by David Perry
The former marine did not recognize the number. He hesitated then pressed the icon to take the call.
“Peter Rodgers.”
“This is Detective John Palmer of the Newport News Police Department.”
“You have Jason in custody?”
“That’s correct.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Your brother says that you have evidence that …” Palmer hesitated, lowering his voice. “ … that Delilah Hussein is alive. A phone and a file with a message and video file showing captives. Is this true?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you send them to me?”
“Are you going to release my brother?”
“That’s not possible. He’s a suspect in another murder.”
The word murder sent a sharp pain through Peter’s gut. “Then why do you need it?”
“It may help your brother … and help us find his girlfriend and his son … your nephew. Bring the phone and flash drive to police headquarters.”
Peter glanced down at the cell phone emblazoned with the number two in grease paint and the flash drive. The laptop lay on the passenger-side floorboard. He didn’t want to end up in custody beside Jason. It would not help Michael and Chrissie’s cause.
“Negative. Give me your phone number and I’ll send them to you.”
Chapter 31
The Watcher strode to the glass doors of the Newport News Police Headquarters on Jefferson Avenue for the second time in the last hour. The time was twenty-two minutes after midnight. At the moment, he appeared to be a man without a care in the world, his gait unhurried and casual. He checked his watch, calculating the time. His appearance was much different than during his first trip here an hour ago. He had donned a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, a blonde wig, a white t-shirt, jeans, and a brown leather bomber jacket. Now, he was back in his dark suit and fedora. If his timing was correct, he had less than a minute.
Hussein’s plan had gone to hell. The Watcher was improvising.
Before Jason had killed the tattooed beast, his former military training and spy tradecraft was taxed by this convoluted, perilous mission. Now he was in uncharted territory. Every neuron in his body fired, hypersensitive to every detail.
He yanked open the door and strode into the two-story foyer lined with the portraits of officers who had paid the ultimate price. His eyes registered everything but carried the indifferent look of a bored man trying to pay a parking ticket. He stopped and appeared to study the paintings. The foyer was semi-dark at this late hour. By the nearly empty parking lot, he guessed the building was sparsely populated
After glancing at his watch, The Watcher approached the reception desk. A sleepy-eyed, but pleasant black woman smiled up at him.
“Hi, I’m Doctor Alberti. I need some help …”
Three … two … one …
A muffled bang sounded over his left shoulder. The Watcher feigned a jolted surprise.
“What the hell was that?” he said, ducking.
“I don’t know,” the black woman replied, alarmed.
Smoke roiled from under the restroom door, spilling into the foyer.
“It’s a fire,” The Watcher shouted.
The woman circled the desk and approached the men’s room door. She disappeared from the man’s view as she pushed it open. The Watcher pressed the button on the remote control in his jacket pocket beside the badge. A second explosion fired.
The black woman shrieked, staggering backward from the cloud of smoke. The orange hue of fire glowed inside the bathroom. A man and a woman appeared from a side door, saw their fallen comrade, and rushed to her aid. The Watcher joined them.
“I heard you say you were a doctor. Are you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you help?”
“Definitely.”
The Watcher knelt. “Can you hear me, ma’am?”
The woman did not respond. He checked her pulse and turned to her co-workers.
“We need to get her away from here. A conference room, maybe,” the man in the dark suit said.
“Sure, this way,” the man replied. “Just off the hallway.”
They lifted her. The Watcher and the other man carried the receptionist toward the swinging double doors leading inside the building. The woman swiped a key card, held open the heavy doors, and pointed to a conference room. They sat her in a comfortable chair.
“Get her a wet cloth and some water,” the Watcher commanded. “You,” he continued, pointing at the man, “call an ambulance and the fire department. Then get a fire extinguisher and call 911! I’m going to my car to get my medical bag. I’ll be right back.”
The woman rushed off. The man dialed the conference room phone.
The Watcher headed for the nearest stairwell.
As John Palmer walked to the evidence locker, he rubbed his sweaty palms together. Not since he was a rookie patrolman twenty years ago had he recalled feeling this nervous. He had chomped on the ever-present toothpick in his mouth for the past two hours, shredding it. He spit the remnants into a small waste can moments before he slid his leather wallet containing his shield and identification card through the opening in the thick, grated metal toward the clerk.
“Hey, Steve. I need to see the personal effects of the vic, William Luther. They were brought in hours ago.”
“Sure John. Slide your card into the slot.”
Palmer slid his key card through the pad, logging the time and his badge number into the system.
“It’s in aisle seven, top shelf. Here’s the case number.” The clerk handed him a slip of paper.
Palmer thanked him and headed into the stacks of boxes neatly catalogued on rows and rows of metal shelving. A phone rang. He found the aisle and stepped in. He scanned the top shelf and found the box. Palmer pulled it down and placed it on a small wheeled table a few feet away.
He lifted the lid and hesitated. Palmer walked back to the main corridor and snuck a peak back at the clerk’s desk. The clerk was on the phone and engaged in conversation.
