All the Wrong Moves

by Lovelace, Merline

  He jotted another note in the margin and took a last glance at our scattered equipment. It looked pretty pathetic strung out like that but still represented several hundred thousand dollars in assets.

  “That does it for me. Any questions on where we go from here?”

  “Just one. Where do we go from here?”

  I was pretty sure I knew, but I wanted to hear from him when, if ever, I’d be off the hook.

  “I’ll file my inquiry report for review by the legal office. Then the item managers of the more expensive pieces of equipment will determine which items they want to send to the depot and try to salvage. When they’re done with their review, the property manager at Headquarters level will delete the unsalvageable items from your inventory and help you dispose of them. That’s where the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service comes in,” he added to jog my memory.

  Properly jogged, I nodded. “Sounds like we’re talking several weeks yet.”

  “More like several months.”

  Of course. Foolish me.

  I left the team to re-cram our stuff back into our half of the storage room and drove the colonel to the airport in plenty of time to catch his flight. He’d covered a lot of ground in his day-and-a-half. I hoped the folks who reviewed the results of his inquiry would be as expeditious.

  I felt liberated with the colonel gone. The rest of the weekend loomed ahead with nothing more urgent to do than peruse my mags and float in the pool. Or . . .

  An alternate plan took shape. On a whim, I flipped up my phone and dialed Mitch.

  “Hey, you.”

  “Hey, back.” The smile in his voice generated a little tingle at the base of my spine. “I was just going to call you. What are you doing?”

  The tingle moved upward and outward.

  “I dropped the inquiry officer off at the airport a few minutes ago and am on my way home. You?”

  “Getting ready for two o’clock muster.”

  Sighing, I jettisoned my half-formed idea of inviting him over for a cool dip followed by hot sex.

  “There’ve been some developments in the Armstrong case,” he told me. “I don’t want to talk about them over the phone. Where are you now?”

  “On Alameda, just passing Fourteenth.”

  “You’re only a couple of miles from my place. Want to swing by?”

  “Sure.”

  He gave me directions, which I followed to a residential neighborhood in the older section of El Paso. The homes were mostly one-story adobe, with lots of swing sets and plastic castles dotting the fenced-in yards. The trees and shrubs were low-water—live oak and Big Bend silver leaf. Buttercup yellow honeysuckle and flaming orange trumpet vine provided splashes of brilliant color.

  I had trouble placing tough, no-nonsense Jeff Mitchell in this tranquil setting until I remembered his teenaged daughter. He’d said the girl—Jenny, I remembered—lived with her mother in Seattle. Obviously Mitch kept a home here for when his daughter visited.

  Or not.

  I realized the error of my thinking after he answered the door and ushered me inside. Blinking, I glanced around the front rooms. The only items in the living room were a beat-up leather sofa and chair, a floor lamp, and a TV. In the dining room, a wrought-iron chandelier dangled above the empty space which should have been filled with a table and chairs. Functional mini-blinds covered the windows in each room.

  That was it. No pictures. No swags to soften the stark blinds. No personal touches of any kind except a stack of paperback novels beside the chair.

  I glanced up at him. He was in his mean greens and ready for work but I wasn’t letting him get away this time without satisfying at least some of my curiosity.

  “Lived here long?” I asked dryly.

  “About six years.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “I told my wife to haul off everything she wanted when she moved out. She took me at my word.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three years ago.”

  I lifted a brow, and he shrugged.

  “I don’t spend much time here. That was one of the reasons my wife moved out,” he added, with a wry twist of his lips.

  I wanted to ask about the other reasons but Mitch forestalled my nosy questions by playing the polite host.

  “How about some coffee? Or ice water? I can manage either.”

  “Ice water sounds good.”

  I followed him to the kitchen. It looked a little more lived in, with a coffeemaker, microwave and toaster on the counter and a round oak table positioned to catch the light from the windows.

