by Rob Ashman
She felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She lay in bed thinking about the various plans Lucas and Harper could be hatching. It pained her to admit it but she had a grudging respect for Harper because deep down she knew, if the situation had been reversed, she would have done the same. But a grudging respect is different to liking someone. And she disliked him with a passion.
Moran was looking forward to the day, a novel feeling given what she had been through in the past week. She showered and drank a cup of strong black coffee as she dressed. The effects of a bottle of wine and no food had caused a little collateral damage as she examined her eyes in the mirror. Make-up was required, if she could remember how to apply it.
Moran arrived early and set about her day. She had been reassigned to help a colleague whose job it was to interrogate the flight manifests. His name was Johnno, he was in his late forties and wore a suit which probably fitted him when it was new ten years earlier. Moran had seen him around the office, but he always kept himself very much to himself.
The task was a soul-destroying job of cross-checking lists of people’s names and their destinations against anything which looked like it could be Nassra Shamon. It was her first morning working on it and already she was climbing the walls.
The airlines were cooperative but not proactive, so if you needed something you had to ask. They didn’t think to provide details of connecting flights or transfer schedules. You had to work it out and request it. It was clear to Moran that Johnno was in his element, he loved it. She was beginning to see why co-workers kept their distance.
Mills had stuck his head around the door and waved a good morning at her, obviously pleased she was back at work. She was fully expecting another invite for cold beer and corn chips.
Moran looked up and realised the office was full of people. It was 9.30am.
‘What’s happened to the morning prayers?’ she asked Johnno.
‘Not sure, maybe Mills has been pulled away on something else. He’s fanatical about the morning briefing, so whatever it is must be important.’ He buried his head into the mountain of paper and once again disappeared.
The morning ticked by and by 11.20am Moran was seeing double. The close layout on the VDU and the densely packed printouts were blurring into one. One flight was sounding very much like another and destinations were becoming interchangeable. She had tried to chat with Johnno about what he’d already found out but without success. She even tried to tempt him with coffee but was met with a shake of the head. No words were required.
From what Moran could gather the whole exercise was drawing a blank. There was no record of Shamon entering the country on a flight, though her visa said she had, and there was no record of her leaving the country or taking an internal flight. As far as this piece of the jigsaw was concerned, Shamon miraculously appeared one day in Las Vegas and had not left. Surely the obvious move was to check the car rental and public transport records out of Vegas in the days following the Ramirez killing. An obvious move but one Moran was not going to suggest. Ploughing through flight manifests was just fine.
She was so engrossed in her work that Moran failed to notice Mills standing next to her desk.
‘Do you have a minute?’
‘Sure, I could do with a break.’
‘Let’s go somewhere quiet.’
Moran was on full alert. An invite to talk somewhere quiet was Mills-speak for an invite to after-work drinks. Maybe he was plucking up courage to ask her out on a proper date, with food that didn’t come out of a foil bag. She followed him across the corridor into a small office.
He sat at the desk and offered her the seat opposite.
‘Can you close the door, please?’
‘What’s on your mind?’ Moran asked.
‘Yesterday, after you went home, I took a call from Miriam Took.’
The hairs on the back of Moran’s neck stood to attention.
‘She is an account manager for the Wells Fargo bank,’ he continued.
Moran knew exactly who Miriam Took was.
‘She called because she wanted to confirm that the account details she provided were okay. She said that during your meeting yesterday you were a little confused and she wanted to follow up to ensure everything was in order.’
Moran’s heart was in her mouth.
‘To be sure we had the correct information, she relayed the transactions over the phone. I couldn’t tie up what she was saying with what you reported at the morning briefing. So I asked her to fax me the details.’
Mills slid a sheet of paper in front of her. Moran didn’t need to look at it, she knew what it said.
‘Who or what is Helix Holdings?’
Moran wanted to die.
‘There are three sizeable payments to them around the time Ramirez was killed. And the day after his death the account is closed. You reported there was nothing unusual about the account.’
Moran said nothing. She was incapable of saying anything at all.
‘Come on, Moran, I want to hear what the fuck you think you’re playing at?’
The puppy dog eyes were no more, they were flashing anger.
‘I can’t explain, I just lost it yesterday.’
‘Lost it, lost what? Lost your ability to spot an unusual payment on a bank statement?’
‘You saw how sick I was yesterday, I wasn’t thinking straight.’ She was grasping at straws and sinking fast.
‘Yes, you were sick, yes you may have been muddled in your thinking, but the meeting with the bank was the day before. Are you telling me you were unwell then?’
‘No.’
‘So when you had your meeting with Miriam Took what the hell did you talk about, the fucking shopping channel? Because it sure as hell wasn’t Helix Holdings.’
‘Yes, we talked about it but everything appeared okay.’ She had her head well and truly below water.
