C T Ferguson Box Set

by Tom Fowler

  “Not everyone sees it. My grandmother was born a Zhang. I took it as my middle name when I turned eighteen.”

  “Wanted the keys to the kingdom?”

  “I guess so,” Jasper said. “I knew what the family did, and I wanted access to it. They wanted a bigger presence in America. Win-win.”

  “How deep was your family tied into Rosenberg?” I said.

  “Not past me, and what money they’d toss at him for sending along a nice girl to pick up.”

  “So they won’t mind terribly when you get hauled away.”

  “I almost like you,” he said, adding the laugh I came to find annoying. I would have preferred fingernails on a chalkboard. “What happened to those two guys I sent for you?”

  “I’ll send flowers to their funerals,” I said.

  “You will?”

  “No.” He didn’t even seem fazed the two men were dead.

  “Oh, well,” he said. “I guess you win the battle. I’m over here, winning the war.”

  “For now.”

  “For good.” I heard the background noise again, a little louder this time, along with a bunch of people talking and milling. “Hey, it’s been fun, but I need to go. Places to see, girls to kidnap, money to make. You know how it is.”

  “I know several urban philosophers noted a direct correlation between money and problems.”

  Jasper laughed again. “Yeah, but they’re dead, aren’t they? I’m not. There’s the difference.”

  “One more thing,” I said. “Stanley Rodgers.”

  “What about him?” Jasper said.

  “Who decided to kill him?”

  “I did. Eisenberg and I convinced Rosenberg. Rodgers used to be somebody. We figured it’d be easier to get his girl with him gone.”

  “Who killed him?” I said.

  “The two guys we sent after you the first time.”

  “Nice to see you didn’t bother upgrading the help,” I said and hung up. I’d had more than I could take of Jasper and of this case as a whole.

  Gloria popped her head into the office when I finished. I loaded my sound editing program. “Is this case almost over?” she said.

  “I think so,” I said. “I hope so. I only need to find the slippery son of a bitch who fled town.”

  “You know where he is?”

  I loaded the file of my recent call into the program. “I’m not sure, but I think I’ll be able to figure it out.”

  Gloria walked into the room. Her gray sweatpants, which I could never believe she owned, fit her loosely but exactly tight enough to pique my interest when she walked. She wore one of my Ravens T-shirts over them. Somewhere along the way, Gloria was loosening up. She would be loath to admit she dressed like the common people (even if her sweatpants were made by Hilfiger), but I noticed and smiled.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said. I played my call with Jasper. Gloria walked behind me and watched over my shoulder. I felt a shudder run down my spine. Working with someone looking over my shoulder always bothered me. In Hong Kong, I was compelled to learn more independently than my fellow hackers because I hated feeling eyes behind me. I fast-forwarded a bit until the background noises became easier to isolate.

  Gloria watched me tweak the controls, turning up the normally extraneous sounds and silencing the main track. When I clicked the Play button, we heard the isolated ambient noises. It was a mechanical woman’s voice, speaking Chinese. “What is it?” Gloria said. “Japanese?”

  “Chinese,” I said. “Mandarin. She said the train to Beijing would board on platform number three.”

  “So this guy is in a train station in China?”

  “Yes. I think I know which one, too, but I want to see if he’s headed for Beijing.” I advanced the track closer to the end of the call, when I could hear people milling about. This time, we heard the voice again, a little louder, advising travelers to let other passengers get off the train before they got on and thanking them for taking the train to Beijing.

  I had him. “He’s going to Beijing,” I said.

  “Great,” Gloria said, leaning down and looking at my computer screen with interest. “Now what are you going to do?”

  “I have to tell someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Ideally, I should tell the Chinese police.”

  “I thought they didn’t like you very much.”

  “They don’t.” A brief flashback to my days in the Chinese prison forced a deep breath. “The feeling is mutual, though I have an idea.”

  Later, Gloria and I walked back to my car after dinner at Chazz, which Chazz Palmentieri opened in Baltimore several years ago. I didn’t know how authentic the touches of Brooklyn were; I simply liked the food. Gloria did, too, but I think she preferred the wine. The bottle we shared cost three times as much as our entrées. I don’t know if its price made it good wine or not.

