Unsolved Page 23

  86

  AT 6:45 P.M., he sits in his wheelchair before his bank of electronics: The computer monitoring Emmy’s home PC, however inactive it may be these days. The GPS keeping tabs on her vehicle. The tablet displaying Emmy’s e-mails. His own laptop, full of research on his next bombing site. Dinner—rice and chicken in lemon sauce—on a plate to the side, untouched.

  He tries to still his hands, which are quaking as he forces them down on the desk.

  “Well, there’s no doubt now, is there?” he whispers. “You are most definitely out of time, soldier.”

  He slams his laptop closed. He hurls the GPS monitor against the wall. He sweeps the plate of food off his desk, and the plate clangs to the floor; sauce and sticky rice stain the wall. He closes his eyes, his chest heaving.

  He missed his chance last night with Emmy, when Agent Bookman showed up at her apartment just after she did. True, he could’ve taken them both out, but there would be no passing that off as an overdose or suicide. It would have been a brutal, messy double murder. The spotlight on him would only have grown hotter.

  It’s unraveling too quickly. They could be here any time now. Suspicion has grown far too heavy on a cantankerous wheelchair-bound war veteran from Annandale, Virginia.

  He pops up from the wheelchair, kicks it backward with his foot.

  I can walk! It’s a miracle! Hallelujah!

  He’s silently cracked that joke to himself so many times. Oh, how often he’s wanted to do that, to bounce up in the middle of the sidewalk or in some public place, just to see the look on everyone’s face.

  But he is finding no humor right now.

  He does some stretches, releasing nervous energy, bounces in place like an athlete gearing up for a game. He walks over to the wheelchair that’s halfway across the room, the RANGERS LEAD THE WAY sticker on the shroud, the American-flag decal on the armrest, and pats it lovingly.

  What a superb tactical advantage it’s provided. How many people he has been able to subdue and kill simply because they never imagined that he could be a threat. A man in a wheelchair? Harmless. What could he do to me?

  True, it’s been a real pain in the ass, having to pretend his legs don’t work, keeping them perfectly still whenever he’s in character. Lucky for him, nobody ever suspected the ruse. But why would anyone suspect him? Who, after all, would pretend to be confined to a wheelchair?

  Well, he would.

  “You’ve been a good friend,” he says to the motorized chair. “But I won’t be needing you tonight.”

  Tonight will not be subtle. Tonight will be hands-on. Tonight will be violent.

  He’s rather looking forward to it.

  If the FBI doesn’t get here first.

  87

  “LIEUTENANT MARTIN CHARLESTON WAGNER,” I say to the room. “Age forty-four. Honorably discharged from the U.S. Army three years ago after an injury in Iraq, an IED explosion that left him partially paralyzed. Relocated to Annandale, Virginia, eighteen months ago, where he lives on his army pension and is self-employed as a motivational speaker and political activist.”

  After discovering Martin Wagner this morning, we spent the day gathering whatever information we could to present to the task force, a group joined today by lawyers from the Department of Justice, who will need to seek a warrant from a federal magistrate.

  I press a button on the remote in my hand, and the video display (thank you, Pully) on the projection screen changes to a screenshot of the home page of his website, LieutenantWags.com. There he is in all his glory, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, the crescent-moon-shaped scar on the side of his face.

  “He gives motivational speeches, mostly to others with disabilities,” I say. “He preaches self-reliance. ‘Don’t ask the government for anything. Don’t accept handouts. Do it on your own.’ He wants to abolish welfare and Medicaid and Social Security and Medicare. He’s written a number of essays on the subject. He self-published a book. And he speaks all over the country.”

  I punch the remote as I talk, displaying various articles and a copy of the book he wrote. I punch it again, and up pops Wagner’s tour schedule.

  “Look at the cities and the dates,” I say. “Indianapolis. Atlanta. Charleston. Dallas. New Orleans. And Chicago. Against each of those dates, we can match the murder of some activist for the poor or the sick or the homeless. And, of course, Chicago was the bombing of the hotel for the homeless.”

