Shiver on the Sky
Page 54
Chapter Thirty-Four
(Thursday, 6:15pm—Gordon)
Lieutenant Kleinman sat behind his cheap pressboard desk and glared at Gordon. Gordon and Faulkner, who’d closed the office door behind them, stood quietly in front of him. Kleinman glanced at Faulkner, then turned his gaze to his own hands, clasped on the desk.
“Let me see if I understand what happened.” Kleinman’s eyes settled on a point between Gordon and Faulkner. It made Gordon want to turn his head and check what was going on behind him, but he controlled the impulse.
When neither answered, Kleinman went on, speaking slowly. “You guys have been working on the Bentley case, which you were told was no longer yours. In the course of this unauthorized investigation, you have been in communication with a suspect, this Tremaine guy. Not only did you fail to arrest Tremaine, knowing we had a warrant out for him, but you then hatched a plan involving another civilian—a columnist from the Caller-Times for God’s sake—who is also Tremaine’s buddy. The same guy who gave Tremaine a GPS with some sort of half-assed alibi on it. The alibi you didn’t bother to check out, because you were worried about unnecessary publicity.”
He paused to glare at them both again. Gordon wished he’d get on with it. They didn’t have a lot of time. “So your plan,” Kleinman finally continued, “was for the columnist to meet with another guy, who wasn’t a suspect in the Bentley case, who wasn’t a suspect in anything, because Tremaine sold you a bill of goods about what was going on in Bentley’s company.”
He leaned back, giving them a chance to respond. They didn’t. He nodded. “Okay. Now the columnist is gone. You want to start checking with his editor and his friends, who are probably mostly reporters, essentially telling them the CCPD has managed to lose one of their people. You guys came into my office, for the first time all week, so you could tell me this? Is there anything else you’d like to add?”
“One thing I’d like to stress here,” Gordon said carefully. “No argument, we screwed up. But LaMott is missing. Chances are we were on to something. We need to find him fast, or the way this case has gone, we’ll be finding another body.”
Faulkner nodded. “Phil’s right. I also think we need to look more closely at Mr. Sheffield’s alibi for last Saturday.” He told Kleinman about Sheffield’s so-called “cousins,” who had purportedly spent the weekend with him on Goose Island, and their history at CyberLook.
When he finished, he looked Kleinman in the eye. “Lieutenant, we all know that if we’d gone by the book we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. But we are here, and we have a problem, and we also have good reasons to look at Mr. Sheffield’s activities.”
“Or we would,” Kleinman said, “if it was still our case. It got taken away by the Feebs, remember? Tell me something, though. You guys think the fact the columnist is missing backs up your wild-ass theories, which include federal involvement in crimes in our jurisdiction. But suppose you’re wrong. Suppose Tremaine is guilty, which I have to say all the evidence points to. Maybe he did something to this LaMott character. Since he was obviously free to move around, instead of sitting in a cell, which is where we generally put people who have warrants out for their arrest.”
Gordon shrugged. “The guy’s a straight shooter. I don’t see how he could be both dumb enough to leave all the evidence lying around and smart enough to be so damn plausible. If you want us to pull him in, we can do it any time. All it’ll take is a phone call. But if we do, we need to keep him here. We turn him over to the Feds, he’s a dead man.”
Kleinman jabbed a finger at Faulkner. “Think carefully. You buying this crap?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I am.” Faulkner smiled slightly. “And so are you. I can tell. You’re not angry enough.”
Kleinman leaned back in his chair. “Huh. I don’t know if you guys are the luckiest idiots I’ve ever met, or secret geniuses. Though this LaMott character going missing makes me lean toward the ‘idiots’ theory. Want to know why I believe you?”
“Sure,” Gordon said. Faulkner waited.
“Because I met a guy from the NSA named Jameson this afternoon. Sheffield apparently was working with somebody on the federal side. From what they told me, you’re right, it was about Bentley’s company. Apparently Sheffield was guilty as hell. They even have a witness who saw him grab the McPhee woman yesterday.”
“Was guilty? And how come Jameson told you about it?” Gordon asked.
“Sheffield and a guy from the NSA offed each other in a house on Ocean Drive this afternoon. Some guy who didn’t give his name, said he was just jogging by, heard the shots and called us. So Tanner—who works on cases when I tell him to, I guess you two kinda forgot how that goes—anyway, Tanner and I got there before the federal guys could shut us out completely. Also, the Fed Sheffield was working with is missing, and the others want him bad. Enough to ask us for help, even. And the house where it all went down? Belongs to a guy named Viktor Bentley. Sound familiar?”
“It sounds very neat,” Faulkner said.
Kleinman’s face flushed. “Yeah? You mean maybe you spooked somebody with this column idea, so whoever it was grabbed the columnist and sacrificed Sheffield and this other guy? Sounds like overkill to me, ‘specially when they knew Sheffield wouldn’t make the meeting, because by then he’d caught a bad case of rigor mortis. And grabbing this LaMott guy would get more press coverage, not less. So if it’s neat, I don’t get who it’s neat for.” He glared at Gordon.
Unfair. Faulkner had brought it up. “Whatever,” Gordon said. “We can figure it out later. Right now we need to find LaMott. Can you give us some help on that?”
Kleinman sighed. “Yeah. If this fuckin’ mess costs me my job I’ll hunt you down like a dog. But…it’s our mess, so let’s clean it up.” He got up from behind the desk and started for the door.
“Ah…sir?” Faulkner asked. “What about Mr. Tremaine?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Tremaine. You guys call him, since you’re such good friends. Find out what he knows about LaMott’s other friends and where he might go.” Kleinman slammed the door behind him, leaving them in his office.
Gordon looked at Faulkner. “That went well.”
Faulkner nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it did. Considering that we could have been suspended. Or fired.”
“Still could.” Kleinman might not have a choice about that, especially if the Feds had actually cracked the case on their own. What had he and Faulkner accomplished?
Faulkner turned to go, but rested a hand on the doorknob for a moment. “It still seems too…too convenient. For somebody.”
Gordon nodded. “Yeah. I agree with you. But for now let’s do what we can to find LaMott.” Maybe he’d even be alive.
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