Bombshell

by Catherine Coulter

  “Got to admire that pilot,” Mac Brannon said, watching the helicopter blades whip so close to the tree branches that snow went flying.

  The snow had stopped falling for the moment, and the sun glistened off the white hills, making the world look perfect again.

  Dix straightened and twisted his back around, trying to loosen up. “I’d rather not do that again,” he said. “I hope Salazar makes it. I’d hate for my back to have suffered for nothing.”

  Henderson County Hospital

  “I hate this place,” Griffin said, staring around the emergency room, the walls painted what was supposed to be psychologically soothing pale green but looked more like week-old artichokes to him. Only he and Anna had come to the hospital; all the other DEA agents had stayed at Winkel’s Cave, doing an inventory of all the drugs and overseeing their removal. His last view of them was high fives and huge smiles. As for Anna, she couldn’t stop smiling, either, a huge blazing smile. “An op that went perfectly,” she said for the third time, rubbing her hands together. “Can you believe it, Griffin? It went perfectly!” She was manic, adrenaline still pumping a wild cocktail in her blood. “I’m guessing at least five hundred kilos of cocaine. It’s the biggest bust I’ve been in on. I wonder how long they’ve been delivering drugs at Winkel’s Cave?” On and on she went, questions pouring out of her mouth. She was right, it was an amazing operation. And all the agents had survived, plus they’d closed down a big distribution center and wiped out the MS-13 gang activity in the area. At least for a while.

  Anna pulled off her black wool cap and grinned up at him. “Did I tell you you’re amazing, Griffin? You made it through the cave, even that one gnarly section. Let’s find Dr. Chesney so she can look at your leg. You’ve got to get it strong again; otherwise, you’ll never be able to hold my weight.” Whatever that meant.

  He lightly laid his fingers over her mouth to shut her up. He could feel her manic smile beneath his fingers. She said through his fingers, “I’m going to check on the status of the wounded gang members.”

  She was back in two minutes. “One gang member is on his way to surgery, two gunshot wounds, leg and belly. Will he tell us anything? Doubtful, since gang honor demands they keep quiet. We’ll see.”

  “What about the other one?”

  She shook her head.

  Griffin watched her pace back and forth in front of him, unable to keep still. Griffin sat there smiling up at her while he rubbed his throbbing leg. She leaned down and kissed him, then she was off when she saw Mac Brannon walk into the ER with Dix and Ruth. He watched her talk, gesticulating with her hands. It had felt odd not to be in charge of an operation, but he couldn’t complain. Everything had gone according to plan. It was a miracle. He wondered what Anna would say when she came crashing down from the ceiling.

  He thought about a cup of hot black coffee. He thought about how he hated hospitals, even when they were warm and comforting. And his leg started aching like a rotted tooth, but he could stand that. He had no intention of letting Dr. Chesney poke around anymore.

  Anna and her boss were still in animated conversation. He didn’t know where Dix and Ruth had gone to. He made the trek to the cafeteria, bought himself a cup of coffee and listened to techs, doctors, nurses, cafeteria personnel, and a score of visitors talk about the huge drug bust in Winkel’s Cave. He sat down and stretched out his leg and began to lightly rub it. He wondered idly if Salazar would survive surgery. At least he’d been alive when they’d wheeled him in.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Here he’d been driving across the country, enjoying seeing relatives and friends, excited about his new assignment with Savich in Washington.

  Three days ago it had all changed. You never knew what life would dish up, like a gorgeous DEA agent named Anna who’d shot an alligator when she was nine. He called Savich to fill him in on what happened.

  Anna joined him, and they went to the surgical waiting room on the third floor. They sat together, not speaking now, because Anna’s adrenaline levels were crashing, neither of them knowing if Salazar would live or die. Mac Brannon was sitting across from them, his cell phone attached to his ear.

  Salazar had been in surgery for two hours. An OR nurse came out periodically to give them updates. Salazar was holding his own; he might make it. Then again, he might not were the unspoken words.