‘In what way does that look okay?’ He stabbed a finger onto the sheet of paper in front of her. ‘It sticks out like a cock on a Barbie doll.’
‘I … I … don’t know.’ The words dried up in her mouth.
‘This is serious shit. This is a murder inquiry. You are a detective, trained to look for things which could lead us to identifying individuals involved in crime. And you didn’t think this was worthy of mention? The only conclusion I can make is you wilfully withheld information.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘No, and neither do I.’
He slid another piece of paper across the table.
‘I’m suspending you from duty pending an investigation. You will be contacted in writing when the investigation is complete and you will be given a date to attend a meeting. If you so wish, you can choose to be accompanied by your union rep or a co-worker to support you. It’s all set out in the letter.’
Moran picked up the paper and read it. It was in HR speak and basically said what Mills had told her. He’d rehearsed his lines well – she was screwed.
‘You can pick up your things and I will escort you from the building.’
Moran got to her feet, still holding the letter.
‘You need to surrender your badge and your weapon.’
She unclipped them both from her belt and laid them on the table.
‘I can explain,’ she said in one last-ditch effort.
‘No, Rebecca, I don’t think you can.’
Mills swept past her and held the door open.
She picked up her bag and her coat from the office and Mills walked behind her as she made her way from the building. She felt numb.
He followed her to the main door, turned, and left without another word.
Moran stood outside trying to comprehend what had happened. She was stunned and didn’t move for a full five minutes. Then her head clicked into gear and she ran across the parking lot, she needed to get home.
Forty minutes later her front door clattered open and Moran made straight for the
phone. She then pulled a small suitcase from her wardrobe and filled it with a selection of black clothes and toiletries. She piled other items into her handbag as a car horn blasted outside.
Moran left the house and jumped into the cab waiting at the kerb. The thirty-minute journey seemed to take forever as the traffic continued to build the nearer they got to the Vegas Strip. The cab swung into a drop-off zone and she shoved ten bucks into the driver’s hand. While he was rooting around for change, she was gone.
Moran scanned the board and hurried to the Delta Airlines desk. She needed to catch a flight.
Mills returned to the incident room and dumped a file marked Nassra Shamon on Johnno’s desk.
‘Moran is off the case. Can you deal with this?’
‘Yes, sure, boss,’ Johnno replied looking up. It was his standard response to anything a senior person asked him, but it didn’t mean he would do it. It was a response designed to ensure they would leave him alone.
Mills scuttled away to create confusion elsewhere. Johnno picked up the file and dumped it on top of the mound of computer printouts. Bank details were not as much fun as flight schedules.
22
For the second time in two days Jameson stood in the centre of Cabrillo Bridge. He was doing his tourist act of admiring the high-rise view of downtown when he clocked Mechanic walking up the pedestrian way.
She stopped next to him, pulled out a camera and started taking snaps.
‘What the hell happened, Jess?’ Jameson said looking straight ahead.
Mechanic always felt weird when someone used her real name. She had spent so much of her adult life living with a false identity, it made it sound as though they were referring to someone else.
‘She saw me and panicked and put the truck through the storefront. It got messy.’
‘And the target?’
‘The target was eliminated but I had to take out the shop worker as well.’
‘That is messy.’
‘Yeah, it sure is.’
‘Where did you take her out?’
‘Inside the store.’
‘CCTV?’
‘I disabled the one outside as per the plan but there were two cameras inside so I took the recorder.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘Busted up and deposited in six separate dumpsters. I burned the tape.’
‘Good.’
‘Sorry, it was a right cluster fuck.’
‘Yes, but it sounds like you recovered the situation. And from what you’ve said, the cops will think it’s a ram-raid robbery gone wrong, which is fine for us. It makes it look less like an execution.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so. I feel like shit. I hate it when things screw up.’
‘There are times when the best laid plans don’t survive first contact and we have to react accordingly. It’s the outcome that’s important not how we got there.’
‘I know, but this was a straightforward in-and-out job. The only collateral damage was supposed to be her driver’s side window and a CCTV camera, not a whole fucking store, a truck and another dead body.’
‘You dealt with the situation and made it work. Don’t be hard on yourself. The client got the result he wanted, he’s not going to care about the other stuff.’
‘Thanks, I suppose I just needed to hear it.’
‘Go look at your bank balance, that will make you feel better.’
Mechanic took the camera from her face and flashed him a sideways smile. Jameson flashed one back.
‘How you doing?’ Mechanic asked.
‘I’m mending slowly. I’ll be back in work tomorrow.’
‘I was thinking another meeting would be good.’
Jameson’s bruised cock twitched into life.
‘You say when and I’ll be there. But it’s probably better if it’s not for the next week or so.’
They allowed the moment to pass, both pretending to look at the skyline in the distance, each one picturing their favourite scene from the other night.
Mechanic broke the silence.
