by Jon Mills
“Sorry about the water but you had them worried there for a second, they thought you weren’t going to wake up. Seems whoever dished out the chloroform went a little overboard.”
Kara rolled up into a seated position and squinted. “Henry?”
Henry Ellis sat across from her.
“I told Bill this wasn’t necessary, but what can you do? These FBI guys are a law unto themselves.” Henry glanced off to his left.
Kara scanned the room and saw two other guys, dressed in blue FBI windbreaker jackets. One of them was talking on a cell phone, the other leaning against a brick-and-mortar wall looking over paperwork. There was lots of light filtering in through dirty windows. It looked like she was in a rough-looking studio apartment. There was a blue couch, a large painting on the wall, a ladder leading up to the roof, hardwood floors, a table and a few home décor items. The steady hum of traffic could be heard outside.
Her brow pinched. “Where the hell am I? And why are you here?”
Her throat was dry, and tension in her head was causing it to throb.
“Right, about that. It’s probably best Bill explains,” Ellis said.
“Bill? Explains? Did you drug me?”
He put up a hand. “Me? No. The FBI…” He paused looking embarrassed. “Bill should be back in a minute, he just went out for coffee. I figured that might help with the…”
He pointed at her head.
“Nausea? Headache?” she said. Kara rubbed the back of her head. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
“What’s going on, Ms. Walker, is that you may have fucked up our investigation.”
An African American, broad-shouldered city slicker in a dark navy suit and tie ambled in with a cardboard tray full of coffees. He jerked his head to the two FBI agents waiting near the doorway to indicate for them to wait outside. They left and he strolled over, taking out one of the cups of coffee and handing it off to Henry before making his way over and offering her one. “Wasn’t sure if you took milk or sugar so it’s black.”
He removed his cup and tossed the tray, then pulled up a chair and spun it around the opposite way, plunked down and took a sip of his coffee. “Countless hours of wiretapping, data collection and a year’s worth of surveillance, and you may have blown it. Now Henry here tells me that he might have been partially to blame for that so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ve heard his version, now I want to hear yours. So tell me, what the hell were you thinking?”
Kara squeezed the bridge of her nose and took a hard pull on the drink. “No offense but I usually like to be on a last name basis if we’re going to play who’s got the bigger dick.” She took another hard pull on her drink while he stared back at her with a blank expression.
Henry stifled a laugh.
“Bill Davis, special agent in charge. FBI.”
“So tell me, Bill, when did the FBI approve chloroform and kidnapping? Or is that a new policy?”
“You didn’t give us much choice. And before you tell us some bogus story about how Washington Bureau of Investigation green-lit your little Clallam County joint effort, let me save you the trouble. You might have been given access to case files but I’ve already spoken to Tim Greer. He didn’t clear your involvement. But let me guess, Detective Goodman isn’t aware of that?”
She stared back at him. She could feel the animosity. “You’ve had five abductions over the last twenty-five years.” She glanced at her watch. “And by my calculations you have just over twenty-four hours until he takes another boy. But I’m guessing you already knew that.”
“You’re damn right we do. What the hell did you think that attempted abduction was for? Your benefit, so you could find a loophole in being able to work with Clallam and interfere with our investigation?”
Kara put her cup down and raised a hand. “Hold on a minute. Back up the truck. You have been doing surveillance for a year. On who?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“After the shit you just pulled, I think my attorney would beg to differ.”
Bill raised his eyebrows and looked at Henry. Kara’s gaze bounced between them.
“Are you involved in this?” Kara asked Henry.
He cocked his head but didn’t reply.
“Well if you’re involved, what about Goodman?” Kara asked.
“No,” Henry said.
“But I thought you retired?
“I have. They wanted my input. And let’s be clear, for the record I was not aware, and I sure as hell didn’t approve of them taking you the way they did.” He tossed Bill a look of disgust.
Kara shook her head trying to shake the mental fog. “Okay, so who are we talking about?”
There was hesitation on Bill’s part.
Henry spat it out. “Darryl Clayton.”
“So let me get this right, you’ve had him under surveillance for a year and done nothing?”
“These things take time,” Bill said.
“Oh don’t bullshit me.”
“We needed to be sure.”
“You mean you wanted him to take a kid?”
“That’s not our intention.”
“So if you’ve had him under surveillance, why did you let him get away if he attempted to abduct a kid recently?”
“He didn’t,” Bill replied.
“Of course he did. It was in the damn newspaper.”
“That wasn’t him.”
“Then who was it?”
They were both reluctant to reply but then Henry spat it out. “The FBI.”
“And… there goes what little advantage we had,” Bill said getting up and walking across to one of the windows.
Kara sat there for a second with a puzzled expression on her face then the penny dropped. She recalled Bill’s words. What the hell did you think that attempted abduction was for? She looked at him. “Are you’re telling me that attempt was made up? That the FBI was behind it?”
Henry nodded.
