McCall watched as he began to search the drawers, not just examining the contents, but pulling them open fully, as if he was looking for a concealed one that was locked. Suddenly he stopped and looked up at McCall, as he tugged on a slim drawer above the seating space. He smiled as if he had just won a prize.
“Okay, Steel,” Sam told him. “It’s locked so we wait and see if the key—” She stopped talking as her mouth fell open at the sight of the lock-pick set Steel had produced from his inside pocket.
“Sam, could you check those books over there, there might be something useful?” he asked.
McCall understood his meaning, even if she didn’t like it: if she didn’t actually see him pick the lock, it never happened. Sam turned away and brushed a finger over the leather-bound books: Law, History of the Law, Psychology and numerous other volumes that would probably make her head hurt if she tried reading them.
She turned quickly as John let out a victorious ‘Yes!’, but she didn’t know whether to be impressed or scared at the speed with which he had completed the task.
“First time lucky?” she joked.
Steel shrugged and smiled as he packed the burglar’s tool back into his jacket. She walked round to see what he had discovered. Inside the drawer were a mass of papers, some of them letters, but one in particular stuck out. It read:
Ten years ago you destroyed my life like acid you Bitch now you will burn in Hell.
John Steel lifted the note by the corners as not to disturb any evidence—it was printed, using a computer, and the letters were large—72-sized Times Roman font.
“Well, that’s chilling and somewhat poetic,” Steel said.
McCall shot him a surprised look.
“In a bad murderous way that is,” Steel continued, trying to ameliorate his last statement.
McCall opened a clear evidence bag for him to place the document inside. As she sealed it he continued to look but found nothing of importance. There were a couple of receipts for a local restaurant and other places, that she was going to probably put on her expense account. He closed the drawer with an almost disappointed look on his face. He had hoped for more than just the note.
“We need to find out what she was working on ten years ago.” McCall and Steel spoke almost in unison.
Steel sat back in the chair and tapped the leather of its padded arms. “Does it strike you as odd that ‘ten years’ keeps cropping up? It wouldn’t surprise me if she had worked on a case connected with one of the escapees.” Steel saw the look on her face that told him that she had the same feeling.
“So who’s the girl?” McCall asked out of the blue, causing Steel to look up suddenly from his thoughts.
“Sorry, what?” He shook his head as if to bring himself back to reality.
“The girl in the hallway who you were talking to,” McCallpersevered. “Who is she?”
The English detective stood up and walked over to McCall. His features had become expressionless, as usual. “Ask me again after the case is done, will you?”
Sam nodded as if she was trying to understand, but he knew she wouldn’t be done with it—she would be on his back until she got an answer. The trouble was, he didn’t know who the girl was any more than she did. All he knew was that he had been tasked to keep her safe.
*
“So, Captain Brant, are you any closer to finding the escaped men?”
The Chief of Detectives’ voice was dry and calm. Emotionless, some would call it.
“Not yet,” Brant replied. “The FBI have put out their nets and pictures have gone across the board to every toll booth, gas station, train station, you name it, we have the word out.”
There was a slight pause from the other end of the line, as though the Chief was gathering his thoughts. “And the killer. Any leads yet?”
Brant became tired of the same question, but he knew he had to give him something. Since McCall’s return from the courthouse she had briefed Brant just on the off-chance of him getting such a call.
“Two of my best detectives are working on it now, they are following a lead as we speak. They think it is some sort of revenge killing.”
The pause came again, but this time Brant could swear he could hear tapping in the background, like fingernails rasping on something hard, like a desktop.
“Very good, Captain, but please keep me apprised of anything new, we all need to keep people happy, don’t we?”
Before Brant could answer, the phone gave out a dead tone as the call disconnected.
Brant looked over at McCall and Steel, who were sitting on a long couch that was at a back wall opposite Brant’s desk. After replacing the receiver he sat back in his chair.
“That was the Chief asking for updates again,” Brant told them. “I swear the man might as well get an office here—it would save the city a fortune on phone bills.”
McCall and Steel smiled, but they could see there was something eating at the captain.
“That’s an idea, he could have yours!” McCall joked, turning to Steel.
“You have an office?” Brant asked. “I thought you were joking about that?”
McCall shot the captain a shocked look. “What, Captain? Haven’t you seen it yet?”
Steel dug her in the ribs with his elbow. “Anyway—” Steel interrupted, hoping to change the conversation. “This whole thing has something to do with an occurrence that happened ten years ago. It must have been something big to have so many players in it. But we need to find out whatever it was that happened. It could be the key to everything.”
Brant nodded, as he weighed up the task in hand. “That’s a hell of a job. A lot happened ten years ago.”
John Steel knew it was a mammoth task but he hoped that all of the victims intersected at some point. There had to be something that tied them all together.
McCall looked over at the elevator as Tooms and Lloyd stepped out of it.
“So do you think that the missing escapees are involved?” Captain Brant asked.
