It took Sean a minute to process that. “You mean that Mona inserted a death certificate into the system? How the hell?”
“Oh, I’m sure you could find a way.”
“That’s me.”
“If someone pulled it, it wouldn’t hold scrutiny. There was no body, no police report, no burial. But on the surface, it seems legit. So I went to Darlene’s neighborhood this morning, after she left with her son, and through one of her nosy neighbors I learned that Darlene’s older sister died and left her a trust, which paid for the house and her college education.”
Very interesting.
“There’s one more thing you should know.”
“I’m still processing everything you’ve already told me.”
“Everything you told me about Mona’s family was true—her mother was a drug addict, petty theft, drug sales. A real waste case. In and out of prison. The kids, Ramona and Darlene, were often left on their own for days or weeks, but when their mother went to prison for three years, when Darlene was four, Darlene was put into foster care and had a rough time. Records are closed, but I have my ways. Ramona, then thirteen, disappeared. The mom got out, reclaimed Darlene, and proceeded to go down the same path. Ramona may or may not have been around—I’d have to dig a little more. But a friend of mine, a retired cop who worked that beat, said the mom was a piece of work. Used the kid as a mule. The mom overdosed a couple years later—and it was nasty, from what the reports show. I can’t get you a copy because my contact at HPD was squeamish about sharing. But Darlene was then sent back to foster care. Lucky for her, she got in with a good family, the Hatchers. She legally changed her name when she was eighteen.”
“And what about the boy’s father?”
“Nothing. I could probably dig around some more, but she was eighteen when she had him. That makes me think that it was a high school romance.”
“Don’t dig. Yet. But if you can send me what you know about the Hatchers, I’ll consider following up if I need to.”
“The girl had it rough growing up, but she seems to have her life in order now. It’s not easy being a single mom, but she’s never had to worry about money or a place to live, which makes it a whole lot easier. She goes to church on Sunday and the kid plays baseball and has friends. They seem very normal.”
Sean didn’t want to disrupt their lives.
But Mona Hill had threatened Lucy.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he lied. He thanked Renee and disconnected the call.
Of course he knew what he needed to do. Sean aimed to find out just how much of a soft spot Mona Hill had for her half sister.
He turned back to his secure laptop. Mona Hill had checked her email last night. His worm had traveled through her system, and he mirrored her hard drive on his own computer. He was searching only for one file.
It didn’t take him long to find it. It was the last video file that had been viewed. In fact, a short clip had been copied and saved two days ago. He hesitated, then viewed it.
His heart nearly stopped. It was Lucy. Naked and chained to the floor.
He shut it down.
Rage exploded. He jumped out of his chair. It tipped backward and knocked over the books stacked on the shelf behind him. He barely noticed. He stormed out of the room, slamming his door so hard the wood cracked. Down the hall to his gym, where he hit the punching bag over and over until his fists were sore. A groan escaped his throat and he wanted to kill Mona Hill in the worst way. He wanted to hurt her. What she did for her sister—with her illegal money—might be considered noble to some, but she’d stepped on many, many people to do it.
She’d fucked with the wrong person.
A fraction calmer, but no less angry, Sean went back to his office. He deleted all the video files from her computer. He was about to install a nasty virus when he hesitated.
Why had she created that clip?
Sean searched her emails. The clip was attached to an email that had gone to a blind account that Mona Hill had sent on Monday afternoon—the same day that Lucy and her partner had spoken to her. Lucy’s gut instinct about Mona had been right, and Mona had then parlayed her knowledge … for what? To whom?
Sean pulled down all the routing information on the blind account. Everything was traceable given enough time and equipment. And desire.
He certainly had the desire.
Then he installed a nasty virus that would obliterate Mona’s hard drive and any device that connected to it. But even if he destroyed the virtual files, she might have a copy of the video on a disk. He needed to find and destroy it, too.
He erased his cache, reformatted his hard drive, shut everything down, and locked his laptop back in the safe. He’d rebuild the computer later.
Sean formulated a plan. By the time he was done with her, Mona Hill would do anything he wanted her to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Barry was waiting for Lucy as soon as she walked into FBI headquarters. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t even have time to go to her desk. She followed Barry to one of the pool cars. “What happened?” she asked as they pulled out.
“Your idea about the bus route panned out. I had a couple analysts making calls to drivers and we found the stop our Gary used more often than all the others. I was about to send a couple agents out in the field to canvass, see if they could get a positive ID on the guy before we go out there, when Zach found him based on our description and neighborhood.”
“Zach is the best.”
“Gary is Gary Ackerman. He’s dead. Shot to death Sunday night in his studio apartment. I got it cleared by SAPD and we’re going there now.” Barry tapped a file that was on the seat between them. “That’s the report.”
