“Who else knows about this?”
“Jacques Tremblay recorded his uncle’s confession,” Parker said, “but I’m sure he knows nothing about Dromel’s conversation with Peabody. Unless Dromel was spreading it around, which I doubt, I think knowledge of this doesn’t go beyond this room.”
“And you say you think the men who attacked you killed Eric Tremblay?”
“It’s a hunch,” Parker said. “He talks on the tape about Americans approaching him to cause the spill. Could be our same three. Except they had a strange way of showing their gratitude.”
Parker shifted in his seat, then leaned in to Simmons. “The FBI and local police are interviewing the guy who survived, right?”
Simmons nodded. He looked at his watch. “I’m heading over there now. Should’ve been there twenty minutes ago.”
“Mind if I tag along?” Parker said.
Chapter 103
Parker and Simmons stood side by side with their arms folded. A short way off in the small, sparse room, the lead detective on the local force leaned against a wall.
“Your cooperation is much appreciated, Sergeant,” Simmons said.
The local cop chewed on a toothpick. “Always happy to oblige.”
The three watched the scene playing out on the other side of a one-way mirror.
Two interrogators, one short and balding, the other slim with a prominent chin and goatee, pulled up chairs on opposite sides of a small table. Vincent Williams (aka William Vincent, Vince Wallace, and William Wallace) fidgeted in his seat at the third side of the table, in direct view of the spectators behind the glass.Williams’ entire scalp was covered in bandages, giving him the appearance of a mummy.
“So we’re gonna try this again,” the bald cop said.
Since they had got him into the room, they had been relentless, piling him with questions about the attack on the three Canadians in the abandoned warehouse. They had stopped only when Simmons and Parker had arrived. Now, having listened to Parker’s hunch, the interrogators returned with a new tactic.
“Your buddies are gone,” the bald cop continued. “They’re kaput. There’s no use trying to protect them, and they sure as hell aren’t in any position to cover for you. Come on, Vincent, make it easy on yourself. Maybe we can work something out and get you a plea bargain if you cooperate.”
“If not,” the cop with the goatee said, “with some of this stuff, you could swing,”
“So let’s start again,” the first cop said. “This time from the top, literally. Up in Canada. The police from there tell us they can link you to a murder in a place called Syron Lake.”
Williams folded his arms and stared at the table.
The bald cop inhaled loudly.“What can you tell us about that, Vincent?”
The cop with the goatee exchanged glances with his partner, and then slapped his palm on the table. “Answer the question!”
Williams jumped. Recovering from the surprise, he pressed his arms more tightly against his body.
“I know nothing about Canada,” he said.
“Eric Tremblay,” the balding cop said. “That name mean anything to you?”
Williams poked his tongue against the inside of his cheek and sighed loudly, fidgeting more.
The cop continued. “Eric Tremblay drowned at his camp supposedly after having too much to drink. But the Canadian cops say something’s wrong with that picture. You see, the man never drank when he went fishing with his buddy like he did the day he died.”
“Smarten up, Vincent,” the cop with the goatee said. “We understand the Canadian police have evidence to run with.”
“Prints lifted off the beer,” the first cop said.
“They believe they can place you guys at Eric Tremblay’s camp,” the interrogator with the goatee said. “Remember your friends aren’t here any more. It’s just you. So you’ll take the full rap.”
William shifted noisily in his chair, unfolded his arms and grabbed the edge of the table.
“Liars!” he shouted. “You’re trying to trip me up. But I know the tricks you’re up to. You got no prints on those cans. None!”
Williams lifted his chin and snorted. “You’ll never make me believe you got my prints to be able to pin this on me. You don’t scare me. You won’t wear me down and make me confess to something I didn’t do. Try that on somebody else!”
The cop with the goatee held up his hand. “Calm down there, buddy.”
“We’ve got a ways to go still, Vincent,” the balding cop said. “Let’s get back to where we were, shall we, with the warehouse on….”
Parker turned to Simmons. “It was them; has to be.”
“He’s denying it,” Simmons said. “But that’s not saying much. He’s denying everything, right, left and center.”
“He said ‘those cans.’”
“So?”
“We’ve never released any information about the four beer cans that were found in Tremblay’s boat. I told those two investigators to simply mention prints lifted off ‘the beer.’ That could suggest anything — bottles, or even a single can. But this punk was quite definite in referring to cans of beer.”
“He seemed pretty sure you don’t have his prints.”
“We don’t,” Parker said. “Remember, I told them to simply tell him we found prints and that we believed we could place him and his cronies at Tremblay’s camp. I never said we found his prints.”
Simmons questioned Parker with a raised eyebrow.
