by Jason Pinter
“All right,” Tally said. “Tell us everything.”
Wickersham nodded hesitantly. “I think I’m going to need to call a lawyer.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet,” Serrano said. “But that could change very quickly. So if you plan on going anywhere, and I mean anywhere, if you cross the street to get a bagel or go see a movie, you need to let us know. Terrible things happen in those holding cells.”
“Horrible things,” Tally added.
“Trust me,” Serrano said, “you don’t want to give us a reason to put you in one.”
“Things happen I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy,” Tally said.
At this point, Wickersham’s face had turned a shade paler than the half-and-half he’d poured into his coffee. But Serrano knew that if they arrested Wickersham, whoever had paid the kid would find out and circle the wagons. It was better to keep Wickersham out of prison—and scared.
“So now that we know you helped destroy an innocent woman for money,” Tally said, “this is your chance to make amends. We want to find out who paid you and why. Somebody wanted to ruin Constance Wright’s life.”
“I didn’t want that,” Wickersham said softly. “I just . . . I was in love. I wanted to be able to support her.”
“Aw, you were in love,” Serrano said in a mocking tone. “I’m sure whatever sorority girl caught your fancy appreciated your committing multiple felonies for her.”
“She wasn’t some sorority girl,” Wickersham said angrily. “She was special. And I was broke. I had no right to even be with her. We wanted to start a family, but I couldn’t support a kid on what I made. Then someone offered me more money than I’d make in twenty years. What was I supposed to do?”
“Well, definitely not what you did do,” Tally said. Wickersham was silent. He looked ashamed.
“Does this sweetheart of yours have any information about the payments from this Mr. X?”
“No,” Wickersham said. A little too quickly.
Tally said, “One more question, for now. Do you know anyone named Rachel Marin?”
Wickersham looked confused. “No. Why?”
“No reason,” Tally replied. “Let’s go, lover boy. We’re not done with you by a long shot.”
CHAPTER 20
Before calling Steve Ruggiero, Rachel perfected her grossest, bubonic plague–esque hacking, phlegmy cough. By the end of the conversation, Steve made her swear on her children not to set foot in the office until she had a clean bill of health. Rachel figured she had two weeks before he started getting suspicious.
Once she dropped Megan and Eric off at school, Rachel went back to the hotel and booted up her laptop. The Wi-Fi took ten minutes to connect. She could have cooked a Thanksgiving turkey in the amount of time it took each page to load. This wouldn’t work. She threw the laptop in her purse and found a coffee shop a few miles down Lakeland where the Yelp reviews praised the speed of their free Wi-Fi and the strength of their espresso.
When Rachel went downstairs, she noticed an Ashby PD patrol car idling in the parking lot. Its wipers were on, brushing back the light dusting of snow gathering on the windshield. A thirtyish female cop with red hair and freckles sat in the driver’s seat sipping a Coke. An overweight, balding cop sat next to her. He was chewing on an overstuffed breakfast sandwich and staring at it like it contained the mysteries of the universe. The female cop noticed Rachel crossing the parking lot and gave her a subtle nod. Rachel cinched up her coat and offered a thin smile. She found an unfortunate irony in the fact that she now had two sitters watching her family.
She drove to the coffee shop, parked, ordered a double espresso, and found a seat at a communal table. She noticed the patrol car pull into the lot. She could see the redhead behind the wheel. Their eyes met again. This time Rachel didn’t bother to smile.
Ignore it, Rachel thought. You have work to do.
The Wi-Fi information was printed on her receipt.
Network: BeansNBrew
Password: x6G$d6J0*DNM(c15M’C72#0S!
It took her four tries just to correctly enter the mishmash of letters, numbers, and symbols. She took a quick look around the cafe. It was late morning, so the only patrons were stay-at-home moms and their zeppelin-size baby carriages, unshaven aspiring writers, and a few retirees with nothing to do but enjoy a hot cup on a cold day. Rachel envied their serenity.
