by Kirk Russell
Raveneau studied it a little longer then folded the bubble wrap back over. He was careful not to touch it. He looked up at Becker and said, ‘Alan Krueger was shot with a nine.’
‘Did you have any idea this was coming?’
‘No.’
Becker picked up the FedEx box and looked it over.
‘Did this Thomas Casey send it?’
‘Matt Frank sent it for him. That’s what Candel told me, but I don’t think this is what Casey had in mind to send.’
‘You said this Matt Frank travels with his coffee business. He goes to trade shows. He was in Los Angeles not long ago. Isn’t that correct?’
‘That’s what he told us.’
‘How about this idea? Matt Frank sent you the videotape from Los Angeles. He FedExed the videotape same as he FedExed this gun.’
‘Could be. You should have stayed a homicide inspector.’
‘I know, should never have taken the promotion. I’m not cut out to herd cats. But I get the feeling you don’t think my idea fits.’
‘The kid has anger, a lot of it. He was close to shooting me when he found me at the house. I heard the buzz of one of his shots go past my head and there was a moment there when I could feel him debating. But he was angry before he met me. As soon as he introduced me to Casey, he disappeared. He took off. He may not know it yet, but he doesn’t like his uncle much. Uncle Casey calls the shots, writes the checks, and tells him what to do. So by sending this gun instead of the complaint against me he strikes at his Uncle Casey. I’m speculating, but that’s how I read it.
‘It may be the gun used to kill Krueger, but if it is it’ll be a ballistics match only. There won’t be any prints, any residue, anything to tie it directly to Casey. It won’t be registered to Thomas Casey or anyone we can find. It’s probably not registered.’
‘You can find that out quickly.’
Raveneau nodded.
‘I’ll take it to the lab and then I’ve got to go meet Ortega.’
In his car Raveneau checked to see who the missed calls were from. He figured Ortega followed his text with calls but all three were from Ryan Candel. He didn’t call Candel back yet. He called Ortega who said, ‘You inspired me, Raveneau. I did another search and found something. We’re at the cabinet shop. Come on over.’
FIFTY
‘ What did you find?’
‘Money in a floor safe underneath one of those bolted down saws. This is like a fun house. Everywhere you look here you find something. But like I said, you inspired me.’ Ortega turned to him. ‘It’s the money we found I want you to see.’
Ortega squinted and for whatever the reason looked pained. Bruce Ortega worked his way from uniform officer to sergeant to a stint with Burglary and Robbery to the Homicide Detail by age thirty-four. He came on quietly and Raveneau knew him as a hard worker, knowledgeable about DNA and the more recent forensic advances available to them. He had good instincts and was intuitive about motive. He called himself a steady plodder, but Raveneau didn’t think of him that way at all.
This afternoon he was dressed in a charcoal gray sport coat, black pants and black loafers. He once told Raveneau that his wife shopped for him twice a year at Nordstrom’s semiannual half-off sales and got her inspiration from watching the remake of the TV series Hawaii Five-O. She then toned it down to their budget.
‘The safe was underneath the big band saw. I didn’t come here looking for anything other than a new idea. Here, let me show you.’
They walked to the tool room where the cutting was done and looked at a saw cut in the concrete surrounding the area where the band saw had sat. Someone pointed it out during the search Raveneau was on, though he couldn’t remember who. Ortega ran the edge of his shoe along the saw cut line.
‘We cut the bolts holding the saw down and I shoved the saw out of the way with the forklift.’
Raveneau looked into the open safe.
‘Where’s the money?’
‘In Khan’s office, the locksmith just left.’
‘How much was there?’
‘I haven’t touched it, but enough for both of us.’
He smiled.
‘I want you to look at it before I notify my fearless task force leader. When I do they’ll show up here with a dozen agents.’
‘You’ve gone rogue.’
‘No, technically you’re on my team.’ He turned. ‘Did you hear they made an arrest this morning?’
‘Yeah, I heard a couple of hours ago about Mathis.’
The Bureau had arrested Cleg Mathis, prime suspect in the Khan murders at a McDonald’s in St Paul, Minnesota, but headed to Canada with false ID. It happened mid morning Pacific Time. Raveneau was impressed the Bureau had tracked him down.
In Khan’s office Raveneau looked in the bag then pulled on latex gloves and lifted out a bundle of bills. It shouldn’t surprise him but it did, and as it did, something brushed along the edges of his consciousness again. The blatant aspect was striking. The bills could hardly stick out more but they probably paid Khan with them. In his view it was another mistake, but maybe they had it all so well scripted they were that confident.
‘What do you make of these?’ Ortega asked.
‘They look like the counterfeit bills my guy Krueger was carrying. They’re identifiable but not traceable.’
‘But you’re saying they’re the same as what you found on Krueger, right?’
‘They look the same to me, but I’m an instant expert. You need to call the Secret Service.’
‘Why would you pay anybody with counterfeit notes that look like they were buried in your grandfather’s mattress?’
‘Maybe they wanted to make it easier for the Feds and us later. Maybe they want the operation rolled up after it’s done.’
