The Red Hot Fix

by T. E. Woods

  Barry stepped behind LBJ. “Chill, man. It’s just business. You can’t blame a guy for wanting to get paid after you’re done.”

  LionEl slammed his hands down on the table and shoved his face less than an inch from LBJ’s nose. “After I’m done? You at our joint talking to some jive-punk rookie about covering your ass after I’m done?”

  Sweat stained the armpits of LBJ’s thousand-dollar suit.

  “It’s not like that, LionEl.” LBJ tried to push his chair back. “Don’t I always take care of you?”

  “You take care of me?” LionEl tossed a chair aside. “You think I’m some bitch you rub, then take shopping? Fuck you, L.B. I’m the payday. No me and you’re out on the street hustling meat wagons. And now you talkin’ to the kid?” He grabbed the back of LBJ’s suit, pulled him out of his seat, and threw him onto the table. “You motherfucker. The deal was you and me.” He left L.B. sprawled on the table like Thanksgiving dinner for a small city and stabbed a finger toward Barry.

  “You tell Mr. Po-lice Man I got tired cooling my heels. He wants to talk to me, he can send a car.” LionEl reached down and grabbed the neck of his flailing agent. “And you, you son of a bitch, you stop talking to rookies. You got nothing to say, you hear me?”

  LBJ nodded and gurgled as best he could. LionEl released his grip, lunged his chest toward Barry, and stormed out of the room. LBJ wiggled his mass off the table and waddled his panicked way to the door.

  “LionEl, wait.” His voice was hoarse. “I got the keys.”

  “Should we go after them?” Micki asked.

  Mort watched Barry Gardener settle back down into a chair.

  “No, let ’em go.” Mort focused on Gardener’s steady breathing. “We know where they work.”

  Jimmy stood and Bruiser snapped to attention. “LionEl was definitely worried about what beans LBJ might have spilled.”

  Mort nodded. “Get a warrant for security tapes from the No Fly for the past month. See what tapes you can get from the businesses with parking lots adjacent to the bar, too. Let’s see who walks in and out on the days LionEl or LBJ are there.” He headed back to the interview room.

  “You get all that?” Gardener asked.

  Mort righted the chairs LionEl had tossed. “You knew telling LionEl his agent was after you would blow his gaskets.”

  Barry Gardener nodded. “We got it all on the line with tomorrow’s game. I figure it couldn’t hurt to get LionEl thinking about how he can channel some of his insecurity and anger into making plays.”

  Mort wondered what Gardener was channeling. “You gonna sign with him? When this contract’s done?”

  Gardener laughed. “LBJ as my agent? My father taught me long time ago we’re known by the company we keep. I hold quality people near.” His eyes narrowed. “And unworthy folks get nowhere near me.”

  A warning tickled at the base of Mort’s skull. “Who determines a person’s worth?”

  Gardener’s gaze was steady. “For my life, I do, Detective.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Lydia loaded the car with luggage and the few books she’d acquired during her stay. An envelope with the cottage’s keys and a fifty-dollar tip for the cleaning service sat on the kitchen counter. The pinecone Maizie had given her during their visit to her special place was in her pocket. She picked up her canvas gun bag and locked the door behind her.

  Fatigue burned her eyes as she drove through the early morning mist. Reviews, amendments, and double-checks of her plan had kept her awake most of the night. The clock on the dashboard warned her she had less than twenty minutes to catch the first ferry.

  Lydia waited behind two damp-haired commuters for a cup of coffee. She stared at Whidbey Island shrinking in the predawn dark and whispered a hope that the universe would be kinder to Maizie than it had been. She knew she’d never see the little girl again.

  It was still dark when she drove off the ferry. She missed the jam of commuters clogging Interstate 5’s artery. The DJ promised a beautiful spring day in the Pacific Northwest once the fog burned away. Lydia turned off the radio and settled again into mental rehearsal. By the time she pulled into her Olympia driveway, it was nearly seven o’clock. She slung her gun bag over her shoulder and entered her empty house.

