Suddenly she was shaking. She dropped her head between her legs, her entire body trembling. “Oh God,” she moaned. “I’m so sorry . . .”
Tom moved beside her and placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. Her skin radiated hot, the back of her neck shiny and damp. She tried to speak through the spasms wracking her body. It was hard to understand everything she was saying, but he caught the gist of it: despite feeling she’d done what she had to do to keep her daughters safe, she’d caused someone’s death, and felt deep remorse. It seemed to crush her.
“Does he . . .” she stammered, “Does he have family? Oh God . . .”
“Not that we know of,” Tom said. “Just an ex-wife. He seems like a loner.”
She raised her head. Her face was flushed, her eyes shining. She wiped away the tears with her hand and Tom grabbed her some tissues, handed them to her. He went back to the desk chair, giving her some space.
She got under control, met his gaze. “You asked what I thought of Declan.”
“I did.”
“Well, I think I know what you’re really asking. Did he say something to me that was some kind of sensitive information? And the answer is, no. He didn’t. I can tell you what he did talk about, though. His wife. How he regretted that they’d never had children. He regretted the divorce.”
Tom unfolded his arms, acutely aware of his body language all of the sudden. He tried to sit casually and draped his arm on the chair. “But did you . . . what did you think of him? If none of the things that happened this morning happened — if you’d never gotten the phone call on your way to work, what would you have thought of him?”
“A sad man. A lonely person; one who was having a psychotic break.”
“Would you have recommended another 24-hour watch?”
“Yes.”
“And how did you determine that?”
Her look lingered a moment. “He said, ‘I don’t deserve to live.’”
A silence developed in the room, and Heather drank the rest of her water. The woman who’d showed up at his room door five minutes ago had been lively, almost vivacious, but now she looked peaked. Tom felt guilt swelling up, but he knew the questions were necessary.
“This guy,” he said, “walking around in his front yard naked, a neighbor calls the police. They show up, try talking to him, move in on him, and he goes for one of their guns. Boom, he gets arrested, they take him in. Then, he’s in jail, and this . . . thing happens. He takes this lethal pill. But I’m also wondering, you know — you said psychotic break. Was this guy really out there? Was he hearing voices? I mean . . .”
She shook her head, her eyes wet and unfocused. “I don’t know. I don’t think he was schizophrenic or had de-realization, nothing organic like that. He wasn’t on any meds, had no history of mental health disorders. But I really wasn’t able to . . . That’s all I can say.”
“I understand. And he never mentioned anything about a man named Mario Palumbo?”
“No.”
“How about Edgar Vasquez?”
“Vasquez? No.”
“But did he seem paranoid at all, worried people were after him?”
She daubed at her eyes with a wadded tissue. “He seemed afraid of something. Of judgment. I’m not sure if from the law, something in his head, or something else.”
“And he never explained why he was naked, walking around in front of his house?”
“Mr. Lange . . . Agent Lange, Howard Declan experienced an episode of acute, primary psychosis. He hadn’t been sleeping, maybe for weeks, and was probably disassociated. But I only had forty-five minutes with him, and like I said, I had a lot going on. And this is an initial assessment, part of an ongoing process; I have no concrete answer for why he did what he did.”
She rose, a bit unsteadily, and brushed a strand of hair from her face. Tom started to get out of the chair, but she put out her hand. “I do think Howard Declan had some kind of secret. Okay? I won’t presume to know what, but something was eating away at him.” Her gaze had sharpened to become direct. “Some clients have organic, degenerative conditions; a physical problem with their brain. But Declan had no history of that. If pushed, I’d say he was like the rest of us — even if we’re sane, we all have the potential to be consumed by regret, by guilt, to the point it pushes us to extremes.”
Tom’s gears were turning, thinking about money Declan owed, if that was the extent of his burden. Then his mind hopped tracks. “Heather,” he said quietly, “I want to share something with you. I want to be straight with you.”
“Oh? You trying to build a rapport with me now?” The corner of her mouth curled into a slight smile.
“Maybe. But I want you to really consider this. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how long this protection is going to last. We need to prove that it’s someone specific who targeted Declan, who used you, and that’s been challenging. I just want to prepare you that we may come to the end of this very shortly.”
She took this in, then nodded. “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Tom had one more question. “How about you?”
“How about me what?”
“Can you think of anyone who would want to do something like this to you?”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “You mean, put me through all this? Set me up as some kind of murderer? No, Agent Lange. Thank God I can answer that one. No one.”
* * *
Lange saw Heather Moss back to her room, and Culpepper let her in with a magnetic key. Heather said goodnight and closed the door.
“Hey,” Tom said to Culpepper, “You still smoke?”
“Yeah, the gum is just to get me through. But don’t tell anybody. Nothing more on the outs these days than being a smoker.”
“Give me one to keep me quiet.”
“You’re the boss, boss.”
Culpepper pulled out a pack of Camels and shook one out. “Need a light?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll be back.”
* * *
He stood in the parking lot, looking off into the dark pine and cypress trees of the Corkscrew Swamp. The faintly metallic smell of the marsh wetlands hung in the air. He flicked the lighter and fed the flame to the Camel between his lips and the aroma of burning tobacco took over.
