Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set

by T. J. Brearton

  On either side of Palumbo, linked by a length of green yarn, were Palumbo’s number one and number two guys; Ben Franco and Rodney Lamotta. Franco was bald and beady-eyed, Lamotta looked like some pro wrestler after his career ended and the make-up came off. Each of their photos branched into a filigree of strands pointing to more photos, some actually printed pictures, some newspaper clippings that were yellowing with age. Beside almost every image was a sheet of paper bearing the name, date of birth, suspected aliases.

  In the lower right corner was Nick. Nick’s sheet of paper also came with a date of death.

  Finally, running along top of the collage was a timeline, linking notable events — including Nick’s death — in a chain. Several strands of yarn threaded from the timeline down to certain photos. Almost every strand eventually led back to Mario Palumbo, the sort of Godfather of it all.

  Howard Declan wasn’t up there.

  Tom stared at Palumbo’s picture, thinking, I hope it is you behind this, you son of a bitch.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THURSDAY

  The statewide attorney’s office felt like an ice box. Tom and Blythe sat down at a large desk and the secretary who led them in closed the door behind her as she left. Tom glanced at his watch: two minutes before nine a.m. Bob Mandi walked in, a prosecutor with a face so round and scrubbed it looked almost childlike.

  Mandi took his seat at the desk and set out a file, glanced up at the agents. “Good Morning.” After scanning a few documents, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “So where are we?”

  “Well, let’s just come right to it,” Blythe said, crossing her legs. She was wearing a skirt today and Tom noticed a small bruise near her knee. “Heather Moss has virtually no record. She’s a mental health counselor with Everglades County. Recently widowed, has two daughters. Moss claims she received a call on her cellular yesterday morning instructing her to bring a small package already in her possession to Declan. The caller threatened the lives of her daughters and was very compelling that they could carry out those threats.”

  “How so?”

  “They described the girls in detail. Where they were, what they were wearing.”

  “So we’re talking about multiple persons, working in concert.”

  “That’s what we believe at this point,” Blythe said.

  “And this package. Some kind of lethal pill? And this led directly to . . .” Mandi flipped a page in the file and squinted at what was written. “Cerebral hypoxia?”

  “Following a violent seizure, yes.” Blythe shifted and re-crossed her legs the other way. “That’s the preliminary finding. The full autopsy is expected to conclude later today.”

  Mandi was still looking down. “Does she lock her car?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He glanced up, and his eyes flitted between Blythe and Tom. “Is Heather Moss in the habit of locking her car? Did you ask her?”

  “We haven’t yet.”

  He folded his hands on the desk. “Because the poison was already in her car, you said.”

  “In her bag,” Tom answered, edging forward in his chair.

  “And where was her bag?”

  “Probably in the house.”

  “‘Probably.’ How about her house? Does she lock it up at night?”

  “The package,” Tom said, “a manila envelope, the kind you might put keys in, was very small. Could have been dropped into her bag at any point.”

  Mandi studied Tom a moment, then his eyes flitted to Blythe. “And you’re looking into that — what is it called?”

  “Could be something called Syntox,” Blythe said, “a controversial suicide pill. Or it could be homemade. People used to keep potassium cyanide hidden inside false teeth.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “It was called the ‘L-pill’ in World War II, developed by British and American secret services.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It is.”

  “So someone, at some time, could have dropped the pill in her bag, homemade or otherwise. Maybe she doesn’t clean her bag out that often, or pay too much attention to what’s in it?”

  Blythe shrugged.

  “And of course the manila envelope is being tested for prints.”

  Blythe nodded. “Her car has been impounded, the clothes she was wearing are at the lab — we’re doing everything we can.”

  “Everything you can to show that she is the victim here, it seems.” His cherubic face seemed to darken. “What have you got on the other victim, Howard Declan?”

  “We’re still mining for details,” Blythe said quickly. “But right now we think it’s likely he worked for Mario Palumbo in some capacity, and that he may have been involved in the death of Edgar Vasquez.”

