Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3)

by Gary Earl Ross

  Pete and I had kept separate notes during the walk-through. Now, at a corner table for two near an unlit stone fireplace, we compared them. We checked and counterchecked to be certain we had anticipated all our security concerns.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “Everything’s cool except the catwalks in the convention hall,” Pete said. “I counted eight access points, ladders and doors, any one of which would give a shooter a chance to turn a simple contract kill into a hitman’s holiday. There must be two hundred light fixtures in the ceiling. Viva Las Vegas, G! With six hundred people on the floor and interconnected catwalks masked by ceiling panels, a guy could move from light to light without being seen and make Stephen Paddock look like a Boy Scout with a Red Ryder BB rifle.” He blew out a long stream of air and shook his head. “Sure, the Ninja Turtle said those doors would be locked and he’d have people stationed there. But what if the shooter is one of his people, with a keycard? What if he goes up there early and puts a dozen ARs with bump stocks in different places? Empty clip, drop rifle, move to next position. Repeat. A suicide mission for sure, but everybody will know the guy’s name afterward.”

  I nodded as I flipped through my own notebook, noting I had stopped counting at two hundred light fixtures. “If you’ve started In the Mouth of the Wolf, you know the bastards who killed the Post reporter would love nothing more than to turn a diversity conference into a slaughterhouse. Some wouldn’t mind being a martyr to the cause.”

  “I finished the book,” Pete said. “You’re right. This is not Charlottesville.”

  “Where too many cops did nothing when everybody knew what was going on.”

  “We gotta talk to the department. We have no idea who’s gonna show.”

  “Exactly the point,” I said. “We’re spitballing here. There might not be a shooter. Without proof of a specific threat, how much support will we get? How much time and money for a hunch?”

  “Not enough.” He sighed. “So what are our options?”

  “A sweep before every plenary session. There are seven, morning and late afternoon the first three days, morning the last day, the awards brunch where she’ll give the keynote. Eight if you count the opening night reception. For the hotel we need more mini-cams and motion detectors, a better laptop than mine to manage it all. Jimmy’s shop doesn’t have enough. I’ll have to order the small stuff and beg for the big things.”

  “So far there’s just four of us,” Pete added. “You, me, and the two Weisskopf guys. I know you’re doing this as a favor, but we’re gonna need more people.”

  “I’ll talk to James Torrance,” I said. “He’s backing this conference too. A massacre could put his beautiful luxury hotel out of business, so I expect he’ll get the Donatellos to do more. Also, I’ll ask Rory Gramm at APP if he can scare up money to hire more help.”

  “Including surveillance people.”

  “I know somebody who might be able to organize that,” I said. “Yvonne.”

  “Yvonne who?”

  “Brewster. A friend who works in IT. Maybe she can even get us a couple of laptops.”

  Just then our lunches came, a club sandwich with a side salad and iced tea for me and for Pete the largest steak on the menu, with double orders of bread, garlic mashed potatoes, and vegetables, along with a plastic take-out container. But before he took his first bite, Pete cut the steak in two and put one piece in the box along with half the bread and sides.

  “Man, don’t look at me like that,” he said, grinning. “How many times does a guy get to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the same billionaire?”

  14

  I met Yvonne at the downtown Spot Coffee on Delaware and Chippewa after she finished her day at the Humanitas Institute four blocks north. I had become acquainted with Humanitas staff a year and a half earlier, during my search for Keisha Simpkins, who worked there.

  Yvonne came in wearing a long clinging navy skirt and a short pale blue spring jacket. Her head still shaven, she wore hoop earrings and bright red lipstick that enhanced the richness of her deep brown skin. She waved at me on her way to my table.

  “How are you, G?” she said, unslinging the black tablet bag on her shoulder and hanging it on the back of the chair across from me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How are you? As good as you look, I hope.”

  “I’m okay.” She shrugged. “Work’s been kind of hectic and I miss LJ. By the way, I told Ileana and Cassidy I was meeting you for coffee.” She leaned over the table and pressed her lips to my cheek before she sat. “They said to give you a kiss from them.”

  “Tell them I said thank you, and hi. So, how was your trip to Virginia?”

  “I miss LJ so much.” She smiled sadly, her huge, blue-shadowed eyes lighting the pain in her face. “When you first introduced us, I thought maybe we would just be a fun thing for a little while. I mean, ordinarily I’m not interested in younger men. But this was LJ Doran, who set the computer science department on fire after I graduated. You never turn down a chance to meet a legend.”

  “What is he, four or five years younger than you?”

  “At my age that feels like a lot. Yes, I thought it would be a nerd fling, nothing serious. But I like him, a lot. When he gets his first FBI posting, if he asks me to go with him, I’m there. I can get an IT job anywhere.” She dabbed her eyes with a tissue she pulled from the outer pocket of her tablet bag. “Look at me, losing my shit like I’m sixteen.” She cleared her throat. “So, to answer your question, Virginia is beautiful. I was good when we were going out to dinner or sightseeing with LJ’s folks.” She lowered her voice. “But I did my damnedest to cripple him when we were back in the hotel.” Flushing, she caught her lower lip between her teeth, held it for a second or two. “I hope this doesn’t embarrass you. LJ said you’re the one he talks to about stuff like this, stuff he can’t share with his parents.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “He likes you a lot too.”

