by David Grace
“You think she’s a lure,” Dohenny said in almost a whisper. “You think he’s going to use her to force Hopper to be someplace where he thinks he’s got a shot at him.”
“That’s the only way this makes any sense,” Kane said. “If–” Kane was interrupted by a tone from his phone. “It’s Senator Denning,” Greg told Dohenny, and tapped the ‘accept’ button.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Five minutes after he fled the bar Donald pulled into a shuttered gas station then climbed into the back seat and injected Kathryn with eight milligrams of Lorazepam. Next he removed all her clothing including her shoes just in case the Secret Service had fitted her with a tracking device. He covered her naked body with a blanket then dumped all her clothing into the trash bin behind the station. He had picked this spot in order to lead the cops in the wrong direction and now he turned around and headed back the way he had come. Fifteen minutes later he had Kathryn locked in the back bedroom of a crumbling house whose closest neighbor was one of dozens of abandoned bank foreclosures in the area. The owner of this house was also in foreclosure, approximately sixty days away from the hammer falling. He’d been happy to accept Mr. Smith’s offer of a one month cash rental with no questions asked.
Donald propped Kathryn up on the bed and pulled a thin jumpsuit over her legs and chest then dropped a pair of cheap sneakers on the floor. This room had no heat and a heavy overcoat was hanging from a hook on the opposite wall. Donald checked her pulse and made sure that she had not vomited into her throat then covered her with a blanket and locked the door behind him. Days earlier he had placed a radio in the room with the volume turned up high then stood on the sidewalk and listened. Nobody was going to hear her screams.
There was no point in contacting anyone tonight. Let them stew for a while. The more anxious they were the more cooperative they would be. Besides, they would want proof of life and the woman wouldn’t be in any shape to talk to them for another twelve hours. Donald made one more circuit around the property then locked up and climbed into bed.
* * *
Kane felt as if he was playing out a scene from a movie – the irate politician pacing his living room in the dead of night and demanding answers from his frightened subordinates, except that Greg Kane didn’t work for Denning and the senator was more upset than angry.
“I don’t understand how this could have happened without anyone seeing something,” Denning complained. “Were they in on it, the people in the bar?”
“There’s no evidence of that.”
“Was the owner or the manager one of those gun-nuts? You can check for that, can’t you, see if they’re members of the NRA or the Aryan Brotherhood or something like that?”
Kane almost reminded Denning that no judge was going to issue a subpoena for the NRA’s membership list but Greg bit his tongue. That wasn’t the issue in any event. Everybody in the bar told essentially the same story and they couldn’t all be involved. The evidence was pretty straightforward, one trained kidnapper with a well thought out plan. Sure, he might have had an accomplice, a helper, a driver, but that was irrelevant right now. All that mattered was that he, or they, had gotten away clean. All the authorities could do now was wait for the kidnapper to contact them and make his demands.
“The Secret Service is doing a thorough background check on everyone who was in the bar,” Kane said with surprising tact. Am I pulling my punches because of Denning’s position or because he’s Allison’s uncle? Greg wondered.
“A lot of good that does us now,” Denning muttered. He took a sip of scotch and paced the room. “What happens next? What’s our next move?”
“We wait for the kidnapper to contact us and go from there.”
“You know what he’s going to want, don’t you? He’s going to demand that Hopper vote to strike down Lyla’s Law.” Denning took another swallow of whiskey.
This guy’s losing it, Kane thought. He’s smart enough to know better.
“Senator, have you ever heard the phrase, ‘You can’t push a string?’“
“What?”
“When you don’t control a situation trying to force things won’t work. Right now we’re not in control. The next step is up to him.”
“Can you find him? Can you save her?”
How the hell am I supposed to know that? Greg thought.
“We’ll know more when he contacts us,” Kane said instead. Denning raised his glass and seemed surprised to find it empty. Angrily he slammed it down on the cherry-wood end-table and it shattered with a hollow, crunching sound. The senator stared at the debris like a man just woken from a dream.
“Crap!” He shook his head in dismay. “Sorry,” he said, looking at Kane. “I’ve been acting like a damn fool. Let’s sit down.” Denning waved Kane to the sofa while he took the love seat on the opposite side of the coffee table.
“Just tell me straight out,” Denning began in a tired voice, “did the Secret Service screw this up?”
Did they? Kane asked himself. Should they have posted a second agent? Would that have made any difference? In one sense, yes, because this particular scheme wouldn’t have worked. In another, no, because this guy was smart and trained and he would have just tried something else and then they would have had two dead agents instead of just one.
“No,” Kane answered after a second or two. “They played it by the book. Anyone can be gotten to if you want it badly enough.”
“So, we just wait?”
“For now.”
“Do you think he’ll try to force Hopper to recuse himself?”
“I think he’s going to try to kill him and this is only a scheme to get closer to his target.”
“How’s he going to do that? Surely the Secret Service isn’t going to let Hopper anywhere near this man.”
“We won’t know anything until we hear his demands.”