  Mandi sifted through some papers and pulled up a sheet, squinted at it, took out his half-framed reading glasses and put them on. “So, Everglades CID on this — they did the crime scene investigation on the Vasquez accident, and there’s no conclusion of brake tampering or something like that. In fact, there’s really nothing conclusive here at all.” He slapped the paper down on the desk.

  “Well, you know why that is, sir. Palumbo has been a County vice narcotics case for two years. Because Vasquez was part of another trafficking group, and he was purportedly meeting with Palumbo, all this falls under VNB purview. And certain information gets protected by court order.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Vice narcotics have been focused on the trafficking, trying to get to Palumbo by working their way up. But it was CID that handled the Vasquez crime scene, as you say, and it basically went nowhere. That could mean they didn’t find tampering, but it could also mean they did, and vice narcotics has been working off that information.”

  Mandi reddened, as if his blood pressure was rising. “Have you considered Heather Moss might be making this up? That she wanted Declan dead for her own reasons?”

  Tom spoke, beating Blythe to it. “Of course we’ve considered it. But there’s nothing so far that shows any motivation. Nothing in her history that shows any intersection between Moss and Declan. She’d never met him before yesterday morning.”

  “Maybe not Declan, per se,” Mandi said, “but someone like him. An inmate. A person with psychological problems . . . Maybe Moss is sick of dealing with people and their problems and wanted to just do something. Has she been psychologically evaluated? From what I’m seeing here, the only thing she has to corroborate her story is a cell phone call that lasted seven minutes. And we have no idea what was said.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I think that’s stretching,” Tom said.

  “Oh, you do, huh?” Mandi glared at him. “Look, I’m poking at this, seeing what gives. We’ve got a dead man, we’ve got a woman who’s gone in to see him, gives him a pill, he dies. You know and I know the autopsy will confirm that. What we can’t confirm is what was said to Moss on the phone. What happened with the caller’s number?”

  “Nothing,” Blythe said. “Out of service. Probably a burner phone, thrown away or destroyed after use.”

  Mandi picked up a crumb on the desk, tossed it in the wastebasket. “What’s your recommendation, Special Agents Blythe and Lange?”

  “Hold the murder charge,” Tom said. “She might be an unwitting participant here, but she’s not a cold-blooded killer. Let us work.”

  Mandi bit his thumbnail and looked off at a wall of books in the office. “We can’t know what was said. We can’t know that anyone was watching her daughters. So far you haven’t produced any witnesses at the school or day care who saw someone or something suspicious.”

  “No,” Blythe responded.

  “And you’ve floated this idea that Mario Palumbo used her to go after Declan because of something Declan did in relation to Edgar Vasquez, but we don’t have any proof of that, if there is proof, and even if there is it will take some time and some legal maneuvering to get at.”

  “County CID inves
tigated before they ran into the vice narcotics firewall,” Blythe said. “Declan was questioned in relation to Vasquez. He had his own auto shop for years. In his statement, he admits to frequenting the dog track as a customer.”

  “But he denies anything incriminating. Never worked for Palumbo, he said.”

  “Maybe because he was terrified.”

  Mandi seemed to think about it all, his eyes roving over the files in front of him. “Okay, well, if she’s loosed, what’s to stop her from being terrified? And running?”

  “She turned herself in,” Tom said.

  “Maybe she thought she’d be safe in jail. And maybe she is.”

  “Not necessarily,” Blythe said. “There’s eight hundred inmates in Everglades County Jail. Palumbo’s got an estimated three hundred in his employ — and those are just the legit people on his payroll. Someone could get to her.”

  “So, what happens when she gets out?” Mandi shifted in his chair, making it squeak. “She gets shot at again?”

  Blythe waved a hand in the air. “Either way, the fact that she was shot at supports the theory this is related to organized crime. It makes no sense that she goes after Declan for some other reason, then just happens to be targeted for murder on the same day.”

