Evelyn

Chapter 27

"I'd like to show you something, Will," Evans proposes as he and Connors finish the last of their apple pie and coffee.

"Where?" Connors asks, hoping that Detective Beckett and her team are reading him.

"Not too far from here," Evans assures him. "You can follow me. What are you driving?"

Connors describes a seized Black F-150, chosen for the operation. Jerrold nods approvingly. "Good vehicle. I have a red RAM 1500. You won't have any difficulty keeping eyes on it."

Evans' red truck makes good time on Route 202 until he flashes his lights to alert Connors/Jones that he's taking a turn off. A paved public road leads to a gravel-topped private one, snaking up a hill through woods. "Defensible," Connors mutters to himself. Evans will easily spot anyone following them. At best, the team will have to lag behind and conceal their vehicles. The most he can do, once he gets wherever Evans is taking him, is keep up a running conversation to let the cops listening to him know what's going on.

Evans pulls up in front of a large wooden structure. Having grown up a city boy, Connors knows almost nothing about farms, but to him, the building looks like a barn. He parks on tamped-down dirt next to Evans, who gestures for him to follow. Evans unlocks a large padlock holding the doors of the structure closed and punches a code into his phone. "All right, Will, we're clear to go in."

Connors has seen police armories with fewer weapons. "This is outstanding, Sir. Are those high capacity magazines for the Kalashnikovs?"

"Highest capacity available," Evans proclaims. "We've had ordnance built to order as well." He points to a device Connors doesn't recognize. "See that? I had it put together myself way back in late '69. It shoots a small charge beneath a car, just enough to throw it out of control. We blocked some invading jungle bunnies that way. The cops never figured it out. They barely investigated; just said the n******* had accidents, probably from drugs. The tests were s*it back then, and we could go after as many mother f****** as we wanted to with no one catching on. Sometimes I really wanted to announce it to the world, you know? Maybe send something to the paper. But that would have put an end to our operations."

Connors struggles to keep up his front. "Why did you stop?"

"Damn n****** got together to send out patrols. Some of the k*kes went out with them. It got too hard to set up."

"How did you pick your targets?" Connors probes.

"Looked for n****** driving nice cars, probably stolen anyway, maybe coming in from another state to infest the city. We rolled the cars and took the plates. That slowed the idiot cops down even more."

"They're not that much smarter now," Connors comments, desperately hoping he's wrong.

Evans slaps his new protégé on the back. "You've got that right. Too busy trying to take away guns from real Americans to go after the enemies of our way of life. I've been in the fight for over 40 years, but it's young bucks like you who have to pick up the torch now. And it's worse than ever. "Sh*t! There's a n***** in the White House. How the hell did we let that happen?"

Connors shakes his head. "Damn libtards! But if we're going to fight them, we'll need everything you've got. I want to see all of it," he adds, hoping to give Beckett's team enough time to get situated.

"Son," Evans declares. "I'm going to show you."

"Did you hear that?" Castle exclaims. "Evans as much as admitted to killing Paul and Mara."

"Babe, he didn't admit to killing anyone, just rolling cars and stealing license plates decades ago. We can't arrest him for that now. The statute of limitations on car accidents is only three years. But we can keep listening to see what else he drops. Depending on what more Evans says, I could alert the New Jersey State Police and the A.T.F. about this place. If Connors keeps him talking enough to get what we need, we can go after him as soon as he isn't standing in the middle of a damn ammo dump. If not, I could still have enough to pull him in for questioning once he's back in my jurisdiction. But that might not get us far, and it could blow Connors' cover. Right now, we have to stay out of sight and wait this out."

"I hate this, Kate! That man, or someone following his orders, killed Evelyn Montgomery's parents, and you're telling me we can't go nail him for it."

Kate frames his face in her hands. "Not yet, But we will. I promise. We will."

"Are you going to go to the Anderson reunion?" Alexis asks when Evelyn fills her in on her call with Sonia.

"I don't know," Evelyn confides. "It is my birth family, but it's also the family that threw out my grandmother. I wonder if the pregnancy Karina wrote to her brother Stephen about was Mara or if she and Timothy had more than one child."

"She could have had more," Alexis muses, "but then, why would Mara and Paul have no next of kin? I'll do a search for Browns in Michigan who might be Mara's siblings or their children, but I might be looking for a nonexistent needle in a very big haystack. I'm Googling for Browns in Detroit now. I'm getting about 3 million hits. The White Pages has over 100. I need to go back to the genealogy databases and see if I can find anything else we can use. I'll let you know."

"Thanks, Alexis. You're going above and beyond the call of duty on that."

"I'm going above and beyond the call of curiosity," Alexis admits. "Now that we know about Karina and Timothy, I want to find out what happened to them, maybe as much as you do."

"Well, good luck then, to both of us."

Connors tests the balance of a modified pistol in his hand before returning it to its spot, with a whistle of admiration. Evans grins. "You like that one, do you?"

"I'd love to take it out to the range, or maybe shoot at something more interesting than a target," Connors claims. "So, how do I get started with all this? Do I get put on a team or get an assignment or what?"

"There are people I have to talk to, but after that, you'll be receiving a probationary assignment," Evans explains. "Depending on how well you do, we'll see where you go from there. But understand, if you tell anyone outside our group about a word of this, you won't ever be going anywhere again. Do you copy that?"

"Loud and clear." Stomach turning, Connors makes a white supremacy hand signal he learned as part of his cover. "We have to protect what's ours."

"Yes, we do," Evans agrees. "Do you know how to get back to New York from here?"

"Not a problem," Connors declares.

With Evans long gone in the opposite direction, Connors pulls into a rest stop to meet up with Beckett and her team at an outdoor picnic table. "That was quite a performance," Rick congratulates the officer, applauding.

"Ms. Rodgers is a heck of a teacher," Connors responds, before turning to Kate. "What's our next step, Detective Beckett?"

Kate bats a windblown strand of hair out of her face. "That will depend on Evans's next move."