Necessary Decisions, A Gino Cataldi Mystery

by Giacomo Giammatteo

  Lonny came over, repeating the gratitude. “So what do we do, Detective?”

  I knew I shouldn’t do what I was about to do, but I did it anyway. “Give me your word that you’re not going anywhere, and you can ride with the family to the hospital.”

  He offered his hand. “No problem there. I owe you for that.”

  “I’m sending someone to the hospital to ask her questions. I’m going to Winthrop’s house. I’ve got to get these people.”

  “Get them for Jada.”

  I let the Hacketts alone and set about wrapping things up so I could get out of there. I called the ambulance and gave Lance instructions for securing the area until someone else arrived. The crime scene unit could handle their own business. Next I called Delgado and told him what had happened, and to keep it quiet for now. Until we figured things out.

  It was good to get Jada, but I was still pissed. We had been played like fools through this whole thing, to the point of relying on them to help us save Jada. It was time to get these fuckers. Now!

  Chapter 63

  Charred Evidence

  I was two miles away when the phone rang. It seemed like all it did was ring. “Cataldi.”

  “Gino, it’s Julie. Those addresses you gave me earlier?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The fire department just had a call to one of them. There’s a big blaze in a building a few blocks away.”

  Aw shit! “Which address?”

  Julie gave it to me. “I’m on it. Call Tip and Delgado for me. Fill them in.”

  I turned on the siren and punched the gas up to Tip-Denton speed. Fortunately, the traffic was light. From about a mile away, I saw the smoke. As I closed to within half a mile, I saw huge tongues of flames lapping the sky. The end of the road came quicker than I thought, switching from pavement to gravel. The car bounced hard. I thought the shocks broke for a minute. I hit the brakes and got down to a reasonable speed. After a couple hundred feet, woods surrounded me, growing thicker the closer I got. The road skewed right, then left, opening into a small clearing. I hit the brakes. Four fire trucks stood in front of me. I scanned the area. Didn’t see anyone but firemen. I got a sick feeling in my gut.

  If anyone was in there…

  I headed toward the building. A quick glance at the fire made me shiver, despite the heat. I was far away, but my skin prickled. It felt as if the air might explode. I waited a moment then moved forward. Didn’t get far before I had to stop, my hands going up to shield my face from the heat. I moved back a step or two. A fireman stood to the left, drinking water. I flashed him my badge and approached.

  “What have you got?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Bad one. The place was full of accelerants.”

  “Arson?”

  “Probably.”

  “Any bodies?”

  The fireman put the bottle down. He looked at me. “I know we’ve got some bodies in there, but we don’t know how many yet.” He grabbed another bottle of water from a cooler. “We’ll know more later. I gotta get back.”

  I gave him my cell number and asked him to call if he got something. “I’ll come back later,” I said, and went back to the car. Time to get to Winthrop’s house. As I drove, thinking of what to do, the phone rang. It had been ringing so much, it almost pissed me off.

  “Yeah!” I said, in a tone I knew was too aggressive.

  “Gino, I can barely hear you. You sound pissed off.”

  “What’s going on, Ribs?”

  “Scott came back.”

  “Did you tell him about the spyware?”

  “I laid it out nice and pretty. Actually, I had the tech lay it out for him while I watched his reaction.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “I’m not sure. He was baffled, but…something didn’t ring true about his reaction. Almost like, ‘Okay, that’s news to me, but…I’m not surprised.’ That type of a reaction. Like if you find out your girlfriend is cheating on you, but you knew she probably would anyway, because she cheated on her old boyfriend with you.”

  “That’s a deep analysis, Dr. Delgado.”

  “Call me Dr. Ribs.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The oddest part. He hasn’t once asked about Jada, and he doesn’t know she’s safe. All he asked about was whether we had any leads on the van from the description he provided.”

  “He’s worried about his money.”

  “Guess so.”

  “And you wondered if people at work could hate him enough to do this?”

  “I’m still not buying it, Gino. Ever since this started, I’ve had a feeling that this guy was involved somehow. That feeling is stronger now.”

  I didn’t say anything, but the same thought had crossed my mind a few times. And I trusted Delgado’s instincts. That’s what made him a good poker player. He was the best I’d seen when it came to determining if someone was bluffing. “So you don’t think it was someone from work?”

  “As Tip would say, ‘That dog don’t hunt.’”

  I was thinking about how this might have played out when I heard Delgado talking again.

  “Hey, Gino, you there?”

  “Sorry, Ribs. Let’s work this backwards. If it’s not anyone from his work, and if we trust your gut and assume Scott had something to do with it…fill in the blanks for me.”

  “The biggest problem I got with this is that it’s his daughter.”

  “But it’s not,” I said. “This was Hackett’s daughter.”

  “It was supposed to be his.”

  I thought for a moment. “Who said so? Suppose for a minute that this was planned to be Jada from the beginning. If we assume Scott is working with the kidnappers, he can give them whatever information he wants and keep other things out. If they know they have the wrong girl, it doesn’t matter.”

  Ribs sounded frustrated. “None of this works, Gino. Why would he do it? This man stands to make tens of millions. Why risk a kidnapping? For what—to split a few million he has to pay back to the bank?”

