by David Archer
"You give me and my niece here a scare because you’re too lazy to do your job right, and now you think you can tell me what to do? I don't think so, miss. Now, get out of my way."
Lee decided to be a bit more forceful. She stepped forward, blocking the elderly man's way. "No, sir. I don't think so. You need to stay inside."
"Private Lee?" Nancy said, confused. “What’s going on here?”
Lee refused to budge, her eyes locked on those of Thomas McRae, just in case he tried anything stupid. "Ms. McRae, Agent Wolf seemed to think your brother-in-law might know something about the kidnapping. I would be remiss in my duties if I allow him to leave this point. Two of the other agents are on the way back, and they can make the decision when they arrive, but I’m not going to allow Mr. McRae to leave the house until they get here."
Nancy stared at her "What?" she asked, and then she turned to look at her brother-in-law.
The man shook his head. "Are you really going to listen to this nonsense, Nancy?" he said. "Now, excuse me, I'm going out."
The doorbell rang in that very moment.
"Ms. McRae, please see who is at the door," Lee said. She was fairly certain, and fervently hoped, that it was Agents Turin and Lance.
The woman nodded hesitantly and then hurried to the door. To Lee’s relief, she had been correct. Marco and Jenny stepped into the room, and Marco smiled at the old man.
"Going somewhere, Mr. McRae?" Marco said.
"Well, I…" Mr. McRae started, his rudeness vanishing suddenly when he was faced with a man instead of a young woman.
"Hold that thought," Jenny said, an evil glint in her eye. “I’m sure you’re going to have plenty to say shortly.”
FOUR
Though Thomas McRae was alone in the hastily set up interview room, he was by no means unattended. Noah, Neil, Sarah and Jenny were watching him closely on the computer monitor, unimpressed by the guilty and shameful look in the elderly man's eyes. He certainly hadn't felt guilty when he had orchestrated his nephew's kidnapping.
Sarah looked around as the door opened, almost expecting Noah to be there. To her mild surprise, though, it was actually Renée.
"May I come in?" she said.
"Of course," Noah replied politely, beckoning her inside. Jenny glanced at her, then returned to watching McRae. Renée nodded and stepped inside, closing the door behind herself.
"I take it you want to watch the interrogation?" Neil asked.
"I thought it might be interesting," she said with a slight shrug. "Who will be asking the questions?"
"Marco," Jenny said.
Renée noticed a slight irritation in her voice. “I take it he doesn’t always do the interrogations?"
"No, Noah usually lets me handle it," she answered. "I’m pretty good at finding out what I want to know."
“Yes, but Noah wants to keep this old man in one piece,” Sarah said. “At least for the moment.” Noah looked at each of them in turn, but said nothing.
"I don't kill people just because they won’t talk to me," Jenny pointed out, trying not to sound too indignant. “Not all the time, anyway.”
Renée chuckled softly. "I should hope not," she said.
Marco appeared at that moment, walking into the interrogation room with the air of someone who was ready to wring the truth out of the man with his bare hands, if necessary. Thomas McRae looked up at him cautiously, but Marco didn't seem to be bothered by the stare. He simply sat down in a relaxed way and then held up a file for Mr. McRae to see.
"Do you know what this is?" Marco said.
Mr. McRae shook his head.
Marco snorted. "No problem, I’ll tell you. This is a complete dossier on you and your entire family, including your nephew Danny." He tossed the file on the desk. "It also tells us that you have had some pretty serious financial problems in the past few months, but all of them seem to have disappeared in the last couple of days. That bank account you set up in the Caymans? Maybe you can explain the quarter million dollars that appeared in it right after Danny was taken yesterday.”
The old man looked away. "I don't know what you are talking about."
Marco grinned at him. "Sorry, but that’s not true. We already know you were involved in the kidnapping, and that you were well paid to do it. The guy who ran the operation only had to watch from down the street to make sure you did your job yesterday. The men in the car just waited for you to call and say Danny had stepped out of the house. He’s undoubtedly the one who had Mark Crawford’s cell phone, so he was probably the one who called Danny that morning. Did you tell them to kill Mark, too?"
