A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6)

by Robert Dugoni

  Tracy looked to Kins.

  “How would I do that, Andrei?” Kins said.

  “You don’t do anything. The phone does it. Get the phone. It stores the time and place of each location so that it can provide location services, like when you engage Google Maps and your phone knows your location. There were articles about this being an invasion of privacy. Hah.” He gave a sharp, sardonic laugh. “This I find amusing. If you want your privacy invaded, you should live in Russia.”

  “Could someone disable this service?” Kins asked. “Could they turn it off?”

  “They could, but that I do not see—not unless they’re paranoid.”

  Tracy looked to Kins, who shook his head to indicate he had no further questions. “Thanks, Andrei,” she said. “Hope we didn’t disturb anything important.”

  “Could be worse,” he said again. “This has been the highlight of my night.”

  Tracy disconnected and looked at her watch. “We need to get Aditi’s phone.”

  “It’s still just speculation, Tracy.”

  “Not if we get Aditi’s phone and the history shows her at Bridle Trails State Park, it isn’t.”

  “And if she tells us we’re crazy and won’t give us her phone, then what? I’m not sure we have probable cause.”

  “She and Kavita shared an account.”

  “That’s not enough. We need something more.”

  “I agree,” Tracy said. “We need her phone.”

  “That’s a bit circular, don’t you think? You going to make that argument to a judge: We need her phone to prove we needed her phone? We need something else. And if we go out there now and start asking her questions and get nowhere, she could toss that phone in England.”

  “What about the service provider? Maybe they can send us the records,” Tracy said.

  “Maybe, but this isn’t an emergency like the need to find Kavita’s phone. We’re going to need a signed search warrant.” Kins looked at his watch. “I don’t know if we have time. What time did you say she was getting on a plane to London?”

  “Tonight. Late.”

  The telephone on Tracy’s desk rang. She spoke to Kins as she crossed the bull pen to answer it. “I say we drive to the airport tonight and take our chances.”

  She lifted the receiver. “Detective Crosswhite.” Tracy listened for a moment, then turned to Kins, who had his back to her and had his cell phone to his ear, likely to update Shannah on when he’d be home. She snapped her fingers twice to get his attention, then picked up a pen from her desk and hurled it at him, hitting him in the back of the head.

  Kins turned and Tracy put the caller on speakerphone. “I’m sorry, Ranger Paige, but could you repeat what you started to tell me so my partner can hear?”

  “Sure. I was just saying that I went over to Seattle today and looked through the storage materials for the Bridle Trails State Park. I found that report of the rider whose horse fell down a well. I thought you might want it.”

  Kins approached. “How long ago was that report made?”

  “Hang on.” They heard the shuffling of papers. “It was nine years ago.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No. The rider managed to get off before the horse fell. The horse broke a leg and had to be put down.”

  “Was the well anywhere near Kavita Mukherjee’s home?”

  “Is that the decedent?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know she lived near the park.”

  “It was the family home.”

  “If you provide me the address I can try to figure that out.”

  Tracy looked to Kins, who turned back to his desk to look up the Mukherjees’ address.

  “Is there a name on the report?” Tracy asked.

  “Yeah, there is. The rider was fifteen years old. It’s a foreign name. First name is Aditi. A-D-I-T-I.”

  Kins spun around at the sound of the name.

  “The last name is Dasgupta. Do you need me to spell it? Detectives?”

  CHAPTER 47

  The back room had no windows. The only light came from the narrow gap at the bottom of the door. Faz had a sense that he’d been in the room for several hours. He’d heard others speaking in the adjacent room, but no one had been in to see him since the man he’d followed to the storage unit had left. He’d examined the pipe to which he had been cuffed, and pulled on the strap that had been bolted into the wall; it wasn’t going to come loose.