“I don’t get it. Why?” She shook her head. “And how the hell can you get away with doing that?”
Bill turned and folded his arms. He leaned against the window; the sunshine bathed his face leaving half of it shadowed. He took a deep break. “After 9/11, the FBI has turned most of its energy to stopping terror attacks, finding cells and ensuring that no harm comes to citizens. It’s a hard job. To do it effectively we have to create new tactics. One of which is running sting operations across America, targeting the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He returned to his seat and slumped down. “The bureau sends out informants to trawl through Muslim communities, spend time in mosques and community centers, and talk to radical Islamists in order to identify possible targets who are sympathetic. If we identify a high-value target, we will run a sting whereby we create a fake terror plot that involves weapons and targets. Then, before it’s carried out we swoop in to make arrests and secure convictions.”
“Entrapment?”
“Ah, we don’t like to use that word. It tends to get lawyers’ backs up and well there is a lot of confusion around its usage. Obviously there is the obvious — where a citizen might see deliberate traps that manipulate unwary people who were unlikely to become a terrorist. Then there is of course where the prosecution has to prove a subject was predisposed to carry out the actions they’re accused of — for example, supporting jihad. So we try not to use the word entrapment, even if that is what it is. Ultimately we like to think of what we’re doing as preventative.”
“So the kid,” she said.
“Didn’t exist,” Bill added.
“And the abductor?”
“Made up.”
“I don’t get it. What did you hope to achieve?”
Bill glanced at Henry for a second. “We hoped to kill two birds with one stone. If you want to use the word entrapment we figured by creating a false abduction, and drawing attention to
it in the media, whoever has been responsible for these abductions would back off with the increased police presence. And then of course there was the fact that if Clayton was behind it, it might push him to do something, you know — dispose of someone.”
“You were hoping to buy yourself time?”
“No. We were hoping to save a kid,” he replied.
She stared at him for a few seconds then smiled. “You believed my mother, didn’t you?”
He chuckled. “Actually, no.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “But Henry did, and with his track record that’s enough for us.”
Kara nodded a few times, reached down and scooped up her coffee and took another sip. “And what about the truth? Does the media know?”
“No and we plan to keep it that way.” He paused and said slowly, “We need to keep it that way.” He sniffed. “We’re well aware that someone has been taking a boy every five years in the surrounding counties. What we haven’t been able to pinpoint is who, however, with the assistance of your mother, Henry here, and Noah Goodman we’ve—”
“Noah’s in on this?”
He shook his head. “No. He’s on a need to know basis. If and when something crosses his table he passes that information on to Henry and…”
“And Henry passes it on to you,” Kara said.
Henry spoke up. “We’ve had to do it this way, Kara. For someone to have managed to elude the police, the FBI and State for this long, we assumed they had to have some connection to the case. Potentially could even be law enforcement.”
“So you think it might be a cop?”
“We’re not certain but we haven’t ruled it out.”
There was a long pause as all of them dwelled on that.
“So where does Clayton fall into all of this? I’m guessing you based the fake abductor on Gregory Clayton’s description, right?”
“Darryl Clayton was never ruled out as a suspect in your brother’s disappearance. If he was involved, it was him. Gregory would have been too young.”
“Well of course,” she said. “But you think he and Gregory might have been involved in the recent abductions?”
“Let’s just say our sources have certainly swayed the investigation in their direction.”
She nodded, her brow furrowed. “So why haven’t you’ve obtained a search warrant?”
“We need probable cause to believe a criminal activity is occurring at the place. Accusations by neighbors and townsfolk might have shone a light on him but that wouldn’t fly with a judge and that’s who we have to convince. Simply put, no hard evidence.” He got up and walked across the room and leaned against the window looking out, a smidgen of despondence evident.
She nodded for a second then remembered what Sam had said. “What if you had that evidence?”
Henry leaned forward in his seat. “What did you find, Kara?”
“It’s not what I found. Sam. Sam Young, he contacted me yesterday.” She stumbled over her words trying to take all the jumbled-up thoughts coming at her and make sense of it. “We visited Clayton.”
“We know you did,” Bill said folding his arms.
“But he went back.”
“What?” Bill spun around and listened intently.
“He returned two nights ago. Said he came across a box of kids’ clothes, and nude Polaroids in Clayton’s home. In the bedroom closet. He said he took video of it and he was going to show everything to me. That’s where I was heading last night before…”
“The explosion? Yes, I heard about it. I’m sorry, Kara,” Henry said.
Sadness washed over her and all the loss she felt from the night before came back hard and fast. It would have been easy to wallow in it but that’s not what Sam would have wanted. She stood up and then had to support herself against one of the pillars in the loft. “We need to…”
“You need to sit down,” Henry said.
“No time. We need to find his phone. There’s a chance that the forensics lab might still be able to get the data off it even if it’s been affected by the fire. If you get that, you get your search warrant,” Kara said. Then something dawned on her. “Hold on a minute. If you had him under surveillance, you must have heard my conversation with him last night, right? That’s why you took me. You thought he was going to come after me?”
