“Tell me, is your office in Washington?”
“We have regional offices as well, of course. In fact, the Washington office is purely administrative. Our personnel are based out of New York or Austin, Texas.”
The connection was obvious. New York was close to Cape May, New Jersey; Galveston, Killeen, and Alvord were in Texas; Brooksville, Oklahoma, was probably an easy day’s drive from Austin. Getting from Austin to Florida or New Orleans would be simple. An adjustor could take a flight to somewhere within reasonable driving distance of a forecast disaster.
Amaia hazarded a last request, not expecting much of it. “Mr. Landis, I’m going to forward to you a list of some significant recent disasters, including New Orleans, where a disaster is striking even as we speak. I’m down here helping out after Katrina, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to phone you again, but I’ll do my best to get back in contact. But it may be extremely important for our ongoing investigation to establish which adjustor—or adjustors—visited those specific locations and when. And if any happened to be on leave on those dates. Oh, and if any of them has been on vacation for the past couple of days.”
“Um-huh,” Landis responded, certainly taking all that down.
She had a sudden inspiration. “And could you also provide the birthdates of any adjustors who fit those criteria?”
“I can.”
“How long do you think it will take to gather all that information?”
Landis was quiet for several seconds. Amaia was hoping against hope that he could have it quickly.
“Some of this I can have for you today, but for most of it I’ll need to check with our regional HR departments . . . oh, let’s say, probably by noon tomorrow.”
Agent Stella Tucker noticed that her left leg was numb. She stretched it as much as she could, which wasn’t much. She had to get out of the seat in the back of the van, then bend a long way over to stretch her legs. She glanced back at the five men with her in the van and caught every one of them except Emerson quickly looking away and pretending not to have been staring at her butt. Her FBI colleague, seated in the other jump seat, was staring at nothing. She rolled her eyes and massaged her calves to get the circulation going.
The SWAT team leader’s voice came through her earphones loud and clear. “He just moved. Still got his hands on the steering wheel, but he’s looking up.”
“Everybody stay put!” she responded. “Remember, unless something unexpected happens, we wait for him to enter the house. If we arrest him now, even if he’s armed, the DA will make mincemeat of us. We wait until he goes inside.”
She’d reminded them a dozen times, but she knew all the SWAT team members were on edge. She was just as nervous and irritable as they were. Her legs ached from the perpetual squatting in the back of the van.
Brad Nelson had been sitting in his car, parked in front of his wife’s house, for an hour and seven minutes.
He’d driven up, stopped right before the front gate, and killed the motor. She’d been convinced right then that he was going to get out and go to the front door. He’d even pushed open the door on the driver’s side, which caused the interior light to go on. But then he’d pulled it shut and stayed inside, intently studying the house. Ten minutes earlier he’d looked up for a few moments as if something had caught his attention, but then he’d knotted his hands together, gripped the wheel, and put his forehead against them.
“My man on the upper terrace says it looks like he’s praying,” the SWAT team leader told her.
She took that as a telltale sign. Praying before killing would be entirely in keeping with the profile for the Composer they’d assembled from crime scene details and records of Martin Lenx’s behavior.
“He’s separated his hands and he’s looking up again.”
She looked through the rear window. She had an unimpeded line of sight to the front of the Spanish colonial home with the broad second-story terrace. A palm tree near the entrance partly masked a walk around that ran to the rear of the house. From her position, she could see the back of Nelson’s car but very little of the man himself.
“Stay alert. If he’s finished his prayers, he might be ready to go.”
Events seemed to prove her intuition correct.
“He’s moving again,” the SWAT leader radioed. “He’s leaning over now, taking something from the glove compartment. It’s a gun! Repeat, suspect has a pistol!”
“Everybody stay alert!” Tucker urged again. “Remember, wait until he goes inside.”
She saw the car door spring open with such force that it rebounded and slammed back against the emerging driver, who paid no attention. Both of his hands were clutching the pistol, which he extended firmly before him. Leaving the car door open, he hunched over and ran toward the side of the house. Tucker was astonished; she hadn’t expected him to go that way. He’d been in front of the house for more than an hour, as if he couldn’t work up the courage required. Tucker had expected him eventually to start the car and drive away.
The SWAT leader yelled into his microphone. “Heads up, everybody, he’s going to the back! Suspect is armed and heading toward the back door!”
Desperate for air untainted with men’s aftershave and unable to restrain herself, Tucker opened the rear door just a crack. Through the early-morning quiet of the street, a thunderous pounding reached her before the voice of the SWAT leader did. “Attention! He’s kicking the back door down!”
She exerted command. “Wait! Wait, everybody, until he goes inside.”
The next thing she heard was a series of gunshots. She could have sworn there were four, though in the recap afterward they counted five: four from Nelson and one from the SWAT member in the living room forced to return fire.
When she returned to the improvised emergency room, Amaia saw Bull with Johnson outside Dupree’s room. Little Jacob was nowhere in sight. Charbou stalked down the hall toward them, clearly furious.
“Where’s the boy?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, he’s with his grandmother,” Johnson told her. “Her husband is stable. They’ve been moved to the third floor.”
She pointed to the door. “Any news?”
Charbou answered angrily, glaring at his partner. “No, there’s no fucking news, and you know why? Let me tell you, since your boss and my partner have been working behind our backs all the time we thought we were tracking down a serial killer!”
“That’s not true. We’re after the Composer,” Jason Bull countered patiently, keeping his voice low.
“Salazar was on to it from the start, all those little whispers and private conversations. I didn’t see it at first, then, yes, I saw it, but I didn’t want to believe it, even though she pointed it out. Because not in a million years would I have thought you’d do such a thing!”
Bull looked down, patiently enduring his partner’s tirade. When he did reply, it was again in a quiet voice. “You wouldn’t have understood.”
Charbou glared at him. “I wouldn’t have understood. You’re telling me I’m an idiot. If there’s anything I don’t understand, it’s why you didn’t explain it to me. And you can start by telling me—what in holy hell is that thing we brought here in the Zodiac?”