by Jim Magwood
“You know this, Jacob?”
“Yes. I do.”
Both the men sat quietly for several moments. Jacob had said what he felt able to for the time. Roger didn’t know what more he could, or should, pursue.
Finally, Roger said, “We need to talk to the detective about this.” Then he added, “Right?”
Jacob said slowly, “Yes, we do. While it may just be assumption or conjecture at this point, it is possible with the highly strategic things that have been going on that someone is using one of these ghost people or there is perhaps a group of them working for some unknown reason. He may already know this, but we would be criminal not to at least bring it to his attention.”
“What can we tell him, Jacob? In what direction should we have him start?”
“Well, the first thing is that we don’t know for sure this is the case for him. You are the one with contact with him, so I would suggest you just broach the subject and see if he knows anything at all. You could then continue as the conversation leads.
“Second, we do not have any specifics for him. We can give him some generalities; the kind of people to look for, questions to ask, maybe some old files to research. We might direct him to certain agencies where he could ask his own pertinent questions.”
“Do you know any of those questions, Jacob?” Roger broached the subject carefully. He knew some of Jacob’s background, but they had never talked details.
After a moment, Jacob replied, “You know some of my background, Roger, but there are simply things I cannot speak of. I can, however, make some inquiries through my contacts to see if we can give your detective some concrete leads. Why don’t you make the initial contact with him so he can get started and I will start some messages to some old friends and see what I can come up with.”
“Okay, I’m on it.”
Both men turned to their computers to begin a much deeper level of investigation.
CHAPTER 81
“Paul, I was thinking that you’ve got me working in possibly three directions. One is, of course, the school fires and the related actions. Another is this side avenue of the shootings. They’re becoming more and more related to the fires in some way because of the same weapons being used, but we don’t have any reasons why. The third, although certainly on a different track, is the money and computer crime avenues. Admittedly, there are a few separate avenues there, also, but that’s another investigation.
“So, the first two are supposedly related. What more can you tell me about them that I might put into my investigation?”
Roger had e-mailed Paul and a few hours later they were together on the phone.
“Okay, but first, you wouldn’t have any problem with my partner, Jake, getting on the speaker phone, would you?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, hold on a moment. There, we’re opened up now. Roger, I’ve got Jake Hardee on the line; Jake, this is Roger Evans talking to us.”
“Good to hear your voice, Roger.”
“And you, Jake.”
“So, let’s get started. Roger, I think you’ve got basically all the data we have. In fact, you’ve sent us a lot of stuff we didn’t have. Probably the only thing you aren’t in on yet are the conversations we’ve had back and forth here; just ideas, suspicions, that sort of thing. So let me bring you up on that sort of stuff.
“First, with the links you gave us a couple of days ago, we started linking the shootings more directly with the fires and stuff. You gave us the idea of the school kids that got shot up and we ended up talking about how the senator and assemblyman, and even the Smithsonian, might have been involved. There’s a suggestion that maybe one of the parents got mad long after the actual event and has started gunning for everybody. We’re in the process right now of running down all the parents and others that were involved and checking them out.”
“Roger, what we don’t have at this time is a name, a link, someone to start looking at. You got anyone for us?”
“No, Jake. Nobody has popped up in our search here, nobody specific. You’re probably running down all the relevant names now. But I do have one thought for you.”
Jake and Paul jerked up in their chairs and Jake said, “What?”
“Have you guys ever heard of demons or ghosts? Perhaps ex-military or CIA or somebody now out for hire?”
There was a long silence as Jake and Paul just looked at each other.
“Where did this come from, Roger?” Paul said quietly.
“Um… I presume this means you have heard of them. Okay, I’ll go on. My partner and I here have come across enough references in our searching to make us think there’s possibly a very well trained person or persons who might be involved in your things. You’ve got bomb making, fire starting, weapons and, it appears, excellent shooting… and it goes on. Enough things to make us think of the possibility of military experience, something like that, and the further possibility of people for hire. At this point, we don’t have any names for you, but maybe coming up with too many possibilities. So, ringing any bells?”
After a moment, Jake said, “We have mentioned those spooks, Roger, but haven’t followed up on anyone yet. Or maybe, just one, but no contacts yet.”
“Just one as in a specific suspect?”
Jake looked at Paul quickly and got a positive nod, so replied, “Yeah, a suspect in some part of this. He may have been the guy who set off the bomb explosion we got caught in while we were trying to visit with him.”
“Yes, Paul mentioned that to me. By the way, how is your partner?”
“She’s doing pretty well. Still probably a lot of minor surgeries for cleanup, but she’s at least home now. Thanks for asking.”
“Well, we keep wishing her well. About this suspect, if you could pass on a name, perhaps we could do some traces on him from some larger angles.”