  It took Mandi another moment. “Alright. Look, truth be told, I’m inclined to agree with you. But please, tell me, what else is going on with Palumbo as a lead? What have we got? I can’t put Heather Moss out on the street when she’s on video passing Declan the pill that kills him. Not without someone else to put in the hot seat; it’s insane. And where can we go from here? Your Carrie Anne Gallo case last year intersected with County VNB’s open investigation on Palumbo’s drug network, but once that investigation was closed, it was the end of collaboration.”

  “We need to begin anew,” Blythe said. “Let’s bring in Sergeant Coburn, County vice narcotics. See what we can find out on Declan, and what Coby’s surveillance shows on any of Palumbo’s men yesterday morning.”

  Mandi ran fingers over his mouth and sighed. “This leaves me in a tough spot.”

  “What about the feds, sir?” Tom asked.

  Mandi’s eyes seemed to flash. “No.” The word boomed in his spacious office.

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “No. We’re not . . . This . . .” He glanced away again, then said in a quieter voice, “The FBI’s hands are tied here. I’ve already spoken with them. Anything to do with this runs counter to their interests right now.”

  “Counter to their interests?” Tom checked on Blythe but she wasn’t returning eye contact.

  “Yes,” Mandi said. “Counter. You don’t have a shred of evidence this links to Palumbo, and there are sensitive operations ongoing all over the place.”

  Tom held the man’s eye, but didn’t argue.

  Mandi softened. “Look, I admit it looks like she was used, then they tried to get rid of her. But, we need that shooter. Or we need that caller. In the meantime, we can treat this as her being a witness to gang violence. Okay? That’s how it plays. But someone is going to have to answer for the death of Howard Declan, and the feds aren’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. You’re on your own there. We’ve already held her for one day. The arraignment is this afternoon, press conference to follow. You need to find me something. Now.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sergeant Danny Coburn pushed half the cheeseburger into his mouth and bit down. The smell of fried grease wafted out the pass-through window of the eatery’s kitchen. A kid, all of sixteen, leaned into the window with a waiter’s pad as the next hungry customers in the queue stepped forward. Coburn nodded towards some shaded picnic tables in the distance. “Let’s sit over there.”

  He led Tom and Blythe out of the cabana. Tom glanced at the beach as they walked, the sparkling Gulf beyond, a few seagulls circling the air. It wasn’t yet tourist season, but a few bold swimmers were out in the water — probably northerners. Colorful umbrellas dotted the sand. A couple of kids played Frisbee by the grassy edge. A lone woman in a red sunhat read a book.

  Coburn sat down at the picnic table, already finished with the second half of the burger and licking his fingers. He wore a flower-print bathing suit and a white, unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt, revealing his considerably hairy stomach.

  “Thanks for meeting with us.” Blythe swung a leg over the bench and sat with it between her legs. “Sorry to bother you on your day off.”

  Tom edged onto the corner of the bench next to Blythe.

  Coburn shrugged and gazed off toward the ocean. “No rest for the wicked.”

  Blythe asked, “You here with Sherry and the kids?”

  Coburn nodded and pointed. It was hard to see them clearly through the brushy barrier between the park area and the beach, but Tom glimpsed a woman with a couple of kids leaping around her.

  “I didn’t know you were married,” Tom said. “How many kids?”

  “Five.” The sergeant glanced at Tom then folded his hands and stared off the other way, into the parking lot. “Was working fifteen, sixteen hours a day for about six months there for a while. This is the first day off I’ve had in a long time.”

  Blythe said, “You know why we’re here, Coby...”

  He shifted his weight a little, and the picnic table squeaked. “It’s not going to be easy. I already spoke to my guys, but this information won’t get you very far.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, Palumbo’s about the most fun we’ve had yet. These guys are good at counter-surveillance and getting better all the time. We’ve got all these guys up on a wire, but we’re not getting the information we need from traditional surveillance. So, we go to the StingRay. But as I’m sure you know there’s all kinds of pushback using cell tower simulators. Washington State passed legislation that requires a warrant, so did California and Colorado. It’s supposed to happen here, too. There’s a bill floating around in the state legislature.”

