“He wrapped her in an electric blanket,” says Lenz. “Right around body temperature. Even if she died, we’d have been slow to notice anything.” He pulls up Knapp’s closed eyelid, then lets it close. “We’ll be lucky if she can ever tell us anything.”
“This is all wrong,” says John. “You don’t beat your girlfriend and leave her for dead, then go shopping at Wal-Mart.”
“The painting’s gone,” I say dully.
“What painting?” asks Lenz.
“The one Wheaton gave him. He must have taken it to sell.”
“He’s pulling a rabbit,” says John.
Baxter’s radio crackles. “Sir, this is Agent Liebe. My agents inside lost visual with the suspect a couple of minutes ago. We’re in the store in force now, but it’s full of people. I think maybe-”
“Shut it down!” Baxter orders. “Nobody goes in or out.”
24
The Kenner Wal-Mart is a riot waiting to happen. As we drove up, sirens blaring, I saw the parking lot half-filled with cars but empty of people, and though we entered the store through its rear loading dock, the low roar of an angry crowd rumbled through the service doors. In the twelve minutes it took us to get here, two agents sifting through the trapped customers and four searching the aisles and dressing rooms have turned up no sign of Leon Gaines, though his car still sits in the parking lot.
In the security room at the back of the store, a bank of video monitors displays feeds from three dozen video cameras mounted at various locations in the ceiling of the store. Baxter shows the head of security his FBI credentials, then asks the technician operating the VTRs to fast-forward from a point three minutes before Agent Liebe reported losing contact with Gaines to the point that he sealed the building.
“What’s this guy done?” asks the security chief.
“He’s a federal fugitive,” says John. “That’s all we can say.”
“I don’t think we can legally detain customers inside the store. The company could be liable.”
Baxter turns away from the screens. “Your store was sealed by the federal government. You’ve got no worries.”
“There’s Gaines,” says John, looking over the tech’s shoulder.
On the screen, Leon Gaines pushes a grocery cart along the hardware aisle. He’s wearing a dirty white T-shirt, black jeans, and has three days’ growth of beard on his face. His curly black hair is a tangled mess, and he moves with a jerky sort of energy, like a man looking for a fix. His cart holds a gallon of milk, a pack of precut hamburger patties, some toiletries, and a copy of Hot Rod magazine. After ten seconds, he moves out of the frame.
Baxter’s radio crackles. “Agent Liebe, sir. We just had to arrest an elderly gentleman at the main exit.”
Dr. Lenz chuckles softly.
Baxter holds the radio to his mouth. “Keep the lid on.”
“Give us the cameras covering the exits,” says John.
“You don’t want to try to follow him on other views?” asks the tech.
“Just the exits.”
Two sets of automated glass doors appear on the screens, plus the large service exit at the rear.
“Run it normal speed.”
We watch people stroll in and out of the store: male and female, young and old, black and white. Some customers stop beside the greeter and have a sticker affixed to a product they’ve come to return.
“Stop the tape!” says John.
“What is it?” asks the tech, stopping the tape.
John touches his fingertip to the figure of a brunette woman exiting through the automatic doors. “Look how tall she is compared to this other woman.” His finger slides onto a blonde frozen in the entrance door; she looks almost a foot shorter than the brunette. Then his finger slides back. “I think this is Gaines.”
Baxter crouches before the screen and squints. “Damn it. You’re right. He shaved, put on a wig and coat, picked up a handbag, and walked right past our people.”
“Probably brought a battery-powered shaver with him,” says Lenz.
Baxter straightens up and turns to the security chief. “Let everybody go.”
The man nods and hurries away to quell the incipient rebellion.
“He’s been gone fifteen minutes, minimum,” says John. “He could be anywhere.”
“We’re less than a mile from the international airport,” Baxter thinks aloud. He lifts the radio to his mouth. “Liebe, your whole detail is going to the airport. Come back here first.”
“Yes, sir.”
Baxter touches Gaines’s image on the screen and looks at the tech. “Can you give me a print of this ‘woman’?”
“No problem.”
“Print twenty. And twenty of him the way he looked in the hardware aisle. An Agent Liebe will be back here to get them.” Baxter looks at John. “Back to the office?”
John walks over to the gray wall, then back, as though pacing will give him some insight into the situation. “We should leave somebody in the parking lot. In about a minute, a customer is going to start yelling that his car was stolen while he was trapped in here. Once we know the make, we can put everything we have in the air.”
A muted ring sounds in the room. John pulls his cell phone from his jacket. “Kaiser here… Just now?… Put him through.” He looks at Baxter. “Roger Wheaton just called the office and asked them to page me. He said it was an emergency.”
“Wheaton?” says Lenz.
“Hello?” John covers his open ear and turns away from us to concentrate. “Yes, sir, John Kaiser… Can you get out of the building?… I understand. Can you get them out?…Listen to me, Mr. Wheaton. If you can’t get them out, get yourself out. They’re not your responsibility… We’re on the way. Get to safety and wait for us to arrive.”
John whirls to face us. “Gaines just sandbagged Roger Wheaton in his office at the Woldenberg Art Center. Gaines claimed he’s being framed by the FBI and that he needs money to get out of the country.”
“Is he armed?” asks Baxter.
John nods. “Wheaton told Gaines he would drive him to the bank and get him money, but that his wallet and keys were down in the gallery where he was painting. Gaines told Wheaton if he wasn’t back in two minutes, he’d take students hostage and start killing them. There are fifty to seventy students spread through the building, and they have no idea what’s happening. Wheaton ran down to another office and called us.”
“Why not the police?” asks Lenz. “And why ask for you?”
“He said he didn’t want Gaines shot out of hand. He’s actually worried about that son of a bitch.”
“I don’t want him shot either,” I say sharply. “He may be the only person in the world who knows where the women are.”
Baxter takes out his cell phone and hits a speed-dial button. “This is Baxter. Give me SAC Bowles, right now.” He looks at John. “We need a chopper out here – Patrick? Leon Gaines is at the art center at Tulane, and he probably has hostages. We need SWAT out there ASAP… How many choppers do you have in the air?… Send them both to the Kenner Wal-Mart parking lot. And you’d better alert the task force. Be sure they know who’s running the scene at Tulane… I’ll keep you posted.” Baxter waves away a sheaf of photo prints the tech holds up to him and looks at John. “We’ll have two choppers outside in three minutes. Let’s move.”
Hurtling over New Orleans at a hundred knots, you can see why people call it the Crescent City. The older sections sit in a great bend in the Mississippi River, the main streets either fanning into the bend or running with it. Today the river flows the color of slate, thanks to a gray overcast, but a broad shaft of sunlight to the south shows a patch of familiar reddish brown.
John and Baxter ride the lead chopper, Dr. Lenz and I the one behind. Below us, Audubon Park stretches north from the river to St. Charles Avenue; north of St. Charles begins the rectangular garden that is Tulane University. As the lead chopper swings over a golf course and drops toward Tulane, an overwhelming sense of deja vu brings sweat to my face and hands. I’ve descended into many cities this way, clinging to a spar with my cameras around my neck: Sarajevo, Maputo, Karachi, Baghdad, San Salvador, Managua, Panama City. The list is endless, but the city below me now is the one in which I began my career, and it strikes me that the symmetry of my ending it here might be quite a temptation for the fates. If so, I accept the risk. The placid green island below harbors a desperate situation, but in the resolution of it lies the answer to the mystery that has haunted me for more than a year.