Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(22)

He had dozens of drones, the careful harvest of several years’ work, scattered across Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. They had been actively involved in the hunt for Mary and Michael. It would take some of the drones longer than others to drive to Grand Rapids, but by the time Martin and his colleagues from DC arrived later that evening, he would have assembled another team.

In a half an hour, one of the nearest drones would bring him clean, serviceable clothes that would fit the monkey. He didn’t bother ordering anything too fancy. He had no plans to stay in this body a moment longer than necessary.

Once he finished the phone calls, he ordered a couple of pizzas and paid for the food with the monkey’s credit card. After all, like Warren Buffett, he believed that one of the best traits of the very wealthy was maintaining frugal financial habits. Then he was ready to sit down with his laptop.

The first thing he saw when he opened his in-box was an e-mail from Martin, with an attachment. Martin’s note was short and to the point.

Here’s the info on Crow. I have one of my staff digging around for more information, but in the meantime, here is the FBI file on our subject.

Smiling with satisfaction, he clicked on the encrypted attachment, punched in a pass code and opened the digital copy of a dossier on Nicholas. He began to read the contents.

Naturally Crow had excelled at everything from an early age. As a teenager, he’d had his choice of career paths. Several universities had courted him with football scholarships, but instead he chose to go the Ivy League route. He took a scholarship to study public policy and public administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. When he graduated, Crow joined the army, where he distinguished himself again.

Boring.

He stopped reading and started to scan. He already knew that Crow had been an exceptional man. Crow had to have been in order to have occupied the position he’d had.

No, he was looking for something else on Crow, something meaty that he could sink his teeth into, and hopefully shake something useful out of it.

Crow’s mother and father had been divorced from the time that he was six years old. He had lived in Chicago with his mother, who had been a nurse, and he had spent summers and Christmas vacations with his father, Jerry Crow, now retired. Crow’s father had owned a couple of antique stores, which he sold several years ago, and he was reputed to be a First Nation elder and active in his tribal community.

And the elder Crow lived in northern Michigan.

There we go.

There was the first little nugget of something to nibble on.

His mother had died in a car accident in the nineties when Crow had been serving overseas. His father, Jerry Crow, was still alive. The dossier even had a digitized photo of him, although it appeared to be at least ten years old. The man in the photo was around sixty or so.

He had terrible dress sense. He wore a flannel shirt and Levi’s, and he held a lit cigarette between the fingers of one hand. His gray-streaked black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and his strong face was creased with laughter as he looked off camera.

“I think I need to pay you a visit, Jerry,” he said to the photo. He tapped the laptop screen with a blunt fingernail. “Offer my condolences on the loss of your son. I feel optimistic that you and I will have an interesting conversation.”

A knock sounded on his motel door. He strolled over to look through the peephole. The first of his drones had arrived, carrying packages of clothes. As he dressed, other drones arrived until within a couple of hours, he felt replenished with both energy and resources.

The state patrol had not yet reported any sign of the car Michael and Mary had been driving, but that had been a long shot anyway. It was more to keep pressure on the pair and make sure they kept moving than anything else.

In the meantime, he was clean, well fed, dressed and he had manpower, weapons and equipment. Plus he had a man in northern Michigan that he was very much interested in talking to. He set his drones to various tasks, then he settled on top of the bedcovers, folded his hairy monkey hands together and closed his eyes to focus on marshaling his forces in the psychic realm.

First he had to cast the net out. He needed to have a presence in every port town. Then he had to tighten the perimeters. Then they could concentrate on sweeping the countryside. He would tear this state apart with his bare hands, if that was what it took to find them.

Another knock sounded on his door. One of his drones answered it. He did not let the interruption disrupt his work until he heard Martin’s voice. Then he sat up in bed to watch Martin usher two other people into the room, a man and a woman. They both wore dark suits and were sharp looking, intelligent and fit. These would be Martin’s colleagues from DC.

As intelligent and as capable as they no doubt were, they had trusted Martin. They never stood a chance. The moment the door closed, several of his drones, including Martin himself, faced the two FBI agents with guns drawn.

Slowly they put their hands up. Martin stepped forward to divest them of their weapons, while their wary gazes darted from drone to drone, until finally they looked at him, as well they should.

He rolled off the bed and onto his feet.

“Hello, hello,” he said cheerfully. “It’s about time you showed up.”

Martin said, “We’ve been in dialogue with the director of the Michigan State Police about how best to direct the manhunt. I have set up a personal meeting with him in an hour, at the District Six headquarters in Rockford, and I told him that I would be bringing a consultant with me.”