“Yes. And I was working my ass off to keep him out of sight. Anyway you seem like a good guy, Sam. Don’t… trust anyone. Okay?”
Sam was already heading toward the elevator when Collins hung up. He pocketed his phone and stood facing the doors as they closed and left him in the quiet, enclosed space. He was clearheaded. The minor buzz he had before the phone call was gone.
He wasn’t surprised by Barney’s revelation. According to a recent report, drug arrests had begun to decline over the past few months. The mayor’s office had spun it as a result of the increased effectiveness of the new programs, but Sam had his doubts. It was common knowledge Stonebridge remained a major gateway for trafficking between New York and the rest of the Northeast. Just because there hadn’t been any major busts recently didn’t mean drugs were no longer coming into the city. In fact it could simply mean the trafficking was continuing unchecked. After all the Voronkovs had many members working throughout the area, like tiny spiders skittering around on one large, complex web. If one thread broke, they would simply build another.
The elevator dinged when he reached the ground floor. Sam gave his surroundings a sweep as he made his way to his parking space and climbed into his truck. There were a few people on the street, but no one paid him any attention as the engine roared to life.
Other questions ran through Sam’s mind as he reversed and headed toward the address Collins had relayed. Was he being stupid for trusting his word? What if he was walking into a trap?
He hesitated at a red light with his hands on the wheel.
If Collins was telling the truth, Sam was about to gain possession of information that would make him a target if the wrong people found out he had it. He thought for a second about calling Chief Howard and telling her. But could he trust her? And Nathan was out of reach at the moment.
He made the final turn and curbed his truck a block away from the mailbox. After a cursory rummage in the glove compartment, he found an old blank envelope—his cover in case someone had eyes on the area.
He fingered the folded paper. “Cautious” wasn’t an adjective anyone had ever used to describe him, but was he bordering on reckless? Ever since seeing Tim seize up, he’d been thinking about how fleeting life was. With Nathan gone, it felt like he was on hold. But he had always wanted to make a difference, and he wouldn’t get there by sitting on his hands.
His blood hummed with excitement as he hopped out of the truck, started to whistle, and made his way toward the dark blue shape of the mailbox. Collins had chosen wisely. The street was quiet. After he slipped the empty envelope into the box, he purposefully dropped his keys, cursed, and kneeled down to find them. Running his fingers gingerly along the underside of the cool metal box, he encountered cobwebs, rusty metal, and then a smooth bump of plastic tape.
The key.
He removed it and gripped it tightly in his palm. As he retraced his steps to his truck, it seemed to get even hotter, until it was searing a brand in his skin. The night stretched long before him. He thought about the bottle of whiskey waiting at home. Tomorrow he’d find out what was inside the safe-deposit box.
UNION NATIONAL Trust was a small brick structure with an even smaller parking lot. When Sam entered with the key in his pocket, there were only a few pensioners in the lobby and a bored teller at the long, faux mahogany desk. A security guard gave him a disinterested glance and then continued pacing the scuffed marble floor. Beyond him a narrow hallway led to what looked like the vault.
Sam had spent the morning wondering if he should go to the bank or wait to talk it over with Nathan. After a few hours of internal debate, his disobedient streak won out. With Nathan out of state, it was easier to ignore his inevitable objection. Still, with every step he took, he could feel Nathan’s disapproval. A shrink would probably say he was courting trouble on purpose.
Sam peeked into one of the cubicle offices flanking the wall of the bank. He’d never rented a safe-deposit box, and he wasn’t sure how the process worked. Would he need a photo ID or something, even though he had a key? What if they denied him entry?
He didn’t have much time to wonder. A woman wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses looked up from her computer. He smiled at her as sweat started to bead on his forehead. He’d worn a blazer to conceal his holster, and the room was warm. Coupled with the state of his nerves, he was sweltering.
