Devoted(65)

A deputy, thundering up the front stairs, shouted, “Sheriff! You up there?”

As the man appeared at the head of the staircase, Eckman said, “What is it?”

“They got him. Johnson and Colt got the bastard. Colt’s hurt bad, ambulance on the way. Johnson’s all right, and the perp is under restraint.”

Eckman smiled broadly at Megan, as though the abominations so recently revealed were no longer of any consequence. “You’re safe, Ms. Bookman. Perfectly safe. My men have done their job. You can stay the night without concern. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

His shoulders back and a bounce in his step, as though the terror visited on Pinehaven County was an opportunity seized, a political crisis become a career enhancement, he walked away.

To his back, she said quietly, “It’s Mrs. Bookman.”





68





The ambulance was capable of carrying two injured persons, but Walter Colt refused to be taken to the hospital in the same vehicle as Nathan Palmer, even though the EMTs intended to tranquilize the killer with chlorpromazine.

Freeman Johnson totally understood. He persuaded the first responders to put in a call for a second unit for Palmer, and Walter Colt was whisked away, the ambulance’s lightbar flashing and its siren wailing as if it were some woodland banshee chasing through the trees.

Backup had arrived before the ambulance, so that Freeman didn’t have to wait alone with the prisoner. He had his cattle prod ready, and Deputy Argento had one as well. Carrickton armed herself with a shotgun, and she looked as though she would enjoy using it.

Facedown on the ground, the perp struggled tirelessly to free himself from the zip ties that bound his wrists behind his back. He was so persistent that he had rubbed the skin away and was bleeding slightly. The pain seemed not to matter to him.





69



Hours past his usual bedtime, fueled by black coffee and two glazed doughnuts, beginning to consider using the next cup of brew to wash down a caffeine tablet, still at his computer in the morgue, Carson Conroy had gathered more information than he had hoped to acquire.



When he’d gone to the National Crime Information Center website to look for any warrant issued for Nathan Palmer, his screen had gone white except for a perfect silhouette of his shoulders, neck, and head. He knew this meant that some security agency—most likely the NSA—had an interest in who researched Palmer and had taken his photograph with the camera in his computer. He was not concerned, because this had happened twice before on other cases, without any subsequent consequences.

Although Nathan Palmer was wanted for larceny, arson, and murder, the specifics of these crimes, the what-when-where, were missing from the writ issued by the court in Salt Lake City. That data had been put under seal, which Carson found decidedly strange. Palmer’s photo, taken from a Montana driver’s license, showed a reasonably attractive man in his midthirties, clean-shaven with brown hair and brown eyes.

Something about the photo resonated with Carson. He had never met Nathan Palmer, yet the man looked familiar.

Lyle Sheldrake, the previous sheriff and the one who brought Carson to Pinehaven, had anticipated a moment when his successor, Hayden Eckman, would get himself into a situation where he would feel it necessary to set up a fall guy. Because Carson was not an Eckman loyalist, he would always be a prime candidate for the new sheriff’s scapegoat. Consequently, Sheldrake had created a secret back door into the department’s computer system and left instructions for its use only with Carson. Sheldrake had said, “Maybe Hayden’s not the snake he seems to be, but you best have some antivenin just in case.”



Now Carson Conroy swam secretly through the shallow lake of data maintained by the sheriff’s department and found his way into the cloudy backwater of Hayden Eckman’s personal files. The one that looked most interesting was labeled Unofficial Case Notes. Therein he found an entry made this date, regarding his supposed inebriation, argumentativeness, and generally unprofessional behavior when Frawley and Zellman had arrived from Sacramento to effect the transfer of jurisdiction in the Spader-Klineman murders.

Carson was angry, but not enraged. In such a situation, an element of surprise, a sense of unexpected betrayal, must be present for anger to escalate into something stronger. He had thought Eckman capable of both deceit and treachery, so that his anger was hardly more than indignation, lacking violent passion and vindictiveness. Anyway, the lie about his being drunk was not the most interesting thing in the file related to the recent murders.

Of greater interest were Eckman’s notes on his conversations with Tio Barbizon, the attorney general of California. The National Security Agency was not only interested in the case, but was trying to run the investigation—and keep it quiet—through Tio Barbizon’s office. The suspected killer’s Nathan Palmer ID was false. Although Barbizon didn’t share Palmer’s real name, he did reveal to Eckman that the fugitive had been a highly placed executive at Refine, Inc., with oversight of the Springville, Utah, facility where ninety-two had died in a ferocious fire.

Carson backed out of the sheriff’s department computer system. He knew why Nathan Palmer looked familiar. The previous day, he had seen a bit of film on the news, a clip from a two-year-old speech that the CEO of Refine had given concerning the company’s cancer research at its labs outside Springville. He googled it, found it. At the time of the speech, the guy sported a neatly trimmed beard, and his hair appeared blond, not brown. Although his name was Lee Shacket, the resemblance was strong enough that Carson had no doubt the guy was also Nathan Palmer.