by Matt Lincoln
Agent Abbie Stark, who aspired to Special Agent status someday, taxied the Cessna 172 at the Miami Execute Airport. She had been, we heard, recruited by the CIA but had been pressured into leaving after personal differences with a supervisor.
Stark didn’t know it, but Diane had her fast-tracked to Special Agent. Similar to Muñoz, Stark was easily underestimated due to her appearance. The redhead was average height and build, but that build was all muscle, and she was highly skilled in three martial arts and at the firing range.
“Agent Marston, do you want to log flying time?” Stark asked over the headset mic as we lined up behind other planes. “I heard you’re going for your small craft license.” She looked at me with a straight face and quirked an eyebrow. “If you’re ready, you can do the takeoff.”
“I’m not ready to fly with him,” Holm groaned. “God spare us!”
“Thanks, partner.” I met Stark’s serious look. “Are you an instructor?”
She nodded. “I got my private craft license in high school and instructor cert during college. I keep it renewed and give lessons when I have time.”
The runway stretched before us, and then it was our turn. I grinned.
“Hell yes, then.” I put on the brakes and revved the throttle.
“Okay, go.”
I let off the brake. The Cessna bolted forward. When we hit speed, I pulled back on the yoke. The ground dropped away, and I banked west toward Tampa.
“He didn’t kill us,” Holm muttered. When Stark looked back, he backpedaled. “Kidding. Well, not kidding, but I’m glad that he didn’t mess up. I’ve been in the car with my partner far too many times.”
“Stark, should I practice a stall maneuver?” I suggested with zero seriousness.
“No,” Holm yelped. “Seriously, Ethan, I will shut up now.”
“Good,” Stark said with a slight smile. “No backseat pilots.”
The two-hour flight felt long in a little plane, but it was better than almost five hours driving. Stark landed us at a nice little airport right off the bay. Landings were new to me, still, so I didn’t volunteer for that part of the flight. Holm made the wise choice to keep quiet about it.
The local MBLIS field office loaned us an agent and a Chevy Traverse for the day. A fair-skinned man with brown hair and a slight beer belly met us at the Cessna once it was parked.
“Agent Dustin Knightly. You must be Agent Marston.”
“Special Agents Marston and Holm,” I answered. His damp, weak handshake made me want to wipe my hand on my pants, but I didn’t want to be rude. “And this is—”
“Agent Abbie Stark,” she told him as she secured the plane.
“Pleasure,” he said with a smarmy grin. When she was on the other side of the plane, he turned to us. “Hot little thing.”
“Agent Stark can kick anyone’s ass,” Holm snapped. “Including anyone who makes the mistake of harassing her.”
“Chill.” Knightly held up his hands. “I was just making an observation.”
“That is an observation you will forget and not speak of again,” I ordered him. “Is that clear, Agent Knightly?”
“Understood,” Knightly growled. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
God, I hated pervs. I had the pleasure of working with extraordinary female agents over the years, and any one of them could put that asshole in his place. I didn’t mind putting a stop to it before it got to them, though.
Stark rounded the tail and rejoined us.
“All set,” she reported. She gave Knightly a cool look and then addressed Holm and me. “Acoustics can get weird. It’s funny the things you hear when your back is turned.” She turned back to Knightly and held her hand out. “Keys.”
I turned to Holm and grinned. Diane was right. Stark was going places. Her take-no-shit attitude was beautiful to behold as she stalked away from Knightly. I turned toward the Traverse and expected her to toss me the keys. She did not. Although I was her superior, I decided it would be wisest for us to not challenge her wish to drive. Holm sat in the back and smirked at Knightly.
“We need actionable evidence against Kelley,” I reminded everyone as we pulled into MediWaste. “If we can get Cole to cooperate, it’ll be that much easier to get a warrant.”
When we walked into the building lobby at MediWaste, none other than Devon Cole ran up to us. His face was white as a sheet, and his eyes were wide. At the reception desk, Mrs. Hastings looked almost as pale, and another employee ran down the aisle behind her.
