“Ralph,” Jake said with surprise.
“She knew we’ll find that through Burt and go after him. And, maybe he was the only one who knew Natalie was behind it,” Kiara said.
“She murdered him to clean all the traces,” Jake said.
“Not a murder. He did commit suicide but against his wish. All evidences were against him. He was the one who made calls to Brendon. He was the one who paid the killers of Brendon. Since she was wrapping up her business, she did not need Ralph or Brendon anymore.”
Rebecca looked at Kiara with surprise. Kiara knew what she was feeling.
“You may blame the loss of the ring as the reason why Brendon was killed, but that was just a cover-up. She was going to remove her traces anyhow. She made everyone in this chain do what she wanted from them, including us. Burt, Ralph, and Brendon were the three biggest pieces of the puzzle. She gave a last job to everyone; Brendon to get the ring and Ralph to get rid of Brendon. Burt’s job was to lead us to Ralph. Everyone felt it was over, but it was just a trap. And, you know what our last job was for her?”
With that, she looked at Jake.
“I met her in the morning. I gave the ring back to her,” he said sheepishly.
Rebecca did not know how to react. She covered her face in her palms.
“We need to catch her before she leaves the country,” Kiara said hurriedly.
“Maybe Robert got hold of her?” Jake said.
“She’s too smart to be caught like that.”
“Maybe she went to the airport. We should go there,” Jake suggested.
“We’re talking about one of the busiest airports in the world and we don’t even know where she’s going.”
“I know where she’s going. She mentioned that she was consolidating her business in Shanghai. She can reduce her manufacturing costs by half and—” Jake was cut short by a pat on the shoulder by Kiara.
“She’s indeed too smart for all of us,” Kiara said. “It’s not the business. It’s the antiques. China doesn’t have an extradition treaty with us. Once she lands there, we can’t do anything.”
“Let’s go,” Jake said. Kiara nodded and turned around.
“The paintings,” Rebecca said softly. “That was my last job.”
“What?” Kiara turned towards her.
“The chest was empty because she ordered all my paintings. It was my last job. She knew of my existence. She left me alive to mislead the investigation. She knew I will lie to the police to save myself. However, every word that I said made the suspicion stronger.”
Jake approached her. “She played with everyone’s mind. You could not have done anything to save Brendon.”
“I lost everything to become someone that I never was,” Rebecca said as tears rolled down her cheek.
“Don’t worry, she’ll get the punishment she deserves,” Kiara interrupted and looked at Jake. “Let’s go.”
Jake looked one last time at Rebecca and followed Kiara, who was almost running by now. They had finally found out the mastermind, but the time was short. They had to inform Robert and George immediately. Once Natalie was out of the country, they were going to be mere spectators.
Chapter 12
George walked frantically across the room while Robert had buried his head in his palms. He had come empty-handed from Radisson. Natalie’s name was not even registered with them.
Both could not believe how they had been fooled in believing something to be their biggest achievement while it was the stupidest thing they had ever done.
“How much time will it take?” Kiara asked while shaking her head in disbelief.
“I’ve used all my contacts. They’re screening all the flights to China for the passenger list,” George said while scratching his forehead that was already wet with cold sweat.
“I hope we nab her this time,” Robert said while getting up. “Like a fool, we sent her jewelry back. She played us like a puppet. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her once I see her.”
Jake looked at him and gave a faint smile. “Let’s hope she is still in New York first.”
Kiara ignored all of this. She was still thinking about Natalie’s strategy the whole time. She had planned each of her steps meticulously. Kiara was sure that she would have anticipated that they were going to check the flights. Her fear became reality as one of the sergeants brought the list of passengers for the day.
As they screened the list page by page, their tension increased. This time George covered his face in his palms. “She fooled us again.”
Robert looked at the list one more time and threw it on the table in frustration. “She is not on any of the flights. She knew we were going to check this.”
“You had the list of people who checked out today from Radisson?” Jake asked Robert while he was trying to find anything in the list.
“What?” Robert said. He was still overwhelmed by not finding her name in the passenger list.
“She’s not that stupid to tell us her real name. Get me that list,” Jake said angrily.
Robert’s face lit up as he understood what Jake meant. He rushed out of George’s office, almost hitting against the glass door.
