by Kristen Lamb
Sawyer.
I meekly opened the front door and let him in, only this time, instead of 5.11 attire, he wore a starched shirt, silver tie, and slacks. He frowned. “Forgive me, but when you said you’d wear the same thing to dinner, I naturally assumed you were joking.”
“It isn’t the same thing. These are Batman jammies. I’m classy like that.” I struggled to wake my drugged brain.
“You fell asleep.”
“What makes you think that?” I gave my best shock face then yawned.
“The sheet marks across your face for starters.”
“You’re the FBI agent. No getting anything past you.”
Sawyer reached for my hands making me jump. His face twisted into a scowl as he inspected the perfect lines of bruising around both wrists. I noted the telltale ripple of the muscles along his jaw.
“I’m fine. Really.” I was still full of codeine. I was fine as frog hair.
“Why do you let people walk on you like this?” he said, his voice all agent-like and it pissed me off.
“Want to know why Phil targeted me? I’m a doormat. There.” I flopped on the couch and drew the throw blanket over my body as if it might shield me. “I wasn’t the only one who fell for the lies. A lot of big people, powerful people smarter than both of us together got conned. If the FBI is so clever, why isn’t Phil behind bars?”
His shoulders relaxed in a way that told me I’d made a good point.
“And as far as Meyerson?” I sulked down into my nest of pillows. “There are bigger things at stake, things worth more than a couple of bruises.”
“What things?” He sat across from me in the new wicker chair.
“Meyerson’s too cocky and stupid to be anything but a bottom-feeding fry.”
“And?”
“And none of your business. Go eat by yourself. I’m not hungry,” I said, but then my stomach growled so loudly Amarillo probably heard it. I wanted to pull the blanket over my head and die, but Sawyer laughed catching me by surprise.
“Meyerson’s a small fish and what? Who are you after?” he said.
“Do you ever give up? Must be fun being married to you.”
“Not married.” He brushed me off. Then, he leveled his eyes on me, and, in a strange voice asked, “What do you want, Romi?”
His question made me stumble. “I want you to stop asking me questions and go away.”
He said nothing, just that unnerving stare.
Emboldened, I said, “I want the Great White. I don’t waste time with gatekeepers.”
“Who do you think is the Great White?”
I didn’t know jack, but I was going to bluff anyway. “Quid pro quo, Clarice.” I folded my arms.
“You watch too many movies.” He eyed me strangely.
“Look,” I said, my voice steady as stone. “Maybe, just maybe if you shared a little more of what this new development is then I could answer your questions better. You know something new, something big you’re not telling me.”
“What makes you think I know anything new?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because if you didn’t, then hours of interrogation and my stack of statements taken well over a year ago would be enough. There would be no reason for you to be here. I haven’t touched a computer unless one counts the worthless paperweights at Unemployment.”
He shrugged. “You were moving.”
“I’d moved three times and no FBI visits. What changed?”
“We’d been monitoring your phone and, though you’d moved four times, you remained local. As of Wednesday, you were making a move that brought you right to the Mexican border.”
“And?”
“And what?”
I gave him my best I’m not a moron face. “You had more than that.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I made a living out of reading people. And your face tells me you are all out of aces, friend. But, suit yourself. I’ve been chasing my own ass for over a year.”
Glowering, he said, “Give me a minute.” He let out a long, heavy breath and I could see the mental wrestling match behind his eyes.
“What?” I cocked my head.
“Give me a minute.” He stalked out the front door and I could hear his truck door open and close. Less than two minutes later he returned with a large black folder.
His manner remained closed, unreadable, all business. “You’re familiar with the name George Pohlson.”
“Yes, he was Verify’s Chief Financial Officer. Disappeared after the celebration in Monte Carlo. Pohlson, and the Chief Operating Officer Brenda Vanhook.”
Sawyer rattled off a couple more names.
“Yes, I know all those people. They were all part of the scam.”
“Are you aware they’re all dead?”
I wavered a bit, but refused to let it show. I’d hated those people with everything in me, yet knowing they were dead brought only sadness and fear.
“No,” I said, my voice low. “I didn’t.”
Sawyer shifted the wicker chair closer and sat across from me, so close I could smell the spicy scent of his shaving balm. He removed photos from his folder and handed them to me. It was a crime scene image of Pohlson floating face down in his swimming pool. “George Pohlson. Garroted from behind. No forced entry, meaning he might have let in whoever killed him.”
I ran my fingertips across the image. “Where was this taken?”
“Pohlson was killed in his seaside estate in Tampico, Mexico. When we traced his last cell phone call, guess where he was calling?”
“I don’t know, Homeland Security?”
“Presidio.”
