Dennis laughed.
“You’re right. Jesus. At any rate, I knew this bird in London a few years ago that I didn’t tell you about. Seemed just another of those quick romances. She was a feisty Irish kicker. We had a go for a bit but then after I came back to NYC, we naturally drifted apart. She was fifteen years younger than me, and I adored her, but there was always a bit of tension because of my father’s money. She always kept saying she was my bird from the wrong side of the tracks. I told her I didn’t care which choo-choo she rode, as long as she rode me,” Dennis said sarcastically.
“That would make her about forty—not exactly robbing the cradle,” Gantry offered.
“Yeah. I suppose when you get over forty or so, the age difference doesn’t matter anymore, but you would’ve thought she was a teenager, the way she acted. As I always do when I’m in London, I was hunting around for albums or memorabilia; garage sales, antique shops and the like. The old rockers and groupies always needed cash. I found a box of things that a guy claiming to be Jimi Hendrix’s former landlord swore belonged to him, just some clothes and some other junk. That was about three years ago.
“But I remember this one interesting thing —a journal. It had periodic entries, sketches, poems, lyrics, things like that. It looked authentic. I thought the poetry and song lyrics could be valuable. I never did look at it carefully, though. I was just interested because it was his.”
“When I left, I asked her to keep the box with some other stuff I’d picked up, and she said she’d put it in her mum’s attic with some other stuff I had up there. I didn’t think about it anymore until you brought up Brian Jones and Hendrix last week. I could give ’er a ring if she’s still at the same number. Maybe I could ask Fraser’s to pick them up and authenticate the contents.”
“Fraser’s?”
“Right. Fraser was a friend, artist, chemical supplier, and uber-groupie in London years ago. I think he actually lived with some of the Stones. His family now has one of the leading memorabilia stores in London.”
“Might be worth a call, but first let me tell you what’s been going on.”
Gantry spent the next hour filling Dennis in on all the details, including the bug in his apartment. Dennis was stunned at all that had transpired in just a few days. He had a look of concern for his friend.
“This is really serious now,” Dennis said. “I think I’ll make that call to London, maybe see where that bird is.”
In some ways, Gantry was energized about what was unfolding, but in others, he was very anxious, even scared. It was consuming him. It felt just like the old days when they made up the rules as they went along. He felt like he’d been methodically drawn into something much bigger than he’d originally imagined, something out of his control, as if an invisible hand were moving chess pieces and had already thought through all the moves and countermoves. He was just afraid that he might be one of the pawns.
Gantry was fixated on the “courier.” How quickly would they locate this guy?
Alex Jaegar’s Apartment, New York
“Gantry. What the hell is going on down there? Haven’t heard from you in forever. I hope this is going to pan out to what we discussed. I don’t like being left in the dark.”
Alex was in another of his moods. He could swing from gregarious to overbearing in a heartbeat.
“Yeah, I just got back from Quantico and I’m packing for another trek down for our next round. Good progress so far, but I’ll know more in the next few days. Melendez has come aboard. It took some work. I had to lay out all of the clues and really fight like a beggar to get him to see it all.”
Alex interrupted, “Gantry, this is not feeling like its got legs under it, and getting the kind of support you need to get a serious investigation going. Are you sure he’s not just being polite to you?” Alex lectured in a stern professional tone. Daniel nodded in agreement as Alex looked at him.
Polite to me? Gantry thought. That was unlike Alex to make a comment like that.
Gantry thought it best to not to share any information about the English accountant, nor did he tell Alex about Dennis’s possible journal discovery. Instead, he brought Alex up to speed on the whiteboard work and the initial London involvement in general.
“Gantry, it sounds as if this is going to take much longer than we thought. Let’s make a call on this thing in the next day or so. OK?”
Gantry didn’t respond. Alex never questioned his judgment.
“On a separate note, I do have a bit of news for you now.”
“What’s that?”
“Jodi called me.” Gantry’s blood started rising. “She said that you had been trying to reach her.”
“Why would she call you and not me?” Gantry sharply replied.
He instantly was transported back to the confrontation years ago with Alex, when he first found out about the brief affair that Jodi had with Alex. “You son of a bitch!” Gantry kept saying as he flailed away at Alex, almost knocking him unconscious. “How could you!”
Gantry abruptly quit his job at Stone and moved out of the house, having decided to go back to Texas and start his life over.
Jodi had begged him not to leave. But he wouldn’t relent. This was not the first time this had occurred. It wasn’t until he reluctantly met with Alex and he tearfully explained what had happened when they ran into each other that night. Alex pled with Gantry to forgive him. Eventually, Gantry agreed and went back to work.
In a perverse way, it became kind of a sick joke with Gantry, thinking that Jodi drove Alex to come out of the closet.
“She thought you didn’t sound yourself and she was worried,” Alex insisted. He didn’t want to summon up the past either.
Quantico, VA
Gantry arrived back at the motel late Sunday night and hung up six clean shirts, his sport coat and two pairs of jeans. He stuffed his underwear in the dresser and put his mini CD player on the night table. No more scratchy country & western tunes coming out of the decrepit radio next to the bed. It was midnight, but he put in a voice mail to Raphael anyway, telling him he was here and would see him at 6:00 a.m., as they had agreed.
