Patriot Lies (Jack Widow Book 14)

by Scott Blade

  “Jesus!” Shaw said and jolted up from his chair.

  Tunney put a hand on Widow’s chest and spoke first.

  “Sorry about my associate. He doesn’t get around people much, but he’s a damn fine assistant PI.”

  Widow said nothing to that.

  Shaw pushed his glasses back into place and took a breath and asked a question.

  “Are these Eggers’ teeth?”

  Tunney said, “We don’t know. We think so. But we found them at the crime scene.”

  “Crime scene? We already ruled it as an accidental death.”

  Widow started to speak, but Tunney kept his fingers on Widow’s chest as a way of telling him: Let me do the talking.

  Widow didn’t like it, but he knew when to shut up. Right then, the faster this went, the faster he could get on with finding the guys in the black Escalade.

  Tunney asked, “Who ruled it as accidental death? You?”

  “I did.”

  Tunney spoke, showing the same level of frustration that Widow would’ve shown, only he kept it civil.

  He said, “We found these teeth and the zip tie and the broken bottle all at the crime scene. Did you not think to do any detective work?”

  Shaw looked stunned and a little ashamed.

  He said, “I don’t see how this strip of plastic or the bottle mean anything.”

  Widow brushed Tunney’s fingers off his chest like he was tapping into a wrestling match.

  He said, “It’s a zip tie. Someone restrained Eggers to that bench and set him on fire.”

  Shaw looked up at Widow.

  “Sorry, I just see plastic. I can’t do anything with this. But the teeth. That’s something.”

  Tunney asked, “How long for you to test the blood on the teeth? Maybe it’ll match Eggers’.”

  Shaw turned back to his desk and bent over to look at the teeth.

  “I don’t think the blood is usable. Maybe. I won’t know till our forensic guys take a look.”

  Tunney said, “Still, you can match the teeth to Eggers’ dental records?”

  Widow said, “That’s how they identified his body, according to the Washington Post.”

  Shaw nodded. There was a look on his face.

  Widow asked, “What is it?”

  “Eggers was missing two teeth. There was no indication that it had been done when he was in the Navy.”

  Widow said, “Those are his teeth. I’m sure.”

  Shaw stared at the teeth.

  Kidman said, “Okay. On face value, the teeth suggest someone pulled out his teeth before he died.”

  Widow said, “Or knocked them out.”

  Kidman nodded and said, “That is enough for us to reopen the investigation.”

  Widow asked, “What about the bottle?”

  Shaw asked, “What about it?”

  Tunney asked, “You think the bottle was used to knock the teeth out? Is that why it’s shattered?”

  Kidman said, “Maybe that why it’s shattered. Maybe it was thrown at Eggers?”

  Widow said, “I didn’t bring it in to suggest it was the weapon used to knock out his teeth.”

  Shaw asked, “Then why bring it in?”

  “Because of the label. The brand.”

  Kidman leaned over Shaw’s shoulder and looked down at the label on the desk. He read the label aloud.

  “Clyde Brothers’ Whiskey. Never heard of it.”

  Widow said, “Everyone knows that alcohol is flammable. But it’s not like the movies where someone shoves a rag into a bottle of whiskey and throws it, and it burns down a house in seconds.

  “The alcohol in any bottle of bottom-shelf to top-shelf whiskey acts as an accelerant, but in order to get the right bang for your buck, you need cask strength whiskey. For Eggers to have burned himself alive, he would need something like Clyde Brothers’ Whiskey, the cask strength version.”

  Shaw said, “Okay. So this might’ve been his own bottle?”

  “Not likely.”

  Tunney said, “A bottle of Clyde Brothers’ Whiskey will run you about two hundred bucks in a liquor store. Eggers was homeless. He wouldn’t have bought it.”

  Shaw said, “Unless he planned to burn himself alive.”

  Tunney asked, “You ever hear of a suicide done like that?”

  Widow said, “Buddhist protestors do that in China.”

  Shaw asked, “What about the money? Did you mention money?”

  Tunney looked at Widow. Then he explained to Shaw about the fifty million in stocks.

  At the end of it, both Shaw and Kidman stared at Tunney with their jaws dropped.

  Kidman asked, “What the hell was he doing sleeping on park benches? He could’ve bought a damn hotel with that kind of money.”

  Shaw asked, “Did he not remember that he had bought stocks that grew that much?”

  Tunney shrugged.

  Widow said, “He knew. He employed an estate attorney to handle his affairs.”

  Shaw asked, “When did he do that?”

  Tunney said, “The attorney he hired is the one we’re working for right now, but I don’t know how long he’s represented Mr. Eggers’ estate.”

  Shaw took a breath and said, “We’ll need to talk to him.”

  “Of course,” Tunney said. He pulled out his thick wallet again, sifted through it, and pulled out another of the same simple business cards belonging to Aker that Widow already had.

  Tunney handed the card to Shaw, who took it and thanked Tunney.

  Tunney added, “Any questions you guys come up with about the money or anything, Aker will help you with. We just do as we’re told.”

  Shaw thanked the two of them. Then he asked, “Is there anything else?”