Again, Jake and Paul hesitated, then Paul said, “We’ve got a name, Roger, but the authorities he supposedly comes from are being pretty slow in sending us any info. Yeah, maybe we could use your help. The name we have from some fingerprints is a Concorde, Joseph Samuel, formerly Army, some kind of special forces with a lot of heavy training, but we haven’t got much more on him yet. Age is likely in his late 40s. And, yeah, he might be related to the demons or ghosts.”
“Okay, we’ll start tracing him from our end, and see if we can come up with any partners or anything, also. Anything else at this time, Paul, Jake?”
“No,” Paul replied. “You’ve got about everything we’ve got. Do you have any sources for these spooks we might try to tap?”
“Well, about the only place these folks have showed up is previous military, like Army or Navy, or through the CIA. These aren’t run-of-the-mill ex-military private armies. They were very well trained and were used for specialized missions… espionage, infiltration, assassinations, and so on. If they aren’t being used by those agencies now, then there are likely a lot of them that have gone free-lance. Hired out to either mobs or gangs, or even governments. They didn’t likely do much mingling between agencies, so if this guy was Army, then that’s where it would probably rest.”
“Okay, we’re digging right now, but it’s going slow. If you find anything to help, it would really be appreciated.”
“For sure. Let me get back to the search with this name and then I’ll be back with you.”
When Roger hung up, he turned to Jacob and relayed the news. Jacob immediately got on the phone to a contact in the Mossad and asked if a trace on Concorde, Joseph Samuel could be started, with any possible relations from the old days added in. He let Roger know it would take a couple of days, but there would likely be results they could work with.
CHAPTER 82
Jeff Sheldon’s latest attack on the government he hated had finally caught the full attention of the FBI, and the chaos he created had now magnified exponentially.
Many of those who had more or less innocently invested in the scheme had brought the authorities into things
when they couldn’t get any response from the “investment group.”
Many of those who had “borrowed” funds from their organizations to make the investments had been exposed when the media were made aware of things by Jeff’s behind-thescenes messages.
Several of the organizations that had been robbed by the participants had filed legal actions to pursue recovering their funds. Some of them weren’t really excited about exposing the participants, especially when they were actual political organizations. “We don’t want to hurt good old Mayor X, but what do we do about…?”
Eventually, the events could no longer be kept as internal investigations or within local police forces or district attorney camps, and the FBI was made aware of dozens, then hundreds of them. However, since there was no actual main headquarters or base of operations for the “investment company,” there was nothing the FBI could tap that would lead them anywhere, and the whole investigation stalled.
More and more participants kept coming to light, but no one had any hard evidence to work with. All correspondence had come through the Internet; all invested money had gone to offshore banks that had immediately passed on the funds to other banks; no e-mail messages from any of the participants had been answered after the initial investment period. In fact, they had all been returned with bad Internet addresses.
Jeff received quite a little shock one day when one of his directors called him to a meeting and the room appeared to be filled with high-level government “suits.” He quickly lost his concern, though, when he was introduced to the group as a major investigator for the Treasury Department and was briefed on the activities and eventually told to get busy investigating them. He made it at least back to the elevator before he couldn’t control the snickering and when he was finally in the privacy of his office, he exploded with delight and finally had to have more than one drink to calm himself.
The plan had turned out magnificently.
In light of his “investigation,” he was freely able to research news articles, police reports, even federal complaints, to see what was being said throughout the country. For those in the public eye, the explosions from news agencies and “letters to the editors” was tremendous and volatile. “Hang them” was a common message from the public. “Hang them” was also behind the wording of many of the news articles, but most of the reporters and media managers dearly wished the stories would continue forever because of the great increase in sales revenues. People loved to hate their elected representatives, and this time they had a valid right to do so.
Bob D’Arcy, the senior Washington FBI agent, was tasked with the lead on investigating within their own area. He had tapped into all the computer resources he had available, but ended pulling his hair when nothing came up roses. He reached out to the agencies across the country and gathered everything he could get his hands on. Everything easily linked. The initial investment proposal messages were all the same and appeared to come from the same source. They were easily tracked through the Internet until they all ended up coming through dozens of different cutouts and became untraceable. The original proposals had been able to be responded to, but eventually all the flow-back lines had been closed and were now simply gone.
Jeff, from his position in the investigation, was able to carefully watch most of the tracing activities and he was pleased and relieved when they kept coming back with no traces or results. He also saw the many news articles telling of the actual arrests of many of the participants in the scheme. No trials were anywhere close yet, but the fear and anger that kept surfacing as more and more trusted civil servants were brought to the public eye was becoming explosive. Citizens were starting recall procedures, cities and government agencies were involved in massive exposures of their public fund sources that had been “borrowed,” and there were even threats of physical violence reverberating through the ether.
All of which caused Jeff great delight. But he relished his thoughts for the next event.
CHAPTER 83
“Sylvia, the reason we came by today was…”
“To bring me a McSteak and McSpaghetti and McSpumoni and…”
“Well, not exactly.”