  “There’s grounds for a warrant in this case,” Tom said.

  Coburn gave him a tight look. “We’ve been tracking this crew for two years.”

  “You mean it could be retroactive.”

  “New laws that say we need a warrant could make our previous surveillance inadmissible in court. It’s fucked up.”

  Blythe swept a hand in the air, as if brushing away Coburn’s words. She leaned in and stabbed the table with her finger. “We need to know where Palumbo’s people were yesterday morning, between seven and ten a.m., anyone near the jail, or on Tangerine Drive in Bonita Springs, or both. And we need to know if anyone made a call from that 945 number.”

  “So you’ve said, and so we face the same problem we faced last year.” He held up his hands. “Guys, this information is protected. I can’t just pass surveillance on to any other law enforcement outside my unit.”

  “Coby, Bob Mandi is behind us on this. Anything you give us is just for him, and us.”

  Coburn looked around as if to catch someone watching, then pulled a tin of chewing tobacco from his pocket, stuck a wad of it under his lip. “Alright. So far, my guys don’t see that anyone was near the county jail. Or the clinic. Or on Tangerine Drive. Closest cellular subscriber the StingRay picked up — closest subscriber who is part of our gang of suspects, okay — was on the other side of Fort Myers, thirty miles away. But not using 945.”

  Blythe sat back, presumably to let this information settle in. Then she shook her head. “Might not even matter. They could have called Moss from anywhere.”

  Coburn scratched his stomach, then spit to one side. “The StingRay collects calls made. You gave me Moss’s number, too, so my guys ran it against all calls that were placed from someone in Palumbo’s network we’ve been tracking currently.”

  “How many people is that?” Tom asked.

  “Right now, twenty-two. We’ve had as many as thirty-five. But they dump their phones, they switch up, they’re taking videos, checking out everything. I told you, the technology goes both wa
ys. Every new toy we’ve got, they find a way to subvert it.”

  The table shook as Coburn stood up. “Sorry, I don’t have anything else to tell you. I’ve got to get back.”

  Tom rose, too. “Anyone under your surveillance ever use the 945 number?”

  Coburn shrugged. “It’s not a real area code. It’s a prepaid number. To answer your question, yes, I’ve seen it here and there.”

  Blythe looked like she was grappling with a decision. “Coby, we need another favor.”

  He gazed off toward the beach. “Lauren, come on . . .”

  “Unless we know for sure Palumbo can be ruled out, we can’t say he’s definitely not behind this. All you need to do is back us up with Bob Mandi. Tell him you’ve seen the 945 number before.”

  He kept his back to them, looking toward the beach.

  Tom stood up and stepped beside him. “Heather Moss has two little girls,” Tom said. “She’s a single mother — her husband is dead. Right now those girls are with DFS while she sits in County. If we can’t show Mandi something, just the possibility of Palumbo’s network behind this, Moss is going to get hit with a murder charge in a couple hours.”

  The big man’s chest rose and fell with a sigh. Tom knew Coby wanted Palumbo just as badly as anybody else, and was frustrated by his own system. “Fine. I’ll call Mandi. You’ll have my support.”

  “Thank you, Coby.”

  “What about Howard Declan?” Tom asked. “What can you tell us about him?”

  Coburn turned back toward them, spit to the side again. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “We never had Declan under direct surveillance.”

  “Okay, but CID came to question him about the Vasquez car accident . . .”

  “They did some old-fashioned investigating, Lange. They had witnesses who said Vasquez was at the dog track the night he died. They questioned dozens of people who’d been there. Declan was one of them. That’s it.”

  Blythe stepped in front of him and shook his hand. “Give my best to Sherry and the kids.”