Free Tunnel of Night by John Philpin

tall. From his posture, I’d say that he learned to shoot in the military. He shouldn’t have missed. Then he walked into the kitchen and tore the page from Peterson—an elaborate game. Put that together with all the other characteristics you were tapping into your twentieth-century toy.”
    I paused to allow Lane time to absorb that information, then said, “We’re talking about John Wolf.”
    “A copycat. Like I said before. Somebody who studied Wolf, who is imitating him.”
    “Copycats are rare, Lanie. The concept appeals to the law enforcement community more than it equates with reality. Fear of the copycat becomes a convenient excuse to withhold more information in a case than is necessary. There have been a few. The Tylenol case comes to mind. When it does happen, it’s a different pathology from what I’ve encountered among serial killers. Typically, it’s someone at the fringes of sanity, about to tip over anyway. He hasn’t had any formulated plan. There hasn’t been anything to copy. The actions of the first killer serve as a catalyst, a trigger, and off he goes.”
    I looked at Lane and said, “We’re going to see Dexter Willoughby.”
    Willoughby was the FBI agent who showed up at the old house in Vermont right after the explosion that I assumed had taken Wolf’s life. Willoughby took over that scene, sealed it, then headed thirty-five miles north to secure Wolf’s entire business operation.
    “Willoughby wouldn’t take my calls when I tried to reach him from Lake Albert. That’s why I was … out of sorts when I got back from town.”
    “There’s no way Wolf could have walked out of that inferno.”
    “I didn’t think so, either. I’m still not convinced. Everyone, including me, assumed that Wolf was dead simply because of the force of the explosion. As far as I know, his death was never confirmed.”
    “How could he have survived that, Pop? No one could.”
    I thought about the last time that I had seen John Wolf. The killer was in the cellar of his boyhood home, sprawled on top of a bomb that was buried in the coal bin. It was the same coal bin that he had been locked in as a child—his stepfather’s preferred method of discipline over the years.
    “Lane, what might Wolf have done with all of those childhood hours alone in the terrifying darkness of that dungeon?”
    Claw at the earth. Dig. Make your way toward freedom. Slow and steady, lad
.
    There was a large slab of sandstone in one corner of the coal bin. I had noticed it when I reburied Wolf’s own explosives and changed his timing device. What would I have found if I had lifted it?
    Wolf was fascinated with birds. The killdeer is a bird that builds its nest in a depression in the earth. If someone comes too near the nest, the bird emerges, feigns injury, hobbles with bent wing. I could see Wolf collapsing to the ground, wounded, like the killdeer only pretends to be. I could see him tunneling free from the cellar, dragging himself far away from the house.
    Alive. Healed now. Taking flight. Seeking vengeance
.
    “If Willoughby wouldn’t take your calls, he’s not gonna let us through the front door.”
    “I’m confident that he already regrets not talking with me,”
    “Huh? Pop, he shut me out of the Wolf case totally. He didn’t let the Vermont authorities in on any of it, either. After the first couple of days, he even began keeping his partner, Susan Walker, out of it. I hear he got all the credit for a major case cleared. He probably landed in a corner office, and sits behind a mahogany desk.”
    “I called a friend,” I said. “Agent Willoughby will see us. If Wolf did get out of there alive, Willoughby is the one person who would know.”
    SHE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE CORNER OFFICE . Willoughby’s secretary ushered us in. But the desk that the FBI special agent was sitting behind was walnut, not mahogany. I nodded at the desk.
    “Win some, lose some,” I mumbled to Lane.
    The small, slender man had been with the