I Will Find You(43)
“So you don’t blame him?” Max said.
“Not really, no.”
“What did you two talk about during your visit?”
“I just asked David how he was.”
“And how was he?”
“Still broken. David didn’t want visitors. He just wanted to be left alone.”
“Yet you came back the next day.”
“Yes.”
“And planned to return again.”
“David and I were close. Before all this, I mean. I…I also confided in him.”
“Do you mind telling us what about?”
“It doesn’t really matter. I’ve had some setbacks of my own.”
“And you thought, what, he’d be a sympathetic ear?”
Rachel’s voice was soft. “Something like that.”
“And by setbacks,” Sarah said, “do you mean your recent divorce?”
“Or,” Max added, “the scandal that ended your career?”
Rachel stayed very still.
Max leaned closer. No reason for subtlety anymore. “It’s all unraveling, Ms. Anderson. You know that, don’t you?”
She didn’t take the bait.
“Look how much Sarah dug up in just a few hours. We are going to catch him. There’s no question about it. If he’s lucky, we will catch him alive, but David Burroughs is a convicted child killer who stole a firearm from a warden, so…” Max shrugged to indicate that this was out of his control. “As soon as we do catch him—probably in the next few hours—Sarah and I will turn all our efforts toward building a case against you for aiding and abetting.”
“You’ll serve a very long time,” Sarah said.
“This is not an idle threat on our part,” Max said.
“Not a threat,” Sarah repeated, giving Rachel the dagger eyes again. “I can’t wait to put you behind bars.”
“Unless, Sarah.”
“Unless what, Max?”
“Unless she cooperates. Here and now.”
Sarah frowned. “I don’t think we need her, Max.”
“You’re probably right, but maybe Ms. Anderson didn’t know what she was getting involved in. Maybe she didn’t understand what she was doing.”
“Oh, she understood.”
“But still—we agreed, Sarah. If Rachel tells us what she knows now, we give her full immunity.”
“That was before, Max. Now I want her to serve time for jerking us around like this.”
“You have a point, Sarah.”
Rachel stayed silent.
“This is your last chance,” Max said. “Your ‘get out of jail free’ card expires in three minutes.”
“Then we arrest her, Max?”
“Then we arrest her, Sarah.”
Sarah folded her hands and put them on the table. “So what do you say, Rachel?”
“I changed my mind,” Rachel said. “I want my lawyer.”
Chapter
17
Okay, Sarah, give me the most likely working theory,” Max said.
Max and Sarah headed toward Newark Airport to catch a flight back up to Briggs Penitentiary. It had turned out that the attorney Rachel Anderson called was the notorious Hester Crimstein, who promptly got her bail and released.
“Stop chewing your nails, Max.”
“Let me be, Sarah, okay?”
“It’s gross.”
“It helps me think.”
Sarah sighed.
“So what’s our working theory?”
“Burroughs escapes with the help of Philip and Adam Mackenzie,” Sarah began.
“We are sure the Mackenzies are in it?”
“I think we are.”
“I think we are too,” Max said. “Continue.”
“Burroughs gets out of the warden’s car in the underground parking garage at the outlet center. He calls Rachel Anderson, who is waiting for his call at the Nesbitt Station Diner. Rachel drives over to the outlet center. With me so far, Max?”
“Yep. Keep going.”
“She meets up with Burroughs. Burroughs gets in her car.”
“And then?”
“They head up north. We have that last phone ping.”
“Which is odd.”
“How so?”
“Why turn the phone off then?” Max asked. “Why not earlier?”
“If she turns it off at the outlet center, we would know that’s where she went.”
Max frowned. “Yeah, I guess, maybe.”
“But?”
Max shook it off. “Go on.”
“They keep driving to that general store—”
“The Katahdin General Store,” Max added, “in Millinocket.”
“Right, where he buys the survival gear. Based on the traffic patterns and timeline I put together, I’d say she had time to drive him farther north for another half hour or so. Either way, Rachel drops Burroughs off in some heavily wooded area. We have copters and dogs covering it, but the area is black-hole vast.”
“And then?”
Sarah shrugged. “And then that’s it.”