“I just called the police,” he gasped. “How did you get here so fast?”
“We were coming in to talk. What happened?”
“It-it’s my nephew. Nick.” Cole turned toward the receptionist’s desk. “My sister is going to kill me.”
“Mr. Cole, talk to us.” I snapped my fingers to get him focused on me. “Where’s Nick?”
He pointed a shaky hand toward the back. “K-Kelley’s office. He… Oh, my God.” Cole ran to a trash can and threw up. “I c-can’t go in there.”
A police car screeched to a halt outside the glass doors.
“Mr. Cole.” Stark stepped in front of the CEO. “Mr. Cole, I’m so sorry this happened. Where is this office? We’ll take care of it from there.”
He took a shuddering breath and looked at me. “It’s two doors down from mine.”
“Okay. I know where that is,” I said. “Is Kelley in the building?”
Cole shook his head. “He was leaving when I got back for lunch. H-he acted normal. Said he’d be out for a while.”
“Knightly, have the police get a BOLO out on Simon Kelley,” I ordered. I did not want that pasty asshole around this. “Tell them MBLIS is on scene.”
We drew our weapons and ran to the back as the first cop got into the lobby. Knightly’s officious voice followed us back until the door swung shut. Holm led us through the cubicle maze until we reached the executive offices. Blood spatters marked the cube wall across from Kelley’s office, and there was a pool of blood leaching from the doorway into the hallway carpet.
I stepped over it and looked in.
“Shit…” Stark said when she saw.
“Woah,” Holm said.
“Yeah, Kelley’s our guy,” I muttered.
Nick Ames’s body was left two steps inside the door. Kelley must have worked quick to gut the young man. The blood spray that landed on the cubicle continued inside. It looked like someone had given a combat knife to a wild animal. Maybe that’s what Kelley was.
Uniformed cops ran up to the scene with guns drawn.
“Put those away,” I ordered. “The suspect is gone.”
“Badges, slowly,” a corporal snapped. “There’s a dead MBLIS agent and stolen vehicle at their garage.”
Holm and I looked at each other, and Stark swore.
“Our ride was an imposter,” Holm snarled. “Dammit. They were ready for us. How the hell did they find out?”
“Badges,” the corporal barked. “Slowly and keep your hands away from your holsters.”
We complied, and a few minutes later, a harried detective arrived, out of breath, on the scene. He saw Ames’s remains and hit the door frame with the side of his fist.
“Detective Chenowith,” he said by way of introduction, and between huge gasps. “I was just at the MBLIS scene. They’re a few blocks over. Suspect snapped the agent’s neck and took the SUV. We think he came here to pick up your guy and get him out of here.”
“So much for not targeting innocents,” I growled. “He’s still escalating, Detective. I want to know how he got tipped off.” I looked at Holm and Stark. “How the hell did they know we were flying in?”
“Detective!” A stocky officer ran up to him. “They found the Traverse. It’s on fire at a park. Some kids said a couple of men set it and left in a black car. One of the kids got video, but it’s not very good.”
“Lock down the airports,” I told them. “Kelley is going to try to fly out. Check the Sedin Disposal p
lane besides the commercial flights at the international airport. He may be working with one of the Sedin pilots.”
“And the marinas,” Holm added. “He’s known to grab boats and get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Damn,” the detective said. “That’s a wide net, fellas. We have a lot of marinas…”
“I know.” My jaw muscles wouldn’t relax, and I couldn’t stop pacing. Kelley could be anywhere. “I need a pair of gloves, Detective. Ames must have said or found something to set him off.”
“From what I hear, that kid pissed everyone off,” Stark observed. “I’ll talk with employees. They went to their shelter-in-place locations when the screams started.”
“Alright,” I told her as an officer handed me gloves. “More of our local agents should be here soon.”