Once she was connected, Rachel was relieved to find that the Wi-Fi speed was fast and reliable. She created a folder on her desktop and labeled it “CR.” Then she spent the next two hours digging up everything she could on Isabelle Drummond, née Robles, and her brother, Christopher.
Isabelle was, from what Rachel could tell, a model citizen. On paper. She paid $49.95 to run a full background check on Isabelle, which came up clean. No arrests or convictions, no marriage or divorce decrees outside of Nicholas. She had purchased the house she currently lived in with Nicholas Drummond just under two years ago for $4.15 million. The mortgage was in Isabelle’s name. Rachel was moderately pleased that her initial estimate on the property value was so close.
Isabelle previously owned a three-bedroom, two-bathroom condo on East Stallworth Boulevard, purchased seven years ago for $2.05 million. She sold it right before moving in with Drummond, for $3.14 million, a cool $1,090,000 profit, before taxes and Realtor fees.
She graduated from George Washington University in 2012 (current tuition with expenses: $70,443 per year) with a BA in art history, then spent several years working in public relations for a tech firm that had created a suite of social networking apps. Isabelle’s name was attached as a contact to a number of press releases. It was during that time that her parents, Arturo and Yvette, died.
Arturo had emigrated from Ecuador in 1971, having graduated from Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral with a degree in marketing, communications, and sales engineering. He took a job as a sales rep with Carton-Phipps, a small pharmaceutical company, but rose through the ranks and was made CMO by 1980. Carton-Phipps, or C-P, had a market cap of $37 billion as of 2014.
And when Arturo and Yvette were killed when their Cessna CJ3 jet crashed after takeoff at Toncontín airport in Honduras, Isabelle Robles was the sole inheritor of her family’s multimillion-dollar holdings.
Isabelle Robles had cash in the bank, millions in stock, and no oversight. She had both the time and the means to repay a grudge.
Christopher’s history was more checkered than a flannel shirt. Arrests for possession, possession with intent to sell, possession with intent to distribute, resisting arrest, loitering, and multiple counts of disturbing the peace. He’d spent six months at the Whitecaps treatment facility outside of Vail, Colorado. He had never owned property, which didn’t surprise Rachel. She couldn’t imagine banks were tripping over themselves to lend him money, and even if Isabelle was willing to be a guarantor, Isabelle surely knew Christopher living on his own was a disaster waiting to happen. Which was how he had ended up living with the newly married Drummond couple.
Rachel opened up Facebook. She had no legitimate social media profiles but had created a pseudonymous one several years ago solely for the purpose of spying on her children and, occasionally, doing exactly what she needed to do now. She searched for and found Christopher Robles’s account. She couldn’t see the bulk of his profile—it was restricted to friends—but there were a dozen public photos he was tagged in that she could view.
One photo caught her eye: Christopher Robles standing with two other people in front of a gray-brick, graffiti-covered wall holding the very same SIG Sauer he’d been armed with when he broke into her house. Robles held the gun in front of his crotch, an angry sneer on his face. The caption read, “They’re both locked and loaded.”
Subtle.
But what concerned Rachel more were the two people on either side of Robles. To Robles’s left stood a behemoth of a man. He was Hispanic, at least six feet four, and
closer to four hundred pounds than three hundred. And not all of it was fat. His forearms, heavily tattooed, had ripples of muscle mass. And the single blue teardrop tattooed just below his left eye, ink commonly received in prison, suggested he did not live a life of pacifism.
His right arm was draped around Robles’s shoulders. In his left hand he held a Desert Eagle .50 Mark XIX. One of the most powerful handguns in the world.
In fact, because the Desert Eagle used gas-operated action as opposed to the blowback or recoil action of most handguns, it actually had more in common with AK-47 rifles than most pistols. It was also hugely popular in films because, well, it looked cool. But that cool gun could stop a rhino in its tracks.
