Full Disclosure

by Dee Henderson

“Wouldn’t that be a rush? Go. Bribe with whatever you have to so that’s the next thing worked.”

  Paul called his boss, then headed upstairs. The building security chief came off the elevator as Paul started to open the stairway door. He stopped to see what the man had.

  “DMD Couriers, five packages dropped off. This is the photo of the delivery guy. He’s a regular to this building. His route ends in twenty minutes, and DMD Couriers will hold him at their office until you’ve spoken with him. Trouble?”

  “Yes. If any more deliveries come for my attention, hold the delivery guy and call me.”

  “Will do.”

  Paul took the stairs up. He entered the small room just off the secure conference room they normally used and personally reset the access codes. His boss arrived. Paul punched in the encryption code and offered his cellphone and the photo of the letter.

  Arthur read it. “The director is going to love this. What’s the plan?”

  “We need to put a reply in the mail within seventy-two hours, with a thought-out plan for tracking the package and catching her when she picks it up. We wait longer than that, we risk her disappearing. During those seventy-two hours we need to figure out how we tripped into her, follow where these two tapes can take us, trace the package she sent, and hope we get fingerprints somewhere along the line so we know who we’re chasing.

  “We catch her, this gets simple. We open the door for a deal, she’s got twenty-eight more tapes. She can whittle the terms of the deal in her favor a few tapes at a time. We open that door, there’s no way to predict how far it is going to go. So it ends up being a conversation for the director’s level. It’s a tactical problem, to game what she might do and how to proceed, to figure out what the attorney general can live with. That would be your kind of problem, sir.”

  “Tomorrow morning, ten a.m., my office. I’ll have the decision-makers in the room. We keep it to ten whoever sees this letter, or we’re going to lose control of this.”

  “You, me, Sam, Rita, the director, the U.S. attorney general, that gets us to six. Chief of the lab trying for prints, a good audio guy, makes eight.”

  “We’ll use Thomas Gates from legal to write the deal agreement. That gets us to nine.”

  “I’d like to discuss it with the MHI. If we need someone with clout to open a door for us, she can get us a conversation with Vice President Gannett. He’s got an interest in this case.”

  Arthur nodded. “Granted. That’s ten. What else do you need?”

  “The questions are easy; speed is the problem.”

  “I’ll be near a phone if you need me or if there is news.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  His boss headed out.

  Paul’s phone rang. “Yes, Sam.”

  “Six sets of prints on the package, three of them are going to be our people, one the courier, figure another at the DMD offices, so there’s a chance. The prints are being run now. The audiotapes show no prints. Rita’s staying with the letter and envelope. I’m going to walk the tapes to the audio lab and stand over him while copies are made, then put the original tapes in your office safe. You need the delivery package upstairs?”

  “I can work off photos. Send them to Franklin.”

  “Sending them now.”

  Paul moved into the large conference room. Six teams were in the field doing interviews, so it was down to a skeleton crew, and the room looked almost empty. He’d have to decide which ones in the field should be on a plane tonight to get them back here.

  “People, I need your attention.” Agents turned toward him. “For the next several days there are going to be code-level assignments going out. This is the kind of case that will be on your résumé thirty years from now. It’s going to be urgent and come in waves. And you’re going to have to work with less than normal information about what’s going on. Give me your best, and as fast as you can.”

  He looked to Franklin. “Sam just sent you a picture of a package from DMD Couriers. I need you lights and siren to their office. When did the package arrive at DMD Couriers, who brought it in, who accepted the package, and what do they remember about who brought it in? I need security-camera footage for as far back in time as they have it. The courier who delivered it here will be at their office in twenty minutes. I need everything he knows about the package, and ask everyone if they will give us elimination prints. Kelly, go with him, and work on how the delivery was paid for. Was anything signed? Is there an account number that can be traced? I need the handwriting.

