“Why don’t we grab the girl and make her tell us where he is?”
Stanton shot him a hardened glare over his shoulder. “Quit asking so many fucking questions. All you need to know is if we don’t find Voleski in the next twenty-four hours, they’re going to need dental records to figure out who the hell we are.”
Chapter Nineteen
Snell called Jake’s cell a few minutes after midnight. Bear was tearing his hair out trying to track down Hal Skirchak in Washington. The cell number he had for Skirchak wasn’t current, he wasn’t listed, and Bear angrily punched numbers on the phone as he fought an automated directory. Given the fact it was one in the morning D.C. time, there was no live person available.
Jake answered his cell from the bedroom. “What’s up?”
“I’m in my office and two things are pissing me off,” she said. “First, there’s a file on Blue Heron buried deep on one of the servers and it’s password protected.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Very. I should have access to everything here and I can’t open the file.”
“Is there a date on the folder?”
“Hold on.” A second passed. “Two weeks ago.”
“Can you break the password?”
“I’m not a hacker. I’m going to poke around some more and see what I can find. Why would a small pharmaceutical company in the middle of Kansas have a password protected file on a federal server?”
“Technically, Olathe is on the east side of Kansas, not the middle.”
“You know what I mean, smart ass.”
“What’s the other thing?” Jake asked.
“Those two assholes in the Escalade from outside Dreams are still following me. I’m looking out the window right now and they’re parked back on the access road. I don’t know who they are and it’s making me nervous. I don’t like to be nervous, so it pisses me off. I want your help.”
“You’re a federal agent, Snell. I’m a lowly private investigator wanna-be. What do you expect me to do?”
“I thought you were some kind of bad ass, Caldwell. Maybe I need protection.”
“How much protection do you need?” Jake asked. “You have a gun and you’re locked inside a federal building.”
“I can’t stay here forever.”
“You still have a gun.”
“They may both have guns,” she said. “Two is greater than one last time I checked.”
“So you’re looking for protection?”
“That and I thought you could help me dig through some boxes. There’s a reference to some archived documents stored in the basement. They haven’t been scanned into the system. Could be something there.”
“It’s after midnight,” he said, staring longingly at his comfortable bed.
“You going to turn into a pumpkin?”
He paced a few steps. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
He hung up and found Bear slouched on the couch, the phone pressed to his ear, eyes half-open.
“Any luck?” Jake asked.
“Hell no,” Bear said. “These Washington douchebags keep transferring me around. I’d give a thousand dollars just to talk to a real person for more than sixty seconds. Skirchak is still with the ATF in D.C., but nobody will hook me up with a number. Who called?”
“I’m going to meet Snell. She wants me to dig through some boxes with her.”
Bear shucked his eyebrows up and down. “You want company, or can you be a good boy? I told Maggie I’d watch after you.”
Jake threw Bear a grin. “Don’t worry, chief. I’ll be on my best behavior. Back in a couple hours. Call me if you get anything.”
Jake stepped into the early morning air, and the two guys tailing Snell popped to mind. One of them had looked familiar when he spotted them outside Dreams. The memory danced on the edge of his mind’s eye, and he relaxed and let it come. Two years ago. A diner. A fight. Well, Jake threw two punches and received none. One of the many outstanding jigsaw pieces clicked into place. He needed confirmation it was the right piece. Inside his truck, he thumbed the business card Detective Ogio gave him with a cell number on the back. Ogio answered on the third ring. Unlike Jake, he sounded like he was sleeping.
“Ogio? This is your blue bird calling.”
“What? Caldwell? What freaking time is it?”
“It’s late. Sorry to wake you but I need a favor.”
Ogio yawned. “And you think I’m the one to do it for you?”
“You didn’t clue me into the microphone in the ceiling for nothing.”
“It was a moment of weakness,” Ogio said. “I felt sorry for you.”
“Come on. You wanted to tell me something. So, help me. What did you want to tell me?”
“Nothing. I probably said too much already. I’m not a big fan of pissing in my boss’s face. It’s what’s called a career-limiting move.”
“Your boss seems like an asshole.”
“He is, but that’s not illegal.”
“So Chief Ware is tied up in this?”
Ogio breathed out. “You’re not as bright as I thought.”
“Blue Heron, then?”
“You’re getting warmer. I’m not saying anything else, and I’m going back to sleep.”
“Before you nod back into dream land, I need that favor.”
It took a few minutes of convincing Ogio, but the detective gave in. Twenty minutes after he hung up, Jake spurred his truck up the hill to the FBI office. A hundred yards ahead he spotted the Escalade Snell mentioned parked between the pyramids of light from the lamp posts. He stopped his truck, killed the lights, and called Snell.
“Look out your window,” he said.
At this hour, only a handful of windows lit up the building and hers was easy enough to find. She wheeled to the window, still sitting in her chair. “What am I looking for?”
“Watch the birdie.”
A minute later, a black and white from the Kansas City Police Department slid behind the Escalade. The blue and white domes on the roof spun up and a spotlight bathed the back of the SUV in harsh light. The two figures looked out the back window.