  “Let’s start there, Chicago. That’s why we’re here, right—the bombing?” This from the top prosecutor in the room, a woman named Amee Czernak. She’s dressed in a charcoal suit, has sand-colored hair pulled back neatly at her neck, and is looking at me over the glasses perched on her nose. “Did you confirm that he attended that speaking engagement in Chicago?”

  “Yes,” I say. “There’s some video of it on his website and on YouTube. He spoke at three p.m. on Saturday. The bomb detonated twelve hours later, in the early hours of Sunday morning. He would’ve had plenty of opportunity to stake out the payday-loan store and the hotel above it that weekend and plant that bomb.”

  “How do you know that?” she asks. “Do you know when he arrived in Chicago that weekend?”

  “No. He didn’t fly, and he didn’t take any bus or train that we could find, so we assume he drove. And avoided the toll roads.”

  “So you don’t know when he arrived in Chicago. Do you know when he left?”

  “Not yet,” I concede.

  “Can you account for his whereabouts at any other time that weekend in Chicago?”

  “No, I can’t. Not yet. We think he began his stakeout across from the payday-loan store at six fifteen on that Friday evening. That’s when he paid off the homeless man, Mayday.”

  “And you think he murdered that homeless man.”

  She’s done her homework; she had this information for only an hour before we met.

  “So he couldn’t be a witness later, yes. Mayday’s death is consistent with the other murders we’ve chronicled around the country on dates that Wagner was in those cities.”

  “Murders that haven’t been called murders by anyone else but you.”

  “New Orleans PD has opened a murder investigation into Nora Connolley,” I say. “But otherwise, you’re correct.”

  “Our top forensic pathologist doesn’t think this Mayday individual was murdered,” she says. “And his death is similar to other deaths across the country that, to date, have not been called murders either.”

  “Well, that may be true, but—”

  “You can’t prove any of these were murders, Ms. Dockery. And you have no proof whatsoever that remotely ties Lieutenant Wagner to the Chicago bombing other than the fact that he was one of three or four million people in Chicago that weekend. And, oh yes, that he had…what was it? A moon on his face, which is a description we received from one homeless man’s account of what another homeless man said. It’s…” She sits back in her chair. “How am I supposed to take this to a judge?”

  “You can take this to a judge,” I say. I punch the remote to display the close-up image Pully got of Wagner’s wheelchair. “A man with an American-flag decal on the arm of his wheelchair placed something under Nora Connolley’s car only hours before she died.” I punch the remote again. “And here—from Wagner’s website—here he is, Martin Charleston Wagner, posing for a photo with a group of wounded war veterans. With the same American-flag decal on his wheelchair.”

  I wait for a reaction but get only a blank stare from the prosecutor.

  “While in New Orleans,” I summarize, “ostensibly to give one of his motivational speeches, Wagner went out of his way to park his vehicle a good three blocks down the street from a grocery store, by a pawnshop, and then wheeled himself all that way—nearly half a mile—to the parking lot of the grocery store, for no apparent reason other than to place something under the fender of a car owned by Nora Connolley. Then he went straight back to his vehicle and drove away. He could’ve easily parked h
is vehicle in that grocery-store parking lot, but he didn’t. He had one and only one goal—to put something under the fender of a car owned by a woman who died a few hours later and do it without detection. Does that seem the least bit odd to you?”

  The prosecutor allows that it does, then plays with her pen, tapping it against a notepad. “Books, I understand you were just assigned to the case. What’s your take?”

  Books hadn’t planned on speaking tonight, being new to the case and given our relationship. He straightens. “Yes, I was just assigned. There hadn’t been an agent assigned so far; it was just analytics. I’ve had only a bit longer than you with this information, but I’m convinced by what I’ve seen.”

  Amee Czernak’s eyes drift to the ceiling. “How fast could you serve this warrant?”

  “Tonight,” he says. “I’ll walk the application over to the emergency judge if you green-light it. If the judge signs off, I can have a team in Annandale by two, three a.m.”

