by Diane Capri
“The bodies were moved.”
CHAPTER 16
Friday, February 11
9:15 a.m.
St. Louis, Missouri
“The thugs?” Otto sat upright. “Moved? Where?”
“Good question.”
She ran a palm across her face and scrunched her eyes closed to think. “Bramall moved two bodies and that SUV? By himself?”
“Dunno.” He paused like he had more to say.
“What?”
“You’re listening, right?”
“What?” she squawked, like an irritated parrot.
“When the locals arrived at the scene, Unit D-6 was empty. Completely empty. To be clear,” he paused, “the drugs and the money are also gone.”
“Where did they go?”
“Still working on that. The Boss’s video missed it somehow. Looks like someone tampered with the cameras.”
More sleep was now totally off the agenda. She took a deep breath and a swig of coffee and walked toward the bathroom to get dressed. “Where’s Bramall?”
“His sedan is parked in a remote lot at the St. Louis airport. But he’s nowhere to be found.”
“So far,” she said.
“He’s in the wind. Along with his client. And the two sisters.”
“So we’re back to square one?” The news was simultaneously energizing and exasperating. She could feel his frustration through the phone, too, along with something else.
“You can’t really think I missed it.” He tisk, tisked.
“Missed what?”
“Give me some credit here,” he mocked, sounding hurt, which was a total ploy.
She figured he meant the flash drive she’d lifted from the shoebox. But she wasn’t about to admit to evidence tampering. Not on a monitored call. Nor was he likely to be more specific, and for the same reason.
Besides, she had nothing to tell him on that score anyway. She couldn’t open the flash drive. She’d tried. The encryption was too sophisticated for her laptop. She could break into the files back at the Detroit Field Office. Which was where she was headed next.
She said, “Where are you?”
“Still in Houston.”
“What are you doing there, again?” Something was up. She could feel it. Call it cop’s intuition or whatever. But Gaspar hadn’t been the same since he’d been shot in Palm Beach. He’d been on leave for too long, and then returned to light duty. He wasn’t bouncing back.
She was worried about him this time. Really worried.
With the change in their assignment from intel gathering to an active manhunt, her concerns were even more justified.
He said, “How about you meet me here and I’ll catch you up?”
She considered the suggestion for a nanosecond. Resources were available to her in Houston. Not to mention how much warmer its February weather was compared to Detroit. She’d been cold all the way to her bones lately and that junket to Palm Beach sunshine a few weeks ago was nothing but a distant memory.
In Houston, she could sit down with Gaspar and find out exactly what was going on with him.
She opened her laptop to search. “Next flight from St. Louis to Houston leaves in three hours. Around two hours flight time. An hour to circle and then on the tarmac waiting for a gate, if history is any teacher. I can be there by late afternoon, if we’re not delayed.”
“I’ll text you the address. And I’ll keep digging for info on all the parties involved in the case,” he paused briefly. “Do we have any actual intel that Reacher is anywhere near this thing?”
She understood what he meant. She cocked her head to think about known facts. “Noble believes Reacher may know where the sisters are. Which suggests Reacher is keeping in touch with them, perhaps.”
“Do you trust Noble?”
“No reason not to.”
“So far. That you’re aware of.”
“Noble is DEA, and the guy knows way more about heroin than we do. He’s credible enough that the Boss is worried about all this. Which is why we are where we are.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I’d bet a beer that it’s possible Reacher’s around somewhere.”
Gaspar’s tone turned deadly serious. “But you haven’t seen him, or heard from him, or even smelled him, right?”
“Right.” She smiled. She believed she’d smelled Reacher in the past. Gaspar had never accepted her olfactory senses as accurate.
“And you would tell me if you had seen him or heard from him or smelled him, right?”
“Of course.” She meant it. But his skepticism was justified. She’d held things back from him before. She’d probably do so again. He knew it. She knew he knew. Which changed nothing.
His voice was low, quiet, all trace of teasing gone. “You think he’s mellowed somehow, Kim. But you’re wrong.”
He was still talking about Reacher. He could have been warning her about the Boss. She didn’t argue, but she didn’t agree, either.
He said, “We don’t have enough intel and what we do know has more holes than Swiss cheese. We can’t say who our friends are at the moment.”
“Agreed.” She didn’t promise anything. Because she needed flexibility. She had no idea what might happen next.
She changed the subject. “The Boss knows more than he’s telling us.”
“So what else is new?”
“How did he know I’d find Bramall at the storage unit? Surveillance of some kind, right?”
“Likely. And not unusual. Bramall drove from Chicago in his personal sedan. He probably had a cell phone on him,” Gaspar said.
She replied, “Which means the boss could trace him, sure. He’d know where Bramall came from. The direction he was traveling. But he couldn’t predict Bramall’s destination if he had nothing but tracking devices.”
Gaspar sighed. “So his crystal ball is better than yours. Or he’s a good guesser.”
“I’m going with good guesser,” she said, not kidding.
“Really? How unlike you.”
She laughed. “Okay, how about educated guesser.”
“Meaning what?”
