Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1)

by Ed Markham

  “So what?” Lauren asked him.

  He pushed his glasses farther back on his nose. “So, the ropes were tied loosely enough that she should have been able to squirm from the pain. It looks as though she barely moved while the tar was burning her. I think she was experiencing some kind of paralysis.”

  “Jesus,” Lauren said. She looked at David and added, “Fugu.”

  “Fugu?” the pathologist said. His expression was dubious but he took one look at David and quickly modified it. “I mean, uh, you believe this woman was poisoned with tetrodotoxin?”

  Lauren nodded to him.

  “Then I’ll look for that during my examination.”

  She and David left the living room and walked to the kitchen at the back of the house. A small handful of New Jersey State Police investigators had congregated around a white package sitting on the countertop.

  Lauren walked toward it, but one of the NJSP men stepped forward to block her path. He smirked at her and said, “I heard you assholes had some fun down in Baltimore this afternoon.”

  The investigator looked to be in his late thirties. His thinning black hair was combed straight back and plastered to his head, and his jaw clenched as he struggled to keep his lop-sided grin from blooming into laughter.

  He looked at David and his eyes ran over his clothing, but then he returned his attention to Lauren and found his grin again.

  Always in Jersey, David thought to himself. He knew from experience that NYPD liked to mix it up from time to time, and the Marshalls were usually prickly. But New Jersey local and state police were always looking to start something.

  “Excuse me?” Lauren said to the man. She took a small step back.

  “What do you say, sweetie?” he said, leaning toward her. “Why don’t you and your buddy let us take it from here, before you sic another SWAT team on some unsuspecting dad?”

  The investigator’s smirk widened, and his colleagues turned toward each other, shaking their heads and chuckling. David looked from the investigator to Lauren, and he almost smiled. He knew the man had no idea what he was in for.

  “Sweetie?” Lauren said, her eyes growing wide. “This is a joke, right? You can’t be this fucking stupid.” She looked from the investigator to his cohorts and then took a step forward.

  “Now hold on—” the guy started to say, but Lauren cut him off.

  “Have you even seen what happened in the other room?” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest and backing him up. “Is this funny to you, you fucking clown? Go look at that old woman and tell me this is a good time for us to measure dicks.” She crossed her arms over her chest and made to move aside, but then she stepped forward again and shoved the same finger back into the investigator’s chest. “Actually, I’ll save you the trouble. Mine’s bigger than yours. Not only could I call your boss and have him send you on a coffee run, I could end your career for those sexist remarks. So why don’t you and your bros here clear out and let us work? We don’t have time for this bullshit.”

  The investigator looked momentarily cowed, but he quickly recovered and, trying to save face in front of his colleagues, said patronizingly, “Yeah sure, okay.” He raised his hands in a show of mock surrender and stepped back theatrically, smiling over his shoulder toward his buddies. Despite his efforts, it was obvious to everyone in the room who had come out on top of the exchange.

  Lauren had turned her attention toward the box on the countertop, and David was walking to join her. But as he passed the investigator, the man leaned toward him and whispered, loud enough for all to hear, “Her time of the month?”

  David stopped and turned back. He stepped toward the man until their faces were inches apart, and the room became pin-drop silent.

  At first the investigator returned David’s steady glare with a smirk, but then his face tensed and he looked gravely angry. No one moved until, without warning, the investigator threw a fake jab at David’s chin, stopping just before he made contact.

  It was meant to make David flinch. He didn’t so much as blink.

  The investigator tried and failed to chuckle this off, but he was visibly flustered now.

  “Go outside,” David said, still looking at the investigator but addressing all of the NJSP men. “Sit in your cars. Don’t come back in until you see us leave.”

  The man made a sound with his throat but didn’t speak. He turned and left the kitchen, and the other NJSP men followed him without a word, their eyes on the floor.

  When they’d gone, David turned to find Lauren staring at him with a mixture of surprise and annoyance.

  “Look at you, the original badass,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Asshole.”

  “Exactly. I can handle assholes myself.”

  He realized his stepping in had offended her. “I know you can,” he said. He nodded to let her know he had no doubt so far as that was concerned.

  He moved to her side, and they both regarded the package on the counter, which contained the section of snake and the accompanying piece of dried skin. David walked with the scrap to the kitchen’s range. He lit one of the gas burners and held the shard near it until the words appeared.

  Undo the Heavy Burdens . . .

  Let the Oppressed Go Free

  10 days

  “This from the guy who tied an old woman to a chair and burdened her with tar and feathers?” Lauren said.

  David laid the scrap of skin back on the countertop and looked around. There were no photographs on the walls—no smiling snapshots of children or relatives like the ones that littered the walls of his parents’ house in Philadelphia. He walked to Deb Pepper’s breakfast table and looked out at the back yard, which was buttressed by tall privet hedges. A lonely woman living a lonely life, he thought. He pulled out his phone and took a picture of the yard.

  He turned from the window, and as he did he realized he could smell something foreign. The kitchen table was covered by a paisley tablecloth and a thin layer of plastic. David crouched until his eyes were level with the top of the table, then he poked his head underneath it to examine the floor.

