“House is clear except the basement,” Snell announced from the hallway. “Let’s check it.”
Jake followed Snell’s long legs to a six-panel door near the kitchen. She opened it, flipped a light switch and they descended the bare wood steps into the basement. Snell trained her Glock in front; Jake held his Sig Sauer at his side.
After clearing the room, Snell snapped on a pair of neoprene gloves and passed a pair to Jake.
“Thought I couldn’t touch anything,” Jake said.
“Don’t be a wise ass.”
The open square basement smelled of breezy fabric softener from a laundry area to the right of the stairs, a load of folded white towels on a table next to the dryer. Across the concrete floor, the water heater, furnace, and a mass of aluminum duct work spread across the wall. Steel racks with particle board shelves lined the wall to their left, stacked top to bottom with labeled cardboard boxes. A carpeted play area lay in the middle adorned with a tiny table covered in Legos. Christopher’s play area while his mom did laundry under the light from a naked bulb hanging by the wires. No exit from the basement other than an oversized window in the corner by the utilities.
Snell stashed her gun in her shoulder holster. “Help me with the washing machine.”
Jake popped his weapon back in his waist and shimmied the washer back and forth along scratched grooves in the floor until they obtained ample access to the cinderblock wall behind it.
“This thing’s been moved a lot,” Jake said. “Check the gouges in the concrete.”
A foot from the floor, one block stuck out from the smooth wall. At a quick glimpse, they wouldn’t have noticed the irregular grout around it. Snell dug her fingers into the block’s side and wrestled it clear. Jake dropped behind her and shined a pocket flashlight into the opening.
A red leather notebook, eight inches long and a quarter inch thick, lay atop a beige steel lockbox next to a Walther PPK pistol. Snell took the pistol by the butt with two fingers and passed it back to Jake. He checked it and noted it was loaded but covered with a faint layer of dust. He set the pistol on the table next to the towels. When Snell opened the notebook, Jake shined the light on the pages.
“The writing’s Russian,” she said, turning pages.
“What’s it say?”
“Beats me. I recognize the characters, but I can’t read it. Have to get someone in the office to translate it.”
“It’s a code though,” Jake said. “Check the letter above the numbers. Like one of those cryptogram puzzles in the paper.”
She handed the notebook to Jake who placed it on the table by the pistol. He flashed the light back to the lockbox Snell pulled out. Her long fingers danced on the button to open it but stopped.
“What?” Jake asked.
“What if it’s booby trapped or something?”
Jake frowned. “You’ve been watching too many spy movies. Angela opened it and she still had her digits intact. Stop being a pussy and open it.”
Snell flashed her teeth. “Now there’s something I haven’t been called before.”
“You know what I mean. Open the freaking thing.”
Snell pushed the button. Jake caught his breath, but let it go when nothing exploded. Inside the box lay a series of pictures. Jake ran enough surveillance operations with Logan to know reconnaissance photos when he saw them. As Snell thumbed through them, Jake noted four different men and one woman, but couldn’t place any of them. After going through the pile, she returned to the second one in: a man in a dark suit coming out of a revolving door outside an office building. The man appeared in his fifties, white hair and a bushy moustache spilling across his upper lip.
“Recognize him?” Jake asked.
She tapped the man’s face with a gloved finger. “Yeah, but I can’t remember from where. The rest don’t ring a bell. Damn it, where have I seen this guy?”
“Beats me. The way Angela said she reacted to the pics, I thought it’d be kiddie porn or something. I mean, it was a visceral response when I probed.”
“Gotta admit I’m disappointed.” Snell hung her head. “No smoking gun here.”
“You sure that was everything in there?”
Snell extracted a pocket flashlight from her jacket, shining the beam in the dark recesses of the hole in the wall. She squinted, wiggled the light and reached deep, pulling out a brown, cloth bag with a draw string. She extracted brown and black-haired wigs, two frames of eyeglasses, and a rectangular box with fake moustaches complete with a little bottle of spirit gum to hold them in place.