  His bulletproof vest and holstered weapon were hooked over one of the chairs. A mug sat on the table beside a yellow legal pad. The top sheet of the pad contained what looked like a timeline, with dark, heavy arrows leading from one main event to the next. The titles of those events snagged my instant interest.

  “Hooker to Armstrong to Bennett to Blank,” I read. “Who’s Bennett?”

  “The owner of the phone we retrieved from the desert.”

  “The owner? I thought the phone was one of those disposable jobbies, purchased at a mall kiosk and tossed away after one use.”

  “The number did trace to a disposable. Apparently the caller extracted the SIM card containing the phone’s registry and traded cases.”

  “Why?”

  “One more attempt to confuse and diffuse, I’d guess.”

  Mitch clunked ice cubes into a glass, filled it with tap water and joined me at the table.

  “The instrument was in pieces and wiped clean except for a partial print under the SIM card. Whoever changed out the card missed that one.”

  I wasn’t surprised. You ever buy a new phone and try to install the SIM card from your old one?

  On most phones, you have to unscrew the back cover, remove the battery, locate this little tab thingy the size of a cornflake and ease it out. Non-techie that I am, the task always left me sweating. Or cursing. Or both. It doesn’t help matters that my six-year-old nephew can switch one out in eight-point-two seconds. Blindfolded.

  “Donati and company ran the print through the FBI’s database,” Mitch continued. “They came up with more than a hundred and fifty thousand hits.”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “Like I said, it was only a partial.”

  “So how did they narrow it to this Bennett character?”

  “Donati fed every known variable about Hooker and Armstrong into the Bureau’s Statistical Probabilities Analysis System. He looked for links to U.S. Marine Corps snipers, the drug raid in Colombia, the arms deals Hooker supposedly brokered, Juan Sandoval’s tattooed ass, and so on. The runs narrowed the possibilities to less than fifty people. Agents then went knocking on doors. One of those doors was Bennett’s.”

  “What’s his connection to the case?”

  “Her connection.”

  “I stand corrected. What’s her connection?”

  “She just happens to be a senior analyst at the headquarters of B&R Systems, one of the largest weapons manufacturing conglomerates in the country.”

  I let out a long, low whistle. “Is that a coincidence, or what?”

  “There’s more. B&R has had two shipments of arms hijacked in the past six months.” Mitch’s voice took on a hard edge. “That wouldn’t be notable in and of itself. We’re seeing almost as many stolen weapons going south these days as drug shipments coming north. What makes these B&R incidents especially significant, though, is that Patrick Hooker was supposedly finalizing the deal for one of those shipments when he was captured.”

  “No kidding! What did Ms. Bennett have to say about that?”

  “According to Donati, she was shocked out of her gourd. Claims she had nothing to do with the stolen shipments, never had any contact with Hooker or anyone associated with him. She also claimed her cell phone was stolen and she didn’t have a clue who took it.”

  He paused for effect.

  “Ms. Bennett admitted sh
e’d been having an extramarital affair with a lover who abruptly disappeared from her life two weeks ago. Her phone disappeared about the same time. Donati says they ran every scrap of info Joy Bennett supplied about her lover. Turns out he gave her a fake name, fake address, fake background.”

  “Wow.” I sat back in my chair, amazed at the twists and turns this case had taken. “And all this happened in just a few days. I thought you said Donati and company weren’t all that enthused about pursuing the anonymous call to Armstrong Sr. after his confession and arrest.”

  “Donati got energized when I told him you’d located the phone. He’s kept me apprised of what’s happened since then. Although . . .” Frowning, Mitch drummed his fingers against his coffee mug. “He called this morning. Said he’s getting pressure from the top to screw down the lid on this investigation. Asked me to back off and let him take it from here.”

  “Interesting. My boss gave me the same line. This was after he received a visit from an agent assigned to CID headquarters. The agent was accompanied by an FBI type. They indicated the case had high level interest. They also indicated they weren’t real happy with me for providing those coordinates to a Border Patrol agent instead of channeling them through our military investigative unit.”

