Die Trying

thanks,” Webster said. “But I think we should keep this dentist thing away from everybody, just for the moment. Makes the whole deal look worse. Meantime, send me your stuff. I’ll get our people working on it. And don’t worry. We’ll get her back. Bureau looks after its own, right? Never fails.”
    The two Bureau chiefs let the lie die into silence and hung up their phones together.

    THE YOUNG MAN strolled out of the forest and came face-to-face with the commander. He was smart enough to throw a big salute and look nervous, but he kept it down to the sort of nervousness any grunt showed around the commander. Nothing more, nothing suspicious. He stood and waited to be spoken to.
    “Job for you,” the commander said. “You’re young, right? Good with all this technical shit?”
    The man nodded cautiously.
    “I can usually puzzle stuff out, sir,” he said.
    The commander nodded back.
    “We got a new toy,” he said. “Scanner, for radio frequencies. I want a watch kept.”
    The young man’s blood froze hard.
    “Why, sir?” he asked. “You think somebody’s using a radio transmitter?”
    “Possibly,” the commander said. “I trust nobody and I suspect everybody. I can’t be too careful. Not right now. Got to look after the details. You know what they say? Genius is in the details, right?”
    The young man swallowed and nodded.
    “So get it set up,” the commander said. “Make a duty rota. Two shifts, sixteen hours a day, OK? Constant vigilance is what we need right now.”
    The commander turned away. The young man nodded and breathed out. Glanced instinctively back in the direction of his special tree and blessed his feelings.

    MILOSEVIC DROVE BROGAN north in his new truck. They detoured via the Wilmette post office so Brogan could mail his twin alimony checks. Then they went looking for the dead dentist’s building. There was a local uniform waiting for them in the parking lot in back. He was unapologetic about sitting on the report from the dentist’s wife. Milosevic started giving him a hard time about that, like it made the guy personally responsible for Holly Johnson’s abduction.
    “Lots of husbands disappear,” the guy said. “Happens all the time. This is Wilmette, right? Men are the same here as anywhere, only here they got the money to make it all happen. What can I say?”
    Milosevic was unsympathetic. The cop had made two other errors. First, he had assumed that it was the murder of the dentist that had brought the FBI out into his jurisdiction. Second, he was more uptight about covering his own ass on the issue than he was about four killers snatching Holly Johnson right off the street. Milosevic was out of patience with the guy. But then the guy redeemed himself.
    “What is it with people?” he said. “Burning automobiles? Some asshole burned a car out by the lake. We got to get it moved. Residents are giving us noise.”
    “Where exactly?” Milosevic asked him.
    The cop shrugged. He was anxious to be very precise.
    “That turnout on the shore,” he said. “On Sheridan Road, just this side of Washington Park. Never saw such a thing before, not in Wilmette.”
    Milosevic and Brogan went to check it out. They followed the cop in his shiny cruiser. He led them to the place. It wasn’t a car. It was a pickup, a ten-year-old Dodge. No license plates. Doused with gasoline and pretty much totally burned out.
    “Happened yesterday,” the cop said. “Spotted about seven-thirty in the morning. Commuters were calling it in, on their way to work, one after the other.”
    He circled around and looked over the wreck, carefully.
    “Not local,” he said. “That’s my guess.”
    “Why not?” Milosevic asked him.
    “This is ten years old, right?” the guy said. “Around here, there are a few pickups, but they’re toys, you know? Big V-8s, lots of chrome? An old thing like this, nobody would give it room on their driveway.”
    “What about gardeners?” Brogan asked. “Pool boys, something like that?”
    “Why would they burn it?” the cop said. “They needed to change it, they’d chop it in against a new one, right? Nobody burns a business asset, right?”
    Milosevic thought about it and nodded.
    “OK,” he said. “This is ours. Federal investigation. We’ll send a flatbed for it soon as we can. Meanwhile, you guard it, OK? And do it properly, for God’s sake. Don’t let anybody near it.”
    “Why?” the cop asked.
    Milosevic looked at him like he was a