Raveneau shrugged. He really didn’t know what to make of this, but he felt reasonably confident the bills would match.
‘How many of these bills got printed?’ Ortega asked.
‘Good question.’
‘They haven’t given you any idea?’
‘I doubt anyone really knows.’
‘And they’ve been out of circulation all this time?’
Raveneau shrugged, couldn’t answer that either. Ortega knew about the buy last July so there was nothing to say about that.
‘Is there a big stash over there in Hawaii, Raveneau?’
‘There’s one somewhere.’
FIFTY-ONE
But if there was the connection Larry Benhaime suggested, Raveneau wasn’t sure how he was going to prove it. He talked awhile that night with Coe after Ortega called and said the Secret Service had confirmed the bills were counterfeit and in the same series. The next morning ballistics testing matched the Glock 17 to three of the bullets removed from Krueger’s body and Raveneau and la Rosa sat down with Becker and the captain.
By late afternoon they were on their way to the airport. They would get to Hawaii tonight, but it was going to be a long one. Their flight routed through Los Angeles and included a two and a half hour layover.
At LAX Raveneau talked again with Coe and learned more details about the Mathis arrest.
‘He had the garrote with him and when we showed him everything else we have he caved. He gave us a name and a description of a woman that’s close to what Drury gave us, right down to an abdominal scar she told Drury was from a bullet that grazed her. Mathis claims she slept with him same as Drury.’
He sounded puzzled as he continued.
‘We still can’t figure out who she is. We got a little bit from Interpol, but it may just be chatter. There are rumors of an American woman who fits the description and acts as a go-between. She may have organized the murder of a London banker for Russian clients, but the Russians usually stick with their own. She probably had a role in the kidnapping-torture-murder of two telecom executives in Brazil. Interpol believes she’s an independent contractor reached through a website, but they don’t have the website link.
‘Both Math
is and Drury did describe more or less the same woman. Drury claims she has a Texas accent but looks as if she could be from the Middle East. Mathis told us this afternoon, southern accent and he was sure she was half Lebanese though she didn’t tell him that. What that information does for us I don’t know. It may not do anything.’
‘The similar descriptions are worth something.’
‘They are and we’ve got agents looking hard for her. That said, we should have stayed with Mathis. He was on his way to Canada to get paid fifty thousand dollars for taking out the Khans. We should have followed him but we didn’t want him to get over the border. He was carrying a throwaway phone and supposed to get a call from her after reaching a rendezvous point in Toronto. The Mounties are there and we have agents with them watching the area but so far no sign of her. I’ll call you if anything changes.’
La Rosa and Raveneau landed late in the night. The plane was quiet before landing then picked up cheerful chatter as it unloaded. Within forty minutes they were headed to their rooms. Before dawn Raveneau made coffee in the room. He talked with Ryan Candel as he waited downstairs outside the lobby for la Rosa. She came off the elevator with a wry smile wearing the lei left on her bed.
‘We’re here,’ she said. ‘Let’s get some of that coffee you’ve been talking about.’
‘Candel says Matt Frank called him last night and that he was agitated and in his words sort of incoherent. He said it weirded him out and that he alluded to things he’s got to get done before he can focus on his business. He said there were problems but didn’t say what they were. He asked Candel about me, whether I’ve questioned him any more and whether his name has come up.’
‘Does Ryan know we’ve got some questions about his new brother?’
‘He’s getting the picture.’ Raveneau paused. ‘Matt Frank is supposed to meet us this morning at Hapuna Beach at nine. The beach is north of here. I know where it is. It’s not going to take us long to get there.’
‘Did Candel say anything else?’
‘Not really, and I’d say he was disturbed by the conversation with Frank and having a little trouble with what we’re asking him to do. He’s conflicted. He’s known his half brother for under a week, but part of him wants to protect him.’
They had an hour to kill and made calls sitting in the sun on a bench in a shopping center half a mile from the main highway. La Rosa got her coffee and looked happy with it. Then they drove north toward Hapuna Beach with Raveneau pointing out the rise of North Kohala Road ahead, and farther north around the curve of the island the steep-falling slope where the ranch was.
‘Can you see the ranch from here?’
‘No.’
‘There’s so much lava. It’s drier than I thought.’
‘This is the dry side.’
Raveneau checked the time as they left the highway and drove slowly through a small town along the water before turning into the Hapuna Beach lot. He spotted Frank’s gray Toyota pickup and parked nearby. They walked through the entrance past rest rooms and down toward the beach.
‘There he is.’
‘Where?’
‘That guy over there with the green and white shorts carrying the surf board.’
Frank waved and leaned the board against a low concrete retaining wall. He picked up a towel and a can of some drink and came toward them, drinking from the can as he walked. Frank belonged on the beach and he and la Rosa probably looked like a pair of missionaries on a recruiting drive in the third world. He watched Frank closely as he approached, and then the three of them sat down on a concrete bench and Raveneau said, ‘A package arrived at our Homicide office.’
‘I sent it to you.’
‘Then I have to ask you what was in it?’
