25
Wells came back to Miller’s trailer just past midnight Friday morning. Its false wooded serenity was gone. It was a crime scene now, the property of the State of Washington, to be prodded until it gave up its secrets. All its lights were on, but it looked emptier than ever.
Paramedics and sheriff’s deputies had moved Darby’s corpse to the morgue at Pullman Regional, leaving only a patch of bloody and trampled snow where he’d lain. In their place, two state troopers sat in a Yukon next to Darby’s Explorer. The troopers told Wells they’d peeked inside the trailer to make sure there were no other bodies. They were waiting for daylight and a forensics team for a full search. Wells understood the caution, but he couldn’t wait. He doubted the Russians had left more traps. They would want investigators to be able to search the trailer and find the clues they’d left.
At least Wells would be able to work in secret. The initial service calls had gone out over police radio, but no cub reporter with a notepad and an iPhone set to record was going to show up. Wells figured Seattle, two hundred seventy miles west, was the closest city where reporters were on duty all night. And no one except the cops and Darby’s family knew he had died. The FBI had asked the Sheriff’s Office and Washington State Patrol to sit on the shooting until morning. The deputies had told Darby’s wife but asked her to stay quiet, too. The announcement they planned for the morning would say only that Darby had died overnight and that they were investigating.
Leaving out the details would buy them extra time, though by early afternoon the state papers and Associated Press would insist on knowing more. Once the word ambush appeared, the story would become national news. But those hours would give Wells and the FBI a chance to find Tom Miller and the woman who called herself Allie.
The details had been worked out while Wells was locked in an office at Pullman Regional. The local cops had waited for him at the emergency room entrance. No surprise, after his call. They frisked and cuffed him while the hospital techs moved Coyle to a gurney and sped him away. An officer half Wells’s age asked him if he’d shot Coyle, or anyone else, then frog-marched him to an office and shackled him to a desk.
Wells stared at the ceiling as he tried to unpack what had happened. On some subconscious level, he must have recognized the trap. Otherwise, why had he circled the trailer instead of going to the door? But he hadn’t taken the time to understand what his intuition was telling him.
He closed his eyes as the Muslim prayer for the sick came to him: As’alu Allah al’azim rabbil ’arshil azim an yashifika—I ask Allah, the Mighty, the Lord of the Mighty Throne, to cure you. Coyle would laugh at the blessing, Wells knew. Coyle couldn’t stand religion. Since his brother died, he was as sure an atheist as the late, great Christopher Hitchens. Wells repeated the prayer, anyway. Arabic was better than English for these desperate pleas, faster, more guttural and primal. It dug deeper into the muck where the truth lay buried—
A long night ahead, and Wells was already exhausted, the adrenaline from the ambush gone. He put his head on the table, floated through the walls into the operating room with Coyle. His dad, Herbert, was the surgeon, which made perfect sense. Herbert reached into Coyle’s chest with neon green tweezers, and a buzzer on Coyle’s nose went off. Thought you said he was the best, Coyle said. Just like you.
Before Wells could answer, the operating room door swung open. Sheriff Darby rode a BMX bicycle through. He pulled a wheelie and gave Wells a thumbs-up. Trusting a boy from Montana, he said. Lookit me now.
Lookit? Coyle said. Did he say lookit? Am I already in Hell?
You don’t believe in Hell, Wells said.
Got to be better than nothing.
Come on, Dad, get to work.
What’s the rush, John? We’ve got forever and a day, forever and a day—
Herbert began to sing, a low baritone rumble, then reached down to pull Coyle off the table, swing him around the room, a Fred-and-Ginger routine—
Better than jazz, Marine, I tell you—
The office door mercifully swung open, pulling Wells awake. He wiped sleep from his mouth as the cop walked in. The wall clock said an hour had passed, but the nap had played the neat trick of making Wells even more tired. He’d been so sure Coyle was dead. A bad sign.
The cop unlocked his cuffs. “Supposed to take you wherever you want.” He sounded neither annoyed nor impressed with the fact that he’d been told to chauffeur a man who’d been a murder suspect an hour before. He was young enough not to question his orders. Wells wasn’t sure he himself had ever been that young.
“I’ve got my own car. Anyplace around here still selling coffee at this hour?”
