“Hold up a minute. Ellie Scarron already told me her husband was a saint. He put infertile women in contact with the law offices so they could work a private adoption. He even funded part of the operation. But when the firm started getting more and more kids, they reached out to him to start finding more adoptive mothers, and he started asking questions. She’s fully convinced he was murdered.”
Sam was surprised. “So Scarron was the good guy in all of this, just trying to help women? You think he was legitimate?”
“I don’t know. But it bears looking into. He died here in Lynchburg. I’m going to reopen the case as a homicide, throw some resources to it, see what we can dig up. Don’t worry, I’ll do it quietly. It looked like a heart attack, and he was cremated, so there’s no chance of repeating the autopsy, but perhaps they still have the samples and slides.”
“Cremated? Where?”
“Hoyle’s. Where else.”
She hated to hear that. She liked Regina Hoyle. It was too early to assume she’d been on the wrong end of this, but even the thought made Sam’s stomach curdle. “Do we need to be looking at them, too, June?” Sam asked.
“Yep. Don’t worry, I’ll get everything cooking down here. So, the second thing, I’m pretty sure the man who killed Frederick McDonald is long gone. There was a blood trail from the house to a spot that had a surveillance camera. A Nissan Pathfinder with a Virginia license plate was parked there overnight. Looks like even though the killer was wounded, he made it back to his car and got out of Dodge.”
“That’s a good catch, Detective,” Baldwin said.
“Yeah, well, McDonald refused our protection, but we were on the lookout for anything suspicious near his house. Don’t tell anyone this, but one of my patrol guys saw the truck earlier in the night and thought it looked out of place, so he took down the plate and put a GPS tracker under the wheel well. The signal stopped emitting an hour ago near Great Falls, Virginia. Turned off like it had been damaged, or discovered. So you might consider watching your backs, too.”
“Roger that, Detective. We’ll be in touch.” Baldwin looked at Sam. “This just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”
Chapter
55
Near Great Falls, Virginia
EDEN’S NEW HEADQUARTERS was on the fringe of civilization. There were well-populated areas less than fifteen minutes to the west, south and east. To the north, across the Potomac River into Maryland, was an upscale country club community. They were surrounded by normalcy, harmony, life. But back in the woods where their little farm was secreted, time had been arrested. The land was completely undeveloped, pristine. There were no power lines running into the compound, no sewer or water, either. They were living off the land, land purchased and owned by Arthur Scarron’s trust.
The entrance to the compound was on a dirt track deep in the woods, its access blocked by a silver three-bar gate. And though there was no power, there was a camera pointed toward the road, and a small metal arm reaching from the ground with a box on top. Either this was meant to be a deterrent, or they were running everything off generators.
Pull up to the gate, get seen by the cameras, speak into the box and presto, the gate would open and Eden would accept you into their land. It all looked so simple, Sam thought.
Except things weren’t going to be nearly that easy.
Operation Angel Fire, as this incursion had been named, was well under way. Sam sat on the hood of Baldwin’s car, safely out of the way, watching the melee. There were federal agents everywhere, helicopters flying in and out, assault vehicles rolling up the road. The FBI wasn’t exactly being subtle. She thought that was risky. A magnificent show of force might make Curtis Lott and her people come out of their compound unharmed, bringing Rachel Stevens with them. Or it could drive them into a mass suicide, as the Edenites had done before.
The head of the HRT was a thick-necked man named Brian Cole. Ten minutes earlier, he and his crew had flown in on an MH-6 Little Bird, the men bristling with weapons, M-4s cradled in their arms, Colt 1911 .45s strapped to their thighs. There was also a gorgeous German shepherd named Dry, sitting patiently by his handler’s feet, tongue lolling out of his mouth to combat the heat.
Sam expected the HRT to be aggressive and mouthy, but she was totally wrong. Cole was quite mellow, giving instructions in a calm voice. There were smiles and clear respect from his men. On his command, his team separated themselves into two units. A sniper/observation team stalked off into the woods, weapons up, to get the lay of the land. An assault team began making their preparations, laying out extensive maps and satellite imagery, drawing on the paper with grease pencils. To Sam, their markings looked more like an SEC football play than a deadly assault.