Alex looked down at the dead man and the wrinkled, soggy, blue skin. There was something about this case that was nagging him. He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that he was missing something.
“Just do the autopsy,” Alex said. “And tell me whatever you find as soon as you can.”
Hills muttered to himself, and the photographer’s flash went off as the team investigated the crime scene.
“Come on,” Alex said. “There is nothing we can do here for now. We have bigger fish to fry.”
“Like who?” Evans asked, jogging to keep up with him.
“Like Hans Kane,” Alex said. “The billionaire who we believe is giving financial support to the terrorist groups in Russia. We just found one of their men murdered in Hans’s house. He says he has nothing to do with it, but I bet my bottom dollar he did it.”
“What about the dead body?” Evans asked. “I mean, shouldn’t we do some interviews? Maybe some worker knows something? We should look at the crime scene and work on ways to identify –”
“Look here, kiddo,” Alex said, leaning toward him. “Do you know why I got where I am today? I got here because I know when to go after what. Now, that case over there – we can do nothing about it, eh? Not until Hills does the autopsy and the forensic team finishes cleaning the area. Until then, this is a waste of time. Now, Hans, on the other hand, is ready. We have the files and the information we need to try our best to connect him and the dead man. Hey, you can stay here doing whatever you want, or you can come with me and catch one of the most wanted men by the FBI.”
Evans gave a short nod, and Alex turned around, marching toward the car.
“Good,” he said. “You do as I say, and you and I will get along splendidly.”
“I wondered why no one wanted to work with you,” Evans said, sitting down on the driver’s side. “You were the great Alex Payne. It would be anyone’s dream to work with you. You are a genius – one of the best FBI has ever had. It’s why you get away from so much crap. So, when I found out that every partner assigned to you just leaves after a few months, I wondered why.”
“Do you have your answer?” Alex asked.
“You are a jerk,” Evans said. “You don’t care about anyone else but yourself. You treat your partners like crap, and all you want them to do is be your lap dog. You don’t care about their opinions or their input.”
“You figured out what others take months to realize,” Alex said. “What you gonna do about it?”
“You may be a jerk,” Evans said. “But you have a lot to teach me. And I don’t think I am going anywhere.”
A chuckle escaped Alex. He reminded him of her with her blunt manner and unbreakable spirit.
“So, Evans,” Alex said. “Are you really as good of a detective as Crow said you are? Tell me, what do you think about the dead body?”
“You mean did I notice the tattoo?” Evans said. “I saw it on the wrist, distorted but visible.”
Alex smiled and didn’t reply.
“It was a gang sign, wasn’t it?” Evans said softly. “You think this man was murdered.”
“You are sharp,” Alex said. “And I like that. But the question is, who killed him, Evans? I have a feeling this is going to be very interesting.”
Four
The Russian War
“Come on now,” Alex said, leaning across the table. “Are you really telling me that you didn’t see anything? You were seen, you know – holding that gun. I have a witness willing to testify that they saw you dumping the body and burying it. Are you sure you want to continue denying these allegations?”
“Look, man,” the guy in front of him said. “I had nothing to do with this. I am telling you I don’t even know this man.”
“Hans hired you to kill him, didn’t he?” Alex said. “Tell me, what did he do to upset Hans so much? Maybe he brought some message that Hans didn’t like? Maybe the Russians decided that the deal was off, or maybe they decided they wanted more money? Either way, Hans had you kill him and dump him off somewhere – but you thought burying him on the grounds of Hans’s mansion would be a good idea.”
“Man, you must think I am stupid, yea?” the guy said, laughing. “Why the hell would I dump him on Hans’s grounds. You must be mental. I didn’t kill that man.”
“What you are saying makes a lot of sense, you know,” Alex said with a smile. He stood up, marching around the interrogation room as the silence in the room reigned on. “I guess I didn’t think of that. Why would you dump the body in Hans’s estate when you know it would trace back to him? After all, Hans has never been caught before, has he? He’s never been implicated in any crime, only suspected – and what good is that without proof, eh? I mean, his men would know better than to dump a body where it would be easily found and then somehow linked to Hans, now wouldn’t they? Which makes me wonder, why did you do it?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” the guy said, laughing, but this time Alex could sense the nervousness behind it.
“Who paid you,” Alex said slowly, “to frame and set up Hans for the crime?”
“If someone wanted to frame Hans, they wouldn’t use some low-life Russian,” the guy said. “You would need someone with more smarts.”
“You are good,” Alex said appreciatively. “Really good. Have you thought of a career as a detective? You are making a lot of sense right now. I am truly impressed, you know – with such indisputable logic. If I were framing Hans, I would make sure that there was enough evidence to tie him to the case that even he wouldn’t be able to get out of it with all his connections and money. I mean, dumping the body on his estate serves no purpose unless it’s not the police you are setting this up for.”
“Look, man,” he said. “I already said all I wanted to say. I already told you everything. I didn’t kill that man. Hans has nothing to do with it. Now, how much longer are you going to keep me here?”
