No Hesitation

by Kirk Russell

  Jace had no idea what to do with that and moved on. “Had you met Alan Eckstrom before the night you picked them up?”

  “No, that’s the one and only time I’ve met him. He was a little drunk but very funny. I haven’t seen him since. I told that to Agent Grale.”

  “You told Agent Grale the night they quit you called a number Eric gave you and the woman who owns the van told you where it was parked and how to find the keys.”

  “That’s true, and I picked up Eric and Alan in a parking lot. They sat in back so their faces wouldn’t show. I hugged Eric first. It was like a fun thing. Like a prank or something. They never thought the FBI would be looking for them. It was about them making a statement to Dr. Ralin. We dropped Alan on a street about a mile away—Eric will remember the name of the street. Then I dropped Eric off where he’d parked this pickup and trailer of his. I took the van back, got my car, and was almost to the lake before I caught up to Eric.”

  “Almost to Panguitch Lake?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Eric Indonal has been staying with you at your cabin?”

  “It has a bedroom and a couch that becomes a bed.”

  Not ready to say she’s in bed with him, Jace thought. “And you personally never saw or talked to Alan again?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s return to medical uses for AI. Do you know how long they’ve had that goal?”

  “Eric says it’s why he got into AI. All three of them had that goal. He says AI is so fast it can give doctors instant information about similar cases and what was done to cure people. All of that in just a few seconds. He’s very excited about starting work on it again.”

  Jace asked another list of questions but learned little more. Maldon’s face reddened as she talked about how outrageous the news coverage was.

  “I think all of the conspiracy websites on the Internet should be shut down and some of those people should go to jail.”

  Jace listened without commenting on that then stepped outside and talked with another agent monitoring the interview. That agent agreed that Maldon didn’t have much more to offer.

  “Okay, I’m going to tell her and wrap it up,” Jace said and went back in. “I think you’ve been honest with me, Cindy. Thank you for that. We very much need your help with Eric and not tomorrow or a week from now, but today. We have concerns about the woman Eckstrom may have been staying with, so rack your brain for anything more you can remember. We’re also going to take temporary measures to protect Eric, starting today. That could mean you’re separated from him for several days as we get sorted out.”

  “Where will he be?”

  “At a safe location. You’ll be able to talk with him by phone. I’m sure you understand. I’m going to leave you here alone for ten to fifteen minutes now as I go check with my supervisor. Are you okay with that?”

  Maldon nodded. Jace left the room and was surprised to find Grale and Mara already interviewing Indonal. She knew Grale had arrived but had thought this interview would wait until she finished with Maldon. She texted Mara as she listened and watched a video feed.

  In the interview room, Grale said, “Last time we talked you mentioned a Margaret Landis. Describe again how you met her.”

  “It was at the Blue Jaguar the night we quit. Alan was kicking back on the couch, and I’m in a chair. We’re talking about the usual stuff, and this woman walks over and sits down with us. I figured she was a little buzzed or bored with her date. Turned out she was fighting with the guy she’d come there with and wanted to sit with us for a few minutes. Or that’s what she said. She was classy and super funny and quick. We’d worked the night before and worked through the day and were fried but wanted a drink before we did our disappearing thing. Margaret sat down and I just kind of rolled with it.

  “We had a drink or two, and she keyed in on Alan in a flirty but not super aggressive way. I went to the restroom. When I got back, they were sitting close, like up against each other. That’s when I figured out, they knew each other already. I asked him later, and he didn’t really cop to it. He didn’t deny it either, and that night there was a bunch of stuff that later didn’t make sense.”

  “You were a little buzzed too?” Grale asked.

  “I was. We were quitting Indie after all those years. I was freaking. She got us to tell her our full names and then said she knew who we were and asked, ‘You’re the ones who really built it, right?’ We could have cut it off right then—it’s not like we haven’t been warned about who might approach us—but Alan and I knew we were quitting, so what’s the diff if we weren’t going back to Indie Base?”

  “You were having fun,” Grale said.

  “Yeah, we had a secret and great drinks and were back to where we started. It was wrong, but things were crazy that night.”

  “What do you mean back where you started?”

  “Wanting to take what we’d learned about AI to the medical world.”

  “What kinds of things did Landis want to know?”

  “She didn’t ask much and changed the subject, pointing out a dude across the room who she said was her date. They’d had a fight and she wanted to stay with us. So pretty weird, right? What I think now is it was all staged. He was with her but not her date. She targeted us, or they both did. She wanted to share contacts with us, and we both said great. Alan shared his. I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It felt funny. We didn’t know her. After she got Alan’s contacts, the dude at the bar started toward us. She saw him coming and asked me for my contact info really fast, like she had to have it before the guy got to us, but I said I’d send it later.”

  “And what happened with Landis and the boyfriend?”

  “Not much.”