Mr. McRae's eyes widened tenfold. "What? No, I didn't!"
"But you admit to everything else, do you?"
Mr. McRae swallowed hard and then his face fell in resignation. "I—I had no idea what they were going to do," he whispered.
Marco shook his head. "Oh, come on, are you serious?'" he said. "Are you going to try to tell me you thought they were taking him out for a picnic?"
Mr. McRae lowered his gaze. "What do you want from me?"
"Just two things,” Marco said. “First, I want to know where they’re keeping your nephew, and second, I want to know what it is they wanted him for. Answer those for me, and it’s possible you might avoid the death penalty."
Mr. McRae sighed. "I don't know, either of those."
Marco snorted. "McRae, I'm not in a mood to play games. Tell me where they are, and you might find a judge who will be lenient."
"I'm telling you, I honestly don't know. They never said where they were going to take him, or even why they wanted him." Mr. McRae cried, and then let out a tired sigh. "All I was supposed to do was make sure to slip something into his coffee that morning and help him get out to the car. As long as they were able to take him without anyone getting hurt, I would be paid."
"So you drugged him?" Marco said in feigned shock.
"Yes. I just put a couple drops of something into his coffee, something to make him lethargic and cooperative. It took effect quickly and then all I had to do was walk with him out to the street and help him get into the car.” He raised his eyes to Marco. “I'm not proud of it."
"I can’t imagine that you would be," Marco said, his eyes cold.
The old man suddenly glared at him. "Don’t think to judge me, young man. They assured me he wasn’t going to be hurt, and that he’d be returned safely once he does what they want. You can’t imagine how expensive it is, trying to keep Nancy happy. That woman has the most expensive taste I’ve ever…"
"Never mind her," Marco said, slamming his hand on the table. “What is it they want Danny to do, Mr. McRae?”
"I don’t know," the uncle said just as emphatically. "They said they'd drop him off somewhere when he was done, and that would be that."
"Do you know how long they were going to need him, at least?"
"No. They said it would be only a few days at most, but that’s all they told me," Mr. McRae said.
“Okay, last question. Who was it came to you and suggested you help snatch your nephew? Had to be somebody who knew about your money troubles, so don’t give me any line about how it was just some guy you’d never seen before.”
McRae sighed and looked at the table top. “No, I certainly knew him. His name is Jared Gallagher, and he and Danny used to be friends. They got into some kind of argument a couple of years ago, had something to do with the girl they were both crazy about. He came to see me about a week ago, said the people he was working for now need Danny’s help, but that Danny wasn’t cooperating. He offered the money if I would simply help them arrange to borrow my nephew for a short time.”
“Why would they get you involved? Why didn’t they just go ahead and snatch him for real?”
McRae shook his head. “Because Danny—Danny is a highly skilled fighter. Without those drops, he could have easily taken on the men who drove him away, and several more besides. It had to be done without anyone getting hurt, remember?”
; Marco pursed his lips, taking in the information, and then got back on his feet. He had barely made a couple of steps to the door when Mr. McRae stopped him, however.
"Agent Turin?"
Marco turned and eyed him icily.
"Can you please tell his mother how sorry I am?"
Marco stared at him for a moment, then walked out without another word. He stepped into the main room and looked at the others. "If he doesn't know where they’ve been keeping him, there's no telling where they are," he said, frowning.
“Then we keep looking,” Noah said. “On the other hand, this means the calls from the kidnapper are probably real. Whoever has Danny is trying to make us back off.”
“I just have one question,” Jenny said. “I’ve been going over everything, and I can’t figure out how you knew the old man was involved. Care to enlighten me?”