  “You think this would satisfy a judge?” she asks him. The ultimate compliment, a lawyer asking an agent for his legal opinion.

  “I do,” he says. “Get us that warrant, Amee, and we’ll prove it. We’ll have this guy in custody before dawn.”

  88

  QUARTER TO ELEVEN. His mind is ready, his body is ready, but he must wait. He’s going to wait until the target is asleep. And the target is a night owl.

  A target, yes. Not a person.

  If it’s someone you know, he was taught, forget that. It isn’t a mother or a father, a daughter or a son, a wife or a husband. It’s not someone you know. It’s a target. An obstacle to your goals. Eliminate the obstacle.

  And that’s exactly what the target is—an obstacle. If the FBI finds this person, it’s all over for him.

  He moves the wheelchair into a closet. He grabs the plastic bag of clothes that he’s never worn inside the apartment, that have never touched a surface in here, never collected a single fiber. Long-sleeved shirt, long pants. Rubber gloves. Flat shoes, no treads. A skin cap for his head.

  In his garage, he walks over to the side wall, where various gardening items hang from pegs—extension cords, a hose, a shovel, a water sprinkler.

  And a small loop-knot of nylon cord. A vestige from his time in the service. It’s a bit frayed on the ends, showing some wear. But it’s still the most effective garrote he knows.

  Quieter than a gun. No blood. Strong enough to withstand any resistance. Easy to grip. Victims are immediately silenced.

  Seven different people on three different continents have felt this cord close around their throats, crush their tracheas, cut off their oxygen. But that was then, during his time in the service. He hasn’t used it as a civilian. Tonight will be a first.

  Now he just has to wait until two a.m.

  89

  I LEAVE my car at the Hoover Building and go with Books in his, rolling down the passenger-side window as we drive, letting the wind hit my face. I check my watch. It’s 1:45 a.m.

  “You’re quiet,” says Books.

  “I’m pissed. Frustrated is a better word.”

  We need more, Amee Czernak, the prosecutor, told us. You’re close, but not close enough for search warrants. She shut us down.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” I say. “We’ve spent the last five hours, since she sent us packing, trying to dig up everything we can.”

  “You called your contact in Chicago, that cop,” he says.

  “Yeah.” I asked Officer Ciomek to look at footage from POD cameras around the bombing site in Chicago, now that we have a specific vehicle—a Dodge Caravan—and a specific license plate. “But that could take days. And she said those POD cameras are pretty grainy.”

  Books doesn’t respond, which means he’s thinking. I put my head against the cushion and close my eyes, my eyelids heavy as wet doormats…

  “Let’s go there,” says Books. “Let’s go to Morningside Lane.”

  I shake myself out of the steady drift toward slumber. “Go to—go visit Darwin?”

  “Wagner.” Books smiles. “He has a name now.”

  “Go visit Wagner?”

  “Maybe,” he says. “We don’t need a warrant to do that. We can ask him to voluntarily consent to questioning. We can ask him to consent to a search of his house. He can say no, but we can ask.”

  “So…we just drive over to Morningside Lane, knock on the door, and say, ‘Hi, Lieutenant Wagner, got some time to talk? Mind if we look around your town house?’ Just like that?”

  “Pretty much,” he says.

  “Just…drive over there right now and knock on his door?”

  “Well, not right now.” He glances at the clock on his dashboard. “It’s nearly two in the morning. If he woke up at all, he’d likely refuse to consent. And then we’d alert him, and we’d give him the rest of the night to dispose of anything incriminating.”

  “But he might say yes.”

  “Yeah, he might, but a judge would likely throw out the search. You don’t shake someone awake in the dead of night and ask for their permission to search. It’s too heavy-handed. Too coercive. If the search is invalid, we can’t use anything we find. It’s too big a risk, Em. First thing in the morning. Dawn.”

  Books takes the exit for Alexandria.

  “We’re not going to my apartment?” I ask.