“Jack in the Box up 27.”
“Thanks.”
On his way out, Wells asked the nurses if anyone had news on Coyle. “Gonna be a while,” the head nurse said. “But he’s lucky Dr. Kenley was on call tonight. She’s amazing.”
Wells wanted to stay until the surgery was done, but the trailer awaited. He scribbled his number. “When she comes out, will you ask her to call me? Any hour, doesn’t matter.”
The nurse took the number but shook her head. “She probably won’t. HIPAA.”
The Ford stank of blood. Red smears covered its passenger-side window. Wells wondered how many units Coyle had lost. He knew he should call Coyle’s parents, but he couldn’t bring himself to wake them, especially when he didn’t know whether Coyle would survive the night.
Instead, he called Tarnes, who filled him in on what had happened while he was locked up. She’d reached the duty officers at FBI headquarters, who’d passed a message to the Seattle agent in charge, who had leaned on the Washington State Patrol. The Feds would have their own agents at the trailer by morning. Meanwhile, the troopers guarding the trailer were expecting Wells and would let him pass.
“Thanks, Julie.”
“Any word on Winston?”
Strange to hear Coyle’s first name. Wells usually called him Coyle or Sergeant. “Still in surgery.”
“You call his people?”
The question jabbed Wells. “Not yet. I wanted to know where he stands.”
“I can do it. You have enough to worry about.”
Wells almost said yes. But he was Coyle’s senior officer. The job was his. “Get some sleep, Julie. I’ll call them.”
“Let me know if you find anything. And John . . . ?”
His name hung heavy. “What’s that?”
“Not everything’s your fault.”
Then she was gone.
He badly wanted to call Anne. But waking a pregnant woman at 4 a.m. to make her carry his sins seemed cheap. Instead, Wells swung into Jack in the Box and ordered a combination meal, cheeseburger and large fries. Eating emotionally in his old age, soothing his soul with salt and fat. Then two more combos, though those weren’t for him. No quicker way to a cop’s heart.
Sure enough, the troopers watching the trailer perked up at the burgers.
“Twelve-gauge,” the one in the passenger seat said. “Rigged to angle down the stairs. Nasty. You’ll see.”
“Find anything else?”
“Not much. It’s empty, for sure. The door to the bedroom’s open, so we looked, but we didn’t check any closets. Basically, sniffed the place for bodies.”
In other words, the troopers hadn’t gone out of their way to find more traps. “Understood.”
The trooper handed Wells latex gloves and booties. “Just don’t mess it up for tomorrow, the techs are gonna shake it out.”
At the door, Wells pulled on the protective gear, stepped inside. The trap that had killed Darby waited. Nasty was right. The shotgun had been hidden in a closet in a wall left of the front door. The killer had nailed a two-by-six to the closet floor, duct-taped a metal C-clamp to the wood, tightened the clamp around the barrel of a shotgun. The fishing line ran from the doorknob, through a pulley screwed into the back of the closet, to the trigger.
Civilians called these setups booby traps. Police called them spring guns. By any name, they were simple and deadly. This one had been positioned high and angled down, to take out not just the person who opened the door but anyone behind him. And the person who set it had left the door unlocked to make entering easy.
Seeing it set Wells’s blood on fire. He knew the killer hadn’t meant to target Coyle or Darby. But the randomness only made him angrier. He wondered if Miller had set the trap. Probably the Russians. They could have come to the trailer anytime after Miller and Allie left and before the snow on Tuesday night. Miller had probably given Allie the key months before. If not, she could have stolen and copied it. The police might never find the answer. The filament, C-clamp, and wood were all available at any Home Depot. The shotgun was a Remington, a popular brand, untraceable if it had been bought used for cash at a gun show or garage sale.
Wells forced himself to leave the closet behind, turn to the rest of the trailer. The living room was spare and clean, guides to local hiking trails stacked on the coffee table, weights in the corner alongside a sit-up mat. The furniture was carefully set at right angles. Miller hadn’t lost his military habits. He’d cleaned before he left, too. The toilet was spotless. The glasses and coffee cups were washed. The refrigerator was empty, aside from a jug of water, a loaf of white bread, and a package of string cheese.
