The Enforcer

by Anna Perrin

  Brent nodded. “You told the other agents that you met with him May twenty-seventh.”

  “That’s right. We shared ideas for reducing costs at the Last Resort Food Bank.”

  “Did you discuss anything else?”

  Sharratt frowned. “Like what?”

  “Like sex videos?”

  Two bright spots appeared high on Sharratt’s cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

  Brent leaned forward and stabbed the table with his finger. “Do the words ‘Internet porn’ clarify matters for you?”

  “No, they do not.” Sharratt’s tone was indignant, his gnarled hands gripping the arms of his deck chair.

  “What about bribes? The ones you paid to keep from being prosecuted?”

  “Bribes?” he repeated. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but you are dead wrong.”

  “Speaking of dead,” Brent said, “who did you hire to kill Sanderson?”

  Distress showed clearly on the older man’s face. “Stop right there. I considered Pete Sanderson my friend.”

  “Well, I’m thinking any friendship you had with him ended when he threatened to expose your cozy arrangement with Forrester.”

  “I don’t know anybody named Forrester.” Sharratt rose to his feet with difficulty. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “Not just yet,” Brent said, remaining in his seat. “I have more questions for you.”

  “I don’t care how many more questions you have. I’m not talking to you again without my attorney present.” He shuffled toward the patio door, looking noticeably older than when he’d come outside.

  “It doesn’t matter how many high-priced sharks you hire,” Brent said, pushing back from the table. “The truth will come out.”

  Sharratt stopped just inside the opening to the house. “You say that as if you know the truth,” he stated quietly. “But your wild accusations prove that you don’t.”

  Brent straightened to his full height. “Well, you’re in my sights now. I’ll be gunning for you.”

  He left one of his cards on the table, weighted down by an empty tumbler. “If you decide to cooperate, call me. Because I won’t stop until you’re held accountable for every one of your crimes.”

  BRENT’S CELL PHONE rang two hours later, as they drove along the expressway heading out of the city.

  It was Sharratt requesting another meeting immediately. Surprised by the man’s urgent tone, Brent agreed and turned the Mustang around. This time, Sharratt didn’t offer them drinks or make small talk. He appeared subdued, shaken. “I’ve changed my mind about talking to you.”

  “I’m listening,” Brent said.

  “My wife died last year.”

  Brent didn’t see how the man’s loss was relevant, but he remained silent, waiting.

  “I didn’t know what to do with myself. So my son got me a computer, set me up with an e-mail address and access to the Internet. Within a few days, I was getting all this porn stuff in my e-mail box.”

  Obviously, his son hadn’t installed a decent spam blocker. And for a man in his seventies, the concept of porn delivered to the home via personal computer was probably a strange—and titillating—experience.

  “At first, I didn’t even know what the subject lines meant, and I was shocked when I opened the first message. I immediately deleted it, of course, and so many others. But then…” His voice trailed off.

  “But then what?”

  Sharratt licked his lips. “I got curious.”

  Did the guy expect him to believe that he was only guilty of sneaking a few peeks? “So you checked out those smutty e-mails, right?”

  “They came to me. I didn’t go looking for this stuff.” He glanced away. “At least, not at first.”

  Brent only raised his eyebrows.

  Claire leaned forward, her expression sympathetic. “Then they invited you to check out some Web sites,” she guessed.

  He nodded. “And I did. Then I joined a chat room. I just wanted to look at some pictures, talk to some people.”

  “I doubt that would make you a suspect in an FBI investigation,” Brent said.

  Sharratt grimaced. “Well, I did a little more than that.”

  “Define ‘more’ for me.”

  “I ordered some movies.”

  “Kiddie porn,” Brent said, unable to keep the disgust from his voice.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the old man said. “Little girls being slapped around and forced to have sex.” He shuddered.

  “You understand that by ordering those movies, you encouraged the brutal exploitation of those children.”

  Sharratt flinched as if he’d been struck. When he spoke again, his voice wavered. “I swear, I didn’t know. In fact, I was so horrified by what I saw that I threw the movies in the trash.

  “I wish I’d never got involved. And that’s what I told Pete.”

  “Let’s back up,” Brent suggested. “Did you know you were a suspect in an Internet porn operation?”

  “Nobody ever questioned me about it.”

  If Sharratt’s story was true, Forrester wouldn’t have needed to manipulate or expunge evidence from his file. The Bureau had targeted dangerous predators, not porn viewers. “Tell me about your meeting with Sanderson. Who set it up?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  The man’s gaze shifted to the thick area rug in the center of the living room floor. “I was scared.”

  “Of what?”

  Sharratt lifted his head, his eyes filled with anxiety. “The man who threatened to kill my granddaughter if I refused to pay.”

  CLAIRE DARTED A LOOK at Brent, whose only outward sign of surprise was a flicker of his eyes. He must be one heck of a good poker player. But then, she already knew what a challenge it was to read him. He had alternately intrigued and frustrated her.