On Robles’s right was a woman about five feet six who looked like a living canvas. Her entire body was covered in tattoos. She had a metal stud in her lip, a hoop through her septum, and a chain linking that hoop to one of the ten piercings in her ear. She had green hair styled in a pixie cut and wore cutoff jean shorts and a washed-out purple tank top with an image of bloody knuckles printed on it.
But her look was not what caught Rachel’s eye—even Rachel had gone through a punk phase when she was younger—it was the Ruger AR-556 semiautomatic rifle hanging at her side.
The caption on the photo read Friendz 4 Life. Friendz 2 Death. Bulletz N Blood.
Just the kind of pals you’d want to bring home to meet your parents.
Robles’s “pals” were tagged in the photo. The Hispanic Hulk was Nestor Aguillar, and the girl with the nuclear waste hairdo was Stefanie Steinman.
Rachel clicked on both of their profiles, and her heart sank. They had each posted the same photo that very morning. The photo was of Christopher Robles, and he was wearing a tuxedo. His hair was cut and parted. He was clean shaven, and the smile on his face was bright and genuine. A far cry from the washed-out, strung-out man in her home. There was a time stamp on the lower right hand of the photo. Rachel cross-checked that date with a search for Isabelle Robles and confirmed that the photo had been taken two years prior at Isabelle’s wedding to Nicholas Drummond.
Nestor’s caption read RIP Crazy Chris. Never B 4Gotten.
Stefanie’s read Will Never 4Get U.
Underneath Stefanie’s message was a link out to YouTube. Rachel clicked on it. It took her to a clip of the famous scene from Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson recited a verse from Ezekiel 25:17 to some poor schlub before filling him with enough lead to start a pencil factory. Rachel turned the volume down on her computer and watched the scene in full.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
She closed the browser page and thought about what Nicholas Drummond had said about Chris’s friends.
Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to get on their bad side.
Then she muttered two words.
“Fuck. Me.”
CHAPTER 21
Serrano and Tally were driving on I-84 West in the Crown Vic out toward Rosenwood Township, ten miles west of Ashby. Rosenwood was a small, mainly pastoral principality with a population of less than twenty thousand. It bordered the Ashby River on the north and was made up predominantly of midsize office buildings filled with family medical and insurance practices and ranch-style, single-family dwellings. If Ashby was the budget Chicago, then Rosenwood was the budget Ashby. The housing and commercial real estate markets in Rosenwood were cheap, and because of that it was attractive to companies with employees based out of and serving Ashby, Peoria, and Chicago.
Rosenwood’s biggest claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of the esteemed, noted, respected inventor Victor Maloriano. Maloriano was a botanist who, one day, after growing tired of the constant red marks on the side of his nose made by his glasses, glued two small silicone pads onto the frames to protect his skin. Two years later he patented the Nose Pad, then sold the patent for $20 million to an eyeglass manufacturer in 1981. Soon after that Maloriano went mad and began abducting local dogs from their homes. When the Rosenwood PD received a noise complaint of incessant barking by a neighbor, they found Maloriano stark naked in his easy chair, with no fewer than twenty dogs of different breeds roaming his spacious Craftsman home. The dogs were returned to their owners. Maloriano was committed to a sanatorium. People preferred to focus on the Nose Pads when remembering Maloriano.
Serrano was about to make a crack about Maloriano to Tally when his cell phone rang. The call was coming from Rachel Marin. Tally saw the caller ID and rolled her eyes.
Serrano pressed answer and put the call on speaker.
“Ms. Marin,” he said. “How’s the Best Western treating you?”
“Listen, Detective,” she said, ignoring the question. “I need you to keep an eye on two people for me. Names are Nestor Aguillar and Stefanie Steinman.”
“You need us to keep an eye on two people for you?” Tally said, irritated. “Ms. Marin, we’re employees of the state, not you personally.”
“I could go the ‘I pay your salary’ route, but that’s too clichéd, and I’m not an asshole. Anyway, this isn’t a favor. You warned me about what Isabelle Drummond might be capable of, right?”
“That’s right,” Serrano said.
