Signature Wounds

by Kirk Russell

  Half an hour later as I walked out, I called Beatty back.

  “What happened at Red Rock with the police officers?”

  “I couldn’t find a campsite and needed to sleep. I figured it wouldn’t be any big deal, but the cop who rousted me wanted to try me on terrorism charges.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In the mountains behind the airfield.”

  “The Strata airfield?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I couldn’t think of a place to go, so I’m camping out for a few days. But it’s bad news out here. I’m seeing this through a spotting scope, but it looks like the two security dudes are dead in their Land Cruiser about a third of a mile south of the airfield. Eddie’s truck is at the airfield, but I haven’t seen him. I tried to call you last night.”

  “How do you know they’re dead?”

  “With my spotting scope I could see a reflection of Tak’s face. His pupils were dilated and I saw a fly crawling over his left eyeball with no reaction from him. He’s dead.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  “I figured after what happened at Red Rock I couldn’t call 911 or the sheriff. They’d just come for me. I called you.”

  “There’s nothing about this in the message you left me earlier.”

  “I’m on a watch list. I don’t know who listens in on your voice mails. I only wanted to talk to you.”

  Get the information first, I thought, and then check it out. The rest we could deal with after, but I didn’t know why Beatty was out there. If I didn’t, no one else would either and I could hear the questions already. Sometimes it’s the murderer who calls in the killing.

  “You’ll have to come down and meet whatever officers or agents come out. Are you clear on that?”

  “It’s not going to be you?”

  “It’s going to be whoever can respond fastest. I’m caught up in the bomb investigation. We caught a break.”

  My phone beeped and I said, “Hang tight for a minute. I’ve got a call coming I’ve got to take. I’ll be right back to you.”

  “I’ll switch phones. I’ll call you back.”

  “Jeremy, just hang on, it’s not going to be long and no one is trying to get your location. I’ve been with Julia and just walked out of the hospital. Stay on the line. Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.”

  I took the other call. It was the front desk and they transferred me to Venuti.

  “Come to the office as fast as you can. Omar Smith and his lawyer just arrived and Smith is asking for Special Agent Paul Grale. What is it with you two? He says he’s got a confession to make but wants you here.”

  “Okay, but I’m twenty minutes out and I’ve got Beatty on hold. Let me tell you what he just told me.”

  I did and asked, “Can we get agents out there?”

  “How good a shot is he?”

  “Very good.”

  “Then I could be sending agents to their deaths. We need to be careful here. I’ll call Strata. Get here. Get into the room with Smith and then we’ll deal with the rest of this. I’ll make some calls before you get here, but Smith is ready to talk. You need to focus on that. Do you have any ideas about what he’s going to say?”

  “It’ll be something about money. Let’s stick on Beatty for a minute. Let’s say he’s right.”

  “No, let’s say he’s dangerous. We know he had a beef with these security guys and we know he has no reason to be there. Based on what you’ve told me, we have to treat Jeremy Beatty as a possible murder suspect. If it’s sheriff’s deputies that go there first, we have an obligation to warn them.”

  “If you frame it that way, you’ll get him killed.”

  “Get here and we’ll talk. I’ve got to go.”

  He hung up. He was exasperated and questioned my judgment. Truth was, I wavered for a moment as well and when I switched back to Jeremy, he was gone.

  49

  Despite air conditioning, Smith’s forehead and scalp glistened with sweat. His gaze held mine for a moment then moved to the wall behind me. The tall, thin lawyer to his left looked worried and nervous. He’d probably advised against this meeting.

  “On May twentieth, my sister’s three daughters were kidnapped in Istanbul. They were pulled into two cars and the kidnappers told my brother-in-law they would kill my nieces or sell them into Syria to ISIS or for prostitution in Turkey if he did not pay $300,000 for each of them. So almost a million dollars, and my brother-in-law has no money. He doesn’t even work. The kidnappers must know this. Everyone knows this, so I am wondering, ‘Who is behind the kidnapping?’”

  He answered his question a moment later.

  “I am thinking the men I am in court with in Istanbul are the ones. It is a way to pressure me. Perhaps the ransom goes to them and the kidnappers get a cut. Thoughts like these are in my head, but my sister is nearly without words when she calls me. She is crazy with worry.”

  “Did you contact the police in Istanbul?”

  Smith looked at me like I was a fool and said, “It was a condition of the ransom we make no contact with the police.”

  “It always is.”

  “The police, I don’t trust them. The men I owe are speaking to me and they are very angry. They want money I owe and they want it now. This is what I am thinking. I do not expect them to hurt the girls, and they know Ozan, my brother-in-law, has no money. Why take the children of a man who has no wealth? It was obvious, it was to reach me.”

  The lawyer scowled and twisted a pen between his fingers as if this was difficult for him to hear, though I didn’t grasp why. Maybe he knew what was coming next.