She stuck her hand back in the bag and fished out three more photos. As Jake examined the disguise material, Snell gasped. When he turned, her skin was bone white.
“You okay?” Jake asked.
Snell regained her composure and handed the photos to Jake. The three photos displayed a tortured depravity the likes of which he’d never seen, the people shown mauled to such a bloody degree that Jake couldn’t tell if they were male or female, especially since one of them no longer had a head. All three figures decorated in carved, crimson mosaics, artfully macabre and horrific. Whoever did this took their sweet time in carving these people. Jake prayed they weren’t alive when it was done to them. No wonder Angela freaked out.
Snell perched her hands on her hips, tip of her tongue on her upper lip as her eyes swept across the evidence. “Notebook of coded Russian, gun, surveillance pictures, a disguise kit hidden in the cinderblock wall of a wife killer, and pictures that would make Jack the Ripper jealous. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Who the hell is this guy?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
McKernan rifled through files in an office desk as Jake and Snell came back upstairs. As the grandfather clock in the living room bonged the arrival of the midnight hour, Foster bounced down the stairs empty handed. Snell shared their basement find, and after the requisite displays of disgust, they helped McKernan process the rest of the office, but didn’t have any better luck than he did. Snell set aside the red notebook and spread the pictures across the desktop. Foster thought she recognized the man in the second photograph as well but couldn’t put a name to him either. As they talked, Jake thumbed through the notebook, snapping pictures of a couple pages with his phone, trying to be discreet.
“Well, we’re not leaving empty handed.” Snell scowled at Jake’s cell phone and took the notebook from him. “Let’s pack up and get out of here. I know a guy at the office who can translate the book.”
“Rodway?” McKernan asked. “He left last week. Went back home to Australia for a month.”
“What about Hawn?”
“Assigned to a RICO case in Michigan for God knows how long.”
“I know a guy,” Foster piped in from hallway. “Sam Stone. He’s with the CIA but knows Russian. Spent three years undercover in Moscow and is here in KC for the moment.”
Snell snapped her fingers. “Good call. I worked with him on a DC task force a few years back. How do you know he’s in town?”
Crimson crept up Foster’s long neck. “He called a couple of weeks ago. We had an…encounter a few years back, and he likes to stay in touch.”
“I thought he was married,” Snell said.
“He is,” Foster said. “But I didn’t know it at the time.”
A shit-eating grin curled on McKernan’s face. “Foster, I had no idea you were such a slut.”
“Bite me, baldy. It was an oversight that only happened one more time after I found out about his wife.”
“One more? You’re such a bad girl.”
“I thought the FBI and CIA weren’t the sharing type,” Jake said.
Snell thumbed through the red notebook. “Most aren’t, but Sam might. Plus, as Foster said, he spent three years in Moscow. If this is Russian and Connelly is who we think he is, Sam might be the guy we need. Plus, he’s a natural smartass. Since Bear’s not around, I don’t want you going through withdrawals.”
“It’s your show,
Snell,” Jake said. “Make the call.”
They killed the lights in the house and headed out the back. McKernan found a piece of cardboard in the pantry and taped it over the broken glass pane. He didn’t have to do it, but it was a nice touch. They huddled on the back porch talking logistics for the day ahead. Foster would call Sam Stone and set a meet to translate the book, Snell would try to track the guys in the pictures, McKernan would scour the FBI databases for anything helpful on Connelly, leaving Jake without a task.
“I feel like a fourth wheel,” he said to Snell. “Scan and email the pics of those guys to me. I’ll check if anyone knows who they are from my network.”
Her upper lip curled like he suggested she lick the toilet bowl in the public restroom at a bus station. “Keats?”
Nobody hated Keats more than Snell. He’d eluded her for years, and it really pissed her off. “My network is bigger than just him, but yeah. He’s on the list. If there’s some kind of Russian tie and any of the guys in the pics are involved in nefarious shit, there’s a shot Keats knows who they are.”