Before his parents died, he’d had woods to play in. But since there hadn’t been a lot of families taking in foster kids where he grew up, he and Nick had gotten bounced around between a few homes in the city. Some of the families were strict, others let kids roam, and Tom got to know the streets.
Lots of different types on the street, but they had something in common — they’d either learned how to survive or were learning.
Heather Moss was interesting because he couldn’t quite peg her. She was smart; when Blythe asked if she’d been curious what was in the envelope, Heather had stuck to the facts — she’d been instructed not to look. Didn’t say whether she’d obeyed that instruction or not. Either she knew the system or had that survival instinct. Maybe both.
He’d asked her if she could think of anyone setting her up, and this time her response was more direct — no — but it snagged him: he wasn’t sure if she hadn’t been able to think of anyone, or if there was someone she didn’t want to think of.
Or maybe couldn’t.
His phone vibrated, and Tom saw Blythe’s incoming number. The time was almost eleven.
“Hey, what’s up?” Tom asked.
“There’s been another murder.”
He just stood there a moment. “Well, it’s an unfortunately common occurrence.”
She wasn’t into the humor. “Everglades City. I need you at the field office first thing tomorrow. We’re going to have a look at the crime scene video.”
“Is there a connection between Howard Declan and this person?”
“You could say that.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FRIDAY
“So this happened
four days ago,” Blythe said. She sat at her desk and booted up her computer. “A day before Howard Declan was arrested.”
Tom set his bag down and looked around the single-room Naples field office. Since his reassignment to Governor Protection, he’d only stopped in once to pick up a few personal belongings. No other agent had been posted in his absence — Blythe had been working alone. There was coffee in the pot and Tom poured himself a cup.
“That’s old,” she said without turning around. She opened a file on the computer and brought up a video.
Tom sipped anyway. Bitter and cold, just right. He moved beside her. “Okay, let’s have a look.”
“So this is Everglades City. Everglades City is very small, one way in, one way out. It’s a tight fishing community, everyone tends to know one another.” She pressed the Play button. A large, rundown boat was moored to a rickety-looking dock along a swampy inlet. The camera operator, likely a tech from the county’s crime scene bureau, panned for a 180-degree view. To the right was an overwater bungalow, looking about ready to fall in. “Sheriff’s Department took the call and recorded this video,” Blythe said. “But they called in the state bureau because—”
“The Everglades are also under our jurisdiction. Got it.”
“Well, technically, this is Big Cypress Preserve. It was supposed to be part of the Everglades National Park, but it hadn’t been purchased from the private owners yet. So it’s its own thing. But yes, that’s why the state bureau was initially notified. An agent came in from Miami. Rhodes.”
The shot panned left, passing by the boat, and revealed nothing but more swamp stretching away in the other direction, bristling with mangrove. The low clouds formed a dark and dismal sky.
Tom felt his nerves start to crawl. “So why are we looking at it now?”
“Just watch.”
The tech walked towards the boat. There were voices, then a sheriff’s deputy came into view, followed by someone in a suit. Blythe pointed. “There’s Rhodes.”
The deputy led Rhodes along the dock, the tech operating the camera trailing them. The deputy and Rhodes stepped aboard. It looked like a fishing schooner — glimpses of a dirty net piled on the deck, fishing poles scattered about, an overturned bucket leaking some kind of bait.
The team moved through the pilothouse and the shot swept over the rudimentary controls: steering wheel, throttle, toggles to ignite and trim the inboard engine. Then the image framed a narrow set of stairs. The deputy started down, then Rhodes; the camera followed.
A cramped living quarters was in disarray. Clothes strewn about, dishes piled in the tiny kitchen, a few books on the floor.
The shot swung toward the bed.
“Oh boy . . .” Tom sucked in a breath. “There he is.”
The dead man’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. One of his eyes had turned dark red. There was a crusty ring around his mouth.
“. . . appears to be some kind of overdose.” The deputy on camera was speaking to Rhodes. “You have the vomit here around the mouth, and there’s signs that the decedent soiled himself. Could be postmortem though.” The deputy’s hand, sheathed in a blue plastic glove, pushed aside a blanket partially covering the body to reveal the bespoke excretions.
“Ah, God . . .” Tom said. “Just like Declan?”
Blythe leaned back in her chair. “The director of the Miami ROC called Turnbull this morning. The medical examiner said this was likely poison, something that attacked the central nervous system.”
Tom rubbed a hand over his mouth. Two men, potentially killed in the same way. “The chemical is the same? Potassium cyanide?”
“They’re still doing confirmatory testing. Both district medical examiners are working on it, and the lab in Miami.”
The tour had continued while they discussed, the video wandering the living quarters. The deputy pointed out a laptop sitting on a small, built-in desk. Hard to be sure, but looked like a new MacBook Pro.
“So this can’t be Declan’s killer in a murder-suicide because this guy’s death predates Declan’s.”
“Correct. He died two days before Declan.”
“Who is he?”
