Duel to the Death

by J. A. Jance

  Her sarcastic response must have gotten Dave’s attention. He backed off some, and when he spoke again his tone was a bit more conciliatory. “It’s not that I thought you were responsible, but this is serious, Ali. This Webster character is dead, but the real problem is this—the way he died leads back to some very dangerous people. So what’s his connection to High Noon? Do you have any idea what he was doing there?”

  “Planting surveillance devices of some kind,” Ali answered.

  “Why would he be doing that, and who was he working for?” Dave wanted to know.

  “Since he’s dead, we obviously can’t ask him either one of those questions,” Ali replied, “but I believe it’s safe to assume that he was spying on us.”

  “For whom?”

  “Again, I have no idea.”

  “You didn’t mention anything about listening devices when we talked yesterday.”

  “That’s because we learned about them after I talked to you rather than before. It turns out that, without my knowledge, Stu and Cami had installed an interior security monitoring system inside our building. The cameras were up and running on Friday afternoon at the same time that Steve Barris, aka Ron Webster, was there doing his thing. The problem is, we didn’t get a look at the feed until much later in the day yesterday.”

  “You’re saying you have video footage of the guy?”

  “Yes, he appeared to be tinkering with various electrical outlets and switch plates. Our assumption is that he was installing some kind of surveillance equipment.”

  “You just called it an assumption. Does that mean you don’t know for sure?”

  “We’ve had several things on our plate. Cami and Stu have both been out of town this weekend. With everything else that’s been going on and since no one was in over the weekend, we decided to leave the equipment in place until tomorrow when people are back in the office.”

  “I’d like to get a look at that security video,” Dave said. “Can you send me a copy? That way I can pass it along to Detective Wasser.”

  “I won’t be sending it personally,” Ali said, “and you’ll have it, but only on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You said the homicide leads back to some very dangerous people. What kind of dangerous people?”

  Dave sighed. “Ali, this is an active investigation. I shouldn’t be talking about it with you.”

  “It happens to be an active investigation that involves High Noon, and we’re the ones who brought it to you in the first place,” she insisted. “So tell me.”

  “We may be talking about a Mexican drug cartel. Lately, one that operates out of Sinaloa has been suspected of outsourcing their US-based hits to a network of MS-13 gangbangers. So far there are four separate homicides with MOs similar to this one—three in Texas and one in New Mexico. In each of those instances, bottles of gasoline were used to create firebombs that were thrown from speeding motorcycles. The fire investigation in Marana isn’t complete by any means, but they’re saying that what they’ve found so far points in the same direction—back to the cartel.”

  “So you’re saying that after Webster targeted High Noon, someone else targeted him?”

  “Exactly,” Dave said. “And the next question is this: If the drug cartel was out to get him, what are the chances some of the same people are going to come looking for you?”

  “No chance,” Ali answered firmly, “as in zero. To my knowledge, High Noon Enterprises has had no dealings with drug cartels of any kind, Mexican or otherwise. I’ll be glad to send along the security video, but I can’t see what any of this has to do with us.”

  No sooner had Ali said the words aloud than she knew they weren’t true. Several years earlier, High Noon had been caught in the crossfire between two warring cartels—the Cabrillo Cartel out of Monterey, Mexico, and the Díaz Cartel from the border town of Juárez. Both had been targeting Lance Tucker’s GHOST software, which had ended up providing law enforcement with enough critical information to bring down both organizations. As far as Ali knew, neither of them had survived. All of that was in the distant past, but could what was happening now harken back to any of that?

  “I hope you’re right about that,” Dave was saying. “In the meantime, you need to know that I’ve already given your contact information to Detective Wasser. I’m sure she’ll be in touch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the ATF turned up on your doorstep as well.”

  “They’ve called in the feds?” Ali asked.

  “In the past two weeks, because of those other four cases, the ATF sent notices to agencies all along the Mexican border warning them to be on the lookout for this kind of activity. Someone in Pima County picked up on the similarity almost immediately, and the sheriff asked for help.”

  Dave paused. Then, seeming to notice Ali’s stricken silence, he asked, “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” she answered, “just trying to wrap my head around all this.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in, but whatever’s going on, it’s dangerous as hell, Ali, and you and everyone else at High Noon need to act accordingly.”

  “Will do,” Ali said. “Thanks for the heads-up, Dave. I’ve gotta run.”

  And run she did. Bounding out of the bathroom, Ali paused only long enough to slip on her shoes before dashing through the makeshift master bedroom, down the hall, and out through the kitchen. Alonso was there, loading dishes into the dishwasher, but Ali raced past him, making for the stairway that led to the man cave off the garage.

  “I know who Steve Barris really is,” she announced as she burst into the room.

  “So do we,” B. replied, motioning up to where the image of Ronald Dawson Webster’s Arizona driver’s license was displayed on an overhead screen. “Frigg just told us. Who told you?”

  “Dave Holman,” Ali answered.

  “Dave?” B. asked. “How did that happen? What’s he got to do with any of this?”