  Widow thought of the guys in the black Escalade again, but didn’t offer up the information because Tunney had instructed him not to, on the chance that he might sound crazy, Widow presumed.

  Widow managed not to mention the Escalade, but he couldn’t hold his tongue about the investigation.

  “I gotta say that from my point of view, this whole thing was sloppy police work.”

  “Excuse me?” Shaw said.

  “So, you didn’t find the teeth. Okay. But you would have if you had looked closer. And the zip ties and the bottle of whiskey? You should’ve searched the bench, at least. That’s where I found the zip tie. And there’s broken glass all over the place. A little detective work would’ve led you to the same evidence I found.”

  Tunney said, “That’s out of line, Widow.”

  But Shaw wasn’t insulted, not the way Tunney had expected.

  Shaw said, “I didn’t investigate the crime scene because a fire investigator was called in. Our guys didn’t look it over at all. The FI came, and he checked it out. He said it looked like an accidental death. Can you blame him? A homeless drunk lit himself up. Fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. We found the cigarettes and lighter. It looked like case closed.”

  The four of them looked at each other.

  Widow asked, “This fire investigator, you’ve worked with him before?”

  “Sure. Once. He’s been around for years. He’s reliable.”

  Tunney said, “Not here.”

  “We all make mistakes. How was he to know about the teeth?”

  Widow said, “I found the zip tie underneath the bench.”

  Shaw shrugged.

  “I guess he missed it. It’s just a piece of plastic. Why would he even recognize what it was?”

  Widow ignored that and asked, “Can we see the traffic cams?”

  Shaw said, “Traffic cams? On the streets around Lincoln Park?”

  “Yes. One of them might’ve gotten an angle of Eggers on the bench. We might be able to see what happened. Maybe we can see who else was there.”

  Kidman said, “The cameras would’ve at least gotten the plates of any vehicles that might be involved.”

  Shaw said, “Let me make a phone call. We’ll go take a look.”

  T
unney looked at Widow.

  He said, “Nice job.”

  “That’s Navy police work.”

  Tunney nodded along.

  They waited as Shaw got on his desk phone and dialed numbers. He spoke to someone on the other line and told him the date and times he wanted to pull up on cameras on the streets surrounding Lincoln Park.

  Widow interrupted him and told him the specific camera on the specific cross streets that he wanted to see.

  Shaw nodded along and relayed the information to the person on the other end of the phone. He followed it by waiting and making a few uh-huhs and a yes and, finally a be right down.

  Shaw hung up his phone and said, “Okay. Follow us.”

  Widow and Tunney followed Shaw and Kidman back through the bullpen, past the other busy detectives.

  Widow stayed in back.

  They walked to the same elevators, but this time they took a different one down. They rode past the first floor to a basement level. When they got out, Shaw took a left and swung around to an office with a glass window on a door.

  They went in and found a large office with multiple screens mounted on two walls with three technicians at keyboards in front of them. Two were busy working on something together. They wore headphones. Occasionally, one would look up and nudge the other one, and they would talk, compare notes on whatever case they were working on.

  As boring as technician work might be, Widow was struck with a sense of satisfaction to be back behind the scenes, on the hunt for a suspect.

  A third technician was standing at the door when they walked in. He greeted them and gave out his name, which Widow missed because he was staring at the other techs working.

  They followed the technician over to an empty terminal.

  He spoke directly to Kidman and Shaw and didn’t look twice at Widow or Tunney.

  He glanced at Shaw and asked, “Okay, gentlemen. You asked to see the traffic cameras surrounding Lincoln Park?”

  Shaw said, “Just the intersections around it.”

  The technician nodded and went onto his keyboard and typed away. He palmed a mouse along with a pad and clicked away there too.

  Within moments, he was in some kind of search box. He unchecked some things and checked others. Then he clicked on a search bar and stopped.

  He asked, “What dates?”

  Shaw gave him the date from three nights previous and the times.

  The technician keyed it all in, and the computer started searching. Only seconds later, it came up with the right streets and times, displaying multiple camera feeds.

  “Which one you wanna check first?” the technician asked.

  Widow intervened and stepped up closer to the guy’s right shoulder. He pointed at one of the feeds with the right cross streets.

  “That one!”

  The technician moved the mouse and clicked on the tiny little box that displayed the camera he was talking about.

  The box came up and filled the screen. The other four men waited, but the technician looked flabbergasted. He clicked the mouse again.

  Shaw asked, “What is it?”

  Tunney said, “Nothing’s happening.”

  The technician clicked the mouse again. The screen was big. They could see a thumbnail of the camera’s view, but nothing happened.

  The technician said, “That’s weird.”

  Shaw asked, “What?”

  “The feed won’t play.”

  “Why not?”

  The technician clicked it again. Nothing happened. Then he sat back in his chair and took his hand off the mouse.

  “What’s going on?” Tunney asked.

  The technician said, “It won’t play. Let me try something else.”

  He double right-clicked over the video’s thumbnail, and a little box of menus came up. He went into one called Information. It opened a box filled with stats about the camera’s feed.

  The technician reached up and tapped the screen on one section.

  “It says zero?”

  Shaw asked, “What’s that mean?”