Kiara approached Jake. “You’re looking for common names?”
“I hope there’s only one,” Jake replied as Robert came inside. He was panting heavily. Jake took the sheet from him and scanned it as fast as he could. He stopped for a moment and took the airline booking record in his hand. He almost jumped in joy as he found a common name.
“She booked it under the name of Jennifer Turner.”
“Finally!” George yelled.
“Which flight?” Kiara asked. As Jake looked at the flight schedule, his enthusiasm evaporated.
“Two o’clock flight,” he said with despair.
“She is already out of our jurisdiction,” Robert said in a frail voice. “We can’t do anything now.”
“Show me.” Kiara was not willing to give up so soon. “This flight has a stopover at London.”
With that, she looked at the wall clock. “We have two hours before she reaches London.”
George looked at her. “I can’t do anything in this. This is beyond my power.”
“I know a guy who can,” Jake said and looked at Kiara, who nodded in return.
“Go away,” Carlson said as soon as he opened the door.
“Sir, we have company,” Jake said before Carlson could have slammed the door on them.
He looked at the pale faces of George and Robert. “What do they want now?”
“They want to save their asses and they need your help with that,” Jake said while looking at Robert who squirmed a bit.
“What have you done now?” Carlson asked as he got aside.
“It’s not us this time,” Kiara replied.
“Tell me, but don’t make much noise. The kids are sleeping.” Carlson gestured towards the bedroom.
Kiara nodded and told him everything. As she explained, Carlson’s face tensed. He took a deep breath. “Well, this doesn’t seem to be a short-term plan of hers. She has taken years to plan this out. A person that patient seldom makes any mistake. You have to be hundred percent sure about this.”
Jake looked at him. “Every criminal leaves footprint, sir. I am damn sure it’s her in that flight.”
“What do you think?” Carlson turned towards Kiara, who nodded reluctantly. “You’re not that sure?”
“You’re right. She planned every step and there was no chance that we could have anticipated any of them. What are the chances that this is not planned by her?”
“You feel that she took a name from the flight booking list and then booked the hotel room under that name?” Carlson asked.
“I don’t know how she did it. But she’s too smart to give us the name of her destination. She may have done that purposefully. She made everything look so complex that we would feel we have decoded something really tough. The more difficult the solution, the easier it is to acce
pt as one’s success.”
“Or maybe she played so much with our minds that now we have the solution, we’re thinking that it can’t be true because she can’t make a mistake,” Jake said with a hint of anger.
“You have to decide in the next two minutes if you want my help or not.”
“It’s our only bet,” George said and looked at both of them.
Jake held Kiara’s arm and took her to the corner of the room.
“What’s happening?” Jake asked.
“She couldn’t possibly have changed her name,” Kiara said thoughtfully.
“What? You still believe her real name to be Natalie?” he asked firmly.
“She filed a complaint against you. She was not a local. There was a great chance that police could have checked her background too. She would not have taken such a risk,” Kiara stressed.
“Valid point. But most of the time the background of the complainant is not checked. So, she may have taken that risk,” Jake responded.
“No, she wouldn’t do that.” Kiara was adamant.
“OK. If we don’t take Carlson’s help, what is our next plan?” Jake asked the pertinent question.
“I don’t know,” Kiara said softly.
“You think about it while we make arrangements to get her out of that flight,” Jake said and walked towards Carlson.
After a minute or so of contemplation, Carlson got up. “I am going to ask a huge favor from the government. They’re not going to give this for free. I will be damned if this backfires.”
“This is our last chance, sir,” Jake tried to assure him for one last time. “We need to take this risk.”
“OK, I’ll be in the other room. Give me five minutes and please don’t make noise—the kids are sleeping.”
The three of them nodded in unison.
Jake looked at Kiara who was still standing at the corner of the room. He walked to her.
“I know what you are feeling. But, every criminal makes a mistake,” Jake said and patted on her shoulder. “Let’s wait for an hour or so. Everything will be clear.”
Kiara looked at him and nodded. “I hope you are right.”
Carlson came out after five minutes. “They’re checking for the flight. In the next forty minutes or so, the situation will be clear. There is one issue though.”
“What issue?” George asked.
