As he pulled closer, he saw her shorts and sweaty T-shirt. The ATF could use her as a recruiting poster, as long as they didn’t include too many details about her personal life. He pulled his car directly behind her parked Crown Vic. She looked up as she came closer, taking a second to register who had blocked her in.
He stepped out of his Monte Carlo and met her at his hood. “You’re tough to track down.”
“I’m pretty sure our case is done. At least half of it.”
“I know you’re pissed but I gotta talk to you.”
“Billy, I’m not really mad. I did feel like you stabbed us in the back, but after reflecting on it, I suppose you had your reasons. I saw her, too. She is a hell of a reason.”
Tasker looked at her. “Who is a hell of a reason?”
“Wells’ wife. She could tempt anyone.”
“Please tell me that’s not what you think. I couldn’t live with grabbing the wrong guy. That’s it. I had no other motive.”
“But the FBI agent, Cobb, said he saw the handoff.”
“He saw the possum cage handed off. The missile was already in the truck.”
She looked like she was considering it, then said, “Why does it matter? I can’t work with you again anyway.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because my bosses think you’re unstable. The FBI bosses spent a few hours over here yesterday making sure everyone had the same opinion. You are not to be involved in another FBI or ATF case ever again.”
“That’s a lot of administrative effort spent on one guy. If they concentrated that energy on crime, I wouldn’t have to lock my door.”
She looked at him sharply. “Billy, the way our bosses feel about you now, you won’t ever have to shower again. No one will ever be close enough to smell you.”
That hurt Tasker. He wouldn’t admit it to her or anyone else, but it stung to have someone say they weren’t interested in working with him. He waited, then said, “I have something that might change your mind.”
“I doubt that. Billy, do you realize that the FBI wants to indict you for this? They’re convinced you did it to make them look bad.”
“That’s ridiculous. They do enough on their own. They don’t need others making them look bad.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He took a few steps back, leaned into his car and retrieved a small vial of the noxious liquid that the Homestead bomb-maker claimed was TATP.
Camy asked, “What’s that?”
“It may be the explosive used in your Krans-Festival cruise ship bombing.”
She smiled a little. “Jokes won’t win me over, either.”
“No joke. A guy we picked up made it. Says it’s TATP and he sold some to Daniel Wells a couple of years ago.”
Her light eyes took in the vial as Tasker held it up. “Our Daniel Wells? What’s he got to do with it?”
“He may have made that bomb.”
“Because he bought an explosive?”
“Other things, too. I need to check them out. But the explosives-maker, Anthony Mule, is certain it was our Wells that bought it from him.”
“Did he sell only to Wells?”
“No, he had a pretty long list.”
“So even if it tested positive, we can’t say that Wells did it. Could’ve been anyone on the list, or the guy who made it.”
“Wells has got a Toyota Corolla stashed behind his house and a matching set of red Samsonite luggage.”
She looked at him, obviously intrigued. “If all that is true, why aren’t you over there right now?”
“Because I’m not in it for glory. I want to do it right. He has no idea about the information we have. He’ll be there for a while. I intend to get an airtight search warrant and build the case right. That is, with your help. I don’t jump other people’s cases.”
She smiled. “You don’t help them, either.” She took the vial and held it up to the halogen streetlight. “You know what this means to me. I lived this case for nearly two years.”
“That’s why I came to you.”
She gave him a skeptical look.
He continued unfazed. “Test it. If it’s not a match, nothing happens. If it is, then we need to hit Daniel Wells quick and hard.”
She held the vial with no sign of giving it back to Tasker. Looking at it, she said, “As tempting as that sounds, Billy, I was told, just this afternoon, not to have any contact with you. I just can’t work with you right now. Especially not on Wells. I mean, you’re the one who let him out. The Bureau would have me skinned alive.”
“Since when does ATF worry about what the FBI thinks?”
“Since we moved to the Department of Justice and they work with us on everything.” She paused and looked at him. “I’m sorry, Billy, but I just need them more than I need you.”
Tasker nodded.
She kept the vial and said, “But I’ll drop this off at the lab right now. We’ll see what they say. If it checks out-I’ll thank you later for cracking my case.”
“I don’t care who stops him, as long as he’s stopped now.”
“I promise to run it up the chain and see what the bosses say.”
“Sounds fair.”
She turned and started back to the building. Tasker didn’t mind seeing her walk away.
Daniel Wells dried the tears in his daughter’s eyes. “It’s all right, Lettye. Daddy will come and get you in a few days. Don’t cry, sweetheart.” He looked in the backseat of his wife’s old Ford station wagon. His two boys were quiet, sitting side by side, waiting to leave. “You two be good, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.