“You weren’t framing Hans so the police would arrest him?” Alex continued without batting an eye. “You were setting him up for the Russians, weren’t you? The Russians sent one of their men to him, and that man ends up dead. Not only does he end up dead, but he also ends up dead at Hans’s estate. Now, that is enough evidence to convince the Russians that Hans murdered their man. And that is enough for them to end their dealings with him – which means they will have to find someone else in this country to work with. Now, which one of Hans’s many enemies hired you to do this?”
The guy smiled a crooked smile and looked away.
Alex walked over to him, leaning down, resting his hands on the table, and looking at the man eye to eye.
“Who hired you to kill him?” Alex whispered. “Look, I know you did it. I have more than enough evidence to prove it. If this goes to court, the prosecutor is going to have a field day with the evidence I have collected. I have all your bank transactions. A huge sum of money was transferred into your account just a day after the murder, transferred through some Swiss bank account that can’t be traced. We also found the gun that you used to murder him. The gun you thought you had disposed of. The gardener saw you throwing it away, and he was instantly suspicious. He never really liked you – you know. He took it out and kept it carefully aside. He was going to blackmail you with it, but I convinced him to part with it. Now, I know what you are thinking. I wiped the gun. They can’t find any link to me. Well, let me ask you this. You wiped the gun, but did you wipe the magazine you put into it?”
The face in front of him paled, and Alex gave a satisfied smirk.
“We have your prints on the magazine of the gun,” Alex said softly. “We have evidence showing the huge sum of money you received after that murder had happened. We have a witness who saw you dumping the body. Now, that is enough for any prosecutor to prove your guilt, but you have no chance of escaping with the new state attorney. He is ruthless, as I am sure you have heard. Now, the way I see it – I have bigger fish to fry, like whoever hired you to do this. I know you are
just a pawn in all this. You didn’t plan this. You didn’t want to do this. But you have a family to feed, so you did it. And I am sure the jury will see it that way too and give you a lighter sentence. Of course, you need to show them you are repentant. You are sorry for what you did – and I am sure they will see it all your way. The choice is yours.”
Alex knew he had his man. He knew that whoever was trying to strike a deal with the Russians would be stopped before they could even start anything. The man in front of him was sweating, and Alex could almost see his thought process. The man opened his mouth, and Alex knew he was about to get his confession.
And then, the door burst open.
“Agent Payne,” Evans said, panting. “You need to hear this.”
“What is it?” Alex said, cursing the young boy who had come in at the wrong time.
“It’s the drowned body we found,” Evans said. “The reports are here. And believe me, you want to hear this.”
Five
The Poor Soul
“Dr. Hills just sent us all the finalized reports of the autopsy,” Evans said as the two of them marched down the corridor to the conference room. “He hurried it along for your sake; we are still waiting on the rest of the forensic report. But the autopsy –.”
“What did he find?” Alex asked, taking out a cigarette and taking a drag of it.
“A young male, John Doe, estimated age 22, height 170 cm, was found dead on the docks washed up from the sea,” Evans said. “The coroner believes he was in the water at least a whole week before getting washed up. The estimated time of death is eight days ago, but then again, we aren’t sure about this because of how long the body has been at sea. The cause of death was massive internal bleeding into the abdominal cavity and not drowning, as we thought.”
“Massive internal bleeding?” Alex asked, his mind already whirring as he stored every bit of the information.
“I know,” Evans said. “We saw no signs of any abuse, or injury, or even blunt force trauma. But it seems that the body was tortured repeatedly, after which the victim was healed using some accelerated growth serums and then tortured again. Dr. Hills found chemicals in the blood that he couldn’t identify, and he found evidence of electrical torture as well. He was tortured for God knows how long, where he was abused, and then healed, and then abused again. Eventually, he developed internal bleeding that the assailants failed to control, and he died because of it. His body was then probably dumped at sea, they used weights to help his body sink, but it seems the recent high tides and stormy conditions lead the body to be washed ashore.”
“This isn’t just any murder,” Alex said, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. “He was tortured, probably for information. Not only that, the technique that was used is uncommon. In fact, it is almost unheard of.”
“We also have a picture of the tattoo,” Evans said. “It’s hard to make it out properly because of the swollen skin, but I think we can both agree that this is some gang tattoo.”
“We have quite a few local gangs here,” Alex said. “And I was sure this would be linked to them. But now –.”
“Some small local gang didn’t do this,” Evans said. “I am not even sure a human did this. This is barbaric.”
“You are right,” Alex said. “Put the word out. Get the different gang members in for interrogation. Arrest them, get them in here.”
“Wait, you just said I was right –,” Evans protested.
“These people know things,” Alex said. “They might not know much, but situations like these mean that they have heard something. Maybe some rumor or some whisper in the night, but they know. They always know. Get them in here, scare the crap out of them, make them think you are pinning the murder of this man on them, and they will squeal like a baby. Contact the local police, have them station officers, and arrest any gang member that they see doing anything shady. We just need an excuse to get them in, that’s all. Once they are all scared enough, they will tell us whatever they heard or know. It won’t be much, but it might guide us in the right direction.”