  Griffin looked up to see Dr. Chesney staring at him, as grim-looking as his mother when he’d pissed her off by leaving no gas in her car. He’d hoped Dr. Chesney was home making snow angels in her front yard, but no, there she was, looking at him from the waiting room doorway, her toe tapping. He gave it up and smiled at her. What followed was five minutes of questioning in an empty patient room, Anna standing beside him. He’d asked her to leave, but that hadn’t worked. Dr. Chesney said, “Okay, let me see the leg. Drop your pants, Agent Hammersmith.”

  Anna, curse her, was grinning as he pulled his pants down and sat himself again on the side of the bed. “Nice boxers,” she said. “I’ve always preferred commando, but black’s good, too.”

  Dr. Chesney gently lifted the bandage from his wound, but it still hurt. “You’re lucky,” she said after poking around. “The stitches have held, despite all the grief you put them and yourself through. Take some more aspirin when you need it. Like right now.”

  Anna brought him a cup of cold water from the fountain, and Dr. Chesney stood over him until he swallowed the aspirin.

  She lightly touched her palm to his cheek. “No fever. Good. Take care of yourself, Agent Hammersmith,” and she walked briskly out. Not a moment later a code red came over the loudspeaker.

  “It’s time for another update,” Griffin said, and limped to the nurses’ station, Anna behind him. Imagine a world-famous classical guitarist, a professor at Stanislaus, and, to top it off, a big-time drug dealer. He wondered how long it would take the media to flood Maestro, Virginia. They met the OR nurse in the hall. “He’s out of surgery, but his prognosis is uncertain. He’s still unconscious, so there’s no reason for you to remain. The surgeon told me to tell all your agents to go out and prevent snow accidents. As for you, Agent Hammersmith, he said you were luckier than you deserved, that if you’d ruined Dr. Chesney’s excellent work by crawling around in Winkel’s Cave, she’d stake you in the snow and leave you.”

  There was another code red over the loudspeaker, and Griffin thought, Oh, no, not Salazar.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tuesday afternoon

  Savich parked his Porsche a half-block down from Peter Biaggini’s apartment building on Willard Avenue, and they walked through the softly falling snow to its pristine lobby. They used the stairs and followed the long hallway to the last door on their left to find Mr. August Biaggini looking at the yellow FBI crime scene tape crisscrossing the open doorway. He stood unmoving, staring in, as if uncertain what to do.

  Sherlock lightly laid her hand on his arm. When he turned, his face was curiously blank. She said, “Sir, I’m Agent Sherlock and this is Agent Savich. Let me say we are very sorry for the loss of your son.”

  “Yes, I remember you. They won’t let me in. My wife is asking for Peter’s blue suit to bury him in, but they won’t let me in.”

  The beautiful lilting voice they’d heard two days before was flat, as if he were moving and speaking simply out of habit, with no emotion at all.

  Savich said, “I’ll speak to the forensic team leader. Wait here a moment with Agent Sherlock.”

  Savich ducked under the tape and met Jennifer Whipple in the large entryway. “Hey, Dillon, I called in about the father waiting outside. I mean, I can’t let him in, now, can I? He could contaminate the scene—”

  “It’s okay, Jennifer. I’ll stick with him. He wants one of Peter’s suits for his son to be buried in.”

  “I know.” She swallowed, her eyes darting toward a tech who was dusting for fingerprints in the
large living room. “Okay, we’re done in the bedroom.”

  Savich went back to the hall, where Sherlock and Mr. Biaggini were speaking quietly; rather, Sherlock was speaking and Mr. Biaggini was standing with her, unresponsive, his eyes unfocused.

  “Sir, if you would come with me.”

  “Do you know who did this to my son, Agent Savich?”

  “We will know soon, sir,” Savich said.

  Savich wasn’t about to take Mr. Biaggini to the bedroom, since the floor was covered with dried blood, the walls and furniture splattered with it. He met Sherlock’s eyes.

  She said, “Sir, why don’t you describe the suit you want and I’ll fetch it for you.”

  Mr. Biaggini knew, Savich thought; he knew why Sherlock didn’t want him going into the bedroom where Peter had died, but he said nothing. He described the clothes his wife had requested, his voice a whisper.