“I think he was tracking Bramall initially. But then, once he saw the general direction Bramall was headed, made an educated guess about the destination.”
“That storage unit is near a busy regional airport. There’s a lot of other places in the general vicinity Bramall could have been headed.” Gaspar gave the situation a couple of beats. “It’s more likely the Boss has some inside intel he’s not sharing.”
“And what would that be?”
“He’s been on this less than twenty-four hours. But he knew a few names and dates, and he had access to Noble’s DEA investigation files.”
“Right.” She waited.
“My guess? He found something in Noble’s files that connected the Chicago mobster, Big Mike Bavolsky, to Unit D-6. Bramall is based in Chicago. Mackenzie is based in Chicago. Lots of Chicago connections going on. The Boss probably made the relatively short leap from one to the other.” His phone clicked to signal another call. “I’ve gotta go. We’ll talk when you get here.”
After he hung up, she sipped her coffee and thought about the sequence of events. The Boss had sent her to St. Louis within a few moments of when Noble was called to Lake Forest. The timing was suspect.
Which probably meant the Boss sent Noble in the opposite direction from the drugs and cash stored in Unit D-6.
The only reason the Boss would bother had to be Reacher.
Gaspar must have already come to the same conclusion, and he was clear-eyed about Reacher. As far as Gaspar was concerned, Reacher was a dangerous vigilante. Simple as that.
As it happened, Otto agreed.
But Reacher was more complicated. Dangerous vigilante wasn’t the only way she’d describe him.
It was only the least terrifying.
CHAPTER 17
Friday, February 11
10:15 a.m.
St. Louis, Missouri
&n
bsp; She’d napped, showered, dressed, made a couple of phone calls, used the TV checkout option, and was on her way out the door of her room when her phone rang. She checked the caller ID. “Otto here. What’s up, Noble?”
“I promised you a call when I had something to report. Which I’d hoped would happen before now. But we’re still at the crime scene in Lake Forest.” He paused for a breath. “Things are going a bit more slowly than I expected.”
“What do you know?”
“Not much. Victim ID is proving problematic. The body was found in the Mackenzie home. More specifically, in the bedroom Rose Sanderson was using. Made sense to assume the victim was Rose, although the sisters are twins so it could be either one.”
“Okay. And it’s not Rose?”
“We still don’t know. The body’s been removed to the morgue from the Mackenzie home. DNA will take a while.”
“Fingerprints are better, anyway. Identical twins will have identical DNA, but not identical fingerprints. Sanderson’s in the databases for sure. All Army personnel are printed, and DNA swabbed these days.”
“You’d think so,” Noble sighed. “Problem is, the victim doesn’t have any usable fingerprints. Which, as you know, is odd but not freakish. It happens.”
“Did you check with the Army? If Rose had fingerprints, you know the victim’s not likely to be her, right?”
“Unless her fingerprints were altered after her discharge, Rose’s prints should be in the system. And we’re still checking. It’s not as easy to get data like that about an inactive soldier, believe it or not,” he replied.
“Oh, I believe it. Remember me? I’m the one completing the background check on a guy who’s fallen off the face of the earth.” She paused. “What about Jane? Was she on the known traveler list? Or registered with the global reentry plan? She’d have had to leave fingerprints for that if nothing else.”
“Working on it, Otto. These things don’t happen as quickly as you see on TV, you know. Procedures need to be followed. The scene is taking a while to process. This is a monstrously big house,” he replied.
“So you just called to tell me you have nothing to tell me?” she asked.
“Not exactly. This thing is getting more complicated. I’m not sure where it’s going. But I need to find Reacher more urgently now. How about we work together on that?”
“I already have a partner.”
“Not the way I’ve heard it,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Scuttlebutt is that Gaspar’s on his way out. He should have been out a few years ago when he was wounded on the job. But they made him a charity case and kept him on a desk because the bosses felt guilty.”
Otto couldn’t argue about Gaspar’s history. Partly because she didn’t know anything more. And, as he would have said, it was what it was. “What’s your point?”
“Since he teamed up with you, he’s been shot twice more. He’s still not cleared for active duty. Nor will he be. And he’s got a new baby to go with the crew he already had. A stay-at-home wife, too.” Noble paused again and took a deep breath she could hear across the miles. “Come on, Otto. Use your head. Exactly how far up the priority list do you think finding Reacher is for a guy in Gaspar’s situation?”
“Tread carefully there,” she said quietly, but her nostrils flared, and her face warmed with anger. Gaspar had worked through the pain. He’d taken gunfire, some of which was meant for her. He was due some loyalty and respect. If the Boy Detective didn’t understand that, she didn’t give a damn about him and never would.
Noble said, “Okay. Look at it this way, then. Exactly how much help do you think Gaspar will be if you do find Reacher? Are you willing to take the weight for whatever happens because you can’t rely on him?”
She put cold, hard steel in her voice when she replied, “What do you want, Noble? You’re suggesting we can’t rely on Gaspar, but we can all rely on you? Is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“Go to hell.” She hung up, breathing heavily. If he’d been standing in front of her, she’d have punched him hard in the gut. Hard enough to double him and make him feel it next week. Gaspar was twice the man Kirk Noble would ever be. What a jackass.
