SINCE EIGHT O’CLOCK, the motel maids speaking softly in Spanish and the clink-and-clatter of their equipment carts had penetrated the room, growing louder as the morning matured. It was almost ten, and Jane didn’t want to delay until eleven, when in spite of the DO NOT DISTURB sign, there might come a knock at the door and a polite inquiry about maid service. The less interaction she had with the staff, the less likely they were to remember her.
Besides, she had stayed there two nights, her maximum for any location. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object too long at rest tends to have her throat slit.
She loaded her bags into the Ford and dropped the room key at the office, where she asked the address of the nearest library.
At a nearby McDonald’s, she bought coffee and two breakfast sandwiches, threw away half the bread, and ate in the car. The food was better than it looked. The coffee was worse than it smelled. She fished a tiny pill from a bottle of acid-reduction medication.
At the library, she used a computer to search for the nearest stores selling art supplies, laboratory equipment, and janitorial supplies. None of that would bring her to the attention of the people who were looking for her.
By one o’clock, she’d acquired bottles of acetone, a container of bleaching powder, what minimal laboratory vessels she required, and a couple of items from a drugstore.
In Tarzana, she located an acceptable motel, where she chose to stay because she’d never before been in that town and would be a stranger to everyone.
She used a different forged ID from the one she had presented at the previous motel, and she paid cash in advance.
The king-size bed reflected in the mirrored rolling doors of the closet. She stowed the trash bag. Before putting the suitcases with it, she retrieved binoculars, a LockAid lock-release gun sold only to law-enforcement agencies but acquired illegally from the same people who had remade her Ford Escape, and finally a sound suppressor threaded to fit the barrel of her Heckler & Koch .45.
By five o’clock, working in the bathroom, wearing a surgical face mask and nitrile gloves, she derived a quantity of chloroform from the acetone by the reaction of chloride of lime, which was the bleaching powder. She filled a six-ounce spray bottle purchased at the beauty-supply store, set it aside, and cleaned up the mess.
When she stepped outside, the late-afternoon sun marinated the suburban sprawl in a sour light. The warm air smelled of vehicle exhaust that had been rinsed by catalytic converters into harmless compounds but nonetheless soiled the air with an unpleasant scent.
In a restaurant across the street from the motel, she enjoyed a dinner of filet mignon, more than once assuring herself that it was not her last meal in this world.
6
* * *
EARLIER IN THE DAY, shortly before four o’clock Eastern time, Section Chief Nathan Silverman had been in his office at the Academy in Quantico when he received a heads-up call from the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office, informing him that the SAC would be sending him a report regarding an incident the previous day, in Santa Monica, involving either an imposter passing herself off as Special Agent Jane Hawk of the Critical Incident Response Group or Special Agent Hawk herself.
The incident was strange, the SAC said, but seemed to involve no crime other than the possible impersonation of a Bureau agent. As his field office was one of the busiest in the nation, he had little time to waste on something as seemingly small-potatoes as this. The five Behavioral Analysis Units had provided considerable assistance to the L.A. office in recent high-profile cases, however; and the SAC respected Silverman and his people. The report would be finished and transmitted by nine o’clock East Coast time.
At 7:30 that evening, Silverman sat down to dinner with his wife of thirty years, Rishona, in their house on the outskirts of Alexandria, about twenty-five miles from Quantico. They sat catercorner to each other at the dining room table.
The children were through college and off on their own. He and Rishona could have eaten in the kitchen with much less fuss, but she insisted on the more elegant atmosphere of the dining room.
When she cooked, which was more nights than not, she made an event of dinner, with good china and sterling silver and crystal, damask napkins held in rings from her collection, and candlelight.
He thought himself among the luckiest of men, that his wife should be both lovely and his best friend, with whom he could share anything and trust in her discretion.
Over a Caesar salad with romaine of exceptional crispness, followed by thick fillets of braised swordfish, he spoke of his day.
Following the terrorist strike in Philadelphia on Monday, Investigations and Operations Support as well as Behavioral Analysis Units 1 and 5—all in the Critical Incident Response Group—had been overwhelmed with requests for assistance, and today, Thursday, was the first evening he’d gotten home before eight o’clock. He had much to tell her, but inevitably, Jane and the call from the Los Angeles field office featured prominently in their conversation.
With his finest people, Nathan Silverman managed to have both a disciplined professional relationship and a social one that was not common in the Bureau. Rishona knew Jane well and thought of her and Nick as extended family. She had grieved for Nick, no less for Jane, and regularly asked after her.
“I didn’t chase her for the ID,” Nathan said. “I thought I knew her well enough to be sure she’d be back to work in two months, even six weeks.”
“She doesn’t have a heart of stone,” Rishona chided.
“No, but she’s got the heart of a lion, that one. Nothing sets her back for long. Two months ago, when she surprised me by filing for a leave extension, you may remember she called.”
“Yes, she was going to travel around the country with Travis. It might be good for the little guy. He so adored Nick.”
“Well, she gave me a new phone number where I could reach her, but she hoped I would, as she put it, give her space. I had both her house and cell numbers, so I assumed this was just a new smartphone. Same area code.”
He paused to savor the swordfish, but his wife, well aware of his subtle use of silences to add drama to his stories—it pleased him to make even the most mundane news entertaining for her—grew impatient after five seconds. “Don’t make the scene Shakespearean, Nate. What about the phone?”
“Well, I’ve given her the space she wanted. But when this bit came in from L.A., I almost rang her up. I don’t know why, I really don’t, but instead I asked one of our younger computer whizzes to backdoor an address for the phone, just as a personal favor not as a Bureau matter. After all, no crime is involved. Turns out the number isn’t a smartphone. It’s just a cheap burner.”
“Disposable?”
“Bought at Walmart in Alexandria and activated the day I last talked to her. None of the minutes on it have been used.”
Announced by neither lightning nor thunder, a sudden hard rain roared down the night and drummed the roof, so that both he and Rishona looked at the ceiling in surprise.
She said, “We’ll see now if that gutter repair works.”
“And when it does, I will have saved us four hundred dollars.”
“I sincerely hope so, dear. You can’t know how I suffer for you when you’re embarrassed by a do-it-yourself catastrophe.”
“Isn’t catastrophe a bit too strong a word?”
“I was thinking of the guest-bathroom toilet.”
After a silence, he said, “Even then, the word disaster is more accurate.”
“You’re right. I exaggerate. It was merely a disaster. Now, why would Jane buy a disposable phone for you to call?”
“I don’t know why, I really don’t, but on the way home, I took a side trip into Springfield to drive by her house. It’s not there.”