Bill shook his head. “What are you on about?” He looked to Henry to see if he could make any sense of it but both of them seemed clueless.
She ran a hand through her hair. “You said you had Clayton under surveillance. Wiretapping, right? Data collection. Phones and so on. So you must have heard the conversation when he called?”
Henry squinted. “He called you?”
She started back blankly. She began to pace back and forth. “He must have used a burner phone. You probably didn’t know about that, that’s one of the reasons why he’s managed to stay one step ahead.”
“Okay, hold on, Kara. You’ve lost me.” Bill said. “Are you saying Darryl Clayton phoned you last night?”
“Yes. I mean. I assume it was him.”
“We didn’t hear any conversation, Kara. Our guys were monitoring and had his property under surveillance all night. He didn’t leave that property.”
“Then you need to update your equipment because I’m telling you that was him. He knew about Sam.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’d remember his voice anywhere.”
“Darryl?”
“No, the man who took Charlie. I mean, he must have been using some kind of voice scrambler but it was him. I’m certain. He said he wanted me to leave and that if I ever came back he would die. He said Charlie was alive. I heard him.”
“Charlie?”
She shook her head, confusion, and panic rising in her chest. “I’ve got to get back. Bobby. My father.”
Bill threw his hands up. “Kara, hold up.”
Kara didn’t listen. She bolted for the door but before she got a few steps outside into the corridor that led down to the stairwell, she was blocked by the two FBI agents. They had their mouths up their radios. Bill quickly caught up.
“You can’t go.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“You said yourself, if you return he’ll kill him. We need you to stay out of the picture until Tuesday.”
“But Sam. The phone. Clayton.”
“We’ll deal with it. But I’m gonna need you to stay here,” Bill said.
She shook her head. “That’s my brother.”
Bill took a hold of her. Behind him was Henry, who was also trying to get her to see reason. “Listen to him, Kara.”
Bill continued. “You have my word. We’ll find that phone, and we can get that information off it. In the meantime I’m gonna need your phone.”
“Why? Is keeping me here not good enough?”
He stifled a laugh. “If Clayton called, we’ll need to get in contact with your phone company and get the details of the call.”
“Best of luck with that,” she said. “He’s probably running through a voice over IP using a local library.”
“Not if he was at the house all night.”
She stared back at him then said, “Well, I don’t even have it with me. I was on it when your guys grabbed me. I dropped it along with my keys outside my parents’ home.”
Bill turned to one of his guys and he darted away, obviously to go and check.
“Look, I really need to check on my father.”
“We’ll take care of that. For now you stay put. I’m sure Henry here will keep you company.”
“Great. I get demoted to babysitter,” he said.
“Old man, you retired. This is a step up.” He scanned Kara like a slave trader. “And not a bad one either.” He exited leaving them alone. Henry turned and walked back to his spot on the couch and slumped down. He reached over for a home décor magazine off the table. Pissed off and surprised by how things had turned out, Kara turned and said, “Well you think you can at least tell me where I
am?”
Henry replied, “Port Angeles.”
Chapter 34
More bad news arrived by way of the phone at nine-thirty that morning. Henry answered and nodded, hemmed and hawed a few times, and then hung up. Kara was sitting cross-legged on a table near the window basking in the warmth of the morning. She squinted looking over. He scooped up a set of keys from the table and jerked his head. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Blackmore.”
“They found the phone? That was Bill, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t reply but headed straight for the door.
“Henry.”
She hopped off the table and slipped back into her shoes.
“Look, I don’t want to get you worried but the sooner we can get back the better.”
She frowned. “It’s Bobby, isn’t it?”
“No.”
His reply hung in the air as she waited at the door. “My father?”
Henry drew a breath. “He’s had a heart attack. They have him in the hospital at the moment.”
“Wh-aaat?” she stammered rushing over.
“He’s stabilized, Kara.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know yet but try to remain calm.”
She brushed past him and led the way out onto the bustling street. The day was already in full swing. Store owners were open for business. Pedestrians filled up the sidewalk, and traffic was streaming through the town. For a Sunday it was busy.
That morning as Henry pulled into the hospital she was mulling over questions and blaming herself for an incident that she had no idea about. She’d grilled Henry on the way over but he’d been given very little information on what occurred, all they knew was that her father had been taken to Blackmore General Hospital. Inside, it was moderately busy. The hectic activity that the hospital was known for on Fridays and Saturdays had been replaced by a slower place. She’d only ever seen the place once and that was when she was eleven and had broken her arm. It had a changed a lot since then.
After making an enquiry with the front desk they were told to stay in the waiting area until someone checked with one of the nurses. Kara remained standing, cradling her chin in hand and tapping a finger nervously against her cheek. Five minutes passed before they were given a room number and the all-clear.