“Well, I was doing a little digging into Christopher Robles, and he has two good friends, Nestor Aguillar and Stefanie Steinman. They posted videos today that lead me to think they’re looking for some payback for Robles, and let’s just say they also like taking pictures with weaponry strong enough to take out the Avengers.” She gave Serrano the correct spellings for both names.
Nestor Aguillar. The name sounded familiar to Serrano. Which meant he’d probably done some very bad things.
“Anyway, I know the hotel is being watched by your people. But during the day, my kids are in school. My son’s school is fifteen minutes from my daughter’s grade school. I can’t possibly watch them both at the same time. And if, God forbid, something was to happen . . .”
“I hear you,” Serrano said. “Let me call the station and see if I can get a uni to check in on them during the day. In the meantime, we’ll look into Steinman and Aguillar and see if there’s anything to be concerned about.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
“Not a problem. Be safe. Call if you need anything.”
“I will.”
Marin hung up. Serrano put the phone back in his pocket.
“I think you’re sweet on her,” Tally said, grinning. Serrano tapped his finger against his chin.
“Nestor Aguillar,” he said. “That name rings a bell. Which probably means it’s not a good thing for Rachel. Who’s on watch commander duty today?”
“Pat Connelly,” Tally said.
He dialed the station. “Hey, Pat, it’s Serrano. Listen, I need you to run full background checks on two Ashby residents: Nestor Aguillar and Stefanie Steinman. Criminal records, known associates, arrest reports, anything you can dig up. Send it over to my cell as soon as you have it.”
Serrano hung up.
“You’re worried about her,” Tally said. “Rachel Marin seems like she knows how to take care of herself pretty well. I wish Claire could handle a shotgun like that. I would have proposed sooner.”
“It’s not Rachel I’m worried about,” Serrano said.
“You think Isabelle would go after her kids?” Tally said.
“Isabelle blames Rachel for her brother’s death. Fair or not. And they were tight. Chris was basically her child, the way she took care of him. I’d like to think she could understand that her brother dug his own grave, but grieving family members are not always rational. Better to be safe.”
Tally nodded. “She’s cute, you know. The Marin woman.”
Serrano laughed. “Cute? Come on, Leslie. You aren’t allowed to call a woman ‘cute’ past the age of twenty-two.”
“Trust me, Casanova, I’ve been with way
more women than you have, and yes, you can. But it’s all about how you say it. You should work on your game. Maybe convince a woman who’s not your partner to spend some time with you.”
“I don’t need dating advice.”
“Sure about that?”
“Concentrate on what we’re here for, Tally. We’re almost there.”
J&J Accounting was located in a midsize steel-and-glass office building off I-84. Serrano pulled into the parking lot. According to property records, J&J owned the entire building but only occupied the third floor, leasing out unoccupied office space to other companies.
The number Sam Wickersham had corresponded with to set up Constance Wright was registered to a company called Albatross LLC. Albatross had leased office space from J&J three years ago, right around the time Wickersham said the calls had started coming in. There was only one problem: Albatross was registered in the name of a Walter Mackey, an eighty-four-year-old retired florist who lived in Ashby with his eighty-eight-year-old wife, Beattie, in a house they’d bought in 1974 for $8,000.
Walter Mackey had a grand total of $12,474 in his savings account. This was a man who spent his Saturdays cutting coupons, not coordinating secret payments to take down a sitting mayor. Somebody had used Mackey’s social security number to fraudulently register Albatross as an LLC, most likely to transfer money to Sam Wickersham without it being under the name of a real individual or legitimate company.
Albatross had no employees and no tax records and was not registered with the Better Business Bureau. It appeared to be a company that had literally been set up to facilitate money transfers to Sam Wickersham and nothing more.
Wickersham claimed to have no knowledge of the identity of Albatross, that he did not know who he’d spoken with, and that he’d never met anyone in person. Yet he’d received three wire transfers during that period of time totaling $480,000. Which explained why a guy with limited means and ethics could afford a high-end bachelor pad stocked with unread books to use as romantic bait.