Identity Found

by Ray Green

Kyle said nothing during this exchange; he set down his beer and resumed his work, gazing intently at the laptop screen as he tapped and clicked away. A few minutes passed before he broke the silence.

  ‘I think I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘It has to be something to do with this Johnson Brothers outfit,’ he asserted. ‘Practically everything on her computer which was saved within the last few weeks relates to that company.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed James, ‘but what could be so important about a tinpot little building company employing a few illegals?’

  ‘Dunno,’ admitted Kyle. ‘Hey, Carla—’

  ‘Juanita,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Yeah … sorry. Anyway, didn’t you say some of the hard copy stuff you’ve got is also related to this company?’

  ‘Only one document as far as I can see,’ she replied, levering herself wearily from the bed and heading for the pile of papers on the chair where she had been sitting. After shuffling the papers for a couple of minutes, she fished out what she was looking for: a slim document consisting of no more than about ten pages, printed double-sided and stapled together in the corner. ‘It’s headed “Employment of Illegals by Johnson Brothers”.’ She handed it to Kyle, who scanned the first sheet of paper.

  ‘Yeah,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve got the original file right here on the screen.’ He paused for a few moments, staring at the screen. ‘Definitely the same document … but it really doesn’t tell us anything.’ He handed it back to her.

  She tossed it back onto the pile of papers on the chair.

  And then she spotted it. The document had landed upside down, with the blank second side of the final sheet facing upwards. Except it wasn’t blank: it contained a handwritten note.

  Her heart jumped as she scanned the note. ‘Guys … guys … I think I’ve got something here.’

  Chapter 28

  Mark Bowman sat opposite Cynthia Newman in the New York Times office. She slid the photo he had handed her back across the desk.

  ‘Yes, she worked here as a temp …. just for a week. Nice girl, very efficient.’

  Nice girl, he thought. If only you knew.

  ‘What name was she using?’

  ‘Using? What … you think it might not have been her real name?’

  Mark metaphorically kicked himself for his poor choice of words.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss that with you, Mrs Newman. Now, if you could give me her name …’

  ‘Sure. Gema … Gema López.’

  The same name she used when visiting the hair salon; maybe she’s starting to get a little careless.

  ‘What kind of work did she do here?’

  ‘Well … just general admin really. My secretary quit recently, and I needed some temporary cover to fill the gap before her permanent replacement starts.’

  General admin? There had to be more to it than that. There’s no way that she just happened to come and take a routine temping post `in the very organisation where her victim had previously worked.

  ‘Can you be a little more specific? It could be important to our investigation.’

  Cynthia raised her eyebrows and spread her hands. ‘Usual stuff: filing, typing, answering the phone … that sort of thing. Mind you she was a very bright girl; I can’t understand really why she wasn’t looking for something much more demanding.’

  Because she was looking for something right here, he thought, but didn’t say.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Cynthia, ‘you said you were investigating Julia Turner’s murder. What on earth could the work my temp was doing have to do with that?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Newman … like I said, I’m afraid I can’t discuss the details of the case.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, not sure there’s much I can do to help you, then.’

  ‘Are you quite sure there’s nothing else she was working on while she was here?’

  ‘Well, she did spend half a day working for Joe Goldsmith’ – she tilted her head and rolled her eyes skyward – ‘next floor up.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Oh, I think she was gathering together all of Julia’s stuff for you guys to take away and examine.’

  What? Mark was well aware that Don Lister had collected a bunch of papers and files to try to ascertain what Julia had been working on, but what the fuck was he doing allowing anyone to, potentially, tamper with evidence before seizing it? No wonder he’d never made it beyond Detective rank.

  ‘Can I talk to this Goldsmith guy?’

  ‘If you like … no-one else wants to, if they can help it,’ she added, acerbically.

  Mark really wasn’t interested in the office dynamics and who liked who … or didn’t. ‘Can you call him then?’

  ‘Sure,’ she replied, reaching for the phone, ‘I’ll just—’

  Before you do that, can you get me copies of everything you have on this Gema López: address, previous jobs … everything you have.’

  ‘OK, I’ll have someone get her personnel file … not that there’ll be much on it; she was only here for a week.’

  ‘You already said,’ muttered Mark, starting to get a little irritated by this woman’s rather offhand manner.

  ‘So what do you want first … the file, or to talk to Goldsmith?’

  The intonation on the last word of her sentence, and the fact that she could only bring herself to refer to him by his surname, spoke volumes: Mark could almost taste the animosity which obviously existed between the two of them.

  ‘Well,’ replied Mark, ‘perhaps if Mr Goldsmith is available now, I could talk to him while you get the personnel file sent up to me?’

  ‘I guess,’ she said, reaching for the phone once more.

  While she was talking on the phone, Mark was trying to make sense of what he had learned so far. Assuming this woman – ‘nice girl’ – was Julia’s killer, why did she need a copy of the autopsy report? The only thing he had been able to surmise was that there was something in the report which might incriminate her. Other than the card with the scorpion logo – which had obviously been left deliberately – what could it be? He had scoured the report from cover to cover and had come up with precisely nothing.