“Hi,” he said, giving her his most winning smile. “I need to retrieve something from my safe-deposit box.” He raised Nathan’s black work briefcase, the one he used for his teaching trips. Sam had found it in the closet while rooting around for something professional to wear. It seemed the perfect solution to stow whatever was in Barney’s box, assuming it didn’t contain something large or cumbersome… like a severed head. That thought had been enough to encourage him to investigate the gun safe. It felt strange to be carrying a concealed weapon, but it was the one concession he made to the list of Nathan’s imagined objections. Once he got home, he’d lock up Barney’s evidence.
She blinked owlishly. “Key?”
He held it out.
“ID?” She typed something on the computer.
Sam held his breath. Shit. The woman slowly blinked again, like his hesitation was paining her. He had to make a decision.
“Sam Flynn.” He fished out his license and handed it to her, and his heart hammered as she typed out his name. He should have asked Collins what name the thing was under. He should have—
“Right this way, please,” said the woman.
—given the guy a little more credit.
The deposit vault smelled musty, like dust and a thousand old possessions left behind. The woman procured a key from a ring on her belt, slipped it into one of the two keyholes, and motioned for Sam to do the same. She pulled out the small rectangular box and set it on the sole metal table in the center of the room.
“Ring the bell when you’re finished.”
Once she’d gone, Sam opened up the hinged box and peered inside. There was a manila envelope filled with receipts and tax documents dating back years. A quick flip through them suggested the mayor’s accountant had been creative with his returns. The only other object was a small red flash drive. Sam slipped both items into his briefcase and rang the bell.
THE CAR wasn’t turning.
Sam glanced in the rearview mirror at the silver sedan that had been following him for the past several minutes. He hadn’t noticed it in the bank parking lot, though, and he told himself he was being paranoid. But at the next light, when he turned left and the car continued to trail him, his stomach dropped uncomfortably. He couldn’t see the driver through the car’s tinted windows. Shit.
He’d loaded a few rounds into his gun before he left the apartment. Even so he hadn’t honestly considered the possibility of a confrontation. What would Nathan do if he were here? Thinking quickly, Sam slowed to well below the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit, and instead of passing him, the sedan slowed too. Double shit.
He sped up, and the sedan sped up. Whoever was driving didn’t appear to be making any attempt to conceal the fact they were following him. His hands slipped against the wheel as he made the first left turn he could. The sedan turned too.
Sam glanced into his rearview as adrenaline revved up his fight-or-flight instinct. Even though the sedan was close behind, he couldn’t make out the driver—only a vague shadow of a genderless person who appeared to be wearing sunglasses. The car didn’t have a front plate either, so he couldn’t tell whether it was from out of state or local. And Sam had made a tactical error. The road he’d chosen was becoming more and more rural by the second. Why had he turned left, away from downtown? Cursing himself for his stupidity, he pressed the gas pedal, and the engine roared. The speedometer read fifty, then fifty-five.
The road was relatively straight, with only an occasional house on either side, and soon Sam realized he was heading toward the old Stonebridge airfield. The corrugated metal roof of the old hangar was barely visi
ble through the thick growth of trees, but he remembered it well. He’d had his first driving lessons there as a teenager. His father took him onto the abandoned tarmac in order to avoid traffic and to give him a chance to make mistakes. His father’s stern but patient face flashed before him. Ease up on the gas, bud. Turn the wheel with both hands. Keep them at ten and two. Remember to use your mirrors to check for traffic.
But leading the sedan onto the tarmac would only continue the cat and mouse game. To make matters worse, another spring thunderstorm was brewing on the horizon, filling the sky with dark clouds. Sam drove faster. His truck rumbled underneath him, the vibrations reminders that the engine was old and not accustomed to speed, in spite of some recent repairs. He hoped it would hang on a little longer.
