Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  She smiled absentmindedly, thinking of Carrillo and his plan to use Lily Pearson as leverage. She had to brief SAC Pearson, even if it was almost nine. It was his daughter, and that made everything they did next his call. Nevertheless, did they know everything there was to know about the incoming shipment and the smugglers’ plan? It seemed too simple, too easy, but once the Colombians set their eyes on a fed’s family, nothing was simple anymore.

  “Can you stay on Carrillo a while longer?” she asked Michowsky, shooting him a critical gaze, observing how tired he looked in yesterday’s wrinkled and smelly clothes. He’d been at it for almost forty-eight hours, and she was asking him for more.

  “I’ll take the night shift,” Fradella offered, “and you’ll get some shuteye,” he added, looking at Michowsky. “You do what you’ve got to do,” he then said, looking at Tess.

  “Uh-huh,” she acknowledged, wolfing down the rest of the fries on her plate. “I’ll get things moving on the shipment issue, then go back to the precinct. The night’s still young, and something tells me the Taker of Lives isn’t taking the day off today.”

  Her phone rang, and she looked at the caller ID with a sense of foreboding. “It’s Donovan,” she announced, then took the call on speaker. “Hey, D, what have you got?”

  “They’re releasing Koester,” he announced impassibly. “He’s alibied out, rock solid, for the night Estelle was attacked. There wasn’t any trace of high-tech stuff on his computer.”

  “Yeah, I expected that. What else?”

  “The streaming site just went live again,” D said, exasperation seeping in his voice. “He’s announcing the show will start shortly.”

  “What’s it saying, exactly?” she asked.

  “It says, ‘We’re about to begin, with you in charge. Get ready to vote for your favorite means of entertainment.’ That’s it.”

  “Okay, call me the moment that changes. We need to know what the hell he’s planning to do this time.”

  “Or what he’s already done,” Fradella added.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she replied, frowning. “Where are we with creating the short list of potential targets?”

  “Almost there,” Donovan replied. “For every iteration of the model I’m building, I run simulations, and I expect it to return the victims he’s already attacked at the top of the list. That’s how I validate the model. I believe we’re close, but I still need a little more time.”

  “We don’t have a little more time, Donovan,” she snapped, turning heads in the bar and earning herself a disapproving glance from Cat. “We need to know who he’ll attack next.”

  Silence ensued, the air dead, as if the conversation had ended.

  “I’m sorry, D,” she said, lowering her voice. “I know how hard you’re trying.”

  “Yeah,” he eventually replied dryly, “or so you say.”

  “No, I mean it. You deserve better.”

  He just hung up, leaving her frustrated and ashamed. They were all tired, but that was no excuse. She drank some lemonade to quench her thirst and barely felt its taste.

  Michowsky and Fradella stood, ready to go. Fradella handed her his car keys.

  “We’ll swing by the precinct and get another car,” he said, then squeezed her shoulder briefly. “Take care, all right?”

  The moment they were gone, Cat took Fradella’s seat across the table from her.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked in a low, understanding voice.

  She sighed, looking at his creased face, at the kindness in his eyes. There wasn’t enough time to explain everything that was wrong in her life, no matter how much she wished she could take that time and just unload her burden for a while.

  “I don’t know how he’s doing it,” she said instead. “This… bad guy I’m trying to catch, he seems to always know ahead of time what people will do, with precision.”

  Cat grinned. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t that what you do? Know ahead of time what people will do? Anticipate the scumbag’s next move?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not like me,” she replied. “He’s playing everyone; he organizes these votes but knows ahead of time what people will vote for and how many.”

  “What’s so unexpected about that?” he asked, leaning closer to her across the table. “If I’d have these folks here, in the bar, vote for their favorite beer, do you think the result would be a surprise for me? I see what they drink every day. It’s right there, in front of me.”

  She tilted her head, looking at Cat, while an uneven smile stretched the corner of her lips. Could it be that simple?

  She stood and put a smooch on the man’s cheek. “Cat, you’re amazing.”

  39

  Scenarios

  Tess drove up and down the street, slowly, observing, then pulled in at the curb in front of SAC Pearson’s house and looked around one more time. No one seemed to have the house under surveillance. She couldn’t see any parked vehicles with the driver waiting inside, anywhere on the entire street.

  Then she looked at the Pearson residence windows, all shrouded in darkness, trying to ascertain whether everyone had already gone to bed, or if the windows were covered with completely opaque draperies. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noticed a TV flicker coming from one of the lower-level windows, just a sliver of it, barely visible along the center of the window, where the curtain panels should’ve overlapped.

  She texted Pearson and he appeared within moments, tying a colorful bathrobe with a double knot and walking briskly toward the Explorer in oversized house slippers. Then he opened the passenger door but didn’t climb inside.

  “Come on in, Winnett, what the hell.”

  “No, sir, I don’t think that’s wise,” she replied, barely above a whisper.

  Maybe it was her imagination or the dim ceiling light in the SUV, but it seemed Pearson turned paler. He climbed inside and closed the door, then turned to her with a stern look on his face. “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a shipment of Colombian drugs heading into port on Monday,” she said, continuing to keep her voice down, just in case. “About a hundred million dollars’ worth of the stuff.”