“Are you still seeing my niece?” Denning asked in a sudden change of topic. Kane just stared. “She’s stopped talking about you. It occurred to me that you might have been upset that I dragged you into this Hopper thing and blamed her. It wasn’t her idea you know.”
“I never thought it was.” Denning waited. “And, yes, we’re still seeing each other.”
“That’s good,” Denning said, giving Kane a sudden smile. ‘Grieving is one thing but at some point you have to let it go. My wife . . . .” Denning paused then briefly looked away.
“Survivor’s guilt,” Kane said. “When I got out of the hospital the department made me go to counseling. They told me that sometimes people who live think that it’s disrespectful to be happy after someone you care about has died, as if being happy is evidence that their death didn’t really matter to you.”
“Did that happen to you, when your partner was killed?”
“Me? No. I killed the son-of-a-bitch who murdered Ralph. I did right by him the same as he would have done for me.”
Kane almost asked if Allison had gotten any counseling but then realized there was no point. If she had it hadn’t helped and if she hadn’t it was because she didn’t want to let go of the pain. Maybe she’ll never let go of it, he thought and wondered if he wasn’t wasting his time with someone who was possibly broken beyond repair.
They stared at each other for a few seconds longer then Kane got up.
“I’ll call you when we hear from him,” Greg said.
“Good.” Denning rubbed his forehead and looked away. Kane followed the senator’s gaze to a picture of a much younger Arthur Denning and a smiling, brown-haired woman with sparkling blue eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Danny Rosewood looked nervously over his shoulder knowing that he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing but somehow unable to stop himself. He had tried to reach Agent Kane but all of his calls had gone to voice mail. Something was up, he could tell that much, but no one would give him the straight story.
“Ask your buddy, Kane,” Jerry Helms had said and given him a nasty smile. For a second Dann
y almost asked the boss but stopped himself. He knew Kane wouldn’t have liked that. Well, he decided, partners trust each other. When there’s something I need to know, Agent Kane will tell me.
Danny had wanted to add Conklin’s license number to the D.C. Police database with a “Report but do not stop” notation but Kane had nixed that idea.
“Why not?” Danny asked.
“If you had killed somebody and gone underground and gotten yourself a new identity you’d want to know if anybody had found you, wouldn’t you?” Danny nodded. “If you knew all about the license plate database and the plate readers on patrol cars wouldn’t you want to put a flag into the system so that you would be warned if anybody started looking for your new license number?”
“But that’s an official police database.”
“Farber was a dirty cop,” Kane said as if he was talking to a five-year-old.
“So?”
“If I asked you to do something like that for me, could you?”
“Well, sure, but– oh.” Danny said, finally getting it. “So, what should I do?”
“Find another way,” Kane told him and hung up.
So, Danny had spent untold hours again going through all of Conklin’s VISA charges and he found another way. This time, instead of focusing on unusual purchases, the outliers, he paid attention to the ordinary, repeated charges, food, gas, restaurants and the like. This quickly narrowed his search to a nine block area and he figured that Farber/Conklin probably lived someplace near the center. He briefly considered checking all the restaurants where Conklin’s card had been used in the hope that he may have had food delivered to his home but, keeping Kane’s paranoia about tipping their hand in mind, Danny let that idea go. Instead he started physically searching the target area. It took him several days but eventually he found his man.
Danny didn’t actually have a plan, at least not much of a plan, nothing beyond driving the neighborhood and looking for Conklin’s Camry whenever he could steal a few hours away from his desk. While Kane was on his secret assignment he spent his days driving in circles but one afternoon as he was grabbing a quick lunch at the Burger King he saw a silver Camry stop at the light. Danny swallowed without chewing and sprinted for the door. Just before the signal changed he caught a glimpse of the plate. The last three numbers matched. Farber was a block ahead of him by the time he got out of the lot which was probably the only thing that saved him from being burned.
Eventually Farber pulled into a row house near Brightwood Park. Danny glided by just as Farber was reaching into the back seat to retrieve a bag of groceries. The first two digits of the house number were 81 but Danny didn’t get the rest. Heeding Kane’s warning about spooking the target he resisted the impulse to park and take some pictures. Instead he kept going all the way to Missouri Avenue where he pulled over and tried to get Kane on the phone, again without success. Frustrated but excited he returned to the office and found the boss and another man standing next to his desk.
“Where have you been, Rosewood?” Immerson demanded.
“Just out doing some legwork, sir.” Danny glanced at his other visitor.
“This is Special Assistant Sebastian Wren,” Immerson told him.
Danny froze for a second.
“Mr. Wren,” he said at last then nervously stuck out his hand.
“That’s Supervisory Agent Wren,” Immerson corrected him.
Wren smiled and took Danny’s hand.
“Agent Wren will be fine. You look pretty busy there, Rosewood,” Wren said gesturing toward the stacks of folders on Danny’s desk. “What‘s all that?”
“That, oh, it’s just, you know. . . data. Agent Kane said that finding someone is about getting all the information that you can and then looking for something that stands out, like a loose thread on a sweater that you can pull in order to unravel it.”