Lucy opened it. Gary Ackerman was fifty-five, the same age as Harper Worthington. He had been born and raised in San Antonio. He’d been in the military for twelve years, retiring after serving two tours during Desert Storm. Returned, had trouble finding steady work, until he landed a job as a long-haul truck driver. His career was cut short when—while walking across the street—he was hit by a car. The driver was never found, and Gary woke up with brain damage and blindness in one eye. He lived on disability and a small military pension, had no credit cards, paid cash for everything, and the only thing he used his bank account for was to receive his disability checks—which he promptly withdrew the day they were deposited, never going into the same branch twice in a row.
He was shot twice in the chest Sunday night. Motive unknown, possibly theft. A small laptop that his neighbor said he was never without was missing, but nothing else.
“This isn’t a coincidence,” Lucy said.
“No, it’s not. Did you get to the last page?”
She flipped to the back and read a note Zach had written.
Gary Ackerman graduated high school with both Harper Worthington and former congressman Roy Travertine. Worthington and Travertine went on to college and Ackerman joined the air force. He has a pseudonymous Web site, The Truth Files, which is all about conspiracies, mostly government and military related. Before Travertine’s death, Ackerman was a regular volunteer on his campaign and served in a nonpaying role as the head of a group called Veterans for Travertine. It’s the only political activity Ackerman has on record. His accident was five years ago, he was lucky to survive. Most of his rants on his Web site appear to be harmless. But some of his insights were proven accurate over the years by subsequent events. For example, three years ago he wrote about a governor in another state and claimed that he had embezzled money out of a fund he created, based on one line in an obscure newspaper article. Last year, the governor was indicted for embezzling—not from that specific fund, but from the prison system, conspiring with his brother-in-law who worked for the bureau of prisons.
But the big thing? Adeline Reyes-Worthington got a restraining order against him seven years ago, during her first election campaign. Don’t have the details—it was fil
ed in D.C.
“Gary Ackerman must be the guy Harper met with,” Lucy said. “It explains the note about Travertine on the tablet. Maybe that’s how Ackerman got in to see him.”
“What it doesn’t explain is what they talked about or why Ackerman set him up at the motel.”
“If Ackerman set him up.”
“What other logical explanation is there? There was a restraining order against him—”
“To stay away from Adeline.”
“Still. Would her husband trust him?”
“It seems that way.”
“Or Ackerman came up with a way to punish Adeline by killing her husband.” Even as Barry said it, his tone suggested he didn’t believe it.
“He doesn’t have the resources, and he’s a paranoid conspiracy theorist,” Lucy said. “Someone could have known that Harper was meeting with Ackerman.”
“It’s more likely that Ackerman was hired to set Harper up—or possibly threatened to set him up—and then killed to keep him quiet.”
Certainly possible, Lucy thought.
Barry didn’t speak for the rest of the short drive. He was preoccupied and more serious than usual.
They showed their badges to the apartment manager, who let them into Ackerman’s studio.
The one-room facility was clean but cluttered. The twin bed was made military neat; the kitchenette was in perfect order with no dishes in the sink. But there was little space to move around. Each wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They were packed with books, binders, and file folders. On a desk, under the lone window which looked out onto the street, was a power cord. It went with a Toshiba laptop that was no longer on the desk. While the desk was completely clear, there were stacks of files under the desk, all labeled.
“Other than the laptop, we can’t possibly know if anything was taken,” Lucy said.
“Don’t be so sure of that,” Barry said. “I’ve known guys like Ackerman. Once we figure out his logic, we’ll know if anything is missing.”
Lucy slipped on gloves and opened the desk drawers. “I think I found it.”
“That was fast.” Barry looked inside the bottom drawer. There were hanging files, all neatly labeled. The contents from one hanging file were missing. The identifying tab had been torn off.
The files on either side of the missing file were dated: April, June.
“This must have been what he was working on,” Lucy said. “And whatever he was doing in May, that’s now gone.”
She pulled the two files and glanced through them. Nothing jumped out at her. She was about to sit down and go through them more carefully when she heard Barry on his cell phone. “Juan, can you send Zach with an agent to Gary Ackerman’s studio? There’s potential evidence here, and we need someone with an analytical mind to weed through the irrelevant files to find the important items.”
When Barry was done, Lucy said, “We’re not doing this?”
“We have another appointment. I wasn’t sure what we would find here, and I didn’t want to send Zach on a wild-goose chase. Juan’s going to send Nate with him.” Zach Charles was an analyst, not a field agent, and therefore couldn’t work in the field without being accompanied by an agent. And in a case like this, an agent would be added protection.
Lucy glanced around before they left. She felt compassion for the veteran she’d never met. A good, honest life damaged by a reckless driver. Living with paranoia and fears he might not even understand. The brain was the most complex organ in the human body. Even neuroscientists knew less about the brain than what they suspected they could learn. But what was the trigger? What event or article or image had Gary Ackerman seeking out Harper Worthington?
Or was it the other way around?
Back in the car, she said to Barry, “What if Harper was the one who sought out Gary’s help? They went to school together, and Harper must have known Gary had volunteered for Travertine. It stands to reason he at least knew about his accident and Web site. Harper became suspicious about Adeline’s activities and went to the FBI. The FBI put him off because they didn’t want him trampling on their ongoing investigation. Harper then contacted Gary—maybe because of something he wrote?—and they put their resources together.”