McCall nodded as Steel just sat motionless, as if not willing to commit himself to an opinion.
“It makes sense,” she continued. “They break out and kill the people who put them away. They would have plenty of friends and resources on the outside to pull it off.”
Brant thought for a moment as he toyed with the idea, then he turned to Steel. “What do you think, John?”
Steel stood up calmly and brushed the creases out of his suit. “I think we need to stop the killer. Because I don’t think they are done yet.”
*
McCall and Steel left the captain’s office and headed for Tooms and Agent Lloyd, who had just entered the briefing room to check on some files. They walked in to find Tooms searching through a fresh stack of files.
“Hey, guys, the financials for the guards haven’t come back yet, have they?” Tooms asked eagerly.
McCall shook her head, puzzled by the greeting. “No. Apparently they have a bit of a backlog of cases. Why? Did you find something out at the hospital?”
Agent Lloyd’s eyes lit up as Steel entered the room, but the Englishman’s attention was on Tooms, not her.
“The driver may have been coerced by the guard next to him,” Tooms went on. “The guy who—get this—had been put onto the bus last minute.”
McCall’s mouth fell open at the news.
“Not only that,” Tooms continued excitedly, “but there were four escapees not three. We may be looking in the wrong place.”
Steel felt Lloyd’s stare and looked down to where she sat. He could see she was trying to catch his eye, but his icy expression only brought a tear to her eye, which she quickly brushed away.
“So what did you guys get apart from a dead body?” Tooms asked.
Steel looked over at him, realizing he had not heard about the state of the corpse.
“Body, no,” Steel answered. “Soup, yes.”
Joshua Tooms looked confused for a moment
“Somebody used a
powerful acid to kill the judge,” Steel explained. “By the time we got to her the ME was using buckets to collect what was left of her.”
Tooms and Lloyd cringed at the thought.
“But we did find a note which proves it was the same person. We are thinking it may have something to do with an event that happened ten years ago.”
The other detective looked over to Lloyd, who also seemed excited about the theory.
“All of our escapees went down around ten to twelve years ago,” Agent Lloyd told them. “Maybe that is part of your connection? All we have to do is find the fourth runner, and find out when he was put away.”
McCall smiled at Lloyd’s theory and gave Steel a friendly slap on his shoulder.
“See, Steel?” McCall said to him. “I told you they might be connected with the escapees. It’s lucky us girls think alike or you boys would be lost.” She headed for the recreation room for a much needed cup of coffee.
Lloyd followed her, sensing an awkward moment if she stayed near Steel. As Lloyd left John did not move, but followed her movements by using the reflection in the large display monitor on the wall. He could see her turn to look at him, almost to find out if he would turn, but he would not give her the satisfaction. But all the while one thought kept coming back to him: why the hell was she here?
*
Steel left Tooms to get on to Financials while he headed off for the solitude of his office. There he could think in peace and quiet. What’s more, he had another little matter to see to.
He stepped inside and slowly closed the door. Every time he entered he would stop, close his eyes and breath in the comforting smell of aging wood and leather, an aroma that made him think of his home back in Britain. John used to love his father’s study as a child, there was just something about it he couldn’t define. So when he had the chance for an office he knew how he wanted it to be decorated and furnished.
John Steel had searched on the internet and various dealers for the same type of furnishings that he’d had in the mansion at home. But then he reasoned, why get reproduction items when you already have the originals? So most of the furnishings were brought over to the USA from his father’s old study in England.
As he walked slowly towards the ship captain’s chair he let his hand brush against the hard leather of the nearest chesterfield armchair and run along the antique wood of the desk.
He sat gently in the chair and put his feet up on the desk and took off his sunglasses, allowing the natural light onto his weary eyes.
Then he closed his eyes and drew in a large breath, held it for a couple of seconds, then slowly exhaled. He repeated the action twice more before sitting properly at the desk and switching on his laptop. The screen blinked, then seconds later the password protection came up, John Steel typed in the password, and then waited for the computer to finish the loading process.
He clicked onto the internet browser icon and then opened his email account. Scrolling down the list, John searched for any updates to his private mission but found nothing but junk mail. Closing the screen down, he went for an internet search on Judge Mathews. She had been a prominent figure, so details of her career would be all over the web. His search for her cases was made simple by the time line: all he had to do was find out as much as he could about the start of her career, which was twelve years ago.
As he searched through the pages he noticed that at that time she was a prosecutor, and a hell of a good one at that. Steel could track how she shot up through the ranks of the legal profession.
He made notes of the dates of cases that were relevant to the escaped men. Further information wasn’t forthcoming, so it looked as if he would have to go and find the files. Sure, he could have telephoned for them but he wanted to speak to people who may have known her, to get a feel for what she had been like as a person. Was she fair or brutal? Callous and cruel, or decent and kind?
The Englishman sat back in his chair and looked over at the large monitor on the wall. Even though it was switched off, he still used it to focus on, as he let his thoughts collect and sort themselves out in his head.
