High-Risk Investigation

by Jane M. Choate

  “Most people think that in order to slit someone’s throat, you have to pull the head back, expose the neck fully.” He tipped his head back, held his hand to the carotid artery. “The problem with that is the windpipe provides some measure of protection. Whoever killed Crane knew that you have to come in from an angle.”

  “Someone with a medical background,” Scout mused aloud.

  “More likely someone with military training,” Nicco corrected. “Special ops soldiers are taught how to kill like that with a single slice of the knife.”

  He knew she wasn’t a stranger to violence, had witnessed it firsthand, but he hadn’t meant to paint so graphic a picture. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. I need to know what kind of people we’re up against.”

  His lips stretched in a hard line. “The men and women I served with would lay down their lives to protect America from her enemies, but there are always a few bad apples who use Uncle Sam’s training for their own reasons.”

  Nicco’s thoughts turned bleak, his memory calling up three members of another unit who had looted a museum in Afghanistan after it had been gutted by a mortar attack. The stolen artifacts had found their way to the black market and the men, eventually, to a federal penitentiary where they would spend twenty-plus years. At one time, they had been honorable men, good soldiers, but they’d traded their integrity for the lure of easy money.

  “Once you step down into the gutter,” he said after relating the story to Scout, “it’s real hard to pull yourself out.”

  “It hurts you, doesn’t it? To think that someone who served is mixed up in this.”

  “Yeah. It hurts. It also makes me mad as all get-out.”

  * * *

  Though Crane had been dirty, Scout could still feel pity for him. For the wasted life that had been his. For what he might have been had not greed and a thirst for power claimed hold of him. For the violence that had taken him.

  Violence left a stain. Beyond the blood that had trickled down his cheek and onto the floor in a rust-colored pool. Beyond the torn and upturned furniture. The mark could never be scrubbed away.

  Given the time line of when Crane had called and when she and Nicco had arrived, he’d have been killed in the last forty-five minutes.

  Nicco turned back to look at her, frowned. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ve been to crime scenes before.” She took a steadying breath. “Even murder ones.”

  “I know,” he said gently. “But that doesn’t mean you have to stay here. Not like this.”

  She wanted to take the out he was offering and get away from the ugliness, but she held fast. She wasn’t running.

  Nicco punched in a number on his phone. In a few terse sentences, he gave the location and victim’s name. “The police are on their way,” he told her, then punched in another number. “Sal, there’s been a development.” Nicco filled in his brother on Crane’s death, then listened for a minute. “Yeah, we’re sitting tight, waiting for the police to show up.” He groaned. “I got it. Cooperate, play nice and tell them everything we know. Too bad they probably won’t return the favor.”

  While they waited for the police, Nicco made a sketch of the crime scene. Scout did the same and wondered how their sketches would compare. Those drawings would prove useful when calling up details. She noted the placement of the body, the overturned furniture and other details.

  The police arrived within minutes, along with crime scene technicians, the ME and others. Nicco and Scout were escorted to another room where Detective Wagner interviewed them. She judged Wagner to be a good policeman, observant, competent, committed. A blessed numbness settled over her and allowed her to answer the questions in a coherent fashion.

  No, she didn’t know who had killed Leonard Crane.

  No, she didn’t know who had reason to want him dead.

  No, she hadn’t seen anyone else.

  And, finally, yes, she would make herself available for further questions.

  Wagner asked to see the general manager of the hotel next. He nodded slightly to Nicco and Scout, a sign that they could sit in on the interview. Not that it did them much good.

  The GM was unhelpful in the extreme. “This is a private hotel where our guests expect and demand the utmost privacy and respect. I cannot permit you to question them or the staff as that would disrupt the service for which our establishment is famed,” a fussy man in a fussy suit told Detective Wagner, a haughty expression slathered on his face.

  “It’s not up to you,” the detective said equably. “The sooner you let us do our job, the sooner we’ll be out of your way. We can start with your staff if that makes you feel better.”

  Scout gave Wagner kudos for not allowing the GM to intimidate him from doing his job. She’d never had patience for those whose noses were stuck up in the stratosphere.

  “Thanks for letting us stick around,” Nicco said to Wagner after the detective had interviewed members of the staff.

  “It cuts both ways. You two find out anything, I expect you to let me know.”

  “You got it.”

  Outside, Nicco and Scout headed to his truck.

  Inside the cab of the truck, she felt his gaze on her, warm and concerned. Though she appreciated his worry, she wasn’t going to fold under the pressure. She’d made a promise to herself to see this through and she wasn’t going to go back on that. In her mind, a promise was a promise, even one made to herself. Especially one made to herself.

  What had Crane known and why had he been killed for it?

  That was the question uppermost in Scout’s mind the following day as she and Nicco sifted through crime reports and notes they’d made about the union boss. Also spread across her kitchen table were photos of the scene, courtesy of Detective Wagner.