  Lydia spent the next three hours in her computer room, searching sites, programming linkages, and bypassing firewalls. Most were easily hacked, though the two most important to her plan took longer than she’d anticipated. She watched the clock and wished she could run a beta test, either assuring her plan would work or demonstrating the flaws she’d need to correct. But she only had one shot.

  Dunfield was expecting her at three o’clock that afternoon. In exchange for thirty thousand dollars, he would have a stage set and cameras ready to film her raping his seven-year-old daughter. After that, he’d pocket the money and sell her to the next pervert willing to shatter a child’s life in exchange for a sexual conquest he could fantasize about for years. She had five hours left.

  Lydia took a deep breath and turned to her keyboard. She’d drafted the wording during her drive down from Whidbey. Now, as she saw her thoughts on the screen, she made edits to stress the urgency. She’d budgeted thirty minutes for this portion of the task and she used every one of them. The clock read 10:30.

  If all went well, she was about to disrupt a lot of coffee breaks.

  She took a deep breath and pressed Enter.

  Lydia pushed back from her console, walked to the corner of her communication center, pressed her forehead against the cool cinder blocks, and tried to steady her breathing. She failed.

  “The fuck?” Detective Rodney Hassler of the Puyallup Police Department reacted to the scrolling message covering his screen as he worked on an arrest report for a seventeen-year-old caught stuffing nine bottles of OPI nail polish into her pockets at the local Walgreens. He smacked the side of his screen a few times before the words floating across clips of pornographic videos and stills of youngsters forced his attention away from petty crime. He didn’t know he was one of 234 law enforcement officers from Vancouver to Bellingham experiencing the simultaneous broadcast.

  Special Agent in Charge Katherine O’Day at the Seattle FBI office was the first to call for the source location of the transmission jamming their computers. In less than two minutes her technician told her the signal was being bounced too rapidly across cell towers spanning the globe. Within three minutes the FCC’s Olympia suboffice had complaints from every law enforcement jurisdiction west of the mountains about the clip playing in a redundant loop.

  “This is Gary Dunfield,” the rolling text read. “He is engaged in the production and distribution of child pornography. The photos you are seeing are the merchandise he offers on his encrypted websites.” The screed went on to list the links, and commanding officers up and down western Washington scrambled their staff outside to verify the allegations. “At three o’clock this afternoon Dunfield will be expecting to meet someone who has offered to pay to rape Dunfield’s young daughter, Maizie. He will be filming the crime. When he is finished, he intends to offer his daughter for sale into sexual slavery.” The rolling loop gave Dunfield’s address and linked into Google Maps. “The rape is to be filmed in the basement of Dunfield’s house. That house sits adjacent to a junkyard. Dunfield’s wife, Hannah Roswell Dunfield, went missing two years ago. Check the cars over the hill, where the customers don’t go, and you’ll likely find her body. Hannah has family in Camden, Maine. Her sister is Rebecca Farraday. Please contact Rebecca and her husband Aaron when you have rescued Maizie.” The text ended with a statement that the loop would play twenty more times, at which time control of their computers would be returned to them.

  “Fucking dumbass college kids,” Special Agent Jason Raskop groused. “Think they’re clever enough to break into the FBI.” He nodded to his supervisor. “We’ll track ’em. I’m on it.”

  O’Day ignored him for the two young agents running toward her. “You get in?”r />
  The taller agent nodded while the other tried to catch his breath. “The links were spot-on. You can’t believe what this guy’s pushing.”

  Katherine O’Day gnawed her lower lip.

  Raskop said, “I’ll assemble a task force.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Say the word and I’ll pull three guys to nail this thing down in thirty days.”

  O’Day looked past him. That humming in her gut that had once told her where a counterfeiter was hiding his plates stirred up again. “Conley, get with Judge Haskin right now and get me warrants for the house and property. I need them within an hour. Haskin can call me if she’s got an issue.” She swung around to two agents writing furiously as the rolling text ended.

  “Got it?” she asked.

  “Word for word,” the agent with the gray crew cut said.

  O’Day nodded to the woman next to him. “Ennis, contact every agency who got this message. We’re taking charge. This guy’s gone interstate and that makes it our jurisdiction. We’ll coordinate with the locals on Whidbey and back them up on the investigation if we find a body.”

