Take the Fourth

by Jeffrey Walton

  “Bobby.”

  He stood up to meet Jorja. “Jorja, what’s going on? They told me to sit tight and don’t leave.”

  “Did they question you yet?”

  “About what?”

  “Anything.”

  “No, I have no idea what’s happening… . I was supposed to take Mr. Carson to the Westinghouse for an eight thirty meeting.”

  “What time did you bring him back last night?”

  “Pretty early… I’d say right before twelve, he wanted to get a good night’s sleep for this meeting, he didn’t want to leave last night’s dinner too early but he had to.”

  “Who was the meeting with today?”

  “Don’t know, but like I said it seemed important… can you tell me what happened… is he okay?”

  “Aunt Gracie… my Aunt Gracie,” as she took a long pause as to not really believing what she was about to say, “was found dead this morning.”

  Bobby sat back down and Jorja grasped his shoulder in a very loving way. She left Bobby to his memories, for he had known Grace and Floyd for the better part of ten years now and they treated him like family, as they did with all their help. With that, Jorja went to seek out the person in charge when her phone chirped.

  ‘What have you got?”

  “Just speculation at the moment, nothing solid, but police reports and rumors are saying T.O.D. was between eleven and one.”

  “I just learned that Bobby, the driver, dropped Uncle Floyd off at just before twelve which makes him a prime suspect.”

  “Jesus… you think he did something like this?’

  “No, no way in hell but… .”

  “But what?”

  “I’m thinking… . do you know if he called anyone yet?”

  “Hold on… . no outgoing calls, a few incoming… . same for his cell.”

  “Gotta run,” and Jorja punched in a new number, as she was listening to the ringing in her blue tooth adapter, she heard a phone ring from her other ear.

  “Calling someone?”

  As Jorja spun around she saw Eric Riedal, the owner of the last question and Mr. Carson’s confidant, one of his best friends, and most important at this time, his lawyer.

  Jorja clicked cancel on her cell and Eric’s phone stopped ringing.

  “No one in particular… . they won’t let me in.”

  “Come with me.”

  Even though Jorja’s credentials are top notch, there are certain situations which they are out of their realm… . criminal investigation in the downtown District of Columbia is one of them unless they involved Homeland Security or terrorists in one shape or another. Murder was simply a crime so it was bestowed upon Eric’s credentials to get them past the door of the study, where a simple remark was all that was needed. “Yes, I’m Mr. Carson’s lawyer.”

  Upon just glancing at Jorja, Floyd began to tear up once again. No words were spoken and a much needed hug was granted. He hugged her tight and still didn’t say a word. Jorja herself was beginning to tear as she glanced at a picture of her aunt on the desk. Then she broke the silence and the hug.

  “You okay?”

  “Your Aunt Gracie is dead, that’s all I know… . there was another body bag, another… another, someone else with her… . I don’ t know.”

  “We’ll figure it out, just for now be calm.”

  “What have you told them,” asked Eric?

  “Nothing much, just that I came home around twelve and fell asleep in the study, woke up to cars pulling in my driveway.”

  “Not to alarm you but they are putting the time of death somewhere between eleven and one which means you might have been home at the time this happened,” mentioned Jorja.

  “So I’m the prime suspect?”

  “Probably so, did they do anything to you while they questioned you?”

  “They swabbed me for gunshot residue and took a DNA swab, that was about it. Right now I’m sure the D.A. is fielding the evidence to see if they have enough to hold me.”

  “Exactly where is your gun?”

  “Locked in the gun safe.”

  “Speaking of which,” said a man with papers in his hand standing in the doorway of the study, “we have a warrant to search the premises for that very gun. We understand that it is a nine millimeter.”

  Eric spoke up, “Papers please,” read them and nodded. With that, Floyd Carson unlocked his gun safe, and handed the man a box containing his handgun, a nine millimeter.

  . . .

  Chapter 47

  “Pictures. Goddamn fucking pictures was what it was supposed to be,” was the notion echoing through Scott’s mind, “How in the world did Reynolds fuck this up?” He went to his office, slammed the door shut and flipped his cell. He dialed Reynolds’ number and waited. It went straight to voicemail.

  “Listen, call me asap, not later today, not in a few, call me right fucking now, you got that?” in one of his most demanding tones. He then sat at his desk and logged into the network but was so pissed-off he couldn’t concentrate. Within a few minutes his phone rang. It was Reynolds. He saw the last incoming number and dialed it immediately, never listening to the voicemail message.

  “Where are you and why didn’t you answer?”

  “I’m heading to the rotten apple, I must have been in a bad cell, why, what’s up?”

  “You haven’t heard? Not listening to the news?’”

  “No, I’m listening to an audio…, it’s”

  “I couldn’t give a shit, right now you’re up to your goddamn eyeballs, Grace Carson was murdered last night.”