  He’d contemplated yelling, but given the layout of the storage facility, with the retail space at the front now closed, and a swath of trees and bushes at the rear, and the drone of cars from the nearby 509 freeway, no one was going to hear him. Little Jimmy’s minions must have deduced the same thing, which was why they hadn’t shoved a rag in Faz’s mouth. On the other hand, none of them struck him as heirs to Einstein’s throne either. It could have just been a mistake.

  Instead of fighting a losing battle with the strapped pole, Faz had used his time to figure out when he’d start to be missed, and by whom. That was hard to say. Vera would certainly try to contact him after it got dark, but she was accustomed to his schedule changing quickly, and his frequent need to work late and not getting the chance to speak to her. She also had other, more pressing matters to worry about. Del was not likely to call him. Del was like Faz in that regard. He called if he had important information, or if he needed something. He didn’t call to just shoot the shit. Del would also be conscientious of Vera’s illness and he’d try to respect their privacy. So, unless Del learned something about Gonzalez from his contacts in Los Angeles, Faz didn’t expect to hear from him. In other words, Faz could be in this room for a long time. Then again, maybe not long enough. He was more convinced than ever that Little Jimmy was moving drugs up and down the West Coast, and that he had stumbled onto the epicenter of that operation. With millions of dollars at stake, Little Jimmy couldn’t very well let Faz go with a promise not to say anything. Hell, Jimmy didn’t even need millions at stake to kill Faz. Like the guy had said, Jimmy hated Faz and held him responsible for Big Jimmy’s death. Killing a cop, however, wasn’t something anyone in the drug business did lightly, not if they wanted to fly under the radar. So maybe Faz could hope that Little Jimmy would at least be conflicted. Then again, Little Jimmy probably didn’t even know how to spell “conflicted.”

  Faz heard men speaking Spanish on their way to the room. The door opened and the light came on. The bouncer and the man he’d followed entered the room. Behind them stood Little Jimmy, smiling. Speak of the devil, Faz thought.

  “What is it they say about a patient man?” Little Jimmy asked.

  The others in the room didn’t have an answer. As Faz had speculated, they weren’t about to give Einstein a run for his money.

  “Come on, Detective Fatso. You know the answer.”

  “Can’t say that I do, Jimmy.”

  “Good things, man. Good things come to a patient man.”

  “I think it’s actually ‘Good things come to those who wait,’ but either way, I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you. I’m not exactly a good thing.”

  “No? What are you going to tell me? Are you going to tell me that everyone knows you’re here and they’re on their way to rescue you?” His smile broadened. “We checked your phone, Detective. That’s right. We got past your password—surprise. We aren’t the dumb Mexicans you gringos take us for. You had some nice pictures of Francisco,” he said, “but you hadn’t sent anything to anybody. The way I see it, nobody knows you’re here, man. You’re on an island. You’re that guy? What’s his name?” He turned to ask the others in the room.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” Faz said.

  “No, man, the actor. He talks to the volleyball . . . Tom Hanks. You’re Tom Hanks, man.”

  “And how long do you think that’s going to be, Jimmy? How long before people start missing a detective attempting to solve a murder?”

  “I don’t know. How many people out there love you enough to
give a shit?”

  “A lot, Jimmy. I’m very popular.”

  Little Jimmy stepped forward, still smiling. “Not in here you’re not.” He looked to the bouncer. “Hector here? He wants to take you apart with his hands. What did you do to piss him off so much?”

  “I think it might have been the bee comment.” Faz looked to Hector. “Was it the bee comment, Hector? The one about reducing the swelling? I was just trying to be helpful.”

  Hector looked at Faz, clearly still not understanding.

  “You’re a funny man, Detective Fatso,” Little Jimmy said. “Were you this funny when you arrested my old man?”

  “I’ve gotten funnier with age. I figure by ninety I’ll be a riot.”

  “You know what’s funny? You thinking you’re going to make it to ninety.” Little Jimmy laughed and the others joined him.

