Jackson

by Dale Mayer

  “Do we need to check in with Max? Make sure he’s okay?”

  “He should still have a security guard on him. And I don’t know what Max’s role in all of this is, or if he was just the unlucky vehicle driver who went in pursuit of the shooter.”

  “I hope he’s not involved,” she said. “I really like the guy.”

  Almost two hours later and now in his apartment—which hadn’t been tossed by any intruders—Jackson settled back in his chair. They’d gone to her place, done a quick second check for bugs, found nothing and, feeling better, had headed to his apartment for some much-needed sustenance. His stomach was full and happy, his mouth still humming joyfully with the taste of steak and baked potato and Caesar salad. He studied Deli’s features. “Ready for a nap?”

  She shook her head. “No, a nap will mean sleeping right through the night.” She glanced at her watch. “But I don’t know how it got to be almost seven o’clock.”

  He reached for the bottle of wine and topped off her glass. “After the days we’ve had,” he murmured, “an early night is exactly what you need.”

  She smiled. “True enough. But there’s still so much to be done.”

  “Eating and sleeping have to be done too.”

  “Sleep might have to come next,” she said. She lifted her glass of wine and clinked gently against his glass. “To a much better tomorrow.”

  “To a better tomorrow,” he echoed. He took a sip and then added, “Hopefully one that doesn’t mean us finding another dead body.”

  She gave a mock shudder and looked up at him, her eyes haunted.

  His heart swelled for her. “I’m sorry you’ve had to see this,” he murmured.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “It’s just incredibly bad luck we’re involved to this extent. You never did get far with the MPs did you? You were attached to the investigation, but they weren’t happy about it or something?”

  “Something like that, yeah. But we’re so involved now that I’m sure we’re both suspects.”

  Her gaze widened in horror. “Seriously?”

  He wanted to reassure her somehow that this wasn’t the case, but anybody with a brain would have to consider that. “Even if they do, they’re not likely to look at us for long,” he said reassuringly. “But we were the last to see James alive as far as anyone knows – except for his killer.”

  “But they were all dead when we got there.”

  “We know that, and surely the coroner’s time of death will prove that,” Jackson said, his voice low. “But we could go through some pretty unpleasant questioning first.”

  “But we have alibis,” she snapped.

  Apparently the thought of being a suspect made her more angry than upset. He grinned at that. He preferred spitfire over tears any day. “Sure, some of the time we do. Some of the time we were sleeping. And honestly, we’re most likely to alibi each other. That’s not exactly what the MPs want to hear.”

  She tapped the table impatiently with her fingers. “Well, that’s not acceptable. I’ve never been called a liar in my life.”

  “You mean, at least for somebody to get away with it,” he said with a big grin. “But I think everybody realizes that you’re great at what you do and that you’re also honest and ethical. We just have to make sure everybody involved in this investigation knows too.”

  “Alex should be able to help us there.”

  “Sure, but she can’t have a personal interest in this, or she can’t work on the case,” Jackson reminded her. “It’s one thing to know of us. It’s another thing to know us well.”

  Deli raised both hands in frustration. “Well, that’s of no help then.”

  He loved the fact her brain was always ticking, her mind was always spinning angles, moving forward, looking at things from a different perspective. “I’m not prepared to walk away from this and allow other people to handle it. Are you?”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do,” she said. “Think about it. All we’re doing is fumbling around in the dark, finding men after they’ve been killed.”

  “True enough,” he said. “So maybe we need to find a way to get at these people before they’re killed.”

  He could see from the look on her face just how tired she was. It was hard to make heads or tails out of any of the information they had gathered so far. He had a pretty good idea what was going on, but they didn’t know the players.

  He motioned toward his spare bedroom. “Look. It’s late. If you think you’ll sleep through the night, just go to bed now. Have a shower, crash and sleep as long as you need to.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s too early. Let’s get the dishes done.” Determinedly she stood, even as he protested. But she was stubborn if nothing else.

  As much as he loved her spirit, that stubbornness went along with it, so he was hardly one to complain.

  They did the dishes, and he refilled their glasses with wine. He’d be fine, but he could see the red wine made her even more tired.

  She laughed when she took a sip of her refilled glass. “This should ensure I sleep through the night.” She sat down in the living room and shook her head. “I’m sinking fast. Maybe I will take you up on your offer for a shower and to sleep here in the spare room. I wasn’t going to bed yet, but it feels like I’m being foolish not to. I should sleep better here too.”

  “Come on.” He led her to the bathroom, pulled out clean towels, laid them on the side of the sink and said, “This is for your shower, and, over here, this is a spare room.” He pushed opened the door to show her the double bed all freshly made and picked up a bathrobe he kept on the hook on the door. He tossed it on the bed. “Go crash into bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He snagged her into a warm hug, kissed her on the forehead, then dropped his arms and stepped back out. He closed the door gently behind him, only hearing her faint thank-you as the door shut and went click.