  We were back to the same place again—no motive. “You’re right. Keep thinking. I’m coming back.”

  When I walked into the house, it seemed empty. No laughter, not even any smiles. Plenty of people, though. I looked around for Scott. He was on the back patio, talking on the phone. I grabbed Delgado’s arm. “You told him about the spyware, right?”

  “That’s another phone,” he whispered. “His is on the counter.”

  I motioned him outside. Once out of earshot of the phone, we revisited the theory regarding Scott Winthrop and his involvement in the kidnapping. As we chatted, Tip pulled up.

  “What are you two brain surgeons doing out here?”

  “Trying to find motivation for Winthrop doing this.”

  “Shoot, all you had to do was ask the best damn detective in Texas.”

  I had nothing in me to laugh. Besides, I’d heard Tip’s lines too many times.

  “What are you trying to pin on the poor man?”

  “We think he could have some kind of involvement, but it doesn’t make sense. There’s no motivation for him to do it when he’s going to be filthy rich in a few months.”

  “Suppose he’s not going to be rich,” Tip said. “Suppose he’s up to his ass in debt.”

  “But he will be rich, and Julie checked him out. His finances look good.”

  “He’s only going to be rich if they go public. But if something were to be wrong with their clinical trials, the IPO could fall apart, depending on how damaging the data is. Or, if they do the IPO and the clinical trials look bad, the stock could tank.”

  I got excited. “Spit it all out, Denton. Don’t drag it.”

  Tip’s face twisted a little. His scar twitched. If he had done that to Sanjay, I’m sure it broke him down. “That little weasel Sanjay told me everything. Scott’s been blackmailing him to keep quiet, but they’ve got problems with their drug. Scott knew the clinical trials were going bad, but there was nothing he
could do about it. The best he was able to do was blackmail Sanjay’s brother, who works for the company doing the trials, to delay the results for a few weeks.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “Nothing in the long run,” Tip said, “but everything when you think about it in light of the kidnapping. If the data comes out, the IPO is sunk. If he delays it, it gives him time to arrange a kidnapping and secure a loan against what he’d earn on the IPO.”

  I gave that some thought. Things were coming together. “So he makes a deal to split the money with the kidnappers, gets the loan, plants the spyware so they know what we’re doing at all times…”

  “And collects the money when it’s done,” Ribs said.

  I thought more. “The problem is, he still has to pay back the seven million. All he did was get himself a million or two in cash in trade for seven million in debt.”

  “That’s not good math,” Tip said.

  “We’re missing something,” Delgado said.

  “I’m getting coffee. Anybody want any?”

  “Me,” Delgado said.

  “Tea for me,” Tip said.

  I racked my brain while I made the coffee and tea. Delgado was right; we had the right idea, but we were missing something. I went outside again and handed out the drinks.

  “Anybody think of anything?” I asked.

  Tip shook his head. “You married into a smart family, Gino.”

  I turned to look at Delgado. “What? You got something?”

  “Remember when we first met Winthrop, the day his daughter was grabbed? Or when we thought it was her?”

  “In case you don’t remember, that was only two days ago.”

  “God, you’re right. Seems like a long time. Anyway, when we were talking about the neighborhood, he said how safe it was, and how he had lived in so many other places where it wasn’t.”

  “I remember.”

  “The cities he mentioned, amigo, were Mexico City, Bogota, Caracas…”

  “Get to the point, Ribs.”

  “If he lived in those cities, and he was an executive at the time, I’d bet all of the money I don’t have that he had kidnap insurance.”

  “Kidnap insurance?” I knew that somewhere, maybe in another life, or on TV, or in an article…somewhere I had heard of kidnap insurance. But I had no idea what it involved. “How does that help us?”

  “It takes away the seven-million-dollar loan he’d have to pay back,” Tip said. “Assuming he’s got the insurance for that much.”

  My heart raced. I was rolling with this theory. “So he pays the ransom, collects the insurance, and pays back the loan.”

  “And splits the money with the kidnappers,” Ribs said.

  I held up my hands, not wanting to kill the celebration, but… “Whoa, guys. Hold on. I love the enthusiasm, and the thoughts behind it. But a couple of things need to be ironed out. First we need to see if he actually does have kidnap insurance; then we’ve got to see if it is for seven million or more; then we have to figure out how Scott Winthrop, a biotech executive, got in touch with hardened criminals; then, one of you brilliant minds has to explain to me how the kidnap insurance would help him when they took the wrong fucking girl.”

  Delgado’s dimples faded into his cheeks. Tip’s scar twitched and went back to normal. And all of the laughter and celebration disappeared. We were back to square one.

  Chapter 64

  Wrapping It Up

  I looked at Tip and Delgado. We were all in a state of shock. There isn’t much worse than thinking you’ve got a crime solved, only to discover you were a dumb ass and didn’t know shit. “I still think we’re on track, but we’ve got to tie him to the kidnappers, and we’ve got to figure out the motivation—some way the money would help him.”

  Something else came to mind. “Tip, you said he was in debt. Julie didn’t find any.”

  “Sanjay says Scott has an interest-free loan from the company. He thought it was for a couple hundred grand.”

