Inside, the place smells a little musty but like home, where he and his five uncles played cards, drank beer, and talked tits and the Packers while his dad made a pot of deer chili on the makeshift stove.
Bartello relaxes a little, drops his groceries and suitcase on the floor, and reaches inside the hidden compartment for his heroin.
“Just a little bit, got to make it last,” Bartello says as he coaxes the balloon out of its hiding place.
“Did you forget something?” a husky male voice asks from the hallway.
Bartello freezes and opens his mouth to speak, when two men emerge from the dark corridor. One carries an ice pick and a blowtorch.
“Wait, this is a mistake, guys. I just came up here for the weekend. I was going to come back with your money, I swear. Please, just give me a few more days.”
The smaller man easily tackles Bartello to the floor. He places Bartello in a headlock and forces his forearm against Bartello’s windpipe. Bartello starts to lose consciousness, but the smaller man eases his grip from Bartello’s neck, enough so Bartello is alert and can feel and experience every minute of his torture session.
His screams go unanswered for the next thirty minutes, heard by no one in the desolate woods, until a final gunshot rings out and nature resumes its peaceful vigil.
CHAPTER 16
Julia gets to the hospital first thing to discover David awake and alert for the first time since the bombing, and although he isn’t able to speak yet, his progression to conscious but unresponsive is a step and, for Julia, a cause for celebration. Julia pops the cork to a bottle of sparkling cider and pours five glasses—two for Logan and Will, one for Helen, and two for her and David.
“Daddy can’t pick up his glass or drink, but be sure to cheers his plastic cup for luck, guys,” Julia says, and brushes her red Solo cup against her husband’s on the table next to his bed.
“He looks good, don’t you think?” Logan asks.
“Yes, Mr. David looks very good. He has nice color in his cheeks,” Helen says. “That is a sign that his circulation is pushing the bad things out of his body. Good circulation, good health.”
Julia doesn’t bother to question Helen’s medical acumen and lifts Will up so David can see him. Will buries his head into Julia’s shoulder, uncomfortable in the new situation and more uncomfortable still with his daddy lying motionless in a bed with tubes and wires connected to his body.
“Want to go home,” Will pleads.
“We just got here. Say hi to Daddy, sweetheart,” Julia answers.
“No. Daddy looks funny,” Will says.
“Logan, get the picture Will made for Daddy,” Julia suggests.
Logan pulls out a crumpled white paper with blue and red scribbles strewn across it and hands it to Will.
“Give Dad the picture,” Logan tells Will, sounding more like a lecturing parent than an eight-year-old.
“No. Go home now,” Will says.
“Shhh,” Julia whispers in her son’s ear. “Will drew you a picture, David. The kids spent most of the afternoon making you their cards.”
Julia’s phone signals its ring in her purse, and Julia puts Will down next to his brother. “Why don’t you two see what else you have in that backpack for your father?”
“Stop saying stupid things in front of Dad,” Logan warns Will.
Will begins to sob in earnest now over his brother’s rejection and the strange appearance of his father, who now looks like a marred wax mannequin impersonating the man he knew just a few days ago.
Julia looks at the caller. Navarro. She knows she has to take it and nods at Helen to play cleanup with her boys.
Julia scoops Will back up in her arms and wipes away his tears as Navarro’s call slips to voice mail.
“No fighting, you two. Will is trying his best, Logan. This is all strange for him,” Julia says.
“It’s strange for me too,” Logan answers.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll only be a minute on the phone. I promise,” Julia says.
Helen swoops in and catches the boys’ attention by pulling out Julia’s iPad from Logan’s backpack. Logan takes it from Helen’s confused hands and he expertly navigates to the camera icon. He sits down next to his dad on the hospital bed and begins to show his still-unresponsive father recent family pictures. Will easily sidles up to his brother’s side so he can see the action on the screen.
The boys now occupied, Julia goes inside David’s private bathroom, shuts the door, and calls Navarro back.