The first few fat drops hit his windshield, splattering loudly with the impact and streaking out along the glass as more rain followed. A flash of lightning up ahead lit the nearly black afternoon sky. He was running out of options, and the sedan didn’t show any signs of backing off. Even though he had chosen his route, it almost felt like part of a plan—as though the sedan was purposely forcing him into the storm and making him speed up. Almost like it was a trap. What if he couldn’t get out of it? He imagined the truck spinning out of control into the thick bank of trees. He would die, and Nathan would be alone again.
Keep those hands at ten and two.
His father had always driven so cautiously, and he’d taught Sam to do the same. Why was he speeding on the night of the accident in a snowstorm?
Pushing the random thought out of his mind, Sam focused on the road ahead. His chest ached when he thought of Nathan getting the inevitable phone call. I’m so sorry to tell you, but….
Moreover, if Sam died, no one would ever know about the mayor’s supposed mob ties. He was likely the only one on the outside who knew the truth—besides Collins—and the evidence would die with him. He doubted Collins would stick his neck out again.
Sam tried to calm his panic and consider his options. On the left a chain-link fence enclosed the abandoned airfield. On the right tall maple trees lined the road, their green leaves frothing in the rising wind of the storm. Rain started falling harder, coating the windshield in sheets. Despite being on the highest setting, Sam’s wipers were hardly doing the job. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, and pellets of hail soon joined the rain and clattered loudly on the roof. Behind him the sedan’s driver had turned on the car’s high beams. It was gaining on him.
A turn curved sharply to the right, and Sam slammed on his brakes to make it without skidding off the road. His hands slipped on the steering wheel as the truck lost all traction, and Sam’s stomach lurched. Hydroplaning. His father had warned him about that too. Miraculously the wheels found the ground, and he made the turn without incident. But he wasn’t out of the woods. Not a hundred yards ahead of him, there were taillights in the darkness, and beyond them, a line of oncoming headlights on the other side of the road. Even through the rain, he could tell they were slow moving. He was trapped.
Fuck no.
Whipping his truck over the barely visible double yellow lines to face the traffic, he passed the car on his right and made it back to the proper lane just in time to hear the blare of a car horn from his left. The line of slow traffic continued to pass, making it impossible for Sam’s pursuer to follow him. Sam floored it.
Once he’d made it a safe distance, he took the first turn he could onto a dead-end street with a few rundown houses and flicked off his lights. A minute or so later, the silver sedan sped by on the main road. He squinted to try to make out the plates, but they weren’t legible through the rain.
What the hell had just happened?
He sucked in a quick breath and then another. He was light-headed, and his heart was pounding loudly enough in his ears to be audible above the rain and the occasional rumble of thunder. With trembling hands he felt for the gun in his holster, drew it out, and placed it on the passenger seat next to the briefcase. It didn’t do much to calm him down. He was having a panic attack.
Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he leaned his head back and took stock of the situation. Whoever had tailed him had seemed willing to run him off the road. Had they followed him to the bank? He thought again of the woman who assisted him. Had she been paid to call someone if he showed up?
Sam ran a hand over his face and through his sweat-damp hair. He was in deep, deep shit.
Then again, what else was new?
ONCE HE made it home, he locked and bolted the apartment door from inside. He grabbed only the essentials—computer and chargers, a few changes of clothes, more ammo, and, of course, Shadow. The cat complained loudly when he stuck her in the carrier, but he appeased her with a few treats and the promise of wet food whenever they arrived at their destination. For her, a local pet hotel.
He was back on the road again in fifteen minutes. He deposited Shadow at the Furry Friends Hotel and Day Care Facility, left his truck in a grocery store parking lot, and called for a ride to take him to a cheap motel across town. There was no sign of the silver sedan or any indication he was being followed. Sam checked in under a false name, paid the front desk attendant with cash, and was sure to lock the door behind him and leave his gun on the side table next to the bed, where he could reach it easily.