  “I’ll see ninety, Jimmy. I got good genes. My grandfathers on both sides of the family lived to their midnineties and both my mother and father are still going strong in their eighties. Did you know my father scuba dives? No shit. He went swimming with sharks just last summer in South Africa.”

  “Maybe you’ll go swimming with the sharks too,” Little Jimmy said. “I can arrange it. Seriously, your old man sounds like a tough son of a bitch. What happened to you?”

  “I got the looks,” Faz said.

  Little Jimmy laughed again. “But not the luck. You’re going to come up short of your two grandfathers. Me? I don’t know how long I’m going to live. My old man, he might have lived a long time, but somebody put him in prison and he got killed.”

  “That would be a hazard of running drugs, wouldn’t it?”

  Little Jimmy lost his smile. “Go ahead, Detective, keep making jokes. What do they say? He who laughs the last is the best.”

  “Close enough,” Faz said.

  “So go ahead, tough guy, laugh. You’re a brave man.”

  “No, Jimmy, I’m not a brave man. I’m a problem. I’m your problem. I figure you would have killed me already instead of doing this bullshit tough-guy dance, but we both know you can’t kill me.”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “Because it’s bad for business to kill a cop. I know you’re running drugs. I know that you probably have millions in inventory in those storage lockers out there. Inventory that doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the cartel you’re working for. You kill me, you don’t think my partner, Del, is going to know about it? What do you think we’ve been working on? You kill me, and Del is going to rain hell on you and everyone else up and down the coast, from Canada right down to Mexico, to the doorstep of the cartel supplying you. You know how the cartel is going to fix that problem? Do you know how they’re going to make sure you can’t testify against them when the storm hits? The same way they fixed it when Big Jimmy went to prison. You’re going to be playing pinochle with the worms, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy stepped closer, close enough for Faz to feel his breath on his face and smell the acidic tinge. Jimmy tilted his head to the side and made noises with his tongue through the gaps in his teeth. “What they care about in Mexico is who moves their product the fastest and gets the most money. And that is me, my friend. We won’t even be here in twenty-four hours. We’ll be like ghosts. Poof. We’re gone. Nothing here. Lockers cleaned out. Product all gone. It’s gonna be spread far and wide, and I’m going to make so much money I’ll live like a king somewhere. And you? Shit, I’m not going to kill you for any business reason. What’s the fun in that? I’m going to kill you because you made this personal, culero. You disrespected my old man. Then you disrespect me in my own home.”

  “Respect is earned, Jimmy. I respected your father. He was a man. And I didn’t kill him. The people you work for killed him. How much respect you think they have for a boy who works for the men who killed his father?”

  The blows came fast and furious. Little Jimmy threw a combination of punches and kicks and the others joined him. Faz tried to bury his head in the space between his arms but it was futile. Unable to cover up, he could do little but take the punishment and the pain, the searing pain. He heard bones cracking and felt blood spraying from his nose and mouth. The beating continued, until he could no longer hear or feel a thing.

  CHAPTER 48

  Del walked in the front door of his house trying to appease Sonny, who danced on his back legs, pawing at the air, whining. “Okay, okay,” Del said. “Take it easy. I know, you think I abandoned you.”

  His Shih Tzu had been inside the house, or the backyard, for most of the past two days, first because Del’s back had prevented him from taking Sonny on their usual walk to the park, and then because of Del’s increased workload with Faz on administrative leave. Sonny was less than eight pounds, but Del thought it best, given his gimpy back, that he not pick him up, at least not for another day or two. “Give me a minute to get settled here and we’ll go for a walk, okay?”

  Sonny, a white-and-brown ball of fur, dashed past Del and pulled his leash off the peg near the front door.

  “Yeah, yeah. We’re going to go, and you can do your business, but let me do my business first.”

  Del draped his suit coat on the railing of the staircase and started down the hall. His cell phone rang. He fished for it in his pants pockets, then realized it was still in the inside pocket of his coat. He thought it would be Celia, but the number was not listed. Del answered.