  O’Day continued to hand out assignments. Raskop stepped forward as her other agents responded with quiet efficiency. He looped his thumbs in his belt and rocked on his heels. “What’s my role, Chief?”

  Katherine O’Day ran her eyes over the room. “Sandwiches for seventeen should just about do it.”

  Lydia sat in the far corner nursing a glass of merlot. The sports bar was enjoying a quiet lull between state workers meeting for lunch and happy-hour customers ready to celebrate the end of another day in the cubicle. She focused on a jumbo flat screen where two boisterous announcers in matching navy blazers opined over what the recent death of a basketball team’s owner might mean as they struggled in the playoffs. She glanced at her watch. It was 4:07. Nearly six minutes later than the last time she checked.

  The logo of the local news affiliate exploded onto the screen. Drum-heavy theme music accompanied the announcement that regularly scheduled programs were being interrupted for breaking news.

  The bartender looked up from his Sudoku.

  Lydia moved her glass of wine aside as a young blonde nodded to the camera and pressed a finger into her ear. “Pat, we’re live on Whidbey Island, outside of Langley, where just a little over an hour ago the FBI and local law enforcement descended on a junkyard here.” She referred to a small notepad. “I’m told Gary Dunfield, the owner and proprietor, has been arrested in connection with a months-long investigation into child pornography.” The visual switched to an overhead shot of Dunfield’s property. Dozens of vehicles surrounded the house. People scurried in and out, carrying boxes and computer parts. The camera returned to its reporter.

  “Now details are sketchy, but as you can see from all this activity, this was obviously a joint effort between several agencies. I’m told the FBI is leading this investigation.”

  An off-camera male voice asked if any additional arrests had been made.

  The blonde nodded. “As I said, details are few, but I’m told there will be a press conference …” A cacophony of barking dogs drowned out her next words. The camera shifted attention to a field behind the house as the startled reporter struggled to explain what was happening.

  Lydia exhaled and a throbbing anxiety that had pulsed in her chest all morning slowed. She signaled the waitress and reached for her wallet. There was no need to wait for the televised report. She knew exactly what was happening.

  Corpse-sniffing hounds had found little Maizie’s mother. Lydia handed the server a fifty-dollar bill and asked her to keep the change.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Mort waved Jimmy and Micki into his office. He needed their opinion. Either he’d connected the dots or his caffeine-addled mind was offering up a hallucination in exchange for a few hours’ sleep.

  “No offense, but you look like hell,” Micki remarked. “Doesn’t smell too good in here, either.”

  Jimmy tossed an empty takeout container of moo shu chicken into the wastebasket. “You been here all night?” He shoved a space clear on the couch and sat. “What’s the midnight oil reveal?”

  Mort grabbed a marker and headed to the whiteboard. “Hear me out.” He wrote as he spoke. “We know Vogel was at his penthouse an hour before game three.”

  “Security desk logged him in at 6:22,” Micki confirmed.

  “I spent the night with Silas from IT. He manned the console while I went bug-eyed.” Mort pointed to a pile of DVDs on his desk. “Felicia’s rehearsal, the No Fly and surrounding businesses, and security at the arena.” He drew an arrow on the whiteboard. “Silas slowed the clips down frame by frame. Right to the second. Everyone’s right where they should be.” He turned to his colleagues. “Until game time. That’s what we were missing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘missing’?” Jimmy asked. “We were there, remember? In the luxury box.”

  Mort picked a disc from the pile on his desk. “We couldn’t see where we weren’t looking, Jimmy.” He popped the drive open and slid the disc in. “I got as many feeds as I could. Arena security, three local stations, and ESPN. Lots of different angles.” He clicked his mouse and the disc played on the screen. “Tell me what you see. Make special note of the time.”

  Micki and Jimmy watched the monitor while Mort watched them.

  “I’m not seeing anything.” Jimmy sounded disappointed. “You getting it, Mick?”

  Micki scrutinized the images. “Can we go back twenty minutes?”