The room was a dingy affair with stained yellow wallpaper and an orange shag carpet that was matted and dark in places. He didn’t want to know with what. It was the kind of place you rented for sex or cleaning up after a murder. Nathan would have hated it.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s not the Ritz,” Sam muttered to himself. “Try to stay calm.”
He called Nathan, but it went straight to voice mail. Nathan’s deep, smooth voice made Sam’s chest twinge.
Hello. You’ve reached Nathan Walker. Please leave a message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.
“It’s me,” Sam said after the beep. “I need to talk to you. It’s an emergency.” He threw down the phone and booted up his computer. He had to find out what was on the flash drive so he knew what he was up against.
He clicked open the first file.
There were several photos from what looked like surveillance video of an intimate gathering. A slightly slimmer Mayor White sat at a table with a man wearing a black suit. He had close-cropped white hair. Both of them held cigars, and they were smiling. Sam didn’t recognize the white-haired man, but he’d bet money he was a Voronkov. Another man stood behind them, slightly apart and to the left, and Sam would have remembered his face anywhere. He seemed to be watching the proceedings with interest. Sam zoomed in.
It was the guy who killed Emma Walker and almost killed him. Bernhardt Hoff.
BY NIGHTTIME Sam had gone through all of the files, and he was livid. While some were more incriminating than others, taken together they were enough to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mayor White and the former deputy mayor—now Mayor Rick Morgan—had been taking regular bribes from the Voronkovs over the years. The files revealed a trail of corruption that brought new insight to recent events. The mayor had known about and directly benefitted from the Voronkov’s former arrangement with the PD and the Feldman Foundation. While the Voronkovs sent their drugs by land and sea through Stonebridge, to destinations in the north, and laundered their money through the Feldman Foundation, they gave the PD a cut to keep quiet.
The mayor’s “tough on crime” reputation was an illusion, based on his strategy of going after small-time dealers and their customers, rather than focusing on the big money. Sam had once considered Chief Sheldon a friend, and he was enraged to discover that he had played right into the mob’s hands for financial gain. He was less surprised to find out that White had been involved all along. But how, even with Collins’s assistance, had he seemed to keep his hands clean?
Why didn’t Sheldon expose the mayor and his cronies during the trial? He and his staff took the entirety of the blame. Bernhardt Hoff was a made
man, as well as a torpedo—a hired gun—but he hadn’t ratted out his bosses during the trial either—even for a lesser sentence. He probably knew what thanks awaited that sort of betrayal. Maybe Sheldon kept quiet out of fear for his life.
But since the trial and conviction, the city had been lulled into a false sense of complacency, and that naïveté had allowed the same corruption to flourish under a different guise. Mayor White’s Streets Clean policy was appeasement at its worst. There was even a recording, secretly obtained by Collins, which consisted of a very stoned mayor boasting about how stupid the people of Stonebridge were to buy into “that load of crap.”
If the mayor were still alive, Sam would have kicked his substantial ass.
He flipped his computer shut with disgust. He couldn’t look at the mayor’s self-satisfied grin anymore. Whatever the case, in the last few months, the tide had turned against Mayor White. Maybe the fallout from the Halloween bombing and arsons had made him a liability, or maybe his increased drug use had signed his death warrant.
It seemed probable at least someone in the PD knew what was going on. Because the mayor had appointed her, Chief Howard was the most likely suspect. And either one of the Voronkovs or someone on White’s staff had killed him. Rick Morgan? It made sense. He had the most to gain.
Or maybe not.
One item—an e-mail from the mayor to Collins—pointed the finger in another direction entirely. White suspected his wife was having an affair, but he didn’t know with whom. So the entire mob connection could be unrelated, and the mayor’s death attributed to the cold-hearted calculation of two people who wanted him out of the way for personal reasons.
Sam scratched the rough growth of stubble on his chin. He hated the idea of Chief Howard being involved. In spite of his cynicism, he wanted to believe there were good people in the world, working in public service and politics for the right reasons.
Blind Spot Page 10