  He nodded once, slowly, while a deep frown ridged his forehead. “Is this the case you’re working on, the evolving serial killer? I’m not sure I follow.”

  “No, sir, this is the other case… the green folder.”

  His jaw slacked for a brief moment. “Carrillo?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how’s my daughter connected to all this?”

  “She’s their insurance policy, in case they get heat from anyone.”

  His chin trembled in anger; he pressed his lips together and clenched his fists, then appeared to make an effort to control himself. “This is ridiculous. What do they think I could do if the Coast Guard inspects their cargo?”

  “Make calls, invent some undercover operation that supersedes their seizure, that kind of thing.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he replied, raising his voice a little.

  She nodded once. “They don’t know that. They watch a few episodes of Narcos and believe they’re smart.”

  “Do you have all the information?”

  “We have the date and the approximate time the coke will be transferred on a Miami-registered boat, the name of that boat, and the names of several players. We need to seize that shipment, sir.”

  He shot her an angry glare that softened within a moment. “He’s going to have my daughter… Do you realize that? Jeez, Winnett, what the hell are we doing?”

  “You taught me, sir,” she replied calmly, “many years ago, when I was a rookie. You said, ‘Keep your cool and go over the scenarios, one by one. Use the one you hate the least.’ That’s what we’re going to do.” She paused for a moment, letting it sink in. “There are two boats in play. The Hermosa, a thirty-four-foot center console, reserved for Carrillo’s fishing
trip with Lily.” As she spoke, she showed him the images attached to an email sent by Michowsky earlier. “Then there’s the Reina del Mar, a forty-three-foot, high-speed, fishing yacht equipped with five, four-hundred, horsepower engines. This boat will take over the drugs somewhere at sea from a Colombian vessel and head into port with the crowds returning from Memorial Day activities on the water. That’s their plan.”

  “It pains me to say it, but it isn’t half bad,” Pearson muttered. “Coast Guard won’t know what to inspect first in so much traffic. Nevertheless, I can’t leave my daughter in their hands, Winnett, you know I can’t.”

  “If something happens, and she can’t board the Hermosa as planned, they’ll know something’s off and they’ll disappear, make plans for another day, another way. We won’t be able to make the bust.”

  “No, Winnett, no. I can’t,” he muttered, lowering his head. “There’s a line I’ll never cross.”

  “What if we trail the Hermosa from a distance? Put satellite eyes on them?”

  “How long does it take to put a bullet through someone’s head?” he snapped, and his raised voice resonated powerfully in the closed confinement of the vehicle.

  She waited for a moment, thinking the question might be rhetorical, an opening of a statement he needed to make. He looked at her intently, waiting for an answer.

  “Seconds,” she replied calmly. “Even less.”

  “Can you be on that boat within seconds, to stop the bullet from Carrillo’s weapon?”

  She sighed, a long breath loaded with frustration. He was right, except for one detail.

  “Why would he keep her at gunpoint?” she asked. “He’s got her as leverage, ready to use however many different times they want to do this.”

  “Do you actually believe this could work?” Pearson asked. “Do you think it’s a risk worth taking?”

  “No… just going through the scenarios I really hate,” she admitted after a while. No one had the right to ask the man to put his daughter’s life on the line for a drug bust. “The people on the Reina might call Carrillo by sat phone the moment Coast Guard approaches it, and then it would be too late to hope we get to Lily on time. He wouldn’t immediately shoot her, because he needs the leverage, but hostage situations at sea are very difficult to control.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off hers but didn’t argue anymore. There was no need; she was arguing his point for him. She hated to admit it, but leaving Lily in Carrillo’s hands for the Monday fishing trip was not an option. She couldn’t think of one single scenario that ended well.

  “Now give me an alternative that you hate less, Winnett. One that keeps my daughter out of harm’s way, but still gets us those damn drugs.”

  “Could you tell Lily what’s going on? Could she handle it?”

  “She’s desperately in love with Carrillo and trusts me less and less since she sensed I’m against their relationship. I was quite vocal expressing my opinion of him; I didn’t pull any punches.” He ran his hand over his shiny scalp once or twice, troubled. “If I were to bring her in on this, the first thing she’d do is call Carrillo to confront him.”

  “And we lose the shipment, everything. We won’t have a single piece of evidence, just hearsay.”

  “Right,” he agreed. “I hate this scenario way too much to use it. What else have you got?”

  She started thinking about different things she could do, some of them really outside the procedural box, not necessarily easy to share or explain to a ranking federal agent like Pearson. Then she had an interesting idea, more like a hunch, and a tiny smile fluttered on her lips.

  “What if Carrillo were to cancel the fishing trip, be otherwise engaged the day after tomorrow?”

  Pearson’s eyes lit up. “That would work, admitting you can pull that off from the inside of the drug-smuggling organization.”

  Tess’s smile bloomed into a full grin. “I’ll get busy then.”

  “Do I need to know?” Pearson asked, his hand on the door handle.

  “It’s better if you don’t, sir,” Tess replied. “Have a good night.”

