CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Turk's nose came in handy when they reached Watson.
Watson was a small unincorporated community just outside of Dulles and consisted of a few small farms clustered around Watson Road, the only paved road in the entire community.
Just past those farms were a thousand acres or so of forest that backed up into slightly more established rural communities.
It was fairly small as far as wildernesses went, but the forest in those acres was dense, and the path Julie described when Faith called her again was overgrown and only barely passable.
Turk had a much easier time navigating it than his humans did, so he took the lead while Faith and Jessica followed, and the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office formed a perimeter.
It was early afternoon by the time Faith and Jessica reached the area, and about eighteen hours since Sarah Brennan was attacked.
Faith hoped that Jimmy—if he was the killer—had chosen to return to his lair.
She imagined he would feel at least relatively safe here since it was off the grid and nearly inaccessible.
“How did Julie manage to visit him here?” Jessica asked. “She doesn’t really strike me as the outdoorsy type, and—Ah! Son of a bitch!”
She slapped her neck and pulled her hand away, glaring at the remains of the wasp she had killed. “This is very much an outdoorsy area,” she finished.
“He’s her brother,” Faith said. “You make sacrifices for family.”
“Well, if my brother ever decides to go crazy and turn into a hermit, he’s gonna do it on his own.”
Turk barked, signaling their arrival at the cabin. Faith held her hand up to stop them and drew her weapon. Turk looked at her for instructions, and she said, “Hold here, Turk.”
No one came out to investigate the barking. If Sullivan was there, he was hiding.
The cabin was barely visible through the trees that grew around it.
It was a small lean-to, maybe eighteen feet square, with an open doorway and an uncovered window next to it.
A massive yellowjacket nest glued a pair of elm branches to the eaves.
Jessica eyed the nest dubiously, but no insects buzzed within it. An old nest, now abandoned.
“James Sullivan!” Faith called. “This is the FBI! Come out with your hands where we can see them!”
No response.
Faith glanced at Jessica, then called again. “James! We have a K9! If you don’t surrender yourself peacefully now, he will bite you!”
Turk launched into a deep, heavy stream of barks at that, growling and snapping and making it clear that he absolutely would bite.
No response.
Faith took a deep breath. “James! We’re sending in the dog now!” When there was still no response, Faith said, “Go, Turk.”
Turk sprinted toward the cabin and launched through the door. His barking lasted a few seconds. When he fell silent, Faith’s heart twisted. Oh God, did he have a weapon? Did he hurt Turk?
Then Turk trotted out of the cabin door, looking disappointed. He looked at Faith and barked again, this one a far less aggressive bark than the warnings he’d given James Sullivan.
The absent James Sullivan.
Faith sighed. “Shit. He’s not here.”
“We should still search the cabin,” Jessica said. “We might find out where he’s going next.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
They approached the cabin, trading their handguns for flashlights. When Faith ducked into the cabin, she swore and put a hand on Jessica. “Careful.”
The floor was almost completely covered.
A sleeping bag lay in one corner, and a narrow path led from it to the door.
There were no clothes or personal belongings that Faith could see other than the sleeping bag, and an ancient radio was plugged into a gas generator with a pipe attached to its exhaust that pointed out the window.
Nothing else was plugged in at the moment, but the generator had a couple of one-hundred-ten-volt outlets and USB connectors on the front of it.
Most of the floor space was taken up by a massive duffel bag filled with blank dog tags and a manual press next to it with multiple typefaces that could effectively impress the information found on a legitimate dog tag.
The large press bore the logo of a company called Memorial Manufacturers, Ltd.
and proudly advertised its ability to make "official quality" pressed items. It didn't specifically say dog tags, but that's what it was for.
Jessica took some pictures for evidence while Faith and Turk scoured the place for anything else that might tell them where Jimmy was right now. They didn’t find anything. Jimmy was in the wind.
When Faith finally accepted that crawling over every square inch of the small lean-to wasn’t going to tell them where their killer was, she sighed and wiped sweat from her brow.
The wasps had left her alone, but she was sporting a healthy collection of spider bites from checking corners and looking underneath the sleeping bag.
Hopefully none of those bites were dangerous.
Turk snorted and plopped moodily atop the sleeping bag. Faith scratched him behind the ear and said, “It’s all right, boy. Good job.”
Turk glared at her for a moment, then rolled his eyes. Obviously, it wasn’t a good job because where was the bad guy?
"We have his name now," Jessica said. "We can put out a real APB. Something will turn up." She smacked at her neck, not a wasp this time, but a mosquito almost as big as a housefly. "God, what is it about me that makes insects love me so much?"
Faith would have cracked a joke, but she was worn out from yet another fruitless search.
Not entirely fruitless since they now had proof of Sullivan’s guilt, but as Turk might have pointed out, the bad guy was still out there.