“But that does sound pretty good, Paul. Maybe…”
“Jake.”
“Okay, guys, enough about my newest non-hospital cravings. What’s up?”
“Are you up to some questions? We really do need to talk again about that guy in the hotel. I know…”
“It’s okay. Yeah, its’ still scary, but I’m okay. What have you got?”
Sylvia still had minor surgeries every few days, but they were pretty much outpatient events now. Her health was good and all the major work had been done. It was only when either she felt something poking her from under the skin or the doctors found another suspicious sighting in a scan that she went back in for another removal. Her eyes had received no trauma, and her body and limbs hadn’t received any deeply serious damage, so she was now able to live at home alone and was progressing well toward eventually coming back to work— everyone hoped, including her.
“Syl, you were the only one who got a look at the guy at all. I know you’ve been asked before, but do you remember anything at all about him? Color, body size, anything either big or little? Right now, we have nothing. We do have his basic file from the Army because of the fingerprints, but it’s too old and we have nothing to put out on the street.”
“Paul, the most I could give you is still the same. He was already out the window when I came through the door and I got an image of long, straggly hair flopping behind him as he was going down the fire escape. Then the explosion hit and I was gone. He was likely just a millisecond out of range of the explosion himself. If we had kicked the door a second earlier, he would have got it, too.”
“Yeah, that’s what we figured. He appeared to be living real ragged in that room, so maybe we could assume a slighter, maybe even haggard change from his military picture, and then just put the long hair on him. Maybe that’s all we’ve got.”
Jake said, “It appears that he left everything behind. Maybe he had a small bag or something, but it looked like everything else was still in the room. It was all messed up good by the blast, of course, but the team says it didn’t look like anything was cleaned out. The closet had a couple of things in it, and the dresser. But that was it. Looks like he ran with nothing.”
“If he’s the ones with the guns, would it be likely he had them with him?”
“Yeah, Syl. There was no sign of any guns. Some cleaning materials were there, but no weapons of any kind, no ammunition, nothing else.”
“Would he have had time to grab anything, Paul, except a prepared bag? Have you figured the time sequence?”
“Yeah, we’ve done that several times. We knocked three times, I think, and listened at the door, then called out to him and a few more seconds before Jake booted the door. So he would have had plenty of time to grab a bag of weapons and stuff and get out before we crashed through.”
“The cleaning supplies…?”
“Yeah, they were for a large caliber weapon, so would have fit with anything that we’ve encountered so far. Rifle length rods and cords and so on.”
Sylvia thoughtfully asked, “Where do you think he would have gone?”
“We have no way of knowing. We checked all the busses and cabs from that night. Nobody saw anything. Maybe he had a car, but we just don’t know. But, personally, we don’t think he went far. All appearances say he had been local for a long time and so it’s likely he would want to stay that way. If he’s really been buried for a time with no police or medical reports, then he would probably be able to stay like that. Just move to another place in town and get buried again."
“You’ve already checked all the drifter hotels and such?”
“Yeah, everything. But you know there’s a lot of them won’t talk much. Especially without a good ID. Especially you get down the back alleys and so on.”
“Jake, would he be livin
g with someone? A relative or old war buddy, someone?”
“Yeah, we’ve looked at that. But we don’t have any leads at all from his records. No relatives or known friends living in the city. Also, if he had been able to do that after the hotel, why wouldn’t he have done it before? The explosion was big news for a few days, so a lot of people would have heard about it. Then he comes waltzing in asking for a place to live? Maybe not.”
“Do we have enough to go on to say he has the weapons we’re looking for?”
Both Jake and Paul smiled a little to hear her including herself in the “we.” Maybe she’d be okay, after all.
Paul answered, “Yeah, with the little we have so far, we’re making that assumption. But, no, we really don’t know. With what Sarge told us, and then with the cleaning supplies and so on, we’re guessing. But we really don’t have any shell matches or crime scene fingerprints or anything else.”
“Well, it certainly sounds as if you great dee-tectives don’t have much to go on, right? You need little ol’ me to come in and work this for you?”
“Well, come to think of it, little girl, maybe we could bring you some of them fancy donuts with them cinnamon thingys and you could work right from here. Likely wouldn’t take you but a moment or two to head us right. Right?”
“Mmmm. Cinnamon thingys sound pretty good right now. Pretty hard putting on any makeup, though. Yeah, think I’d be best working it from here. Think you bad-guy chasers could play bad-guy a little and fetch me my laptop from the office? They’ve probably got it locked up. Maybe I could do some searching? Specially if you brought some of those donuts…”
Jake rubbed his hands together and said, “Paul, I bet that if you could round up some of them super donuts I could rescue that little bitsy laptop while you were at it. Whadda ya think?”
“I think it’s almost done. Syl, can you hang loose for a day or so while we find our way back to that big headquarters building and then back here?”