  “That so?” His frown deepened. “I don’t understand this posturing. Paul Donati and I go back a long way. We’ve worked some tough cases together. This is the first time he’s ever given in to turf issues pressure.”

  His gaze dropped to the yellow legal pad and locked on that blank space after Bennett’s name. I waited a beat before asking the question I pretty much already knew the answer to.

  “You’re not going to back off, are you?”

  He lifted his gaze. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  His jaw worked above the collar of his uniform and he hesitated so long I didn’t think he would answer.

  “They arrested John Armstrong Sr. for murder,” he said at last, “but it could have been me. It almost was.”

  Who has a quip or a quick comeback for a revelation like that? I sure didn’t. Uncharacteristically silent, I waited for him to continue.

  “I told you I spent a hitch in the navy, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The long months I spent at sea were tough on my wife. Our marriage started coming apart at the seams, so I left the navy and took a job with the Border Patrol in the hope it would bridge the gulf. The tension between us only got worse but Margo and I hung in there for Jenny’s sake.”

  “Jenny, the Cosmogirl.”

  “Jenny, the Cosmogirl,” he echoed quietly. “She’s bright and sweet and the one genuine accomplishment in my life. Or was.”

  I remembered John Armstrong’s anguish at losing his son and got cold all over.

  “Wh-What happened?”

  “I was on patrol and intercepted some human cargo being smuggled across the border. They were just kids. Eight, ten years old. Scared to death and crying for their mothers.” His jaw worked. “Turns out they were destined for a brothel in Houston.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “The more we dug into the situation, the more we realized this was a well-organized and obscenely profitable ring. I asked to work 24/7 with a counterpart in Mexico. Ramon and I went way back. We’d served on a cross-border task force for six months. Took a couple of deep-sea fishing trips together. He had kids, too, and made it a personal quest to shut down this child smuggling operation. Took us months, but we finally ID’ed the ringleader.”

  His mouth twisted into a hard line.

  “Rafael Mendoza. The man’s a thug straight from the barrio. He’s made so much from peddling human misery that he now has homes in Guadalajara and Mexico City and a seaside condo in Malibu. That’s where we nailed him. Sipping champagne and admiring the sunset with his chica. When we led him off in handcuffs, Mendoza swore we’d regret taking him down. Ramon’s youngest son disappeared a month later.”

  I got a cramp around my heart and almost didn’t want to hear what came next.

  I know the world’s a dangerous place. I know it’s inhabited by sickos like the one Mitch just described. I’d gotten a taste of sick myself when EEEK and I plowed through Messrs. Hooker and Sandoval. Yet the unquenchable optimism that lands me in trouble more often than not wanted desperately to believe the slime hadn’t touched Mitch’s daughter.

  “Margo, my wife, fell apart when she heard about Ramon’s son. She railed at me for putting Jenny’s life in danger, for always thinking of my work before my family. She couldn’t get out of El Paso fast enough or move far enough away. For Jenny’s sake, I had to let them go.”

  He paused, took a swallow of his now cold coffee and continued.

  “I’ve only seen them twice since. Margo’s afraid I’ll lead Mendoza’s henchmen to Jenny. I’m afraid she’s right.”

  “What? Is he still pulling strings?”

  “Yeah, he is. Ramon and I both testified at his trial in Mexico City. Damned thing was a farce from start to finish. He’d obviously bought off the judge and scared the jurors shitless. He should have been sentenced to ten to twenty minimum, but got off with a stiff fine and walked.”

  “Like Patrick Hooker,” I murmured, understanding now.

  “Like Patrick Hooker,” Mitch echoed grimly. “And, like John Armstrong Sr., I wanted to pump a bullet into the bastard’s face so bad I hurt with it.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I may yet, if I sense him or his people getting anywhere close to my daughter.”

  Or close to him. Mitch hadn’t been kidding about making as many enemies as friends in his line of business. No wonder he always walked around with a holster strapped to his ankle.