Wells found no trace of Allie, no women’s clothes or cosmetics or personal items. A box of condoms was tucked in the bathroom cabinet, but it was unopened. Wells suspected that if the FBI matched the serial number, the Bureau would find it predated Allie’s arrival. No surprise. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave any evidence of her existence.
The gun safe in the bedroom was locked tight. Wells left it. If the Russians had set a second trap anywhere, the safe would be the place. Besides, he already knew Miller had taken his rifle.
The more Wells looked, the more strongly he felt that Miller had intended to leave not just this place but his life behind when he walked out. In a kitchen drawer he found Miller’s most important documents neatly stacked: discharge papers; medical records, showing the extent of his injuries in Kandahar; the title and registration to his pickup, which turned out to be a black Dodge Ram; the Veterans Administration letter explaining he’d been given a sixty percent disability rating. A dozen photographs from Afghanistan lay at the bottom. Mostly standard stuff for an infantryman, pics of Miller and his fellow soldiers at the base and on patrol. One showed Miller grinning as he sat astride a donkey that had a big red ribbon stuck to its side. A sergeant stood beside the donkey, angling a bottle of Jim Beam as if he planned to pour a shot in the animal’s mouth. As Urquhart had told Wells and Coyle, Miller wasn’t very good-looking: short, with pitted skin and a strange slope to his forehead. He looked happy enough in the picture, though.
At the back of the drawer, Wells found the red ribbon from the picture. Miller could have had other copies of the photos, maybe even his medical records. He didn’t have another ribbon. He’d cared enough about it to bring it home from Kandahar. He hadn’t forgotten it here. He’d left it.
Wells took it, left everything else for the cops.
The Russians had seeded the place relatively subtly. Wells found no ISIS flags or Qurans left open to verses that called for death to the unbelievers. But the top drawer of Miller’s bedside table held a dozen pamphlets about Islam, the basic brochures that mosques and Islamic community centers left on their front tables for curious American visitors. What does Islam say about terrorism? Who was the Prophet Muhammad? What do Muslims believe about Christians and Jews? Ramadan: The Month of Fasting . . . The pamphlets were creased, paragraphs circled and underlined. Wells took them. Islam had enough problems in the United States without the Kremlin helping.
The second drawer contained two photographs. They both showed the bloodied corpse of an Afghan child lying on a muddy village path, his neck torn apart by a high-caliber round. The photos were taken from different angles, both close up. Wells suspected that even a forensic expert would have no way to determine where or when they had been taken, much less who had taken them. They didn’t have any indication of when they’d been printed on the back.
Wells wondered if Miller had really taken the pictures, if they’d really depicted an incident from his tour. If not, the Russians were taking a chance by leaving them. On the other hand, would the FBI want to ask the soldiers who’d served with Miller about them? And if his buddies denied that they depicted a real incident, would investigators believe them? Plenty of kids had died during the war, usually by accident, occasionally in atrocities that received little attention in the United States but lots in Afghanistan.
The Russians were offering a story the investigators would understand: an angry veteran, getting by on disability, lonely, Hispanic in a rural and overwhelmingly white community, racked with guilt over a child’s death. He’d grown interested in Islam, self-radicalized, decided to put his skills as a sniper to use. I’ve met the enemy and he is us. As an explanation for terrorism, the narrative was a little paint-by-numbers, but it would stick. Best of all, from the Russian point of view, it didn’t require Twitter rants from Miller, or even letters or a diary. The photos and records spoke for themselves.
Of course, none of this evidence explained how the woman who called herself Allie had actually convinced Miller to shoot a pastor and a cardinal. Wells couldn’t imagine her playing a true believer, considering she’d picked Miller up in a bar. He supposed only Miller and Allie knew the answer. He took one of the photos, left the second. He suspected having the picture might come in handy if and when he confronted Miller.
In the bottom drawer, more articles, these about the futility of the Afghan war, the problems at Walter Reed. Followed by stories about Luke Hurley, Cardinal McDonnell, and—
Paul Birman. Senator from Tennessee. Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence. Presumptive presidential candidate. And the leading voice for more American invasions of Islamic countries. Birman had been in the news plenty since the Hurley shooting. In fact—
He was giving a speech. Friday afternoon. Today. In Dallas. At the site of last month’s attack.