“I will talk to the police,” Evans said.
“And another thing,’ Alex said softly. “We need to find a way to identify this man. Run his fingerprints through the system again and put some feelers out. If we can contact his family somehow, or anyone who knew him, maybe we can find out what mess he had gotten himself into.”
“Alright,” Evans said. “Have you ever seen anything like this? Dr. Hills said that the chemicals he found in the person’s body would cause the synapse and the pain receptors to over-activate and lead to severe, excruciating pain. He said that the chemicals they found would then heal him so that they could torture him again. I mean – I thought these kinds of things only happened in books.”
“I have heard about something like that,” Alex said. “A very long time ago. And I have a very bad feeling that this is just the start of something very twisted and dark.”
Alex had always been an intuitive man and had always relied on his gut. Right now, his gut was screaming at him that there was more to this case than met the eye. He needed to solve this case, and he needed to do it as soon as possible.
“Go back to the man I was interrogating,” Alex said. “Get his statement. He might lawyer up, in which case we can’t do anything about it right now.”
“What are you going to do?” Evans asked softly.
“Me?” Alex asked. “I am going to do some thinking. I will report to Crow about our findings. Let me know what you find.”
With that, Alex marched out of the conference room, his mind churning and his steps determined. As Sherlock Holmes would say, ‘the game is afoot,’ and Alex couldn’t deny it – he loved the thrill of the chase.
Six
A Grim Past
“– and get Flitch onto the case –,” Crow was saying. “I need you to –.”
Alex burst into his office, marching toward the table and planting his butt on one of the chairs. Crow trailed off, casting a look toward Alex, and then put his phone down after saying, “I will call you later.”
He turned to look at Alex, intertwining his fingers and a staid expression on his face.
“Well?” Crow asked. “What is it?”
“Why did you assign me to the John Doe case?” Alex asked.
“What case?” Crow said.
“You know, the drowned body that washed up on the docks?” Alex said. “Why would you assign it to me? You know I have more than enough on my plate right now. I am going after a really big fish – a whale – Hans and the Russians. So why would you assign me a simple drowning?”
“But it wasn’t a simple drowning now, was it?” Crow said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Alex said. “And I am sure you already know what it was. You probably saw the reports before I did. But the point is, I know it. You know it. But I found out about this – Now. And yet, somehow, you knew before everyone else that this wasn’t a simple murder, that this wasn’t some poor sap who drowned in an accident or some poor guy who killed himself. You knew that this was something highly suspicious and possibly dangerous. You know something you are not telling me. That is why you assigned me to this case, isn’t it?”
Crow looked at Alex for a long minute before cracking a smile and leaning back into his chair.
“You never fail to impress me,” Crow said.
Alex gave a short nod, looking away for a minute, and then he stood up. He pulled down the blinds of all the windows and promptly returned to his seat.
“I need a drink,” he said.
“I don’t have anything,” Crow said.
“Maybe you should check the hidden cabinet behind that painting on your wall,” Alex said. “I will have a scotch.”
“You aren’t supposed to drink on duty,” Crow said softly.
“No?” Alex said, amused. “Am I supposed to tell the public about the possible Russian threat looming over our heads? Am I supposed to tell them that Director Crow is keeping in
telligence reports suppressed? Intelligence reports that might be hinting at a development that could change the world as we know it?”
Crow glared at Alex for a minute and then got off his chair, making his way to the painting.
“So, you have figured it out,” Crow said, entering the password into his secret safe.
“I would still like you to explain it to me,” Alex said. “I need to hear it from you.”
“I see,” Crow said, pouring Alex a scotch and passing the glass to him. “Well then, I have received reports of an underground organization that has been rather active these past few days. We don’t know anything about the organization. We don’t know who leads it, who the members are, or even what they are called. We don’t know what their mission is or even know their plans. All we know is that they are up to no good. We had one of our men infiltrate the organizations – a task that was herculean believe me – but he was killed before he could report anything to us. Since we know nothing about the people, we don’t know anything about the organization itself.”
“The man that we found,” Alex said. “It was him?”
“It was our agent,” Crow said. “Undercover on a mission to infiltrate the organization and report to us about it. As you know, he was found dead.”
“That’s why his fingerprints weren’t in the system,” Alex said. “How did he get in if he didn’t know anything about the organization?”
“There was a hiring a few weeks ago,” Crow said. “It was a secret, passed from one person to another. All the men in the slums, all the gang members, all the criminals; they all heard it. An organization was hiring people very discreetly. In fact, even though we knew about this, we still had a hard time getting the man a meeting. He met a man who asked him a bunch of questions and told him to leave. We have tried to identify the man based on the information the agent gave us, but we couldn’t get far. Then, two days after the meeting, he got a visit from the organization members telling him he had been selected and had five minutes to pack. Our agent managed to leave us a message informing us of what happened. That was the last communication we had with him. And now, he is dead.”
Payne: a suspenseful FBI crime thriller (Alex Payne Series Book 1) Page 2