“I’m Special Agent George Miller, and this is Agent Ellie Michaels with the FBI,” George said, completing the introductions.
“Wow.” Mr. Pemberton looked impressed. “How can I help you?”
George turned and looked at Ellie, seemingly at a loss for what to say next.
Deciding to help him out, she took the lead. “We wondered if you might have a few minutes to answer some questions for us.”
“Of course.” He stepped aside and indicated they should go in the door he’d appeared through. “Anything to help.”
They took a flight of stairs up to a corner office overlooking the back of the building. There were several framed certificates on the wall and some letters that appeared to be from companies Mr. Pemberton had helped in the past that were particularly pleased with his services.
After offering them a beverage, he sat behind his huge dark wooden desk and looked at George.
When the young agent didn’t speak up, Ellie began the conversation. “We’re investigating a series of cargo thefts across the country that have occurred at truck stops.”
“I always hate to hear about those,” Mr. Pemberton replied. “Millions are lost that way every year, and most of them could have been prevented.”
“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Ellie continued, picking up his lead. “Each of the companies have turned to you for assistance after the losses, and we wondered if you could share some of what you do to help protect them from further thefts.”
“You want some inside information?” He appeared to be joking.
Ellie decided to play along, knowing that even though she hated being treated differently because she was a woman, it was still a card she could try. “Nothing proprietary, but you seem to be one of the best risk-mitigation experts in the business, and I’d hoped you could explain a little of what you do that has made you such a giant in this business.”
Just like Janice had taught her, flattery seemed to open Mr. Pemberton’s tongue, and before long, he was pulling out sample contracts with suggested programs for assessments, followed by trainings and equipment overhauls. Everything he referenced was in a folder on his desk, neatly pulled together so he could easily access it. A lot of what he pointed out sounded self-explanatory, but given the list of clients he provided as potential references, Ellie figured there must be a real market for what he was selling.
“How is it you managed to get every carrier that has been hit recently to sign up for your services?” Ellie asked.
Mr. Pemberton took a drink of the dark-colored beverage from the glass on his desk and then paused before responding. “It sounds bad when you say it like that, but honestly, there aren’t that many risk assessors for truckers out there. For a long-haul company, I could only think of three options, and I’m the biggest one. Plus, I’ve spent the last couple of years intentionally marketing myself to the insurance carriers in the hope they would suggest RMA to their clients. I don’t want to call it dumb luck, because I’ve worked hard, but if I lay all the cards on the table, I’ve got a bit of a monopoly in the business, and when there’s a rash of crime, everybody hears about it and gets nervous. I’m reaping the benefits of other people’s bad fortune.”
She had to admire how clearly he summed up his advantage. “What are some of the major issues companies need your help to fix?”
“It varies,” he admitted, “but it’s usually a matter of lazy security managers who try to cut costs and don’t invest in staff or video systems to monitor their property. In the majority of my clients, I can easily tie the issues a truck stop or service station has to the poor decisions made by the person in charge of security.”
After an hour, she couldn’t come up with any more questions, and Mr. Pemberton took the pause in conversation to explain, “Most of what I do isn’t rocket science. But the way I present it so that it doesn’t come off as insulting to anyone’s intelligence makes people able to swallow their pride and follow my advice. And nine times out of ten, if they follow everything I lay out, they are able to prevent any more loss.”
“What happens in the other case?” Ellie wondered aloud.
“Sometimes people are just determined and lucky enough to get away with a desperate act,” Mr. Pemberton admitted. “There’s not a lot you can do to combat that.”
As much as she wanted to find fault with his reasoning, Ellie agreed with him.
As soon as they got to the car, George asked, “Did that help any?”
Ellie didn’t respond, lost in thought trying to process everything they’d just been told.
“I thought he was nice. Didn’t you?”
“Something was off,” Ellie admitted.
“Really?” George seemed shocked she would say such a thing. “What?”
That question made her grimace. “I don’t know… He was so helpful that it was as if he anticipated our questions and had perfectly rehearsed responses ready for them.”
“Or maybe he was just answering honestly,” George argued. “I think he just wanted to help.”
As they drove back to the office, Ellie replayed the interview in her head, and it bothered her more and more. Mr. Pemberton was never nervous or at a loss for how to explain his good fortune and almost seemed to have been expecting them with every necessary exhibit in a folder on her desk. Business had been good—he wasn’t kidding when he said he basically had a monopoly—but the office for RMA didn’t reflect a booming business. It was modest at best. It was possible he had intentionally set it up to be that way to make his customers feel more comfortable or to keep the office from being a target of criminals. But something was off, and Ellie was determined to figure out what it was.
When they pulled into the parking lot of the Bureau, George thanked Ellie for coming along. “It was great to see you in action.”
“I’m afraid it wasn’t much action, just a lot of talking,” Ellie reminded him.