Until he was brought into custody, innocent people were still in danger, and Hayes and Cruz were denied the justice they deserved.
Jessica called in the APB, then put a hand on Faith’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll find this guy. He has nowhere to go.”
Faith recalled their trek through the wilderness.
It was barely a mile from the road to this cabin, and it took them over an hour.
If Jimmy was used to this kind of environment, then he could disappear easily and live off the grid for decades.
He couldn’t hurt anyone living like a hermit, but that wasn’t good enough for Faith. That wasn’t justice.
But what could she do? Turk hadn’t found a scent. Jimmy was gone, and judging by the lack of belongings here, he wasn’t planning on coming back. All she could do was hope that the APB turned something up.
Her phone buzzed. Bridgette. She was the last person Faith wanted to talk to, but on the off chance she might have more information for them, she answered. “Bold.”
“Oh my God,” Bridgette gushed. “So, I talked to the soldier guy after his class again—his name’s Derek, by the way, and he’s cute enough I might let him actually take me out—and he said that this guy Jimmy went off the deep end a few months ago.
He left the class, ranted about false prophets, called himself the Apostate like it was some kind of title, and I guess just up and left his apartment.
Didn’t pay rent or anything. The police showed up to evict him, and he had been gone for weeks. ”
Faith sighed. “Yes, we know.”
“Wait… What? How?”
Faith was not about to tell Bridgette about Jimmy’s sister, so she said, “We followed up on him after you called me. He’s our guy.”
“Hell yeah! I mean… Did you find him yet?”
“Not yet. The police just put out an APB.”
“Faith!” Bridgette tsked. “I thought I was gonna be exclusive! I could have put the word out about Jimmy.”
Faith was too exhausted to explain to Bridgette the difference between a press interview and an all-points bulletin. She just hung up.
Jessica chuckled. “Hanging up on reporters will never not be satisfying.”
Turk whined softly. The normally upbeat dog was subdued after arriving at the cabin to find Sullivan gone. It seemed to have sunken into him that finding this particular bad guy was going to be more difficult than most, maybe the most difficult since the two of them had hunted Franklin West.
You’re jumping to the worst-case scenario, Faith told herself.
“Okay,” Jessica said. “So, what are we going to do while we’re waiting for the APB to pull something up?”
“Search the cabin. Top to bottom. Dig through this mess. We need to look for any sign of wear Jimmy is, or, failing that, any sign of who he plans to target next.”
“You don’t think he’s on the lam?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t know,” Faith replied, “but I doubt it. I think he might be too far gone mentally to understand the danger he’s in.
From what Bridgette told me, his mental state is precarious.
He might not be thinking clearly enough to understand that his best bet is to leave the area and keep his nose clean. ”
Jessica nodded slowly. “You might be right. We’ll make sure that law enforcement is still keeping an eye on the targeted chaplains. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll show up to try to kill one of them, only this time our friends in blue will be able to get to him before he runs away.”
Faith frowned. “I really don’t want to just sit here and wait for news.”
“I know. I’m just trying to be positive.”
The three of them began searching the cabin. Turk trotted around the outside of the dwelling, looking for anything, Sullivan might have buried outside. Faith and Jessica got started digging through the mess covering the floor of the cabin.
As the minutes dragged on and more and more of the cabin turned up nothing, Faith’s anxiety grew. Sullivan could be deep in the wilderness by now, ready to disappear for decades before he was found. He could be on the road on his way to Canada or Mexico.
Or he could be looking for his next victim.
She was about to despair of finding anything here when her fingers closed around a spiral bound notebook hidden underneath a pile of rancid-smelling clothes. Her heart leaped when she pulled it out and opened it to reveal a list of names: Robert Hayes, Daniel Cruz, Sarah Brennan.
And the last name, Walter Brennan.
“Jessica! I have something!”
“Brennan.”
“Oh yeah?”
Faith handed her the notebook. Jessica read the names, and her eyes widened. “This is it. This is our list.”
“Now we know who we need to protect.”
“Look up Walter Brennan,” Faith said. “Figure out where he is and get bodyguards to watch him ASAP.”
She waited, heart racing, while Jessica looked up Walter Brennan.
After a few minutes, Jessica said, “Okay, I’ve got him. It looks like he travels a lot for the Chaplain Corps, but he’s based at Anacostia-Bolling. He was out of town, though. He just got back this morning” Her eyes widened, and she looked at Faith.
“Call Metro PD,” Faith said. “Tell them we need presence around the base. Turk!”
Turk popped his head into the cabin.
“Come on, boy,” Faith said. “It’s time to go catch a bad guy.”
Turk barked exuberantly, and the three of them made the best time they could out of the forest to their car. It was a long shot that Sullivan would surface now that everyone knew who he was, but there was always hope. As long as there was hope, there was no room for despair.
And if Sullivan wanted to complete his revenge, then Faith would be there to prevent him.