“What if he’s one of the guys involved in the nefarious shit?” McKernan asked.
“Then I’ll know,” Jake said. “He’s a worse liar than Snell.”
“Fine.” Snell crooked a finger in Jake’s direction. “But don’t say a word about what’s going on here. I don’t trust that scumbag any farther than I could throw him.”
They broke the huddle and headed up the driveway, Snell with the red notebook and Foster with the envelope containing the pictures. They were halfway to the street when a dark sedan pulled in the driveway, stopping as the headlights splashed across the foursome paused in the middle of the concrete. A few seconds ticked past and the hairs on Jake’s neck stood on end. Something wasn’t right. He dropped his hand to the pistol at his waist.
“Snell.” Jake slinked to the edge of the driveway, noticing she reached for her gun as well. “Is that…”
Gunfire erupted from the driver’s side window of the sedan, spitting sparks in the dark and sending the four of them scattering.
Chapter Thirty
Thorns dug into Jake’s arms and face as he dove clear of the gunfire and into a groundcover of creeping juniper on the side of the driveway. From behind a stumpy bush, he raised his Sig and emptied his mag at the sedan, one shot blowing out the driver’s side headlight, the rest buried in the body of the car and windshield. Snell sprawled on the concrete, unmoving, her gun stretched out in the driveway before her. McKernan and Foster fired as they backed toward the protective cover of the house.
Jake scrambled to his feet, the sedan rolling closer, bullets whizzing by, one close enough to whistle Winchester. He was stuck in no man’s land, too far from the house to use it as cover and a huge target for whoever shot at them from the car. Must be Connelly returning home. The sedan crept forward, an unconscious Snell in its path, mere feet from being crunched by the car’s tires.
Jake slammed another magazine into his pistol, racked in a hollow point, and ran across the driveway, spraying rounds across the windshield. He grabbed Snell by the foot and dragged her across the driveway, a black smear left on the concrete, her hands releasing her gun and the notebook. The sedan stopped. A large figure, backlit by a nearby streetlight, climbed from the driver’s side and dropped below the fender. Jake snuck a peak to Foster as she released another round of shots.
Crouching against the house, Jake tried to melt into the darkness with Snell at his feet. He aimed his weapon over the top of the sedan. If the guy showed so much as a hair above the trim of the car, he’d hit the morgue without the top of his head. Dogs howled in the background and lights flicked on from houses across the street. The metallic sounds of a new magazine popping in and racking a round into the chamber echoed from behind the car as Foster blasted new shots from the corner of the house. Jake’s fingertip tightened on the trigger, ready to squeeze. Lights flashed from the passenger side, sending a spray of bullets toward Foster. She cried out as Jake swung to the left and returned fire. Seconds later, the sedan tore out of the driveway in reverse, and with a screech of spinning rubber rocketed up the street and out of sight.
Jake turned to Snell, fingering her carotid artery and finding a thready pulse. He gently rolled her and pulled out his pocket flashlight. Foster ran over, breaths quick and heated, blood spotting the side of her face.
“Is she…” she gasped.
“Alive, but I don’t know for how long. Call 911.”
“Already did. Find where she was hit.”
Her black shirt made it hard to see the damage, so Jake lifted it from the bottom and found two small holes in her abdomen. He reached around her narrow waist and swept along the backside.
“Two shots in, one exit wound as far as I can tell. Jesus, there’s a lot of blood.”
Jake tore off his shirt and compressed it against the stomach wound to curtail the bleeding. “Where the hell is McKernan?”
When Foster didn’t answer, Jake looked to the tears in her eyes. “He…he…took one in the throat. I was reloading, exposed. He shoved me out of the way, and the next thing I know, he’s gone. He saved me.”
“Goddamn it,” Jake muttered. “I’m sorry, Foster.”