“Navarro, what’ve you got?” Julia says, her voice slightly above a whisper.
“Do you want to call me back?”
“No. I’m in the only semiprivate place I can find in the hospital where I can use my cell phone.”
“Bartello is dead,” Navarro says.
“Oh shit. There goes anything he could’ve told you about Rossi.”
“Not exactly. His buddy found his body up in that deer camp Russell mentioned. Apparently, the friend was worried and went to check on him. From what the sheriffs told me, it sounds like he was tortured before he was killed, like it was payback or the killers were trying to get something out of Bartello.”
“I’m betting the murderers have to be the same guys we saw outside of Bartello’s townhome. Do you have any proof?”
“On the killing, not yet,” Navarro continues. “But Bartello had a change of heart at the last minute and gave his buddy an envelope an hour or so before he was killed. There was a letter in there addressed to me. The Escanaba sheriff looked it over already and told me it’s a detailed laundry list of Rossi’s drug and gambling operations.”
“But Tarburton claimed double jeopardy on that, so he probably can’t be charged.”
“Let me finish. Bartello also says some guy named Enzo Costas . . .”
“Nick Rossi’s second-in-command. My source told me,” Julia interrupts.
“Anything else you failed to share?”
“Sorry. I didn’t know his role in the Detroit operation,” Julia says.
“Yeah, so in this letter, Bartello claims Enzo Costas blackmailed him and made him hire a sniper to take out the Butcher on the day he was scheduled to testify.”
“Enzo Costas may have been laying down the orders, but Rossi was still calling the shots from prison. There’s your attempted murder charge,” Julia says.
“Right now, all we’ve got is a dead guy’s word against Costas. But Bartello did give us something we can work with—the name of the sniper. Jason Meter, an ex-army guy who lives in Dearborn. I brought him into the station already for questioning. Meter sold out his employer in under ten minutes. Meter confirmed Bartello hired him and Bartello bragged about how he was the head of Rossi’s Detroit operation. The sniper swears up and down that he wasn’t involved in the bombing.”
“That should be enough for you to at least arrest Rossi. You bring him in on the attempted murder charge and then sweat him about his role in the courthouse bombing attack.”
“I would if I could find him. Rossi’s in the wind. He’s not allowed to leave the country, but a friend of mine in the FBI told me Rossi has a place somewhere in California. I reached out to an L.A. police officer I worked with a few years ago. If Rossi is on the down low there, my cop friend may be able to help me find him. He thinks Rossi has some mountain retreat somewhere near Santa Barbara.”
“I know where Rossi’s hiding.”
Julia can hear Navarro exhale heavily in frustration on the other end of the phone.
“If you’re going to California to question Rossi, I want to go,” Julia says.
“No, you’re not,” Navarro answers.
“I’m the one with the address.”
“Don’t you want to stay with David?”
“He’s not out of the woods, but David’s condition is improving. I know he’d want me to go after Rossi for what he’s done. I’m comfortable leaving for a day trip.”
“With the flight back and forth, it’s mor
e like a two-day trip minimum.”
“Okay. Let me think about it. Will’s having a hard time seeing David like this, and I don’t want to upset the kids any more than they already are.”
“If you’re going to come along, you need to let me know pretty quick.”
“I will. Sorry to hear about Bartello, but at least he did the right thing in the end by giving everything up in the letter.”
“There was something else in the envelope, a flash drive. I told the Escanaba sheriff to look at it before he sent it my way. He said the flash drive has what looks like a surveillance video on it. The recording is pretty grainy. It’s a couple having sex in a hotel room.”
“If the quality is bad, I doubt it’s anyone’s porn stash. It sounds more like blackmail to me.”
Julia ends her conversation as Helen raps lightly against the bathroom door.
“I’m so sorry. I had to take that. Is Will okay?” Julia answers, and pulls Will out of Helen’s arms.
“The boy is fine now. The children and I will take a walk to the gift shop, and that will give you a few minutes alone with your husband,” Helen says.