  “Who’s blackmailing you?” Brent demanded.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. I just leave the money where I’m told. Last time it was a hundred grand.”

  Brent looked at Claire.

  She wondered if he was remembering her insistence that Forrester would need a big financial payoff to risk prison. A single payment of a hundred thousand dollars would certainly fit her definition of big.

  “At first, he only threatened to expose my secret,” Sharratt said. “I just couldn’t bear losing the respect of my children, my friends and the members of my church. After several sleepless nights, I sold off some investments and paid, hoping that would be the end of it.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Brent stated flatly.

  Sharratt grimaced. “He phoned two weeks later, demanding more money. When I balked at paying, he threatened to murder my granddaughter. That’s when I called Pete.”

  She saw a muscle in Brent’s jaw clench before he asked, “Why Sanderson?”

  “We’ve worked together on various charities over the years. And I figured as an FBI agent, he’d know how to handle a situation like this.”

  “What did he advise?”

  “He urged me to report everything, but I told him I couldn’t risk the consequences and I begged him to respect my decision. Eventually he gave up trying to change my mind and asked if I knew why the blackmailer had picked me to shake down.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, but I certainly wondered about it. So the second time he called, I asked him straight out. He just laughed and said, ‘Research is the key.’ I still have no idea what he meant, but Pete seemed shocked.”

  Claire shivered. Anybody who had spent time with Forrester would recognize that expression as one of his favorites.

  Sharratt spoke in a sad monotone. “Pete said he had a hunch he wanted to follow up. That was the last I heard from him.”

  Claire shot Brent a quick look, but nothing about him betrayed personal involvement. He had his feelings under complete control.

  The old man passed a shaky hand over his face. “When the FBI contacte
d me, they said they were talking to everybody who had seen Pete recently. There was no mention of blackmail, so I figured no one knew what Pete and I had discussed. And I wasn’t about to tell them.”

  Sharratt had no way of knowing his blackmailer was an FBI agent who would kill Sanderson rather than be forced to give up his “sweet deal.”

  “Did you pay the second time?” Brent asked.

  “Yes, three weeks ago.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I heard nothing, and I hoped he’d forgotten about me. But he phoned today after you left, demanding another hundred thousand,” Sharratt told them.

  “When are you supposed to deliver the money?”

  “He wanted it tomorrow, but I told him I couldn’t liquidate my assets that fast, so he’s given me three days to come up with the cash. He’ll tell me the location later.”

  “How will you deliver it?” Brent said.

  “He said to put the money in a black canvas bag. The bills are not to be sequentially numbered.”

  Forrester had made sure neither the money nor its container was unique enough to be identified at a later date.

  Brent drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, and Claire understood his frustration. Eventually, Forrester would be picked up. However, without Sharratt’s positive ID of him or large amounts of unexplained cash, blackmail would be tough to prove. And the same was true of Sanderson’s murder. To build a case against him, Brent needed evidence.

  “If he contacts you again,” Brent said, “call me immediately.”

  “You’ll try to stop him?”

  “I will stop him,” he said, his jaw tight. “In the meantime, do whatever is necessary to get the money together. It’s the bait we’ll use to hook him.”

  Chapter Ten

  Brent wasn’t able to reach Gene until an hour after he and Claire had arrived back at the cabin. Sitting alone in the living room with the cell phone pressed against his ear, he decided it was time he was fully candid with his supervisor.

  “There was a CD hidden in Forrester’s vehicle,” he told Gene when the other man finally came on the line. He quickly briefed him about decoding the information in the CD’s files, matching a name to Sanderson’s murder investigation and meeting with the blackmail victim.

  When he was finished, Gene let out a low whistle. “As awful as this may sound, the Bloodhound’s murder is finally beginning to make sense to me.”

  “Forrester must have figured out Pete knew about the blackmail scheme,” Brent said. “He paid a snitch to set him up, and then he killed him.”

  Acid roiled in his stomach, and he shifted position, trying to ease the discomfort. Since the beginning, he’d been keeping Pete’s loss at arms’ length, telling himself he had to stay detached in order to solve the puzzle. But instead of feeling good that a crucial piece of the puzzle, motive, had slipped into place, he felt hollow, emptied out.

  Gene cleared his throat. “Forrester’s participation in the Bureau’s Internet porn investigation means he had access to everything known about the suspects.”

  “That info helped him choose his targets.”

  “Nothing to stop him,” Gene added.

  “Until he picked the wrong one.” The wrong one being Sharratt, longtime acquaintance of Pete Sanderson, who recognized Forrester’s pet phrase.

  “The blackmail drop is the best chance we have of apprehending Forrester,” Gene said. “Let’s meet tomorrow at nine to work on a plan.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “If the Bloodhound had lived a little longer,” Gene added quietly, “he would have nailed Forrester’s sorry hide to the wall.”

  “Damn right he would have.”