They knelt in the driveway at Snell’s side, talking to her, telling her it would be okay. Minutes later, sirens wailed in the distance, Snell’s pulse weakening by the minute. A squad car and ambulance roared into the driveway, their flashing blue and white lights piercing the night. The two officers in the squad car jumped out, guns drawn and aimed at Foster who raised her hands in the air, badge in hand.
“Hang on, Snell,” Jake whispered, squeezing her hand. “Hang on.”
As the cops and paramedics approached, their bodies breaking the beams thrown by their headlights, Jake glared at the blood smear on the driveway.
* * *
Five minutes later, the ambulance zipped out of the driveway with Snell secured in the back. The tight-lipped paramedics had worked on her, unwilling to give Jake or Foster a prognosis no matter how many times they asked. The Overland Park cops grabbed a shirt from Jake’s truck, and then peppered them with questions. Both Jake and Foster relayed what few details they knew. Over the cop’s shoulder, Jake could make out McKernan’s feet and left arm sprawled in the driveway, the rest of his lifeless body obscured in shadows.
“I wonder how his kid’s game ended up,” Jake said, a heaviness settling in his chest. His dad was an abusive alcoholic and it didn’t sound like Connelly was much better for Christopher. But McKernan’s kid had a hell of a dad and Connelly snuffed him. “I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.”
“Not if I get to him first,” Foster said.
A minute later, a car door slammed behind them. Foster jerked toward the street. “Oh shit.”
Jake turned as a paunchy man in his sixties stormed the driveway in khaki pants and a navy jacket. Gray hair punched from the side of his head, beady eyes shooting daggers from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “Who’s he?”
“The Special Agent in Charge. This is going to suck.”
Jake wanted to head to the hospital, check on Snell and get busy tracking Connelly to put the bastard six feet under. He could already tell the old man would be a fly in the ointment. The Overland Park cop wanted to avoid the man’s vibe as well, melting away in the direction of the flashing blue and red lights.
“I’m Special Agent Murphy,” the old man said, voice deep and as scratchy as an old vinyl record. He ignored Jake’s outstretched hand. “Agent Foster, would you mind explaining what in the hell happened here?”
Jake dropped his hand back to his side. “Agent Murphy, I’m Jake…”
“I know who you are, Mr. Caldwell.” Murphy’s stare was hard and full of steel. “And I wouldn’t give two wooden nickels for what you have to say at this point. You’re lucky I don’t place you under arrest right now. My suggestion is to keep your mouth shut before I change my mind.”
“Arrest
me? For what?”
Murphy ignored him and turned back to Foster. “Where’s McKernan?”
Foster pointed up the driveway. Murphy walked to the body, examined it for a minute before tilting his head to the heavens.
“He liked McKernan. A lot,” Foster whispered. “His grandson played baseball with McKernan’s kid.”
“I should get out of here and find Connelly. What kind of trouble am I looking at?”
Foster arched her eyebrows. “A ton. You have no idea how much trouble Snell got in because of you after the Ares shootout with Senator Young. She filed the paperwork to make you a registered informant, but never got it signed and approved because she filed it after smoke cleared with the terrorists.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Jake asked, his palms getting sweaty.
“It means you have zero legal standing here, which is going to be a major problem.”
Jake’s mind raced. He thought of bailing but wouldn’t get past the gaggle of cops congregating at the end of the driveway. He doubted Bear would be able to do anything to help him. Wait…Bear.
“I’m a sworn deputy of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office,” Jake said.
Foster’s drew her head back. “Bullshit.”
“No, that’s true shit. Bear swore me in.”
“It’s pretty thin.” Foster pursed her lips.
“Thin’s my middle name.”
“Well,” Foster said as Murphy clomped back to them, his angry red face replaced by slumping shoulders. “Here’s your chance, Mr. Thin.”
“Agent Murphy,” Jake said. “We need to find Andrew Connelly.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Caldwell. But first, I’m going to find out what happened here and why I have one agent dead and another fighting for her life.”
Jake sucked in a lungful of air. “I can explain.”
Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 63