“Zach and his people are going through each of Ackerman’s articles—if there’s something there, they’ll find it.”
“It might not be obvious.”
“They know how to do their job.”
Of course they did. Zach was exceptionally smart. His thought process was similar to Sean’s—they both saw not only the big picture, but how all the little pieces fit in. It’s why Zach made a good analyst, and Sean a good security expert.
“Where are we headed now?”
“James Everett.”
“Agent Dunbar isn’t going to like it.”
“I don’t care.”
This was a new side of Barry.
“Did something happen last night that I wasn’t involved with?”
“I don’t like bringing work home with me, Lucy, and yet I couldn’t get this case out of my head.” He sounded angry about it, too. “Everett and Adeline were partners. They split up when she ran for Congress, but remained friends. He’s feeding information to the FBI. Then two months ago he cuts all ties with Adeline and endorses her opponent. Why not last year when Dunbar first started this investigation? Or why not keep the façade up, considering he could probably gather more information if he remained close to her? And Dunbar … his reaction was odd to me. I’ve been mulling it over and over in my head. Then I thought back to Elise Hansen.”
“The prostitute.”
“She claimed she was hired to take photos of Worthington, which she believed were to blackmail him. It has a ring of truth. Then why not Everett? He’s worth a small fortune. And the one thing that connects the two of them is Adeline.”
“So she has her husband killed and blackmails Everett … Why?”
“What if she knows about the FBI investigation?”
“Then Dunbar is at risk. We need to warn him.” That wouldn’t go over well.
“Maybe she doesn’t think it’s Dunbar. Maybe she doesn’t even think that it’s someone on staff—but that it was her husband. Or her former partner. So she has Worthington killed but sets it up to look like an accident or natural causes. It’s complex because in her head, she’d think that no one would look at her because she wouldn’t do something so outrageous that might embarrass her or jeopardize her campaign.” He paused, as if realizing how convoluted the reasoning was, but it still sounded plausible. “She then sends the hooker to Everett … to get pictures to blackmail him. Maybe he tipped her off that he was working with the feds when he cut ties with her. It made her suspicious. And maybe that’s what made Harper suspicious as well.”
It made sense, in a twisted way. “We need Elise’s statement. She said a man shot her—implied,” Lucy added. “If Adeline is behind this entire thing, she has someone working for her—someone we can cut a deal with.”
“This is where it gets tricky, Lucy. Elise is an unreliable witness. She’s already lied to us. Harper was dead before she left the motel room. She flirted with the taxi driver. She went to another client and had sex with him. She admitted to accepting a substantial amount of money to take dirty pictures of Worthington. And, even knowing that whoever hired her gave her a lethal drug and tried to kill her, she hasn’t given us a name. Plus, there’s nothing that connects Elise to Adeline.”
“Not yet, but we haven’t been looking for that connection. But if it’s there, we’ll find it.”
“I like your confidence, but not only do we need to find the connection, we need to make it stick. Circumstantial evidence isn’t going to give us a warrant, not against a member of Congress, let alone an indictment. This case needs to be rock solid, and that means that not only do we need Elise Hansen and James Everett to tell us the truth, we need to break Mona Hill. She already admitted to sending Elise to James Everett. Which makes me
think she also sent Elise to Harper Worthington, even if Elise said otherwise. She’s the conduit and has absolutely no ties to Adeline—that we can find.” Barry glanced at Lucy. “Are you going to have your A game when we interview her again?” Barry asked her.
“Of course.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Barry—I let her get under my skin once. It won’t happen again.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “I made some calls last night.”
She knew what was coming. She didn’t want to talk to Barry about her past. She didn’t think he could know the details—it wasn’t super secret knowledge that she’d been raped, but the circumstances surrounding her rape and how she killed her kidnapper were sealed. But because of her association with Rick Stockton and Hans Vigo—and the fact that her sister-in-law taught at Quantico—people had a lot of theories about her. Most wrong. Some close to the truth.
“Matt Slater and I went through Quantico together,” Barry continued. “He told me about the prostitution ring you uncovered, the blackmail, the girls you saved.”
“Do you not trust me?” she asked bluntly. “Is that why you’re checking on my credentials?”
“It’s not about trust.”
“I beg to differ.”
“I don’t know you, and it’s clear you have far more experience than most rookie FBI agents who didn’t come from local law enforcement.”
“I thought after working together for nearly a week that I’ve proven myself to you. And yet, you call the D.C. office for what? To dig up dirt? To find out if I’m going to fall apart in the middle of this investigation?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“And what did Slater say? Because my partner and I solved that case, and we apprehended the killer and took down a corrupt lobbyist. People are alive because we did our job. That’s all I’m trying to do here.”
“Slater said you were protected from on high, but that you didn’t need it because you were a good cop. But—because most people in D.C. know about your friendship with Rick Stockton among other high-ranking staff and would unfairly judge you by it—it was wise that you were assigned far away.”
Best Laid Plans Page 28