“That would be wonderful. I appreciate everything you’ve been doing for my family.”
Julia waits until Helen leaves with her sons and then closes the door to David’s room.
Julia sits on the edge of the bed, gently lays her head against David’s chest, and then brushes her lips softly against his cheek.
“You did so great today, babe. I know you’re fighting your way back. I’ll keep doing my part too. I’m getting closer to Nick Rossi. I met his wife, Isabella. I know she’s hiding something. And Navarro arrested a sniper who Rossi hired to kill Sammy Biggs, so all we have to do is find Rossi so he can be arrested in connection to the bombing.”
David’s body twitches underneath Julia, and she jumps up in surprise. She stares back at her husband, who gives her a laser-sharp stare.
“David, are you okay?”
“Hard to talk,” David says in a dry whisper. He fumbles for a paper and pen on his bedside table and scratches something down in an unsteady hand:
Box twenty-two. Three. Two. One. Thirty. Infinity.
“I’m going to call your doctor,” Julia says, and pushes the button to the nurse’s station. “What do those numbers mean?”
“Money code,” David answers. “The bomber . . .”
“Is Rossi the bomber?” Julia asks.
David’s eyes burn bright, and he nods his affirmation.
“Rossi knows. You’ve got to find Rossi in California, or you and the boys will be killed. Rossi already tried once.”
“Jesus, David. What do you have on him?”
“Rossi knows about the surveillance video.”
“What video? Just start from the beginning.”
“The bar video, the footage from the case. Rossi will come after Logan and Will if you don’t stop it. Then you’ll be next,” David warns. “Find the money and the surveillance footage from the bar. Rossi will hide out in California.”
“How did you know that?”
“The bomb wasn’t meant for Sammy Biggs,” David says.
“Who was the target then? You?”
David’s eyes roll back in his head, and his body begins to jerk underneath the bedsheet.
“Where the hell is the doctor?”
Julia jumps up from the bed as the door opens and the on-call physician breezes in.
“I think my husband is having a seizure. Do something!”
The doctor moves quickly to David’s side and begins to check his vital signs. He then injects a clear substance into David’s IV line, which stops the tremors. David closes his eyes and his breathing steadies. The doctor hovers over David for several minutes and then turns around with a calm expression.
“Your husband is fine, except for a slight increase in blood pressure and heart rate, but nothing that I can see as a concern. Your husband is still very weak. I gave him a sedative to calm him down.”
“Something is wrong, I know it. Why was he shaking like that?”
“Ms. Gooden, I don’t see any cause for alarm right now. David’s rise in blood pressure and heart rate is probably related to the excitement at his sudden ability to verbalize for the first time, which set off a temporary physical reaction. From his chart, it looks like his Glasgow Coma Scale score was an eleven, so although nothing is definitive at this point, a good percentage of patients who score in this range are able to make a full recovery. So I wouldn’t be too concerned. It’s common for coma patients to be alert and awake for only a few minutes at a time at first.”
“He was really upset. He was trying to tell me something.”
“Another commonality. When patients first come out of a coma, they oftentimes use inappropriate words that don’t make sense to anyone else but themselves. Their memories, their thoughts, get jumbled. Imagine everything you’ve ever experienced in your entire life gets tossed together in a cup and then is thrown out randomly on a table. Whatever your husband said, he may be piecing together disconnected parts of his memory that he thinks fit together.”
“David knew exactly what he was saying.”
* * *
Julia quickly stuffs her overnight bag with the bare essentials she pulls from her closet and dresser. She grabs a tape recorder and her reporter’s notebook, and before she puts them in her purse she tears out a single sheet of white paper from the notebook and writes down the phrases and numbers David scribbled down on the hospital pad: Box twenty-two, three, two, one, thirty, and then the words infinity and money code after them.
She pulls out her cell phone and calls Don Brewbaker, who was David’s second chair on the Nick Rossi case. He answers on the first ring.
