by Greg Iles
Kaiser moved behind the chair, reached into the corpse’s back pocket, and slowly worked out his wallet. The driver’s license in the wallet identified the bloody mess in the chair as Andrew Rusk.
Damn it, Kaiser thought. This is going to be a nightmare. A clusterfuck of jurisdictions, a turf battle within the Bureau—
He winced at the sound of his cell phone. He expected SAC Tyler, but the LCD window read ALEX MORSE. He started to ignore the call, but then he reminded himself that this was Morse’s case. Had been from the start.
“Morning, Alex.”
“Hey, John. Will Kilmer told me there might be something wrong out at Rusk’s house?”
Kaiser sighed. “You could say that. Rusk’s dead, and a woman with him. I’m guessing she’s his wife.”
“Dead? Jesus, I’m coming out there.”
Kaiser heard the excitement in her voice. “That’s a terrible idea. The place is going to be crawling with agents and cops. Webb Tyler’s liable to come out here. You’re not supposed to be anywhere near this case—or any other case, for that matter.”
“Well…at least now we know I was right. Rusk was in this thing up to his eyeballs.”
“We don’t know anything of the kind. All we know is that someone you disliked intensely—some might say even persecuted—is dead. So I think the prudent thing is for you to stay away and let me brief you later.”
There was a long silence.
“Do you agree?”
“John, I’ve been investigating Andrew Rusk for weeks, while everyone else sat on their asses and told me I was nuts. I’ve been inside that house. I might see things your people wouldn’t see in ten years of looking!”
Kaiser felt a chill of suspicion. “You’ve been inside Rusk’s house?”
Alex fell silent, obviously aware that her passion had carried her into dangerous waters.
“You stay where you are, Alex. That’s an order.”
“I hear you. Damn it.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
“You’d better.”
Kaiser hung up.
One hour later, Alex pulled her rented Corolla into the mass of law enforcement vehicles parked outside the Rusk house. She knew Kaiser would be furious, but after six weeks of blood, sweat, and tears, she could not sit idle while others picked up the baton and went forward. Besides, she rationalized, Kaiser can’t give me orders if I’m no longer an FBI agent. He was only a few pay grades above me, anyway. And SAC Tyler won’t come out here…not in a million years. He likes that air-conditioned office downtown.
Alex fell into her official stride and walked past a cordon of sheriff’s deputies. A couple of FBI agents gave her the eye, but nobody challenged her. In less than a minute, she had worked her way into the study where what remained of Andrew Rusk was still taped into his chair. Crouched behind him were two men, one of whom Alex recognized as John Kaiser. A strange blue glow emanated from behind them. Then she recognized the roar of a cutting torch. After about a minute, she heard a grunt of triumph, then Kaiser stood up and turned.
“Goddamn it,” he said with genuine annoyance. “Don’t you ever listen?”
“This is my case,” she said doggedly.
“You don’t have any cases! Do you get that?”
Alex said nothing.
“Obviously you don’t. I’m lucky to be in here myself. I told the sheriff that there might be biological weapons in this house, and that we needed to check it before they do the usual homicide investigation. Webb Tyler’s going to have my ass, if not my job.”
“What’s back there?” she asked. “A safe?”
Kaiser nodded reluctantly.
“What’s in it?”
“We’re about to find out.”
The man with the torch had finally got the door open. He backed away for Kaiser to examine the contents.
“You haven’t been inside this safe before, have you?” he asked Alex.
“No.” But not for want of trying. “What do you see?”
“Stay back there, Alex. I mean it. You’re JAFO today.”
Just Another Fucking Observer. “I can’t observe anything from over here.”
“Take a look at the notepad on the desk.”
She did. It was a miniature legal pad, and scrawled on it in pencil was what looked like a man’s handwriting—mostly numbers. “What is this?” she asked. “It looks like GPS coordinates.”
“I think they are. And a time and date.”
She read the numbers again. “Jesus, that’s today.”