Parker continued. “We found only Tremblay’s prints on the cans. Either this guy knew only Tremblay held the cans and was forced to drink, or that the killers also touched the cans but left no prints because they wore gloves or something. At any rate, he demonstrated that he knew without a doubt that cans of beer were involved in Tremblay’s death, which is information only the police and the killers were privy to.”
Simmons nodded. This Canadian is slick, he thought.
A sudden loud crash caused Parker, Simmons and the local lead detective to jump. They turned to the one-way mirror and saw Williams on his feet with his hands wrapped around the throat of the cop with the goatee. The other cop struggled to get to his knees and throw an upturned chair from off him.
Two new officers burst into the interrogation room and pounced on Williams. He fought with them, twisting about and flinging his arms in the air. In the melee, Parker caught a flash of red at the back of William’s left hand and thought Williams had cut himself.
The officers wrenched Williams’ hands behind his back as they subdued him. Even so, their light blue shirts remained unsoiled. In fact, there was no dripping blood anywhere as they carted him out of the room.
Parker walked closer to the glass and studied Williams’ hand before the officers shoved him out the door. The redness was permanent — a birthmark, it seemed.
Parker’s brain tingled. Something about that struck him as important. What was it?
The local lead investigator stood akimbo. He puffed out his chest and creased his face into a scowl.
“That piece of scum is going to get what’s coming to him,” he said.
Simmons arched his eyebrows and looked at Parker.
Parker stared back at the FBI agent, and his eyes suddenly lit up as if set aflame. “It was them,” he said. “Damn! They killed both of them.”
“What are you on about?” Simmons said.
Parker let out a sharp breath. “They killed Eric Tremblay and Osgood.”
“Who’s Osgood?”
“Marcus Osgood, Tremblay’s fishing buddy. He was at Eric Tremblay’s camp
the morning Eric drowned. Osgood died of a gunshot wound the same day.”
“Oh, the guy in the trailer?”
Parker nodded. “You know about that?”
Simmons grimaced. “We came across his file during our investigations. I saw the pictures. Not a pretty sight.”
“It makes sense now,” Parker said, shaking his head. “I had thought Osgood’s death was somehow tangled up with Syron Lake’s local politics. But it looks like Osgood must have seen or heard something concerning Eric and the Americans and the spill. So the Americans snuffed him out.”
“How’d you come up with that?”
“An eyewitness picked up Osgood a short distance from Eric Tremblay’s camp and gave him a lift home the morning of their deaths. He recalled that sometime later, he saw a stranger parked not far from Osgood’s trailer, apparently spying with binoculars.” Parker folded his arms. “Someone with a red blotch at the back of his left hand!”
A door opened behind them and a uniformed officer walked over to the lead investigator.
“You won’t believe this, Sarge,” the officer said. “You know this morning, that report that came in about a mailman who found the pensioner that was shot dead in Daytona Beach?
“What about it?”
“Well, we went through the belongings of these three yahoos from the warehouse and check out what’s on this scrap of paper that we found in their car.”
He read out an address.
“Same Daytona address,” the lead investigator said, nodding.
Parker knitted his brows as he searched his memory.
He leaned over to Simmons. “Jacques Tremblay said in a letter I read that he was planning to move to Daytona Beach and that he was going to send the address in a follow-up letter. When I was at Dromel’s house, I saw some goon steal letters from his mailbox.”
“You think your goon and Williams and his gang are connected?” Simmons said.
Parker nodded. “They were all after the two recordings Dromel told Stella about. I can only conclude that the men I saw at Dromel’s house got Jacques’ Daytona address from one of the letters they stole and somehow passed it on to Williams and his buddies.”
“So they were trying to track down Jacques and the old man that got killed was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Highly likely.”
Simmons turned to the lead investigator. “Sergeant, we’d be very interested in seeing the ballistics report of that Daytona Beach homicide. Even if it’s preliminary. I want anything that could give us more leverage with this twerp.”
Chapter 104
Simmons sat on the bed in one of the rooms of the safe house where the two Canadians were being put up. How long they would stay and how exactly they could help tie up the Mahler case, he wasn’t sure.
It was the end of a long day and his mind was only on the two calls that he’d been aching to make.
Finishing up the first, he propped his cell phone against his left ear with his shoulder as he undid his tie.
“Okay, good-night, big man,” he said. “Remember, Daddy loves you.”
He had been ten minutes late, but his ex was playing nice and allowed him to make up the time. Her birthday was coming up and he thought he would play nice, too. Maybe he would get her a bunch of roses to go along with the usual birthday card. Maybe.
Now, he looked at his watch and quickly punched a number. He listened to the ringing on the other end.
“Be there,” he said under his breath.
Finally, a voice came on the line. “Sarah Cohen here.”