  She drove off, leaving Pearson at the curb looking at her with a dazzled yet hopeful expression on his face. She floored it as soon as she exited the residential neighborhood and went straight for the interstate.

  When her phone rang, she expected to see Michowsky or Fradella’s number on the car display, or Donovan’s, given the late hour, but it was a number she didn’t recognize.

  “Winnett,” she said, as soon as she accepted the call.

  “This is Kurt Briggs, Deanna’s fiancé,” the man said.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Briggs. What can I do for you?”

  “I… managed to watch that video,” Kurt said, his voice breaking under the load of pain and anger. “The man’s gait, the way he handled himself, I believe I’ve seen that exact gait before. It seems very familiar.”

  “Who did you recognize?” Tess asked.

  “That’s exactly the damn problem, Agent Winnett,” he said, sounding upset with himself. “I can’t remember. All I know is that I’ve seen that gait before, and that means I know what to do.”

  “This is very helpful,” Tess replied. “It confirms the killer was part of Deanna’s entourage. I strongly suggest you don’t get involved in any way beyond this point.”

  “I will invite all the people Deanna and I knew, one by one without exceptions, to dinner, lunch, drinks, or whatever they’ll accept, and when I see that gait again, I’ll know.”

  “Mr. Briggs, why don’t you let us do our job? Approaching the killer can be dangerous. He won’t hesitate, while you might tip your hand. You might make him disappear.”

  “Agent Winnett, I gamble with millions of dollars every day and I don’t break a sweat. I can hold my own.”

  “Money doesn’t want to kill you, Mr. Briggs, nor did it murder your fiancée.”

  “I’ll be fine, ma’am, I promise you that. I won’t do a thing; just buy him lunch, let him express his sympathies, then once I know who it was, I’ll walk away and call you.”

  “All right, but promise me this: before you start inviting people, make a list of everyone you and Deanna both knew, and share that with me. As soon as you can, please.”

  He hesitated for a long moment, then replied dryly. “Okay, I will.” Then he hung up, leaving Tess to wonder if it could be that simple.

  40

  A Favor

  Tess pulled over at the curb in front of the Bartlett residence, making the bodyguard standing in front of the door straighten his posture. He was a tall guy, probably six-three, all muscle and attitude. He wore a jacket at least two numbers too large, to accommodate the size of his biceps and the double harness holster he was wearing nonchalantly. His bare scalp shone in the moonlight, and Tess wondered if he shaved his head every morning, or if he was already bald at his young age.

  She approached, showing her badge. “Special Agent Tess Winnett to see Mr. Bartlett, please.”

  “Do you have an appointment? It’s late.”

  “Now, please,” she said firmly.

  He spoke briefly into the radio, not taking his eyes off her, as if she were the enemy. A moment later, the door opened, and Sidney Bartlett walked outside.

  “Agent Winnett,” he greeted her, “I’ve been expecting your call for a while.”

  She looked intently at the bodyguard, then at Bartlett, but Bartlett didn’t react. She shrugged and turned to leave. “Too bad the condition of your porch has changed so much since we last spoke.”

  Bartlett turned toward the bodyguard and made a quick dismissive gesture with his head. The muscle obeyed promptly, disappearing inside the house without a single word.

  “Better,” Tess said, “thank you.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it,” Bartlett said. “Who killed my daughter?”

  “I promise you’ll be the first to know when we know, and we are getting close to finding out,” she said, raising her hands to pacify Bartlett, whose exp
ression had swiftly turned to intense disappointment. “I’m here to ask for your assistance to make that happen sooner.”

  “Anything,” he replied coldly.

  “There’s a certain man who, um, should be assigned to take care of some other business over the next few days,” she said, pretending she didn’t notice Bartlett’s raised eyebrow. “We keep stumbling into him and he’s slowing our investigation.”

  “Is he related to the investigation? A suspect?”

  “Oh, no, absolutely not,” she replied, underlining her response with a hand gesture. “Only he keeps some of our key people busy with his antics, instead of letting me have full access to the team and get them to focus entirely on your daughter’s case.”

  Bartlett frowned. “What exactly would you like me to do, Agent Winnett?”

  “If he could be taken out of the picture for a couple of days, say… reassigned, maybe, that would work perfectly for me. I don’t believe the investigation will take more than that. We’re close.”

  “And when exactly would you like this man to be busy elsewhere?” Bartlett asked calmly, and Tess felt a cold shiver down her spine. Was she putting out a contract on Carrillo? She definitely hoped not; she’d better make damn sure she wasn’t.

  She hesitated one more moment, thinking hard. Would telling Bartlett about Carrillo jeopardize the drug bust? She didn’t believe so… Law enforcement didn’t ask for smugglers to be reassigned if they were under suspicion; they just busted them or hung a tail on them until the bust could happen. She was ninety-nine percent sure the drug delivery would go as planned, only without Carrillo in play.

  “Tomorrow he can still do whatever he wants, but Monday morning he should already be out of our way, if you get my drift. On Monday, I need that team to be laser-focused, Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Absolutely,” Bartlett replied. “Consider him reassigned.”