“Yep. Two p.m. I think your lawyer friend was about to bug out of town.”
“Where are these coordinates?”
“I’m not sure yet. Hank Kelly thinks they’re on the Gulf Coast, if not actually in the Gulf of Mexico. He’s a GPS hobbyist. Plays those games where they track down planted clues. On his off time, of course. What a world.”
“There’s a name here. You saw that?”
“Looked like Alejo Padilla to me,” said Kaiser, still peering inside the safe.
“Me, too.”
“Sounds Cuban.”
“Uh-huh. And this writing after that?”
“C-P-T? It could mean ‘captain.’”
“You think Rusk was headed south of the border?” Alex asked.
“I do.”
“By boat?”
“Probably. Or maybe seaplane.”
“Why would he flee the country in a boat?”
“If you need to take out contraband, it’s the best way. A large amount of cash, say.” Kaiser shifted on creaking knees and laid some papers out on the floor.
“Anything good?” Alex asked.
“Would you call two Costa Rican passports good?”
“Holy shit!”
“They’re not valid yet, but they look legit.”
“Costa Rica,” she said thoughtfully. “We have an extradition treaty with them now.”
“Yes, but these passports aren’t in the Rusks’ names.”
“But they have the Rusks’ photos?”
“Yep. Take a look.”
She moved forward and leaned over his shoulder. Kaiser was right. She took one of the passports and compared the smiling photo of Andrew Rusk to the bloody corpse in the chair to her left. God, he died bad. She looked back at Kaiser, who was wading through the usual financial papers of any affluent family. Insurance policies, wills, deeds, Social Security papers…
“What else have you got?”
“Looks like a boat to me,” Kaiser said, holding up a photograph.
Alex looked at the four-by-five snapshot. “That’s not a boat, that’s a yacht. You could sail around the world in that.”
“Did Rusk sail?”
“Rusk did everything. All the hobbies of the rich and shameless.”
“Is this boat out at the local marina?”
“I’ve never seen it before. He owns a powerboat, but it usually sits on a trailer out behind this house.”
Kaiser looked up from the papers. “There’s no powerboat out there now.”
Alex looked down at the legal pad where the coordinates had been scrawled. “What if he was planning to meet someone at sea? Power out past the twenty-four-mile mark, board that yacht, and then take off for Costa Rica?”
Kaiser was staring at a sheet of paper in his hand. He gave a long, low whistle.
“What is it?” she asked, sensing his excitement.
“This piece of paper grants safe passage through Cuban territorial waters, and ensures permission to dock at the marina in Havana.”
“What?”
“And it’s signed by Castro himself.”
“No way.”
Kaiser stood and held the document up to the light. “Not Fidel. His brother, Raúl. The defense minister. And this document isn’t made out in Rusk’s name, either. It’s made out to Eldon Tarver, MD.”
Alex took the paper and read it line by line, her pulse beating faster with every word. “This i
s a photocopy.”
“What it is,” Kaiser said, “is inarguable proof that Andrew Rusk and Eldon Tarver were working together.”
Alex swallowed hard and handed the paper back to Kaiser. Having finally discovered what she had worked so hard to find, she felt oddly disconnected from herself. Then she realized why: she had really been working to prove that Bill Fennell murdered her sister. Until she possessed evidence that proved that, she could not save Jamie from his father, as Grace had charged her to do.
“Why would Raúl Castro give Tarver permission to emigrate to Cuba?” she asked.
Kaiser looked at her as though she were slow. “The Virus Cancer Program. Viral bioweapons. I’ll bet the Cuban DGI made an overture to Tarver at some point after the VCP was terminated, offered him money to come work for them. They approached a lot of scientists who were involved in sensitive research. Tarver must have figured Cuba would be a good place to lie low for a while, until it was safe to transfer to Costa Rica under a different name.”
“Was he right?”
“Excepting the fact that he couldn’t foresee the timing of Cuban political upheaval, yes.”