  And now she had contrived to get herself into the New York Times office, presumably with the express purpose of gaining access to documents and files which would reveal what story Julia had been working on. But why? If it was a random killing then, surely, what Julia had been investigating was totally irrelevant. Conversely, if she had been killed because of what she had been working on, then her killer would know what that was – unless, of course, it was a contract killing. If so, the killer hired to murder her might well ask no questions, as long as the fee was right. But then why would she – he was increasingly convinced that it wasn’t a ‘he’ – want to dig through the autopsy report and, even more puzzlingly, Julia’s files and papers?

  None of it made any sense.

  ***

  Juanita read out loud the handwritten note on the back of the final page of the document which had landed upside down. ‘Mohammed and Ahmed Bashara – July 19/20’. She looked up and scanned the faces of Kyle and James, neither of which showed any sign of recognition or understanding.

  ‘What does it mean?’ James wondered aloud.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Juanita, ‘but for her to pick out two specific individuals’ names and highlight two particular dates must be significant.’

  ‘Hmm …’ mused Kyle, ‘the names sound Muslim. I’d have thought most of the illegals employed by this company – if indeed they are employing illegals – would be Hispanics … hardly likely to be Muslims.’

  ‘Maybe,’ suggested James, ‘she picked these two guys out specifically because they didn’t fit the usual mould.’

  It wasn’t enough, thought Juanita. She must have had a better reason than that. ‘The girl at the New York Times said that Julia had previously been sharing what she was working on, but suddenly went all secretive. She thought Julia had stumbled across something
much bigger than the employment of a few illegals. Maybe these two were up to something much more significant than working under the radar in the USA.’

  ‘Or maybe …’ suggested Kyle, ‘they’re not employees at all; they could be the owners of the company.’

  James raise a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Owners of a company with a name like Johnson Brothers?’

  Kyle shrugged. ‘Could be a cover?’

  Juanita wasn’t convinced, and judging by his expression, neither was James.

  ‘What about the dates?’ said Juanita. ‘Mean anything to either of you?’

  ‘Well, said James ‘July 19th is Brian May’s birthday.’

  Juanita had no idea who Brian May was, and evidently neither did Kyle. ‘Brian May?’ he enquired.

  ‘You know … Queen.’

  ‘He’s a queen?’ said Juanita, completely perplexed as to where this was going.

  James laughed. ‘No … I mean the rock group Queen.’

  She’d heard of them, but that was about it. Kyle looked totally blank.

  ‘Oh, you philistines,’ teased James. ‘Brian May was their lead guitarist – one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time.’

  Kyle shook his head in bewilderment. ‘And how, exactly, is that relevant?’

  James shrugged. ‘She asked me if the dates meant anything to me. That’s what July 19th means to me.’

  Juanita let out a peal of laughter. ‘How on earth do you even know that?

  ‘It’s kind of strange – although a lot of my memory is still hidden from me, I can remember quite a lot of my childhood and teenage years. As a kid, I was learning to play rock guitar—’

  ‘I know … you told me,’ she interjected.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I was convinced I’d be the next Brian May. He sort of became my hero … I looked up everything about him. Did you know he’s got a PhD in Astrophysics?’

  Juanita began to laugh again, tears now streaming down her cheeks. ‘No …’ – she could hardly get the words out – ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Kyle was watching this exchange with an expression of utter bewilderment.

  ‘Anyway,’ said James, ‘as you know, I never did make it as a rock guitarist; instead I studied as a doctor, but then …’

  His expression darkened as his words tailed off.

  Juanita knew immediately what was going through his mind. She rushed over and hugged him. ‘Shhh … it’s all history now.’

  It was completely bizarre: in the space of just a few minutes, the mood had gone from excitement, to intrigue, to manic hilarity, to sombre reflection. Juanita needed to break the spell; she unwrapped her arms from around James and stood up.

  ‘So how are we going to find out what it means?’ she said, her voice firm and determined.

  James did not respond to her attempt to take charge and get the focus back onto the job in hand; he still seemed lost in his own thoughts.

  But Kyle did. ‘Seems to me we’ve got three possible strands to pursue.’ He tapped the inside of the index finger of his left hand with the index finger of his right. ‘First, we gotta figure out who these two guys are: employees, bosses, or nothing to do with the company at all.’

  He tapped the inside of his left middle finger. ‘Second, we gotta dig into their backgrounds … find out if there’s anything to suggest they’d be up to no good.’

  He tapped the third finger. ‘And finally, we need to figure out what’s significant about those dates … apart from the guitarist thing,’ he added, making his own attempt to lighten the mood.

  James finally emerged from whatever dark place he had fallen into. ‘You’re right,’ he asserted. ‘Let’s divide our efforts: I’ll go through the company data to figure out who these two guys are in the company; Kyle, maybe you can do an internet search to see if you can get any background on them; Juanita, you see if you can work out the significance of those dates. Come on, we’ve got a new lead here; let’s not waste it.’

