“Where the hell are you, and what’s going on?”
“I’m really not in a position to talk.” Gantry’s eyes were darting from side to side.
“Plane,” Dennis growled.
“C-Can you get a private plane to pick us up in Birmingham? We will be there within the hour. I need your help,” Gantry pleaded.
“Okay. Go to the Eurojet terminal there. That’s who I use,” Alex replied. “We’ll call them now and tell them you’re coming. Let me know when you are in the plane and safe.”
Jaeger disconnected, then punched in Melendez’s number.
“I just got a call from Gantry.”
“Where is he? We haven’t been able to get in contact with him, and they aren’t in their hotel.”
“They are on a train to Birmingham and he just asked to get them a plane to get them out of there as soon as possible. He said that someone was after them, and he sounded very scared. Said he couldn’t talk. I am arranging for Eurojet to fly them home. It’ll be a G-5. They will be there within the hour.”
“Nothing more?” Melendez asked.
“No. What the hell is—”
“Okay, I’ll notify Scotland Yard. Let me know if you hear from him again.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jaeger received confirmation from Eurojet: the plane would be fueled and ready to go within the hour.
Alex’s assistant softly knocked on his door.
“Mr. Jaeger, the London office just called and said they got a package addressed to you earlier today.”
“Yes. So what?” he replied, a little irritated.
“Well, the reason they called…The package was from Buddy Holly, Useless, Texas,” she replied.
Alex jumped up. “Get them on the phone immediately.”
In minutes, he was on the phone with security in the London office.
“Please open the package and tell me what’s in it,” Alex said.
“Yes, sir.”
Alex heard the rustling of paper.
“It is a red leather journal. Looks pretty worn.”
“Shit, the Hendrix journal,” Alex exclaimed. “I want you to have someone take it to Scotland Yard immediately and deliver it to Inspector Robert Bruce. Immediately!”
“Yes, sir. We’ll leave right now.”
FBI Headquarters
Quantico, VA
“Robert, let’s get the team on this now. This has escalated quickly,” Melendez said.
Within twenty minutes, the full international team was on a video call.
“Is everyone on?” asked Melendez. “Good. As many of you are aware, the case has taken a number of unexpected turns. We all anticipated that we were dealing with something far more sophisticated than any of us originally thought. That is now confirmed. Angus Hislop, the source of the clues and the creator of the labyrinth of bank accounts and companies, is believed dead. He was shot, execution style, at close range with a .22 caliber pistol.
“Before he was killed, he sent his records to the Rolling Stone offices. As many of you are aware, they have proven key in establishing an offshore flow of funds and a tax-fraud scheme that implicated Brigid Greely. Hours ago, Greely was shot by a sharpshooter as she was turning herself in for protective custody.”
Gasps and even cries filled the room in response to the devastating facts that were thrown out like machine-gun fire.
“This is what we know so far. I am in Washington with the pickup team, and we are just about to go through Greely’s belongings,” Melendez explained.
“But one more thing: Alex Jaeger received a call from Gantry Elliot asking if he and Dennis Briganty could be flown privately out of Birmingham. He said they were being followed. We should get confirmation shortly that they are at the terminal.”
Bruce said, “Raphael, before you continue, I just received a package from the security office at Rolling Stone.”
Bruce opened the cover and began to skim through it.
“It’s an old journal,” he said. “The envelope it came in was addressed to Alex Jaeger from Buddy Holly, Useless, Texas.”
“That’s from Gantry!” Jodi shouted.
“It’s the Hendrix journal,” Moxie said. “There was something in there that we picked up on Gantry’s video monitor before it gave out. He was focused on it.”
“Robert, open the journal and see if you can find what could have made Gantry so nervous,” Melendez said.
“It was the pages that looked like there was something spilled on them,” Moxie said.
“Let’s see,” Bruce said.
He read aloud from Hendrix’s own hand:
Met my shrink, Dr. Burnham, twice this week. Having trouble sleeping. Am beginning to get scared. They sent that goon down again— pushed me around a little. Asked if I wanted to end up like Jones. Said they own me, and I’m not going anywhere.
Bruce stopped. “It’s difficult to read past this. There are stains on the page.”
“Any name mentioned?” Melendez asked.
“Don’t see anything, Raphael. Sorry.”
“Tanner, can we see the age-progression work done on the sketch we got with Anne Herriot?”
The digitally enhanced artist’s rendition, age-progressed, appeared on the screen.
“Red hair? Could this be the same guy?” Melendez asked.
Suddenly Jodi said, “That looks a little like Gantry’s friend Dennis, at least the Dennis I remember from about eight years ago. Red hair, thin face, piercing eyes—even that bump on his nose.”
“Are you sure, Detective?” Melendez asked.
“Well, no, sir, I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” she responded.
“Okay, team. Keep your schedules clear. This is live and hot!” Melendez instructed.
“That’s all that’s in her purse? Two phones, cosmetics, and a book on integrative health?” Melendez asked. “She must have held back until she had a deal. Get to her condo and office and grab her hard drives. Also get all her pictures to our advanced photo analytics guys to do a comprehensive facial recognition match. I want a dump of the calls on both phones.”