What the hell am I doing?
He had been asking himself that question for the last hour, ever since Jason Rodgers asked him to get the keys.
What he was about to do was a felony. Tampering with evidence in a crime would end his career. He would lose his pension.
All for a man he barely knew. It could be a hoax.
Peter Rodgers had texted the video file uploaded from the flash drive, along with the voice recording from the cell phone in question. Palmer had watched and listened to them. They lent more than just a ring of truth to Jason’s tall tale.
Palmer had met Delilah Hussein one afternoon in her mansion on Riverside Drive for thirty minutes while an officer tried and failed to chase down Christine Pettigrew along the shoreline of the James River. Hussein’s rich French accent was unforgettable. The voice in the recording he’d listened to an hour ago sounded very much like hers. As the words slipped into his ear, a lead weight materialized in his gut.
This shit is happening again!
If it was a hoax, Jason, and now Peter, would face a slew of additional charges over and above manslaughter or murder. If it was real, Palmer didn’t want the deaths of two hostages on his hands. The detective had seen enough during the assassination attempts to know that Delilah Hussein was more than the Newport News Police could handle. They didn’t have time, according to Rodgers, to analyze the recordings for authenticity.
Rodgers had saved two presidents and nearly paid for it with his life. Palmer recalled the sight of Rodgers in the hospital, wounded, beaten, and weak. The man had run into the fray rather than run from it. He hadn’t shied away from the fight. Eventually, all his charges were dropped in York County and Newport News.
Palmer decided to go with his gut.
It’s real!
Palmer and his wife had lost their only child to cancer nearly a decade earlier. The aftermath was more than she could handle. They were st
ill married, but only in appearance. Their daughter’s death had ripped the will to live out of Pat. And he’d almost allowed it to do the same to him.
No one should ever have to bury their child.
As soon as he had seen the image of the boy chained to the wall in the grimy cell, Palmer knew he would not refuse Jason Rodger’s request. He just needed to wrap his mind around it. He still didn’t know how the keys would help. There was no way Rodgers was being released. But the desperation in the pharmacist’s eye and the memory of all Rodgers had been through plucked a nerve in Palmer. So he’d left Rodgers with his rookie partner, Kent Romo, and headed for the evidence room.
Just get it over with!
Palmer removed the yellow copy of a two-ply inventory list from the box. He read over the list and moved the few items around in the box.
“Did you find it okay, Detective?”
Palmer whipped his head in the direction of the words. The clerk was standing at the aisle entrance.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look pale.”
“No, Steve. I’m fine. You scared the shit out of me … I’m just making some notes. The box was right where you said it would be.”
The clerk studied Palmer for a beat, then turned to leave. “Okay, let me know if you need anything.” Palmer watched Steve disappear, a look of confusion etched on his face.
Palmer removed every item in the box and laid them on the small table: a wallet, some coins in a plastic bag, a jack knife, a cell phone, two guns, and a money clip holding a ten, a five and two ones in it.
Palmer looked in the box again and then at the items on the small table. What the hell!
He didn’t need to worry about committing a crime.
There were no keys here.
Two seconds later, fire alarms sounded, sending deafening, intermittent blasts through the basement.
“I need a SITREP, now!” Broadhurst demanded, wheezing the words.
“Rodgers has been arrested,” someone answered.
“What? When?” Clay Broadhurst rolled himself in the wheelchair to the left of the agent at the workstation.
“The FBI team following him and The Watcher said he visited a house and was involved in an altercation. Shots were fired. A body was removed from the residence. Rodgers was taken into custody. He’s being interrogated at Newport News Police Headquarters.”
“Shit.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Get me the Newport News Chief of Police on the line.
Klaxons blared and red beacons flashed throughout the corridors. John Palmer alternated between a run and a hurried walk along the gleaming first-floor corridor of headquarters. Glancing out the large window of the hallway, he saw fire trucks clogging the circular drive and parking lot. He spied two firefighters walking toward the foyer.
He stopped a uniformed officer as she approached.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“Fire alarm. Smoke and fire in the foyer restrooms,” she replied. “It looks like they have it contained. It was a homemade smoke bomb and two-minute flamer.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“No sir.”
Palmer had taken the stairwell in the rear of the building, so he had not seen the commotion. The elevators had been disabled intentionally. The whine of additional sirens in the distance grew louder.
Palmer raced past the elevator and burst out of the stairwell. Fifteen seconds later, he appeared in the homicide squad room. He checked the interrogation room and found it empty. He darted to the holding cell and found it empty.
“Where’s my prisoner?” He demanded of a junior detective.
The young man shrugged and said he’d been ordered to evacuate.
“Where’s my prisoner?” he repeated.
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s Kent Romo? I left him in charge.”
Another negative response.
“He better hope I don’t find him.”
Chapter 32
“Who the hell are you?” Jason demanded, sitting at the wheel of the man’s black Cadillac CTS-V.