I put on the gloves and stepped wide around the remains. Kelley’s desk was spotless, but not in the dumped-everything-off kind of way. The few items that sat on the desk were aligned to perfect angles and parallels. Even the desk phone’s cords had been laid in precise measure.
Behind the desk, the leather chair showed little wear, and that was at the front edge alone. Of the desk’s drawers, the only one that showed a scuffed handle was on the top right. I nudged the drawer out. It held the usual pens, thumbtacks, and business cards that one might expect, but its bottom looked shallower than it ought. I pulled it the rest of the way out and dumped the contents onto the desk.
“Hey, you’re messing up the crime scene,” Detective Chenowith complained. “You know better.”
“I know this guy is in the wind, and the sooner we’re looking in the right place, the sooner we’ll find him.” I saw the space underneath the drawer and showed it to Chenowith. “He’s armed.” I pointed to an empty nylon holster that was attached to the drawer bottom. “This was his handgun, and this,” I pointed at a slimmer, familiar outline, “is the sheath for his KaBar. I guarantee you he has both weapons with him, if not more.”
“Oh, God.” The detective shook his head as he stared at the young man. “How old was Ames?”
“Early twenties, I think.” I looked to Holm, who shrugged. “Robbie, go look at Ames’s desk. See if he had anything about Kelley over there. Maybe he ran across something and went to confront Kelley.”
“Or blackmail him,” Holm suggested. “That kid thought he had brass balls. He might’ve tried something stupid.”
“Exactly.”
While Holm did that, I combed through the other drawers and filing cabinet kept in a corner. The only files to be found were records on employees and timesheets… nothing actionable. Forensics from the local PD and MBLIS arrived and dicked around about who should do what.
“Enough,” I barked. “It’s a MBLIS case. If you don’t like it, call Director Ramsey at the Miami field office.”
Once that was settled, I finished my cursory look around Kelley’s office. There was nothing to indicate his involvement in anything but MediWaste’s business. He didn’t even have a computer in the room. It looked like he barely used the space. I left the office, which was more difficult with the activity now centered around Ames’s body.
A couple of doors down, at the CEO’s office, Holm was alone in the reception room with a folder spread out on Ames’s desktop. Red and green notes covered several sheets of paper. Holm shook his head over what he read and waved me over.
“Nick was smarter than he let on,” Holm said in a soft voice. “The other day, when I took him out to get food, I saw it. He was screwing with people because nobody took him seriously. I… Ethan, I didn’t think he cared about anything I said.”
“Robbie?” I stepped up next to him. “Talk to me, partner.”
“I told him that nobody would take him seriously until he started to take himself seriously. That he needed to take what he was good at and find something he liked to do with it.” He leaned on the desk. “You know, the standard bullshit we tell kids all the time. Ethan, I don’t think anyone ever bothered to tell him that one little thing, but look at this. He took it to heart.”
I looked at the paperwork. Ames had printed out financials having to do with Sedin Disposal, the contracted collections, and discrepancies that pointed to Kelley. The worst part of it was that these were discrepancies that not many people would notice.
“He’d be alive if I’d kept my mouth shut,” Holm whispered. “Someone else could’ve told him those things another time.”
“This is Kelley’s doing, not yours.” I looked through the carefully notated sheets. “Damn, kid, you got him.” I took a deep breath and blew it out. “This will save other lives, Robbie.”
“I know, but dammit, Ethan, when shit like this happens, it’s the worst part of the job.”
“Excuse me, sirs.” A young police officer came into the anteroom. “We just got a call. There’s a dead pilot in a hangar at the executive airport, and the plane is gone.”
“The executive airport is on the inland side of the city,” I said to Holm, and I turned back to the officer. “Did they say whose plane it was?”
“Sedin Disposal’s, and it’s disappeared.”
31
“How did the Sedin plane disappear?” I demanded. “There’s radar all over the place.”
“I don’t know, sir,” the officer said with a hint of frustration. “I’m just relaying the message.”
The officer left as others came in to process Ames’s work area.
“How are we getting over there?” Holm asked. “We don’t have a ride.”