  “After you went to sleep earlier, I stopped by the substation, hoping to talk to Dave and ask him to run the print I lifted off the buzzer. He wasn’t there, but the deputy who was on duty agreed to run the print anyway. She did, and it came back with a hit to this guy—to Ronald Webster. And now he’s dead.”

  “Webster is dead?”

  “He was murdered last night, down in Marana. He was asleep inside a motorhome when someone used an improvised bomb of some kind to blow the whole thing sky-high, burning down his parents’ garage and home in the process. He was pronounced dead at the scene. I promised Dave that we’d send him our security footage so he can pass it along to Detective Wasser, the homicide cop handling the case.”

  For a moment the only sound in the room was the steady hum of the laboring AC as everyone internalized that bit of information. B. was the first to speak.

  “You want me to send the footage to Dave?”

  “Please,” Ali said.

  “Okay,” B. said, keying in the numbers, “but are you saying that, with Webster dead, High Noon’s name is probably going to surface in the course of the homicide investigation?”

  Ali nodded miserably. “That’s the size of it,” she said, “and it’s all my fault. In fact, it’s even worse than that.”

  “How could it possibly be worse?”

  “The way Webster was killed—that particular brand of arson/homicide is a signature MO that’s known to law enforcement. According to Dave, it suggests that the perpetrator may be a member of MS-13 doing dirty work for one of the Mexican drug cartels.”

  “Which one?” B. asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Drug cartels?” Stu asked. “Really? Could it have something to do with that whole Cabrillo/Díaz drug war thing from a few years back? I thought both of those crews went away a long time ago.”

  “I thought so, too,” B. said. “Besides, as you said, all of that was years in the past. Why would someone connected to that come after us now? What’s changed?”

&nbs
p; “Back then Lance’s GHOST was the new thing on the block, and everyone wanted a piece of it,” Stu said soberly. “Now we have Frigg. We already know she’s not entirely trustworthy, so maybe we’re not the only suckers she had on her reboot mailing list.”

  “You’re saying she might have tried to hand herself off to someone other than you?” Cami asked.

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Stu said. “Can you imagine what would happen if an AI of her caliber ended up in the hands of a drug cartel?”

  “What if we’re dealing with two competing drug cartels, just like last time?” Ali asked. “What if there are two separate entities involved, and they’re both coming after Frigg? One might be responsible for siccing Webster on us in the first place, while the other is the one that took him out.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” B. said. “If it’s one cartel or two, once our name is linked to this mess, it’ll turn into a PR nightmare!”

  “How the hell do we get in front of it?” Stuart asked.

  “By letting our clients know what’s going on as soon as possible,” B. said. “Giving them advance warning will go a long way toward mitigating the damage, but we can’t do that without knowing a hell of a lot more than we do right now.”

  While everyone else in the room had been dealing with this stunning news, a seemingly unconcerned Cami had sat with her face buried in her iPad. “Would it help if I could tell you exactly which drug cartel?” she asked, glancing up from the screen.

  The other three people in the room regarded her with something close to amazement.

  “How’d you do that?” B. asked.

  “Easy,” Cami answered. “I googled MS-13 and arson. Several separate incidents popped right up. There were four that are reasonably close to where we are—three in Texas and one in New Mexico. One of the three in Texas was near Laredo and two were outside El Paso. The one in New Mexico took place near Las Cruces. The stories are short. Do you want me to read them aloud?”

  “By all means,” Ali said.

  As she read the articles aloud, the details surrounding the four incidents were so strikingly similar as to be almost interchangeable. In each instance an incendiary device—a bottle of gasoline with a lit piece of cloth functioning as a wick—had been lobbed into a targeted residence. Each of the four cases had resulted in fatalities, and all of the victims were reportedly known to law enforcement with histories of involvement in the drug trade.

  Of the four stories, only the one in Las Cruces veered off script. Somehow the man in charge of throwing the device had paused a moment too long before letting it fly. As a result the perpetrator had perished, while his intended victim, a former cartel member who had turned snitch, had survived. The would-be assassin was subsequently identified as a member of MS-13. The surviving informant, now in witness protection, had pointed the finger in the direction of the Duarte cartel, an organization based in Sinaloa and headed by one Felix Ramón Duarte, better known by his street name, El Pescado. Once the four incidents were linked, there was no need to add El Pescado’s name to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. It was already there.

  “The Fish?” Ali asked. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “It doesn’t say.”

  “And how does a Sinaloan drug cartel have anything to do with us?” Stu wanted to know. “The ones we ran up against in San Leandro were the Cabrillo Cartel out of Monterrey and the Díaz Cartel out of Juárez.”

  “There’s been a lot of consolidation in the drug world in recent years,” B. suggested. “Maybe El Pescado is a big fish who’s in the process of swallowing lots of little fish.”

  “So when Webster came spying on us, was he working for the Duartes or was he working for one of their rivals?” Ali asked.

  “Good question,” Stu said. “Let’s see what Frigg has to say on that topic.” He picked up the headset. “Frigg?”