“Well, depends on who you talk to, some say he’s a genius. His name is Brian Hamer, though he’s used different identities in the past. He’s thirty-two now, he forged his first ID when he was seventeen. And he made himself a few hundred grand in tax fraud by the time he was twenty-one.”
“A modern pirate,” Tom commented. “A hacker type.”
Blythe paused the video and pulled up Brian Hamer’s file on the computer. Tom scanned a list of names as she continued.
“All these aliases belong to dead people. Hamer was filing tax returns under the names of deceased persons and the IRS wasn’t cross-checking. When he ran out of those, he targeted living persons, mostly unemployed. He did this for a few years and made a small fortune before he was eventually caught by the IRS and FBI.”
“He went to prison?” Tom saw the dates on Hamer’s rap sheet.
Blythe nodded. “For just a couple years.”
“That’s a slap on the wrist. How’d he beat it?”
“Like I said, smart kid. The feds used a StingRay to finally catch him, and that was the key. Hamer mounted his own defense, basically highlighted the whole violation-of-privacy issue raised by StingRays and cell tower simulators in general. The FBI backed down and recommended time served.”
Something tugged at the back of Tom’s thoughts. Something Coby had said. “They probably just wanted him to go away. Not shine too much light on the StingRay controversy.”
“Yeah.” Blythe returned her attention to the screen, then backed up the footage about a minute. They were looking at Brian Hamer as he stared up at the low, angled ceiling above his bed, eyes open, body probably still warm, bacteria swarming in his guts.
“Who called this in?” Tom asked.
She pulled out a notepad from her breast pocket. “Hamer’s girlfriend, Iowa Schnell. Showed up with coffee and bagels and found him.”
“Iowa?”
“She thought he’d overdosed.”
“Schnell?”
“You can’t make this stuff up.”
“What kind of a user was he?”
Blythe shrugged and put away the pad, then looked up at him. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“You want me to go interview her? What about Rhodes? You said this was four days ago.”
“Sure, Rhodes talked to her, they searched her place for drugs, weapons, talked to a few neighbors, not much, and they sort of wrote it off as an OD, maybe a suicide. But now that we’re considering these two cases possibly linked, it’s top-drawer again, and maybe Iowa can answer a few more questions for us.”
They both watched the screen as the cops in Everglades City finished the tour and headed off the boat. The video went dark.
Tom moved to the sink and dumped out the rest of the bad coffee, ran the tap and drank water out of the mug. When he turned around, Blythe was watching him from her desk chair.
“Do you have a problem going down there?”
“I wanted to get to Declan’s today. Have another look at his place. Drop by the evidence room and give his laptop a look. I mean, the clock is running on this thing with witness protection.”
“I’m aware.”
“And I wanted to check the school where Olivia went, and Abigail’s day care. Even if it wasn’t Palumbo, someone was watching those girls.”
His mind drifted a moment, imagining Olivia as she sat in her classroom, Abigail stacking building blocks at day care. A shadowy figure lurking outside of each place. And the thing with Coby — what was it? He’d said Declan was never under ‘direct surveillance’.
Blythe pushed back from her desk but remained seated in the wheelie chair. She was dressed in a dark gray suit and white shirt. She always looked incredibly put-together. Tom wondered if even a hurricane could ruffle her appearance.
“You getting attached?
” Blythe asked.
“Attached?”
She just gazed across the room at him a moment. “You swimming your laps in the morning? Getting plenty of rest? Or are you running around at night, staying up ’til all hours writing applications for witness protection?”
His skin seemed to tighten. “So — we should’ve charged Heather Moss with murder?”
Blythe stood and slowly crossed the space toward him, her eyes cunning. “I’m just asking. Are you taking care of yourself? Or are you doing just what you did on the Gallo case?”
“What did I do on the Gallo case?”
She clucked her tongue as if he should know. “Running on emotions, losing objectivity.”
“Lauren, come on, what the hell . . .” He felt trapped. She had such a way about her. He stayed pinned against the sink like he couldn’t escape her.
“You went through a lot of shit with the Gallo case,” she said, “no doubt. Not only your brother, but what happened with McDermott.”
“I’m fine — Jesus. Everybody keeps looking at me like I’m about to light on fire or something.”
But her comments brought back bad memories. During the investigation into the murder of Carrie Anne Gallo, he’d threatened a guy named Josh McDermott, a woman-beater. McDermott had broken into Tom’s condo and tried to kill him for it. The County crime scene bureau eventually collected enough evidence to help put McDermott away, but by then Tom had decided to leave Naples. It was no longer, for him, the “happiest city in the US”. He’d taken some of the money from liquidating Nick’s estate, bought the place in Bonita Springs.
“I had six months with the state psychiatrist, twice a week,” Tom said.
“And you spent six months working Governor Protection, which puts you in a sort of mindset. Those are long hours, and your job is to be paranoid. I’m just checking in with you, Tom, making sure you’re good to go.”
“I am.” He eased aside as she took more coffee from the cabinets, stuck a filter in the machine and scooped in grinds for a fresh pot. The aroma soon filled the small room.
Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set Page 39