  “What is it?” Lauren asked him.

  “Cigarette,” he said. He called for a forensic technician, and a young woman joined them in the kitchen. He said to her, “There’s a butt on the floor here, and ashes on the tabletop.”

  The tech kneeled next to David and placed strips of blue tape on the floor, bracketing the cigarette. Then she lifted the butt between two gloved fingers so that David could take a better look.

  “The filter’s tip is still white,” he said. “Whoever lit this never took a drag.” He turned his head and read the name on the side of the filter. “Merit. Not a very popular brand.”

  “But one of the cheapest,” Lauren said.

  He stood back up. “I didn’t smell cigarette smoke anywhere else in the house, so I doubt this was the victim’s.” He was quiet for a second. “Let’s have someone talk to cigarette vendors in the area to ask if they sold any Merits today. This is a nice neighborhood. I doubt they have many economy-brand smokers. If anyone sold Merits, we can get a copy of the security footage and see who turns up.”

  Chapter 34

  MARTIN STOOD AT the edge of the landing pad, coffee mug in hand, as the Bell 407 touched down back at Quantico. His olive slacks whipped against his legs, and his white hair fluttered on his head as he stood with one hand shading his eyes against the rotor-generated wind.

  David and Lauren disembarked, and the three jogged together across the tarmac, which the setting sun had turned from black to bronze.

  “Another message?” Martin asked once they were inside.

  David nodded, grateful his father hadn’t started with questions about Jay Anthony Carmichael. He’d spent the helicopter ride silently mulling the day’s events.

  One of the precepts David strove to live by was to do more good than harm, every single day. On this day, he knew that wouldn’t be possible.

  As they enter
ed the compound and made their way toward their offices, he listened as Lauren filled Martin in on the latest murder and the quotation left at the scene.

  “ ‘Undo the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free,’ ” she quoted.

  Martin was quiet as he considered the new message, and David asked him, “Did the list of names we collected this morning turn up anything?”

  “Our people are still working on it. So far it’s a dead end. But there’s something else.”

  “Tell us,” Lauren said.

  “I better let the little guy tell you. Omar. Too technical for me, but his people somehow connected the names of the victims to a computer at the University of Virginia.”

  As the three emerged from the carpeted hallway into the usually buzzing center of their division’s operations, David noticed the stillness immediately.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren said. “It’s funereal in here.”

  “Been like this all afternoon,” Martin said, his voice loud and sharp in the quiet office space. “Tim Thompson and a few other executives were down here earlier to ask questions about Carmichael’s false ID and arrest.”

  “Shit, really?” Lauren asked.

  David just looked at his father. He knew what was coming.

  Martin gestured to let them know all was well. “I’ve known Tim Thompson for thirty years, and I convinced him you and your people didn’t need a pep talk. He and the others met with Carl and the techs who tied the print to Carmichael. Not for long, but long enough to make their point. It was a light bombardment, but everyone here’s still a little shell-shocked. They’ll recover. So will you.”

  David started to speak and then stopped himself. He wanted to tell Martin that he could defend his own decisions to ADIC Thompson, but he realized he was still worked up from the false arrest, and was being petty. With effort, he said, “I appreciate you taking the heat off.”

  “Not sure how much heat there was from Thompson,” Martin said. “He told me he was mostly putting on a show to placate the deputy director, and that we’re all on thin ice with Reilly after this afternoon.”

  Reilly, David thought. He’d considered telling his father about his summons to the deputy director’s office, but had decided the discussion was too absurd to mention. He’d dealt with men like Jonathan Reilly overseas—obstinate, empowered foreign service officials and diplomats who considered themselves frank men of action when in reality they were equal parts bluster, insecurity, and impatience. They had firm handshakes and looked good sitting in dark suits behind large desks, but that was about all they were good for.

  David followed Lauren and his father to their familiar conference room, which contained their case files and Martin’s hand-drawn map of the East Coast. Omar stood as they entered. One look at his face was enough to tell David he had news.

  “I just got off the phone with Newark,” the small man said, tucking loose strands of black hair behind one of his ears. “No new prints—not even on that cigarette butt you found. But we may already have a lead on a vendor.”

  “Cigarettes?” Martin said, looking at David.

  “We found a butt in the victim’s house today,” Lauren said as she took a seat at the conference table and opened her laptop. “But it was obvious the victim wasn’t a smoker. Not a popular brand, so David thought to check around for sales at nearby gas stations.”

  Martin nodded approvingly, and Omar said, “The lead came from a local service station owner—Art Madsen. One of our guys stopped in to ask if anyone had bought Merits, and Madsen didn’t even have to check the store’s sales register. He said someone was in this morning before noon. There are only six cigarette vendors in that neighborhood, and the other five told us they hadn’t sold any Merits today.”

  As he spoke, Omar started to connect his laptop to the conference room’s projection system. “We have a cropped image from the station’s security cameras. Madsen said he couldn’t get her out of his head.”

  “Her?” Lauren and Martin said, almost in unison.

  David stood silently, thinking of the balsa wood and the poison and the blood on the bridge railing. He knew now why those details had stood out to him, and why they’d kept resurfacing in his head. He knew now what it was about his conception of the murderer that hadn’t seemed to fit.