  There were questions about that and then they took a break. Grale left and Jace went in, introduced herself to Indonal, and the interview continued another two hours. When Jace came out, Grale was gone, and she learned he’d gotten a call and left for an abandoned silver mine in Lincoln County where a body had been found. He’d left a message for her. He’d text or call after meeting with a Lincoln County investigator. She relayed that to Mara and added, “He’s not sure there’s cell coverage where he’s headed.”

  “Then text him now.”

  She did, and Grale wrote back, Lincoln County investigator thinks it’s Eckstrom. Tell no one until I’ve seen the body. Will call when I do.

  30

  I called Bill Juarez-Smith, the Lincoln County investigator, as I got close, and he made sure I didn’t miss the cutoff. The unpaved road there led to the abandoned mine. When I parked and got out, we shook hands and he asked, “Ever been here?”

  “No, but isn’t it on some tourist list?”

  “It is. It’s named for the guy who dug it, worked it, and lived and died here. It’s on one of those lists the state puts out to get more people to visit Nevada. Long before that list, it was a draw for college kids. They party out here and explore the mine, but mostly party.”

  “Did they find the body?”

  “Yes, two college kids found the body. If it turns out to be the guy you’re looking for, how do you want to do this?”

  “We’ll come to wherever you’ve got the body and pick it up today.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear. We’re budget strapped and shorthanded. The media would be all over us.” He pointed at heavy-gauge wire covering the entrance with a hole cut in it big enough to walk through. “Every so often it gets blocked off again and six months later someone has cut through it. It’s a misdemeanor to cut the wire, but that doesn’t even slow them down.”

  Inside the mine Juarez-Smith and I walked with flashlights along rusted tracks laid a century ago. They sloped into darkness.

  Juarez-Smith warned, “Watch your head. The ceiling gets lower the deeper we get in, and there’s a
small cave-in we’ve got to climb around. After that it’s no more than another two hundred feet to where he was found. You okay in here?”

  “Yeah, it’s everything I’d hoped for today.”

  “What’s your limp about?”

  “Injuries from a Bagdad bomb. Remember when the FBI sent agents to help the Army defuse bombs?”

  “I was in the service right about then. I do remember. That’s a long while ago. You’re still hurting?”

  “On and off.”

  “Well, take it easy in here. I don’t want to have to carry you out. I’m not even sure I could do it anymore.”

  Our voices echoed in the mine. The air felt cooler and smelled of wet rock deeper in. I heard water dripping as we scrambled over loose rock around a ceiling collapse. Not far from there he lifted his flashlight beam to an old iron hoop set in stone and a four-foot-wide half circle of rocks mortared together to form a well against the rock wall of the mine.

  “There was water here back in the day,” Juarez-Smith said. “Not so much anymore. When I was a kid, there was still enough water in here to get us soaking wet.” He turned to face me as he said, “I hope the FBI takes over this investigation. We got the body out, but we don’t have the resources in Lincoln County to fully investigate the hanging.”

  “You don’t think it was suicide?”

  “No.”

  I studied the crude well as he talked me through what they’d found. Either you climbed up on the semicircle of mortared stones forming the well and looped the rope through the iron hoop and hanged yourself, or it took two people to lift and hang you. Like Juarez-Smith, I didn’t see a lone killer doing the moving and lifting required. But neither did I rule out suicide.

  When I told him that, he said, “When you see the body, you’ll get where we’re coming from. We have the rope and that iron hoop up there was swabbed for DNA. If the FBI takes over, we’ll turn that over to you today as well as contact information and notes on the interviews to date. I don’t know how many people were in here before the kids reported it, so you’ll have to do what you can with it.”

  “When did you get tipped there was a body in here?”

  “Two days ago. The kids who found him say they didn’t touch the rope or anything down here.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “With the body and the rope, yes, but I don’t know about the chairs and the car batteries.”

  “Car batteries?”

  “I just spoiled my surprise. I was going to show you when we looked at the body. There are some bad electrical burns; third-degree burns in places. They tied him to a chair. We have the chairs, rope, batteries, everything we could find. From blood spatter, he may have tipped over backward and spent most of his time on his back. This is conjecture, but I saw something like this once before where they hooked electrical cable up and fried parts of an informant until he gave it all up. He didn’t die but lost his ears, nose, and genitals. It was awful. Similar kind of burns here but not as bad and they didn’t touch his face.”

  I called Mara from my car after we left the mine and before I followed Juarez-Smith up the highway to town to see the body.

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” I told him.

  It was an hour drive, and then I was inside looking at the body, including the burn injuries, which were disturbing.

  “It’s Eckstrom,” I told Mara. “It looks as if he was tortured. How do you want to handle it?”

  “Make the calls to get the body picked up today and say nothing about it until we’ve officially verified it’s him. Don’t talk to anyone, and ask the investigator to stay quiet. It’ll find its way out anyway, but that’ll buy us some time to get a team out to the mine. They’ll want to meet the county investigator. Write up your walk through the mine and include any photos you have. Any evidence they collected goes to the lab first. It can get sorted there. We’ll need to call a press conference. How bad was it?”

