Jake couldn’t put a ring on her finger with this case still in play, but he could talk to her, so he punched the favorite icon on his phone for Maggie. Their daughter Halle was grounded for the weekend for missing curfew again.
“What happened?” Jake asked.
“She’s running around with Toby Buckle,” Maggie said.
“Toby Buckle? Is he the kid with the zits and the giant nose?”
“God, no. Give her a little credit, Jake. Toby is on the baseball team—good-looking kid with the big arms and tight t-shirts.”
Jake remembered him now and growled. “Not the arrogant little prick that drives the blue pick-up.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Now you know why she’s grounded for the weekend.”
“Make it until she gets out of high school or Toby leaves town. I’m with the County Sheriff and I don’t want to get booked for pre-meditated murder.”
“I never heard a thing,” Bear said. “That Toby kid is an asshole.”
Three hours later, they hit the outskirts of Des Moines. The FBI office was off Westown Parkway in West Des Moines. They followed the navigation directions from Jake’s phone and arrived at the office fifteen minutes early. Jake called Riesenberg and told her they were outside the building. He listened for a moment and hung up.
“She’s coming out to meet us.”
A few minutes later, an attractive, five-foot-eight brunette in her fifties emerged though the front door. She wore blue slacks with a matching jacket over a white blouse. Her hair was cut sharp which matched the expression on her face. Jake parked along the curb at the front of the building. Riesenberg marched to the truck, her electric blue eyes wide and bright.
“You Caldwell?”
“Yeah. This is James Parley. He’s a county sheriff in Missouri. He worked on the task force we spoke about on the phone.”
“I remember the name.” Riesenberg studied them for a moment, as if sizing them up. She jerked her head to the west. “There’s a Denny’s a half mile from here. Meet me there.”
She crossed the parking lot to a gold Taurus. Jake followed her to the restaurant. A handful of people stacked on one side of the place ate breakfast and read newspapers or scanned their cell phones. Riesenberg selected a booth on the opposite side to give them privacy. Jake and Bear crammed into the booth on the other side of the table. A waitress appeared seconds later, and they ordered coffee.
“So, what do you want to know?” Riesenberg asked.
“Any reason why we’re meeting here?” Bear asked.
“Because my superiors would frown upon me talking to either of you about this case.”
“Why are you?”
“Two reasons. I really like Jack Logan and I don’t like the truth getting kicked under the rug. The fact those two files in particular are missing from the evidence box pisses me off, but I can’t do anything through official channels. From what you said on the phone, you might be able to.”
“The computer files are password protected,” Jake said. “You know the magic word?”
“Nope, and I have no way of getting into those. If I even try, it’ll set off all kinds of alarms in the system.”
The waitress brought three empty cups and an old-fashioned brown coffee pot. She poured and asked if they wanted to order. They simultaneously declined which earned an eye roll and a guarantee of little future service from her.
“What was in those files?” Bear asked.
Riesenberg stirred a creamer into her cup. “Enough financial dirt to bury some high-profile people.”
“Like who? Why were you investigating Blue Heron at all?”
“You heard none of this from me, got it?” She jabbed a bony finger at them. “If any of this blows back to me or the FBI, I will make it my personal mission in life to make yours a living hell. Agreed?”
Bear and Jake both nodded.
Her voice lowered to a conspiratorial volume. “We had eyes on some high-profile figures in Washington due to the whole campaign finance scandal. We were tracking contracts, kickbacks, and campaign donations. Blue Heron came up in the course of the investigation. They were awarded some juicy government contracts when there were bigger firms who could fill the orders faster with much cheaper bids.”
“Government contracts for antibiotics?” Bear’s chin dropped, and his eyes grew wide in what Jake called his “Bitch, please” look.
Riesenberg waved her hand. “Antibiotic, vaccines, you name it.”
“So somebody was getting fat and happy,” Bear said.
“Morbidly obese and ecstatic. The money was run through several laundering sources that took us months to track down. In the end, we figured out the source and presented the findings to our boss.”
“What did he say?” Jake asked.
“Kudos and pats on the back at first,” she said. “But he ran our findings up the chain. Less than twenty-four hours later, my partner and I were reassigned. They said our work was finished and it was time to move on.”
“Which was bullshit, of course.”
“Of course. I pitched a fit and wanted to close the thing out. Go after the bastard. But they said the issue was being addressed, and it was a sensitive national security matter. Let it go.”
“What kind of money are we talking here?” Jake asked.
“Millions. All funneled through Blue Heron for drugs. First, it’s a crazy amount of money for simple antibiotic pills. Like the proverbial ten-thousand-dollar toilet plunger. But even this was over the top for the government. Second, Blue Heron never shipped a single unit of anything to anyone we could find. Not one. Millions of dollars pumped into that company and nothing coming out.”
Riesenberg’s cell rang. She answered and said she’d be there in a few minutes. “I gotta run. Look at Blue Heron and its CEO Wyatt Drabek. The missing files you’re looking for showed a trail of campaign contributions through a bunch of dummy companies.”