  “Detective Castigliano?”

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “I understand you were inquiring about a Detective Gonzalez this afternoon.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I’m looking for information on where she served in Los Angeles. Who is this? Did you work with her?” He pulled the phone away from his ear to consider the number, which was not on his screen.

  “May I ask the reason for your inquiry?”

  It was a legitimate question. “I’m just trying to get a little information on her. We had an officer-involved shooting up here and she was part of it. I’m following up. Has she ever had anything like this happen before? And who am I speaking with?” Del had walked into the kitchen, searching through the drawers for a pen that worked and something to write on.

  “My name is Jeffrey Blackmon. I’m with the DEA.”

  “The DEA?”

  “I’m ordering you to cease any further inquiries into Detective Gonzalez’s background, Detective. Is that clear?”

  Del stopped looking through the drawers. “Excuse me? Did you just order me to do something?”

  “Cease and desist, Detective. What’s happening is beyond you. And yes, that’s an order.”

  “I don’t know you from a hole in the wall. And I don’t take orders from people I don’t know.”

  “Then let me introduce myself, again. My name is Jeffrey Blackmon and I’m an agent with the DEA.”

  “And I’m Santa Claus. Now let’s prove it.”

  “I’m the agent in charge of the OCDETF. Look it up.”

  “Sounds like an eye exam.”

  “It’s an acronym. It stands for Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “That’s intended.”

  “And you’re running an investigation here in Seattle?”

  “As well as in other cities, yes.”

  “And you don’t want me asking questions regarding Detective Gonzalez.”

  “We do not.”

  “How do I know what you’re telling me is the truth?”

  “Faith.”

  Del chuckled. “My faith is limited to my God, and I have some doubts there also. Everything else, I’m going to need proof.”

  “I believe you were told your investigation into the shooting of Monique Rodgers had come to an end?”

  Del thought back to his conversation with Nolasco. “How do you know that?”

  “I suggest you follow that order, Detective, if you won’t follow mine.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

 
“You screw up my operation, Detective, and I’m going to do a lot more than threaten you. You were given an order to back off. Heed that order. Or I will start making calls. I’d prefer not to have to do that.”

  The line disconnected. Del pulled the phone away from his ear. What the hell had he and Faz stumbled into?

  Sonny continued to dance and whine. “Sorry, partner. Work calls.” He punched in Faz’s cell phone number, but the call went straight to voice mail. Del knew that unless on call, Faz turned his cell off at night and left it in a basket by the back door. He checked the time. He really didn’t want to intrude by calling Faz’s home number. He didn’t know what shape Vera was in, and he knew they were both going through a lot. What he had was interesting, but interesting would keep until the morning.

  He went to his contacts and pulled up the cell number for Johnny Nolasco, to find out how big a pile of shit he and Faz might have stepped in.

  CHAPTER 49

  Tracy called SeaTac Airport as she and Kins sped from the garage to the freeway, a bar of lights flashing out the back window of their pool car. British Airways flight 48 to London’s Heathrow Airport was scheduled to depart at 7:30 p.m., and Aditi and Rashesh Banerjee were ticketed to board. That meant they had limited time to get to the airport, which was certainly doable at that time of night with the flashing lights helping to disperse traffic, though maybe not before Aditi and Rashesh had boarded the plane.

  “Not sure we’re going to make it,” Kins said as he changed lanes and accelerated. “Call the Port of Seattle and ask that they be detained.”

  The Port of Seattle provided the primary police enforcement at the airport. Tracy made the call, identified herself, and provided the names Aditi and Rashesh Banerjee, their flight information, and asked that they be detained.

  When they arrived at the airport twenty minutes later, Tracy and Kins moved quickly to the Port of Seattle Police Department’s offices on the third floor of the main terminal building. The frosted-glass door entrance was in the esplanade behind the Southwest Airlines ticket counter. Kins had been there once, many years earlier. Tracy had never been.