  He remained with Savich in the beautiful entryway with the gorgeous wooden floors. “I haven’t been here that often. I forgot how much light comes in. I think Peter liked that.”

  “Yes, even with the snow it’s full of light,” Savich said. “Did you furnish it for him?”

  “My wife did. She’s a fine decorator. Can you help us be sure to have Peter’s body as soon as possible?”

  “I’ll check with the ME myself, and I’ll call you.”

  “Director Mueller called me personally as well, after Peter’s body was found. It was such a . . . shock. I mean, Tommy, Stony, and now Peter. All of our boys. They knew each other nearly all their lives, and now all of them are dead. What happened, Agent Savich? Why did this happen to my son?”

  The man who looked so much like Savich’s father stood looking back at him, his deadening pain sitting on his shoulders like a black cloak.

  Savich said again, “We’ll know very soon, sir, I promise you.”

  Mr. Biaggini nodded, and Savich showed him into the living room.

  A tech was sitting at Peter’s computer, set on a desk near the wide windows. He looked up toward Savich, and frowned when he saw Mr. Biaggini. “It’s all right,” Savich said. “What have you got?”

  “Agent Savich, it looks like we’ve got encrypted files here. I doubt we’ll be able to get into them.”

  Mr. Biaggini’s cell phone rang, and he turned to answer, his voice lowered to a whisper. He pocketed his phone after a brief conversation and turned back to Savich, his face again expressionless. “My wife is asking for me. She is in bed—our physician prescribed sedatives. I must go, there is so much to be done, and my wife shouldn’t be alone—” His voice stopped midsentence, and then, “We have to prepare for two funerals tomorrow. And when will Peter’s funeral be? It’s enough to take your soul, if there even is such a thing. It was only two days ago that I was with my son in your interview room with you at the Hoover Building. I never saw him again after that day.” He took a deep breath. “I know you did not think highly of my son, Agent Savich. He was not pleasant.” He paused, as if searching for words. His voice strengthened. “I told his mother as little as I could about it. She was so proud of him, though he let her know he held her in contempt.

  “I don’t think his sisters care all that much that their brother is dead. They’re shocked, of course, but I wonder if they loved him. He had contempt for them, too, you see, believed himself above them, and he showed it.”

  Sherlock walked into the living room, a Barneys plastic garment bag over her arm.

  Mr. Biaggini gave her a ghastly smile. “Thank you for his clothes, Agent Sherlock.” He looked from one to the other of them. “Peter was an amazing child. We loved him so, and gave him too much, I guess, most anything he wanted, even though money was tight then.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. He was my son and he was my heart and I would do anything for him, make everything right for him when he made a mistake. I am partially to blame he didn’t learn from his mistakes; I mean, there were never consequences for him. He became more supercilious, more arrogant. I remember I cried on his sixteenth birthday because I realized he didn’t love his mother, he didn’t love me or his sisters. What he seemed to love was power, over his friends, over all of us.”

  “Sir, did Peter say anything unusual to you or to your wife, express anything but sadness when Tommy was killed?”

  Mr. Biaggini stared off into the living room, toward the large windows at the falling snow veiling the world. “Of course, we don’t—didn’t—see Peter every day. I thought, though, that he seemed sad about Tommy when we spoke to you at the Hoover Building.”

  “Do you know why Melissa left Tommy and started up with Peter?”

  Mr. Biaggini sighed, stared down at the beautiful light wood floor. “From what I knew about her, I imagine it had to do with money.”

  “You gave him a regular allowance, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it a large allowance?”

  “Not really. I paid for his apartment, all his utilities. He had all the money he needed to entertain girlfriends.

  “I should go now, to be with my wife. Please find out who killed my son.” He nodded to them and looked lost for a moment before he focused on the doorway, his son’s burial suit draped over his arm.

  When he was gone, Jennifer Whipple walked into the living room as Savich was examining the encrypted files on Peter’s computer. “I didn’t want to say anything with Mr. Biaggini here, but we found a whole lot of cash in a manila envelope in a flour canister in the kitchen. Fresh one-hundred-dollar bills. About twenty thousand dollars, I’d say.”

