by Noah Boyd
“Ever think that may be why your FBI career was only three years long?”
“I only think how great those three years were.”
After another fifteen minutes, Vail pulled up to the house that the day before had been overrun with law enforcement personnel and now stood deserted. The only reminder was the yellow and black tape that crisscrossed the front door. Kate said, “I know this is a stupid question, but did you notify anyone in officialdom that we were coming out here?”
“You’re right, that was a stupid question.” He got out and went to the trunk, lifting out the pry bar. “But I got Mr. Halligan’s permission, if that helps. Come on, let’s take a walk around first.”
They started on the east side of the structure. “The front-room window has no bars on it,” Vail said. He inspected the construction on either side, running his hand along the siding. “There were bars, but they were removed. You can see where the holes have been repaired. Looks fairly recent, too.”
Kate stepped closer. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Yet another good question. Here’s another one: why have bars on all the other doors and windows but take them off of this one?” Vail walked to the back of the house and after checking the wrought-iron gate protecting the back door asked, “Where did you take cover back here, behind the Dumpster?”
“Yes.” She pointed at the bin twenty yards off the northeast corner of the house. Vail went over and stood behind it. “It provides perfect cover. It’s also the ideal position for watching the rear door and the east side of the house at the same time. Exactly what we needed at the time.” Vail walked around the Dumpster, inspecting it. “I was at the front of the house, so that leaves just the window on the west wall of the house. Let’s take a look at that.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Kate said.
“I don’t exactly know.”
When they got to the other side, Vail seemed more interested in the ancient wooden fence that surrounded the industrial property than in the house or the bars on the bedroom window. Kate tugged on them. “These seem to be in good shape.”
Vail was still inspecting the wooden fence that surrounded the auto scrap yard. “It’s not more than ten feet from the house to this fence,” he said to no one in particular. Finally he walked over to the window. He took the bars in both hands and jerked on them with his entire weight. They moved about a half inch. He pushed and pulled, moving them back and forth several times. “They shouldn’t do that.” He took a couple of steps back. “These are newer than the others.” Again he grabbed them, and now using all his strength he tried to pull them out of the wall, but they would move only the same fraction of an inch. Vail leaned in and inspected the bars where they were anchored into the siding.
“Meaning what?” Kate asked.
“I’m not sure yet. Let’s go inside.”
“Yet” was one of those little signs Kate had learned to pick up on with Vail. It meant that he probably knew what was going on, but, as with everything else, he saw no advantage in letting the rest of the world in on it.
He took a quick look around the neighborhood before inserting the claw end of the Halligan bar into the frame of the gate and in a quick, smooth pull, popped it open. He didn’t bother using the tool on the front door. After testing the knob, he swung his hip into it, snapping it open. Kate followed him back to the bedroom where Bertok had died the day before. He pulled up the window sash and yanked on the bars again, watching the points where the metal ends were anchored into the outside wall. Stepping to the right side, he inspected the casing that trimmed the inside of the window. “Did you bring any evidence gloves?”
“Very subtle, Vail. Give me the keys, and I’ll get the evidence kit.”
When she came back in, she set the case down and opened it. She handed him a pair of gloves. “You do remember that this place has been processed?”
“Only in the places that fit the story.”
“Story? That’s what happened.”
“Take a magician—are his illusions the truth or are they fiction? What you believe you see is fiction. Only when you know how the trick is done does it become truth.”
As much as Kate had come to expect miracles from Vail, this seemed too far-fetched even for him. “This was all some kind of trick?”
“Let’s start with the way we traced Bertok to this place. Anything bother you about that?”
“What do you mean? I thought it was a nice investigative string that led us to him.”
“That’s just it, a nice string. I’ve never seen one fall into place so neatly. The call to Bertok’s apartment leads to the Laundromat, then to the motel and the DMV and finally here. All in less than two hours. And of the more than eight thousand hours in a year, all three of us show up here at the same moment. It was almost like one of those training exercises that Quantico dreams up for new agents out at the combat village.”
Kate considered Vail’s refusal to accept the obvious. She wondered if it was a discipline, or a reaction to a demanding father whom he had once referred to as the sire of his “world-class scorn.” Either way, the result was Vail’s ability to find his way through a maze that everyone else failed to realize existed. And while it was an extraordinary thing to witness, Kate wondered if it wasn’t a coping mechanism. “I see your point about it all falling into place nicely, but doesn’t that occasionally happen? Ballistics has confirmed that Stanley Bertok shot at you, barricaded himself, and then committed suicide with his issued handgun, which was also used in four murders.”
“It wasn’t Bertok,” Vail said without the least bit of uncertainty.
“What?” Kate said, her volume unintentionally incredulous. “I’m pretty sure the guy in the morgue is Bertok.”
“It is, but that’s not who shot at me and is probably not who committed the murders.”
“Based on what?”