  “I told my brother-in-law $300,000 for each girl is more than I can pay. There is nothing I can do with numbers like that. But I love my family and I am not a coldhearted man. I am thinking every second how to get them back. Through Ozan, I tell the kidnappers we must negotiate. When my sister hears that, she collapses. She believes I am very, very, very rich, and that negotiating means I do not love my nieces. Nothing could be more false. One week later I offered $150,000 for all three.”

  “On May 27?”

  “Yes.”

  “You offered a fraction of what they had demanded?”

  “This is normal for the purpose of starting a negotiation. For them to know I am a serious man, I must start low. Ozan is shocked by this. He is very angry and goes to the kidnappers without telling me.”

  I jotted down May 20 and $300,000 each on a pad, and May 27, give or take, and $50,000 per girl as a first offer.

  “How much were you willing to pay?”

  “Perhaps $100,000 each.”

  I wrote $100,000 as he continued with his brother-in-law.

  “They put a hood on Ozan’s head and took him to see the girls. The girls are in cages beneath a house, one cage for each girl. There is not much light and they are frightened and weeping and Ozan is shocked, but of course this is what the kidnappers want. Ozan tells them I am not as rich as they believe and in the name of Allah they must release his children. They say they know about the lawsuit for $2,000,000 against me, therefore I must have money. They repeat the demand for $300,000 each and make a deadline of tomorrow. When Ozan calls me, he’s crying. He is apologizing for going to them and frightened at what he has seen. He is a very weak man.”

  A quick but strong emotion crossed his face and made me think what he was about to say disturbed him deeply.

  “The next day the kidnappers sent a video of the body of my youngest niece lying in a gutter. She was the most beautiful girl and the favorite of my sister. When they did that, I canceled the wire transfer I was trying to arrange. I called a friend in Istanbul and asked him to hire people who could find and kill them.”

  His lawyer interrupted. “You did not do that.”

  “I did.”

  He said that and stopped and, for almost a minute, stared through me. When he spoke again his voice broke.

  “My brother-in-law bla
med me. He told my sister I played games with the kidnappers and she went crazy with anger and sorrow. She stopped eating or sleeping. She refused my calls. She talks to herself, and the kidnappers no longer take Ozan’s phone calls.”

  “This was what day?”

  “May thirtieth. There was no need to kill my niece.”

  “How do we contact your brother-in-law and what’s his last name?”

  “Yildiz. Ozan Yildiz. He is gone into Syria to join with ISIS.”

  The lawyer wrote down the name of the brother-in-law and slid it across the table. I pretended to focus on it, though we already knew Ozan Yildiz’s name. The Bureau was in contact with the Turkish National Police regarding Omar Smith and his family and all other known connections.

  “I’m sorry I have to ask for this,” I said. “Can you forward me the video they sent of your niece’s body?”

  The lawyer forwarded it to my e-mail, and Omar Smith looked away as I watched it. It was forty-three seconds and long enough to capture a tragic truth about all of us. A young girl who couldn’t be more than eight or nine was lying on her side in a gutter amid trash and filth. Whether she was Omar Smith’s niece or not, her throat was cut.

  When Smith spoke again it was in a slower and quieter voice.

  “They asked for proof that I didn’t have the ransom money. They wanted to see business records including bank statements.”

  “Your computer records are in English. Did the people you were negotiating with speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did that mean anything to you?”

  “Not much. Many speak English.”

  I thought about what was coming next and my heart skipped a beat as he worked through the mechanics of giving them remote access to his computer. A computer expert was consulted. Things were done to limit what they could see.

  The lawyer slid me a business card with the consultant’s name. Smith’s banks were fed a story about ferreting out a hacker. The banks cooperated. I listened and took notes but inwardly urged Smith to just say it. Say what they focused on after they got in remotely.

  “I gave them access on June 5 and they went through everything. The computer expert said they already know how to do this. He said this was not the first time for them. They asked me about future business, about what was already booked.”

  Smith stared at me. He wanted my reaction, and though I was sickened I wasn’t going to show him.

  “This is how they found the party for the drone pilots,” he said. “It’s how Ozan came to know also. In the schedule of signed contracts, it was called ‘Air Force Drone Pilot Party.’”

  Smith said something to himself that I couldn’t hear but the lawyer did. The lawyer put an arm around him as Smith bowed his head. When he lifted his head again, he nodded at me.

  “I am very deeply sorry that the drone pilots’ party is what they wanted to talk about. When I said no to that, they began working through Ozan. Ozan begins to speak around me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they are making a deal with Ozan, and I am remembering when he was at university how much he hated America. Like the Iranians, for him the United States was the great Satan. He is not a man who can think for himself.”

  “Were you afraid Ozan would try to sell information about the drone pilot party as a way to save his remaining daughters?”

  “For that and for more money and to strike at America. I think it was all these things. He found other people who were not the kidnappers who said they would pay for the information and pay the kidnappers too.”

  “Did Ozan tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The lawyer cut in. “He doesn’t know that.”

  Smith’s fingers worked at the left cuff of his shirt.