Noah turned and looked at her. “The cigarette butt,” he said. “It struck me as odd that someone who was willing to kidnap a man for some sort of secret purpose would bother to throw down a cigarette butt in the middle of it all. It didn’t hit me at the time, but when I saw the cigarette butt in the lab, I realized it was the same brand Mr. McRae was smoking when we arrived at the house. I figured he probably would have lit one if he was nervous about being involved in the kidnapping, and Ms. McRae said she saw him standing in the street shouting at the car as it drove away with Danny. That old man doesn’t move that fast, so for him to be in the street, he almost had to be there when the abduction took place. He was there, the cigarette butt was there. On top of that, the waitress said she hadn’t seen the suspicious looking guy who watched it all before. Someone planning a kidnapping would probably have staked the place out more than once, and the café was a perfect observation point. If he hadn’t been there multiple times, then he wasn’t expecting a problem; he was simply watching to make sure things went according to plan, and he simply watched while the old man was in the street right when the abduction took place. That tells me he wasn’t surprised by Thomas McRae’s presence, so it must’ve been part of the plan. I wasn’t certain, but I played a hunch and it paid off.”
Allison, who had been in a side office with Major Wilson, suddenly stuck her head out and caught Noah’s eye. “Noah? Get in here.”
Noah turned and walked to the door, then followed her inside. “What’s happening?” he asked. “You look worried.”
“We just got a call,” Allison said. “A body has been found in an alley in Buenos Aires, wearing a U.S. Army uniform. I want you to take your team to check it out, just in case it turns out to be McRae.”
She handed Noah a sheet of paper with an address and directions, and he turned to go without a word. He caught the eyes of Marco, Jenny and Neil, and hooked a finger at them to follow him, then took a short detour to the second of the Quonset huts that was being used as the lab and morgue.
“Doctor Emerson,” Noah said as he entered. “We have another body.”
Emerson looked up from where he was bent over the body of Mark Crawford. “I’m afraid he’ll need to get in line,” he said. He pointed at a hastily installed cooler. “Major Wilson has just brought me three more, the ones they had recovered previously. I was just finishing up with this one and about to start on those.”
“You find anything interesting with this guy?” Noah asked.
“Well, I was correct about the cause of death. A single nine millimeters round penetrated his right parietal bone and passed through the brain tissue, resulting in nearly complete expulsion of the brain through the exit fissure. The weapon was fired at extremely close range, and bruises on his hands and arms indicate that he was apparently putting up a fight. I get the impression that he may have surprised his killer, possibly while they were trying to steal his cell phone.”
Noah nodded. “That’s what we thought. Is there something special about the other bodies you’ve got now?”
“Yes, according to Wilson. They seem to be showing abnormalities that the army doctors don’t recognize. This is one of the reasons I was brought in, because I’ve been involved in looking at some strange anomalies with some other bodies that have been discovered recently.”
“Well, let your assistant start with those,” Noah said. “I need you to come along with us right now.”
* * *
It didn’t take long to determine that the new victim was not Specialist McRae. The soldier had been shoved unceremoniously into a corner of a back alley downtown, bare-chested except for dog tags identifying him as Lieutenant William Belcher. Noah and the team carried out their act professionally, photographing the scene and scouring it for any evidence that might lead to the identity of his killers. Emerson did his in situ examination, and the body was loaded up to be carried back to the OC for further examination.
“Neil,” Noah said, “find me everything you can on Lieutenant Belcher. I want to know…”
“Already on it,” Neil said, holding his specially enhanced smart phone. “Lieutenant William Belcher is assigned to the cryptography unit at the local base. Boss, he’s got a high security clearance and is responsible for handling all coded messages from Joint Operation Command. He’s been absent without leave for almost two weeks, nobody has had any idea where he went or how to find him.”
Noah nodded. “Marco, I want you to go find his unit and speak with his commanding officer. Find out about his friends, anybody he hangs out with. Let’s see if he had been talking about any problems before he disappeared.”
“I’m on it,” Marco said.
“Sarah, you go ahead and drive Marco. We’ll ride back with the body.”