  They’d tried to make sense of the number on the scrap of paper clutched in Crane’s hand but had come up with zilch and had decided a change of pace from reviewing their notes and the crime scene photos was in order.

  She pressed her thumbs into the corners of her eyes in a vain attempt to relieve the growing exhaustion that had dogged her since the discovery of Crane’s body. He had sounded genuinely frightened when he’d called yesterday morning, begging her to meet him at the hotel.

  What had he been afraid of? Or who?

  “What if we’ve had it wrong from the first? What if Crane was just a patsy? He was dirty, sure. But he was only the fall guy.” Her voice rose as her conviction that she was right took hold. “Think about it. Crane was the sanitation union rep. What about all the other unions in Savannah? Like the longshore workers?” Her mind raced as the implications sank in. “Whoever controls the docks controls everything. What if Crane was recruited so that whoever is behind this had access to transportation? It wouldn’t take much to use the garbage trucks to transport things.”

  Nicco nodded. “Ninety percent of everything that goes in or out of the city goes through the docks. Drugs. Guns. Human trafficking.”

  “Crane was a public face. When whoever was behind this saw that we weren’t backing down, they decided to make sure we focused on Crane and didn’t look at anyone else. He was sacrificed to keep our attention on him and off everything else. There has to be a big endgame in sight.”

  “It all comes back to money.”

  Her nod was short. “Not just money, but power. Greed and ego are a potent combination.” And sometimes a deadly one.

  Talking felt good. It kept her from thinking about how cold she felt. So cold. Colder than she had ever been since the murder of her parents. She had seen death before. Of course she had. So why was Crane’s death affecting her as it was? Even after several hours, the coldness hadn’t gone away. If anything, it had intensified.

  The answer wasn’t difficult to find. If she hadn’t been investigating Crane, he might still be alive. She knew the
logic didn’t follow, but she couldn’t shake the sense of responsibility.

  “Stop it.”

  Nicco’s words had her looking up.

  “You’re not responsible for what happened to Crane. He made his choices. They cost him his life.”

  She was no longer surprised that Nicco read her so easily. He seemed to intuitively know what she was feeling and thinking. “Maybe if I’d backed off...” She left the thought unfinished.

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything. Crane got mixed up in something bigger than he could handle.”

  “He wanted out. He sounded desperate.”

  “It was too late. He was a means to an end, nothing more. My guess is that whoever’s behind this planned on getting rid of him long before you started investigating him.”

  “Thank you for that.” She wanted to believe Nicco, but the feeling that she was somehow responsible for Crane’s death persisted.

  “The only thing we can do for him now is find the killer.”

  “He wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t particularly nice. But he didn’t deserve to die like that.” Her thoughts took her back to the beginning. “My mother believed he was mixed up in those murders. But what if he wasn’t the one calling the shots? What if he was just a pawn?

  “He was trying to cover his tracks when he came after me and then realized that I wasn’t the real threat. It was the people he was working for.” She sat back, considered. As theories went, it wasn’t bad.

  “Good. You have your fire-in-the-belly back.”

  “Fire-in-the-belly?”

  “You were so cold. So locked away in yourself. I was afraid you’d never come out.”

  Fire. Yes, she guessed that was how she felt. If fire meant wanting to find justice for her parents. If fire meant anger that they’d been taken too soon. If fire meant the fear that those responsible for killing her parents and, yes, Crane, too, might never be punished.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “Worry comes with the territory.”

  “Territory?”

  “Later. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We go after them.”

  “We don’t know who they are.”

  “Not yet.” Determination lit his eyes. “But we will. And then we’ll bring them down.”

  A chill worked its way down her spine. She stared at him, seeing his strength. She wanted to take comfort from it, but all she felt at that moment was fear. Fear for this man who had become so important to her in a short amount of time.

  Nicco had made her fight his own. If something happened to him because of her... She didn’t finish the thought. She couldn’t.

  FOURTEEN

  Nicco took Scout to a hole-in-the-wall diner where they were unlikely to be spotted.

  He expected her to want to work on deciphering the number he’d copied from the scrap of paper clutched in Crane’s hand.

  “How did you get your name?” she asked instead.

  The question startled him before he understood. She needed a respite from the horror of the last hours and obliged her with the story. “My real name is Nikodemos. It means victory of the people.”

  Her quizzical look invited him to share.

  “Mama was diagnosed with ovarian cancer twelve weeks into her pregnancy with me. The doctors told her to end it so that she could start treatment to save her life. She refused. Six months later, I was born. She told my father that I was a victory.”

  “And your mother’s cancer?”

  “After I was born, she did four months of chemotherapy. Papa said she was sick every single day, but she never complained. When I was old enough to understand, she told me that she had been blessed with a healthy baby boy, so how could she be anything but grateful. She’s been fine ever since.” To his chagrin, his voice had developed a hitch. “Sorry.”

  “That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard.” Scout placed her hand on his arm and squeezed gently.