  “We are, but I want to stop by the bookstore first. My Maglite’s there. I’m not doing a search without my Maglite.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Books pulls around to the alley behind his bookstore, where he gets his deliveries.

  “The back entrance?”

  “Back’s easier, just a key. The front, I have to unlock the chains. Come on.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  “No,” he says.

  “You’re just popping in to get your flashlight.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone out here, Em.”

  “For five minutes? What, you think Darwin’s going to come wheeling into the alley and kill me in the next five minutes?”

  Books gives me a hard look, the kind, I imagine, he used to train on suspects or reluctant witnesses. “I think that Wagner has proven himself to be quite effective,” he says. “And I think you, my dear, have a target painted on your back. So, yes, you’re coming with me.”

  So I get out with him, the security camera trained on us. Books pops the lock and pulls open the thick, heavy door.

  “Be quiet,” he whispers. “Petty’s probably asleep.”

  We tiptoe through the large storage room, piled high with books and posters and displays and a bunch of chairs, along with a large safe for the days that Books doesn’t run the cash to the bank. The room is black as pitch, no windows, no outside light whatsoever.

  “It’s behind the counter, I think,” he whispers.

  He heads into the main room. I hear him rummaging around. My phone buzzes. It’s a text message from Natalie Ciomek, the Chicago cop: No luck so far. Somebody better be paying me overtime for this. Followed by an emoji of a smirk and a wink.

  It’s 2:07 a.m. in Virginia, so it’s an hour earlier in Chicago. Still an ungodly hour. God bless her, pulling out all the stops to search through the POD camera footage in Chicago. I type, I O U huge, and send it.

  Then I turn to my right and look toward the corner where the bed is set up for Petty. I listen. I don’t hear any breathing, no sleeping sounds at all. I turn my phone, still lit, toward the corner.

  I take a step closer, holding the phone out in front of me.

  A noise from the front room. Books joins me again. “Got it,” he whispers. “What are you doing?”

  I take another step toward the corner.

  “Emmy—”

  “Shine your light, Books,” I whisper.

  “Huh?”

  “Do it.”

  He clicks the Maglite on and off real quick, like a compliance signal from a ship, so as not to disturb Petty.

  But the bed is made and empty. Petty isn’t
here.

  He flips on the overhead switch, bathing the room in light. Petty isn’t here, and neither is that big duffel bag he always lugs around.

  Just a perfectly made bed and, next to it, two stacked crates serving as some kind of nightstand. On top of that is a glass vase full of fake flowers that Books had put in the storage room.

  “Huh. That’s weird,” he says. “I guess Sergeant Petty got a better offer. Anyway, let’s go. We won’t get back to your apartment until two thirty. That gives us maybe three hours of sleep before we have to get up and visit our serial killer in Annandale.”

  I take one last look in the corner, then turn to Books. “You’re right,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  90

  NOT SOMEONE you know. It’s a target. An obstacle to your goals.

  Eliminate the obstacle.

  He stands outside the back door of the apartment, his pulse even, a cool breeze on his face. He doesn’t have his phone with him, but he knows it’s well past two in the morning. From what he can see of the interior, all lights appear to be out. Good. Even night owls have to sleep.

  He goes to work on the lock with the hairpins. With a final, satisfying click of the lock, the knob turns. He opens the door with one gloved hand; with the other, he holds the Repressor Ultimate to scramble the alarm pad.

  But there isn’t an alarm. Good. Surprising, but good.

  He hears the faint sound of snoring to his right, in the bedroom. He softly closes the door and listens again—the same whispery sounds of sleep from the bedroom.

  He removes the nylon cord from his bag and walks on the balls of his feet, slowly transferring weight, nimbly onward. When he reaches the bedroom, he lets his eyes adjust to the room’s darkness, illuminated slightly by a clock radio, the rhythmic breathing of a body asleep. He tugs at the sides of the cord to widen the noose, allowing it to fit over a human head.

  His pulse drums through him; heat rises to his face. Something primitive is awakening inside him.

  He draws a breath and focuses on his training.