The Devils Teardrop

thought was the unsub. Who’s he?”
    Parker said, “A runner. Somebody Hardy—or whatever his name is—hired to deliver the letter.”
    “But,” Cage said, “he was killed in an accident.”
    “No, it wasn’t an accident,” Lukas said, stealing the words from Parker’s throat.
    Nodding, he said, “Hardy murdered him, ran him down in a stolen truck to make it look accidental.”
    Lukas continued, “So we’d think the perp was dead and bring the money back to the evidence room. He knew we’d have tracking devices in the bags. Or that we’d try to collar him at the drop.”
    Cage, wincing again from the cracked rib, said, “He left the transmit bags downstairs. Repacked the money. And ripped off the tracking labels too.”
    “But he came up with the info about the Digger, didn’t he?” the deputy director asked. “Because of him we stopped the shooter before he could do any real damage on the Mall.”
    “Well, of course, ” Parker responded, surprised they didn’t get it.
    “What do you mean?” the dep director asked.
    “That’s why he picked the Vietnam Memorial. It’s not far from here. He knew we’d be shorthanded and that we’d virtually empty the building to get everybody out, looking for the Digger.”
    “So he could just waltz into Evidence and pick up themoney,” Lukas said bitterly. “It’s just what Evans said. That he had everything planned out. I told him that we’d rigged the bags with tracers but Evans said he had some plan to counter that.”
    Cage asked Parker, “The prints on the note?”
    “Hardy never touched it without gloves but he made sure the runner did—so we could verify the body was the unsub’s.”
    “And he picked sombody with no record and no military service,” Lukas added, “so we couldn’t trace the runner. . . . Jesus, he thought of everything.”
    A computer beeped. Cage leaned forward and read. “It’s an AFIS report and VICAP and Connecticut State Police files. Here we go . . .” He scrolled through the information. A picture came up on the screen. It was Hardy. “His real name is Edward Fielding, last known address, Blakesly, Connecticut, outside of Hartford. Oh, our friend is not a very nice man. Four arrests, one conviction. Juvie time too but those records’re sealed. Treated repeatedly for antisocial behavior. Was an aide and orderly at Hartford State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He left after a nurse he was accused of sexually harassing was found stabbed to death.
    “The hospital administration,” Cage continued, reading from the screen, “thinks Fielding talked a patient, David Hughes, into killing her. Hughes was admitted two years ago. Christmas Day. He had severe brain damage following a gunshot wound and was highly suggestible. Fielding probably helped Hughes escape. The Hospital Board and the police were going to investigate Fielding but he disappeared after that. That was in October of last year.”
    “Hughes is the Digger,” Parker announced softly.
    “You think?”
    “Positive.” He continued, “And the Hartford newspaper shooting—what got Czisman started on Fielding’s trail—that was in November.” Recalling the clipping in Czisman’s book. “That was their first crime.”
    A Chronicle of Sorrow . . .
    “But why so much death?” the dep director asked. “It can’t just be for the money. He must’ve had some terrorist leanings.”
    “Nope,” Parker said definitively. “Not terrorism at all. But you’re absolutely right. It has nothing to do with the money. Oh, I recognize him.”
    “You know Fielding?”
    “No, I mean I recognize the type. He’s like a document forger.”
    “Forger?” asked Lukas.
    “Serious forgers see themselves as artists, not thieves. They don’t really care about the money. The point is to create a forgery that fools everyone. That’s their only goal: a perfect forgery.”
    Lukas nodded. “So the other crimes—in Hartford and Boston and Philly—they were just exercises. Stealing one watch, a few thousand dollars. It was just to perfect his technique.”
    “Exactly. And this was the culmination. This time he got a big chunk of money and’s going to retire.”
    “Why do you think that?” Cage asked.
    But Lukas knew the answer to that one too. “Because he sacrificed his errand boy so he could escape. He told us where the Digger was.”
    Recalling how Hardy had fired at the bus, Parker added, “He may actually have been the one who shot the