“Contributions to who?” Bear asked.
“Wyatt Drabek was the number one contributor to the campaign of Democratic Senator Mitchell Young. That’s why the whole thing was squashed.”
“He’s got that much power at his disposal?”
A smirk crinkled the corner of her eyes. “Young is a rising star in the Democratic party. There’s talk he could run for President in the next election. Yeah, he’s got a lot of power at his fingertips.”
She stood to leave, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt.
“You ever hear of something called Ares?” Jake asked.
Riesenberg’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”
“It’s come up in the course of our investigation.”
“In what context?”
“In the context of people killing to get their hands on it. You know what it is?”
She glanced around the room. “How much do you know about it?”
“Something to do with a vaccine for soldiers against chemical weapons that went wrong. But we don’t know what it does.”
“Few people do, including me. But, ask yourself this. What government agency would be involved in bio weapons?”
“The DoD,” Bear said.
She dipped her head in agreement. “And do you know who chairs the Department of Defense subcommittee?”
“Let me guess,” Jake said. “Senator Mitchell Young.”
“You got it, big boy. If I were you, I’d poke very, very lightly around Ares.” She reached into her purse and peeled off a couple of dollar bills which she laid on the table. “You guys buy the coffee; I got the tip.”
“Hey,” Jake said. “You ever talk to an Agent Snell at the Kansas City field office?”
“Never heard of them.” Riesenberg strode across the restaurant and out the front door. Bear slid around the booth to other side of the table.
“Why ask about Snell?” Bear asked.
“I was curious,” Jake said.
“About?”
“You guys worked that task force for what…a year?”
Bear calculated, his bushy head wavering back and forth. “Fourteen months.”
“Fourteen months of going after Keats.”
“Keats and a few other scumbags. So?”
“You probably had a ton of data to sift through in the beginning, trying to figure out what was important and what wasn’t. But toward the end, the information starts to choke out and pretty soon you’re grasping at straws. There at the end, was there any potential lead you didn’t jump on?”
Bear huffed. “If we had a sniff of a lead, we were on it like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.”
The waitress materialized and topped off their coffee. Kenny Rogers lamented about a woman named Lucille from overhead speakers while Jake waited for the waitress to drop back out of earshot.
“So why is Snell dragging her feet?” Jake asked. “Why didn’t she call Riesenberg?”
“It’s early.”
“It’s almost eleven in the morning. Why didn’t she call?”
Bear absently stirred his coffee. “That’s a damn good question. You thinking she’s dirty?”
“I don’t get that vibe from her,” Jake said. “But you know her better than I do. What do you think?”
“If I was a betting man, I’d say no way in hell.”
Jake stared absently at the table, images flashing in his mind but nothing sticking. “There’s something there, though.”
“Which leaves us sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Jake said. “This shit is piling up deep and you’re the only one I fully trust. We may be in over our heads.”
“I know what you can do right now.”
“What’s that?”
Bear grabbed a menu. “Buy my hungry ass breakfast. We’ll figure out the rest as we eat.”
* * *
Alexander Voleski rested against the headboard of a twin bed in a third-floor apartment less than two blocks from his girlfriend’s house. He’d have preferred a chair, but there wasn’t one in this closet of a bedroom. The briefcase lay on the bed. His gun rested on top of the case, his right hand curled around the grip and finger resting on the trigger guard. The springs of the thin mattress bit into his ass, but it was better than hiding out in an alley somewhere.
The room was a last resort. One way in, one way out. If the acquaintance who owned the apartment gave him up, Voleski had eleven bullets in the clip for whoever busted through the door. The last bullet he would use to take off the top of his own head. No way those bastards were getting their mitts on him.
Voleski glanced at his watch. Eleven in the morning. Thirteen more hours to go until the alternate exchange. The big man, Caldwell, blew up the first exchange with his ill-timed entry and took out his contacts with the Russians. It took a few calls to track down information about the man. He had another meeting set at Dreams through his cousin with contacts at another Russian outfit. The more time passed, the more he realized the problems with his plan. He was alone. They could shoot him and take the case. No real reason why they should fork over millions of dollars for something they could just take by force. The Middle Eastern buyers were still an option, but he didn’t trust terrorists. Too unpredictable.
The second problem was he didn’t know who he could trust or, better yet, who he could leverage to help facilitate the exchange. His former associates with mobster Jason Keats were out. Their insider in the police department was good for getting information, not action. The woman was compromised. Any number of people hunted him for the contents of the briefcase.
Raised voices emanated through the closed door to the room. The guy hosting Voleski brought company. Voleski tightened his grip on the gun and aimed the barrel at the door. When the voices quieted a minute later, he relaxed. He thought of one person who might be able to assist him. Voleski just needed the right leverage to bring him on board. He made a call to track a number. To get his leverage, he headed to Truman Medical Center.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jake and Bear cruised half-way between Des Moines and Kansas City. There was nothing eye-catching traveling south on I-35, just plowed fields waiting for the planting of corn or soybeans, and the occasional cow staring over electric fence wiring. At least the sun peeked out through the dissipating clouds. They pulled into a rest stop to vent the two pots of coffee they downed in Denny’s and stretch their legs. Minutes later, they sped down the highway.