  I understood now why he couldn’t let this thing with Armstrong Sr. go. It went too deep, had become too personal.

  AS much as I sympathized with Mitch, I left his house with no intention of messing around in the Hooker/ Armstrong investigation any further. Honestly!

  I’d contributed to Armstrong Sr.’s defense by locating the cell phone person or persons unknown had called him from. That gave weight to the argument that he’d been set up and might hold some sway with a jury deciding his fate. According to my boss, I needed to let the folks with bright, shiny badges take it from here.

  It was mild curiosity that plunked me down in front of my laptop that evening. Idle interest that had me Googling up B&R Systems. Took me all of ten or fifteen minutes to get caught up again in a scary world.

  I’m not naive. More to the point, I wear a military uniform. But I had no idea conventional arms was such a humongous, trillion-dollar industry. Or that the U.S. led the pack in sales to other countries, with Russia and the U.K. coming in a distant second and third. We’re talking everything from bullets to F-16s here.

  Most foreign sales were legitimate and designated for military purposes. But billions of dollars’ worth of those armaments ended up on the black market and were sold to the highest bidder. Not F-16s, of course. Those would be kind of hard to auction off on the side. Enough assault rifles, grenade launchers and explosives changed hands, though, to validate Mitch’s grim assertion that smuggling arms was becoming as big a business as smuggling dope.

  My Googling also confirmed that B&R Systems wasn’t the only major weapons producer who’d had their products hijacked. One company lost a whole shipment of armor-piercing bullets. In another grisly report, modern-day pirates had boarded a cargo ship on the open sea and murdered the entire crew to get access to a container of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.

  Chewing on my lower lip, I delved a little deeper into B&R’s history and arsenal of products. The company had started small. A family-owned enterprise, Bauer and Rusk originally manufactured rifles, shotguns, handguns and ammunition for the sporting crowd. Within ten years, B&R had gone public, acquired a rival company, diversified into military armaments and got heavily involved in electronics. Ten years more, and the now international conglomerate was p
artnering with major defense contractors like Raytheon Missile Systems to produce big-bucks, laser-guided systems capable of taking out all enemies, large and small. Or so the company’s literature proclaimed. Last year B&R reported $700 million in profits. Not a bad chunk of change for a company headquartered in some small Arizona town I’d never heard of.

  Curiosity got the best of me again. I had to MapQuest Sahuarita, just to see where the heck it was. Right outside Tucson, I discovered.

  Just a few hours from Phoenix.

  Home of Harrison Robotics.

  I stared at the map for long moments. To this day I’m not sure what prompted me to flip up my phone and leave a message on Mitch’s cell.

  “I don’t know what your schedule is next week but I’m thinking of driving over to Phoenix to deliver EEEK to his rightful owners. If you want to go with me, we could make a stop in Tucson, home to B&R Systems, and talk to this Bennett chick.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I pulled into Mitch’s driveway at oh-dawn-thirty the following Tuesday morning, only twenty minutes late. These early mornings were turning into a nasty routine.

  I had EEEK nested in his shipping container in the rear of my Bronco and a few niggling doubts about my proposed jaunt hovering at the back of my mind.

  Dr. J hadn’t actually ordered me to butt out of the Hooker/ Armstrong investigation. He’d merely suggested it. Strongly. I’m sure there’s something in the Uniform Code of Military Justice that would slice right through that thin defense but . . . Well . . .

  I kept seeing Armstrong Sr.’s grief-ravaged face when he spoke of his son. And remembering the grim details Mitch had shared about the threat to his daughter from some sleazoid trafficker in human misery. Like Mitch, I’d more or less linked the two incidents in my mind.

  Then there was the small matter of the destruction of my lab. I took that personally, especially after sweating through that friggin’ loss/damage report. Some folks might think it was my obligation, my duty, to follow up on any possible connection between the fire and the Hooker/ Armstrong case.

  And if the trip took longer than expected, if Mitch and I had to spend the night somewhere along the road . . . What can I say? These things happen.