She retrieved her bag and headed out. Within thirty minutes, she’d stashed her bags in the trunk of her rental car and was on the road. The short drive to U Store Stuff felt familiar on the third trip, although daylight revealed squalor the darkness had concealed. Dirty snow was piled on the shoulders of the divided highway, but the pavement was clear and dry.
The U Store Stuff lot had been dark and quiet last time, but now she noticed papers, empty cups, plastic lids, paper bags, and other trash collecting along the fence. A few vehicles were scattered among the buildings. Men and women dressed in winter coats and boots moved boxes and furniture and countless other items into individual storage units. A few units were being emptied, too.
She pulled into the drive at the end of a long line of vehicles. One by one, they advanced to the keypad, punched in their codes, and drove through the gate. A man stood by the gate passing out flyers and pointing toward the west end of the lot where a group had already gathered.
Otto’s rental inched up each time a vehicle passed through the gate until she reached the keypad. She punched in the same code she’d used before and rolled up to the man with the flyers.
“We had five auctions today, but you’ve missed three already. The next auction is Unit JJ 23.” He offered one of the flyers to her before he waved westward. “Follow the vehicles headed that way. Park as close as you can. The auctioneer will direct you.”
She nodded and followed the traffic, but she left the line and turned into the alley between Buildings D and E. She approached D-6, driving slowly. Crime scene techs would have been long gone by now. There hadn’t been much to process since the bodies and the drugs were missing. A few bullets, a few more bullet holes. That was about it. Workers were already on the scene repairing the brick that had been damaged by the shotgun blasts.
A cleaning crew was inside the empty unit, scrubbing blood stains from the concrete with a power washer. Red-tinged water circled the floor and drained into a covered hole in the center. Unit D-6 would be ready for the next customer by Monday as if nothing had happened.
Otto drove the length of the alley and pulled around the building. She parked the rental and got out. Her footprints were visible in the snow, as were the tire tracks she and Bramall had left last night. She saw no huge boot prints large enough for Reacher. She looked to her left and then to her right. Storage buildings as far as she could see in both directions.
She’d spent a few minutes online this morning at the U Store Stuff website. This one was the company’s largest location. The sitemap showed thirty-four buildings, each with at least five units, ranging in sizes from five-by-five to thirty-by-thirty, for a total of 264 units. Some were big enough to hold vehicles of all kinds, everything from motorcycles to RVs. A few could store the contents of an entire household.
When customers failed to pay the rent, their belongings were sold as is, where is, no questions, no exceptions. Auctions were held almost every day between nine and one, the website said. Buyers were told to bring cash. No checks. No credit. All items required to be removed the day of purchase. “Bring your truck,” the website said. “Move it or lose it. No refunds.”
The Boss’s phone vibrated in her pocket.
CHAPTER 18
Friday, February 11
11:25 a.m.
St. Louis, Missouri
She wasted no time on greetings. “When you ordered me to leave the U Store Stuff lot this morning, I thought you had cops on the way. What did they do, take a vacation en route?”
“Bramall made a call. You were standing right there. What would you have had me do? Leave you to try to explain what the hell you were doing when the cruisers showed up?”
“So you didn’t have ears on his call?”
“Not at the time
. He was using a burner. It was a reasonable assumption that he’d called the locals to report two deaths and a drug trafficking ring, don’t you think?”
She ran a hand over her smoothed hair. “Why did you stop watching him after you sent me out of here?”
“What makes you think I stopped?”
She held onto her patience, but barely. “Then you saw him move the bodies.”
He grunted. “Bramall retired from the FBI. He didn’t leave his training on the hat rack on the way out.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he knew where the cameras were located out there and how to avoid them.”
“You blew it. You lost him.”
“Not immediately.” He blew out a long stream of exasperated air. “The phone call was to an accomplice. After you left, the accomplice didn’t show up for six minutes.”
“And then?”
“All we have on the video is an empty driveway, a closed garage door, and a few shadows. Exactly like the images we have from before you arrived.”
“He looped the video feed,” she said, wondering exactly how he managed to do that without the Boss noticing. Which didn’t matter, really, except that she might want to try it herself sometime.
“He and his accomplice intended to clean out Unit D-6 and he didn’t want to be recorded while they did it,” the Boss sounded supremely annoyed, which was unusual, too.
“Bramall is one of us. Why would he want to do that?”
“Because he’d just killed two wise guys,” he replied. “Mob bosses don’t forgive. They exact an eye for an eye.”
“They’d need to find out about it first. Who would have told Big Mike so quickly? Maybe he would have worried when his guys didn’t show up back in Chicago, but even that would have taken a few hours.”
“True.”
“And the shooting was justified. Which means Bramall wouldn’t have been arrested. He’d have been on his way pretty quickly.” She paused. “So Bramall’s actions after he killed those thugs can’t be explained by Bavolsky. Or at least, Bavolsky’s not all of it.”