  “Peter, there are six sets of prints on the package. They are being run now. Monitor the progress. I need names and faces for those prints. Then focus on the return address on the package. Is it real? The middle of a lake? Tell me everything that can be known about the address where this package originated.

  “Christopher, I have an address in St. Charles, Missouri. I need everything about the address that can be known short of doing a drive-by to take pictures of it. Then I need a list of the lady shooter interviews on a board, listed by date and time.” Paul handed over a Post-it note with the address where she wanted the reply sent.

  “If you hit a problem, find or call me. Tag me with results as soon as you have them. I’ll tell you all later why you are now having fun.”

  Sam was now in the doorway of the war room. Paul joined him and closed the door behind them.

  “This is fun, boss,” Sam said. “My heart’s got some adrenaline going.”

  “Tell me about it.” Paul grabbed a marker and started making a list for himself on the board. Package, tapes, prints, letter reply, lawyers she chose, address to send agreements, how to track the reply to her. “Have any problem with me bringing in Ann?”

  “None. She thinks in puzzles, and we’ve got one. Want to hear the tapes now?”

  “Yes, but it will be faster if we wait for Rita. The package is under way. What else are you thinking?”

  “The currency thief kept the tapes the middleman gave him. So we have the middleman’s voice to use as a comparison. We can establish these tapes are legit if we get a match on the middleman’s voice.”

  “Can you get Treasury to offer a couple of the audio files without telling them why we want them?”

  “I can be persuasive.”

  “Get the tapes,” Paul agreed. “I’m still working on the fact we got her attention. An interview? The middleman investigation? She knew the middleman for years, so maybe she knew him well enough to know where he lived. A trip wire related to his home makes sense. A neighbor. The FBI shows up at the middleman’s home, the lady shooter hears about it. ‘If you ever see cops at my uncle’s home, call me and I’ll give you five thousand dollars.’ Maybe we were the ones who tripped into her.”

  “Do we suspend the interviews while we focus on this?”

  “At a minimum we turn around and re-interview everyone we just talked to.” Paul was grateful he had Ann’s cash to work with. He wouldn’t have to waste time making a case for funding. This had to happen fast, and it could get expensive. “Anyone within a four-hour flight, see if you can get them back tonight. We’ll regroup for a day and send them out again. I don’t want to run shorthanded here until we get our arms around this.”

  Sam reached for the phone.

  Paul thought about the list on the board and added another one. Why did she make contact now? Something changed. Something had to have changed for the lady shooter to be looking for a deal.

  Paul headed back into the main conference room to hear the updates.

  “Boss, the return address is nonsense. There’s no such street,” Peter said. “And the six sets of prints on the package—I’ve got names and photos, and they are all employees, either here or the couriers’.”

  “I’ve got something on the address in St. Charles, Missouri,” Christopher offered. “It’s a house in a nice subdivision on the west side of town. I’ve got photos from a real-estate sale last year—it’s a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch. The homeowner is a Mr. Lewi
s Graves. His DMV photo just generated a match with a high school science teacher.”

  Paul was surprised. He would be astonished if the lady shooter had that homeowner helping her. Why that address? A plus, though, that surveillance would be easier in a subdivision than with a busy downtown street. They would be able to see who came and went. He had to assume someone would be sent to get the package, who would then take it to the lady shooter. “Do what you can to tell me more about Lewis Graves without alerting him that you’re looking. Stay with public records.”

  “Will do.”

  “Boss, I’ve got Franklin on the phone,” Jason said. “According to DMD Couriers, they picked up the package at the Hyatt Hotel on Thomas Avenue, in the guest business office. It’s entirely automated. You set the package on the receiving tray, it takes the weight and your destination address, and gives you the price. You pay and it spits out the address label to put on your package. You drop it in the outgoing mailbox. The machine tells the office there is a package waiting for pickup and a courier stops by to get it. Franklin is on the way to the Hyatt to get security footage on the one who dropped off the package.”

  “Good. Tell him we also want the area checked for prints.”

