by Josh Karnes
Chapter 35
Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico
Special Agent Morales was joined by Lieutenant Ramos at the conference table, and the Fajardo detectives Rivera and Torres were called in to the speakerphone as Ortiz began the impromptu briefing. “Okay, here's the situation. Since the press conference, a lot of heat is coming down on our investigation because one reporter had cell phone video that has been playing on cable news channels since about two thirty. By the time I called my SAC in San Juan, Director Flanagan had already called him from Washington.”
“Is Flanagan coming down here?” Morales asked.
“No, but Otero is, and he's bringing Miller and Casas,” Ortiz said. “I need everyone to make sure they have their notes in order, because we will have another briefing with SAC Otero, it's looking like six o'clock. Everybody know what they need to bring to the table? Ramos, you can give us the ground search results. Allison, you're on kidnapping motive. Let's get some results so we have something to show for the past...” Ortiz looked at his watch, “It'll be forty-eight hours. This thing is all the way public. After our briefing I am sure SAC Otero is going to do another press conference, so we need to give him something to talk about.”
There were nods from the people in the room, and then Ortiz adjourned the meeting and the team went back to their searches.
Special Agent Morales had been digging into the drug angle an hour before the briefing. She began by interviewing Fajardo narcotics detectives over the phone. They detailed much of what Morales already knew about drug trafficking and who the major players were in Puerto Rico, and given Fajardo's location, the Fajardo to Culebra route was a well-known gateway to the Eastern Caribbean islands for drug trafficking. However, none of what the detectives told her made Morales believe the Gradys could be involved in any way. And kidnapping a random Norte Americano teenager was just not the modus operandi of the Puerto Rican drug runners.
Morales still wanted to run down kidnapping, even if it was not related to drugs. That left the Gradys' mysterious financial state. To be sure, she would need to get more information about what she believed was James's numbered account. To do that would take a warrant.
After the briefing Ortiz remained in the conference room command center and was just hanging up his phone after telling the helicopter pilot to return to Vieques when Morales approached him. “Ray, I just finished talking with the Fajardo narco detectives and it looks like that's just going to be a dead end. They said that a random kidnapping of an American teen is not something the drug runners here would do.”
“Random, sure. But what if it's not random? You're sure the Gradys are not connected?”
“We are on day number two of this investigation,” she responded a little too defensively. “There's no way to be sure. It'd take a month of looking into this guy, digging into all of his activities, local Houston cops helping, you name it. No, we're not sure. But it really isn't looking like drugs are part of the mix.”
“Okay. You see this?” Ortiz gestured towards the TV they had pulled in showing Fox News continuing coverage of Joseph Grady's disappearance. “This... circus? It's just getting started. By this time tomorrow Joseph Grady will be a household name in all of America. You and me will probably be assigned to a task force to find him, and as long as those reporters are digging and doing remotes with their cell phone cameras, we will be putting everything else on hold while we search for this kid. We don't have a month. Is there any way to find out for sure if it's drugs, or what kidnapping angle it could be?”
“This is all over the TV,” she said. “If it was kidnapping, wouldn't we have a ransom demand by now?”
“We might, but maybe the Gradys have been contacted directly. I sent them out with Vega to look around El Pliegue.”
“Do you think they'd tell us if they got the call? Or how would they even get a call? Can they get a cell phone call out there?”
“One way to find the answer to both questions. I'll talk to them. What about their family back in Texas? Do they have relatives that might have gotten the call? We were so focused on James Grady's cagy reaction about his sudden wealth that we might have overlooked an obvious family connection. Do they have family money?”
“I don't know. I'll dig. But speaking of that, we need to get into James's numbered account at HSBC in Switzerland. We don't know if it's ten dollars or ten million. And if it's ten million then that changes everything. Plus, if he has gotten a ransom demand, if he's keeping the money secret don't you think he'd keep the ransom demand secret too?”
“That's a good point,” Ortiz conceded. “But he seems motivated to find his son, and he's out there on a boat searching in some sinkhole. You think if he thought, or knew, that, A., he had ten million dollars that some bad guys knew about, and B., he had been contacted for a ransom payment, that he'd be out there looking for his kid when he knows damn well exactly where the kid is?”
Allison Morales looked at the floor, considered this for a beat, and then responded. “That is all the more reason we need to know what's in that account,” she said. “We need a warrant. We need to get moving on it now. It's going to take some time even after our judge issues it to get them to open it up.”
“What do we have to go on? There's no crime that we can pin on James Grady. No cause for a warrant.”
“Tax evasion?” Morales suggested.
“We don't have evidence of that, do we? No IRS record, no indication of payment for services, besides James's own statement, which we both agree, is full of holes. Not nearly enough for a warrant. Look, if James is motivated to find his kid then maybe he'll be more forthcoming. Yesterday when we talked, we all thought maybe the kid had just wandered off or found a girl, that he'd turn up any minute. Now that we have another twenty-four hours of investigation behind us, with a team of detectives with nothing to show for it, maybe he'll be a little more open.”
“You going to call him?” she asked.
“No, I'm going to wait to ask him about this until we can do it face to face. Otero is going to be here in less than an hour, then I will go back out to Isla Roca myself and I'll ask him then. I just got off the phone with the pilot and the chopper's on the way back right now.”
“Whatever you say. I don't think he's going to tell us anything,” Morales said.
“Well I hope you're wrong, because we don't have time to find out your way, and we can't afford to make enemies out of the family on national TV. At least not until we know for sure they are dirty. And right now, I don't think they are.”
Morales knew the conversation was over and Ortiz turned to walk out of the conference room. She didn't like depending on the honesty of citizens, since all of her experience indicated that people lie. And she knew without a doubt that James Grady was hiding something, and his family was covering for him. She wanted to know what it was, and she would keep digging, even if the ASAC was convinced that James was the good guy. It was Ortiz's neck on the line, so she'd do it his way. But she'd work on the backup plan. Time to find a back door into that bank account. Time to find out about the family back home. Time to call her friend in the cyber division.