  “Well, whatever you’re telling him about women, don’t stop. He’s not like my old boyfriends. LJ’s a great mix of passion and unselfish kindness. He’s patient and giving and so damn smart! I feel lucky to be with him.”

  We went to the counter and got coffee and returned to our table. As we drank, I asked if she had heard of Drea Wingard. When she nodded, I explained the writer’s cousin was a friend who hired me to protect her during a coming visit. Then I outlined the challenges I faced bodyguarding a high-profile target at a major conference, from complications presented by the site to the resistance I expected from some conference organizers. Finally, I asked if she would consider supervising surveillance computers from a security nerve center in a hotel suite. When I told her the job would pay a thousand dollars, her eyes widened a bit but she waited several seconds before speaking. One finger traced the rim of her coffee cup.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course. You’d need to take off work for about a week. Do you have vacation or leave time you can use?”

  “No problem,” she said. “I liked her book. I’d love to meet her. I just need to think about it for a day or two.” Then she chuckled. “Funny you should mention this today.”

  “Why?”

  “Tonight on PBS there’s a rebroadcast of a Frontline program about white supremacy in America. Drea Wingard is interviewed in it. It was on last year but I only caught the last part. I plan to watch the whole thing this time with my sister.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  The program consisted of news footage of KKK, Neo-Nazi, and alt-right rallies, young men carrying or wearing Klan crosses, Confederate flags, swastikas, or other symbols of white power. There were interviews with supremacists willing to show their faces and with those victimized by their violence—former spouses, beating victims, relatives of murder victims. Sam had told me his cousin was ten years younger than he was, which put her in her early sixties.

  Interviewed twice in the first half of the program and once in
the second, the Drea Wingard on my television screen looked much younger. She was a handsome, brown-skinned woman with short black hair, piercing eyes, and Africa-shaped gold earrings. She told her story without hesitation or pause, even as her eyes filled and she refused to wipe them. “Yes, I regret I was forced to kill somebody in self-defense,” she said at the close of her interview. “Everybody keeps calling what Liberty Storm did and what these others are doing hate. This is more than that. Hate is a normal human emotion. You can hate winter or canned fish or clowns or some kind of music. I grew up in a home that cherished traditional soul food but I hate okra, I mean hate it. That doesn’t make me try to wipe out all the okra on the planet.” She shook her head. “This is more than hate. This is pure, unrepentant evil.”

  As the final montage unfolded and the narrator began his summation, my iPhone buzzed with a text from Yvonne.

  I’m in. So is my sister if you need more eyes.

  Excerpt Three

  From In the Mouth of the Wolf by Drea Wingard, with Grant Gibbons (3)

  “His name is Wally Ray Tucker,” you explain to Dr. Solomon Clay—not his real name—several weeks after the photo arrays, near the end of your first session. “A bad conduct discharge from the Marines. Three felony arrests. He’s done hard time. The detectives said the ID wouldn’t stand up in court because of the makeup, but it gave them a place to start the investigation—for all the good that’s done.”

  Seated in the armchair perpendicular to yours, Dr. Clay is older, thin, pink-cheeked, bald save for a fringe of white hair on the sides and back of his head. For most of this hour he has listened—to the particulars of your loss, to the gelatinous pain that seeps into every space left by Grant’s death, to the silence in your house since Miranda and Ben returned to London and the loneliness in your bed. Now, gazing at you through black-framed glasses riding low on his nose, Dr. Clay takes a moment before he responds—a beat you will come to recognize as part of his clinical toolbox. “It sounds as if you think the police are making little progress, Andrea.”

  “Please call me Drea,” you say, annoyed with yourself you didn’t correct him the first time he used your full name. You want to tell him Andrea is dead but don’t know how.

  “Of course, Drea. Feel free to call me Sol.”

  “For now I think I prefer Dr. Clay, if that’s all right.”

  “It is.”

  “Yes, progress is limited, because we’re dealing with two different states.” Your exasperation is palpable. “Maryland arranged for Fairfax police to interview him up in Montgomery County. Lieutenant Wesley planned to record it so I could hear his voice. But Tucker came with a lawyer who wouldn’t let him speak and denied he was part of Liberty Storm. Nothing to charge him with in Maryland. Nothing to justify extradition to Virginia. I know everybody’s entitled to representation, but Wesley said the lawyer was a woman. What kind of woman represents a monster like that?”

  “Frustrating when it seemed nobody was representing Grant,” Dr. Clay says.