  I pulled the car onto Eastern Avenue when Rich called. “Why the hell am I getting an email from the Chinese police?” he said.

  “Maybe you should read it,” I said. “The Chinese are good at explaining themselves.”

  “I did read it. They thanked me for my information on Jasper Zhang Dexter and his sex trafficking ring.” Rich paused. I heard a familiar tone in his voice, like a parent talking to a rebellious teenager. It was a mix of scolding and resignation. My mother frequently used it throughout my teenage years and still brought it out from time to time. “Did you break into my work email account?”

  “I wouldn’t call it breaking in,” I said. “More like walking in through a door someone left ajar.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “It’s not like the BPD practices good password security.”

  “Which makes it OK?” said Rich.

  “Look, I found Jasper. I knew what he did. I knew where he was going. I also knew I couldn’t exactly call the Chinese police and report it all. They’d tell me to go to hell.”

  “I like them more by the minute.”

  “So I reported it under your name. I sent them a nice long email with what I knew and a recording of a phone call between me and Japser. You told them you got the tip from a CI, by the way. They don’t have the same laws about taping conversations we do.”

  “Amazing,” Rich said. “You never learn, do you?”

  “What are you complaining about?” I said. “You sent the Chinese police information they’re going to use to find Jasper and bring him down. They might even get his family. Do you have any idea how huge this is? Your bosses will get a good report on you, and you’ll have yet another commendation you got because I dragged you into it, kicking and screaming.”

  Rich sighed. “Fine. We’ll see how this plays out.”

  “It’s going to play out with the commissioner shaking your hand at a podium and you owing me another dinner.”

  “It’d better. In the meantime, I’ve already changed my password.”

  “Yeah, passwords always stop people like me,” I said.

  Three days later, my cell phone ringing on the nightstand woke me up. My bleary eyes read the clock at 8:22. I felt Gloria stir beside me as I reached for the phone and answered without even looking at the caller ID.

  “Coningsby, it sounds like I woke you,” my mother said. Note to self: check next time.

  “Because you did,” I said.

  “Well, you should be getting up soon anyway.”

  “Schools are closed on account of snow.”

  “Very funny. Your father and I noticed an article in this morning’s paper. Richard got a commendation for helping the Chinese police put a major slave trader out of business. He mentioned you helped a lot in the case.”

  I smiled at my mother’s use of “slave trader” for sex trafficker. “I guess I should be expecting some calls from the press,” I said.

  “You should, dear. There are a few who always talk to you after something like this. What’s that pretty one’s name?”

  “Can we
talk later, Mom? I’d like to get some more sleep before the media blitz bowls me over.”

  “If you must,” said my mother. “Your father and I are going to wire twenty-five thousand to your account today. This was a major coup, Coningsby. Be proud.”

  “Right now, I’m focused on being tired.”

  “Be proud later, then. Have a good day, dear.”

  “You too, Mom,” I said, and hung up. Gloria still snored softly beside me. I returned the phone to the nightstand and fell back asleep after a minute or two of deciding what I wanted to do with the money coming my way.

  The same night, I took Gonzalez to dinner at Kobe Japanese Steak House in White Marsh. He helped a lot more than Rich on the Rosenberg case, and I didn’t want him being unhappy about Rich getting the credit for it.

  “I was a little salty when I first heard about it,” he said over sushi.

  “It’s the way I needed to do it,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “When I finished my master’s, I decided to travel the world. I didn’t want to work, so why not travel? I hit a few places in Europe, then made my way to Hong Kong. I ended up staying there thirty-nine months.”

  “You must have liked it.”

  I enjoyed another piece of my eel and avocado roll. Gonzalez got some roll with cream cheese in it. I fought the urge to vomit in my mouth a little. Cream cheese is perfectly acceptable on a bagel, but it has no place near raw fish. As we ate our sushi, the hibachi chef came out, lit the grill and set up the show. “I fell in with a crowd of hackers,” I said, lowering my voice. “I knew a lot already, and they showed me a bunch more.” I stopped to watch the hibachi chef make his knives twirl, dance, and gyrate as he prepared to cut the vegetables.