  “Mama’s her children’s biggest cheerleader.” He smiled in memory. “When Sal and I were playing football in high school, she’d yell so loud that she drowned out the other parents. Sometimes it got embarrassing, but we never doubted that she loved us.”

  “Now she has a whole new generation of grandchildren to cheer for.”

  “I dodged a bullet there. Once my sisters started having babies, I was off the hook. Now with Sal and Olivia married and expecting, I have another reprieve.”

  “Is that what you want? A reprieve?”

  For the first time since he’d discovered that girls were different from boys, he stammered. “Uh...well, I mean...”

  Scout laughed. “You’re in danger of tripping over your tongue.”

  He laughed as well. He couldn’t help it. Something about her made him want to laugh. The laughter died in his throat as he stared at the notebook where he’d copied the number from the piece of paper clutched in Crane’s hand.

  Scout’s gaze followed his. “Back to the real world,” she said wryly.

  He opened the notebook to the page containing the number. The more he tried to make sense of the sequence of digits, the more frustrated he grew. A code? The seven numbers appeared to be totally random.

  Scout looked over Nicco’s shoulder. “It’s too short for a social security number. There’re no letters so it’s not a license plate. And the prefix is wrong for an area code.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Let’s go high-tech.” She powered up the laptop she was never without and entered the number in a search engine.

  Now it was Nicco who watched over her shoulder. When the results came back “not found,” she tried again, this time separating the numbers into groups. Still no hits. “This is getting us nowhere,” he said in disgust.

  “Give me a minute.” She tried another configuration. “Hey. I think we got something.”

  “What is it?”

  “A warehouse number.”

  Nicco hadn’t been expecting that, but it made sense. Once they finished lunch, they drove to the warehouse district. Located in an area that gentrification had yet to reach, the district boasted dozens of structures that ranged from renovated to dilapidated to barely standing, a section of the city the city fathers preferred to forget. A pockmarked parking lot where straggly weeds pushed their way through cracks in the concrete skirted a tired brick building.

  Despair oozed from the surrounding area. Graffiti decorated the walls while broken windows yawned like giant maws. Empty bottles and trash littered the parking lot. A couple of men slunk away, their drooping shoulders and furtive eyes mute testimony that they had given up on life.

  Scout looked like a hothouse flower that had been mistakenly transplanted into a weed patch. “You don’t belong here.” The words were out before he could stop them.

  “Nobody belongs here.”

  He could only agree. He let himself out of the truck, came around to help her out. “Stay behind me.”

  She nodded.

  Weapon drawn, he surveyed the outside of the building. Except for the two men who had disappeared into the shadows, it appeared deserted. What they would find inside was another matter.

  The warehouse was predictably dilapidated and appeared to be abandoned. Perfect camouflage if someone was storing contraband inside. The only giveaway that all was not as it seemed was the shiny new hardware on the doors. While Scout served as lookout, Nicco picked the lock and slid the doors open.

  A musty smell greeted them. Nicco peered into the darkness. An ancient forklift occupied one corner. Further inspection revealed row upon row of neatly stacked crates. Each crate bore a number, probably an inventory marking.

  He discovered a crowbar propped against a wall and pried open one of the crates. What he found inside was enough
to start a small war.

  He did a quick count. “There’s got to be forty crates of M110s here. Each holds six dozen. At several thousand dollars each, that’s...” He did some rough-and-ready math in his head. “Sold on the open market, these will bring a couple million dollars. Easy.

  “Probably more,” he said, amending his own calculation after further inspection. “These are prime Army issue.” He pulled a pair of latex gloves that he routinely kept in his back pocket and lifted a weapon from the crate, held it in ready position. The sleek weapon could kill a dozen people in less than a minute.

  Nicco thought of the gun left behind at the fund-raiser, no doubt part of this shipment. It was all coming together and painting a very ugly picture. Military weapons sold on the black market commanded a premium.

  “That’s what this whole thing has been about. Transportation via union trucks. The murders. All to move thousands of weapons.” Nicco’s lips tightened as he thought of the misery the semiautomatics could inflict if they fell into the wrong hands, whether gangs in the States or terrorists abroad.

  He pried open another box, this one a different size, and found a dozen .50 caliber sniper rifles. With the Browning AP, the armor-piercing weapon could blast through steel plate.

  A final box yielded an AT-4. The three-foot disposable fiberglass tube could fire a six-and-a-half-pound projectile through eleven inches of armor. It could wipe out anything from the presidential limousine to an Abrams tank. It was one of the deadliest of the weapons in the warehouse. Nicco had seen an AT-4 in action. The devastation it had wreaked was forever imprinted on his mind.

  Silently, he gestured for Scout to take a look.

  “How did the Army not know?” he wondered aloud. “They’ve got someone on the inside. No other way it works.” He made a rude noise. “One of our own. If I get my hands on him...”

  After 9/11, Nicco had enlisted with the ideal of “Never again.” Never again would America’s enemies be able to invade his country and slaughter thousands of people, innocent civilians who had done nothing to warrant such hatred.