Vail ignored the question. “Don’t you think it was very convenient that he came into the Laundromat just after the woman we talked to arrived, almost like he was waiting for a witness. He made sure she noticed him with all that hassle about the hundred-dollar bill. And the bill happens to be one of the punctured ones from the drop, so there’s no doubt about its origin. But he’s all covered up to the extent that she can’t identify Bertok’s photo. Then he conveniently pulls across the street to the motel in plain sight of her.”
“But he had the identical clothing on when SWAT broke in here and found him.”
“Did you take a look at the body?”
“Not really. I mean I saw it, but I haven’t been around enough of that sort of thing to know what to look for.”
“First of all, he didn’t have cigarettes on his breath. I checked the evidence sheets last night. He didn’t have any cigarettes or a lighter on his person. Remember his apartment, what a heavy smoker he was?”
“Maybe he quit.”
“Maybe, but it would have been a pretty stressful time to start worrying about lung cancer. But more definitively, the blood coming from his temple had completely dried and crystallized.”
“Meaning?”
“It takes a while for that to happen. Longer than the time between the shot and SWAT breaking in.”
“Are you saying he was already dead?”
“Yes.”
“Then who shot at you?”
“Whoever was at the Laundromat, and we saw coming in here.”
“So when we were driving by here, Bertok was already in here, dead.”
“Right.”
“Okay, this look-alike shoots at you, locks himself in this room, fires a shot to simulate the suicide shot.”
“Probably while holding the gun in Bertok’s hand in case of a residue test. Yes, that’s right.”
“That’s right?” Kate asked. “Then when SWAT broke in here, where was he? With the bars on the window, the only way out is the door where you and I and the L.A. cop were waiting to light him up.”
Without answering, Vail
pulled on the evidence gloves. First he felt along the left edge casing, and after apparently not finding what he was looking for, he tried the right side. As he slid his hand along it, he found a gripping point and pulled the casing off. Inside was a metal plate into which were anchored the ends of the bars. He pushed the plate up and, reaching through the window, pushed the cage open. It swung out on the hinged edge of the other side. Vail put the casing back into place and pushed on it until it snapped into place. He climbed out through the window. Once on the ground, he swung the bars back into place, and a soft metal snap sounded when the bars reseated themselves in the hidden metal plate. He pulled on them to make sure they had locked into place.
“Those bars on the living room window were removed so anyone covering the back would have to also watch that side because escape was possible through that window. The Dumpster was probably put back there for cover so whoever went to the rear would be screened from this side of the house. This side would be ignored because the window was barred, which is exactly what we did.”
“But where did he go once he was outside?” Kate asked. “We were in the front and the cop with the shotgun was in the back.”
Vail walked over to the fence and tested several of the wooden boards until he found two next to each other that were not nailed at the bottom. He angled the lower ends away from each other and, half squatting, squeezed himself through the narrow opening. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He let go of the boards and they swung back into place.
Ten minutes later, he came back through the fence. “It’s just a short walk to the other side of the property. There’s a side street where he could have had another car parked.”
“How’d you know about the bars?”
“I didn’t, but when I felt the bars move back and forth and saw that pin-and-loop construction that could act as a hinge, it seemed like the only possibility. See, all those years in the construction trade weren’t wasted after all.”
Kate let all the implications run through her mind, trying to synthesize them into a logical explanation. “But Bertok’s gun was used in the homicides, three of them before he even disappeared. So how can it not be him?”
“The answer to that will require a call to the firearms unit at the lab.”
She had no idea what Vail meant but opened her cell phone and dialed FBI headquarters. Once she was put through to the lab, she asked for the examiner on the case and hit the speakerphone button. “Hi, this is Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon.”
“Mike Terry,” the examiner said.
“I’m calling on the Pentad case. I’m going to put on an agent named Steve Vail. Please answer any questions he might have.”
Vail took the phone. “Hi, Mike. You got a match on all the slugs with Bertok’s issue weapon, is that right?”
“And the casings. The one from the fourth murder and all those recovered at the house where he died.”
“Where is the gun now?”
“I’ve got it right here. I was just finishing my report.”
“Other than ballistics, did you do any examinations on it?”
“Not really. Assistant Director Kaulcrick called and said the comparisons were to be done immediately. At the time I was right in the middle of an examination for a customs agent who had been shot, so I went back to that once I had completed the Bertok tests.”
“I’d like you to take a look at the barrel of that Glock. It should have a serial number.” The examiner didn’t answer right away. “Mike?”
“Sorry. I was looking at the gun. It definitely has some wear. But the barrel, it looks much newer.”
“I thought it might.”
“But the casings matched. And they have nothing to do with the barrel. This has to be the gun used in the homicides.”
“Good enough. I’m just tying up some loose ends. Let me have the serial number on the barrel. For the office records.” After writing it down, Vail hung up and handed Kate the phone. “Call the armorer at Quantico and see if this is the barrel that was in Bertok’s gun when it was issued to him.” He handed her the slip of paper with the serial number on it.