  “You got caught,” Gonzalez said matter-of-factly.

  “We all got caught,” I said. “I spent almost three weeks in a Chinese prison. Eventually, they sent me home and made it clear they didn’t want to see me again. So I couldn’t exactly call the Chinese police and tell them what I found.”

  “You could place an anonymous tip.”

  “No. With all the information I put together, plus the phone call I’d recorded, I couldn’t. The reason I used Rich instead of you was because I could break into his email in about thirty seconds.”

  Gonzalez chuckled. “I was wondering how someone who didn’t work the case much knew everything about it.”

  “Mystery solved. No hard feelings?”

  “Nah,” Gonzalez said. He raised his stein of Sapporo to me. I raised mine, and we clinked glasses. “The important thing is the ring got shut down. Your cousin might have gotten a shiny plaque, but I’ll take a dinner here instead.”

  “I think he gets a cash award, too,” I noted.

  “Rub it in, why dontcha?” Gonzalez said.

  Later, Rich sent me a text. Someone in the Chinese police told him Jasper got shanked in prison. His survival was tenuous.

  I thought about Rosenberg, living under an assumed name in Maine, if in fact he still lived. I refrained from contacting the Driscolls since I gave Chris the information. I didn’t know what, if anything, he did with it, and I didn’t want to. On some level, he knew this, and I didn’t expect to hear from him or his wife again.

  Gloria went home earlier in the day. She was going out of town with her family tomorrow and needed time to pack the fourteen suitcases she would no doubt take with her. I looked at her side of the bed, a little amused I now thought of it as her side. The bed felt empty without her. When we first met, I didn’t think I would like her much outside of the bedroom. Over time, we grew closer, and I came to understand her. Now I missed Gloria.

  Maybe I would take another case.

  Dear reader,

  Thanks for reading this box set and coming along on C.T.’s first three novel adventures.

  I think you’ll agree these were all challenging cases. But his next one proved even harder.

  A decorated police officer is killed. The cops think they have the right man. C.T. disagrees.

  When he runs headlong into the thin blue line, it might cost him everything to prove his client innocent.

  Check out C.T.’s next major case in Already Guilty, which you can get right here.

  THE END

  Afterword

  If you like free stories, I have a collection of four C.T. Ferguson shorts I’m giving away. When you join my VIP Readers list, you’ll get free stuff as I make it available, be the first to hear about new releases, free books, and deals, and more. I send two emails a month, and I’m not a jackass with your information. If this sounds like your cup of tea, please sign up here.

  If you enjoyed this book, I hope you’ll leave a review. Even a short writeup makes a difference. Reviews help independent authors get their books discovered by more readers and qualify for promotions. To leave a review, go to the book’s sales page, select a star rating, and enter your comments. If you read this book on a tablet or phone, your reading app will likely prompt you to leave a review at the end.

  The C.T. Ferguson Mystery Series:

  1. The Reluctant Detective

  1.5. The Confessional

  2. The Unknown Devil

  2.5 Land of the Brave

  3. The Workers of Iniquity

  3.5 Red City Blues

  4. Already Guilty

  The books designated as x.5 are novellas; all others are full novels. While this is the suggested reading sequence, the books can be enjoyed in whatever order you happen upon them.

  Connect with me:

  If you’re into social media and book sites, you’ll find me. I have an author page on Facebook and a profile on Instagram. For new release notifications, you can follow me on BookBub or Amazon. And, of course, there’s good old-fashioned email.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and places are either fictitious or used in a fictitious manner.

  Thanks to anyone who read this book, in whole or in part, before it saw publication. Special thanks to my Street Team (the Fell Street Irregulars), and to the members of the White Oak Writers, especially Gale Deitch, Eileen McIntire, Ann Miller, Susan Barror, Elaine Habermehl, and Pam McFarland.