  “I wired money on June 12 as an act of good faith to save the two girls.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars. The kidnappers got the money and told us that was good but not enough. Yet there was no hurry. Now they were willing to negotiate. I could feel Ozan was not as worried. So I became frightened that something was working in the background. We were very close to agreeing on a final price. Then for more than a week I heard nothing before something incredible. They would send someone to America and collect the money in person. Can you imagine?”

  “Did you believe them?”

  “Of course not.”

  I looked hard at him, at his calculated decisions, at what he knew and held back. I felt a cold anger.

  “You’d figured out they were waiting for the Fourth of July.”

  “No, I did not.”

  But he had.

  “You are wrong,” he said. “It was arranged in this way. A man would come to the Alagara. I would pay him and he would call the kidnappers from my office. The money for this was in the safe.”

  The lawyer’s chair scraped back. He stood and said, “I need to talk to my client.”

  Smith shook his head. He waved his lawyer off.

  “I insist,” the lawyer said.

  “I was to meet this man on July 4 at 10:00 p.m. at the Alagara.”

  “The night of the party.”

  “Yes, the night of the party. The party rental ended at 9:30. They knew this from my computer files, and I thought it was 10:00 so that it was after the party. Now I know this was to keep me quiet until the bombs went off.” He gave a small shrug. “But I was relieved we were making a deal.”

  “What is the name of the man you were to meet?”

  “Mansur, only one word. I would know him by that name and he would come at 10:00 the night of the Fourth, but I was to call him earlier in the day.”

  “Did you?”

  “I have the phone number I called. You will have no record of it.” He turned to the lawyer. “Give it to them.”

  The lawyer stalled finding the number. Smith checked it before it was slid across.

  “You were going to be at the Alagara at 10:00 the night of July 4 to pay the ransom to a man named Mansur?”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars. I called that phone number from Houston and he said the meeting time had changed and to call him as soon as I returned to Las Vegas. When he said that, I became frightened. I didn’t know why it frightened me, but it did.”

  I took it the next step. The drone party information got sold and the kidnappers got more than they were going to get haggling with Smith. I asked Smith, “When did you find out the girls were dead?”

  That caught him off-balance. I may have seen fear in his eyes.

  “This afternoon. How did you know they are dead?”

  I looked at him, remembering Melissa saying she liked Smith so much that they’d become Facebook friends. On her Facebook page she wrote about the upcoming party.

  “We’re going to be here awhile,” I said. “I need a few minutes before we continue. Do you want tea or something to eat?”

  “I wish only to die.”

  “Agent Ruiz and I are going to step out a few minutes and then we’ll be back.”

  I walked out with Carlo Ruiz, the other agent in the room with me. I needed to sit alone for a few minutes. Ruiz went to find Venuti and Thorpe.

  50

  Near dawn Omar Smith asked to pray and rest. His expression said, Read nothing into my prayers. They are not because of or for you. When I left him I left the office and drove to the Alagara and walked around as Smith prayed and rested. I looked at the building where so many had died and thought about things Smith had said in the night, reliving the decisions he’d made. It wasn’t religion. It was survival. It was money. It was thinking he was smarter than the bombers, but he wasn’t. A hollowed sadness flooded me as I looked at the ruined building. Then some voice inside, and I would like to think it was Melissa, said, Walk away, walk toward the sunrise and the first light on the fields of flowers draping and laid with notes and cards on the Alagara lot. I knew I was looking at what connects us, w
hat joins us. I needed that this morning.

  An hour later, Smith was brought back to the interview room. He picked up the sketch of Garod Hurin I placed in front of him before asking him, “When did you last speak with Ozan?”

  “July 4, the day he left for Syria. The men he respects so much will put him in a truck with a bomb and tell him he’s honored and lucky.”

  “He never made it. The Turkish police have him. They stopped him at the border. He told them you advised him to cross into Syria. Why did you suggest that?”

  “Yes, why would I? I wouldn’t, of course, and you, with what you’ve suffered, why would you want to play games? Ozan is dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Someone I pay inside the Istanbul police informed me.”

  “Your friend was fed misinformation. He’s alive. He told Turkish police you didn’t want to pay a ransom, so you came up with the idea of selling the information on the drone pilot party.”

  “Nothing could be more untrue.”

  “Through people he knew of, Ozan made contact with a man who set up a meeting. In the meeting he was told there was great interest.”

  Smith smiled at that, but his expression was disdainful. “Ozan said this.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “I see. But you haven’t talked to him.”

  “Others have.”

  “So they are saying I allowed my building that is uninsured for terrorist acts to have a bomb planted in it to kill the pilots and their families and end my business and life here. And why would I do this? Am I crazy with a religious fever? Is that what you believe?”

  “Ozan is willing to testify you discussed selling the information several times before he went looking for the men who would buy it. You pushed him.”

  “I pushed him?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “I am sure he’s not saying that and you are telling me that because the FBI wishes to frame me.”

  “We’re not trying to frame you.”