  “Boss.” Rita was in the doorway of the war room.

  He moved to join her. “What do we have, Rita?”

  She closed the door behind them, pointing at Sam to put down the phone. A smile danced on her face. “We’ve got her fingerprints.” She opened a folder and took out a piece of paper. “Linda Smythe. Miss L.S. is Linda Smythe of Boston, Massachusetts. She is fifty-three years old now. Her prints were the only ones on the letter and the envelope. We have an old photo.” She placed it on the table. “In 1981 she was charged with assault, pled it down to misdemeanor battery, and did thirty days in county jail. There is nothing in the last twenty-five years to give a current address. The address listed in the old report is now a parking lot.”

  “A name, photo, fingerprints—we’ve got someone to chase.” Paul wrapped an arm around Rita’s shoulders. “Sam, the whole team comes back. Tell them to return first class, sleep on the plane, and be ready to work when they arrive.”

  “Will do.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “The three of us,” Rita answered, looking between the two. “Once the lab chief confirmed prints were present, he gave me an encrypted file with the prints, and returned the letter and envelope. They are now in your safe. I ran the prints on the classified system myself and got the match.”

  “I’ll tell the boss, but otherwise we keep the name to ourselves for a few hours. We’ve got two tapes from her, and there are twenty-eight more out there. We’ll have to figure out how to pursue the investigation without sending her back into the shadows—” Paul stopped abruptly.

  “What?”

  “She didn’t leave her prints on the letter and envelope by accident. She gave us her prints. She thinks she is well covered. She doesn’t think that name and photo will lead to her. Or she gave us prints that are not hers to redirect us and keep us busy elsewhere.”

  “So a wild goose chase.”

  Paul nodded. “She’s after a deal, the tapes are real, but the prints may be a way to stall us while letters go back and forth. She doesn’t want to get caught until she’s got the best deal she can arrange, and she’s got twenty-eight tapes to work with to get that best deal.”

  “More like cat and mouse then. She wants the deals from us while we are busy trying to catch her.”

  “Yes. We work the prints and the photo, but we keep in mind it may not be her. What’s helpful, though, is the prints are on both the envelope and letter. If the prints are a plant, we still know the lady shooter handed the pieces of paper to this Linda Smythe, so she is our lady shooter or she recently met our lady shooter.

  “Rita, stay on the prints. See if they lead anywhere else, another name, an open case elsewhere, then age the photo and check it against DMV records and passports. Sam, focus on the bio. Let’s find out about Linda Smythe, and if she has family out there and if any of them are still alive.”

  “What is upstairs going to decide about the offer?”

  “The boss will have decision-makers in his office tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, to figure it out. Sam, I also need you to start gaming out how we use the reply to catch her. We have the address where it is to be delivered, and it’s a house in a subdivision owned by a high school science teacher. She’s not going to pick it up herself. We stake out the address and follow whoever picks up the reply. What options give us the best chance to catch her without scaring her off and sending her back into the shadows?”

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds. She sees us or believes we’re on to her, she simply won’t pick up the reply. She writes and says send it again to a new address, and we repeat the chase until she gets the pages without us getting her.”

  “Whatever she has planned, you can be sure this is not going to be easy. I’ll go up and tell the boss the name. When I get back we’ll listen to those two tapes.”

  Paul returned in twenty minutes, pulled out a chair beside Rita at the table in the war room. “Let’s hear the tapes.”

  Sam’s fingers gave a short drum roll on the table and then he pressed play. Static began the tape and then faint voices. A man’s came to the fore.

  “I don’t do oblique references. You want my help, you need to state clearly what you want, why, and what you’re going to pay.”

  “I want you to kill my wife, Yolanda Meeks. I’ll pay you two hundred fifty thousand. She’s a liability to me, and it needs to be done this week.”

  “You understand when I make a call, that you cannot change your mind? If you fail to pay as agreed, you will yourself be killed by the shooter.”

