“Hey,” Tom said, “where have you been?”
“I’ve been to Declan’s and then I was with Matt, going through his laptop. Tom, we got something.”
Her voice held a tremor he didn’t like.
“What?”
“Declan’s computer drive looked like someone tried to wipe it. But Matt found a way to retrieve the data . . . turns out it’s loaded with child pornography. Mostly pictures, a couple videos.”
Tom felt heavy. He leaned against the small counter. “No shit — Declan? Was he making the stuff? Or just consuming?”
“No evidence on this machine he was making anything, probably consuming only. Anyway, I got your message. And I’m thinking you might be on to something with Hamer’s involvement, with hacking and counter-surveillance. Maybe someone finds out about Declan, what he’s doing, and then goes after him by hiring Hamer? Hamer then hacks the jail CCTV, finds out about Heather Moss getting it easy going through security, uses her to give Declan the suicide pill. Then they retire Hamer’s services.”
Tom’s gaze landed on the stained mattress as he absorbed Blythe’s theory.
Rhodes thumped down the stairs, on his own phone call.
“Hang on a sec, Blythe.” Tom nodded at Rhodes.
“I’m on with the computer tech from Miami ROC,” Rhodes said. “Hamer’s hard drive has been totally wiped. Tech thinks there was probably a program used which is kind of like a self-destruct. She tried to salvage it, but it’s not looking good.”
With Rhodes crammed in the small space alongside Tom, two conversations ongoing, the walls started to close in. Tom squeezed past Rhodes, up the stairs and out into the fresh air.
“Did you hear what Rhodes said?”
“I heard.”
“Alright,” Tom said. “Sounds like someone tried to wipe Declan’s hard drive the same way, but it didn’t work?”
“I don’t know,” Blythe said.
“I’m on my way back. See you in a bit.”
“Drive safe.”
Tom pulled his pack of smokes from the Durango and lit up. Rhodes ambled over.
“Can I get one of those?”
With both of them puffing, Tom gazed at the boat bobbing in the water. Beyond it was a bend in the river, several smaller creeks branching into the mangrove. The boat was in need of a paint job, bulky, not the kind of watercraft typical of Everglades City, airboat tours and fishing charters. Brian Hamer’s boat was moored on property owned by Ned Schnell, Iowa’s incarcerated father. There was an old airboat sitting above the ground on railroad ties a few yards away with Jungle Ned in faded letters.
Tom inhaled the smoke, tried to calm his nerves.
“Blythe said Declan’s laptop had child pornography on it.”
“Ah, Jesus.”
“So what have we got? Someone who goes after an extortionist and a pedophile?”
“Well, that, or you’re looking at it the wrong way. Could be Hamer is behind the whole thing, he found out about Declan, decided to kill him, and he’s the one who hired out someone to threaten Heather, carry the whole thing out.”
Tom shook his head. “I don’t think so. He offs himself before he gets the satisfaction of seeing Declan dead? No, I think there’s someone we don’t know about yet, pulling the strings.”
“Huh.” Rhodes mashed his used-up smoke in the dirt with a boot heel, doffed his cowboy hat and smoothed back his silver hair. “Let’s go.” Rhodes started towards his vehicle. “I got some calls to make, a shit ton of paperwork.”
Tom kept smoking, staring at the boat. “Hamer’s laptop was wiped, but Declan’s still had all the incriminating data . . .”
“Yeah? Well, see there you go. Because Hamer was saying, ‘Look at this guy.’”
“They tried to wipe it.”
“Maybe, or could have just deleted the browsing history, moved things into the trash, make it look that way, easy for cops to find. ‘Look at this guy,’ they’re saying, ‘he deserves to die.’ Shit, I don’t know, maybe he did. Or maybe this thing is just what it looks like: it’s Mario Palumbo using this guy Declan to fuck up Edgar Vasquez’s car, killing him. Then Palumbo takes Declan out. Either way, this Declan guy sounds like a sick son of a bitch.”
Tom was staring at the overwater bungalow, he’d go through that next. “Well, maybe he deserved to be arrested and tried, but no one has the right to dispense their own justice like that.”
Rhodes’ eyes seemed to grow a shade darker. “Yeah, okay. You wait until you’ve been doing this job a few more years.”
“What? Then I’ll learn to disregard the law, you’re saying?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake . . .”
Rhodes marched back to the vehicle, boots crunching the grit. Tom heard the door slam. He didn’t move. He just took another drag, then dropped the smoldering butt to the ground, started toward the bungalow.
“We went through all that!” Rhodes called.
Tom kept going. Heard Rhodes bang out of the vehicle again, cursing. “That place is about ready to collapse, Lange. Nothing in there. Try walking around, you’re liable to fall through the floorboards, and the alligators will fucking eat you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rhodes had been right, not much in the bungalow but some discarded lumber, a few old buoys, sun-faded and peeling. A hole in the floor. Tom looked down and swore he saw an alligator just beneath the murky surface, like Rhodes said, waiting for him to drop though.