“Good. I was hoping you hadn’t left for the day.”
“Spike?”
“Yes. It’s me. I wanted to be the first to tell you. You nailed it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You called it right about the tailings breach. It wasn’t as a result of any storm. I saw a video today with a guy confessing to causing the whole damn thing.”
“You said a video? Where’s this guy? Can we question him?”
“He’s six feet under. He can’t help us any further.”
“Was he a nut-job out for kicks or did he do it for Greene or Maitland?”
“Don’t know. He didn’t give us a link to Greene or Maitland.”
“Drat!”
“Not directly, that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guys who lured him into this mess were the ones who killed him. They’re the same ones who took down Benoit Dromel in Trinidad.”
“Really?”
“The local police are holding one of them. The other two were killed. One by a Canadian cop and the other by one of our guys.”
“Getting anything out of the surviver?”
“He’s singing like a bird. We told him ballistics linked him to the murder of a pensioner they happened to drop in on in Daytona, and that an eyewitness placed him at the scene of the murder of the guy who was shot in Syron Lake. He knows he’s in it up to his neck, so he’s cooperating.”
“So where’s our tie-in to Mahler then?”
“It’s very flimsy, Sarah. This guy doesn’t know who hired them. He only knows that Quinn, the ring leader, had been taking orders from someone in London, England.”
“That’s what you’ve got?”
“Who could it be other than Greene?”
“You’re right,” Cohen said. “It’s flimsy. All just circumstantial.”
“Come on. What about that fight in Monaco that Greene had with Mahler over Syron Lake? It shows strong motive. It’s our link right there.”
Cohen remained silent.
Simmons sighed and kicked off his shoes. He brought his legs up on the bed and leaned his back against the headboard.
“Well, I was afraid to allow myself to go down that path,” he said. “But, I guess I have to face it. All this evidence adds up to little more than a big, fat zero for the Mahler case.”
“Maybe,” Cohen said.
“I feel sure Greene was behind Mahler’s murder and the spill.”
“I’m with you there.”
“It just eats me up to think he could get away with it all.”
“But, Spike, why not try the same tactic with Greene as with the guy who’s afraid he’ll be charged in the murder of the pensioner?”
“We came down hard on Williams with ballistics evidence. In the Mahler case, there’s no smoking gun. The killer made some mistakes, but that hit job was as clean as they come.”
“But there’s enough to lay it thick on Greene. Ask some of the local boys in London to drop in on him for a bit of tough questioning. See where that gets you. He may just trip himself up.”
“Good idea. I should’ve thought of that.”
“I’m a fount of good ideas, Spike. When you need them, you just have to come to the source.”
“Don’t get swell-headed on me now.” Simmons heard chuckling on the line and he cleared his throat. “Don’t forget you have an imperfect record.”
“What imperfect record?”
“You may have got it right about the dam being breached, but you were way off base in trying to pin this on Angela Roseau.”
“Okay, I admit it turns out she has nothing to do with the Mahler case. But I had to explore all possibilities. I was just doing my–”
“I know, just doing your job, as you say. Lucky thing I didn't let you persuade me to take that theory to the director, otherwise we both might have been hitting the street with our resumes by now. Which, by the way, could stil
l happen in my case if I don't get off the phone with you right away and call up London so I can get something to report to the director.”
“Go for it, Spike.”
Chapter 105
Wednesday, March 09
The elevator doors parted and Director Robert Hutton walked toward his office. It was eleven in the morning and he had already been to three meetings with congressmen out for his head. The encounters hadn’t gone well and his face showed it as he passed the desk of a secretary.
“Sorry, Spike,” the secretary said into her headset, “the director is just walking in and he has a briefing as soon as he settles in….”
“Is that Simmons?” Hutton said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Put him through.”
Hutton placed his briefcase on his desk, took off his jacket and threw it on the leather sofa against the wall. He sat and pulled up his chair. He pressed the speakerphone button and clasped his hands before him on the desk.
“What have you got, Simmons?”
“I’m in Florida, sir, and I’ve been up all night with our legal attaché in London. Fortunately, Scotland Yard has been very flexible and accommodating toward us. We have some developments.”
Simmons briefed Hutton on the Florida events, then got to the London follow-up.
“Two Scotland Yard officers went to Greene’s London flat to question him, early this morning. Turned out he’s disappeared. His secretary said she hasn’t seen him in days.”
Hutton grumbled something under his breath.
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“There’s more, sir,” Simmons said, eventually.
A glance at his watch told Hutton that two of his department heads were now sitting outside his office twiddling their thumbs. He twisted his head from side to side to shake out the pain that had lodged itself in his throat and jaws since early that morning.
Run, Girl, Run: A Thriller Page 42