“That’s fine. Your name doesn’t have to appear anywhere. What do you know?”
“Nah, no way,” she said. “I’m not talking about anything without something in writing.”
While I didn’t have the authority to cut a half-million-dollar check on the bureau’s behalf, promise her anything, or make a deal with her, I would sure as hell get someone in a room with her who could. “I’ll have to make a couple calls. Make sure we have everything set on our end. Where can we meet you?”
“Do what you gotta do,” she said.
“Where can I meet you?” I asked again.
“I’ll come to you. No police stations, no FBI headquarters.”
“How about the Garden Suites Hotel? It’s just a little northeast of the university.”
“I know where it is. I’ll be there in an hour or so. Say a quarter after eight. Does that give you enough time?” she asked.
I was a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t enough time, especially on a Sunday night, but she didn’t need to know that. “We’ll get the wheels turning. I mean this isn’t going to be a bag of hundred-dollar bills kind of thing either way, but I’ll make sure we’ve got someone either here or on the way who can handle everything. From the deal in writing to the funds if the information pans out.”
“Good,” she said.
“Now Ms. Wal—” The phone went dead in my ear. She’d hung up before I could even ask for any information as good faith. “Damn.”
“What was all that?” Scott asked.
“Gerrianne Walters.”
“The sister of Burr’s buddy from inside?” Bill asked.
“Yeah. I left a card with her when we stopped at her bike shop earlier. I figured it would just find the trash. Guess it didn’t.”
“What did she say?” Scott asked.
“She said she had information on Burr and then asked about the reward money. She said something about wanting it all in writing. Then said she’d be here in an hour.”
“Be here in an hour?”
“That’s what she said.” I scratched the side of my head. The whole situation seemed kind of off. “I don’t know.”
“Think she’ll show?” Bill asked.
“It was her idea to,” I said.
Scott looked toward the entrance to the restaurant. “Here’s Beth.”
I glanced up to see the hostess pointing Beth to our table.
“What’s up?” Beth asked.
“Gerrianne Walters just called and said she had information on Burr,” I said.
“What kind of information?” Beth took a seat.
“The kind that she wants reward money for.”
“Hmm. That’s quite the turn of events for someone who didn’t know anything about Burr a couple hours ago when we asked her.”
“It is,” I said. “Let me call Ball, see what he thinks.”
I plugged in the number for the home office and hit Talk.
Chapter 30
After leaving the house on foot, Jerry had returned and walked into the living room. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone out there.” She plopped down on the couch. “I think we’ve got somewhat of a plan.”
“Good,” Chuck said. He’d been sitting in the chair in the living room, waiting on Jerry to return. As he waited, he’d put together a plan of his own. “What’s the deal, then?”
“Well, Jake is coming over. He’s going to put you up for the night at his brother’s place.”
“All right. And then what about David?”
“Jake said that he would take you to meet David’s guys somewhere in the morning. I talked to David, and we thought it was probably best if they didn’t come here.”
“Sure,” Chuck said. The thought of her saying that David couldn’t know about the heat from the feds bubbled up in his head. But she’d apparently told him, or maybe she hadn’t. He didn’t figure it mattered much either way. He’d already made the decision to find out just what the hell was going on. Jerry was up to something. Chuck was certain of it. “So, when is Jake coming?”
“Should be pretty soon,” she said.
“Right.” Chuck left the chair and took up a spot on the couch beside Jerry. “Hey, can I use your phone quick?”
Jerry turned toward him and lifted an eyebrow. “For what?”
“I just need to look at a couple things.”
“Um, yeah, I guess. Hang on.” Jerry took her phone from her pocket and punched in her password to unlock it.
Chuck watched her open an internet window on her phone’s browser.
“Here.” She passed him the phone.
Chuck closed the browser and quickly brought up her text messages.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Chuck didn’t respond. His eyes were locked on the screen of her phone. The last text she’d sent was just minutes old. It had gone to Jake. He opened it.
“Hey!” she snapped. “Don’t be reading my messages!” She tried snatching the phone from Chuck’s hand. He extended his right hand to keep her at bay while he scrolled with his left thumb on the screen.
“What’s the big deal?” he asked.
“Goddammit!” She tried ducking under Chuck’s arm and got a hand on her phone. Chuck yanked it away from her and did his best to read the screen as she pawed at his arms and face. Past her flailing arms, Chuck caught bits and pieces of the message. He’d seen the words “turn him in,” “reward money,” and something about “getting David back.” He turned his attention toward her.
“Give me my damn phone!” Jerry dug her nails into the side of Chuck’s face.
Chuck delivered a sharp backward elbow to her forehead.
Jerry fell back into the cushions on the couch. Chuck snapped his head to the right and looked at her. Her eyes were closed—the single shot had knocked her out cold. He stood, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her off the couch and onto the floor. Chuck positioned her faceup then knelt beside her. As Chuck scrolled through the message with his left thumb, he grabbed Jerry by the throat with his right and began strangling her as he read.
