The Lonely Mile(68)

With no room in the driveway, and not wanting to block the ambulance’s departure, the team parked their vehicles on the side of the road just past the end of the driveway. They exited en masse and made their way toward the beat-up old house in the middle of nowhere.

Now, slipping under the yellow “Crime Scene” tape and descending Martin Krall’s rickety basement stairs, Miller gasped as he got his first view of the scene. His initial thought was that Carter’s description had been right on target. It was a bloodbath. A pair of paramedics worked feverishly over the body of Angela Canfield, who lay crumpled and unmoving on the basement’s cold cement floor, just feet away from the body of a man—presumably the I-90 Killer—with half of his head blown off. It was plain to see the man was dead, an assumption that was confirmed by the fact that the medical personnel steadfastly ignored him as they worked on Canfield.

Blood covered an area roughly six feet in diameter around the two prone bodies. It was an incredible amount of blood; the gruesome scene looked as though someone had attached a garden hose to a bucket of human blood and then sprayed it indiscriminately around the basement. The two bodies, one gravely injured and the other already dead, lay next to an old, rickety bed with an iron headboard, upon which lay a thin, filthy mattress.

Miller reached the bottom of the stairs and was approached by a tall, balding man who had been standing out of sight in a corner. The man wore a Mason PD uniform and held his hat in both hands, twirling it over and over before finally clutching it in his left hand and offering his right to Miller.

“You must be Special Agent Miller,” he said. “I’m Greg Branson, chief of the Mason PD. I’m also chief investigator. We’re a small department, ill-equipped to deal with this sort of situation, which is why we don’t have many bodies working the scene yet. I’m pretty sure, though, that you will have your people all over this house in a matter of minutes, anyway, especially once you hear what our two witnesses are saying about your agent.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, chief, and I’d like to thank you for the expeditious notification. I’m sure it doesn’t sit well with your officers that you will be ceding control of the investigation to the Bureau.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Chief Branson answered. “Like I said, we’re not equipped to deal with this sort of thing, anyway. If a Bureau agent hadn’t been involved, we would be calling in the State Police for assistance.”

“Still, I do appreciate it,” he said. “Is Special Agent Canfield going to make it?”

“Good question,” Branson answered and shrugged. “The two EMT boys have been doing all they can for her, working like dogs for the last twenty minutes. They’ve been too busy to answer any but the briefest questions. It looks like they’re getting ready to transport her now, though.”

Almost as if on cue, the paramedics lifted Canfield’s limp frame onto a body board and strapped her securely to it, immobilizing her arms and legs and securing her head. The one who seemed to be in charge had obviously heard Miller’s question to Chief Branson, and he shook his head at them almost imperceptibly. “It doesn’t look good,” he said in a near-whisper. “She’s lost a lot of blood. If I was a betting man, I’d say she won’t make it to the hospital alive.”


Miller looked down and blinked in surprise as Angela Canfield returned his gaze. He had thought she was unconscious, but now he understood the paramedic’s reluctance to speak at a volume she might hear. The FBI agent’s eyes were glazed with pain and shock but alive with understanding. Her skin was bone-white, and she shivered uncontrollably despite the heat and humidity the passing storm had left in its wake, and despite the fact she was draped in a heavy wool blanket.

“Angie,” Mike Miller said in an agonized voice as the paramedics trundled her past and struggled up the stairs. “What happened? Is it true what they’re saying?”

To his astonishment, she smiled like the cat that ate the canary, as his mother used to say. “A gal’s got to prepare for her retirement, you know,” she said weakly. Her voice was quavering and paper-thin. She sounded to Mike like a ninety-year-old woman rather than the sharp, lively, cat-quick young woman he had come to know over the past year.

“Oh, my God,” he mumbled to himself as Chief Branson nodded unseen next to him. He made a snap decision; there was no time to run this one by the SAC. He hustled up the stairs behind the two paramedics, who were now carrying the board with the frighteningly wan body of Special Agent Angela Canfield down the hallway toward the front door. There was blood everywhere, Miller noted. The men had apparently made the decision simply to carry Canfield rather than try to wheel her across the rough terrain to the ambulance.

“Hey, guys?” Miller said, falling into place behind them. “Would it be all right if I rode in the back of the ambulance with her? If she’s up to it, I need to ask her a few questions.”

The men shared a glance, and Miller knew exactly what they were thinking. She was going to be dead soon, so if he had questions, he had better hurry up and ask them. “Sure,” one of them said. Miller didn’t notice which one answered him.





CHAPTER 61


May 29, 7:15 p.m.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU GO to Agent Canfield with the name and address you got from Ray Blanchard like you told him you were going to? Did you suspect something was not quite right with her?” Special Agent Mike Miller watched Bill Ferguson closely as he waited for an answer. They had been over this subject more times than Bill could remember in the twenty-four hours since he had awoken from the surgery to remove one bullet from his arm and another from his leg.