Ernst was right — Palumbo was in the crosshairs and someone just had to pull the trigger.
Tom took a breath. “What do I do?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
In the main room, Ernst emptied Tom’s Glock, stripping the cartridges from the magazine with his thumb. They clattered to the ground. Then the lawyer expertly pulled back the slide, popping the final round from the chamber.
Ernst handed the empty weapon to Tom, grip-out.
Tom slipped it into the leather holster, snapped the thong closed.
The lawyer smiled. A humorless grin, the kind Tom had seen before on the faces of psychopaths awaiting the death penalty. Men missing certain pieces of themselves. Either born remorseless, or built that way by an especially hostile environment.
Beside Ernst were three large boxes, filled with the equipment he’d dismantled in a matter of minutes — hard drive, screens, everything but one camera, which stood on a tripod nearby. “Now, let’s get your story straight: You came to meet me at the Windmill to discuss my relationship with Rapp. We talked about my representing him on the gun matter, and in the course of our conversation I mentioned how, on one occasion, Rapp had discussed target shooting at a scrap yard in Fort Myers. It clicked for you, because you knew of an auto salvage yard where Howard Declan was formerly employed. You circled the perimeter, looking in, saw the Tahoe, and that gave you the probable cause you needed to enter; you searched the vehicle.”
“I would have called it in immediately.”
“Your phone was damaged.”
Ernst was handing it over in two pieces — the phone body and the battery. Then he suddenly threw the body against the ground, cracking the screen.
“Fell out of your pocket when you scaled the fence. So you searched the premises for a landline. There’s one over there.”
Tom looked where Ernst was pointing at the cream-colored rotary-dial phone sitting amid drifts of paperwork and junk. “But before you located the phone, you found this.” He patted the camcorder beside him. “You watched what was on it, you found Declan’s confession.”
Ernst picked up the broken phone, used his foot to sweep away the cartridges littering the dirty floor. “You can pick those up after I leave.”
“It won’t work.”
Holding out the damaged phone, Ernst cocked an eyebrow. “Oh no?”
“It’s what cops call an ‘orgy of evidence’.” Tom took the phone. “Everything here, in one place; too convenient. Plus my supervisor knows I met with you, disengaged the wire.”
The lawyer’s eyelids fluttered and he looked insulted. “But Agent Lange, I didn’t want to be recorded betraying an attorney-client privilege. I told you I had something that might be useful about André Rapp, but asked that it be off the record.”
The Tahoe was partly visible through a dirty multi-paned window. Ernst pointed.
“The dash cam is still inside. I even left the Fusion hooked up to a smart phone. It’s a 945 number. Tom, I’ve thought of everything. Even this one last thing, this last thing you have to do to make it airtight.”
Tom felt heavy again. “One last thing?”
Ernst looked at the camera. “You’re right about one thing — the confession. Palumbo’s attorneys will say it looks coerced, and a judge could throw it out. On its own, it’s not enough. That’s why we need a good old-fashioned paper trail.”
“Declan’s house is monitored, I told you. I have to sign in. And we booked most everything into evidence already.”
“Not this,” Ernst said. He nodded to the bag sitting close on the table. “This you missed. It happens. Cops go back for a second look all the time. And cops come and go from the evidence room. You just have a guilty conscience, that’s all. But when it’s all over, you’ll see how it worked out just right.”
“You’re the boss.”
The lawyer narrowed his eyes. “You still having trouble with this? Save yourself from a lifetime of humiliation and dishonor, Tom, and be the hero who finally finds the evidence implicating Mario Palumbo in the death of Edgar Vasquez via Howard Declan. You can charge André Rapp for Declan’s murder, the drive-by shooting, and for Hamer and Coburn, all acting on Palumbo’s behalf. Rapp will cop to it all; he’s dumb as shit. Turn it all over to whomever you want — hell, give it to the feds.” His eyes flashed. “Do that and you can get rid of the man who killed your brother.”
“How much are they paying you? The Vasquez family.”
Ernst picked up a box, grunted with the weight, started to back away. “You let me worry about that.” He touched the door behind him, started to pull it open. “Your choice.”
“What happens to Heather?”
“Her name will be completely cleared. I’ll fight the fleeing a crime charge; that’s nothing. Help me with these.”
Tom grabbed up a box, a feeling of pure unreality washing over him. He was helping a criminal escape with the evidence of his crime.
“It’s a sick dream,” Tom said. Ernst had the back hatch of the Acura open and Tom set down the box. “It’s pure manipulation.”
The lawyer shrugged. “Who doesn’t manipulate? That’s all life is.” He went back inside for the final box, Tom following. Box in hand, Ernst swung open the door and left.
Tom popped the gun’s magazine and dropped to the ground, frantically scrounging for the ammunition. By the time he located one in the corner, he heard Ernst slam the Acura’s hatch closed, fire up the engine. Tom fed the cartridge into the magazine and pushed the magazine back in. He racked the slide, loading the cartridge into the chamber and stepped out.
Ernst had already undone the padlock and swung the first door, was back in the car. He drove through the gate, stopped, pushed the door closed, and as he did, looked through at Tom.