Without Jerry’s hands in his face, he got a good look at the whole text exchange. The message said she’d called the fed who had come to the shop. That she was going to get the reward money. That she was going to meet with the fed later that night.
Jerry had regained consciousness and began thrashing around. Chuck jammed his knee into her hip and put more weight down into her throat. His arm trembled from the force of his hand squeezing. He went back to reading. Jerry’s text said she was going to turn Chuck in for the reward money, and in the process, she would set David up to pay him back for turning on Leland.
Jake’s text questioned whether turning Chuck in would piss off Leland. Her response was that it wouldn’t when the money filled his commissary and bought him some extra favors inside. She’d also mentioned that Leland would be especially pleased if, while profiting from turning Chuck in, it also got David’s rat ass busted at the same time. She said that she would tell the feds that she heard Chuck was supposed to meet with David at David’s warehouse in Laredo. That David was going to try to get Chuck out of the country. She would say the meeting at the warehouse was at two in the afternoon, which should be right about when they would arrive if they were going to pick Chuck up at eight o’clock in the morning. All Jake had to do was put Chuck up for the night and pass him off to David’s guys in the morning. The message wrapped with Jake saying that he was going to pick up Lenny and would be over in a half hour. Chuck checked the time. The text was about twenty-five minutes old.
“Shit,” he said.
He scrolled up and reread the part about her talking to the feds. It said she was going to meet them later, not whether she was meeting them somewhere specific or if they were meeting her at her house. None of it mattered—Chuck needed to go and quickly. He glanced down at Jerry, who had eyes open, staring at the ceiling. She’d stopped fighting thirty seconds or so before. Chuck continued his white-knu
ckle squeeze on her neck, shaking her head as he exerted force.
“Going to turn me in, eh? You think you wouldn’t die for that? Now look at you.”
Chuck gave her throat one more hard squeeze and let go. She was clearly dead.
“Bitch,” he said.
Chapter 31
“When is she supposed to show?” Ball asked.
“Quarter after eight. Forty-five minutes or so,” I said.
“Any good faith? Did she give us anything other than her word that she has information?”
“Nope,” I said. “She hung up before I could press for it. Like I said, she basically said she had information, wanted something in writing that she would get the reward money, and she’ll be here in an hour. About it.”
“Do you think that she actually has something?”
“I do,” I said. “But I think that there’s something else there as well. She didn’t want to talk earlier, and now she does.”
“Maybe she just needed more time to spend the reward money in her head,” Ball said. “Or someone was listening that she couldn’t talk around.”
“Could be either, I guess,” I said. “Beth was calling Detective Maddox, a guy from the local PD, and seeing if he could get some eyeballs on her house. We’ve already got eyes on her bar, and the motorcycle shop she owns is being watched. If she doesn’t show, we’re going to find her.”
“All right. Well, I don’t know what I can get done on this reward thing tonight, Hank. It’s Sunday and getting late. But I’ll get on the phone. Make a couple of calls and see.”
“All I can ask for,” I said.
“Let me get to it. I’ll call you back.”
Ball hung up. I tucked my phone into my pocket and walked into the restaurant. We’d opted to order, figuring with the hour we had to spare before Jerry Walters arrived, we could get some food down and work the phones while we ate. I rejoined Beth, Bill, and Scott at our table.
“What did he say?” Scott jammed some french fries, which looked delicious, into his mouth.
“He’s going to make some calls,” I said.
“Maddox is going over to have a look at Gerrianne Walters’s place,” Beth said. “He said he’d take his personal car, drive past, and then park down the block—sit on the house until we know if she shows up over here or not. I guess he’s going to text me when he gets there to let us know what he’s looking at.”
“Good.” I pulled my plate of a “butcher’s cut” T-bone steak and broccoli toward me and scooped up my fork and knife. While I used to look forward to eating steak, after eating so much of it on the diet, it was actually starting to get old. I looked over at Bill and the sheer joy on his face as he bit into his grease-dripping cheesesteak.
“What’s up?” Bill apparently noticed me staring at him or, more specifically, his sandwich. “Do I have something on my face?” He swiped around with his napkin.
“Nah, sorry. Was just in thought.” I started sawing off a piece of my steak that was far tougher to cut through than it should have been. I popped it in my mouth and chewed—like chewing on an old tire. I choked it down and sawed at another slice—I was crunched for time. “Anything from the bike shop, bar, trailers?”
“Maddox said he’d call his guys for a report on the shop and land—he’ll let me know what’s up when he calls me back,” Beth said. “As far as the bar, I called Disick, who was going to call Carroll and Comley—again, he said he’d call me back.”
Beth dunked a breadstick into the red sauce that encircled her lasagna. “These breadsticks are actually really good. Anyone want to try one? I got another pair here.”
Bill waved for her to pass one over.
“You, Hank?” She had a dumb grin on her face, knowing that I wanted one but couldn’t have it.
I gave her the side-eye, popped another piece of tire steak in my mouth, and turned up my nose at her.
“We’ve got her car description out to everyone?” I asked. “So they can let us know if they see the car leaving any of these places we’re watching?”
