To the People of Norway: Our hearts are with you – today, tomorrow, and for however long you need them.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Clueless
"It's not him."
Lisbon stared at the officer, momentarily uncomprehending. Then all the air left her in a rush. "You-You're certain?"
"One hundred percent. Prints did not match Patrick Jane. We're running them through the other databases now, trying to come up with a hit." The middle-aged cop turned and started leading her briskly up the walkway. "Sheriff Hamilton's inside with CSI. They're still trying to piece together exactly what happened…"
Lisbon trotted along beside the officer. Her brain was buzzing. "But…there's been no sign of Jane?"
"We're looking," the older man assured her. Even in the dark, his eyes were warm with compassion. "Believe me, we're looking."
Sheriff Hamilton met them on the porch. "Agent Lisbon."
"Sheriff." They shook hands firmly, and Lisbon met his gaze with solemn eyes. "Tell me everything you know."
He nodded, and started guiding her through the crime scene. "One of my deputies, Officer Kelly, started looking in windows when no one answered the door. That's when he saw Laura…"
Paul Jorsten's wife was lying face-up on the living room carpet, not far from the entryway. Her eyes were wide open, and starting to cloud.
Camera flashes lit the room like lightning, bouncing crazily off the giant wall-mirror and reflecting in the blood pool behind Laura's head.
The place was crawling with CSIs. Two were taking pictures while another three edged carefully between furniture and around the body, scouring for evidence.
"After Kelly got inside and determined that Laura was dead, he and his partner did a sweep of the house. They discovered the second body upstairs…"
Lisbon followed the Sheriff up a flight of emerald steps. At the top, a young female officer came over to meet them.
"We got a match," she told the Sheriff breathlessly, holding up the print scanner. "It's Aaron Brody."
Sheriff Hamilton blinked. "Well, I'll be damned…"
Lisbon looked back and forth between the two cops. "Am I supposed to know that name?"
"Only if you work around here," the Sheriff told her. He gestured Lisbon past a child's bedroom, which looked utterly trashed, and into the master bedroom, where a man's body lay curled on the floor, and there were no CSIs in sight.
Lisbon's eyes washed over the scene.
Cold night air leaked through a large broken window. There was blood on the sill.
A thick magenta comforter lay crumpled beside the bed, scorched black in several places.
The dead man was wearing a designer suit, but it wasn't a three-piece. Both of his hands were red with burns. No wedding ring. A small gun lay beside him. Another revolver was across the room, near the fireplace.
The man's face was…destroyed.
Lips were peeled back, exposing too many teeth. His jaw was stuck open, his eyes forever burned shut. His skin was mostly black, a little bit red, and very cracked.
There was a dark stain on the carpet near his open mouth. The rest of the floor was littered with matches, curved shards of glass, and small pieces of what Lisbon first assumed to be ash. On closer inspection, she realized they were pieces of skin.
Lisbon shivered. If it had been Jane…
She took a deep breath, and the smell flooded her. Lisbon's stomach rolled.
If it had been Jane, she would already be in the bathroom across the hall, throwing up.
Sheriff Hamilton was watching her carefully, as if afraid she might faint.
Lisbon narrowed her eyes in defiance. "So?" she prompted. "Aaron Brody?"
The Sheriff looked down at the body. "Aaron Brody is – was – the son of Mason Brody, bane of all law enforcement in these parts. Mason's a bigwig in organized crime. Real kingpin. Prostitution, illegal gambling, even human trafficking…You name something shady that goes on around here, ten-to-one he's involved with it. The Feds have been trying to build a case against him for years, but the guy's slippery like butter. Plus he's got a team of lawyers, each worth their own weight in gold. Probably more than a few politicians in his pocket, too…"
"And how does his son fit into all of it?"
Sheriff Hamilton shrugged. "He's rumored to be part of the organization…He was actually arrested about eighteen months ago. Feds busted up a big prostitution operation. It was some nasty business, too – illegal immigrants, smuggled here and forced to work as call-girls. Some were even sold as sex slaves. Just God-awful business…" He shook his head.
"But Aaron was never convicted of any of it?"
"No. The 'Dream Team' got him off, no surprises there. A few of the organization's low-levels did go down, though. Guys handling the day-to-day business, one of the drivers who helped ship the girls in. Small fish."
Lisbon frowned, thinking hard. "So, what's Aaron Brody been up to since the bust? Any more recent arrests?"
"No arrests, but a buddy of mine at the FBI says they have an inside source who claims that, as far as he knows, Aaron's not working the prostitution side of things any more. These days, he's working as a hitman."