  “What?” as Reynolds tried to comprehend that Grace Carson was dead, he quickly signaled for the shoulder and came to a dead stop along the New Jersey Turnpike somewhere between exits 7 and 7A

  “Grace Carson was found dead in her home, found by her housemaid, she was murdered somewhere between eleven and one but I suppose you’re going to say you have no fucking idea how this happened.”

  “I don’t, I’m just… I just . .I don’t know.”

  “There was another victim as well.”

  “Who? Not Floyd?”

  “No not Floyd, they are still working on it, right now he’s just a John Doe.”

  “I swear to you, I have no idea how this happened, I knew we were getting close but…”

  “Hold on a sec,” as he was reading a priority one message,” they identified the John Doe, does Blake Linge ring any fucking bells?”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “This Blake, who is he?”

  “He was the bait, Blake Remus actually, good guy, worked with him for a few years now, I just don’t understand how this happened.”

  “Who was your handler?”

  “It was going to be Lieutenant Colonel John Smith, retired marine, special ops.”

  “John Smith?’

  “Most common name in the book, never had a problem with him, followed my every command to the letter. He’s done just about every type of covert operation there is and then some. Like I said, I was going to use him but we never placed him into action.”

  “And you said you didn’t get anything from Blake.”

  “I didn’t say, but right, nothing, if he was over at the Carson’s residence then he was pretty damn close to his objective. It’s not like either one of these guys would go off the reservation.”

  “We need to find answers and find them fast, JW is breathing down my neck.”

  “I’m turning around now, I’ll touch base with the office and let them know I’m coming.”

  “Wait, where exactly are you?”

  “Five or six miles from seven a.”

  Scott then pushed a few keys and brought up a map on his monitor, “okay, get to McGuire’s, I’ll arrange transportation for you from there, we need to save as much time as possible and you need to get me answers asap.”

  Dial tone was all that Reynolds could hear. As he keyed in the location of McGuire’s Air Force Base into his trusty GPS device, Scott was in
his office keying in the numbers to the head honcho there in order to arrange Reynolds’ transportation back to D.C. When the office of the Commander in Chief calls, people listen. Reynolds would be in the lobby of the Beta Group in under ninety minutes if all went well . .

  After arranging transportation, he then went to the military’s database and entered the common name John Smith. Luckily attaching retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel to the name wasn’t so common. He received a plethora of information, even the fact that he was deceased as of forty-eight months ago but understood that this was the requisite for a black op of his caliber. He then keyed in John Smith’s tax ID into the system and came up empty, which prompted another phone call.

  “Yeah it’s me, I have a question for you, I have the name of a deceased marine, John Smith, he was a lieutenant colonel. Born in Baton Rouge.”

  “Yeah, I see you queried him, so?”

  “Answer me this, is he truly dead or just off the grid?”

  “Good question, give me a minute,” which was a mere forty-five seconds later, “he is or was, special ops, blackest of blacks.”

  “So shouldn’t we have an eye on him if he is still alive, we should know at least where he is, there is no record whatsoever of him in the system.”

  “You are correct, every dark op can and should be seen by us. I take it this has something to do with this morning’s events?”

  “I’m just trying to find out as much info for the big guy.”

  “I’ve been digging as well, that name didn’t come up in any of my searches, neither did the name in the last priority one, Blake Linge, it was Blake Remus and it looks like he was undercover as well, well in more ways than one.”

  “Interesting… . but see if you can find this John Smith, whatever it takes.”

  “How about this Remus guy?”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s going anywhere, I think the priority here is to find this Smith character and why he’s not in the system.”

  “And why should this John Smith mean something?”

  “I don’t know, it was given to me by JW.”

  “I’m on it… I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Just like with the shootings at the mall, Scott didn’t have time to dig for answers, he had his inside man do that. He needed the time to piece together a cover story, something to keep the President off his back. The fact that Reynolds’ inside man was off the grid made matters worse. Scott’s only involvement was he wanted to invoke a scandal with Mrs. Carson and he had asked for Reynolds’ help. In turn Reynolds hired Blake Linge, aka Blake Remus, for the seduction piece of the plan. From there things got a little dicey, the said black ops guru and in this case, the photographer, aka John Smith, is off the grid and both Blake and Grace have been murdered. It wasn’t much to go on and Scott knew the man with the plan was either the hero or the goat and in this case the coals in the roasting pit were prime for his soon to be rotating dead carcass.

  . . .

  Chapter 48

  Greg did as he promised and piecemealed together as much information as he thought Jorja would require. He found Blake Remus, age thirty-eight and with a little digging he uncovered much about this single man. He was an employee of the Beta Group of D.C., which was a software consultant company that QA’d major applications for various governments before they were released into official use. Blake graduated from Georgetown with a three point three three in mathematics and never went for his masters. He was recruited for his logical skills by the Beta Group when they were in their infancy stage and never really moved along with his peers into upper management; he stayed the course of a business analyst, probably because he liked to travel. He traveled the world on their dime. Within the past month he was in Indonesia and before that Warsaw and Zurich, in fact over his fifteen year stint with the company there wasn’t many places on this blue marble he hadn’t visited. His passport was constantly in the shop for adding more pages to it. He drove a nice car and had a nice condo in a pretty wealthy neighborhood. He was a typical white collar, middle of the road, single kind of guy. What he was doing in the political circle and more importantly, in the bed of Grace Carson would take a deeper drill bit.