“Sir, one of these is a burner phone,” the agent pointed out.
“Let me see it.” He looked at the outgoing calls she had made.
“Los Angeles number…New York number…New York number…another New York number, then…a foreign number.”
“I’ll have them researched for you immediately.”
“No need, I’m going to go old school,” Melendez replied.
He pressed redial for the first number.
“Thank you for calling Warner Brothers. Mr. O’Brian’s office.”
Melendez disconnected, then punched redial on the next number.
No answer. He tried the next New York Number.
“Sony Music, how can I help you?”
He disconnected and moved to the next New York number.
“Dusty Records. If we don’t have it, it doesn’t exist. Please leave a message.”
Melendez hesitated. The name rang a bell, but too faintly. He moved on.
The foreign number did not answer.
A few minutes later, “Sir, I just looked it up. That last number has a Caribbean exchange, seven-five-eight. Looks like a Saint Lucia country code.”
“Got it.”
“…And Sir, the unanswered New York number belongs to Daniel Culain.”
“Bring him in for questioning,” a surprised Melendez instructed.
Melendez needed to think. He went into a darkened office and closed his eyes to help him concentrate as he began to reconstruct the events of the last seventy-two hours. He needed to become Brigid Greely, much like a method actor or a novelist who simultaneously creates and inhabits his characters’ thoughts and behaviors.
Breathing slowly, he cleared his mind. He then posed the question, imagining Greely with the phone in her hand, who would she call?
All the advanced analytics and sophisticated algorithms melted away, as he inhaled deeply, letting
his thoughts rise like smoke. His focus and breathing narrowed.
Suddenly he stood up and turned on the light switch: The smallest details…the smallest details.
He called Tanner and then patched in Jodi Randolph.
“Detective Randolph, what is the name of Briganty’s record store in New York?”
“Dusty Records.”
“That caller ID appeared in Greely’s burner phone over the last seventy-two hours.”
“Oh my God,” Jodi gasped.
“Okay, Tanner, confirm with Herriot that this is the guy.”
“Right,” Tanner said. “Let me find a current picture. Also check if there is a reception photo at Rolling Stone.”
Melendez could see the puzzle pieces fitting together, converging from different directions at once.
“Yes, hang on… Detective Randolph, we need to compare Dennis Briganty’s fingerprints to the ones on the inhaler as soon as you can. Tanner, get an agent to his store and get some prints, pronto. And, let’s get that to London as well. They have been looking at bank videos near St. Albans Pharmacy from the time of the murders. Compare Briganty to the alias also. And where the hell is that jet?
“Detective Randolph, do you have any idea where Dennis lived in London?”
“I don’t remember him ever mentioning exactly where he lived…somewhere in the West End, maybe? He did talk a lot about a café he liked on Grosvenor Square; it was a place he hung out at with some local music people.”
“Tanner, get them that info now,” Melendez ordered.
The agent took high-resolution photos of the Briganty prints from his store on Bleecker Street and sent them immediately to the forensics lab in Quantico.
SCU compared the Briganty progression picture to photos for every branch within a two-mile radius of Grosvenor Square for dates preceding the Jones, Hendrix, and Ham murders. They identified what possibly looked like a much younger Briganty twice in the teller line and once at the ATM a week before the murders. The man was thin, red-headed and tall. The Photo Forensics group was doing a facial recognition run to confirm that it was the same person.
Anne Herriot was shown the original sketch and the progression photograph of what Briganty would look like now. She positively identified him as the man she had seen.
Within two hours, Tanner was finished.
“Boss, we’ve completed our digital examination of the fingerprints of Dennis Briganty and the two inhalers, and we have a match, sir. They are from the same person. No question. We also matched a Rolling Stone reception desk photo of Dennis Briganty to Duluhan.”
“Are you absolutely certain?”
“One hundred percent.”
“He’s the killer,” Melendez said.
Birmingham Airport, UK
By the time Scotland Yard arrived, Gantry and Dennis had already taken off.
“Yes, I remember them,” the operator explained. “They boarded and flew out on flight 2019 a little while ago. The flight plan destination is Teterboro, New Jersey.”
Melendez felt that, for the moment at least, he could breathe. He got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. He put Tanner on the task of contacting the executive airline and Jaeger to see if they could be patched in to the pilot.
A few minutes later, Melendez’s cell phone rang.
“Agent Melendez, Alex Jaeger here. Gantry never showed up at the Eurojet terminal. The plane I arranged is still waiting,” Jaeger reported.
“But I just got confirmation that they got on a plane together and took off.”
“Maybe so, but it wasn’t the one I arranged for them.”
“Then what plane did they get on?”
“I don’t know. Oh my God, someone got to them!” Alex said. “We’ve got to track that plane.”
Within minutes, Tanner alerted the FAA as well as Passur Aerospace, the company that supplies the analytics to support flight planning and destination locations; they’d be able to track the plane’s every movement and get an accurate fix on its direction and speed. Then, they could confirm where it might be headed.