Son of a bitch.
Tom slowly lowered the weapon, holstered it. He listened as Ernst locked the gate from the other side, then got back into the Acura and drove off.
Son of a—
The sun was almost set. Tom walked around the dirt lot, picking his way through the junk, kicking at whatever got in his way, feeling the rage jacking him up, blurring his vision. He got back to the Tahoe. Took out his broken phone and battery from his pockets, reassembled it once more and turned it on.
After a minute, the phone chirped, the operating system was up, and he opened the recording app, searched for the latest file. He’d turned the recorder on just before getting out of the Durango and following Ernst into the scrapyard. He played back the file, listened to static, garbled voices. It wasn’t much, not useable in court, but it was something. He heard Ernst saying: You can get these little lipstick cameras at Sam’s Club.
Heather Moss, and her two girls. Was money Ernst’s true motive for all of this? The promise of more work from the surviving Vasquez family members? Was he an anti-government nutcase? Or was this about Heather Moss, too; some kind of twisted, elaborate scheme to possess her?
“Fuck!”
He strode back to the out building and went inside. Eyed the camcorder, found another loose cartridge on the dirty floor. Then he worked his way over to the phone, and plucked the handset from its cradle. Dialed Lauren Blythe.
* * *
Half an hour later, the place was swarming with law enforcement, crime scene technicians crawling in and around the Tahoe. Tom stood beside Blythe in the middle of the scrapyard.
“Sent a car over to Heather Moss,” Blythe said. “Everything is good there. So someone texted Culpepper, headed him off, you said?”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “I called him to check on Heather and that’s when he told me,” he lied.
A generator was fired up, lights exploded all around them, turning everything brighter than day. Blake Turnbull walked in through the gate, looking concerned.
“You alright, Lange?” He looked Tom over. “What happened?”
“André Rapp,” Tom said, squinting in the harsh light. “Rapp told Robert Ernst that he’d come here in the past, to work on
old cars.”
“Ernst — that’s Moss’s attorney?”
Tom gave a nod. “He’d represented Rapp in the past. I found out about it looking through court records.”
“But you were recording your meeting with Ernst,” Turnbull said, and looked between Tom and Blythe. “Why?”
Blythe just stared at Tom; Tom said to Turnbull, “Because of how he looked to me. Standing in court with Heather. I got some ideas. They didn’t pan out, but since Ernst mentioned this place I decided to swing around, try to salvage some of the day.”
Turnbull kept looking at the both of them, his lips parted, as if chasing around the right word or thought. “You two have something you’re not telling me?”
Blythe beat Tom to it. “We will, sir. As soon as the time is right. At the moment, we have a bit of work ahead of us.”
Turnbull seemed to accept this, placed his hands on his hips and looked around. His gaze landed on the Tahoe. “Yeah, I guess so.”
They went through the rest of the scene. Tom took Turnbull to where he found Declan’s confession. “I’d like you to have another look at Declan’s place,” Turnbull said. “I want this thing solid when we bring it all to Bob Mandi.”
Amazing, Tom thought. Turnbull had just opened the door, figuratively speaking. Now all he had to do was to walk through it and plant the evidence on Declan’s connection to Palumbo that Ernst had worked up. And pay a visit to the evidence room, get a hold of Declan’s laptop.
Tom felt sick. The bathroom was near and he pushed through the door, dropped to his knees, vomited in the bowl.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The rest of the night was a haze. They’d discussed the prospect of getting Moss and her family back into witness protection. Even if Rapp was off the street, Palumbo was liable to send someone else to silence her. She could corroborate the use of the 945 number, the Fusion voice synthesizer, and she’d seen the Tahoe the morning of Declan’s death. She would be a key witness in taking down Palumbo. They had to act fast.
“Might even be witness relocation,” Turnbull said. “New identity, new location, the whole nine. We’ll see what Mandi thinks, and we’ll bring in the Marshals, talk to the FBI, whatever we have to do.”
Tom drove slowly down Tangerine Drive, looking out for Ernst’s Acura. The lawyer’s car wasn’t around, but there was a sheriff’s deputy sitting in his parked cruiser. Heather Moss’s house was dark, probably everybody asleep, and Tom rolled up beside the cruiser, recognized Pierce when the deputy rolled his window down.
“Hey,” Tom said. “Everything quiet?”
“Everything’s okay,” Pierce said. “Lights went off about a half hour ago. Couple hours before that, she was putting the kids to bed.”
Tom nodded, looked off at the house, thinking about Ernst’s cameras. At some point the lawyer was going to need to take those down. Unless he had a way to explain them away, but Tom didn’t think so. Tom said goodbye to Pierce and drove home, keyed into his condo, climbed the stairs feeling like he’d run a marathon. He left the lights off, preferring the gloom as he got the vodka out of the cabinet beneath the sink and poured himself a glass. Sat down in the living room, and stared up at the wall of faces — Palumbo, Franco, Lamotta, Nick. He took a sip of the drink, then another, then finished it. Went back for more.