This was a strange case. As to that there was no mistake, but in the end it would come down to discovering something simple—it always did. However, one thing was clear to him: the killer had left notes which suggested that he or she wanted people to know why they were doing the killing. That would fit one or more of the escapees if it was about revenge, but if that was the case why try and hold up the investigation? It was clear that someone was trying to either stop or hinder the case: this was made obvious by the attempts to kill both him and McCall.
But the more he thought about it, it seemed that even that did not make sense. Whoever was behind the breakout had considerable means and resources. But the killings were fairly simple to organise.
Also, if the guilty parties had that many men at their disposal why not just skip the country and enjoy reading about it in the newspaper, while a hit man did the killing for you? No, there was something wrong, there was an element that was missing.
Steel closed down the computer and stood up, putting his sunglasses back on as he did so. Early in her career as a counsellor, prior to becoming a judge, had seen over nine cases in the two years prior to ten years ago. Granted not all of them were big ones, but nevertheless in all instances she had won.
For him the judge was the key. If he could find out more about these cases he might be able to shed some light on why these things were happening, and the identity of the killer or killers.
THIRTY-FOUR
As Steel left his office he saw Tony had returned from his field trip and was sitting in the refreshment room with Tooms, McCall and Lloyd. Nobody had noticed Steel’s silent approach as they discussed the case and built up theories.
“So the monitor room that controls the cameras has a staff log in place and a supervisor,” Tony explained. “When I spoke to the supervisor she insisted no one had touched or moved the cameras.” He took a sip of coffee from the carry-out mug. “However, when I checked out the crime scene with the techs, they found control units attached to the cameras, which proves they were moved in that area, using some sort of remote controls.”
Tooms blew out a lungful of air as the complexity of such an operation went past the realms of his imagination.
“They probably set up a relay in a building and the driver had the remote.”
They all spun round to see Steel standing in the doorway and talking, with the afternoon sun shining behind him, giving him an almost spiritual appearance, as if he was some sort of archangel.
“Could be,” Tony agreed. “You have cover from sight and plenty of power from the building. Maybe the driver was just the driver and someone else was inside the building using the remote. Either way I’ll check it out.” Tony considered that this was the most logical idea.
“Thought you had gone out somewhere?” McCall said to Steel.
“No, not yet,” Steel said, shaking his head. “I was going over the judge’s case list since around 2005. I’ll see if it coincides with any of our escapees.”
McCall looked at the time: it was now quarter to four, and she felt disappointed that they had achieved so little. She took out her cell phone and checked the display screen, just in case Tina had tried to reach her, but there was nothing new.
“Something wrong?” Steel asked as she tucked her cell phone back into her jacket pocket.
She gazed into nowhere and shook her head before looking up into John’s concerned face. “No, it’s nothing. I just thought Tina might have had something by now”
Tooms looked surprised. “I thought you said she was killed by acid? Tina may be good but that stuff is gonna get rid of a lot of evidence. Hell, you already said they brought buckets.”
McCall looked depressed. The more she thought about it, the more her hopes were dashed. Seeing the horrific state of the judge’s body, and then running flat out to investigate what had happened, had taken its toll for the
day. Her mind drifted to thinking about a hot relaxing bath and the fresh bottle of Jonny Walker red label she had bought the other day.
“You’re right, it was a dumb call,” she admitted. “I was hoping there may have been some evidence of where she had been hours before her death.” McCall was hoping there might have been a meeting with someone or a fight in a public place, anything to make her murder make sense. Steel saw the loss in McCall’s eyes and wished there was something he could do. Suddenly his face became like stone as a thought crossed his mind.
“McCall, come with me,” Steel instructed.
Sam shot Steel a confused look. “Where are we going?” She was almost scared by the possible reply, judging by his poker-faced expression.
“I think I may know of a way we can find out where the judge went.” Steel looked around, almost suspicious of being overheard.
Sam McCall turned to the others. “You guys keep on at the guards. I want to know where they transferred from, what their financial situations are like, everything. Also one of the escapees had a brother—name of DJ or something. That’s Tyrell Williams’s brother. Find him and lean on him to see if he knows something.” McCall looked back to see Steel standing at the elevator, waiting for the doors to open while she gave out instructions.
“It’s okay, we got it,” Tooms told her. “Now get the hell out of here before he goes without you.” He laughed, watching McCall walk speedily after the Englishman. The doors of the elevator opened, and Steel used his back to hold the door ajar while she scurried in.
“So where are we going?” McCall asked, almost expecting some shady alleyway meeting or an appointment under a bridge.
“Church,” he said simply.
McCall turned to him, confused. “Church!” Her voice sounded as puzzled as the thoughts running through her head. Since when did Steel need to repent?
As the elevator doors closed, Detective Bennett walked from around a corner and watched the numbers on the display count down. Taking out his cell phone he backed around the corner while he pressed for the autodial. He waited for a moment before someone picked up.
False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) Page 21