An hour later Melendez received a call from the flight agent.
“At first, we thought the plane was headed west, to New Jersey, but the flight plan appears to have changed, and the plane is now headed south traveling at about five hundred fifty knots.”
“En route to where?”
“We should know shortly where this flight path will take them, but they are not coming to the states, that’s for sure. Based on their trajectory, speed and fuel consumption, the best guess right now is somewhere in the Caribbean.”
“Saint Lucia!”
Melendez picked up the phone and called Bruce.
“Robert, The plane has changed course, and is headed to the Caribbean. I think they’re going to Saint Lucia. We found a call to Saint Lucia on Greely’s phone.”
“Are you thinking what I am thinking, Raphael?” Bruce said.
“Yes—the big guy, the brains. That’s where the boss is,” Melendez replied.
“Raphael, Saint Lucia is an independent country but still part of the Commonwealth. They operate under the British legal system. We have very close ties with the police there,” Bruce said. “I will make some calls. We’ll have no problem getting extradition, should it come to that.”
“Thank you, Robert. I am going to take a team down there immediately and see if our hunch about the big guy is correct. Can you clear the decks for us?” Melendez asked.
“Of course, but I had a plane standing by for our team as well, just in case Briganty rerouted. Will call you from the plane. You will get there before us.”
Gulfstream G-5
30,000 feet, somewhere over the Atlantic
Dennis and Gantry did not realize they were not headed for Teterboro. They thought it odd that there were no attendants on board, nor did the pilot explain the flight plan to them.
The plane made a wide, slow turn somewhere over the Atlantic that neither of them felt.
Dennis sat quietly. Looking out the window, he anticipated Gantry’s concerns. “I’ll explain it all once we land and are safe,” he said.
Then he casually closed his eyes to take a nap.
FBI Aircraft
28,000 feet, over the Eastern Seaboard
“Raphael, can you hear me clearly?” Bruce asked.
“Yes.”
“I have to say, I have never been on a high-speed chase in a plane,” Bruce observed.
“Neither have I.”
Melendez had a team of five SWAT agents with him. Bruce had four. Each member was armed with an AR-16 and a .45 caliber pistol, among other, heavier weapons.
“I just spoke to the Saint Lucia police,” Bruce said. “They said the plane with Gantry and his friend on board is part of a small fleet owned by a local company and primarily used by a wealthy but reclusive resident. They can’t confirm his name, but he has a large, very secure complex overlooking the Pitons,” Bruce explained.
“Right. Robert, I have been working on a ‘John Doe’ arrest warrant for the big boss. We’ve only used this on rare occasions.”
“Not sure I am following you,” Bruce said.
“We’ve used a ‘John Doe’ when we have determined that the circumstantial evidence, behavioral conclusions and motivations describe a key personality in an investigation. A person who we haven’t been able to identify by name. We can arrest and detain the most highly probable person, given the preponderance of evidence, even circumstantial evidence.”
“We have something similar. So you’re thinking we go for the boss as well?”
“Well, if we’re lucky, this could be more than a just a John Doe? Our photo analytics guys have been pouring though Greely’s pictures, especially the one’s found at her office, and applying our test lab’s advanced facial recognition technology to try to match the pictures to anyone associated with the recording industry at that time,” Melendez explained.
“Anything hit?” Bruce asked.
&
nbsp; “Possibly. One candidate has a characteristic match: Possible ownership interest. Irish. London. Right age range,” Melendez explained, “ I have sent you the images we have, thus far.”
“The only problem is we have very limited info on him. And like Hislop, he seems to have vanished years ago. McMullan was his name.”
“Thanks Raphael, just got them. I assume the one picture is from Greeley’s office…umm, photo of a meeting…another…was he a priest?” Bruce asked.
“It’s only a partial, but it appears to be him in priest robes, doesn’t it,” Melendez responded. “Our techs say the partial is the same guy.”
“No…I see it…no, not a priest. Look at the black Celtic cross on the red vestments. The black hood. Do you know what that is?”
“No. Not at all, “Melendez answered.
“That is the sign of the Knights of the Red Branch. The Christian Crusaders. I remember from my university history work. An extreme sect. Must be from a costume party. Died out at the end of the 13th century,” Bruce explained.
“Robert, thanks for the history lesson, my man.”
“If we can apprehend Dennis Briganty, he could possibly help to make a positive confirmation of McMullan.”
Dennis woke up, looked at his watch and pulled the shade up.
“We should be seeing land by now,” he said, looking again at his watch. He looked out the window and saw unbroken open ocean.
“What the hell? This isn’t the route to the states.”
Dennis suddenly realized what was happening. He jumped up and bolted to the front of the aircraft and pounded on the high-density steel sign that read, authorized personnel only.
“Where the fuck are we going?” he shouted as he pounded and kicked at the door. There was no response.
Then he realized what was going on.
It wasn’t Greely who was trying to get Gantry and him.
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