Multiple gears were turning in Lisbon's brain. She walked closer to the body, then wandered over to the gun by the fireplace. It was a thirty-eight. The same caliber that had killed Paul Jorsten. They were both thirty-eights.
"Is the second gun – ?" Lisbon started to ask.
"They're both his. We found matching holsters on the body. Hip and ankle."
She nodded. A back-up weapon made sense for a professional killer. "Okay, so Aaron Brody was a hitman working for his father's organization…He killed Paul and Laura Jorsten because…they were involved with the organization, too? A business deal gone wrong?" Lisbon looked up at the Sheriff, eyebrows raised. It didn't feel right. Van Pelt hadn't found any mob ties in the Jorstens' records. None of it was helping them find Jane…
Sheriff Hamilton looked back at her, equally clueless. "That could be. Or, they witnessed something they shouldn't have. Or hell, maybe they just offended Aaron or his father in some way. All we know is, Aaron came to this house, and, for whatever reason, Laura Jorsten let him in. He killed her, then rooted around downstairs a bit, like he was either searching for something, or else trying to make it look like a break-in. And then he came up here. From the look of things, that's when all hell broke loose…"
Lisbon's eyes traveled again over the gruesome scene in front of her. "Hell" was a good word for it.
"The best we can figure," the Sheriff went on, "is that your man must've taken Brody by surprise. We think Jane was hiding in here, waiting, and when Brody came in, Jane attacked him with a bottle of cologne and some matches. The cologne's animal-based, so the oil would've burned like crazy. And while Brody was on fire, it looks like Jane managed to escape through the window…" He nodded at the broken glass jutting from the window frame.
Lisbon looked at the blood on the sill. Then she looked back at the body. Another shiver rippled through her.
Jane DID that…
Sheriff Hamilton took out his flashlight and walked to the smashed window, shining his beam onto the slanted roof beyond. Lisbon moved to join him.
"He climbed his way down here, and then dropped off the edge to the ground…" The Sheriff trailed his light over Jane's supposed path. Small bits of glass sparkled like fresh raindrops. Several drips of blood stood out black against the grey shingles.
"There's more blood along the side of the garage," he told Lisbon. "Handprints, like someone was leaning on it for support. We've already searched in there, top to bottom. The place was a mess, but no one was inside. Brody had already shot the lock out before my people got here."
Lisbon stared out into the vast darkness, shaking her head. "I don't understand…If Jane got out of the house, why didn't he just get in his car and drive away?"
"Well, his car keys are downstairs on some kind of key holder. It could be that once he was out, he didn't want to come back for them, or it wasn't safe. Maybe Brody was still coming after him." The Sheriff glanced thoughtfully back at the burned body. "Hard to believe he could've stayed on his feet after something like that, but adrenaline can do wild things. Or, maybe Jane was just disoriented. Injured and not thinking straight. He might've wandered off and collapsed somewhere…"
"Although," the Sheriff added quickly, at Lisbon's distressed look, "if that were the case, you'd think we would've found him by now."
"Where exactly have you been looking?"
"Everywhere we can think of," he told her earnestly. "I've got deputies fanning out around the property. They've been scouring the landscape, searching outbuildings, canvassing all the houses up and down the road, trying to determine if anyone saw or heard anything. And Search and Rescue's on the way…"
Lisbon rubbed at her head, which was suddenly throbbing worse than ever. Even with fresh air pouring through the broken window, the thick odors of bad cologne and burnt human were overpowering. She strode back into the hallway, and the Sheriff followed after her, clicking off his flashlight.
Lisbon stopped on the threshold to the bathroom. She stared at the mess beyond without really seeing it. So, maybe Jane hadn't been able to get into his car, but that still didn't explain why he hadn't called for help.
He DID call for help, a little voice reminded her, and for the second time that night she had to swallow past a lump.
He had called while the killer was coming to get him. The strange, muffled, sing-song voice on her phone replayed itself in Lisbon's mind; she now knew that voice belonged to Aaron Brody, the hitman. But why hadn't Jane called again after he escaped?
Dead battery? No signal?
"Agent Lisbon?"
She blinked, startled to find the Sheriff so close beside her. "I'm just thinking," Lisbon murmured, looking back at the laundry-strewn bathroom.
The place had been turned upside down. Towels flung from shelves, socks and underwear tossed out of the hamper…
Lisbon frowned suddenly, noticing something else. Something small, poking out from under a pair of polka dot panties. She slipped a latex glove from her pocket and moved carefully into the bathroom. Crouching low, Lisbon peeled back the panties to reveal a brown plastic horse. She picked it up with the glove.
A child's toy.
Lisbon's mind flashed onto the ransacked child's bedroom a few feet down the hall.
A sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. One that should have occurred much earlier…