Lonesome Lawmen

Three-2

“Ricky Neuman. Niall McBride. Peg Oliver.” Matt finished pinning the last picture on the cork wall to the right side of his desk. Behind him a bank of windows gave a generous view of the uneven skyline that was downtown Denver, with the jagged splendor of the Rocky Mountains serving as a back drop. Inside the hum of legal activity made a soothing accompaniment to thought. “The survivors of Gwynne’s protection op.”

“You think one of them did the dirty?” Henry Robb, the youngest member of their team, had a baby face and innocent eyes that hid a good brain, laced with ambition. His already receding brown hair was pulled back into a ragged ponytail that had taken the place of a failed mustache. He’d come to the Marshals Service straight out of college, attracted by the diversity of the Service’s responsibilities and their nearly squeaky clean image. He hated anyone who marred that image more than he hated looking his age.

“Probably.” Matt paced back to his desk, dropped in the chair and leaned back with his legs stretched out. He’d shoved Gwynne’s file in his out box, but her face refused to be shoved out of his head. She was gone. Her individuality, her humanity had been reduced to a charred bundle awaiting final identification at the morgue.

It didn’t help. Ugly reality couldn’t so easily exorcise the regret that had dogged him since he walked into the room where she had died or take from his memory the imprint of her questioning face.

“Neuman seems the obvious choice.” Henry sat on the edge of his desk, rolling a pencil between fingers beginning to lose their nicotine stain. “His girl was clear when Hayes hit.”

“Yeah. Obvious. That’s why we’re gonna check them all right down to their toenails.” Putting Hayes out of business would scratch Matt’s itch and remove the romance writer from his head. It wouldn’t be easy. They would do the things they always did to find Hayes, but unless they could think of something more than that to do— Matt rubbed his face. Hayes knew all the things the good guys did when hunting and hadn’t made any of the usual mistakes bad guys did when hiding. So far the most unrelenting search had failed to bring them within sniffing distance of him.

Just to make sure that hadn’t changed, Matt grabbed the thick mass that was Hayes’ file, separated half for Henry and flipped his share open. “Looks like Hayes has been a busy little hit man during the last ten years.”

Henry grimaced at a photo from a previous crime scene. “Why’d he move the bodies, then torch them?”

“Profiler thinks he’s got some kind of skewed religious fixation, based on the way he arranges the bodies, then starts the fire in a circle around them.” Matt flipped through the pages, looking for any indication they had gotten close to catching Hayes since their last encounter. Even some additional personal information might help. There was nothing new except the dead.

Six inches of what he’d done. A millimeter of what he was.

“A religious hit man. Now there’s a combo you don’t find very often.”

“Hayes is an original.” Matt shoved the file away and leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head so he could apply some pressure where a headache was starting. “We got a boat load of evidence to convict him if we ever catch up with him.”

“He looks—dull.” Henry held Hayes’ photo at arm’s length, squinted at it, then tossed it back on the file. “How come we got his picture and fingerprints?”

“He did some contract work for the CIA.”

“A CIA killer?”

Matt shook his head. “He didn’t kill for them. His thing was computers. Tracking, hacking, and crashing.”

Henry looked surprised. “Computer geek to killer-for-hire. Interesting career move. There’s not much personal information here. Spooks keeping the good stuff back?”

Matt’s grin was harsh. “They’d like you to think that. I got a source inside that says he’s turned his computer skills on them, took out his own file and a hefty retirement fund. Basically, he’s a thief. His first kill was to protect himself. Guess he liked it. The only other solid intel I’ve got is that Hayes is a fanatic rock climber. Everything else is theory and supposition. SOB doesn’t even have personal contacts that we know of. Does his business by untraceable, coded email, Swiss bank accounts, according to one snitch. Just before Hayes popped him.”

Matt got up and added Hayes’ photo to the rogue’s gallery side of his bulletin board, stabbing the pin through paper and cork, then turned his attention to the other three faces.

Ricky Neuman had a good, not perfect record. His first time working with Peg Oliver, proximity had apparently overwhelmed professionalism. The question was, had his attraction for Oliver distracted Neuman from the job? Or was he a rat who decided to keep her breathing after he fell for her?

Niall McBride had done a decent, though short stint in the Service. Left the New Orleans Police Department because of the residency requirement. Considered a rising star. Getting married before Christmas to a home town girl.

Then there was Peg Oliver. Picked because she looked like Gwynne in bad light. Top notch service record. Practically the affirmative action poster girl for the Service. Tough job playing dead ringer for the witness. Dangerous, too, unless she knew she would be hurling at the local emergency room when Hayes came calling with his knife and box of matches.

If he couldn’t get at Hayes directly, maybe his accomplice would lead him to the bastard. He turned back to Henry.

“Let’s put our three survivors under the big microscope. Toss their lives, turn over every rock. Look down their pants and up her skirt if you have to. I want the rat in the woodpile.”

“Right.” Henry stood up with a youthful air of determination.

Matt looked at his watch. “How come we haven’t heard anything from Riggs? Or Alice?”

Before Henry could answer, the telephone rang. Matt cut the ring in half by grabbing the receiver. “Kirby.”

“You need to work on your phone etiquette.”

He tucked the telephone under his ear. “Alice? What took you so long?”

“Unlike you, I’m not part blood hound.” Her voice in the ear piece was strangely breathless. “She’s gone.”

“What?” If Peg Oliver wasn’t at the hospital, where was she? With his elbows resting on Hayes’ file, he rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“She checked herself out last night. No one knows when.”

“Really.” What did it mean? Where did it fit into the little they did know? Three confirmed dead, two in hand and seriously under suspicion, and one missing Marshal with footsteps leading away from a window. Whose footsteps?

“That’s not all. Oliver did not just happen to get sick yesterday. According to the lab report, she ingested a large helping of ipecac.”

“Now that’s very interesting. Either someone wanted her out of the way—“ Matt leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly.

“—or she wanted very badly to be out of the way. If she did it to herself, she gave herself a rough ride. Doc was surprised she could walk. According to him she almost turned herself inside out and upside down.”

“Doc tell her about the ipecac?”

“Late last night, before she went AWOL.”

Oliver’s disappearance opened all kinds of interesting possibilities. Matt frowned, trying to slow his racing thoughts before they ran out of fuel and left him out on a limb. “I’ll put an APB out on Oliver. You head over to the coroner. Squeeze a quick ID on the bodies out of him.”

Alice hesitated. “You don’t think Oliver went back to the safe house—“

“Depends which side she was on. It’s what I’d do if I found out I’d upchucked something rotten in Denmark.” Matt kept his voice dryly factual, but couldn’t stop his heart stepping up the beats. If Oliver had gone back to the safe house, they were one body short. Now they had to find out which body. Real fast.

Alice was quiet, then said, “From what I’ve heard, Hayes isn’t likely to make—mistakes.”

Matt angled his chair so he could see Oliver’s photo on the board. “They say everyone has a twin.”

Her heard her quick drawn breath.

“You see why I need that ID?”

“Hope no one else does,” Alice said. “I’m on it.”