Sarah looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said, keeping up her act as simply part of the team. She and Marco walked back toward the car while Noah, Neil and Jenny followed Emerson and the body to the van they were using.
Noah went to the morgue with Emerson while Neil and Jenny downloaded the photographs and went over them together. They studied them for almost an hour, until they finally put them on the big monitor screen on the wall. Jenny stood and watched as each one appeared, shaking her head.
"What are you thinking?"
Jenny looked up as Neil came to stand next to her beside the monitor, upon which photos of their latest crime scene were displayed. Witnesses said it looked like he had been mugged—his wallet, phone and watch were missing—but Jenny had the feeling that things were not quite as they seemed.
She shook her head in reply to Neil's question. "Just that the person or people who did this didn’t really seem to care much about what the scene was going to look like. It was obviously staged, but not in any way that makes any sense."
Neil nodded, staring at the photo with her. "I think I agree with you. I mean, who mugs somebody just to take a shirt? And who shoots someone in the back three times? He was obviously killed somewhere else, there's not enough blood anywhere near the body for that to be the place he was murdered. No matter how you look at it, there's a whole bunch of things the just don’t add up."
"Like what, Neil?"
Both Jenny and Neil jumped at the sound of Noah’s voice, just behind them, and they both spun to face him.
"Well, there is obviously the fact that the body was moved." He looked at Jenny as if asking for help, but she merely smiled and let him continue on his own. "I personally get the impression somebody dressed him in those jeans after he was already dead. There's almost no blood on them, and there’s plenty of signs that the blood pooled on his lower back, so some of it should have hit those jeans. And then, he was shot in the back, but he's sitting there with his back against the wall. That just isn’t possible." He paused for a moment, then pointed toward the victim’s right arm. "And then there's the fact that his wrists are bruised all the way around, indicating that he was restrained."
"And of course," Jenny added, pointing toward a picture of the victim’s elbow, "we have these needle marks. Doctor Emerson says there’s more than a dozen of them, and all of them are
not more than a few days old." She turned to Noah. "Renée is testing blood samples now. She should be able to give us a good idea of what drugs are involved before long."
Noah nodded, then looked around. "No sign of Sarah and Marco yet?"
Jenny and Neil both shrugged. "Not yet,” Jenny said. “They should be…”
"We are back," Marco said as he and Sarah walked into the OC. "I spoke to Lieutenant Belcher’s CO, and to a Staff Sergeant Lambert. Apparently Belcher had taken a few days leave time last week, but he was supposed to be back on duty six days ago. Sergeant Lambert knew that Belcher was staying at a local hotel, so I went to check it out. The manager said he'd been staying there for a couple of months, but suddenly checked out over a week ago. No wait, strike that, a girlfriend of his actually checked him out."
"A girlfriend?" Noah asked. Marco shrugged and sat down on a desk.
"That caught my attention, too. I went back to his unit and talked to Sergeant Lambert again, but he claims Belcher never mentioned any girlfriends. Belcher was something of a loner, and the few friends he had didn't know of any girlfriend, family, or even friends outside of his own unit. I managed to get a picture of the woman from the hotel security camera, but she paid in cash. No credit card information, and nobody seemed to know her name.”
“Had anybody seen her with Belcher? Was she actually staying in the room with him?”
"I asked the manager about that, but this is one of those places that deliberately doesn’t pay attention. I asked him about the last time he had seen Belcher, and he said it was about a week ago." He looked at the photos on the monitor, then turned back to Noah. "There was already some people in the room, but the manager got them to let me take a look. I couldn’t see any signs of struggle or anything, and housekeeping didn’t mention anything when they cleaned the room."
Without a word, Noah turned and left, and the rest of them went back to discussing the photos. Marco scanned the photo he had gotten of the mysterious girlfriend, and Neil started running it through facial recognition software. Theoretically, if she was as American as she looked, her face should be in at least one of many national databases.