‘Any more work in the pipeline?’
‘We have one but it’s too early to tell.’
‘I need to disappear for a while. I’ll be gone a few days.’
‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Not sure. I need you to do something.’
‘What is it?’
‘I want you to trace Lieutenant Commander Stewart Sells. I’ve lost touch and I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. If it’s the latter, I want to know where he is, and if it’s the former I want to know where he’s buried.’
‘Who is he?’
‘My father.’
Moran got off the courtesy bus and made her way up the steps to the plane. The stewardess took her ticket stub and pointed out the correct aisle for her to find her seat. This was a flight of desperation, but it was her only remaining option if she wanted to stay a free woman. She took off forty-five minutes later.
Moran ate the in-flight food and listened to the piped music through cheap plastic headphones. She also downed three small bottles of wine, which had the desired effect. By the time the plane touched down in Atlanta she had been asleep for at least two hours.
The turnaround was mercifully short. After a quick bite to eat she was back in her seat on a different plane, ready to make the one hour and seven minute flight to Tallahassee.
The plane landed on time. In the arrivals hall she found the passenger information desk and used the house phones to call various hotels. Each hotel was advertised with a sunny picture and a speed dial button to contact them. On her third attempt she booked a room at the Days Inn for one night. The courtesy car picked her up outside and forty minutes later she was in bed. It was quarter to one in the morning.
She stared at the digits on the clock and reflected on a catastrophic day. She had gone from feeling good about life to lying in a strange bed in a different state and facing a disciplinary charge, all in the space of eighteen hours. Well, twenty-one hours if you count the time difference. And on that thought, exhausted, she went to sleep.
Moran had woken to a beautiful spring morning. After a shower and coffee she’d settled her bill with cash, hailed a cab and headed into the city. She was sitting at a bus stop, holding another coffee and looking at the front of the public records office. It was closed and wasn’t due to open for another ten minutes. The morning commuters were also waiting at the stop, which provided her with cover.
Moran thought about the chain of events which must have happened after she left the office. Mills would have touched base with HR to inform them of her suspension and that she had been escorted from the premises. He would have reassigned her work to another person in the team, someone who already had the workload of two people. Even if Mills made it a top priority they wouldn’t have analysed the bank records before today. So, given the time difference, she had three hours before whoever had the file would start making calls. That was ample time.
Moran had been on an early morning shopping trip and hated the results. She was dressed in a bright yellow puffer jacket, a bright red be any hat, which covered her head and most of her face, and thick-rimmed glasses. She hated the jacket, but it was the only item of clothing she could find at 8am which was at the other end of the colour spectrum to what she normally wore.
Through the frosted plate glass she saw the blurred outline of a figure unlocking the large doors. The public records office was open for business. Moran pulled her case along behind her and crossed the road. She pushed open the door and slipped inside. The building had the distinctive smell of polish and boredom. She approached the front desk.
‘I’m looking for a company – it’s called Herald Holdings.’ Moran figured giving the real name was not a smart move and the name Herald would at least put her in the right area alphabetically.
‘That’s on the fourth floor. Come out of the elevator and turn right.’
Moran thanked the woman.
On the fourth floor she ente
red a huge hall crammed with shelves, each one stacked with files and ledgers. There were rows along both sides and two more down the centre. She scanned the interior looking for surveillance cameras. There was CCTV in reception and outside the elevators but she could see none in the hall. She made her way down the centre aisle looking for H.
She walked up and down reading off the company names. This was going to be more challenging than she expected.
A young guy with glasses hurried past.
‘Are you alright, ma’am. Can I help?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ The guy went to walk on. ‘On second thoughts, could you show me where to find Herald?’
The young man was delighted to be of service. Normally customers gave him the brush-off, so an opportunity to show off his encyclopaedic knowledge was rare.
‘Of course, ma’am, it’s down here.’ He weaved his way through the maze and stopped against a wall of files. ‘Which one were you looking for?’
‘It’s fine thanks, I can take it from here.’
‘Okay, give me a shout if you need more help.’ He walked away triumphant.
Moran waited until he had gone, pulled on a pair of gloves and ran her finger across the spines of the folders.
‘Hartwell, Haskins, Haven.’ She read the names under her breath as she shuffled down the aisle.
She heard someone enter the hall. She couldn’t see who it was but she was no longer the only visitor.
‘Hawshore, Healing, Helix. Got it. Helix Holdings.’
She could hear the quiet tones of a conversation. There was more than one new visitor.
Moran pulled the Helix Holdings folder from the stack and laid it on the floor. She knelt down, flipped it open and read through the documents looking for anything that said Sheldon Chemicals or Gerry Vickers.
The voices were getting closer. She stopped what she was doing and stood up. She eased her fingers between two large files and prized them apart, peering between them. A tall man in a grey suit was walking in her direction, accompanied by a uniformed police officer.