  “Infuriating. Enough to make me want to drive up to Tucker’s home and…and—”

  Sudden tears—the first since you sat down. They startle you, as does the realization you cannot let your husband’s death go unavenged. Now you understand the tissue box on a small table beside your chair. You wipe your eyes and take a deep breath. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I didn’t mean for this to—to….”

  “To come out?” Dr. Clay is astute, calmly voices what you are thinking. “It’s a normal feeling to want to make him pay for what he did, for all he took from you. I want you to know I understand and I’m not judging you. You have nothing to feel sorry for. But there are questions I must ask you now.”

  “All right.”

  He looks at his notepad. “This Brick Butler, the man you stabbed in the neck. Have you thought much about him since…he died.”

  “You mean, since I killed him.”

  “Yes.”

  You take a few seconds to think, to remember. “From time to time. Maybe not as much as I should. Are you wondering if I feel guilty?”

  “Do you?”

  “A little, until I remind myself if I hadn’t killed him, they all would have killed me.”

  “Self-defense makes it easier to accept.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know Wally Ray Tucker’s address?”

  “No.”

  “As a librarian, you can find it easily. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a plan to confront him?”

  “No.”

  “But the idea’s there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it been there for a while or did it come to mind just recently?”

  “Just now, as we were talking.” Not entirely true, you admit to yourself.

  “All right. Do you have access to a firearm?”

  “My husband’s revolver.”

  He pauses before asking his next question. “Do you know how to use a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been practicing shooting, at a gun range or anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know gun laws are different in Maryland?”

  “More restrictive,” you say, remembering one of your talks with Wesley. “Probably why Tucker’s people didn’t have guns when they broke in. The day before, police got a tip and a man linked to Liberty Storm was arrested in Bethesda with a trunk full of guns from Georgia.”

  “So you know it’s a risk to carry your gun into that state.” Another pause. “Do you have it with you now?”

  “Yes. It’s in my purse. On the floor there.”

  He does not react. “Do you carry it because you’re afraid you’ll be attacked again?”

  “I’m not sure.” You shift in your chair a bit. “When the police gave it back to me, I just put it in my purse and left it there. I haven’t forgotten it. I know it’s there every time I pick up my purse.”

  “You work at the Library of Congress, where I’m sure they have metal detectors or at least bag checks.”

  “Both, but I haven’t gone back to work yet. I extended my bereavement leave into a sabbatical while I try to consider some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Whether to retire early or go back to work. Whether to sell the house and move or stay among the memories. I’m not ready yet to decide.”

  “Understandable.” A beat. “As for the gun, is it loaded?”

  “No. So far. I guess I kind of liked the feel of it on my shoulder. The weight of it.” You take a beat of your own. “Look, Dr. Clay, I know we’ve just met. I’m not trying to freak you out.”

  “You’re not freaking me out, Drea. You’ve suffered a horrible loss, to evil instead of fate. Anger, rage, depression, withdrawal, fear, guilt or no guilt—whatever you’re feeling is real and reasonable. Even if it weren’t my job, I would be concerned about you.”

  “I know you have to report me if you think I’m going to hurt somebody.”

  “It’s called a duty to warn,” he says. “I need to make sure you’re not building up the courage to hurt someone, including yourself.”

  You have not told him about putting the gun to your temple and pulling the trigger in the seconds after Grant died. You have no intention of revealing that to him, ever. “I haven’t thought about hurting myself,” you say. “I want to live long enough to see Liberty Storm punished.”

  “I’d have a special session with you to celebrate that.” He adjusts his glasses and leans forward a bit. “Drea, you and I are beginning a process I sincerely hope will help you. It’s early yet for us to build up the trust that will make the best outcomes possible. But I can tell you this. If you did manage to find Wally Ray Tucker and use your husband’s gun to kill him, it would feel different from self-defense. Plus, you would go to prison and Liberty Storm would have a martyr. I don’t believe that’s the best outcome possible. Do you?”

  “No,” you say after a few seconds. “No.”
<
br />   “Where we are now is the point we let each other know if we’re willing to try.”

  “I’m willing to try, Dr. Clay.”

  “Good.” A beat. “Do you have a responsible friend who would hold your gun under lock and key for a while?”

  “No.”

  “With your permission, then, I could put it in my safe. I have papers we’d both sign, an agreement that I’m holding it for you, temporarily. Would you be amenable to that?”

  “Yes,” you say, confident that in Virginia you can always buy another gun.

  15

  The Sunday night before Drea Wingard came to Buffalo, Phoenix and I dined at Charmaine’s Table. Afterward, we crossed the quiet lobby to the South Tower and took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. Using my gold keycard, I opened the door to the suite where I would live for the next week and ushered her inside. The suite was dark, save a soft bluish halo around the backs of the three computer monitors arranged in an arc on a long table facing the door. The table was a few feet past the two steps down into the carpeted sunken living room. Two straight-back chairs facing the monitors were visible in the glow, but it was dark beyond them. The curtains over the floor-to-ceiling window at the far end of the room were drawn.

  I turned on the overhead lights and floor lamps with a slider control just inside the door.