“Yeah, we do,” I told him, “and he just walked in.”
“I just walked into what?” Detective Chenowith asked in a wary tone. “I’m headed out to the other crime scene. Meet you there?”
“You’re taking us,” I told him. “Kelley’s guy is who dropped us off here.”
Chenowith made a disgusted sound. “They didn’t tell me that part.”
We collected Stark and then made for the other airport. Chenowith got us there and drove down the tarmac to the hangar in question. The medical examiner’s van was already there, as well as police from that precinct.
The sixty-foot-wide hangar’s door was halfway open, enough for the active crime scene to be investigated but not let out all the air conditioning in the growing heat. We approached the remains and were stopped by the precinct detective.
“I’m Detective Worth.” He shook our hands. “Just a heads up that it’s bad,” he warned us with a glance over to Stark. “Vic’s name is Kevin Jones. He pilots mostly for Sedin Disposal, but he has a couple of side gigs with charter flights. Nobody saw who flew out on the plane. Given the BOLO, well, that’s why we had you brought over.”
“What do you know about the plane’s location?” I looked around at the runway and hangars. “Did anyone catch it on radar or eyeball its direction?”
Worth shook his head. “No. Jones wasn’t found until after the plane was gone. Airport regulars are familiar with the plane, and they saw it leave fifteen or twenty minutes earlier than the discovery.”
“Who found the remains?” I asked.
“The maintenance guy who cleans their hangar.” Worth pointed to a Latino man who sat on a nearby cargo box. “He was late today. Lucky him. He gets to live.”
I nodded and turned to Stark. “Get some photos for Dumas to examine. See if she’ll fly out to look at both bodies.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stark opened her phone camera and went behind Worth to begin her task. Her calm, methodical approach showed Worth she was quite capable of handling difficult scenes.
“Was Jones the old friend or the guy suggested by Cole?” Holm asked.
“He was the pilot recommended by Cole,” Stark told us as she finished her photos. “You suspected him of collaborating because he was the one linked to MediWaste.”
“Sedin’s pilot is the one working with Kelley?” Holm frowned and turned to me. “Looks like we’re definitely making another stop.”
“I wonder how many ot
her people are involved from Sedin.” I paced the length of the hangar and then stopped. “Yes, we are going over there right now. Let the local MBLIS crew go over this scene.”
“You want to see who isn’t on site at Sedin,” Stark observed.
“Exactly. It might help us to get our bearings on where he may have gone.” I stalked back to the pilot’s remains with Holm and Stark on my six. “And it’ll help explain how Kelley got the materials.” I slowed up for Stark. “You get briefed on the case this morning?”
“Not exactly. I got the case file folder and reviewed it before meeting you at the airport this morning.” She shrugged. “It’s the job.”
“That’s better than some people,” Holm said with appreciation.
“And that’s why some people don’t make Special Agent.” Stark’s smile softened her stern appearance, but it vanished when she glanced at the body. “Hold on…”
The ME was ready to move the remains, but Stark snatched a pair of gloves and poked at a clipboard that lay on the floor near the victim. A fuel receipt was clipped over a flight plan. Stark picked up the board and found a schedule of client stops for the eastern Caribbean.
I called Diane as the ME’s team got the okay to remove what was left of Kevin Jones.
“I heard about the murders,” Diane said as she answered. “We have someone dropping off a car at your location. I presume you’re going over to Sedin Disposal.”
“We are,” I confirmed. “I need someone to get Tim Sedin to talk about his old buddy, Frank Wilson. We think he’s with Kelley, and…” Holm showed me a photo on his phone. “Well, shit. Wilson is the one who picked us up this morning. That was ballsy. We could’ve known what he looked like.”
“But you didn’t. We weren’t looking at him that closely.”
“Ask Sedin if there’s anyone at his company who seemed close to Wilson,” I suggested. “I’ll message Warner to see what he can find to help track Kelley. The three of us here are going to Sedin Disposal and talk to people.”