“Rusk sure placed a lot of trust in Tarver.”
“Mistakenly, I’d say.” Kaiser tilted his head toward Rusk’s corpse.
“What do you think happened here?” Alex asked. “Do you think Tarver did this?”
“Had to be him. This is a torture scene. He put them in the most central room in the house. No windows, multiple walls to deaden sound. It must have been awful in here.”
“What killed the wife?”
“Medical examiner says shock.”
“From a gunshot wound?”
Kaiser shook his head. “Snakebite.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that something? She was bitten twice. Once on the forearm and once on the chest, just above the heart.”
“My God.” Alex shuddered at the idea of what must have happened where she now stood.
“An evidence tech bagged two scales off a bookshelf over there,” Kaiser added. “Reptilian for sure, he said. Not fish scales.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Snake scales are the reptile’s actual skin. They’re dry and have their own color. Fish scales are attached to the skin. They’re translucent and colorless.”
“Did you know that?” Alex asked, impressed.
Kaiser chuckled. “Hell, no.”
“What do you think Tarver was after? I mean, he didn’t touch the safe, did he?”
“He might have. He could have taken some things but left the rest. But it’s well hidden behind a panel under those shelves. He may not have known it was there.”
Alex gazed around the room. “You found that legal pad on the desk? The one with the coordinates on it?”
“No. That was found on top of the kitchen refrigerator, underneath a serving tray. Also, Kelly found a hole out back, in the garden. Looks like something had been dug up recently. The hole was twenty inches deep, in a heavily mulched area. Twelve inches by twenty inches, rectangular.”
“Cash?” she speculated.
Kaiser looked skeptical. “Burying cash is tricky business. I’m guessing something more durable. Gold, maybe. Or gems.”
“Or something we can’t even begin to guess at.”
He nodded, grave apprehension in his eyes. “They found a hole at Tarver’s house, too. Last night.”
“Really? Where?”
“Under the floor of a shed attached to the house. Thin aluminum floor with a square cut out. Tarver’s hole was twice as big as Rusk’s. Freshly turned earth, same as this one.”
“These guys were pulling up stakes.”
“Sir?” said a tech who had been examining the study with a powerful light.
“Yes?”
“I’ve got something on the floor here. Looks like the victim tried to write something with his foot. It’s here in the blood.”
“What is it?”
The man leaned closer to the floor. “It looks like…‘A’s number twenty-three.’ The number sign, I mean, not the word number.”
“Like the Oakland A’s?” Kaiser asked.
“Guess so. Was this guy from the Bay Area?”
“No,” said Alex, searching her memory. “No connection that I know of.”
“Make sure you photograph it,” Kaiser said.
He took Alex by the arm and led her out of the study.
“May I see Lisa’s body?” she asked, as they moved toward the front door.
“They’re loading her out now. Nothing to be learned there. I think she was just collateral damage. It’s too bad she didn’t make it to the hospital.”
“Why didn’t she just dial 911?”
“Phone was dead. Somebody cut the wires outside.”
“With your agents watching the place?”
Kaiser nodded, then paused before the front door. “This guy slipped right through six FBI agents. They’re not wilderness masters or anything, but they’re not stupid. They have ears and eyes. But Tarver moved through them like a ghost. In and out without a sound, and he tortured two people in between.”
“And he’s fifty-nine years old,” Alex observed.
“This is a formidable suspect, no doubt. But now I’m thinking he may be getting help from professionals.”
“The Cubans?”
“Who knows? Alex, this case just became a matter of national security. If the CIA finds out about that Castro document, they’ll want to rip this case right out of our hands.”
“Do you have to report it?”
“I should. Hell, Tyler will hand it to them on a silver platter.”
Alex cursed in frustration. “Maybe you should kick this up to the new director. Roberts seemed like a decent guy to me. Maybe he’s got some balls.”