  “I understand the deal, just get it done fast.”

  The tape went back to static. Sam put in the second tape.

  “You want my help, you need to state clearly what you want, why, and what you’re going to pay.”

  “I want you to kill my brother, Victor Ryckoff. I’ll pay you three hundred thousand after you’ve done the job. He’s pushing into my business for the last time.”

  “You understand when I make a call, that you cannot change your mind? If you fail to pay as agreed, you will yourself be killed by the shooter.”

  “I understand the terms.”

  Another round of static. Sam removed the tape. “It sounds like he’s reading from a script.”

  “He probably is. He’s got down when he wants to start and stop the tape, and he’s careful about what he wants on that recording,” Paul commented. “Flint Meeks killed his wife, Yolanda Meeks, and Tony Ryckoff killed his brother, Victor Ryckoff. The initials don’t match the day-planner entries.”

  “Nicknames,” Rita guessed. “Tin Man. Our aluminum company executive Flint Meeks is Tin Man, TM, and Tony Ryckoff wrote a newsletter called the Gold Nugget, that’s the GN.”

  “No names on the tapes, just voices. We need a voice match, that it really was them on that call, not just someone saying ‘my wife, my brother.’”

  “We use Nathan Scholes,” Rita suggested. “He’s good and he can keep his mouth shut. Lock him in a room, swear him to silence, give him the tapes, tell him what we need. People post birthday parties, family videos, these guys give speeches, maybe there is a public audio file he can work with to match their voices.”

  Paul agreed. “Take him the tapes.”

  “How do you want to handle investigating Flint Meeks and Tony Ryckoff? If they hired a murder, they’ve likely committed a few more felonies over the years. Can we start guys digging into their current lives without saying why we are looking?”

  “I’ll think on that overnight. It might be better to wait until we have as many tapes as we are going to get from the lady shooter before we start using any of the information. I don’t want to tip our hand early and give these guys a warning. They believe they have gotten away with the crime. I’d like them to stay con
fident they are in the clear until the day we put handcuffs on them.” Paul could finally feel the calmness settling in that this was going somewhere. “Let’s dig in and see how far we can get today. The boss offered to buy dinner.”

  Paul glanced at the time when he got home and saw the clock had moved past midnight. He punched in Ann’s number for a secure video call. He would have called from work, but it felt more personal calling from home. He was taking Vicky’s word for it that Ann worked ten p.m. to two a.m. most days, as well as Dave’s comment that she was a night owl.

  “You’re having a late night, Falcon.”

  The fact she was smiling gave him some hope she was going to be forgiving about the interruption. “You look wide awake.”

  She held up a book. “Another hour or so to go. I’d like to know how it ends. Something wrong?” She tilted her head. “No, something right. You look pleased. So . . . how was your day?”

  “Long and profitable. We caught a break in the lady shooter case.” Paul saw her instant smile and matched it with one of his own.

  “That must feel really good to say.”

  “It is.” He picked up his phone and decrypted the image of the letter. He held it up without comment. She read it, smiled, and read it again. “Which tapes did she send you?”

  The single question she started with told him he was right to bring her in on the case. “Twenty-five and twenty-nine.”

  “She knew which day planners you had. She’s been watching all the way back to the middleman’s death.”

  “I think so. Her name may be Linda Smythe, fifty-three, from Boston, Massachusetts. Or the prints may be a misdirect.”

  He watched her think it through.

  “She’s not one to make a mistake like that,” she said. “If they are her prints, it’s because she wants you to know something about her. She’s going to work very hard to get a good deal in exchange for those tapes.”

  “Agreed.”

  “She’s a planner. You won’t catch her retrieving a package, not when her fallback is to walk away and tell the lawyer to resend it. But you’ll have to try, and you’ll have some fun making the chase. In past cases she’s shown no indication she’ll harm a bystander, and she isn’t likely to start now. Someone will pick up the package, and her plan will simply be an attempt to elude you in taking the handoff.”