  With Greg’s new toy, penetrating the sedimentary rock of the data world was quite simply a piece of three layer chocolate cake, though he still had to take the precautionary measures before dialing into the machine Jorja had nicknamed God’s Eyes. A click here, a click there, and even Greg was amazed, and that always took a lot to do. So why was Grace Carson shacking up with a BA from the Beta Group? Where did they meet? That was really his top priority. He quickly formed a timeline and tried to find their first meeting. Through cross references he found two weeks prior to their death they were together at the JW Hotel near the White House. Before he jumped to any conclusions he brought up the hotel guest list from that evening along with the hotel’s booked functions. There was a political benefit for Mr. Carson and neither Blake nor Grace booked a room. He searched again and found the JW Hotel was not their first encounter but again the question arose as to why Blake was on the political radar, he has yet to vote in any elections, and seems to have no influential ties to a party affiliate. He had the uncanny idea that this was not a chance meeting. He then checked phone records and email services. Nothing on the phone records. Email was a tad more difficult to obtain. The Beta Group wasn’t part of the In-Q-Tel links so those systems couldn’t be hacked as easily. It wasn’t impossible, it would just take some time. Before Greg took that road his search came up with another possibility. They both had a gmail account, which isn’t unusual, since gmail had a wealth of users but since this was an internet based email system Greg was able to slide past the security features like a bowling shoe over the maple flooring, quite simply there was a relationship with the people at Google when the government needed help. What he found after his peeking into these accounts were his answers as to why. There were about a hundred seventy or so email exchanges between the two parties, each one becoming more and more intimate. The first several were simple exchanges between two strangers, exchanging conversations based on a breast cancer walk. The move from Blake’s non-existing sister Melissa, to Mrs. Carson was subtle to say the least. This then moved from friendly talk to flirtatious speak, and later towards a more romantic boundary. Pictures were exchanged along with many personal stories of their past. Greg found stories of Jorja interlaced within Grace’s emails. He read them with much interest. Blake’s emails were well written but didn’t seem genuine for one reason or another. The more he read the more he could see Blake was baiting her like a spider spinning a web.

  Blake was a good writer, writing mostly of his thoughts on the road and how his heart ached for he has really never loved.

  From: Grace [mailto:grace@carsons.com]

  To: Blake

  Subject: Re:The Walk

  Blake—

  I found your story very sad and heart touching. I too am lonely at times, well quite frankly most of the time. I have felt true love once and that was in college when I fell in love with my husband. He was a passionate man in both his ideas and goals and need I say, within the sheets.

  As his career started to take off I felt left behind. Sure there are still good times to be had but they are few and far between. I feel the daily droll of life is taking a beating on me I wish I could change things. I do not have the power to do so. My urges are strong at this point in my life but I can count on one hand the times we have made love or had sex since my forties had started . .AND THAT WAS WAY TOO LONG AGO!!! I’m tired of the game that seems never to end, tired of this being the good wife while I wither away into nothingness.

  It took several hours for Greg to read each and every email. It was like a good novel that was written over the time span of six months. Greg knew it was a setup and it was interesting how Blake handled himself as he waited for just the right time to spring into action. But then Greg thought, sure this was Blake’s plan to seduce Mrs. Carson, the woman of
maybe the next vice president, the aunt of his dearest Jorja… but why?

  He pulled the timeline of Blake right up until his death, and he pulled Grace’s as well. He entered the house somewhere between 8:30 and 8:35; though in his last email message to her he was expected around eight. For the next few hours the two dots on the screen were inseparable up until their last transmission. Greg then honed in on the man now in question… Senator Carson himself. His suspicion grew when the timeline coincided by place and time of both murders. He was at his dinner but came home just before 11:30. He was home for roughly five to ten minutes before the bed was stained with blood but never did all three dots overlap. There is that missing window of five minutes which is ample time to do the deadly deed but not enough evidence to say otherwise. At 11:45 Blake and Grace were in the bedroom, the senator was in his office. At 11:50 only one dot was active and it was Senator Carson in his office. Somewhere between those two time stamps the murders occurred and anyone could see why Virginia’s elected official was the prime suspect.

  . . .

  Chapter 49

  Jorja called Greg into her office. She had just come back from seeing her uncle and she was standing beside her desk looking out the window.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sort of…”

  “Why did you come back? You need to take some time.”

  “It’s just that I need… I need… .,” and with that her eyes filled with tears and she grabbed a tissue from the box. Greg really didn’t know what to do; he felt very uncomfortable but approached her anyway. He put his hand on her back but she quickly turned around and fell into his arms. He hugged her, he had no choice, and he didn’t say a word. He just thought.