  “I thought Sanjay was in R&D. How does he know about that?”

  “He’s got a relative in finance.”

  “Can’t anybody keep a secret?”

  Tip laughed. Delgado laughed louder.

  I called Charlie. “Did we ever finish gathering information on Winthrop?”

  “I gave you what I had.”

  “You mentioned he had a break-in about a year ago. Check it out and see which company it was.”

  “I’ll get on it, Gino. How y’all doin’ up there?”

  “Not so good, Charlie. One more thing. Is there any way for you to find out what kind of insurance policies Winthrop had?”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Whether he had any kind of coverage that would reimburse him for ransom.”

  “You’re talkin’ about a K&R policy.”

  “A what?”

  “A kidnap and ransom policy. Pretty common in international work.”

  Charlie was going and screwing with my meter calibration again. Second time today he proved to know a lot more than I’d thought. “How do you know about that?”

  “My sister’s husband sells insurance. Every time we get together, he’s talking about this policy or that policy. About the most boring man I’ve ever met. Only reason I go is to eat the food. She’s a good cook.”

  Calibration was fixed now. With Charlie, it always came back to food.

  “See what you can find out,” I said.

  “Probably through his company,” Charlie said.

  “What?”

  “I said, it’s probably through his company. Most of those policies are bought by the company to cover all executives. Usually their families too.”

  “Okay, Charlie. Get back to me.”

  For the next hour, we brainstormed. Twice I called the fireman I’d met. First time, he didn’t answer. When he did the second time, he said they were still battling the blaze but had five confirmed bodies. One female. Said he’d call when they had something else.

  “Nothing new?” Delgado asked when I got off.

  “Five bodies. One female.”

  Tip scratched his head. “Five bodies? What the hell! Is this a goddamn kidnap-suicide pact?”

  As we puzzled over the implications, Charlie called. “Y’all are gonna owe me for this.”

  “I already owe you. What have you got?”

  “I couldn’t get anything from his work other than confirmation that they had a policy and who it was with. Kept citing privacy issues and all that nonsense. So I called my sister’s husband—remember, the one who does insurance?” Charlie could drag a story out for days if you let him.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I gave him the information, and he knew somebody over there, so he got the skinny for old Charlie.”

  I almost laughed. This might be the only time I’d hear the word skinny in the same sentence as Charlie.

  “Not only does he have ransom insurance, but they got him covered like a fresh-gutted deer. Who is this guy Winthrop, anyway? The way they treat him, he must run with the big dogs.”

  I shook my head and patiently waited. Listening to a Texan tell a story could be painful. Funny sometimes, but painful. “He runs with the big dogs, all right. What did you find?”

  “He’s covered for ten million.”

  “More than enough for what we need,” I said.

  “That’s not all. Get your hand off your dick for this one…it covers guests.”

  I must not have gotten my hand off my dick soon enough; in fact, I didn’t even know what the hell he meant. “‘Covers guests’? What the hell does that mean?”

  He laughed. “I like a lot of strawberry cream cheese with my bagels, Gino. Know that before I give you this. Covers guests means his policy would cover anyone staying at his house when they were kidnapped. So the Hackett girl is covered.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “You betcha.” He laughed some more, kind of like a giggle, but from a r
eally big belly. “That’s not all. Remember when I told y’all about Winthrop’s house gettin’ broken into? I checked that out some more. Guess who did the claims investigation?”

  This was too much to hope for. “Lone Star Recovery?”

  “Now you’re running with the big dogs.”

  “Charlie, you’re the best. You might have earned bagels for life.”

  “Don’t forget to tell Tip what I did for you. He’s always bustin’ my ass.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll tell him.” I cracked the biggest smile I’d worn in days as I looked at Tip and Delgado. “Charlie wrapped it up and put a bow on it.”

  “Let’s hear,” Ribs said.

  “Winthrop not only has insurance, but it covers guests, so Jada would be covered. And get this—Ed Harbough is the one who investigated the claim Scott had last year.”

  “Hijo de puta! So they didn’t take the wrong girl after all. They took exactly who they were supposed to take.”

  “Right,” I said. “Who is going to suspect a guy who’s helping his fellow man?”

  Delgado paced, running with the excitement of getting close to a bust. “So Winthrop pretends all along not to want to pay—once we know it’s not Alexa—then suddenly has a change of heart? Only it’s not a change of heart; it’s all staged to make us think he’s risking seven million for someone else’s kid.”

  “I knew something was wrong when he did, but I couldn’t figure it out. Now it fits.”

  “Sure it fits. Fits even better. Who’s going to suspect a guy doing this for another kid?”

  “Hijo de puta!” Ribs said again. “Jada was the target all along.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. “This cocksucker did all this for money. Fuckin’ whore.”

  Tip clenched his fists. “And if Ed Harbough’s name came up, he’s involved. A lot of nooses hang in that man’s family tree.”

  “He put Scott in touch with the kidnappers,” I said.

  Tip nodded. “I’d bet ten dollars against every donut Charlie could eat.”

  I thought about this scenario for a second or two. “So Harbough has been in this all along? The poker games too?”