It was a legitimate question, June thought.
Lewis’s eyes softened. “We’re plenty different,” he said. “The three of us here, we trying to put out the fire. The people we looking for, they the ones lit the match. They already killed two people that weknow of, probably more. They’re heavily armed and planning some kind of attack. You want to be the person who coulda helped but didn’t?”
“Crap.” Wildman’s mouth puckered like she’d just taken a bite of something rotten. “Fine. Come on.” She turned to Manny and put a finger in his face. “But don’t you touch me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Manny said. “I’m sorry about that. And thank you for your help.”
54
The living room was cluttered with too much furniture, a sign of someone who had moved from a much larger home. Ann-Marie Wildman led June up the stairs to an office in a small second bedroom. The walls were bare. Four file cabinets and a desk with a large monitor were the only furnishings. The single personal item was a framed photo on her desk of a middle-aged man grinning for the camera. Wildman pulled out the chair and sat. “What’s the name?”
“Garrison Bevel,” June said, looking over her shoulder. “Do you remember him?”
“The name’s familiar. I have a lot of clients. I never actually meet most of them, we just email. With some, their affairs are more complicated, and I get a little more involved.” Wildman hit a key and the monitor lit up. “Conventional spelling?”
“Yes. Would you have been involved in any real estate transactions? We’re looking for a physical address, someplace rural, east of Tacoma. Maybe a former summer camp.”
Wildman’s hands froze above the keyboard. “Really? The old Scout camp? That’s the kidnapper?”
“One of them.” June found the brochure photo on her phone and showed it to Wildman. “Is this him?”
“I mean, he’s older now, but yes. Those same eyes. I set up a few companies for him. But I haven’t seen him in years.”
“You met in person?”
“That’s how he wanted it. He did everything in person. He said he didn’t use computers. He even paid me in cash. With the purchase of the old Scout camp, he made me a corporate officer. I signed all the documents. His name’s not on anything.”
She clicked the mouse a few times, typed for a moment, then stopped and turned to face them. “I just want to say something. My clients are regular people who just want me to help them navigate the bureaucracy and, sometimes, keep their names off public records. People have the right to privacy. It’s perfectly legal. If some of them choose to break the law, that has nothing to do with me.”
“Of course not,” June said. “But maybe some clients give you a bad feeling. Like this guy.”
Wildman nodded. “Somehow he knew that my husband had passed away. He said all the right things, but he kept touching me, and he kept asking me questions. Was I all alone? Did I need a friend? The way he looked at me, it was like he could see right through me, all my sadness and pain. Like he was feeding off it.”
She sighed. “My name is on all that paperwork. Am I going to be in trouble? If he does something bad?”
“You run a business. He was a client. If the police ever knock on your door, just answer their questions. You’ll be fine.”
“Like that’s going to help me sleep tonight.” Wildman hit a few more keys. “Here it is. I’ll print a hard copy.”
“Thank you. Can you give me everything else you have on him?”
“Sure.” The printer hummed. June took the papers from the tray as they came out. The top document was for a real estate purchase on NF-54, which was a national forest road. Five hundred acres. The town was given as Palmer, Washington. June passed it to Lewis. “Is this in the right area?”
Lewis glanced at the pages, then did something on his phone. When he raised his head, his eyes were dark and his jaw was set. “It’s right down the road from Nickels’s place. Jarhead and I were practically on top of the motherfucker.”
—
It was seven forty-five and well past dark by the time they got back in the Lexus. They were more than two hours behind Peter’s captors.
Faraday pushed hard through the traffic, but it was slow going, even for Seattle. Manny sat in the shotgun seat with an oil-stained towel on his lap, field-stripping and cleaning his rifle, the smell of gun oil permeating the car. June was in the back with Lewis, who was looking at the hieroglyphics on the old maps Peter had found. Faraday hadn’t been able to make any sense of the markings, but they all were convinced they meant something, if they could just figure it out.
June paged through the rest of the legal documents, hoping to find clues to the Messenger’s plans buried in the printouts. Aside from the Tacoma storefront, the only other real estate the Messenger owned appeared to be an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. He’d set up two other companies with Ann-Marie signing as a corporate officer. One was a construction company, the other a farm. Likely done for tax reasons, to maximize their cash flow while they were building up their compound. They both had the same street address as the former Scout camp.
At least she figured out why the sale of a Boy Scout camp hadn’t shown up on a simple internet search. The answer was in the closing statement, which listed the seller as a Belleview investment group.June looked them up on her databases and saw that they’d bought the property almost twenty-five years ago, when many rural newspapers hadn’t yet gone digital. So June’s research skills weren’t completely broken.
She’d put her laptop aside and was studying the hieroglyphics on the paper maps when Faraday took the exit for the Auburn Mall. They had all agreed it would be good to collect the Tahoe, if they could find it.
Faraday turned into the parking lot. June pointed him toward the trees in the far corner, where Circuit Rider’s text had told Peter to meet him. A minute later, she spotted the Tahoe standing alone under the beating rain. “There it is.”