The man wearing the fedora and the black suit sat in the passenger seat with his weapon, below the level of the dashboard, leveled at Jason’s abdomen. The car was parked at the Skymart gas station on Jefferson Avenue on the northwest corner of the intersection with Dresden Drive, south of Hampton Roads Center Parkway.
Jason was familiar with the area. He had played in weekend softball tournaments years ago at a ballfield on Dresden Drive. Across Jefferson Avenue, the W.M. Jordan building nestled at the corner behind ornate shrubs. At the far end of the same building, the central precinct of the Newport News Police Department resided. Several patrol cars sat parked.
This guy had big ones, Jason thought.
He had appeared in the interrogation room as the fire alarms sounded, flashed his badge, and unlocked Jason’s handcuffs. In the commotion, he led Jason out of the building
“And what the hell do you want?”
“You failed to complete your mission back at the house,” the man stated calmly. “I’m trying to help you.”
“Look, I appreciate the get-out-of-jail-free card, Mac,” Jason said, “but I’m not sure it helped. The whole Newport News police force is looking for me. And you picked a spot right across the street from the hornet’s nest.” Jason pointed to the police cars parked across Jefferson Ave.
“Hide in plain sight,” the man replied. “You’re right. They will be looking for you. So there’s no time to waste.”
Jason paused, then asked, “You helped me last night after Clyde Hutton’s crash.”
The man nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
The man shook his head. “I’m a little higher on the food chain. I suggest you get back on your quest.”
The first opportunity to really study the man presented itself. His aquiline nose split the thin visage in half. The skin was pockmarked with some kind of dermatologic condition. A long scar snaked from under one ear across his throat to the other side.
“And what quest would that be?” He turned away from the man and looked out the windshield, observing traffic zipping by but not really seeing it. The buzzing of a gnat along the inside of the windshield caught Jason’s eye.
“Don’t play coy, Mr. Rodgers. I’m the one that planted the small coffins with the cell phones in them for you to find.”
Forgetting the gun aimed at him, Jason reached out and grabbed the man by his expensive shirt and suit. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know”
“Don’t screw with me! My family! Where are they? What the hell is your part in this,” Jason seethed.
“I don’t know where your son and girlfriend are. I told you I am here to help you. I am given orders by a contact I do not know. I keep tabs on you and plant clues for you to find. I keep you out of trouble, which, I might add, it seems, you are quite adept at getting into. For that I am paid quite well.”
“Who are you?”
“Just call me The Watcher.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“It is in my—and my handlers—best interests to see you complete your mission. The longer you stay alive and continue on your quest, the more information we obtain …”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Sorry … can’t say.”
“So I’m just a pawn …”
The gnat crawled along the dashboard as the man said this. “You are no more important to me than this bug.”
The Watcher slapped the vinyl, crushing the insect. He turned his palm over, revealing a streak of gray dust and mangled insect wings. Opening the glove compartment, he removed a paper napkin and wiped his hands.
“I track your progress. If harm were to befall you, my job would be over.” He leaned back, resting the gun on his lap, but making sure the barrel was pointed at Jason. “That’s all you need to know.”
“So, I guess I don’t have to
worry about you using that thing,” Jason declared.
“I believe you have a deadline, Mr. Rodgers. Did your message not tell you that you were to retrieve the keys and communicate back to whoever is on the other end by one this morning? Would the consequences for you not be dire?” The man glanced at his Rolex. “You have a little more than thirty minutes. I suggest you use them wisely so that you can be on your way.”
“Then let me go so I can find the keys. I’ll call her and tell her I need more time!”
“She won’t give it to you.”
“I don’t have much choice. As you said, I have only thirty minutes left. So let me go.”
“Not yet,” the man said.
“You’re not making any sense. You’re telling me to continue my journey, and you’re holding me up. You’re going to let me miss my deadline?”
The man checked his Rolex once more. “Another minute more.”
The man’s eyes shifted to something behind Jason. The man’s gaze followed a moving object. Jason turned and saw Peter’s large boxlike silver Hummer skidding to a halt in the parking lot.
Peter climbed out, searching.
Jason shot The Watcher a quizzical glance.
The man shrugged. “You can thank me later.” He waved the gun and Jason shoved open the car door.
“Pete!”
“Jason!”
The brothers embraced.
“I should beat the shit out of you, little brother. What the hell were you thinking, ditching me?”
“I’m sorry. I told you I didn’t want you involved.”
“Well, guess what? I’m involved …”
“We don’t have much time. Do you have the cell phone?”
“Right here,” Peter replied, patting his trouser pocket.
Peter opened the passenger door to the Hummer for Jason. Before Jason climbed in, The Watcher, now standing beside the luxury car, called to him.
“I don’t have time for sentiment,” Jason sneered.
“You’ll need these,” the man shouted.
He lobbed something at Jason. It rattled in his hand as he caught it. He opened his palm and looked down at the keychain that once belonged to the deceased William Luther, Tattoo Man.