  Back in the living room, he picked up his glass of wine, sat down on the living room sofa with his laptop and went over the information they had. It was a lot, but it wasn’t enough. He got up, went over to the living room wall where they had put the boards. He studied the names, the dates, the places and realized the victims probably were compromised into doing something. That had to be a hard decision. Getting caught meant a life sentence. In this case, more than one life sentence.

  Max might hold the key to some of this. Jackson pulled out his phone and called him.

  Max answered. “Hey, you found out anything?”

  “Nothing good,” Jackson said. “Another dead man. And he was a security guard at the navy garage, for the night shift after my rig was brought in. Looks like he was sent to retrieve something from the vehicle, but the video showed James had gone in ahead of time and taken the stuff out.”

  “What did he take?” Max asked curiously.

  “Six boxes. We’re assuming they were the new rifles we were testing at training. The new prototypes the military was asked to review. I’m not sure how valuable they would be.”

  “It’s hard to say. I’ve heard murmurs about some new ones,” Max said. “If it’s those, they might be worth a lot of money.”

  “It seems like that’s what’s going on. We haven’t been able to figure out how these men were pressured into it,” Jackson said.

  “Follow the money,” Max said. “It’s almost always about money. It’s either that or they were manipulated into doing it.”

  “We’ve got people on the money right now,” Jackson said. “You have any ideas about what connects the victims?”

  “All navy men who could have been involved in the same training. They could have served on the same tours. There are all kinds of ways they could have been connected. The basic fact is, they are connected because they’re all involved. Other than that, who knows the whys?”

  Jackson said, “True enough. I just happen to be one of those plagued by wanting to know the whys.”

  “Then keep digging,�
�� Max said. “I want to get the hell out of here, but they won’t let me.”

  “We have three dead men to go along with the injuries you and your buddy there received. I don’t think your security is heavy enough,” Jackson snapped.

  Silence came while Max considered Jackson’s words. “Good point,” Max finally said. He groaned. “But there’s absolutely nothing here to do. You know that, right? I don’t even have my laptop. And there’s no Wi-Fi, and my cell phone battery is damaged and isn’t recharging properly.”

  “So what are you doing with your time?”

  “Watching boring TV shows and reading old magazines,” he retorted in disgust.

  Jackson chuckled. “Okay, I can get being pissed at that.”

  “You could always come and visit,” Max said. “Fill me in on the latest details.”

  “I can do that on the phone, since I have Deli sound asleep in the spare room right now. She’s pretty wiped out. We’ve seen an awful lot of death in the last few days. It’s wearing her down.”

  “And so it should,” Max said quietly. “Nobody should see death and take it lightly. We should all be affected.”

  Privately Jackson agreed. And there was no doubt Deli was certainly affected. “How would they have known about the prototypes being in that particular vehicle?” he asked. “Do you have any idea how shipments are divided between trucks?”

  “No, I don’t,” Max said thoughtfully. “But I can get back to you with somebody who might.” He hung up, leaving Jackson to sit here and stare at his phone in bemusement.

  “Any supply chain clerk might know,” he mused aloud.

  He looked up as the guest bedroom door opened. Deli walked out with just the bathrobe wrapped around her, but she looked better, tired but better. She held up the empty wineglass, walked over to the kitchen sink and rinsed it out before placing it upside down on the draining board. “Who were you talking to?”

  He waggled his phone at her. “Max.”

  Her face lit up. “How is he?”

  “He’s doing pretty good. I asked him how and who would have determined which vehicle was carrying what cargo back from the training.”

  She froze, looked at him, then gave a slow nod. “That’s an excellent question. Because somebody had to put the gear in the right truck so these men could retrieve it.”

  “Or somebody just told them what vehicle it was in, but it would have been packed up as per whatever requirements this stuff necessitates.”

  “It’s fairly regimented,” she said. “But, if Max could get us exactly how and who and what, that would be awesome.”

  “It’s the who I’m more bothered about at the moment,” Jackson said. “And whether that who is still alive or has he been taken out too?”

  Chapter 12

  Deli winced. “I sure hate to think that yet another person is dead over this. I handle the big machinery with engines, so guns and weapons aren’t my wheelhouse. Are those prototypes really worth that kind of money to take these kinds of risks?”

  “Whether it’s the money or just that somebody wants to make sure they’re crossing their Ts and dotting their Is, whoever is involved is being taken out of the equation.”

  She nodded. “But still that’s pretty harsh treatment.”

  “The penalty for stealing military secrets,” Jackson said, his voice low and gentle, “is very high.”

  “Meaning death is preferable? Or are you saying they’ll do anything to avoid being caught themselves, and that includes killing anybody else involved?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  She wandered over and sat down on the couch. “I thought I could fall asleep, but now my mind is buzzing again,” she confessed. She stared at the poster boards and all the information they had on them. “Somebody loaded it on the truck. Somebody had to know which vehicle held what. And somebody must have relayed that information to James. And somebody then picked up the material from James.” She turned to Jackson. “CTV cameras. Has anybody checked the street cameras on the blocks around his place? Surely we could track vehicles that parked in his apartment complex and the people who walked back and forth around his unit.”