“You didn’t tell me about Logan saving your ass,” Jake said.
“He never bragged?”
“He never mentioned you at all. I think getting booted off the force is a bad memory for him, so he doesn’t talk about anything that even smells like the KCPD. Tried getting some stories out of him, but when he thinks about it, he wants to drink. I like him better when he’s not hammered.”
“Most people do,” Bear said. “Well, the task force had reached the end, maybe a month from being shut down. There wasn’t a hard deadline, but we knew the pipeline was drying up, and we were still a couple weeks away from getting the seriously incriminating evidence on Keats. An informant tells us a huge gun shipment is being routed through Kansas City. Keats would get part of the shipment, but the bulk of it would end up in Chicago.”
“Keats’s partners?”
Bear inserted a pinch of chewing tobacco into his lower lip. The scent of wintergreen wafted through the truck. “Nah. Looked like it was just economics of shipping. Truck originated in New Mexico. Guns from Ireland were run under the Mexican border through tunnels into a truck that made a couple pit stops along the way. The ATF tracked it the whole way. Every time the truck made a stop, the ATF let them make the delivery and the truck moved on. After the truck was gone, the ATF moved in on the delivery site. Busted two gun rings before it even reached Kansas City.”
“What happened then?”
Bear spit into an empty water bottle. “We followed the truck to one of Keats’s old warehouses in North Kansas City. The truck backed to the loading dock, and we staged ourselves along the street. Once the truck drove away, we moved in. The ATF agents stormed through the front. Logan, myself, and two other guys hit the back.”
“Where was Snell?” Jake asked, gunning the truck past an old couple in an RV going a dozen miles per hour under the speed limit.
“Following the delivery truck to a hand-off point somewhere along I-70. Anyway, the two other guys busted through the back door, and I stormed in after them with Logan following me. The first two guys made it into the warehouse when a bad guy pops out of a bathroom with a hand cannon pointed at me. I mean, I was fucking dead. Just staring down that big-ass barrel. I remembered my wife’s laugh, my kids screaming, and honky tonk music from my dad’s old eight-track in the garage rolling through my head in the span of a second. Like my life audibly flashing in front of me. I could almost hear the tendons in the guy’s finger as he squeezed the trigger. Next thing I know, Logan knocks me out of the way and guns blaze. I’m flat on my ass, the bad guy has three holes in his chest and Logan has one in his arm.”
“Bet he never lets you forget it.”
“Dickhead reminds me of it every time I talk to him,” Bear said, wrapping his knuckles against the window. “Always complaining how the arm never worked right again. I think he’s full of shit as I’ve seen him curl many bottles of liquor with it just fine.”
The tires droned on the asphalt, the truck gobbling up the white divider lines. Jake imagined the scene in the warehouse. In fact, he thought he knew the warehouse Bear talked about.
“Let me guess,” Jake said. “Keats didn’t own the warehouse, and you didn’t have anything to tie him to it.”
Bear spit into the bottle again. “You got it. Fucker sold it six months earlier. But it was his. We knew it but couldn’t prove it at the time. If not for Jack, my wife would be a widow, and those two gorgeous kids of mine would have grown up without a father. I owe him to get these bastards. I could give two shits what’s in that briefcase or if we ever catch t
his Alexander what’s-his-face. All I want is an hour in a windowless room with the assholes who beat up Logan.”
Jake drove on without a word, staring out the windshield as the miles toward Kansas City piled on. Bear grew silent, watching the monotonous landscape flash by out the passenger window. Like Bear, Jake wanted the guys who beat up Logan. Unlike Bear, he also wanted the briefcase. He just wasn’t sure how they were going to get both.
Two minutes later, it all changed when his cell phone rang.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The cell phone read “Unknown Caller,” and Jake thought to let it go to voicemail. Probably a stupid telemarketer trying to sell him something he didn’t want or need. With nothing else to do but eat the miles of road ahead of him, he answered.
“Hello?”
“Who is this?” The voice was thick, throaty, and Russian. Jake had heard enough of the accent in the last few days.
“You first. You called me.”
“Are you Caldwell, the big man from Dreams? I was there.”
Jake threw up a mental picture of the goons from the strip club. “You going to make me guess which one you were? You all sound alike.”
“You hit me in the head with the champagne bottle.”
“Voleski?” At the sound of the name, Bear whipped his head around and whispered for Jake to put it on speaker phone. Jake fumbled with the phone while struggling to maintain a straight path on the highway.
“That is me,” Voleski said.
“How did you get my number?”
“Does it matter, Jake Caldwell? No, it does not. I find it interesting we both used to work for the same man.”
“Except I left on good terms,” Jake said. “Keats doesn’t appreciate being stolen from.”
“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.”
Jake was impressed. Voleski was no idiot. “A Russian quoting Mark Twain?”
“We are not all the ignorant buffoons you think us to be.”
Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 38