I said nothing, gave no hint that I was now officially scared. Presidio was easy driving distance from here.
“We traced the call.”
“And?”
“Got nowhere. Phone was a throwaway.” Sawyer pulled out another photo and it stole my breath. It was Phil. He wore a hat, sunglasses, and linen suit, but I knew it was him. “This image was captured on a security camera near Pohlson’s home.”
“You think Phil killed Pohlson?”
Sawyer said nothing.
“Can I go for Double Jeopardy?”
Sawyer nodded.
“And I’m guessing Pohlson was the last one murdered and probably right before I decided to move back home.”
“Three days before actually.”
I chewed my bottom lip as the news sank in. “All of Phil’s cronies are dead. He no longer has to share the spoils and your natural assumption would be that I was reuniting with him at the border.”
“That’s one theory.”
“One theory?” My blood went cold.
Sawyer sat next to me on the couch and, facing me, continued. “Phil’s partners are now all dead, each executed the same way. Garroted and dumped in water.”
“I need to see.”
“Romi, some things can’t be unseen. Let me just show you the less severe—”
“I’m not an infant.” I ripped the folder from his hands and opened it and retched at the first image of Pohlson, dead in Technicolor. He lay half par-boiled, half sunbaked in a hot tub. His head was barely attached to the spine. It had flopped onto the pool tile at an obscene angle, its eye-sockets, nostrils, and gaping mouth black with ants. I turned away gasping.
“That was dumb. Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be. It’s normal. Frankly, surprised you didn’t puke.”
Rubbing my throat, I frowned. “I thought garroting meant strangling.”
“Strangulation in the pure sense takes too long,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Wha—?”
“It can be…an inefficient method of killing.” His eyes cut away and I wondered how he knew that tidbit of information. He tapped the image. “This was done with piano wire, which can take a head clean off with enough force.”
“What happened, other than the obvious?”
“No blood at the scene other than what was in th
e hot tub, which had been cranked up to high and God only knows how much chlorine dumped in with him. Deck hosed with bleach and no fingerprints.”
“No trace of the killer,” I mumbled. My memory fixed on the tangles of muscle and veins jutting from his neck, like ruined circuitry, wires ripped out of a machine. “Let me see the others,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s a good—”
“I’m fine. That was shocking, is all. You have to understand.” I rubbed my mouth.
“Understand what?”
“George was kind to me. He took me under his wing and mentored me.” I shot Sawyer a look. “And not a creepy ‘mentoring’ either. George had already been through three wives, and his kids were all spoiled deadbeats. He said he saw something in me, something…remarkable. It’s what had made the betrayal all the worse.” I looked away.
I held out my hand and shifted mental gears into analytical mode and studied the images.
Another body had been discovered in Miami, another off dock in Key Largo, and another tied to the anchor of a small yacht, his half-eaten corpse covered in crabs and bobbing in the Caribbean. It was one thing to wish people would drop dead, but when it actually happened?
Maintaining a poker face when negotiating an extra few million for help-desk support was easy. This? I was completely out of my depth. I’d never even seen a dead body and in the past minute, I’d seen several ravaged, bloated, decaying bodies of people I once considered friends.
He leaned forward, face intent. “I know this is hard.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good, because I need you to listen.”
I nodded.
“Garroting is an up-close, violent and personal way to kill.”
“No kidding.”
“It’s very telling about the murderer. Not only were these men and women executed, but their accounts were emptied using the same kind of advanced software Verify used to steal the funds to begin with.”
“Definition of irony,” I said and pushed my hair out of my face. “All right, but I still don’t understand. If you thought I was meeting Phil, why not hang back, follow me then nab us when two star-crossed lovers reunited?” It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
His expression chilled me to my toes.
I waited a long moment before speaking. “Because you never really believed I was heading to meet him.” I felt the blood drain from my face.
“No.” His eyes softened.
“I’m next on his list, aren’t I?”
He didn’t reply.
“Okay,” I said, trying hard not to freak out.
“We don’t know anything for certain, but the security cameras at Casa Linda picked this up the day after you left.” He handed me another image. All I saw was a grainy image of a large shadow man at what was once my front door.
“Security cameras? I didn’t think they worked,” I said thinking of Cesar.
“They didn’t most of the time. We got lucky.”
You aren’t the only one. He hadn’t mentioned Cesar and I wasn’t volunteering. “So, all I need to do is keep an eye out for Phil, right? Unlike the others, I’m not exactly going to welcome him in for coffee.”
He paused a long moment. “My concern is that Phil isn’t the killer.”
“Huh?”
“Our labs enhanced the image at Casa Linda as much as they could, and the person is too large to be Phil. We’re estimating the person had to at least be over six foot one, maybe taller.”