“Julia, great to hear from you. I hope you’re calling with good news about David,” Brewbaker answers.
“Thank you for asking. David made some major strides today. The doctor isn’t promising anything, but we’re all hoping he’ll make a full recovery soon. Look, the reason I called, and I’m not sure of the legalities of what you can tell me, but I wanted to talk to you about the case David was going to present against Nick Rossi.”
“Go ahead and ask, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Great. Were there any issues David was going to bring up about money during the trial?”
“Well, sure. Sammy Biggs was going to testify that Rossi was bringing in a half-million dollars worth of sales a month.”
“How about the numbers three, two, one, thirty? Do they have any kind of meaning to you? Or box twenty-two?”
Brewbaker is silent for a moment. “No, not that I can recall. I could check, but David’s files were in his briefcase. I’m not sure if those were ever found after the bombing. If they were, the Detroit police or FBI would have them.”
“Okay. Sorry to take up your time. One more question, though. How about a money code? Did David ever talk to you about this?”
“Rossi and Biggs used shell companies, mainly the Detroit laundry business that belonged to Rossi’s uncle. The laundry company had existing contracts with the MGM Grand and a few other hotels.”
“Was the name of one of Rossi’s front businesses Infinity?”
“No. That’s the first time I heard of it.”
“One more question. Did you have surveillance footage of Nick Rossi in a bar that would implicate him?”
“We had plenty of surveillance footage shot throughout the casinos, but the smoking guns were the videos we caught in the hotel rooms of the drugs, bribes, and gambling bets being exchanged for cash. And, of course, there’s former mayor Slidell’s payoff in the VIP suite of the MGM Grand. But to my knowledge, there wasn’t anything significant we captured in the casino bar.”
Julia ends the call with Brewbaker, chalking her hunch up to a temporary dead end.
She lays her phone on the dresser next to the box from the hospital holding David’s cell phone and his wallet. Julia feels for an instant like th
e snooping Bianca as she picks up her husband’s thick brown wallet and begins to scour through it for any clues. Three credit cards, five twenty-dollar bills, a stack of business cards, and some kind of rectangular stub. Julia turns the white piece of paper around and instantly recognizes it as an airline-boarding pass. The date is stamped two weeks ago. Julia is about to stuff it back inside the wallet, recalling David’s recent trip to Washington, DC, to meet a member of the DEA’s office. But her eyes catch the arrival location just as she returns it to the billfold.
LAX. Los Angeles International Airport.
Julia feels her pulse quicken as she realizes that David most likely took the trip to recruit Sammy Biggs and didn’t tell her to shield her from the case. Regardless, he lied to her. Just like he had about Brooke Stevens on and her role in the Rossi case. And if David knew that Rossi was going to come after her and their boys, why hadn’t he told her before so she could be warned before something happened?
Julia drops the wallet on the desk, feeling a steam of red bruising her cheeks, grabs David’s cell phone and scrolls through his recent calls. All are local except for one to the Washington, DC, area code and three calls in the Los Angeles area code. Julia notices fifteen phone calls to the same number over a two-week period, just before she and the boys moved back in with David to their Rochester Hills home. The caller is listed as unknown.
Julia feels like a sleazy voyeur as she begins to go through the entirety of David’s text messages, the majority of them banal exchanges with Julia about his schedule and another late night at the office.
Julia’s finger continues to scroll down the screen until she hits on messages between David and Brewbaker. One from David reads, “Found the Butcher’s location in L.A. Will try and arrange meeting. Easier and safer if I go alone.”
Mayor Anderson’s name comes up next, and there is an exchange about an upcoming meeting in city hall. Julia is about to ignore texts from an unknown ID, figuring it’s spam, but decides to check the messages, just in case. Her eyes freeze on a photo of a woman’s naked back, and her round derriere hanging out the sides of a pair of pink lace underwear and the message: “Everything set for California. Get over here now,” followed by David’s response, “Wrapping up. Be there in fifteen minutes.”
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