This wasn’t the first time they’d gone to relatives for an extended time. He’d packed them off to his uncle’s twice, Aunt Sara’s house three times and his cousin in Tennessee for a whole summer. This time he had Alicia driving them to his uncle Tom in Plant City on the west coast of Florida. No matter what he got involved in, he always made sure the kids were safe. They shouldn’t have to pay for his problems. His uncle had taken them when he was afraid those Arabs might come back on him. His cousin in Tennessee when he was afraid someone might link him to the damn cruise ship. Now he was just generally worried. That state cop, Tasker, was sharp. Twice as sharp as the other cops he’d dealt with. He just thought it’d be best if the kids weren’t around while he finished up some business and tried to satisfy his own needs.
He raised his voice, calling over his shoulder, “Alicia, you coming?” That woman would be the death of him. He’d said that about several other women, too, and it was never true. With one of them, the reverse was true. It was really an accident that she had opened the bottle in his workshop, but the fumes had killed her just as sure as if he’d shot her in the head, which was what he had been thinking of when fate had stepped in. He’d found the biggest problem was just getting rid of the body. She was a stout girl, and it had taken all his strength just to load her in the van. Luckily he’d been doing some welding for MidStream Septic Tanks and just planted her under the foundation for a new tank. They’d never been legally married and she had no family. By then the kids were used to running off women, so no one ever asked where she’d gone. He didn’t think the kids even remembered her name.
He heard his wife trotting up behind him.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Sorry, honey. Had some last-minute things to pack.”
“You stay with them, okay?”
Her pouty lips turned lower. “Can’t I take a little break? Your uncle won’t mind. He loves seeing them.”
“Why do you need a break?”
“C’mon, Daniel, I’ve treated them like my own for near two years now. Just want a little time away.”
“Done good, too. They even call you mama and everything. Never did that with Melanie. Hell, Lettye didn’t even know her real mama. She ran off when Lettye was only a few months old.” He knew it had more to do with him than the kids.
“I won’t run of
f. Just wanna get away a little.”
Wells looked at her. Good-looking women were a pain in the ass. He wished he could be satisfied with an ugly girl. Just like he wished he could be satisfied with a little excitement instead of spectacular shows. If wishes were baby back ribs, he’d weigh five hundred pounds.
Alicia squeezed him and laid a long, deep kiss on him until his mind melted. He could only wave as the car pulled away, carrying his own little agents of anarchy off to safety. At least for a while.
Camy Parks stretched her legs and arms like she was Supergirl. A naked Supergirl with massage oil on her back. She felt her body let go as she willed the tension out of her toes and fingers. Hands worked her trapezius muscles and then her neck. She couldn’t control her sigh.
She kept explaining her day. “Then I took the little bottle from Billy Tasker and turned it into the lab. But it looks like it’s not going to make a hell of a lot of difference, at least for me. The SAC told me point-blank to my face that he doesn’t care if Wells blows up the Queen Mary 2 right in front of me-I can’t touch the guy. The Justice lawyers expect a major media-grabbing lawsuit filed by Wells any day, and they say this will look like a vendetta.”
“So Tasker gets to run with your case? After all that?”
“Yeah, if our lab makes a match.”
She sighed. Enough. She enjoyed massages, but wasn’t keen on talking about work after hours. She barely wanted to talk cases at the office gym. Too bad only other ATF agents worked out there. Work was all she seemed to have in common with any of them. Her dad had worked for Jack Daniel’s for years and she never once heard him mention the office or other Jack Daniel’s employees the whole time she was growing up. When he was home, it was to be with her and her five brothers. It was a good lesson to learn.
She rolled over, allowing her back rub to move to the front. She loved the light oil splashed over her breasts, pleased that they were real and everyone noticed. She said, “You got to hand it to Billy, though. He certainly kept at it.”
“Yeah,” came the reply. “Some people don’t know when to quit.”
Wells slowly padded back up the slight slope to the front door after he watched his family drive away. Often he’d lock himself in the shop and catch up on work when the kids were gone. Or, better, work on his own special projects. That was his one fear: one of the kids might be hurt inadvertently by something he did or was working on. He didn’t think they would just wander into the garage and find something. He’d trained them too well. He thought about what might happen if a timer went bad or some of that unstable shit just decided to blow. That was why he had fire alarms and smoke detectors all over the garage and house.
He wandered through the quiet house. It unnerved him. He needed noise and confusion. The only order he liked was in the shop. That gave him his baseline for the rest of his life. There was nothing more orderly than the little detached garage where he affected other people’s lives. And it was getting to be more and more people every time.
The phone’s single ring cut through the silence, making him jump.
“Hello,” he said, half-expecting it to be Alicia saying she couldn’t go with the kids.
“Daniel, you okay?”
He recognized the voice.
“No thanks to you. Were you just gonna let me rot in jail?”
“Don’t you worry, I had it well in hand.”
