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A man, roughly shaved, mussed dark hair peppered with gray, wearing a dress shirt open at the collar and blue jeans.
“Special Agent Francis Blair, FBI,” he says. “Chicago office.”
Blair — that’s the name that Ollie Grafton mentioned. The FBI agent who wondered whether Silas Renfrow really died in that attack on the FBI compound in Rockford.
“Thought I might be hearing from the Bureau. You worked the Michael Cagnina case?”
Blair nods. “You have good information. What can you tell me about what happened?”
Kyle gives his best summary of the events of the night, then he turns to his general suspicions about David Bowers.
When he’s finished, Blair looks duly impressed. “So you think the guy in the operating room is Silas Renfrow?”
“That’s a guess, but an educated one.”
Blair nods absently. He looks tired. He must have rushed down here from Chicago when he heard the news. “Well, it’s a damn good educated guess, Sergeant,” he says. “Let’s get his DNA, test it, and prove it.”
“I told the doctors to preserve him as much as possible,” says Kyle. “And there’s blood all over the crime scene —”
Blair makes a face. “You got the clothes he was wearing?”
“Of course.”
“Those clothes have blood on them. My team can extract that easily.” He nods. “Better I handle it. I can get the results faster.”
Good. It will be nice to have some help. Kyle’s felt like a one-man operation looking into these matters. With someone from the Bureau on board — an expert on Michael Cagnina, at that — his confidence is growing. He’s going to solve this thing.
“If he really is Silas Renfrow,” says Kyle, “you’ve got him on dozens of offenses, I assume.”
“Oh, he’s Silas, all right.” Blair lets out a loud chuckle. “And once I prove it,” he says, “I’m gonna hang a dozen federal M-1s around his neck and personally sit in the front row while they stick a needle in his arm.” He looks at Kyle. “That a straight enough answer?”
SIXTY-FOUR
MY CHEST BURNING, I slide into the passenger seat of the Jeep driven by Camille Striker, a woman who has known David longer than I have, who has known a different person from the one I’ve known, who has known about me all along while I didn’t know about her.
She is wearing a flannel shirt with a winter vest over it, but even through the thick clothing I can see that she’s a workout fanatic. Her features are soft, though — long eyelashes and a tiny nose.
“You’re in danger,” she says. “Your family’s in danger. Where are your kids?”
“Sleeping at home, with a police car outside my house and a cop sitting inside.”
“Okay, good, good.” She blows out a breath. “Good.”
“I appreciate your concern, but it would have been nice if someone had let me in on the news a little earlier.” My sarcasm isn’t helping matters, but it’s better than putting my hands on her throat, my first instinct.
She starts driving. “The police must be looking for me,” she says. “I thought we should talk first.” She glances over at me. “I suppose I should say I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your apology.”
She nods. “Well, for what it’s worth, I told him to tell you. All along, I wanted him to tell you. But David — he made a decision. When all this stuff was happening to you guys — someone moving things around in your house, putting a dead rat in your son’s Halloween bag, stealing your dog, all that — David figured they were seeing how he’d react. They weren’t sure he was their guy. He looked so different than he did before.”
That much I can believe after seeing the photos of him I found in the attic. He went from a chubby, brown-eyed, curly-haired kid, with ears that stuck out cartoonishly, to a bald, physically fit, blue-eyed man with his ears pinned back. A lifestyle change and some plastic surgery did wonders for him.
“So he figured his best play was to act like he didn’t know what was happening,” she continues. “To play dumb, basically. He figured if he ran, if he took you and the kids and fled town, it would be confirming their suspicions. He’d have to be on the run forever.”
“He thought he could bluff his way through it.”
“Actually, it probably was his best move. The only mistake he made was not telling you.”