“Have you found any loose threads?”
The Danny Rosewood of a month ago would have answered “yes” and happily explained every step in the process that had finally led him to their target, but some aspect of Kane’s cynicism had by this time rubbed off on him.
The first week they had worked together something had come up and Danny had asked Kane, “Shouldn’t we tell Mr. Immerson what we’ve found?”
“In due time.”
“When will that be?”
“When it’s too late for him to fuck up our investigation.”
Danny just stared, too confused to know where to begin.
“Here’s the deal,” Kane said, irritated that he had to explain every little thing. “You tell the boss whatever you have to tell him in order to get what you need from him. Until you need something there’s no point in confusing him with facts.” Kane could see that the kid still didn’t get it. He took a breath and tried again. “Look, whenever you tell the bosses anything there’s always some finite chance that they’ll find a way to screw up your case.”
“But–”
“They might tell you to abandon a lead or chase a different lead or talk to somebody or not to talk to somebody. You never know. What you do know is that every time you tell them what you’ve done there’s a chance they’ll tell you that you were wrong and every time you tell them what you’re going to do there’s a chance they’ll tell you not to do it. On the other hand if you tell them nothing then that possibility is reduced from whatever percent it might have been to zero. Zero is good.”
“So,” Danny began, struggling to digest this heretical doctrine, “never tell the boss what you’ve done or what you’re going to do unless you have to?”
“Now you’ve got it,” Kane said, pointing his index finger at Rosewood’s chest. “There’s only one exception to that rule.”
“What’s that?”
“It doesn’t apply to me. You tell me everything and let me figure out if and what Immerson needs to know. Got it?”
“Ahh, yes, Agent Kane. I’ve got it,” Danny agreed solemnly.
Now Danny looked from Wren to Immerson and back again.
“I’m still looking, sir. I figure Agent Kane will be able to give me some good ideas on where to go next as soon as he comes back from . . . well, whatever it is he’s working on.” Danny waited but neither man volunteered an opinion when that might be. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“We’ll let you know,” Wren said then turned away before Danny could offer to shake his hand again.
Once outside the office Wren hit the speed dial on his phone.
“Kane’s gofer claims they haven’t made any progress on the Brownstein case but he’s holding something back. . . . No, sir, it’s just a hunch. . . . Yes, sir. I’ll give him a day or so to relax then I’ll invite him out for a drink, man-to-man, well, man-to-kid, and we’ll see if I can get him to open up.” Wren switched off the phone.
Back at his desk Danny called up Google Street View and five minutes later found himself looking at Mearle Farber’s front door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
For the first time in three years Mr. Justice Hopper missed work. The last time that had happened he had been the victim of a vicious bout of viral gastroenteritis. Today, it was a different sort of an attack. This morning he was closeted with his Secret Service team, two FBI agents with kidnapping expertise and Greg Kane. The first message from the kidnapper had arrived a little after nine, a text to Hopper’s cell:
“Dad, I’m OK. He wants $1M to be paid in bitcoins. Sign in as Rumplestiltskin and reply as a comment here.” The text was followed by a link to a story about a new high-tech watch on BusinessInsider.com.
“He wants money?” Dohenny said.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Hopper asked, hopefully. “We can give him money.”
Kane just looked at the tech guys.
“No luck. He bounced it through an anonymizing server and he turned the cell off the instant he hit ‘send’.”
No one even bothered to ask about monitoring the hundreds of thousands of people
who might view the Business Insider article over the next few hours.
“He’s stalling,” Kane told Dohenny.
“That makes no sense. The longer this goes on the better our chances are of finding him.”
“He’s got a plan. This is all a head fake. How fast can we get our reply up?”
Dohenny looked at the tech.
“I’ve already signed in as Rumlestiltskin87. What’s the message?”
“We need proof of life,” the FBI agent told Dohenny.
“Judge we need a question that only Kathryn would know the answer to.”
Eyes closed, Hopper tried to think. He answered a few seconds later. “When she was five she had a favorite doll that she took everywhere, ‘Sally Sally’.”
“Type this: ‘Agreed – what was your favorite doll’s name?’“
The tech’s keys rattled and a few seconds later the Rumplestiltskin comment appeared at the bottom of the Business Insider page. A minute later Hopper’s phone beeped with a new message: “Sally Sally. Sending transfer instructions at 6:00 p.m.”
Dohenny looked at the tech but only got a brief head shake.
“What’s his game?” Dohenny wondered aloud.
“It could be psychological,” the lead FBI agent, Handleman, said. “He wants us on edge then he’ll rush us with a short deadline once we’re all revved up.”
“He’s running a game on us,” Kane said but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was.
* * *
Donald filled a bowl with corn flakes and milk and carried it to Kathryn’s room. He pounded twice on the door and called out, “Are you awake in there?”
“Yes,” the woman answered in a shaky voice.
“Face the wall, your back to the door. If you see my face I’ll have to kill you.”