Endangered Species by Barbara Block

Author:Barbara Block [Block, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781617735608
Google: qlkVAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00GNIX3TI
Barnesnoble: B00GNIX3TI
Goodreads: 5833912
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 1999-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

9/24

2111

THEY TRIED TO get more out of Pipkin, but he said he’d told them all he knew, and neither Wager nor Mallory doubted the pale and worried man. Mallory said he would like to know if Pipkin decided to leave the Steamboat Springs area, “just in case we have questions about these diagrams”; Wager left his business card and the order for Pipkin to call at once if he heard anything from or about the homicide suspect Libeus King.

When Mallory dropped Wager off at the DPD Administration Building, he waved a hand at the bundle of drawings and plans on the seat beside him. “I’ll fax these back to headquarters. Maybe someone there can make something of them.”

“What about alerting the arsenal?”

“I’ll take care of that.”

Wager was relieved to hear it; the arsenal’s officers would pay a hell of a lot more attention to a warning from the FBI than from a local Denver cop. “Was Tillotson ever afraid King suspected that she was an informant?”

“Not to my knowledge. I worked with her for almost a year. We were both very careful about contacts, and it’s my guess that if King did suspect something, she wasn’t aware of it.” Mallory’s fingers slid restlessly around the steering wheel.

“Of course, if he did suddenly learn about it—if someone told him. …”

That was one of the possibilities. King would have felt—would have been—betrayed. And with all that anger, all that self-righteousness, he could have killed out of blind rage. “How soon before she died did she talk with you?”

Mallory acknowledged that it was a couple of weeks.

The phone call to San Diego that had led Wager to the FBI was dated sixteen days before her death. “Is that William Johnson an agent or an informant?”

“I’m not comfortable answering that one, Gabe. For security reasons. And I don’t know that he has any bearing on the homicide aspect of this.”

He might or he might not; that was why Wager was asking. “I’d like to know what she said to him.”

“Oh—that’s easy. On those calls, Johnson was just a cutout for Tillotson; she didn’t talk to him at all. Johnson transferred all her calls directly to me. On that particular one, she said they were in Denver so King could work on a major project. The ‘headline grabber.’” He shook his head. “That was the last time I talked to her, and she had no suspicion at all that she’d been discovered. She was to find out more about King’s project—who was involved, what was targeted—and call back.”

That still left sixteen days, and all it took was a thirty-second message or a scrawled note. Wager opened the car door. “You don’t think King’s given up on that ‘project’?”

The FBI agent scratched at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve alerted all my sources to notify me if he shows up anywhere in the country. So far, no response. So I assume he’s still in this area. Besides,” he added, “I can’t take the chance he

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