“He heads up the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force.”
Underwood absorbed that, then nodded. “Marshal, I don’t want to sound condescending, but this was a very complex murder case, perhaps the most difficult in my career, which spans four decades. It’s wholly unfair to find any blame with Karen. Or me. Or Erik Curtis. We were all duped by two people who had motivations and a set of circumstances we’ve never encountered before. I’d even say no police force in the world has come up against something as elaborate as this, featuring two very disturbed psychopaths.”
Hurdle frowned. “I’ll debrief you tomorrow. Assuming you get it all figured out.” He faced Vail. “And assuming we catch your buddy Jasmine.”
“I feel bad enough about this. Thanks for rubbing it in.”
“My pleasure. Really. It is.” He turned to leave and spoke as he walked out. “Now I’ve gotta go catch two goddamn fugitives.”
“He’ll get over it,” Underwood said as Hurdle ascended the steps. “He’s pissed. But he doesn’t have a clue what was really going on in this case. I do, I lived it. You do, because you lived the tail end of it. Just know that it is what it is. We do our best and sometimes that’s not good enough. But know that you gave it your all. You did, didn’t you?”
“Give it my all?” Vail studied his face. “Always.”
Underwood smiled. “I have no doubt.”
Vail’s phone vibrated with a text from Leslie Johnson:
townhouse owned by edna heasley age 94
curtis told me why you were looking at this place
ss checks still being cashed
no children no known friends still alive
curtis thinks edna is another jasmine victim so to speak
I think he’s right. “Sorry, just got the 411 on who owns this house.” She typed a quick thanks to Johnson, then turned back to Underwood.
“Jasmine’s had it for nine years,” he said. “This is the place we searched for and never found. There are supposedly trophies here. Somewhere.”
“How do you know? How’d you know all this other stuff about Jasmine?”
Underwood chortled—and coughed. He cleared his throat, then said, “I asked her. She told me. When I started to put it together, she laughed at me for getting it so wrong. I felt so humiliated. It’s not just you. I’m good at dishing out advice, but don’t think I didn’t beat myself up over it, too. Which was, of course, what she wanted. She wanted to feel like she was in control, which meant beating me down. Me, the expert. Plus, she figured there’s no reason not to tell me.”
“Because she was going to kill you.”
“And when she saw you at the door, she—”
“She saw me? There was a camera?”
Underwood gestured across the room where a small monitor showed a view of both the front and rear of the house.
Vail kicked a stool that was a foot to her left. “I looked. I didn’t see anything.” Above that monitor was another screen—of the dog she had found at Jasmine’s. “That’s yours, isn’t it?”
“Rusty, yeah. I saw when you found him. You made him—and me—very happy.”
“I take it Jasmine wasn’t here when I was there.”
“You missed her by two or three minutes.”
“Sorry I had to leave Rusty behind.” She took out her phone to text Curtis to tell him to send an officer to pick up the retriever—and bring him to her house for the time being.
“I saw what happened,” Underwood said. “You realized what was going on and you got your asses out of there in case Jasmine hadn’t already seen you. How’d you find her?”
Vail explained the device Uzi had given her.
“So you know where she is now?”
“Maybe. It’s subject to interference, so there are times when I don’t get a real-time location.” She opened the app. It showed a static signal. Did she stop somewhere? She texted the coordinates to Curtis, who said he and Tarkoff were not far away.
Underwood gave her a dubious look. “Either she’s found what she thinks is a good place to lie low for a while or—”
“She found the device and ditched it. As soon as I showed up here, I was worried she’d realize I had some way of tracking her. She was careful to use burner phones to keep from being found by Marcks—as well as, apparently, by me. So there’d be no way for me to find this place unless I followed her.”
“I’m sure she was extremely careful about that.”
“I need time to rethink all my contacts with her, both recent stuff and in the past. What things did I tell her when my guard was down? What kind of information did I divulge about the investigation?” Vail closed her eyes. What a mess. “You were about to tell me why Marcks wants to kill her. Before Hurdle showed up.”