  “I’m sorry about Pete. I know I’ve said it before, but it always seems so damn inadequate.”

  Brent swallowed around the lump in his throat. Usually, he could come up with a glib response without breaking a sweat, but not right now.

  After a lengthy pause, Gene continued, “I guess some things are just too big for words, huh?”

  Brent cleared his throat and searched around for a way to lighten things up. “Don’t let Claire catch you saying that. That woman believes talking can solve all the problems of the world.”

  “You should listen to her. She’s a smart lady.”

  Smart enough to know he’d had a rough day and needed some space. She’d been quiet on the ride home, then made herself scarce as soon as they’d reached the cabin. He was lousy company tonight. And she was still upset about Mickey’s death.

  “When do you want to pick up today’s reports?” Gene said, when Brent failed to respond to his comment about Claire.

  Even though Brent needed to stay abreast of the team’s efforts to locate Forrester, he couldn’t face driving back into the city today. Not for the first time, he cursed the cabin’s lack of Internet access.

  As he tried to summon up the energy to get back in the car, an idea came to him. “How about faxing them to me at the marina near here?”

  “The reports are confidential.”

  “I know the owner. I can be waiting at the fax machine when they come through.”

  There was a brief pause, then, “I’ll have Lisa call when she’s ready to send them.”

  It was a major concession, but Gene didn’t give him a chance to thank him. “Read the reports, then get some rest. We’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

  As soon as the call ended, Brent felt his eyelids droop. At first, he was drifting, but then an image flashed in his mind. Sanderson, writhing in a pool of blood while Forrester stood over him, cold-bloodedly counting a wad of cash.

  He jerked his eyes open, rubbed hands slick with sweat on the thighs of his jeans.

  When Forrester was arrested, he was going to learn that money didn’t buy cars in prison.

  CLAIRE STUDIED BRENT’S blank face and slumped body. The professionalism he’d used as a shield seemed to have deserted him. He looked worn-out and depressed. She should leave before he noticed her. But over the past few days, her feelings for him had expanded beyond mere physical attraction to include something unexpected.

  Friendship.

  She must be a glutton for punishment to even consider talking to him. The last time she’d broached the subject of grief, he’d hit her with that “no trespassers allowed” stare of his and several biting comments. She turned to go, then hesitated as her mother’s advice echoed in her head.

  A true friend doesn’t wait for an invitation to help. A true friend makes the offer and accepts the risk of being told to mind her own business.

  With a sigh, she turned back.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  It took Brent a full twenty seconds to switch his gaze from the lake to her. “No.”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  He grimaced. “No more coffee.”

  “I wasn’t thinking coffee. I was thinking beer or whiskey. If I hunt through the cupboards, will I find some left over from last year?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “We should have stocked up before we left the city.”

  “Why? So I could get drunk?”

  “You’ve had a rough day,” she said, settling into the leather chair opposite him.

  “I must be a sorry sight for you to be offering me that.” His gaze slid from her face to her breasts and stayed there. “What else are you offering?”

  Her breath caught as awareness shot through her. But despite his provocative words, she saw no lust in his eyes. Only despair.

  “Not sex,” she said quietly. “Friendship.”

  His gaze backtracked to her face. “Not a good idea to be my friend. Look what happened to Pete.”

  When she frowned, he waved a hand dismissively. “Forget I said that. I’m just being morbid.”

  “You can’t hang tough all the time.”

  “Why not?” He shifted restlessly. “Hanging tough sure as hell feels better than hanging by a thread.”

  “Is th
at how you feel? Like you’re just barely holding on?”

  “I can’t talk about this,” he said in a low voice.

  “Yes, you can,” she said gently.

  She was treading on sensitive ground so it wasn’t surprising that he remained silent for a long time.

  Finally, he looked at her, his eyes dark with anguish. “Pete died because Forrester’s a greedy bastard.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head in bewilderment. “I want a rewind button on life. But that’s stupid. Pete’s gone. End of story.”

  “It’s perfectly natural to feel anger and frustration and grief.”

  His mouth tightened and his eyes flashed. “You think you know what I’m feeling?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why? Because you’ve read some psych textbook?”

  She had a sense of déjà vu, of coming full circle to where they’d started, and the thought upset her more than she cared to admit. “I thought you were done with cheap shots against my profession.”

  “That wasn’t a cheap shot,” he said. “I’m trying to make a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling because you’ve never experienced the violent death of someone close to you.”

  His bitter words stung like a slap in the face. “I understand more about tears and pain than you could ever imagine.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, clearly unconvinced.

  Should she tell him? She took a deep breath, then plunged ahead. “When I was eighteen, my father put his gun to his right temple and pulled the trigger. His note said it was the only way he could make the nightmares stop. Ten months earlier, he’d been involved in an investigation where innocent bystanders were killed, including a six-year-old girl. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and second-guessing his actions. Had he reacted fast enough? Had there been a chance to save her that he’d missed?”