“Either way, I have a lot to type up, and I appreciate you riding along,” George shared. “Then I’m going to see the security director at the Stop and Go chain that gave us the footage from the thefts. My uncle suggested that since it had been tampered with, I should maybe talk to them about the way they safeguard their video.”
It was a good idea and might bring up something more useful than what they’d uncovered together that morning.
As they parted ways at the front door, Phillips was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest. The trademark smile was completely missing from his face.
Ellie looked at her watch and back up at her neighbor. “I made it back long before curfew.”
“I’m not worried about what time it is, but you should brace yourself,” he replied mysteriously.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she wondered.
“Phil came in to a dark office, your morning coffee was sitting on the printer stand, untouched, and your desk had a tall cup of take-out from Dunkin’ Donuts. All that, but there was no sign of you.”
“I never knew Phil to keep tabs on me before.”
“You’ve never had the brother of a dead serial killer after you before either,” Phillips reminded her. “Everything’s different.”
“I went out with Miller’s nephew to question a suspect in a case he’s working,” she explained, not sure why she felt the need to volunteer the information.
The left corner of his mouth tightened, and Ellie knew him well enough to know he was trying not to smile.
“Go ahead and let it out,” she prompted. “I won’t tell Phil that down deep, you were glad I was out of the basement.”
“Thanks.” He finally grinned and relaxed his arms. “And I won’t tell Joe you left the safety of the office without sufficient backup.”
“Wait… I had an agent with me,” she reminded him.
“That pup is still wet behind the ears,” Phillips blurted out. “I think Joe would consider him more of a liability than a help.” After a second of silence, he nodded his head
. “I’ll bet he was waiting for you in your office to beg you to help him with a case, wasn’t he?”
Her mind went blank as she struggled to come up with a decent excuse for why she went out with George.
“I knew it!” Phillips practically yelled. “I admire the kid for coming to you for help, but if you wanted to get out in the field, all you had to do was let me know. We’d be great partners—my skills and suave way with people and your brains and intuition.”
“I get more than enough of you at home. I don’t want to work beside you all day too,” Ellie argued.
Phillips lifted his palms in the air. “I get it. You don’t have to announce it to everybody we work with. You don’t want to see me during the day after all the time we spend together at night. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.”
He broke off laughing and dashed away before Ellie could yell at him for insinuating to the whole office that the two of them were involved. Her irritation disappeared to worry with each step she took downstairs. Phil was often irritated about something, but it had never really been directed at her. She paused with her hand on the door to their department and wondered if she could sneak past his office to get to her own without him noticing.
“Michaels!” his voice boomed the second the department door opened.
A day never went by that Ellie didn’t miss her father, but the way Phil was bellowing her name reminded her of the last time she truly got in trouble with her dad. She’d missed curfew by an hour and attempted to sneak in to get in bed without being noticed.
Learning from that experience, she turned and headed to her boss’s office. Any hope she had of getting off easy disappeared when she saw his cane, decorated with skulls and crossbones.
Chapter 13
“Do you want to tell me why the smartest person I know suddenly decided to take leave of all her senses and wander around Richmond?” Phil demanded before she could sit down in his guest chair.
“George came by with the case file, and—”
“I’m not the least bit interested in what that half-wit did,” Phil interrupted. “You made a conscious decision to leave the office and work in the field—which you didn’t clear with me first. Then I come in and nobody is here, and it looks like somebody damn near kidnapped you because I figured there was no way you’d voluntarily abandon your fancy coffee drink.” Phil leaned forward and rubbed his hand over his face, taking a slow breath in. As he released it, he mumbled, “It’s not my injuries that are going to get me; it’s worrying about you.”
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she apologized, feeling like it was the right thing to do.
“You’re capable,” Phil conceded, “and I swore I’d never get in your way if you decided to branch out a little, but at least until this whole thing with Garrison is settled, you’ve got to let somebody know where you are and why you’re out.”
“I figured since I had a detail, if you needed to know where I was, you could find out from them or call my cell phone directly,” Ellie reminded him, still a little confused about why he was this upset. True, the condition of the office probably did frighten him, but it seemed like he was overreacting a little. Until Ellie connected a few dots.
“Why were you here so early this morning?”
“Detail from yesterday afternoon included a report about you taking a jog…” Phil paused at that point to stare at Ellie, as though trying to make a point without actually coming out and telling her that it was a stupid thing to do. “They noted you nearly ran out in front of a speeding car until somebody from the parking lot honked at you. On a whim, I asked them to pull the footage from the parking lot and see who the Good Samaritan was, and the facial-recognition geeks say it was a match for Garrison.”
Ellie swallowed twice and then decided the lump in her throat wasn’t going to disappear that way. She’d tempted fate, and fate could have easily reached out and made her pay.