“Red Mustang,” Beth said. “Everyone knows, and everyone has the tag number.”
“All right.”
Within five minutes, we were done with dinner and calling for the check. Maddox had called Beth back when he arrived near Gerrianne Walters’s home. He said all the lights inside were on as if someone was home, and he saw people moving around inside. The garage door was closed, so he couldn’t comment on whether the Mustang was there. Beth told him to call or message her if someone left—there hadn’t been a call or message the last time I’d asked.
I checked my watch—ten minutes to spare before Gerrianne Walters was supposed to arrive. I paced the lobby, checked my phone, and checked it again.
“Are you waiting on her or Ball to call?” Bill asked.
“Ball,” I said. “It would be nice to know something when she shows. You know the first damn thing she’s going to ask about is the reward money.”
“If she’s admitting that she has information as to the whereabouts of someone on the bureau’s top ten list, we should be able to take her in as a person of interest,” Beth said.
She was right, and we should have been able to, yet it wasn’t quite that simple. The bureau had rules in place to protect tipsters from exactly that. Basically, good information leading to an arrest of whoever the bureau was after meant forgiving said tipsters for how they’d gotten that good information. If she had a real lead for us that led to an arrest, that led to getting a killer off the streets, I didn’t have a problem with paying her for it.
Scott walked up. “The front desk says we can use one of the rooms down the hall. I guess they have a couple meeting rooms before the big banquet rooms. The woman up front said that the doors are open.”
“All right,” I said. “Good.”
Headlights in the hotel parking lot caught my eye. I went to the windows beside the front doors and looked out—a minivan with a family getting out. Not her.
“Beth, did you get a message from Maddox yet?” I asked.
I glanced over at her—Beth was sitting in one of the lobby’s lounge chairs, sipping a coffee that she’d gotten to go from the restaurant. I went back to equal parts pacing, checking my phone, and checking my watch.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Beth said.
“Can we check with Maddox again?” I asked. “See if he can get a call out to his guys. Maybe she left from the shop.”
“He already told his guys to contact him if they saw anyone leaving and if they saw her car. He said he’d call me with anything. I haven’t gotten a call.”
“Try Disick, then. See if Comley and Carroll see anything at the bar.”
“Everyone knows to call us,” Beth said. “Let’s just see if she shows.”
I checked my watch again—five minutes until she was supposed to be there. No headlights in the lot. Four minutes until she was supposed to be there, and my phone rang—Ball.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Green light,” Ball said. “You just have to fill out the forms with the investigation number. Write it up and get her to sign it. Get it back over to me, I’ll sign off on it, and if her information turns out to be good, she’ll get her money.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it. I got word from the powers that be. They say pay her if it pans out. I’ll email you over what you need. You can probably get it printed up at the hotel’s business center there.”
“All right. I’m sure I’ll have to call you back for something,” I said.
“Not a problem. Call me as soon as you finish with her.”
“Will do, thanks.” I ended the call and watched my phone for the email icon. It came a moment later, and I opened the message. There looked to be five or six pages that I would have to print—after I had her sitting in the conference room.
“She’s late,” Beth said.
I looked at my watch—8:16 p.m. A feeling had bee
n building in my gut with each second closer to the time that she was supposed to have arrived. Something made me believe she wasn’t coming.
“We’ll give her until eight thirty and we’ll start shaking trees at her shop, her bar, her house,” I said.
“Hang on,” Beth said. “I’ve got Maddox calling.”
Chapter 32
Chuck fished the Mustang keys from Jerry’s purse, dropped them into his pocket, and was taking the cash from her wallet when a noise behind him caught his ear—the front door of Jerry’s house opening.
“Hey, sorry. We got here as quick as we—”
Chuck spun around to see Jake standing inside of the front door. Jake had stopped his sentence short—his eyes were locked on Jerry’s body.
“Shit.” Chuck tried backing toward the kitchen and rounding the breakfast bar.
“Hell no. You stop right there.” Jake yanked a pistol from his waistline and drew down on Chuck.
Chuck put his hands up and took another step backward.
“If you take one more step, it’ll be your last,” Jake said.
Chuck glanced over his shoulder at the knives on the magnetic holder mounted to the wall.
“Look, man, I don’t know what happened,” Chuck said.
“Get your hands out to the sides and get your ass over here in the living room,” Jake ordered.
Chuck again glanced at the knives. He wouldn’t be able to get to one and do anything with it before being shot. Probably shot multiple times.
“I said hands where I can see them!” Jake ordered. “And get over here.”
Chuck held his hands out to the side and took a couple of steps into the living room as instructed.
“Check her,” Jake said to Lenny, who’d come into the house right behind Jake.
Lenny went to Jerry’s side. “I, ah, I don’t want to touch her. She’s gone.”
“I said check!” Jake snapped.
Lenny waffled. “Her damn eyes are open, staring at the ceiling. She’s not breathing, Jake. She’s dead.”
“If you don’t check or try to do something, you’re going to be joining her in about two seconds,” Jake said.
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