  “He was tortured. It’s bad.”

  In fact, I was left with a vivid image that raised questions about the morality of the human race. After Mara hung up, I drove forty miles before calling Jace.

  “Eckstrom is dead. If you’re babysitting Indonal tonight, you’ll need a plan for that.”

  “I am babysitting him.”

  “Well, you know how these things go, it’s going to leak out this afternoon. It’ll be a body found that may be one of the missing coders . . .”

  “It’ll rock his world,” Jace said.

  “Where are they putting Indonal?”

  “In a casino hotel room on a secure floor. I’ll be in the room next to him. Mara says we’re here because the rest of our local witness protection sites are full. Are you coming back to the office this afternoon?”

  “I doubt it. Mara is sending agents. I’ve got to go back to the mine and later meet the crew that picks up the body and evidence bags.”

  “Mara let you go out there?”

  “Yeah, it surprised me too. It really surprised me. I almost didn’t tell him I was going, but he was okay with it as long as I understood I wouldn’t be working the investigation. Hey, let’s talk later. I’ve got to get going.”

  “Okay,” she said, and I ended the call.

  31

  Dalz

  Dalz followed Sean southeast of Las Vegas to a small business park on the outskirts of Boulder City, and with a spotting scope watched him park. For several minutes Sean sat in his pickup. Then he was out and squinting in bright sunlight and heat looking for or waiting for somebody. It turned out to be a man standing in shade near a building talking on a cell phone. The man signaled with his hand for Sean to approach then held his palm up for Sean to stop when he got within ten meters. Sean waited like a trained dog for twenty minutes while the older man finished his conversation.

  Then he waved Sean over and looked displeased. He pointed a finger and appeared angry. The interaction said Sean had exaggerated his control of the operation.

  He was more likely a puppet reporting back, and from his body language must have sensed his vulnerability, so not a complete fool. If they were successful, the hero would become a liability, Dalz thought, and realized Sean was expendable same as he was. What he watched changed his view of Sean somewhat.

  This isolated business park explained how the more delicate components were protected and stored. Only an experienced nation could pull off a sophisticated operation of this kind. Not that he ever had any doubts. They’d bought the business park and probably the land surrounding it years ago. Within it they had full control but had to know the Americans would uncover this later and were gambling the US would choose retaliation over war.

  With that realization everything made more sense: the misfit team, the low-level leader, the enticements. They’d baited me too, Dalz thought. They knew he’d go after the FBI agent. They knew he’d lie and intended to deal with him later. That led to other realizations. First, he would continue to carry through with the operation and obey. The second was to terminate all connections and disappear when it was over.

  He stowed the scope, drove back to the ranch, then worked through the night assembling the bomb for the van. Tomorrow they’d begin on the missiles. Assembly would progress quickly; the countdown would start soon after.

  32

  Jace

  Jace listened quietly as Mara described the electrical burns Grale saw on Alan Eckstrom’s body. Burns from torture Eckstrom endured before dying. He coached her on how to talk to Indonal.

  “At some point, probably tonight, if not sooner, Indonal is going to hear about it, or you can tell him. It could get rough.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s there at the hotel.”

  “Why didn’t we let his girlfriend stay with him?”

  “Bureau policy.”

  “Somebody could bend that r
ule.”

  Jace checked into the hotel and rode the elevator to the secure floor where casino security monitored the corridors all night. She knocked and quickly looked in on Indonal. He was sipping a beer and on the phone to Cindy Maldon. He’d eaten two small bags of potato chips at seven bucks a bag, and the smell was strong. He looked at her blankly as she pointed next door to let him know she was there.

  Unpacking in her room, she realized she’d forgotten her toiletries bag as well as missed her planned stop at the apartment for clothes for tomorrow. That got lost in Mara’s speech. No clean clothes, not even a toothbrush. It left her moody. Indonal knocked on her door half an hour later. He wore socks with no shoes as if he were on a business-class flight and had just gotten up from his seat.

  “I was wondering if I could get a few things from your minibar.”

  “What’s wrong with yours?”

  “I ran out of some stuff.”

  “So, you want to pilfer mine?”

  “It’s okay.”

  He started to back away, and she swung the door open.

  “Come on in, take whatever you want. How are you doing?”

  “I just heard there’s some rumor Eric is dead. I don’t really believe what they said. It’s someone else. Would it be okay if I had a beer?”

  “Go ahead, and I’ll have one too.”

  “I drank the ones in my room. There were two, and I don’t really know why I’m here.”

  “It’s to keep you safe. Come on in. Let’s have a beer together and talk.”

  Jace changed her mind about beer and unscrewed one of the little bottles of red wine that cost way more than it should. But she figured she was due for something for babysitting the coder. She didn’t feel as harsh as that, and looking at him, she worried about him.