  Juanita smiled. On the surface, at least, James was back to his old self: determined, driven, taking control.

  Chapter 29

  Mark was back at his desk following his visit to the New York Times office.

  When Joe Goldsmith had been interviewed by Mark Bowman, he had concurred with Cynthia Newman’s assessment that the Latina woman they had employed was ‘a nice girl’, although the licentious glint in his eye as he said it spoke of a different interpretation of the term from that which Cynthia had inferred.

  Mark refrained from telling Goldsmith what a jerk he was to have allowed this woman – about whom they knew precisely nothing – to have access to all the evidence which had been requested by the police. In fairness, though, Goldsmith did not strike him as the sharpest tool in the box, and he was probably only trying to be helpful. The real fault lay with that no-hoper Don Lister, who should have just marched in there to quarantine the evidence while he got someone in to help gather it up. Water under the bridge, I guess.

  He read through his copy of the woman’s résumé and personnel record. Most was of little interest but, crucially, he had an address for her.

  He pulled on his jacket and, taking care to avoid Sergeant O’Reilly, slipped away from his desk. He grabbed the keys to a marked squad car – once again, he had no intention of wasting time looking for a legitimate parking place when he found the address he was looking for.

  Half an hour or so later, he pulled up outside the apartment block where his quarry lived: nice, upmarket area, devoid of the towering skyscrapers which dominated the older areas of New York City. He checked the copied document which lay on the front passenger seat of his car: she was on the 8th floor. He had no idea what to expect, but he wasn’t taking any chances: he checked his weapon to make sure it was fully loaded and slipped off the safety catch.

  He stepped out of the car – this time not bothering to lock it – and walked up to the main entrance. As he scanned the panel alongside the door, his heart sank. There were only 7 floors.

  ‘Shit!’ he muttered under his breath, before resetting the safety catch and holstering his weapon.

  As he sank back into the driver’s seat of the squad car, he slammed his hand against the steering wheel so hard that it hurt.

  Another dead end.

  ***

  Back at the hotel, James had drawn a complete blank. He had scoured the internet for all the information he could glean on Johnson Brothers. The owners were, unsurprisingly, two brothers named Johnson. Their photographs showed them to be White Caucasian; it seemed unlikely that they were the two individuals referred to in the handwritten note Juanita had discovered. As far as James could ascertain, there were no others who shared the ownership of the company.

  The company was small: it employed eighteen permanent staff, plus a number of temporary workers which varied according to workload. It was likely that the illegal immigrants employed – if, indeed, there were any – would be found amongst this casual workforce. Frustratingly, James had been unable to unearth any details of the individuals employed – permanent or temporary – apart from the owners themselves. Probably something to do with data protection laws or some such.

  Kyle’s internet search had revealed that Mohammed Bashar and Ahmed Bashar were, in the Muslim world, names about as common as John or David Smith in the USA. He found dozens of references to individuals with these names, many of whom hailed from Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, and had made it onto the web by virtue of the fact that they were known, or suspected, terrorists. Equally, though, there were plenty of respected musicians, actors, politicians, and writers who shared one or other of these names. Regardless of who they were, there was no way he could establish a link between any of these individuals and a small building firm in New York City.

  It was Juanita who had come up with the most interesting piece of information. Among a great many seemingly trivial and insignificant events associated with the dates she was investigating, there was one which was neither trivial nor insi
gnificant: July 19th and 20th were the dates for the next G7 summit, due to be held at Camp David in Maryland. The leaders of the countries with the seven largest advanced economies in the world would all be together in one place for two days. Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the USA, and the UK would all be represented.

  When Juanita revealed her findings to James and Kyle, she could tell by the stunned expressions on both their faces that they were thinking just the same as she was.

  Could this be the target for the most significant terrorist attack since 9/11?

  Chapter 30

  Mark still couldn’t figure it out. More than ever now, he was convinced that the woman he was tracking was responsible for Julia’s death. Why else would the same woman have gone to such lengths to access both the autopsy report and Julia’s files and papers at the New York Times office? And yet, try as he might, he could come up with no convincing explanation as to why she would put herself at such risk of discovery to do so. It still didn’t make sense. But what was really eating him up was the fact that, once again, he had hit a brick wall. He was so tantalisingly close: he knew exactly what she looked like; he knew the make, model, and colour of her car; he had been able to track many of her movements; and yet still he was unable to—

  The phone rang.

  ‘Hello, is that Detective Bowman?’ A woman’s voice: one which he didn’t immediately recognise.

  ‘Uh, yes, it is. Who’s calling?’ he replied, somewhat disinterestedly.

  ‘It’s Mandy Jackson … the hairdresser … you spoke to me the other day.’

  Now she had his full attention. ‘Oh yes, of course, Miss Jackson. You were most helpful – I appreciate it. Now then, how can I help you?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about this woman you’re trying to locate … going over and over again in my mind everything she said to me while she was in the salon. I’ve remembered a few more details which might be of some help to you.’

  ‘You have? That’s great … uh, perhaps I could meet you again to go over everything you can remember.’