“Maybe the lab made a mistake, or Phil’s wearing platform shoes. He always was insecure about being only five-ten.” I sounded like an idiot even to myself.
He sat quiet.
“What about that picture? The one in, in…” I searched for the name of the town, but fear and pain pills clouded my thinking. “Tampico.”
“Doesn’t fit the dimensions of the person in the image at Casa Linda or Phil’s psych profile.”
I blinked, confused.
“Conmen, like all criminals, have a distinctive psychological profile. Phil might wear nice suits, but he’s nothing more than a bullshit artist and a thief. Sometimes thieves kill if it will make them richer or if they feel cornered.” He leaned closer.
“But,” I said, scooting away.
“But that’s unusual. Most of the time? Guys like Phil don’t like doing their own dirty work. Harder to justify their actions. Men like him feel like Robin Hood—”
“That billionaires won’t miss ten or twenty million,” I finished his sentence and he nodded.
“Taking life in such a methodical and intimate way? People he knew personally?” He shrugged. “It’s a stretch. Men like Phil generally prefer to…”
“Outsource.” I drew the blanket closer.
“Yes.”
“You’re thinking Phil was only there to get Pohlson to let down his guard so a professional could gain access.”
“All theories at this point. There isn’t any hard evidence Phil was anywhere near the other victims. Just as likely he paid to have them erased and handled the part he was good at.”
“Stealing.”
Sawyer’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And there’s something else I need to tell you.”
“What?” I asked, but knew to dread the answer.
He drew a long breath and placed a hand on my arm. “Ida’s gone.”
“Gone? No, you mean she went missing,” I said. “She’s very absent-minded. It’s her meds. They should check for her at the laundro—”
He squeezed my arm. “No, Romi. She’s dead.”
“That’s not possible. She can’t be. Ida’s fine. She’s fine. Tell me she’s fine,” I said and began to shake.
“I can’t do that.”
“Show me,” I said a bitter taste forming at the back of my mouth. “You have it. It’s in that other folder, isn’t it?”
“Romi, don’t make me. This is hard enough—”
“Show me,” I said, my voice sounding very small and faraway. “I have to see. Please.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” I shut my eyes and willed myself not to throw up. “I’m asking for closure.”
He set one last photo in my lap. There it was in color. Ida. Dead. Murdered. Facedown, her limp form half on the couch and half on the floor. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the unnatural position of her body, the ghostly pallor of her dead flesh, the deep slice around her throat, the remnants of her lifeblood staining the pink floral couch. I stared at the latest issue of The Inquirer on the pillows I’d so recently fluffed to make her more comfortable.
“You all right?” he asked and set his hand on my arm.
I barely heard his question. White-hot rage filled my veins and I bolted to my feet. “Find the bastard.”
“That’s what we’re working on.”
“Work harder. Find him.” I paced back and forth.
He drew away and surveyed me as if I were some wild thing that might bite.
“I shouldn’t have left her,” I said. “I should’ve stayed.”
“Then you’d be dead, too.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
Sawyer sat silent.
I felt like I was crumbling. “Why’d he have to hurt a sweet old lady? Who does this? Why?” My voice vibrated with grief I could hardly contain.
Sawyer’s eyes locked on mine. “To find you.”
Chapter Nine
I had to take another shower to wash away the once-innocent parts of me that could never be clean again. As hard as I scrubbed I couldn’t make it go away. Had to calm down and gather my wits before I bought a shotgun at a pawnshop and went on a Phil-hunting rampage. But then there was that Shadow Man, the one who came for my life and took Ida’s instead. I thought about Daddy seeing Shadow People. Was he really crazy or had the killer been casing my old home in between murdering the others?
As the warm water flowed over me, my wrath melted to tears
and I wept for my lost friend. I didn’t want to grieve alone. I wanted Sawyer to hold me and let me cry on his chest, but he was all business and I wasn’t that weak. I wasn’t some desperate trailer trash slut who threw herself at men who clearly weren’t interested. I hated myself for crying and hated that I was attracted to an agent who wanted nothing more than to do his job. Hated I even felt attraction at all when a person with any sense would change their name and haul tail for Canada. But, I was tired of being strong, of being alone and I felt so lost. I needed something solid, and everything about the agent waiting in my living room was Gibraltar in slacks.
I left my damp hair down, and it spilled in waves down my back making my wife-beater tank top wet between my shoulders. When I stepped out in flip-flops and jogging pants, Sawyer scowled. “You can’t go to dinner like that.”
“Order a pizza,” I said. “I’m not really in the mood to go anywhere. In fact, you can go. Don’t need to babysit me.”