“Take a slow deep breath,” Phil nearly whispered. “If you take short shallow ones, it’s easier to hyperventilate.”
Ellie was about to argue that she wasn’t that stressed until she took a deep breath and realized her shoulders couldn’t go any higher. She tried to resume a relaxed-looking posture, even if she absolutely didn’t feel it.
“Look, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life,” Phil began. “I am going to remind you that a psychopath is fixated with you and seems to have an uncanny knack for finding you, so it’d be a good idea for you to be more careful and aware.”
As Ellie stood up to leave, Phil called out, “And that crazy Mack stopped by to talk to you. She seemed terribly pleased to hear you’d run off half-cocked into the field. Something about you laying the bait well and it would play right into your hand.”
Ellie wished she knew what that was supposed to mean.
“Don’t look at me to explain it,” Phil said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I've always wondered why the one person who everyone seems to agree is nuts is the one we allow to certify others as sane.”
After promising to be more careful and alert her boss if she planned on leaving the office again, she went back to her office and tried to pick up her day as usual. Her routine was off, and she still hadn’t had a full cup of coffee since George had interrupted her and then tempted her into the RMA visit. She tried going through e-mail, but her mind wasn’t in it, so after clearing out the most urgent things, she decided to do some digging on the CEO at RMA to see if there was a reason why she was so dissatisfied with their meeting.
John Pemberton was fifty-six, divorced, and seemed to have begun RMA right out of college, building it from nothing to the thirty-million-dollar corporation it was today. He’d gone to MIT and studied engineering, which matched well with the way RMA had made a name for themselves early in his career by building security systems for crime prevention. Later he’d specialized in security recording devices, and according to the annual report online, that line of work was still the bread and butter of his company’s business.
Strange that he would be so well known for that, yet when they’d talked that morning, he’d only highlighted his abilities in training and technical assistance. It was possible he was only answering the questions he thought he was being asked, but Ellie felt strongly he was intentionally hiding this from her. The problem was, no matter how deep she dug, she couldn’t come up with a single reason why. Despite the appearance of having been deceptive with her, he seemed to be a model businessman. He had a great rating with the Better Business Bureau, a long series of customers who all allowed their names to be printed in his annual report, and low turnover in staff. Ellie had to admit that on the surface, he appeared to be good at managing his business.
When she pulled up information that was more personal than professional, she was surprised to see he lived in a small apartment, had a considerable amount of personal debt, and was behind on payments for his recently leased vehicle. Any skills he had in business didn’t appear to be useful in his private life. Knowing the reason behind this dichotomy was important, yet she struggled to find anything other than what appeared to be a bitter divorce two years before. Even still, it was difficult to imagine someone so in control during the day unable to carry that over out of the office.
Just before giving up in finding anything new, Ellie pulled up an article that included a mention of Pemberton from a charity event he’d attended the month prior at his club. When she read further, she realized he was a member of the same club her mother attended. Quickly, she closed out of the screen, hoping if she wasn’t looking at the article anymore, she wouldn’t be tempted to call her mother to see if she knew Pemberton.
At least once an hour for the rest of the afternoon, she continued to pull up that press clipping, only to shut it down again, wishing she’d never seen that he had a connection to her mother’s club. She needed private information that was more off the grid than what could be gathered from a credit report or spending history. For that, she needed gos
sip, and if there was one thing her mother excelled at…that was it.
Disgusted that she couldn’t stop thinking about it, she growled at her computer, shut it down, and packed up. Blaming her inability to focus on her lack of caffeine, she decided to remedy that in the hope it would be a sufficient diversion.
****
She’d spent enough time at Mocha Joe’s of late that it was not only familiar but comforting as well. Stopping by for an afternoon drink was the right decision, despite the less than warm welcome she received from the girl in black behind the counter.
Nicole simply pointed at Joe’s office and then put her nose back in the book that was apparently more interesting than Ellie.
Not bothering to knock, Ellie stood in the doorway and smiled when Joe looked up from his computer and immediately stood up. Something about his reaction made her feel more important than whatever he’d been working on, and given how unimpressive her morning had been, it was great to think someone found her worthy.
“You’re earlier than I expected,” he commented, moving to the doorway where Ellie had remained.
“I was done at work, and my morning was interrupted so that I never got to drink my coffee. I’m a little on the desperate side,” she confessed.
Joe put her hand in his and pulled her gently to follow him. “That’s something I can fix,” he spoke confidently. While he busied himself mixing some special brew for her, he asked about her day. When Ellie finally shared about the potential for getting information about the current case by seeing her mother, Joe tilted his head.
“Why don’t you just call her?” he asked.
“She’ll know it’s something I need, which means she has something valuable enough that she can demand I come to talk in person,” Ellie predicted. “If I want this information, I’m in for a dinner with Janice, and I just can’t face her right now.”
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