“How’d you pull that off?” Snell asked.
“I have friends in high places.”
“Thought you’d just yank them out of the car and beat the shit out of them.”
“My alternate plan.”
The officer got out of the vehicle, hand on his pistol, and sidled to the driver’s side. They talked for a minute before the officer returned to his car. Another couple minutes passed, and the officer returned to the Escalade.
“I wonder who they are,” Snell said.
“I know who they are. I just want outside confirmation.”
“Are you going to make me guess or tell me?”
“I haven’t got the confirmation yet. I’ll be at the front door in a few minutes. Come let me in.”
Jake clicked off the phone. Thirty seconds later, the Escalade drove away. Jake slunk low in his seat as they passed. The passenger had the same ugly face he saw outside the strip club and the same ugly face he bloodied in the diner a couple years ago.
His cell phone pinged. A text message with pictures. A little fuzzy, but clear enough. A second later it rang. Ogio. “Nice work, Detective.”
“You owe me one,” Ogio said.
“Tell me who they are, and I’ll owe you two.”
“The pictures come through okay?”
“Close enough. Thanks.”
“Tell me again why I’m helping you,” Ogio said.
“Because I’m a charming son of a bitch.”
“That’s not it. Don’t think you can make a habit of this.”
“I won’t. Who are they?”
“Dominic Pituro and Jordan Matarrese,” Ogio said. “You were right.”
“Say it, again.”
Ogio’s breath crackled the speaker. “Why?”
“Because I like to be right every once in a while.”
“Y
ou say it like it doesn’t happen often,” Ogio said.
“It happens more than most people give me credit for.”
“Pituro and Matarrese work for the illustrious Senator Mitchell Young. Security.”
“Say I’m right again.”
“Don’t push your luck, Caldwell. Keep me in the loop if there’s something I should know.”
“Don’t worry, Detective. Thanks.”
First Keats’s men tailing him, now the Senator tailing Snell. Interesting. What would Snell do with that little tidbit of information, and the pictures of Young and Keats exchanging money? He cruised the access road to the near empty lot. Snell’s Fusion parked alone in the front against a curb near the handicapped spots. Snell met him at the door. She’d shed the leather jacket, and the late hour dragged her eyes low.
“So, who were they?”
“Coffee first. Then I talk.”
They climbed the beige linoleum staircase. A cubby off the main hallway held a couple sludge-crusted coffee pots and an over-the-hill refrigerator. Snell poured two cups of coffee, handed one to Jake, and they headed to her office. Jake closed the door behind them. Snell settled at her desk and took a sip from her cup.
“Jesus, this coffee is awful,” she said.
“You should get a Keurig. Hard to screw those up.”
“You have one?”
“Can’t afford one,” he said.
“So who were the guys?”
“The same guys tailing you outside of Dreams.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Who are they?”
Jake set his cup on her desk and leaned back in the chair. “Two years ago, Keats sent me on an assignment to collect from a deadbeat named Aaron Tripp. He liked to gamble and lose, and owed Keats two grand. I meet Tripp at his place and he, of course, doesn’t have a dime to his name.”
“What did you do?”
“I shot him through the forehead.”
Snell’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open.
Jake laughed. “I’m kidding. Jesus. I kind of liked the guy for some reason. He hemmed and hawed about not having the money but thought he could get some of it in a few hours. His M.O. was stealing luggage from the airport and pawning what he could for cash. I decide to give him a few hours to get it done. Couple hours later he calls me and wants to meet. We hook up in a diner in Riverside. Tripp shows me something he found in this suitcase he stole. Pictures.”
“Of what?”
“Of a certain powerful person doing unmentionable things with a stripper.”
Snell leaned forward on her desk. “Who was it?”
“As Tripp is showing me, the pictures and I’m telling him the world of shit he’s in, these two jerk-offs stroll through the door. One of them was the ugly passenger driving the Escalade tailing you. It took me awhile to remember, but he works for the same powerful guy in the pictures.”
“Who is it?”
“Senator Mitchell Young.” Jake let the statement hang, watching Snell’s reaction. He still wasn’t going to tell her about the pictures he found of Keats and Young. He wanted to find out how she’d handle this first—and what was in the archived files in the basement.
“Mitchell Young? Why would his security detail be tailing me?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“If this security guy was tailing me, he must have seen you. Think he’d remember you?”
“I would hope so,” Jake said. “He broke his nose on my elbow and ran into my fists a couple of times.”
Her lips curled upward. “Funny how that can happen.”
“Maybe he’s a masochist. Young ever come up in your task force investigation?”
“No. Maybe there’s something in the files downstairs. Want to take a look?”
Jake stretched. He was wearing down, and a few hours of sleep would do wonders. But he wanted to dig through those archived files and find out if there was a tie to Blue Heron and Mitchell Young.
“What happened to the pictures?”
“I gave them to Keats and never heard another word about it.”