He took the Durango and headed north, grateful to see the miles of mangrove receding in the rear-view mirror, found his thoughts wandering to Katie. In the rush of the past couple days, he hadn’t been able to focus on the fact that she’d split up with him.
Two weeks ago they’d been having dinner at Buffalo Chips, a spot close to his condo. Charming place, if you liked dimly lit and coated in grease, the walls crowded with funky decorations like license plates and snake skins. Most of the dinner had passed without talking, then Katie had brought up a past relationship. She’d seen a guy for a few months who’d worked in the DA’s office.
“First I thought, you know, it was just cops that suffered from emotional unavailability. But it’s not. It’s just some people.”
“Emotional unavailability?”
She’d given him a look like he knew exactly what she was talking about — maybe he had.
Halfway to Naples, his phone vibrated. His first hope was that it was Katie.
You’re very persistent, Agent Lange.
Tom slammed on the brakes and pulled the Durango off onto the shoulder. The raised dirt was billowing around the car as he typed a return message.
Who is this?
A few seconds elapsed and the phone vibrated with a new text from the same 945 number.
I know all about you.
Tom stared off into the thick wall of vegetation alongside the road. His heart hammered, his hands shook with adrenaline. I know all about you. What did that mean? He didn’t like it. At the same time, this could be a major break.
He punched out a response: What do you want?
He waited again, trying to remain calm, breathing deep through his nose. There was no reply. Instead, his phone chirped and read, Message failed to send.
Shit.
Somewhere, he imagined, there was a room. Filled with monitors, phones, frequency finders and wireless detectors. A type of high-tech doomsday bunker. Someone was sitting there, at the controls, but Tom couldn’t see his face.
* * *
Tom found Agent Culpepper in the hallway, standing guard outside Heather’s hotel room. He’d had the drive to think and ease himself down, but his adrenaline level was still high.
I know all about you.
Could be a bluff, could be nothing, or maybe it only referred to him, personally. But it might mean Heather and the girls, their whereabouts.
“Evening,” Culpepper said.
Tom kept his voice down. “Everybody okay?”
Culpepper sensed something
was off. “They’re the same as they were when you called a half hour ago — what’s going on?”
“How did they do today?”
“Good.” The agent seemed to let it go, then referred to a spiral notebook he was holding. “Two trips to the pool, and that’s about it. Lots of cartoons, sounded like a fight between the girls at one point, little one crying for a good fifteen minutes straight. Amazing. I don’t know how people do it.”
“I’ll be in my room.” Tom started toward the door, eager to have a shower, grab a moment, when he heard Heather come out of her room.
“I thought I heard voices,” she whispered. “Can we talk?”
“Of course. Come on in.”
He used the key card and held the door for Heather. “How was your day?”
Heather stopped in the center of the room and turned. Tom watched her as he set down his bag on the bed. He could already see it on her face before she spoke.
“I’m sorry — this is crazy. I don’t know how much more of it I can handle. We’re cooped up in here; it’s only been two days.” She sat down in the chair and ran shaky fingers through her hair. “I know this is for our own good, but it’s just — it’s not sustainable. Isn’t there a house or something? Somewhere with a backyard?”
Tom sat on the bed and rubbed his knees a moment. “I know this is not ideal for you, for two young girls. But it looks like things are changing on our end anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this, all this, is conditional, like I said before. And I’m afraid it’s not looking like we’re able to meet those conditions.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “You can’t prove that this guy Palumbo was behind what happened to me.”
“We’re working as hard as we can. But you’re right. I can’t prove it.”
“Have there been any other — I don’t know — breaks in the case?”
He thought about telling her about the 945 call but decided against it.
“I’ve been going over this all day,” Heather said, “running through a list of old clients in my head. Even back to New York. Someone who might have been pissed off. Lost their kids or their jobs, or went to jail because of me. And I mean, I think I’m a good therapist. But that stuff happens. I had a client once say they wanted to kill me. And I reported it, right away, to the police.” She gave him a long look, the desperation swimming in her eyes, then she blinked. “I’m rambling, sorry. I haven’t really had another adult to talk to all day and I’m crawling out of my skin.”
“It’s okay. I know this is hard.” But he was glad to hear it — maybe her earlier reluctance to name anyone came from her professional obligations to confidentiality.
He rose and took a bottle of water from the fridge. He offered her one but she declined. After a swallow, he said, “There’s been another murder. I’ve just come from the death scene.”
She frowned. “At the jail?”
“Somewhere else.”
“But you think it’s connected?”
“It looks like it. Same type of death. And the victim might have owned a Fusion — that’s a device to manufacture a voice. You ever heard of Brian Hamer?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t. Who is he?”
“He had a fairly high-profile case about ten years ago. It took a lot to find him and bring him in. He was offered legal counsel, pro bono. An ACLU lawyer, but there were possibly others he reached out to while he was building his case. And he got out.”
She just stared back, then it was her turn to stand. She paced the room. “This is . . . I don’t know what this is. So this guy was after me? Why? I don’t understand.”
“Well, we don’t know who the target is for sure. You and Declan are connected by what happened. But one of you is the constant, the other is the variable. Meaning, maybe someone wanted to get rid of Declan and used whatever means they could.”