The following morning, Gantry, friendly by now with the Marine gate guards, showed the guard on duty his pass and parked near the BAU building. Melendez met him inside, and the two men adjourned to the conference room next to the lab. Gantry saw that Melendez had coffee set out alongside a plate of pastries.
“Go ahead, have one,” Melendez said, sitting.
“What are they?”
“They’re conchas, amigo,” Melendez said. Gantry had never heard Raphael use a single Spanish word, so amigo and conchas made him laugh.
“What’s in ’em?”
“Jeez, they aren’t poison. Are you on a diet or something? They are just Mexican sweet breads. Lucia made them for us,” Melendez said.
Gantry took a concha and dipped it in his coffee, and Melendez laughed. Then, getting down to business, he said, “Robert Bruce has all the clues, and his analyst has been corresponding with Tanner since we spoke last week. This is our go-or-no-go call. If he doesn’t get on board, we’re done with this.”
Melendez dialed into the video bridge, and Bruce came into view immediately.
“Good morning, Raphael,” Bruce said. His voice came through loud and clear, and his picture was vivid and sharp. “It’s a little early for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” Melendez replied, smiling. Might as well get to it, he thought.
“So…what do you think?” Melendez said.
Bruce stroked his chin and said slowly, as if delaying gratification, “Raphael, I may be crazy…but…I think you’re on to something here.”
Melendez breathed as silent a sigh as he could muster. He glanced over at Gantry in the corner, who gave him a thumbs-up.
“That’s great. I hoped that you would concur,” Melendez said. “Have you thought about how we will handle the jurisdictional issues?”
“Yes. Since Hendrix, Jo
nes, and Ham died in or near London, we will take the lead on those cases. Wilson and McKernan will be yours. We can engage the Police Nationale if we end up pursuing the Morrison case, and you can handle the Joplin case if that comes into play. For now, we start with the first five. How does that sound?”
“Great, exactly what I thought,” Melendez said.
“Perfect,” Bruce said, closing a file he had in front of him.
“Joint H.E.A.T. teams?” Melendez suggested. He and Bruce would need to put together a Homicide Evidence Assessment Team—a physical evidence analyst, a toxicology and autopsy specialist, and maybe a corporate financial analyst.
“Yes, I will have Maxwell contact Tanner to get that coordinated.”
“Absolutely.”
“Robert, how difficult will it be to get into the original files and cold-case evidence boxes? We’ve contacted the Los Angeles and San Francisco PDs, on a preliminary basis, of course, no official requests,” Melendez said. He pictured the whereabouts of the evidence: a dimly lit, grimy warehouse outside London with rows of steel shelves holding the disintegrating cardboard boxes —for years, with lots of English damp to help things along.
Bruce smiled and turned his screen so that Melendez could see a coffee table stacked with boxes.
“Well done, Robert!”
“That’s it, at least for the boxes. We may have more in our system, of course, but we haven’t had time to sort through that. This will be a good start.”
The boxes were labeled Peter Ham, Brian Jones, and Jimi Hendrix with their death dates and the date each investigation was completed—or just back-burnered.
“Raphael, I will have my assistant, Maxwell, put these in an evidence room. We’ll get our initial teams together and schedule a call for tomorrow to review Peter Ham first. He is the most recent and most complete and the one that took both of us from conjecture to, well, to something more. If we can get some momentum on the others, we can add them as well. Make sense?”
“Absolutely,” Melendez answered. “We’ll unpack them together and see what we have.”
“Game on, mate! Of course, you’re free to come over to London again and see it all at first hand. I’d love to take some more of your money. Which will it be?”
“Let’s decide later. What time should we get our Ham team together? How about three-thirty, your time?”
“That works. See you then,” Bruce responded. The monitor went to blue.
As Melendez and Gantry were gathering their materials, the door opened, and Senior Special Agent Weldon Mayflower, Raphael’s boss and head of the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Division walked in.
Despite the fact that they’d worked in the same division for the last eight years, Melendez and Mayflower did not like each other. In fact, Melendez despised the man who seemed to thrive on the enforcement of minutia. Mayflower was beyond “by the book,” as far as Melendez was concerned. He was the most anal—and intensely unlikeable—person Melendez had ever met.
Mayflower wore a uniform: black suit with a too-tight jacket, nondescript tie, and pants pegged a little short. He could have been a salesman at—and was at least a walking advertisement for—Sears and Roebuck, circa 1961.
Melendez never could understand their mutual animosity. At first he thought it was jealousy, but that didn’t make any sense. Mayflower was his boss, was making more money, and had more power—he just couldn’t figure it out.
Mayflower stood in the doorway, arms crossed defensively, shoe tapping like an aggressive fourth-grade English teacher. Melendez knew immediately what was happening. He pulled his shoulders back and stood up straight, forming an invisible Maginot Line between himself and Gantry.
“Who is that?” Mayflower hissed, pointing to Gantry.
“Sir,” Melendez said through gritted teeth, “This is Gantry.”
