The Lonely Mile(62)
In his peripheral vision, Bill watched as a hand snaked out and grabbed the gun. It was a slender hand, female, and attached to it was an arm covered with a soaking wet blue windbreaker. An FBI windbreaker. Immediately, he placed the voice. It was the same one he had spoken to dozens of times over the last two days. It was Special Agent Angela Canfield.
“This is the guy,” Bill said, turning excitedly, wondering why she didn’t get what was going on here. How stupid could she be? “This is the I-90 Killer! Put the cuffs on him before he has a chance to—”
“Shut up,” Angela Canfield said, pistol-whipping Bill in the forehead with a force that opened a gash and rocked him back on his heels. Blood spurted and dribbled down his forehead in a thick rivulet. “I need a minute to think.”
As she spoke, Krall reached out, carefully plucked Bill’s Browning from Agent Canfield’s hand, and began examining it. “What are you doing here?” he said to her. “I was supposed to have this chick for a whole week. We had the usual agreement.” The I-90 Killer seemed only annoyed by the fact he had come a half-second away from having his slimy head blown right off his shoulders.
Carli moaned. It was the first sound Bill had heard her make since descending the stairs. She looked at Bill with huge eyes filled with desperation and maybe even resignation. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but before he could do that he had to figure out how to deal with this astounding turn of events.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re involved in this, aren’t you?” He looked into Canfield’s face and saw those ice-blue eyes staring unblinkingly back at him, glittering and beautiful and suddenly also cold and calculating. He recalled the frosty gaze she had leveled at him when he sent her away last night. She continued pressing her service weapon insistently into his forehead. He refused to back off and more blood spilled, starting a second track, running into his eyebrows. Soon it would begin to drip into his eyes.
“Duh,” she said mockingly. “Great sleuthing, Sherlock. How else do you think this moron could escape capture for so long?”
“Who are you calling a moron?” Krall protested, but Canfield ignored him.
“It’s the perfect scam,” she continued. “He takes the girls, enjoys them for a week in his own unique way, and then we move them out of the country and along to their new owners.”
Bill was stunned. “But…these girls are people! They’re human beings, and you’re ripping them away from their families, their lives…”
“There’s money to be made.”
“My God,” he said in wonderment. “What is wrong with you? How can you be so cold? This guy here,” Bill indicated Martin Krall with a nod, “has obviously got mental and psychological issues, but you…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head in utter amazement.
“Oh, grow up, will you, Mr. Boy Scout?” Canfield replied. “I worked gangs for years when I first started in law enforcement, and you know what I saw?”
Bill stared at her silently, in shock, and she continued. “I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw people on the take everywhere. I saw money being made, hand over fist, mountains of money, more money than you could ever count, all going to judges and lawyers and politicians and high-level bureaucrats. I saw myself busting my butt, trying to make a difference, while all the fat cats got rich off my hard work.
“So when I got this gig and ran down the legendary Mr. Krall, here, I saw the chance, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make my big score. We teamed up, made the right connections, and had a great thing going until you came along and rocked the very lucrative boat.” She shoved the gun barrel into his forehead again and pain blossomed outward from the point of impact. Bill barely noticed.
“I was within one or two more girls of having enough money to be able to chuck it all, to blow off the FBI and go live on a beach somewhere.” She sighed and shook her head ruefully. “Now this changes everything. I guess I’ll have to work a little longer. On the bright side,” she said, smiling coldly at Bill, “I believe I can make this all work out to my benefit. Yes, I’m pretty sure I can.”
“But what about—” Bill began.
“Last night? ‘Oh, Bill, let’s share our loneliness and fear!’ Is that what you’re talking about? You concerned me,” she told him. “I had a feeling you knew more than you were telling me, and I knew I needed to keep a close eye on you. I figured you were just like every other man on the face of this filthy planet. I figured, given the opportunity to roll around in the hay with me, you wouldn’t hesitate. Who would have guessed I would come across the one Boy Scout left in the world?”
Bill shook his head defiantly. “Tell yourself that if you want,” he said, “but not every man is as twisted and amoral as you seem to believe.”
Canfield barked out a laugh, short and cruel. “Sure, Bill, if you say so. Let me tell you what I know from personal experience. There’s no such thing as love in this world. There’s only pain and cruelty. And that,” she said, still smiling without a trace of warmth, “brings us neatly back to this moment in time. Here we are, all four of us, and the question is, how do we proceed?
“Mr. Krall, here, as useful as he is at procuring ripe, virginal young ladies for our little business venture, is nowhere near creative or clever enough to come up with anything resembling a workable conclusion to this thorny problem, but fortunately for me, I am. In fact, I believe I have already developed a plan that will satisfy my needs more than adequately. It’s not perfect, but what in this world is?” Agent Canfield no longer trained her ice-blue eyes on Bill, but appeared to retreat back inside her mind. She seemed to be working at convincing herself of the feasibility of her “workable conclusion.”