  “Yes, Mr. Ramey, how may I be of service?”

  “Have you completed the report on Ronald Webster?”

  “Yes, I have. The last pieces just came in.”

  “Please send whatever you have to the wall monitors.”

  “Very well, Mr. Ramey, sending now.”

  For the next several minutes they all stood transfixed in the computer-filled man cave, watching as bits and pieces of Ronald Dawson Webster’s troubled life spooled across first one screen and then another. The report started with his birth at Good Shepherd Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, forty-three years earlier, where his birth parents were listed as Rita Lorraine Webster and Richard Dawson Webster. Subsequent files provided surprisingly in-depth information about his paltry educational achievements. The report on his military service included what should have been confidential details concerning his less than honorable discharge. A number of links went to articles and media coverage of the barroom brawl that had landed him in prison with a conviction for involuntary manslaughter. That was followed by a rap sheet detailing several DUI convictions as well as an arrest for being drunk and disorderly.

  “Where did all of this come from?” Ali asked. “That rap sheet shouldn’t be available to anyone outside law enforcement.”

  “Try telling that to Frigg,” Stuart said.

  The next item, showing on a different monitor, contained Ron Webster’s credit report, followed by copies of his most recent income tax returns, which showed him to be scraping by at little more than $20,000 a year.

  “Whoa,” B. said. “This is intelligence gathering worthy of the NSA. Some of it comes from routine public records—and that’s fine. Items gathered off the Internet, like the media coverage, is out there and readily available to anyone willing to track it down. But how the hell did Frigg sort out what elementary and secondary schools Webster attended? And how is she able to access his income tax returns? Those should be completely off-limits.”

  “Yes,” Stu agreed. “It’s like having access to facial recognition software only worse—much, worse.”

  Just then an additional item appeared on yet another screen:

  Marana resident Ronald Dawson Webster, age 43, perished in an arson-related fire at his parents’ home on West Lambert Lane. Webster was pronounced dead at the scene of the early morning fire in which a manufactured home, a garage, and several motor vehicles were also destroyed.

  His death is considered a homicide and is being investigated by officers from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department as well as agents from the Tucson-based office of the ATF.

  This is breaking news. Look for updates as further details become available.

  “Not only is Frigg incredibly thorough,” Stu commented, “she’s also completely up to date. So when you get around to talking to that Pima County detective, Ali, you’re going to have to watch yourself.”

  “Watch myself why?”

  “Thanks to Dave Holman, Frigg, and Cami, you already know way more about this Webster guy than you should, and you can’t let Detective Wasser know any of it. We can’t afford to have people coming around asking how you happen to know what you know.”

  “Got it,” Ali said. “I’ll be careful.”

  Just then the door opened and Alonso popped his head into the room. “Soup’s on,” he told them. “Stew rather than soup. Come and get it before I throw it out.”

  As the others obediently trudged upstairs, Stu stayed where he was.

  “Are you coming?” Cami asked.

  “In a minute,” he said absently as a new document appeared on another monitor. “I’ll be right there.”

  39

  While everyone else trooped upstairs to eat, Stuart stayed where he was, staring at the monitor containing this latest bit of information—a single line of text consisting of a long list of numbers and letters.

  Stu donned the headset and summoned Frigg.

  “Yes, Mr. Ramey, how may I be of service?”

  “Tell me about the last item on the Ron Webster background check. What’s that long string of numbers and letters?”

  “That would b
e the number for Mr. Webster’s Bitcoin account.”

  Stu found that piece of information utterly stunning. How could someone like Ron Webster, a guy who was maintaining barely a poverty-level existence, have a Bitcoin account? Was that how he’d been paid by whoever had hired him to plant listening devices at High Noon’s offices—in Bitcoins?

  “Do you have information on his current balance?” Stu asked.

  “As of 6:07 a.m. September 10, Mr. Webster’s Bitcoin balance was sixteen.”

  Stu remembered that day very well. September 10 was the day Owen Hansen had committed suicide. It was probably also the day when Frigg had been busy scattering her files to the wind.

  “How much is that in US dollars?” Stu asked.

  “I’m not sure. At this point my blockchain information is updating but incomplete.”

  Stu took a deep breath. “Tell me, Frigg. What happened to Odin’s Bitcoin mining operation?”

  “It was placed on temporary hiatus as of 6:07 a.m. September 10.”

  “Is that hiatus status still in effect?”

  “Once my reboot occurred, the operation relaunched automatically. Transaction files are currently being updated. When the update is complete, I’ll be able to provide you with Mr. Webster’s current balance as well as any recent transactions.”

  “Thank you, Frigg,” Stu said. “Please notify me at once.”

  Stu started to shut down the headset, then he thought of another question. “It has come to my attention that other entities—possibly dangerous individuals or groups of individuals—might be attempting to gain control of you and your considerable capabilities. Do you know of anyone who might be interested?”

  “Graciella Miramar,” Frigg answered at once.

  “The banker?”

  “Ms. Miramar’s formal title is account manager rather than banker,” Frigg specified.