“Gantry who? Or is that a last name? What the fuck is this man doing inside this secure facility?” he demanded.
“Well, sir, Gantry Elliot, he’s…my consultant.”
“Of what species?”
“Music, sir.”
Mayflower seemed to consider this as he looked Gantry over.
“What the hell are you talking about, Melendez? Are you seeking an even earlier retirement than the one you’re facing?”
“No, sir.”
Turning back to Gantry, he said, “Mr. Elliot, I’m sure you are a music expert. However, you need to turn in your ID card at the gate and be on your way. This isn’t a test lab for music theory.”
Mayflower turned, without another word, and left the room.
“Shit,” Raphael said sitting down. “I think we’re in a real jam now.”
Gantry didn’t answer. He didn’t feel as negative as Raphael because he was used to flying under the radar, and he had something else on his mind right now: his ex-wife. What in the world would she be calling Alex for and not call him back? He assumed it was something personal. He had no way of knowing that, as part of the investigation, Raphael had already put in calls to the SFPD and the LAPD to pull them into the joint efforts.
Melendez said, “I have to get back to my office and review my curriculum for Wednesday.”
Gantry was surprised. Melendez had given no further indication of where he stood on the investigation. He felt all the energy leave the room. But they’d come too far to give up now—they were on the precipice, and he didn’t want to lose this opportunity.
“You better leave now,” Melendez said. “I’ll have to think about this.”
“What am I supposed to do, go back to the motel and cool my heels until I hear from you?”
“Exactly. For now, anyway, unless you want to go back to New York.”
“Christ,” Gantry said angrily. “Look, I know this guy is a jerk, and he’s your boss and all. I get that, but this is too big to just—”
Melendez put his hand on Gantry’s shoulder.
“Just go back to the motel, and I’ll call you. Sit tight. Give me a few hours.”
Instead of going to his room, Gantry decided to take a drive. Once in the car, he headed go to the Hitching Post to have a drink.
The place was almost empty with only two men seated at the bar and another in a booth. Gantry ordered a Bookers neat and began to relax, and as he did, he remembered: the magazine had a state-of-the-art video conferencing center. He’d only been in it a couple of times to play reruns of the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. It was a great room, much better equipped than the one they’d just used in the BAU building. There were four 120-inch hi-def screens, an HD sound system, and all the collaborative technology any investigator could want. It was not secure, but maybe Tanner could connect London and New York through the FBI’s secure network.
His mind started to race. He decided to call Alex now and get him back in the loop.
Gantry walked out to his car and opened his phone.
“Are you here or there?” Alex asked.
“I’m here at Quantico. We’ve had a little snag.”
“About what? Is this thing unraveling?”
“No, nothing like that. But I need to borrow our conferencing facility tomorrow.”
“Huh? What for? Don’t those guys have all that shit?”
“Yes, of course they do, but there’s been a conflict with another case they’re investigating, something very big, and we got bumped.”
“So, what do you want me to do? Any breakthroughs yet?”
“Yes, a breakthrough, that’s a good way of putting it. Raphael and I just had a long video conference with his counterpart in London. We’re going international, and that’s a good thing.”
“Why international?”
“Because Ham, Hendrix, Morrison, and Jones were killed in Europe,” Gantry said. “That makes it their jurisdiction. You know all these law enforcement types are like dogs pissing on trees—gotta define their territories.”
“So now we know for sure they were killed? That’s incredible!”
“No,
I just meant that is where they died. Raphael had a conversation with the go-to guy in London and laid it all out to him. The guy is right on the edge of firing the starter’s pistol, but they need to have another conference tomorrow morning early to wrap it up and lay out a plan.”
“So what’s the hold-up?”
“We can’t use the room here in Quantico tomorrow, and also Raphael’s getting a little heat from his superiors about the time he’s spending on this, so I need to commandeer our facility in New York. You told me to have at it when we started, so I need you to help me on this.”
“Okay, but with one caveat.”
I knew it.
“What is that?”
“I get to sit in on the conference.”
Shit!
“Okay,” Gantry replied. Too many goddamn cooks!
As soon as he hung up, he called Melendez and told him his plan.
Melendez expressed reservations. If he were caught, there would be hell to pay.
After a pause, he said, “Okay. Let’s do it. Fuck it. This case is far too important. If Mayflower causes me problems, I’ll deal with it. Once we get this moving, it will have too much momentum for anyone to stop, especially now that Alex and Rolling Stone are involved. Mayflower is scared of the press. A reporter at the Times crucified him years ago for botching a case by trying to garner publicity for himself instead of following leads a reporter had confidentially given him. He’s been nursing a grudge against the media for eight years.”
At 5:30 the following morning, four men climbed into Melendez’s Crown Victoria. They would have over four hours to discuss the conference call and then, assuming it was a go, they would plan the next stages of their work.
Melendez was driving, Gantry riding shotgun, and Tanner in the back with another analyst who was introduced to Gantry as Moxie. Tanner and Moxie asked question after question, what if after what if: Had he ever heard of any crazed fans or death threats on any of these stars? Would any of the remaining band members be able to help? The more they brainstormed, the more detailed the discussion got.
Bright Midnight Page 13