Violets Are Blue - James Patterson [48]
“Looks like we caught a break,” Kyle said to me. “No one will get out of that house until we get there. I like our chances.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “I’m not convinced these are the same people.” I had stopped making assumptions about the killers. Why Charlotte, North Carolina? This would be the fourth attack in the same city. Had everything been leading us to Charlotte? Why?
Kyle listened to another situation report from agents on the scene, then he related the relevant details to me. “The parents of a seventeen-year-old Charlotte boy were attacked in bed late last night. Both bludgeoned to death. A claw hammer was found at the scene. There were bites on the bodies. There’s evidence that either a large animal attacked the two adults, or the assailant was wearing sharpened metal fangs.” Kyle rolled his eyes. He still didn’t have much truck with vampires.
“The boy then fled to an abandoned farmhouse near the Loblolly River outside Charlotte. As far as we know, the people loitering in the house are mostly teenagers. Apparently, some are as young as twelve or thirteen. It’s a mess, Alex. Everything is on hold until we get there. The age of some of these kids is a real problem.”
A little more than ten minutes later we landed in a wide meadow brimming with wildflowers. We were less than three miles from the house where the killer might be hiding. This was Bonnie and Clyde stuff. By the time we got to the thick woods surrounding the house it was past five o’clock. It would be dark soon enough.
The house was a two-story wood-framed structure obscured by an overgrowth of wisteria and myrtle. Pinecones, hickory nuts, and what are known locally as sweet gum monkey balls covered the ground where we hid and watched. Everything about the place brought back memories of where I had grown up in the South. Not too many happy moments, unfortunately. My mother and father had both died in their thirties, well before their time. My therapist has a theory that I see myself dying young because both my parents did. The Mastermind seems to hold a similar theory, and perhaps wants to put it into action soon.
The roof of the old house was sharply pitched; a narrow attic window was broken in two places. The peeling white-painted clapboards were mostly intact, but the asbestos-shingled roof was bare in spots, revealing tar paper. Creepy, creepy, creepy.
The FBI was supersensitive to the fact that most of those inside the house were probably under twenty years old. They didn’t know exactly who they were or if any had police records. There was no proof they were involved with the murders. It was decided that as long as we remained undetected, we’d wait until night to see if anyone left or entered. Then we would move on the house. The situation was getting sticky, maybe political, and there would be consequences if a minor got hurt or killed.
In sharp contrast, everything seemed peaceful in the woods; the ramshackle house was strangely quiet considering all the young people who were supposed to be in there. No loud laughter or rock music, no smells of cooking. Dim lights were flickering.
My growing fear was that the killer was already gone, that we were too late.
Chapter 49
SOMEONE WAS whispering close to my ear—it was Kyle.
“Let’s go, Alex. It’s time to move on them.”
At four in the morning, he gave the signal to breach the house. Kyle was calling all the shots. He had authority over the locals too.
I accompanied a dozen agents outfitted in blue windbreakers. Nobody was feeling too secure about the raid. We moved cautiously to within seventy-five yards of the house, the edge of the pine forest. Two snipers, who had dug in about thirty yards from the house, radioed that it was still quiet inside. Too quiet?
“These are mostly young kids,” Kyle reminded us before we went in. “But protect yourselves first.”
We crawled on our hands and knees until we were as close as the snipers. Then we rushed the house, using three entrances to get inside.
Kyle and I went through the front, the others through the side and back. A couple