‘A gun, a Glock 17 that came from my uncle’s house.’
‘Is it his gun?’
‘He’s had it forever.’
‘Why did you send it?’
‘Because he used to talk about it like it was a person that went out and did things on its own. He talks some strange shit when he’s drunk. He talked about the gun as if it traveled to places, killed bad people, and then came back home. He thought I sent the complaint letter and a video of me telling how you broke in. When he finds out the gun is gone it’ll freak him out.’
He stared at Raveneau communicating something else.
‘That’s the Glock I learned on. Uncle Casey says it belonged to my dad, but it was always sitting in the bar cabinet of the lanai in Uncle Casey’s house. Uncle Casey told me he’d give it to me when I became a marksman, but he didn’t. He likes owning it. He checks on it regularly, like a habit. If he hasn’t already noticed it’s missing he’s going to real soon and I don’t know what he’ll do.’
‘What do you think he’ll do?’
‘First he’ll ask me where it is.’
‘What are you going to tell him?’
‘That it’s mine and I took it. It was Dad’s gun and he promised it to me.’
‘Do you know about something in particular the gun was used for?’
Frank tipped the can, swallowed more of the coconut water, and Raveneau knew he wasn’t going to answer that directly.
‘Was Alan Krueger’s name ever mentioned in connection with the gun?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just asking.’
‘He was their friend.’
‘Did Krueger ever borrow the gun?’
‘I don’t know. I was pretty young and I knew it got borrowed, but I didn’t really know who took it. I guess he could have borrowed it. Other people did. I didn’t get it at the time but they would joke and say things like the gun is away on a business trip, shit like that.’
He finished the coconut water and crumpled the middle of the can.
‘Our housekeeper cleans it every week or so. It’s like a ritual. They used to call it the wipe down. He’s going to ask me where it is and get seriously angry.’
‘The gun isn’t registered to anyone.’
‘But that’s like the whole trip. They had like this whole story around the gun. It lives in that glass case and then goes out on trips on its own. It goes to do good, that’s what they called it, doing good, my dad, Uncle Casey, Shay, Krueger, and some other dudes that I only kind of barely remember. They all knew about it. Maybe it was never registered. Uncle Casey said Dad used to fly with it. As a pilot they didn’t usually check his bags. He carried other stuff for their friends.’
‘I want to ask you about something else having to do with your dad. Were you there when he died?’
‘Uncle Casey found him and woke me up. We walked up there together before he called the police or Dad’s doctor. We didn’t move him. He’d fallen and hit his head just outside the sliding door in front and it was pretty obvious he was dead.’
He looked away at the ocean remembering it, and Raveneau could see it affected him still. Some closeness there not really recognized in all this.
‘That night Uncle Casey and I sat up there in the chairs like Dad did with his friends. We got drunk together and he told me stories about my dad that I’d never heard. In a way it made me feel better and in a way it made me super sad.’
La Rosa spoke softly now, recounting her father’s long decline and death, Raveneau taking it in and thinking Frank was down here in shorts and carrying his board so if his uncle showed up he’d look like he was doing what he did every morning. He was afraid of him or very good at acting.
‘My dad didn’t shoot. He didn’t like guns. He said he killed enough in the war and supposedly that’s why Uncle Casey kept the gun at his house.’
This was a description of a man different than the one Casey portrayed.
‘I wanted to learn to shoot. I wanted to learn when I was little and visited him and he wouldn’t let me. That’s why my uncle taught me. My dad was pretty messed up by the war.’
‘What about your uncle?’
‘He says they did what they were told to and what they had to
, and that you can’t look back.’
‘Is it true he doesn’t leave the island?’
‘No, but that’s his thing. He likes the way it sounds, but really it was my dad who wouldn’t leave the island any more. My uncle makes a trip or two a year to the mainland. He went with me to a coffee thing in San Francisco a few years ago when I was getting the business started. It’s like I said, he just likes to say that. It’s sort of a way he wants to be, you know. Since Dad died he’s sort of taken on these other things that were like Dad’s way.’
Raveneau returned to the gun.
‘If he asks where you have it, what are you going to say?’
‘That it’s in my safe deposit box at the bank. He might say it’s OK or he might tell me to move and buy him out of the coffee business tomorrow.’
‘What do you think is going to happen?’
‘He’s going to freak out.’
‘Is he home right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re going to go see him. What about you? Where can we find you later?’
‘Call me.’
Frank set the empty can on top of the garbage receptacle and then picked up his board.
‘I’m going back in the water.’
‘We’re going to call you later today. We’ll want to meet again, Matt.’
‘I’m pretty sure we’re going to meet.’
He said that and walked away. They watched him, waited until he was out of earshot, and la Rosa said, ‘That was weird, especially that at the end.’
He turned to her. ‘I told you how he was when he found me up at his dad’s house.’
‘I was just thinking about that.’
‘He was real close up there. He wavered. I felt lucky to get away.’
FIFTY-TWO
Going through the gates reminded la Rosa of the summer she worked on a ranch in Montana before she had any idea what she was going to do with her life. She swung them closed and admired what Casey had here.