“Oh, grow up, will you, Mr. Boy Scout?” Canfield replied. “I worked gangs for years when I first started in law enforcement, and you know what I saw?”
Bill stared at her silently, in shock, and she continued. “I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw people on the take everywhere. I saw money being made, hand over fist, mountains of money, more money than you could ever count, all going to judges and lawyers and politicians and high-level bureaucrats. I saw myself busting my butt, trying to make a difference, while all the fat cats got rich off my hard work.
“So when I got this gig and ran down the legendary Mr. Krall, here, I saw the chance, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make my big score. We teamed up, made the right connections, and had a great thing going until you came along and rocked the very lucrative boat.” She shoved the gun barrel into his forehead again and pain blossomed outward from the point of impact. Bill barely noticed.
“I was within one or two more girls of having enough money to be able to chuck it all, to blow off the FBI and go live on a beach somewhere.” She sighed and shook her head ruefully. “Now this changes everything. I guess I’ll have to work a little longer. On the bright side,” she said, smiling coldly at Bill, “I believe I can make this all work out to my benefit. Yes, I’m pretty sure I can.”
“But what about—” Bill began.
“Last night? ‘Oh, Bill, let’s share our loneliness and fear!’ Is that what you’re talking about? You concerned me,” she told him. “I had a feeling you knew more than you were telling me, and I knew I needed to keep a close eye on you. I figured you were just like every other man on the face of this filthy planet. I figured, given the opportunity to roll around in the hay with me, you wouldn’t hesitate. Who would have guessed I would come across the one Boy Scout left in the world?”
Bill shook his head defiantly. “Tell yourself that if you want,” he said, “but not every man is as twisted and amoral as you seem to believe.”
Canfield barked out a laugh, short and cruel. “Sure, Bill, if you say so. Let me tell you what I know from personal experience. There’s no such thing as love in this world. There’s only pain and cruelty. And that,” she said, still smiling without a trace of warmth, “brings us neatly back to this moment in time. Here we are, all four of us, and the question is, how do we proceed?
“Mr. Krall, here, as useful as he is at procuring ripe, virginal young ladies for our little business venture, is nowhere near creative or clever enough to come up with anything resembling a workable conclusion to this thorny problem, but fortunately for me, I am. In fact, I believe I have already developed a plan that will satisfy my needs more than adequately. It’s not perfect, but what in this world is?” Agent Canfield no longer trained her ice-blue eyes on Bill, but appeared to retreat back inside her mind. She seemed to be working at convincing herself of the feasibility of her “workable conclusion.”
“Yes,” she muttered, now speaking in a near-whisper. “I think this will have to do.”
She rotated her arm smoothly, shifting the barrel of her weapon just a couple of inches until it now pointed directly at a surprised Martin Krall.
“What do you think you’re—”
She fired, blowing his head apart in a fine crimson stew of blood, brain tissue, and pulverized bone.
CHAPTER 55
May 28, 4:21 p.m.
THE ROAR WAS DEAFENING, eclipsing the noise of the storm and effectively drowning out Carli’s scream. The spray of blood from the murdered I-90 Killer’s head covered her face and her clothing, tinting her in a reddish hue. She thrashed on her bed in a panic, trying desperately to escape but unable, anchored to the spot by the unyielding handcuffs.
Before Krall’s murdered body had hit the floor, Agent Canfield rotated the gun and once again brought it to bear on Bill Ferguson. The entire bloody incident had taken no more than a half-second’s time and Bill now realized, too late, that he had missed what would likely be his only opportunity to take her by surprise and overpower her. In his shock and disbelief at what he was seeing, he had stood rooted to the spot upon which he was now going to die.
He had taken a single, reflexive step backward when Canfield fired her gun, bringing his hands together in front of his face in a warding-off gesture—another reflexive action, which would have been completely ineffective had the gun been pointed at him—and now Canfield barked, “Get your hands above your head, now!”
Bill obeyed, and when he did, the knuckles of his right hand grazed something sharp directly over his head. He felt a stinging sensation and yelped, glancing upward and seeing that he had struck a pair of wooden crossbeams that had been added in an X pattern between the two-by-six studs supporting the first floor above their heads. Like everything else in the house, the support struts needed maintenance badly.
One of the supports had come loose, hanging off one side of the two-by-sixes. When Bill raised his hands he’d scraped it and splinters dug into the back of his hand. He cried out, shaking his hand.
Canfield screamed, “Get your hands in the air!”
Bill raised his hand again, ignoring the throbbing in his knuckles, well aware that a couple of splinters would soon be the least of his problems. Angela Canfield’s entire body was shaking, and sweat was pouring off her. It ran down her face. Her moment of relative calm had passed, and she was clearly feeling the pressure of this life-and-death situation. Bill realized he was lucky she hadn’t shot him already.