  The technician said, “It means there’s no video. It either didn’t record...”

  He trailed off.

  Shaw asked, “Or what?”

  The technician looked to the right at the other two technicians.

  He said, “Or it was erased. There’s no runtime displayed. That means there’s no video to watch.”

  Shaw asked, “Is the camera broken?”

  The technician tapped the thumbnail.

  “There’d be no thumbnail if the camera didn’t work. The thumbnail means there was a file.”

  “But now it’s gone?”

  “Yes.”

  Widow and Tunney made eye contact.

  Shaw said, “Try the other ones around the park.”

  The technician tried the next camera up, the same thing. He tried four others; all had the same results. The feeds didn’t play back.

  The technician said, “I don’t believe this.”

  Widow asked, “Who else would have access to the camera feeds?”

  The technician said, “Well, really, anyone.”

  Tunney said, “Anyone?”

  “Any cop, sure. Why wouldn’t they?”

  “For security reasons!”

  Tunney grabbed the back of the technician’s chair.

  The technician said, “These cameras’ primary job is to assign traffic tickets. We don’t get a lot of requests for their footage unless it’s for license plates. We share them with all of MPD.”

  Tunney released the chairback and looked away in frustration. So, did Kidman and Shaw. The technician stayed seated. He cocked his head back to look at the detectives.

  Widow stayed forward, leaning over the back of the chair, and staring at the screen.

  Widow asked, “Is there a way to find out who’s accessed it?”

  The technician said, “Not really. It could be anyone from anywhere in the department. It’s all shared on a server. I can tell you that I never emailed it to anyone. But maybe one of the other guys did.”

  Widow asked, “Email it to anyone?”

  “Sometimes, we’re asked for certain feeds by cops from all over the city. Like I said, the cameras can pick up plates of suspicious vehicles. Want me to ask the other guys if they’ve emailed it out to anyone.”

  “If you get requests for certain videos, then why does everyone have access to it?”

  “A lot of the cops across the city aren’t one hundred percent computer savvy. Or they’ve got too much going on to take the time to search for the right times.”

  “What about other departments?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You said the cops all across the city have access to this archive, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What about other departments? Is it only available to the MPD?”

  The technician thought for a moment.

  He said, “I think some other departments have access to it. Like Secret Service, probably Homeland Security.”

  Widow asked, “What about the fire marshal’s office?”

  The technician nodded.

  Widow looked at Shaw.

  He asked, “You said a fire investigator came to the bench and ruled Eggers’ death an accident?”

  “Yes.”

  Tunney asked the question that was on Widow’s mind first.

  “What’s his name?”

  Shaw said, “Jay Haspman.”

  Kidman said, “He’s posted up at the Office of the Fire Marshal Services. It’s only about two miles from here.”

  Tunney nodded and glanced at Widow.

  Tunney said, “If this Haspman guy is in on it, and he erased the video from the traffic cameras, then you guys should treat him as part of a murder.”

  Shaw said, “If there was a murder.”

  Tunney said, “Are you blind? We brought you enough evidence to suggest it was, and now, potential damning evidence has gone missing. That’s enough
to reopen this investigation as a murder, and you know it!”

  “I’m just saying we don’t know what we got yet.”

  Widow asked, “Can we get the fire marshal to suspend him? Until we can sort this out?”

  Kidman said, “That’ll be tough.”

  “Why?”

  Tunney said, “They’ll need a warrant to search his office. Plus, the DA has to agree to it. It could take time, but you guys can get that stuff.”

  “That’s not the problem,” Kidman said. “Haspman is the fire marshal.”

  Fifteen

  Shaw thanked the technician, and the four of them left the tech office and went back to the elevators.

  At the elevator, Kidman and Shaw talked among themselves in low voices, leaving Widow and Tunney out of the conversation.

  No one hit the call button at first, not until Shaw and Kidman were done speaking in private. Then Shaw hit the call button and Kidman turned back to Widow and Tunney.

  He walked them a few steps back. Shaw got on the elevator without them and hit the button to return up. The doors closed on him, and he was gone.

  Kidman put a hand on Tunney's shoulder.

  Tunney asked, "What is this?"

  Kidman said, "Brigs, you're not a cop anymore."

  "FBI. I was never a cop."

  Kidman sensed some hostility in Tunney's tone and removed his hand.

  Kidman said, "Look, guys. The Metro Police Department appreciates your effort and the evidence you've brought us. But we have to take over from here. Let us do our job."

  Tunney said, "You're pushing us out?"

  "I'm sorry. But that's how Shaw wants it. It's his case. We appreciate what you've done for us, but now he's going to take it."

  "That's bullshit! If it wasn't for us, you guys would've missed a murder."

  "I understand, but you're not FBI anymore. Criminal behavior is our bag. You're just supposed to be looking for an heir, not a murder conspiracy."

  "You're telling us to butt out?"

  Kidman walked forward, back to the elevators, and pushed the call button. He stayed quiet until the elevator dinged and came back to the basement floor.

  He said, "We don't want you doing any outside action. We'll call you if we find anything that might lead to your heir. Or if we have any more questions."

  Kidman put a hand up to hold the elevators open.