer from the San Francisco Field Office to Washington. He knew Griffin would be well able to see the possibilities and the problems of the psychic they now faced. It didn’t hurt that he was already involved in the case and knew Brakey. If Savich was right, Griffin would hear Brakey describe exactly the scene Savich himself had been drawn into under hypnosis.
He’d started telling Griffin about it this morning in the office as if he was telling him a dream, about the pine forest, about following the smell of smoke to the ancient tower, about Stefan Dalco appearing. Griffin had listened, sure, but it wasn’t until Savich had baldly told him it wasn’t a dream but an illusion created for him, probably exactly what Walter Givens and Brakey Alcott had experienced before they’d become murderers, that Griffin’s eyes had blazed—no other way to describe it. As Savich had hoped, he wanted to know everything. Savich took him through it, step by step.
Griffin was quiet now, thinking about everything. He said matter-of-factly, more to himself than to Savich, “What do you think would have happened if Dalco’s knife had stabbed you?”
“I don’t know what would have happened, but I’ll tell you, Griffin, the illusion had substance, it felt real.”
“And you believe it’s the same illusion Dalco used on Walter Givens and Brakey Alcott.”
“Yes, a variation. Dalco came after me for a very different reason than Walter or Brakey. Dalco came after me to kill me. He wanted the investigation stopped.”
Savich shook his head. “We don’t even know all that much yet. Doesn’t he realize you’d simply pick it up where I left off if something happened to me?”
“It wouldn’t be the same, and you know it. It’s amazing what you did, Savich—changing the scene to Winkel’s Cave. Maybe it saved your life.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Sherlock did when she started shaking me and slapping me to wake me up.”
“We know it had to be Brakey who killed Deputy Lewis. It would have been an insane risk for anyone other than Brakey, even in the dark. But Dalco said nothing about why he chose Brakey? Why Walter Givens?”
Savich shook his head, settled the Porsche behind a Volvo like Sherlock’s that cruised right at the speed limit. “I think Dalco, as our Brit friend Nicholas Drummond would say, is barking mad. He has his reasons, though. Revenge, perhaps. The deputy may have been unlucky enough to arrest him or someone he cared about very much, and his murder was payback. Why did he use Brakey? I don’t know yet.”
“How did you do it, Savich? How did you escape Dalco?”
“I concentrated with everything in me on that huge chamber in Winkel’s Cave. I don’t know who was more surprised when we popped right there, me or Dalco.”
They passed a hitchhiker, a gnarly-looking bearded man with a backpack and banged-up leather boots. Griffin said, “It sounds amazing. And scary. Now, you think Brakey’s going to tell us about a pine forest and a tower? That he’ll remember Dalco telling him to murder Deputy Kane Lewis?”
“I’m betting on it, which means Dalco, whoever he is, is living in or near Plackett, Virginia, and that Deputy Kane Lewis and Sparky Carroll have something in common with him, something that made both of them his targets. Dalco said they deserved to die, so whatever it is he believes they did was enough for him to murder them, or rather manipulate Brakey and Walter into doing it for him.”
“Both Brakey Alcott and Walter Givens are young,” Griffin said. “Did Dalco pick them because he found them malleable, suggestible? And the Athames, Savich, they’re common to Dalco and to both murders. And the Alcotts own them, you know they do. All of this is somehow connected to them, no doubt in my mind. Dalco knows them, interacts with them, at least he does Brakey. Did you and Sherlock meet the whole family yesterday evening?”
“Not the eldest son, Liggert. As for Mrs. Alcott—Deliah is her name—I know to my gut she was lying, I just don’t know what about, exactly. You know the Athames aren’t traceable, unfortunately. Still, Brakey and Walter Givens had to have got hold of them somehow, somewhere. I doubt a search warrant to search the Alcotts’ houses for a pile of Athames would help us; you know they’re long gone by now.”
“Maybe Brakey will tell us,” Griffin said. He shook his head. “If the Alcotts are involved, why would they have made Brakey the obvious suspect? Why bring our focus right to him? Dalco didn’t seem to care about Walter Givens, made a huge flashy statement by having Walter stab Sparky Carroll right inside the Rayburn Building. But Brakey? Why would the Alcotts want to implicate Brakey?”
“If Brakey doesn’t fill in the blanks, we will need to speak to more people in Plackett; it’s the only way forward to find the tie-in between Sparky Carroll and Kane Lewis and find our way to whoever’s behind these murders. We’ll also check with the sheriff, examine Deputy Lewis’s arrest files. Maybe there’ll be something there.” He said, “Why not have the sheriff do it?” In a minute flat, Savich was speaking to Sheriff Watson. He identified himself, then posed the assignment to Ezra Watson.
“Good, I need something to do, something that counts. Everyone’s talking nonsense—aliens and terrorists, and that’s because they’re afraid as well as upset about the two deaths. This I can understand and work with.”
“How is your sister doing, Sheriff?”
“Glory keeps pestering me to do something and I keep telling her that it isn’t my case, that there’s nothing I can do, that she should call you.” He paused. “But now I’ve got something to sink my teeth into. I’ll get back to you, Agent Savich, if and when I find something that could help. Do you know anything yet about the two murders?”
“Yes, but it’s not solid enough yet. I’ll be speaking to you, Sheriff, and thank you for your help.”
Savich rang off, checked the rearview mirror. “I’m glad the cops aren’t around to pull me over for using my cell while driving.”
“Since you’re driving a Porsche,” Griffin added, “they’d haul you right to the hoosegow.” Griffin’s smile faded quickly. “Stefan Dalco—did you try to trace him?”
“There’s no record of anyone by that name entering the U.S. He’s not a citizen, either, not by that name. I can’t very well give a drawing of Dalco to the press and to Metro. His appearance was as much an illusion as the rest of it. I did have Jesse make me a sketch of his face to show to Brakey. His face may not be his own, but his illusion is, and I hope Brakey will confirm that for us.”
“You know we got the tracking record from Brakey’s truck in this morning. The morning of the murder, he went directly from the distribution center to his usual route, no detours. He’ll have to tell us himself where he killed the deputy and where he put his body on the truck. And why.
“I still find it amazing that Dalco could suggest or order or manipulate two people, whatever their ages, into killing another human being.”
Savich gave Griffin a quick look. “I think Dalco scared them to death. Maybe even more, I think it gave him a thrill.”
“But you bested him, Savich. That’s got to have knocked him back on his black-booted heels, don’t you think?”
“Maybe for now, but I know we have to move quickly. If we don’t find out who Dalco is, I can’t begin to predict what he’ll try next. Kill someone else who’s offended him? I do know, though, that he’s coming after me again.”
Griffin smiled at him. “If—when—he does, you call me.”