A perfect target. Birman would have security, but it wouldn’t be overwhelming. Considering the attention he was receiving, he was a target nearly as important as Duto, with a fraction of Duto’s protection. The FBI and police were focused on the threat to religious leaders. Killing him in Dallas would resonate, and not just because of the bombing. The American Airlines Center was not even a mile from Dealey Plaza. And sooner would be better than later, as far as the Russians were concerned. With the manhunt for Miller intensifying, they would want to use him as soon as possible. Three shootings in a week would also force Duto to respond.
Wells grabbed the articles about Birman, left everything else, slid the drawer shut. Looked around once more, silently wondering if the Russians might have offered Birman’s name as a fake to send investigators the wrong way. But no. The other two targets had already been shot. And the Russians wouldn’t have expected anyone to find the trailer so soon. It was supposed to be discovered only after Allie tossed Miller to the sharks. Everything in it was meant to confirm Miller’s guilt.
Presumably, after Miller was done today the Russians would kill him in what looked like a suicide. Maybe a bombing, his truck loaded with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. He was on the chopping block. Allie couldn’t afford to have him talking.
Wells pulled up Kayak, checked Seattle-to-Dallas nonstops. Lucky him, the route was popular. There was a 6:05 a.m. American nonstop that landed at DFW at noon local time. It was only 12:45 a.m. now. He should be able to make the flight. If not, Alaska had one an hour later.
He jogged back to the Explorer. He wasn’t tired anymore. He wanted morning.
He called Shafer at 4:30 a.m., still twenty minutes east of Seattle, no hint of dawn, just him and the big rigs racing through the dark on I-90.
“You’re up early.”
“Didn’t sleep.” Wells explained his night. As he walked Shafer through the trap at the trailer, he realized the surgeon hadn’t called him yet. Maybe she was still operating. Maybe HIPAA had stopped her. Maybe she’d finished and gone straight to sleep. Or maybe—
No. He wouldn’t let himself even think the word.
“John?”
“Sorry. Good news is, I’m pretty sure I know the next target. Paul Birman. I went back to the trailer, found articles about him right next to Luke Hurley and James McDonnell.”
“Birman’s speaking here today—”
“I know. I’m flying down at six. Get to DFW at noon.”
“You told Tarnes?”
“Not yet. Not until I get down there.”
Meaning: We don’t tell anyone. We find him ourselves.
“FBI’s gonna figure it as soon as they search the trailer, anyway.”
“No they’re not.” The reason that Wells had taken the pages about Birman from the drawer.
“John—” Shafer stopped himself. “What if your plane’s late? What if we can’t find him?”
“There’s gonna be a hotel that has rooms with a view of the speech, and Miller and his little friend are gonna be there.”
“Unless they’re not. Unless there are five hotels like that. Unless he sticks with the rolling hide. You’re gambling with Birman’s life.”
“We have time, Ellis. We can tell the Feds if we don’t find him ourselves. Plus, if we tell Birman to cancel the speech, he will.”
“Unless he thinks we’re trying to make him look bad because we work for Duto, and he won’t back down.”
“We’ll find him.”
“Hong Kong all over again. You’re making it personal.”
Wells looked at Coyle’s blood on the passenger window. Of course I’m making it personal. “I need a pistol, too.” He couldn’t bring the one he had with him through airport screening, and he had no time to check a bag.
“Of course you do. What do you even think you’re going to do with this guy, John? Tell him how your buddy got shot, and he kneels at your feet, asks forgiveness?”
“We know more about this than anyone. Way more than the FBI. I just want to hear for myself how the Russians played him. While he’s fresh.”
Shafer was silent for long enough that Wells wondered if the call had dropped.
“Come on, Ellis.”
“What’s the car he’s using?”
And Wells knew he’d won. “A black Dodge Ram four-door pickup. Three years old. Washington tags.”
“All right. While you’re in the air, I’ll see what I can find. But if we don’t have him at three, you’re calling Tarnes, and I’m telling the FBI. Three. You hear me? Not three-thirty, not four. That’s close enough.”
A deadline that would give Wells less than three hours on the ground in Dallas. He wanted to argue, but Shafer was right. “When did you turn into such a goody-goody, Ellis?”