  “Give me a second here,” Omar said, “and I’ll have her image up.”

  Chapter 35

  DAVID TOOK A seat at the conference table and Martin began to pace as Omar hurried to connect his laptop to the room’s A/V system.

  The projector hanging above the conference table began to whir, and a monitor screen hummed down from a wide slit in the ceiling at the far end of the room. A few seconds later, Omar’s computer desktop appeared on the screen for the whole room to see. He established a connection with ORION, the FBI’s Operational Response and Investigative Online Network, which served as a temporary digital house for any data related to an active investigation. FBI personnel or members of partner agencies could securely login and store or access information on ORION using the Law Enforcement Online Network, or LEO, and the agents working in Newark had used this system to upload the gas station’s video data.

  Omar clicked down through several levels of files. “Okay,” he said. “Here we go.”

  David watched in silence until the black-and-white photograph appeared.

  In the picture, a pale woman stood in front of the gas station’s register alongside rows of chewing gum packs and plastic-tipped cigarillos. Her hair was tied back in a bulbous ponytail, and her large eyes seemed to protrude from her face.

  While one of the woman’s bone-white hands hung at her side, the other was reaching forward, sliding something off the counter. Her fingers looked impossibly long.

  For almost half a minute, no one spoke. Finally Lauren said, “This came from a video recording?”

  Omar nodded. “Fortunately for us, the station’s security cameras weren’t bogus. In a swank neighborhood like that, a lot of them are probably just for show.”

  “Let’s see the whole thing,” David said. His eyes hadn’t left the projection screen and the image of the pale woman. He was imagining her forcing Deke Jacobsen to lift a leg over the side of the bridge, and the senator laying there for a moment—the blood from his stomach soaking the railing—before she pushed him off. He was also imagining her assembling the light balsa-wood apparatus she’d used to murder Mitchell Cosgrove.

  He watched as Omar pulled up the video. Martin was still pacing along one side of the conference table, his hands in his pockets.

  “And we have an exact time on this?” Lauren asked. As she spoke, her eyes were fixed on the screen, waiting for the video to start.

  “Yeah, this should be time-stamped,” Omar said. “I know it isn’t on the still photo, but that’s because our Newark team enlarged it and the bottom-right corner was cropped off.” He tapped the table as he waited for the video to begin. “All right, this is it.”

  Martin stopped pacing as a small black window appeared on one side of the projection monitor. Omar enlarged it so that the blackness bloomed, encompassing the entire screen. The video began to play.

  The screen showed the empty interior of the gas station’s convenience store as seen from just above the clerk’s head. Shelves of potato chips, candy bars, and automobile maintenance supplies stood next to coolers filled with Gatorade and bottled water. There was almost no movement save flickers of light from the cars that passed by outside. The time stamp on the bottom of the screen indicated the date, and showed the time as 11:14 in the morning.

  The room was silent as everyone watched, waiting.

  After a few seconds, the pale woman in the photograph, tall and square-shouldered, pushed open the door of the gas station with one elbow of her light-colored trench coat. She wore the jacket over a dark blouse and slacks. She walked directly to the counter and stood with her arms at her sides. David could see her mouth moving, although there was no audio to accompan
y the video images.

  The gas station clerk, Madsen, appeared at the bottom of the screen. He reached above his head to pluck a pack of cigarettes from the hanging rack. He set the pack on the counter and seemed to be staring at the woman as she reached into her coat’s pocket, her eyes never leaving his. She withdrew what looked like a handful of single dollar bills and dropped them onto the countertop, then she placed a hand over the cigarette pack and slid it away. Without waiting for Madsen to count the money or offer change, she turned and walked toward the door. She paused only to pull a tissue from her pocket, which she used to avoid touching the handle of the door on her way out.

  “Madsen said she paid in ones,” Omar said. “He didn’t think her using a tissue to open the door was strange. Apparently a lot of people do that. Germaphobes, you know?”

  “What about the cameras outside at the pumps?” Martin asked.

  “Yeah we checked,” Omar said. “She didn’t drive. Outdoor cameras catch a glimpse of her as she leaves the station and crosses the street. We asked around the neighborhood, but no one reported seeing her or a strange vehicle.”

  “How about those dollar bills?” Lauren asked. “She wasn’t wearing any gloves, so there should be prints on those.”

  Omar shook his head. “Madsen said that cash was likely first out of the register, and probably dispersed among five different people. That’s probably why she paid in ones instead of a larger bill.”

  “How much more video do we have?” David asked

  “All day if you want to see it,” Omar said.

  “Then we’ll watch to see who ends up with that change,” he said. “If we can get our hands on one of those bills, we can try to match those prints to the one we have on file from the Jacobson site.” He knew they needed proof of the woman’s participation, though in his mind there was little doubt.

  Omar sped up the footage. The reflected light of cars passing outside the gas station flickered by more rapidly. Eventually a man entered, but he paid with a credit card. So did the next customer. And the next. The fourth customer was a young man, probably no older than eighteen. David watched as he put a soda on the countertop, handed over a single bill, and received several bills and coins in change.