  But no disks.

  Henderson County Hospital

  Tuesday afternoon

  The code red wasn’t for Salazar.

  Twenty minutes later, they saw him being wheeled into the recovery room through the closed glass door of the surgery hallway. He was on a ventilator, with doctors, nurses, and technicians on all sides, and more lines running into and out of him than seemed possible. A bag of blood under pressure was dripping into a line in his neck, and the large white bandage around his chest was stained pink. He looked bad, Griffin thought, and he was unconscious.

  One of the doctors stopped to speak to them. “Come back in three or four hours, Agents. If he survives, he should be more responsive then.” It was odd, Griffin thought, but he looked both pissed and relieved.

  Griffin leaned against the pale green wall of the waiting room. “If and when he wakes up, he’s going to tell us how innocent he is, and we know that’s not the case. And when we coach other gang members, they won’t talk, either; the gang has too much of a hold on them, inside and outside of prison.”

  Anna said, “Even though Salazar was their cover, arranged to buy the land around Winkel’s Cave for them, one of them didn’t hesitate to kill him when he said he would talk to us if we didn’t shoot him.”

  Griffin said, “Worse mistake he could have made. Everything was unraveling, but they followed orders. I have no doubt they only pretended to take him prisoner after they trashed his house, hid him in the cave until they could be sure to get him safely away. But he broke the code they live by—if you become a threat to the higher-ups, if you talk, you die.”

  “Let’s get some coffee,” Anna said. When they reached the elevators, one of the doors opened and Anna nearly swallowed her tongue. There stood Dr. Elliot Hayman, director of Stanislaus. She hadn’t even thought to call him to tell him about his brother. His face was tight with panic, but when he saw her, contempt bloomed. “Ah, Ms. Castle. I don’t suppose that is your real name, though, is it? You’re a federal agent?”

  “Anna is my real first name, and yes, I’m a DEA agent.”

  Dr. Hayman’s face was white with anger, and when he spoke, his voice shook. “I know that my brother was shot. I won’t ask why you couldn’t be bothered to call me, his brother, to tell me, but now would you explain how could this happen? Who sho
t him? Is he alive?”

  Griffin said, “He is out of surgery and is in the recovery room, Dr. Hayman, but his condition is very serious. He’s still unconscious. He was shot in the chest by one of the men he was involved with.”

  Contempt rivaled disbelief. “No thanks to any of you, I found out my brother was shot. Agent Brannon confirmed it when he saw me in the lobby. He said my brother was shot in a nearby cave. Convenient to say he was not shot by one of your agents, isn’t it?”

  Anna said, “It’s the truth, sir. There are many witnesses.”

  “And you, Agent—”

  “Parrish, Agent Anna Parrish.”

  “Are you proud to see my brother shot? Proud that you betrayed his trust and betrayed me and Stanislaus?”

  “I was doing my job, sir. It was you who invited him here to Stanislaus.”

  “Yes, that’s right, but what has that to do with drugs? Rafael plays the classical guitar, for heaven’s sake. He doesn’t peddle drugs on street corners.” Both Anna and Griffin saw the lie in his eyes, the pain and grief of betrayal confirmed.

  Griffin said, “You suspected he was involved with drugs, though, didn’t you, Dr. Hayman? And you knew, of course, he spent many summers in El Salvador with the Lozano family.”

  “I have no intention of answering your ridiculous questions, Agent Hammersmith. Why should I?”

  Griffin knew he had to push harder to see the truth. “Because you are also a member of the Lozano family. It is a short step to you from your brother, to you from the family business in El Salvador—drugs, extortion, prostitution, guns—and now to the Lozano organization expanding to the United States. The reality is that your brother came to Stanislaus to a position that would put him above suspicion. He arranged to purchase the land around Winkel’s Cave and coordinated the distribution of cocaine, marijuana, and guns with a violent gang with ties to El Salvador called MS-13. Perhaps you’ve heard of this gang?”