Kaiser didn’t look hopeful. He took hold of Alex’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Listen to me. You have to stay out of this. At least until we figure out how we’re going to handle it. There is no wiggle room in what I’m saying. Do you get that?”
She suppressed the glib retorts that flashed to the surface. “What about those GPS coordinates? What if that’s a rendezvous? Tarver himself could be there, for God’s sake.”
“Do you think Tarver would have left them here, if so?”
“You said the notepad was found hidden on top of the kitchen fridge, right?”
“True. The coordinates could be legit.” Kaiser’s eyes pleaded with her. “I’ll speak to the director about you, Alex. I’ll make clear to him that you were the one who first unearthed these connections. But if I go to bat for you, you have to stand clear while I do it. If Webb Tyler finds out you were here…let’s don’t even go there. You’re going back to the hospital.”
He opened the door and ushered her out.
Alex was the first to see Associate Deputy Director Mark Dodson walking up the porch steps. Dodson glared at her, then transferred the glare to Kaiser.
“Agent Kaiser, what is this woman doing here?”
“I invited Agent Morse to the scene, sir.”
“She’s not Agent Morse any longer. Please take note of that fact in your discourse.”
“He warned me to stay away,” Alex said quickly. “I disobeyed him and came of my own accord. I felt I might have specialized knowledge that could help Agent Kaiser understand this scene.”
A satisfied look crossed Dodson’s face. “I’ll bet you do.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean I think you were here last night.”
Her mouth fell open. “Are you crazy? I was at—”
“Do you deny ever being inside this house?”
She wanted to deny it, but the truth was, she had been here before, and with damn good reason. Triumph shone from Dodson’s eyes.
“What are you doing here, sir?” Kaiser asked.
“Last night, Webb Tyler informed me that you were taking unauthorized measures in his area of operati
ons. It’s a good thing he did, since you’re obviously getting the Bureau deep into a case that belongs to the Mississippi authorities. What can you have been thinking, Agent Kaiser?”
“Sir, I had reason to believe that this case involves deadly biological weapons and, as such, required immediate federal intervention.”
This brought Dodson up short. “Biological weapons?”
“Yes, sir. Yesterday we discovered a clandestine primate lab owned by one Noel D. Traver, which is probably an alias of Dr. Eldon Tarver. Under the guise of a dog-breeding facility, Dr. Tarver appears to have been conducting sophisticated genetic experiments on primates, and possibly even on human beings.”
Dodson suddenly looked less certain of his position. “I’m aware of yesterday’s fire. Do you have proof that such experiments were conducted?”
“We have some escaped animals in captivity. I was waiting for approval to proceed, due to the complexity of the laboratory studies required.”
Dodson licked his lips. “I’ll give that further consideration. But I want Ms. Morse held at the local field office for questioning.”
Kaiser stiffened. “On what grounds, sir?”
“The Bureau received multiple complaints from Mr. Rusk before his death that he was being persecuted by Ms. Morse. We know she blamed Rusk for the death of her sister. I’m going to have to establish beyond doubt that Ms. Morse did not take the law into her own hands last night.”
Kaiser stepped toward Dodson. “Agent Morse has a service record—”
“Of losing control of her emotions during stress,” finished Dodson. “Don’t overstep the mark, Agent Kaiser. You don’t want to throw away your career trying to save hers. That’s a lost cause.”
Kaiser went pale. “Sir, I happen to know that the disposition of her case is not yet final. And—”
Dodson held a piece of paper up to Kaiser’s face. “This is an interview with one Neville Byrd of Canton, Mississippi. Byrd was apprehended in a downtown hotel with both laser and optical surveillance equipment in his possession. He had been surveilling the office of Andrew Rusk. When asked who hired him, Byrd stated that one Alexandra Morse had hired him at double his normal rates.”
Alex gasped in disbelief.
Kaiser turned and looked at her. Seeing the doubt and pain in his eyes, she shook her head in denial. Kaiser looked around at the audience of field agents, hungry for the denouement of this battle.