The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(72)

Morales turned and headed out of the laundry room. “Bottom line, your guy—or guys—are gone.”

I can do the math as well as Rambo. Seven against one, or two, and we still lost. “So no hostages.”

“Doubt it,” Morales said. “But with the tunnel, hard to know. Forensics may help you on that one. Meantime, we’re casting a wide net, see if we can prevent Gaines from leaving the area. I’ve got more men on the way. They’ll be here in five or six minutes. Police are mobilized, too. But I’m not hopeful. Acres of densely wooded land, lots of residences, a park.”

Vail looked out the windows and saw the boots and legs of SWAT officers searching the woods. “A school. I saw one nearby. On the aerial view. They need to go into lockdown.”

Morales stopped and pulled his two-way and chattered into it, passing on Vail’s suggestion.

She heard someone descending the basement steps and saw Ramos approaching, followed by Tarkoff and Morrison.

As Curtis filled them in, Vail turned to Hurdle. “We blew this about as badly as it could be blown.”

He glanced around, taking in the laundry room and Gaines’s escape route. “Self-recrimination’s not gonna help us catch this knucklehead. Yeah, had we known he was going to come at us with guns blazing, we would’ve done things a little differently. But given what we knew, he was not an extreme threat. And there’s no way in hell we’d think he built a tunnel. It didn’t work out the way we wanted, but I don’t think we blew it. Sometimes shit happens. Way I see it, no one got killed—on our team or innocents in the area. Only bad thing in all of this is that one of our prime witnesses is not in our custody answering our questions.”

Vail put her phone away. “Then I suggest we turn our attention to getting a warrant and tossing this place, see what we can learn about Gaines and Marcks and their relationship. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a cell phone he left behind with Marcks’s number in it.”

“Don’t count on it,” Curtis said. “Too goddamn easy.”

“Plain sight stuff,” Hurdle said to everyone. “We need something that’ll give us probable cause for a warrant.”

They fanned out, all of them but Vail and Curtis heading back upstairs.

Vail shoved the Samsung in her pocket, pulled on a pair of gloves, and wandered around the room. There was not much “in plain sight,” so she made her way over to the living area—the entertainment cabinet and loungers—while Curtis checked out a nearby walk-in closet.

She noticed something wedged into the side of the recliner—a DVD case with a handwritten note in Sharpie marker:

7 y/o

Vail bent her head and read the spine from a different angle. Seven-year-old?

She pushed down hard on the leather seat and the cushion parted from the armrest, revealing part of the DVD’s cover. “Uh, got something.”

Curtis joined her just as she held up the disc. “Are you shitting me? Child porn?”

A photo of a naked boy had been inserted inside the clear plastic sleeve of the case. She pulled it open and found a burned DVD marked in the same black handwriting:

Jimmy

“Yo, Hurdle,” Vail called out.

A few seconds later he came halfway down the steps.

“We’ve got our probable cause. Not exactly what we were looking for, but it’ll do.”

Given Curtis’s firsthand knowledge of the scene and police department procedure, he drove back to Fairfax to videoconference with a magistrate. If all went smoothly, he would have the warrant in hand in about an hour.

“Makes me want to vomit.” Hurdle tossed the disc onto the recliner. “At least it’ll get us the warrant. Good job.”

“I’m afraid to see what else we’ll find. This cabinet could be filled with more of that shit.” She sat down on the lounger and thought a moment. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’re asking me permission to ask me a question?”

“No. Yes.” She glanced around and saw that they were alone. “I want to know what’s up with Rambo. I mean, you know him. Pretty well, I take it.”

Hurdle pulled out a pack of gum and folded a stick into his mouth. “How do you mean?”

“Kind of chomping at the bit.”

“His time in Iraq, urban warfare. Changes you, your outlook. Asked him about it once. He said, ‘You can’t be afraid to go after the baddies or you shouldn’t be carrying a badge. Risk is part of the job.’”

“I’m okay with smart risk. Even desperate risk. But not foolish risk.”

“Every circumstance is different. You never did something that, in the moment, seemed like it had to be done, but in retrospect was a foolish risk?”

Hmm. Let me count the times.

Hurdle did not wait for a reply—or he read Vail’s face and got his answer. “I guess one man’s smart is another man’s foolish.”

“Not sure I agree with that.”

“I take Rambo for what he is. A good cop, solid task force member. He just needs some policing at times.” He headed toward the stairs. “I’m gonna get up there and finish looking around.”

Vail checked her watch, then called Jasmine to see if she remembered anything about Gaines, whether or not she might have an idea as to where he would go, places he used to hang out. She doubted Jasmine could offer anything of value, but it was a logical question to ask.