“Hope so. That Tasker fella is smart. I don’t want him figuring anything out.”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
Daniel Wells listened, glad he’d already sent the kids away.
eleven
Bill Tasker stared at the red numbers on the alarm clock next to his rumpled bed, making a game of trying to guess how far they’d advanced every time he opened his eyes. When he was a student at Florida State, he’d been a subject of a psychology grad student’s test of internal clocks. At the time he’d done it for extra credit; now he found it interesting, if for no other reason than it took his mind off how he’d let Daniel Wells walk. All he could think about was getting to the ATF lab and finding out what the results showed. He looked at the clock again: 4:43. Shit. He decided to make use of the early hours and go for a run.
Thirty minutes later, with no hint of the sun arriving any time soon, Tasker picked up his pace, cutting through the Kendall neighborhood he knew so well. No women in bikinis like at Haulover Beach or calm water like at Biscayne Bay-just some simple, efficient exercise to get him in the right mind-set for the day. He went through the details he might have to put into the search warrant for the Wells house. He could already provide an accurate description, and he knew the layout for tactical considerations. In comparison to some drug warrants, it was easy. He didn’t have to rely on some informant with no eye for what cops needed to know when they came through the door. Tasker had been inside the small house a couple of times. His main concern was the kids and Alicia. If Wells was a mad-dog bomber, would he be calm when they knocked on the door? Tasker still had a hard time believing the whole thing. Daniel Wells appeared to be a normal, decent guy. There was nothing about him to indicate he was capable of something like trying to blow up a cruise ship. Why? What would drive a man to do something like that? Had he been paid by someone else? Had he been pissed at someone in the cruise industry? Tasker was going to have to do some digging on this one.
He was showered, shaved and had finished eating just as the sun started to peek over the house across the street. He used the early hour for a quick drive by Daniel Wells’ house. It was as quiet as every other house in the south Dade neighborhood. He just made a few quick notes about the placement of street numbers and colors in case he needed to put it all in a search warrant.
Near noon, Tasker was finally able to get Sutter to meet him. As usual, part of the inducement was food. They met at the La Carreta near the International Mall, off 107th Avenue.
Sutter glowered at his half-eaten Cuban sandwich. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into these places. I hate foreign food.” He held up the sandwich and then tossed it back on the plate. “I like hamburgers and pizza. Shit like that. I should boycott foreign food. Then maybe every white guy I know wouldn’t drag me to places like this all the damn time.”
“How many white guys do you eat with?” asked Tasker.
“Counting you? One. And I don’t want no more foreign food.”
Tasker had been raised in South Florida and never considered Cuban food as foreign. It was more just a different local flavor, like barbecue. He kept picking at his chicken fricassee while Sutter bitched. It was actually relaxing hearing the Miami cop complain about everything from food to television shows. To Tasker it meant the world wasn’t too far off its axis. He was still free and able to work. No one was going to indict him, even if the FBI wanted to. But he had to do everything he could to arrest Daniel Wells if he was guilty of the Krans-Festival cruise-ship bombing. If Tasker did nothing and Wells struck again, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
Sutter looked at his friend. “What are you so bent out of shape about?”
“Wells killed a guy and could kill someone else if we don’t do something.”
“So could I. Doesn’t mean I will. If that good ole boy did set the bomb on the ship, then we’ll be able to pin it on him. Those kinds of techno-freaks don’t strike every day. Look at the guy the FBI chased for so long.”
“Ted Kaczynski?”
“No, man, the crazy guy, lived in a cabin.”
“Theodore Kaczynski.”
Sutter couldn’t hide his irritation. “No, the Unabomber. Took him months to set up another attack. Only killed two or three people. Shit, we got crackheads kill more than that on a weekend.”
Tasker shook his head. “I think Wells could be a real menace.”
“But he didn’t sell the Stinger.”
Tasker smiled. That put it into perspective. He still couldn’t separate the act from the man. He had set this nut loose in South Florida. Then he said,
“I appreciate what you’re saying, but I gotta forget the philosophy and ethical standards I may have met and get him off the streets. I may have followed my conscience and the law getting him released, but I’d do anything now to get him back inside.”
“What’d you have in mind?”
“A search warrant, for starters.”
“When?”
“Our legal counsel is reviewing it now. I need some info on the explosive from ATF and maybe I’ll have it signed by this evening. We can hit the house first thing in the morning.”
“And ATF won’t be involved?”
“I asked, they declined. I’ll see Camy this afternoon when I get the lab results.”
“If you’re gonna see the princess, then I’m going, too.”
“No comments, okay?”
“Me? Please, I’m a professional.”
“Good. I don’t need the ATF feeling about me like the FBI does.”
“You kiddin’? They should kiss your ass for even telling them about this. They should be sittin’ on Wells’ house right now for us.”
“Once we have him, they’ll come to their senses.”
“You don’t think it’s politics?”
“How do you mean?”
“They don’t want to piss off the FBI. They’re worried about a lawsuit for Wells’ false arrest. That sort of politics.”
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