The Lonely Mile(64)
Agent Canfield’s eyes were red-rimmed and teary, and the gun shook in her hand but still pointed directly at Bill. “He did things to me that you wouldn’t believe if I told you, things so horrible and painful and damaging that I am permanently sterile. He took a normal little girl and turned her into a dead husk, a shell of a human being. But I survived. I overcame it, and I’m strong. So don’t lecture me about taking girls away from the safety of their loving homes, because I know better. There is no such thing. If your precious little princess was worth anything, she would have been able to overcome whatever fate had in store for her in her new home. She would have survived, too, just like I did.”
Bill wanted to say, “Like you did? I wouldn’t wish what you’ve become on my worst enemy!” He wanted to scream at her and shake her and try to make her see beyond herself and her raging psychosis. But Canfield’s use of the past tense at the end of her sickening soliloquy stood out to him like a sore thumb. It was all he could focus on. “Your princess would have been able to overcome her fate, she would have survived.”
He knew she was about to act on her improvised plan for dealing with them, and allowing them to walk out of Martin Krall’s house alive was not part of it. He wasn’t surprised. A dirty FBI agent, knee-deep in international human sex-trafficking couldn’t afford to allow two eyewitnesses to survive. Period.
Bill wanted desperately to keep her talking. Talking meant not shooting. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any way to prompt her to continue. What could she possibly add to the shocking history of abuse she had just related? What could he say to convince her to open up further? And did he really want to? Delving deeper into the horrors of her past didn’t seem like the way to keep her from killing them; if anything, it might just prompt her to finish them off that much sooner.
But it didn’t matter. Agent Canfield had apparently decided the time for introspection was over. She bent over Martin Krall’s body, transferring her weapon to her left hand and continuing to hold it perfectly centered on Bill’s chest. Then she reached under the dead man’s shirttail and lifted his pistol out of the waistband of his jeans. She flipped his body onto its back, meticulously avoiding the small but growing reservoir of blood that pooled around his shattered head.
Bill thought he knew what her plan was, and it scared him to death.
CHAPTER 56
May 28, 4:28 p.m.
“NOW,” CANFIELD SAID, CROUCHING next to Krall’s body. “This isn’t ideal, not by a long shot, but under the circumstances, it’s going to have to do. I’m not going to be able to retire quite as early as I had hoped, what with Krall’s revenue stream—not to mention the man himself—blown to bits, but with a little luck and, of course, your help, this might just all work out.”
She placed the I-90 Killer’s weapon in his dead hand, wrapping her own right hand around his and setting her gun on the floor at her feet. Then she used her left hand to steady her right, angling the weapon upward and pointing it at Bill, who was no more than three feet away, hands still raised in the air.
“Here’s what happened,” she said, apparently deciding to run the story past her captive audience. Bill didn’t mind. Talking meant not shooting, although it had become crystal clear that the shooting would begin soon enough. “You got Krall’s address from Ray Blanchard and ran down here without telling anyone—bad idea, by the way, in case you hadn’t realized it by now—but the farmer’s market owner didn’t believe you when you told him you would bring the information to me. He called and advised me that you had been in his store and figured out Krall was the one who had your daughter. All this, you already know.
“As soon as I took the call, I realized that you were in incredible danger. I jumped in my car, leaving Mike Miller in charge at the Leona Bengston crime scene, and rushed here to protect you. I’ll probably get an official reprimand placed in my personnel file for coming here alone—it’s against Bureau policy, and for good reason—but as you might have guessed by now, I don’t much care about that.” Canfield smiled coldly at Bill. He wondered how he could have missed the utter lack of emotion in her shockingly blue eyes.
“Then, when I got here,” she continued, “I came through the door just as the sound of gunshots erupted from the basement.” The FBI agent now seemed to be talking to herself as much as to Bill, rehearsing her story and poking at it, checking for holes. “I rushed down the stairs to find Krall, the infamous and extremely dangerous I-90 Killer, standing over the bodies of poor, unfortunate Bill Ferguson and his beautiful young daughter, Carli. I fired my service weapon, striking the murderer and killing him, but it was too late. You and poor Carli were already dead.
“I tried my best to revive the two of you, performing artificial respiration on both of you all by myself, but it just wasn’t to be. It’s a tragedy, really.” She looked up at Bill, seemingly awaiting some kind of response. He stared back in shock and horror.
“Well,” she said. “What do you think?”
“What do I think?” Bill shook his head. He tried to find words to express the revulsion he felt as he looked at her, but none would come. Words seemed wholly insufficient. Finally, he gave it a try. “My God, you’re a monster.”
Canfield laughed. “I’m a monster. And you’re what? A hero? Maybe. But I’ll be a living monster and you’ll still be a dead hero. For what it’s worth, I will emphasize to my bosses and the media how close you came to rescuing little Carli here. It’s a great story and will go a long way toward shifting people’s attention off any lingering questions they may have about my role in this whole thing. Not that the Bureau will want to dig too deeply, anyway.”