No one was coming for Heather and her daughters. No one except for Ernst. Even if she went into witness relocation, as her lawyer, he could be privy to her new set-up, follow her. She’d have no one else — she might even let him move in when he asked, and he probably would.
Sick fuck.
Or, that was self-pity talking. She’d seemed leery of Ernst in the courtroom, after all.
Fresh drink in hand, he sat back down on the couch, stared at the wall some more. Told himself that Palumbo deserved it, that even if Ernst was a stone cold serial killer, Palumbo was worse. He’d eluded capture for years, had hundreds of people in his employ, thousands were affected by the drugs he trafficked — it was an evil empire. Sitting right under the noses of a law enforcement system that was powerless to stop him. All this surveillance, civilian informants and busts of offenders further down the chain, cops hoping to work their way up, and they never did, or they got close, made a move, Palumbo beat it. When you had money and high-powered lawyers and you lived in Florida — not much different from Texas, really — you could do that. Tom sat there and looked at the wall and worked himself up into a righteous anger, then got up fast and started tearing at it, clippings and photos fluttering to the ground. He grabbed everything, ripped and crumpled.
When it was over and he was breathing hard, third drink in his hand, an idea started to form. Little bits and pieces coming together, coalescing into something he might be able to work with.
He picked up his replacement phone and called Jack Vance. He’d checked voice mail earlier, had missed several calls from Vance that day, hadn’t wanted to speak to him yet, or anyone, but now he did.
Late as it was, old night owl Vance was wide awake.
“Tommy.”
“Hey, Jack . . .”
They talked for ten minutes, then Tom made another call, this time to Katie, expecting her voice mail since it was after midnight. But she picked up, and sounded happy to hear from him. “I’m outside,” she said.
“What?”
He sat up, set down the empty glass.
“I just pulled up,” she told him. “I’m outside your place. Bad time?”
“No — glad you’re here.”
He’d given Katie the second fob that came with the condo for getting in the automatic gate. He went down to greet her. She walked up the stairs in front of him, opened his door and went in. “Got a new phone already?”
“Yeah. My third in a week.”
“You’re going through phones and cars like a . . .” She’d reached the living room, and was looking over the wreckage. She clicked on the light. “Doing a little redecorating?”
“You never liked that particular look,” Tom said.
She stepped through the pile of papers and photos, then glanced at his empty glass on the coffee table. “Got one for me?”
“Sure.” By now he was feeling a little buzzed, a little better. Poured himself one more glass, one for Katie, and they sat on the couch together, facing the bare wall.
“Going to have to put a TV there now or something,” she said. “Like normal people.” Then she faced him, drawing her leg up onto the couch. “You want to talk?”
Déjà vu.
“About this? Or about us?”
“At Coburn’s memorial service you said you wanted to talk about us.”
“I do.”
She nodded, slowly, gazed into her drink. She held the glass with both hands, took a sip, said, “Do you think it’s healthy?”
“What? Us?”
“Yeah. Is what we’ve had what you’d call a healthy relationship? Two cops, both working long hours, trying to scrape together some kind of relationship that began when someone died.” Her eyebrows went up, she took another gulp of the drink, set the glass on the table.
“Healthy as any relationship, I guess.”
Now she scowled. “You have limited experience, I take it.”
“No,” he said. “I know it’s not.”
“Okay. So. What do you want? Let’s say we get back together — well, that presumes we even were together . . . What do you see us as, like, where do you see us in a year? In five years? Ten? Do we have a family? Kids? Do you even want children?”
“Sure.”
She nodded, like she didn’t believe him, and then fell into thinking about everything for a moment. Finally, she said, “Hey — I’m not here to add more complexity to your life. Okay? But I’m wondering, I’m just thinking aloud, you know, if it will ever be any different.”
“You asking me if I’m going to resign?”
“It’s not that I have a problem with you being a cop . . .”
“I know what you’r
e talking about. I don’t know . . . I guess I’m figuring that out.”
She nodded again, but her expression betrayed her disappointment, and she stood up, like she was thinking of leaving.
She looked around like she was forgetting something, then reached into her pocket, pulled out the fob to the security gate, held it out to him. “You want this?”
“No. I want you to keep it.”
She didn’t move. “I’m going to say this — and I hate hearing myself say it — but I think you gotta ask yourself if you actually . . .”
“What?”
“When you came up to me after the service for Coby, and we went to the café — why?” He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. “You needed a sounding board? You needed to unburden yourself?”
“I was worried about you.”
“And you needed information,” she said.
“And you had it.”
“Tom . . .” She faded back, away from the couch, glanced at the door. “It’s really late. Maybe this — you look exhausted. I just . . .” She was still holding the fob, looking at it.
He stood up. “Just stay. Tonight.”
Another glance at the door. “Let me go. Okay?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Come on, you just came all the way here to . . . You don’t even have to sleep in the same bed with me. Okay?”
She remained standing there a few more seconds, between him and the door, looked around the room. “How many of those you had to drink?”
He took a cautious step toward her. “Just a couple.”
“Why do you want me to stay? You just don’t want me to go, and that’s the whole thing with you. Keep me around, keep me right where you want me . . .”
Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set Page 55