They descended the steps, along the corridor past the entrance, and down another flight. The hallway smelled musty and moldy, like an old library with water damage. Snell pulled out a passkey and flashed it in front of a door labeled “Records.” The light turned green and they entered.
“What happened to Tripp? You break his legs for not paying up?”
“I let him go.”
They shuffled down the narrow aisle. Grey, metal shelves stretched floor to ceiling holding cardboard filing boxes, the contents labeled with rough scrawls from a black Sharpie. Snell searched the signs at the end of each aisle.
“Keats let you. Let him go, I mean?”
“No, I took some pics like I killed him and dumped him in an alley. I’m no Annie Leibovitz, but Keats bought it. In reality, I gave Tripp some money and sent him to some place warm.”
Snell stopped and faced him, her jade eyes searching his face. “Why?”
“I don’t have a problem with hurting people who deserve to get hurt,” Jake said, leaning against a shelf. “Most of the people I dealt with deserved what they got. But, the longer I did it, the harder it was.”
“Why?” She pressed back against the shelf opposite Jake, only a couple feet separating them. Her normal icy demeanor had melted away, now curious, vulnerable.
“Not everyone deserved it. Keats used to say if you wanna dance, you gotta pay the band. Some people weren’t in it to dance, they were in it to survive. Some people have shitty lives or are thrown into shitty circumstances. My breaking their kneecaps wasn’t going to help them get out of it. So, when the snapping bones and the screaming pleas kept me up at night, I decided to get out. It was both a moral and financial decision. I couldn’t keep floating people and paying Keats out of my own pocket, and I couldn’t do what Keats wanted anymore.”
Snell’s eyes backlit from within, and she tilted her head up, voice low. “A mob enforcer with a conscience.”
“Not an effective combination.”
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
“And what was that?”
She cocked her head, considering the question. “I don’t know. Not this. More like Keats, maybe.”
“There’s nobody like Keats.”
Snell laughed, stepped a few rows ahead and stopped, traced a number on the aisle label with her finger and darted in. She hefted a box and handed it to Jake. She piled another one on top of it and selected one of her own.
“That’s it,” she said. “Let’s take them back to my office.”
“Lead the way.”
Snell carried the box back up the aisle to the door. She balanced the box with one arm and opened the door with the other. Propping the door open with her foot, she let Jake pass. He twisted and waited for her.
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” he asked.
“Not yet, but I’m getting there. At least you saved me a couple of trips hauling these boxes.”
“Glad to know I’m good for something.”
Chapter Twenty
Snell shoved her chair away and flipped the lid off the first box sitting on her desk. Jake set his two boxes on the floor in front of her desk, their lids coated with a thin film of gray dust, some of which now lined his shirt. He slid a chair over and sat.
“That your daughter?” Jake asked, nodding toward her mouse pad. A mass of blonde curls smiling above a ravished watermelon rind, juice staining her chin. Cute.
Snell instinctively moved to cover it up but stopped herself. Interesting. “Yes. This is an old picture, but it’s still my favorite. She’s a spirited teenager now.”
“But you’re not married any longer?”
She shook her head, breathing out slowly. “Divorced a few years ago.”
“Too bad. What happened?”
“Found out some things I didn’t like much about him, and rather than shoot him or have him arreste
d, I divorced him.”
“Sounds like a great guy. Must be tough being a single mom and being in the FBI.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I get by, and this isn’t a subject I really want to talk about.”
“Got it,” Jake said, cursing himself for prying. “So, what are we looking at here?”
Snell thumbed through the tops of the manila folders jammed inside her box. “The computers show two agents were assigned to investigate Blue Heron three years ago, which is about the time we got the big push to go paperless, start storing everything on the data base and tagging files in order to enable the search engine to find them. From the dates on these folders, it looks like we have records hitting just before that time frame. They never got around to scanning them in.”
“Who were the agents?”
“Walters and Riesenberg. I don’t remember too much about them. They were only here for a few months on loan from field offices in North Carolina and Iowa.”
“Good memory,” Jake said, popping the lid on one box and fingering the tabs on his folders. Dates and names that didn’t mean anything to him.
“Walters especially. He loved our barbecue. Much better than the vinegar shit they served back home. He always promised to give me some special rub he concocted, but I never got any. I didn’t cross paths with them on anything else.”
“We should call them.”
Snell looked up from her box, brow creased. “Why?”
“They might remember something from Blue Heron that could help us.”
“I doubt it.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Jake said.
“It’s possible. But we were elbow deep in Keats.”
Puzzled at her obstinacy on the two agents, Jake sent Bear a text to check on something. Her mention of Keats sparked his curiosity. He picked at a file label. He had to know. “How much do you know about Keats?”
“Better question is what do I not know about Keats?”
“You have files on all his associates?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Since you know I worked for him, you got one on me?” Jake asked.
She nodded. “It’s not thick though. Just some pictures of you running around town. You looked like you stayed away from the heavy stuff and whatever you did, you were discreet. Which is good.”
Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 36