  “The CTV cameras were checked. He has underground parking available at his complex along with the standard outdoor lot. And, from what the security guards there can tell, any exchange would have happened there.”

  “Then we should still check every license plate of every vehicle that went in there, maybe find the SUV driver Magnus’ neighbor told us about. At least then we might either confirm he’s involved or check him off the list,” she said enthusiastically.”

  “The line of thought there is that a meet was scheduled in the underground parking garage. So one vehicle arrived, parked underground. Someone either went to James’s apartment to get the guns or James took the guns himself to the underground parking. The contraband would have been delivered to another person in another vehicle also in the underground parking garage. The security tapes have a suspicious thirty-minute-long missing segment.”

  Hearing that, she frowned. “Why would James take the stolen guns home? Wouldn’t it have been better to take them someplace else? And surely the navy has security cameras on all its garages, keeping track of all the vehicles entering and leaving. We should have asked about that when we saw Carney.”

  Jackson nodded. “We need to see those tapes too.”

  She pulled out her phone, quickly dialed the garage and, when a voice answered at the other end, she asked, “Is Carney there?”

  “No, he’s gone for the evening. He’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  She thanked him and hung up. “Carney is off work. He is supposed to be back in the morning.”

  Jackson glanced at his watch and said, “That makes sense. It’s nine-thirty. We saw him there earlier today.”

  She nodded. “I don’t like this. I have a terrible feeling Carney is in danger too.”

  Jackson straightened. “Why?”

  She looked at him, trouble in her eyes. “Maybe because he spoke with us. Maybe that’s all it takes.” She stared at Jackson for a moment, her mind grappling with all the thoughts running through her brain. “If we could just find somebody before they were killed,” she said, “it wouldn’t feel so bad. It seems like all we’re doing is coming in behind the shooter, cleaning up after him.”

  “To a certain extent,” he said, “yes. But you have to remember that most of these men were dead right away. We’re just now bringing their murders to light.”

  “So who else is likely to be killed?”

  “Anyone connected,” he said.

  She nodded. “Like Carney.”

  Jackson stared at her. “Are you really thinking he’s in trouble?”

  She sagged against the couch. “I’m not sure,” she groaned. “But I know I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to him overnight, especially if I didn’t do anything to warn him.”

  “Do you have his number?”

  She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

  He returned to his laptop and typed in some information. “His name is Carney Johansen. But I don’t find a phone number for him.”

  “Well, Tesla will have one,” she said. “Or one of my supers would have it.”

  “Let’s make a couple calls and see if we can find it then. No address is listed here.”

  “That’s not unusual, is it?”

  He frowned. “It’s hard to say.”

  “You can’t be thinking Carney is involved?” She shook her head at Jackson. “Why would he do something like that?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t say I thought he was involved. But we have to consider everybody. And Carney works at the navy garage as well.”

  “But that would be a third person after the boxes in the truck. Isn’t that overkill?”

  “Potentially, yes,” he said with a nod. “But maybe James was working for Carney. Or maybe the other guy was. We don’t know yet. However, we need to double
-check with Carney that all is well with him.”

  Just then Jackson’s phone rang. He checked his Caller ID and told her, “It’s Kanen.” He hopped to his feet, answering the call. “Hey, Kanen. What’s up?”

  “Just running down leads,” Kanen said, “although we’re not doing so good. I’ve talked to Max and Mason. Assigned soldiers boxed up the gear found in each tent involved in the training exercise. The boxes were marked as to their intended destination, like the navy’s Coronado base or some nearby army base or whatever. The boxes of gear loaded into each truck weren’t designated as to its contents by anyone. They were just packing up, moving out the gear, tent by tent, to be returned to the appropriate base. Other individuals were responsible for loading up the trucks. So it’s likely that whoever loaded the boxes in your rig, Jackson, didn’t know what they were handling.”

  “Which makes sense from the navy’s compartmentalized approach,” Jackson said. “Plus will most likely save some lives from the shooter’s viewpoint. We found Magnus dead as well. We’re now trying to locate Carney, the security guard we met earlier today at the navy garage, to make sure he’s okay.”

  Kanen’s voice turned businesslike. “Last name? Let me see what I can find.” He had the name pulled up in a few seconds and an address right after that. “His cell phone is …” He rattled off a number.

  Jackson wrote down the phone number and address, then said, “And Max says we should follow the money. Of course that’s the age-old adage.”

  “Tesla and I have been doing that,” Kanen said. “But so far no unusual amounts of money have shown up in anyone’s bank accounts, as least the people we’re tracking and their known financial institutions.”

  “So it wasn’t for money? If not money, then what?”

  “It could have been in order to avoid something coming to the surface. Blackmail is always a great motivator. The other thing is maybe they were killed so they didn’t have to be paid. It’s much easier to keep the money all to yourself,” Kanen said.

  Jackson nodded.

  She could hear the phone conversation easily in the small room. Jackson was one of those who held the phone in front of him and talked into it. It made the conversations much easier to hear from both sides. She wasn’t sure what to make of this. But she’d feel a hell of a lot better once Carney answered the call she was ringing through to him. But it rang and rang.