  Mort manipulated the controls and earlier images appeared.

  “Okay.” Micki kept her focus on the screen. “Now can we go back to where we were?”

  Mort obliged and returned the display to what they last viewed.

  “There. Stop.” Micki pointed to the screen. “How’d that get there?”

  “Look at the size,” Mort said. “The shape.”

  Micki nodded. “Autopsy report says Vogel’s skull was punctured with something about the size of a walnut. And that looks heavy enough to do the job.” She traced her finger down to the clock marking. “Timing’s right.”

  “And I’ve seen it since that night. Guess where.” Mort let the DVD play out. This time it was Jimmy who caught the next clue.

  “There.” Jimmy tapped the screen and Mort stopped the play. “Look at that.” He glanced at the time stamp. “Sure fits with the coroner’s theory.” He stepped back from the computer. “But how’d it go down? I mean, millions of people were watching that game. At least twenty thousand of them in the arena.”

  “That’s it, Jimmy,” Micki said. “We were all busy watching the game. Pretty great distraction.”

  Mort returned to the whiteboard. “Now let’s put it together with what else we know.” He scribbled as the three of them shouted out pieces of evidence gathered in the past five days. He drew arrows, noted times, and looked for a flaw in their argument. When it was clear they had their killer, the room went quiet.

  “I don’t want to believe this,” Micki murmured.

  “Facts are facts, Mick.” Jimmy blew out a loud breath. “Search warrants first?”

  Mort stared at the whiteboard. He remembered standing over Vogel’s corpse and promising the dead tycoon he’d find who murdered him. He swallowed hard to push down his disgust.

  “Get the warrants, Jimmy.” Mort wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a bed.

  The concrete stadium rumbled as twenty thousand fans roared when the Wings ran onto the court. Mort leaned in to hear the uniformed commander assure him all exits were covered. He nodded his thanks and waved for Micki, Jimmy, and two plainclothes detectives to follow him. They made their way quickly to the elevator, passing program vendors, hot dog stands, and souvenir kiosks while rock anthems blared. Two linebackers in security T-shirts jumped aside when Mort and his crew flashed their badges.

  “Shame to miss this.” Jimmy punched the level they needed. The closed doors dampened the din to a bearable level. “Wings gott
a take this one or it’s all over.”

  Mort said nothing. He felt the car rise and thought about how the object of their visit didn’t have a clue they were on their way. Probably trying to focus on the game. Figuring they’d gotten away with murder.

  The car stopped and the five of them stepped onto crimson carpet. Mort asked the plainclothes detectives to wait outside. He stood at the closed door, looked to the grim faces of Micki and Jimmy, then knocked.

  Ingrid Stinson-Vogel opened the door. It took the widow a half second to recognize Mort. Then she stepped aside and ushered in her three uninvited guests. Pierce Stinson was slumped in a chair against the far wall. He looked up at them with weary resignation.

  “What’s this about, Detective?” Ingrid patted a hand against her chest. “You shouldn’t be up here without a pass.”

  Mort wondered if she had any idea how silly that sounded. “Pierce Stinson.” His voice was stern authority. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Reinhart Vogel.” Mort began his Miranda recitation but Ingrid interrupted.

  “I don’t know what’s led you to such foolishness, but you must leave. If you have questions for my son, you can reach him tomorrow.” Her eyes flashed. “After I’ve had the opportunity to secure legal representation.”

  Mort nodded to Micki. She opened the door and called in a uniformed officer. Mort finished his Miranda while Pierce remained in his seat, unmoving.

  “Stop this instant.” Ingrid was the demanding CEO confronting rebellious employees. “Leave this room immediately before I …”

  “Before you call the police, Mrs. Stinson?” Mort pulled Pierce to his feet. He offered no resistance as Mort handed him over to the officer for cuffing.

  “Do you understand your rights as I’ve read them to you?” Mort asked.

  “Say nothing, Pierce.” Ingrid’s tone betrayed a shadow of her desperation. “This is all a tragic mistake and I assure you these officers will pay dearly. Keep silent and I’ll make sure everything is fine.”