“I thought you said that was doubtful because they waited until he was in jail?”
“Well, doubtful that Palumbo waited until he was in jail. But it could have been someone else.”
“Someone after Declan. Nothing to do with me.”
“I wish I could say for sure. For now, it’s open to question.”
She slowly sat down on the bed again, her expression haunted.
“Going through these old clients in your head,” he said, “that’s a good idea. Think about anyone who would want to upset your life.”
She nodded, and stared off into the room.
“Maybe you could write the names down?” he asked. “If someone threatened you, that releases you from confidentiality, doesn’t it? Who was the man you reported?”
“It was a woman. Forty-eight years old, living with her aged mother. They had rats in their home. She told me about them and I notified the local Sheriff’s Department. There were rats everywhere. They removed the both of them and put the mother in a home. The next time I saw her, she blamed me. Said she wanted to see me die. And I reported it. They came and they got her and they took her away, too.”
“Is that why you came down to Florida?”
Heather wrinkled her forehead. “That was a long time ago. Glenn was still alive. No, I came down to Florida for other reasons.”
“Can you tell me something about those reasons?”
Heather stood and walked to the window. She pushed aside the curtain and looked down the ten stories to the swamp stretching into the distance. She sighed. “Glenn and I were very happy. He was everything to us. It was just the three of us; me and him and Olivia — she’d just been born when we found out about his condition.”
She let the curtains close, turned and stared into the corner a moment.
“It’s . . . you know. It’s just like they say, but it’s a totally different thing to live it. Have you ever lost someone?”
“I have.”
She studied his face, then nodded. “So you know. But then, to be diagnosed with something like that — and we had hope; they tell you that if you catch Hodgkin’s early, you can beat it, and we caught it early. So we just, you know, kept living life. I got pregnant again. And then — Glenn was fighting for his life while his second child was coming into the world.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He saw Abigail born, and then he died. She was three weeks old. One day he was holding his baby in his arms, the next day the hospital was calling me and saying he was gone.”
She sat down on the bed again. “You know, I’ve been so angry. I didn’t know what to do for a long time, I just went through the motions. Those poor girls . . .” She looked at the wall, as if envisioning her daughters sleeping on the other side of it. Then she shrugged. “I just decided we needed to make a change.”
She drew a deep breath and let it slowly out. He resisted the impulse to comfort her, pick her up out of the chair and put his arms around her.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. Everyone at work. My parents. Our friends. The look on their faces. It was just too much.”
“I understand,” Tom said, thinking about leaving Naples. “And how did you pick Florida?”
Her gaze traveled to the carpeted floor and her brows drew together in another pensive expression. “Partly it was just impulse — get as far away as possible. And Glenn’s friend, Robert, was down here.”
“Your lawyer.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why? Are you very close?”
“No, that’s not why. He’s not why. He suggested it, and it was so radical it just seemed . . . I was lost. I’d stayed with my parents for a while, but I had to make a change, and while the girls were still young. I didn’t want to wait and transition them after they had friends and everything. Olivia started school here. You don’t know how . . . well, you might. You might know what it does to you, how you can’t focus. I knew I wasn’t going to last in New York. That if I stayed there, I’d lose it completely.”
Heather got back to her feet. “I’m not sure if that helps you at all.
And I’m sure you have things to do.” She crossed to the door and Tom followed, reeling from her abrupt change in mood.
He unlocked the door and she stepped over the threshold.
“Your insights were right about Howard Declan,” he said suddenly. “You thought he had a secret. He did.”
Her eyes lit up. “What secret?”
“He was doing some very bad things. That’s all I can say right now.”
“And that’s why you’re thinking it’s possible he was the target after all?”
Tom nodded.
After she thought for a moment, Heather said, “Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any better. Whether he was into something bad or not.”
He nodded. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
She started away then stopped again. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever been involved in. And I’ve always been able to land on my feet. I don’t mean to say I’m some kind of great person. But I’ve been able to deal with a lot.” She searched his eyes. “You’re going to figure this out, right? I’m going to be able to rebuild my life? Again?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Her look lingered. Then she lowered her eyes and walked away. Culpepper escorted her the few feet to her door and she disappeared into the entryway without looking back.
* * *
“The VCDC reviewed the request for protection,” Turnbull said on the hotel room phone. “They’re turning us down.”
“We still have a few hours.” Tom sat wrapped in a towel, his hair wet from the shower.
“Lange, Bob Mandi hasn’t rescinded his endorsement, they’ve just rejected it, flat out. They’ll reimburse up to this point. But there’s no compelling evidence that this is Mario Palumbo.”
“We found child pornography on Declan’s laptop. Someone could have been after him.”
“Right, but who? The connection to Brian Hamer is there, but if he’s the assailant, he’s dead. And if he’s not, we’re miles from knowing, let alone being able to prove, who is. In the meantime, we can keep an eye on Heather, but no wit-pro.”
Tom stood, feeling angry, clenching his towel closed. “Someone threatened her children. And whoever it is, is still out there. Blythe told you about the text I got tonight?”
Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set Page 42