The Triggerman Dance

John looks out over Liberty Ridge and pretends that he is Vann Holt, surveying his kingdom, making his plans. Fifteen hundred Holt Men scurry about the county beneath him. Another thousand represent him around the globe. They are trained loyal, vigilant. They have their own networks of friends, acquaintances and sources. They have their own spheres of influence And the networks spiral back to a common point, just as the spheres all intersect a common plane. The point and the plane are Vann Holt. And this desk is where Vann Holt sits. So, where would he put the drawings of the Journal complex, the notes or Susan Baum?

Nowhere—why keep them? Where would he put the rifle? At the bottom of Liberty Lake. What about the engraving tools used on the cartridges? Back in the tool kit. What else does he need to destroy? Everything that can link him to Susan Baum.

John turns and looks at the massive stainless steel safe. He stands, takes the penlight from his pocket and shoots four exposures of the box. After each shot, he rotates the penlight head to advance the tiny spool of film inside. On the back of the stainless cabinet he finds the manufacturer's number and takes two pictures of it. Maybe Joshua has a way of getting the combination from the number, he thinks. Wouldn't the manufacturer cooperate with the FBI? Of course they wouldn't. He tries the shining circular handle but it hardly moves. He wipes off the handle with a tissue from his pocket, then sits back down at the desk. He checks his watch—five minutes until three.

The top left drawer of the desk slides open on near silent rollers. Inside are two metal rods running perpendicular to the drawer face, over which rest the metal hooks of perhaps ten green cardboard files. John pulls out the second and third drawers on the left side of the desk, and finds another ten or so cardboard files in each. Every file folder is labeled inside a raised plastic window.

As an agent, Wayfarer committed little to paper, less to disc. He was hyper-organized, exceedingly neat. When I think of his desk, I see a large blotter pad of graph paper with not a single mark on it except for the grids. He kept his tapes and interview transcripts in the Bureau safe.

The labels are perfunctory and uninformative. In the three left-side drawers are a total of only thirty file folders, the first twenty-six labeled A through Z, in alphabetical order. The remaining four are all labeled MISC. Some appear to have substantial contents, some appear empty.

John pulls the C folder and sets it on the empty blotter. It contains a single sheet of good quality, high-rag writing paper, 8V2 by 11 inches, and one newspaper clipping. The sheet of paper has a date handwritten near the upper left corner, and below the date only one word, also handwritten:

Anita

Across from the name is what looks like a seven-digit telephone number.

The newspaper article is from the Journal and is dated roughly one year ago. It is a large, "County Section" story about an 18-year old girl found murdered. The girl's mother is named Anita. The family's last name is Carpenter.

John returns the folder and pulls another, then another. Each contains a similar sheet of high quality paper with sparse, handwritten notes, but no news clips. The "S" folder holds ten pages of notes—mostly just first names, and an occasional phrase:

"Hus. Karl capped . . ."

"Locate Sean, son ... Mex surf?"

"Help in I.D., location and ? of perp."

John closes them and returns them to their rod holders. Sparks, he thinks, just little jump-starters for Wayfarer's closed-system memory. Access codes is what they are, like PIN's for an automated teller. Anything vital is in his head. Anything incriminating. Anything private. Everything secret. He pulls the B file and searches it for any hint of Baum. He replaces it, then scans the H file for some scintilla of information about Rebecca. It is a waste of time and he knows it.

John sets the folders back in place, then looks at his watch. It is three o'clock. He can still hear the muted trills of Valerie's whistle from down in the meadow, between the dull pounding in his ear.