Kate called Quantico and was put through to the armorer. She read him the serial number and, after five minutes, said thank you and hung up. “You were right. That is not the barrel that was originally in Bertok’s weapon. It all makes sense. Whoever did this committed the first three murders with a Glock 22 of their own, kidnapped Bertok, took his issue gun, and switched the barrel from the first three murders into his Glock. Then they committed the fourth murder with Bertok’s gun and left the casing because it would now match. Shot at you with the gun before escaping out the rigged window, and they had already placed Bertok’s body in here. Then they just had to leave the gun behind, which tied up all loose ends.” A look of revelation creased her features. “Which means that if all this was staged, the key in the moneybag can’t be anything more than another wild-goose chase.”
She looked at him to confirm her theory, but he was taking out fingerprint powder and a brush from the evidence kit. He dusted the white window frame with black powder. “Nothing there,” he said.
Then he took off the casing and dusted the metal release mechanism. “And nothing there. So much for a quick solution.”
Vail packed up the kit and took it out to the car. They got in and Kate asked, “What do we do now?”
“Do you have any contacts at ATF?”
“I could make a call to headquarters and find one.”
“We need a factory trace on the barrel.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll have to see where that leads us.”
“Is it me, or are we losing ground?”
“Well, let’s see. We now have five murders, we’re short four million nine hundred thousand plus, and we’re still being played like a whorehouse piano.” He smiled. “I’d say we’ve got them right where we want them.”
SEVENTEEN
THEY HAD BEEN DRIVING FOR ALMOST A HALF HOUR WHEN KATE cracked her window to let the warm sunny air stream across her face. It felt good against the cool artificial flow being pumped so uniformly throughout the car. She needed some sort of sensory feedback to separate the real from the staged. She, like everyone else, had been taken in by the Pentad’s plan to blame Stan Bertok for the murders. She let her mind find its way through the twists and turns of the case, looking for any inconsistency that the FBI would eventually have picked up on to lead them to the truth. She was not sure there were any. In the end, the money would not have been found, and the search for it would have become no more than a frustration eventually downgrading to a mild curiosity as everyone thankfully moved on to new priorities. She closed the window and looked back at Vail. He glanced at her with an absentminded smile. He didn’t seem to appreciate what he had done. Then a more immediate downside of the discovery hit her. “Do you want to tell Don about Bertok or should I do it?”
“You’re the one who has to keep him happy.”
“We swallowed the Pentad’s frame hook, line, and sinker. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to make him happy. Until a half hour ago, this case, minus the money, was solved. Now we’ve got another murdered agent, no suspects, and not the slightest idea where the money is.”
“Then give him Pendaran. If he has someone to go after, it’ll take some of the sting out of being wrong about Bertok.”
“What about tracing the gun barrel? We can’t really tell him about Stan Bertok without explaining what we’ve found out about his gun.”
“Give that to him too.”
She looked at him quizzically. “You’re suddenly generous.” She let it hang in the air to see if Vail would respond. When he didn’t, she said, “I know you like to keep the best lead to work on yourself. Giving up both Pendaran and the gun will leave you nothing. Unless you’re keeping something from me.”
“Maybe it’ll get you back in his good graces. Besides, tracing the barrel is piecework; doing it doesn’t interest me. J
ust let me know what they find out. Besides, like you said, we have no choice—it’s part of exonerating Stan Bertok. And Pendaran is going to need surveilling. That’s not a one-man operation, not twenty-four hours a day. I’ve never had the patience for surveillance.”
“Okay, then tell me, while we’re doing the light lifting, where will you be?”
Vail pulled up in front of the federal building. “Even bricklayers are entitled to a little downtime. Union rules.” Vail glanced at his side-view mirror.
“Just on the off chance that you’ve got something going on, please keep the stupid stuff to a minimum.”
He checked the mirror again to make sure the car that had been following them since they left Spring Street was still there. “Define ‘minimum.’”
“You know, anything that causes a lot of paperwork, blowing up tunnels, shoot-outs, honking off assistant directors.” She squeezed his hand before she got out. He took a moment to enjoy her rhythmic walk in the dazzling sunlight. Not now, Vail, he admonished himself. Once she was inside the front door, he checked his mirror to make sure the car was still with him. He wasn’t positive but he thought there was now a second vehicle.
Once a seam formed in the traffic, he pulled away from the curb. He had to assume they were the Pentad. But why were they following him? They had their money and as far as anyone knew, Bertok was being blamed. They had been on Vail since he left Spring Street. Was there something else there they were afraid he’d find?
If he had told Kate about being followed, she would have wanted to bring in the troops, and as careful as these people had been, they would have been gone long before anyone could have gotten near them. He decided if he was going to sneak up on them, he’d have to go back to Spring Street alone.
At a light, he drew his automatic and set it on the seat next to him. When the light went green, he checked his mirror again. There was definitely a second car, and they were keeping a block’s distance between themselves and him. One was a dark gray two-door Dodge and the other a gold Honda. The Dodge was the one he had originally spotted and apparently had called the Honda for help.