“We don’t have a picture of her. We could have easily identified her from the airport camera footage otherwise and saved ourselves the trouble. Now when they get this Jennifer out of the flight in London and she turns out to be someone else, we’ll be in trouble. She will sue the airlines, who will go after the authorities who made the call, and they’ll in turn come after me.”
“Well, she had planned everything carefully. No one in that room except Jake met her in person. So hiding how she looks was also a part of her strategy,” George said ruefully, knowing what a criminal they had encountered.
“Well, you have to admire the guts of this lady. I would also like to see her once we nab her,” Carlson said.
Kiara looked at both of them thinking how they had missed the point that she was still as far from them as she was an hour back. However, a part of her was praying that her hunch was wrong and it was her in that flight.
On the other hand, their words had a different impact on Jake. He was cursing himself for becoming a puppet at Natalie’s hand. He met her so many times but never could find anything that would have suggested that she was a criminal. In fact, she led him to give the ring back to her.
As the time went by, the tension in the room started to build. Robert was the one affected worst by all this commotion. The biggest case of his life was also the biggest mistake of his entire career, a career that was spent in chasing state criminals. It was the first time that he had met someone who had not only challenged the state and federal agencies but had also given a clue about her whereabouts, as if mocking their capabilities as a law enforcer.
Suddenly, Carlson’s phone vibrated. He looked at the phone and then towards them. “That’s them,” he said and left for the other room.
Both Robert and Jake got so nervous that they started walking across the room. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife.
Carlson came out as fast as he had gone inside. All of them looked at him with surprise.
He nodded his head and showed his phone to them. “They didn’t even have to ask her anything,” he said while the screen showed them a picture of an Asian- American woman.
Jake fell down on the couch. “She not only used someone else’s identity, she made sure their ages also matched. That was the only clue that we had based on the ticket details.”
“She had us fooled. The sixty years of experience that all of us have together has gone down the drain,” George said in disbelief.
Jake looked at Kiara. “You must be relieved now that your calculations have come right?”
“Not now,” Carlson almost yelled before realizing his kids were in the other room.
Kiara ignored all of this and moved closer to them.
“We are missing a point,” she said while alternating her gaze between them.
Jake looked at Carlson, who in turn gave Kiara a nod.
“Why did she go to such lengths?”
“Are you asking, or you want to tell something?” Carlson knew she had some theory that she was dying to tell.
“No. I mean, if she was not in that flight, why would she tell Jake about her China plan and also make sure that she had checked in the hotel with the same name as one of the passengers in the flight?” Kiara again looked at them. George and Robert were not able to understand what was happening; neither did they want to know. By now they knew these things were beyond their comprehension. The only thing that they wanted was to get out of this situation.
Carlson’s mind on the other hand had started running after what Kiara had said. “So, she knew beforehand that we were going to find out who she was by today. Once we had come to know about that, we would have put a search alert for her, especially at the airport. She slipped the name of her destination, so that we’ll concentrate only on that and if we know exactly where she was headed to, we will never look for her in other places. And we exactly followed her plan.”
“Not only that. Since we knew she was going to China, we didn’t even send a team to check for her at the airport. We simply checked the flight details and thought that she was smart enough to leave before we could find her.”
Jake understood what Kiara meant. “So, you feel she went someplace else?”
“That’s a possibility. We can’t catch her now, but we can at least find out where she went,” Kiara said and looked at him.
“It will take a whole night for me to go through the airport camera footage.” Jake knew what Kiara was implying but knew it was a lot of work.
“I don’t think so. Just start from one hour after you left her at the hotel. I suppose she must have left in a flight earlier than the one we checked. So you need to see the footage for four to five hours.”
“I think she has a valid point.” It was one of those rare occasions when Carlson agreed with Kiara.
“Let’s go then.” Jake shook his head and got up.
“I can’t come with you,” Kiara said, making heads turn.
“What?” Jake said in surprise.
“I need to do some thinking.”
“What thinking?” Jake said in exasperation.
“She can’t accept defeat. Let her go home and sulk alone,” Carlson said and looked at George. “Robert can accompany him, right?”
“Sure,” George gave his consent.
Jake looked at Robert and then angrily towards Kiara. Not only had she abandoned him, he had to endure Robert’s company too.
He walked towards the door and as he was about to open it, he turned around and looked at Robert, who was still sitting. He came running towards Jake while looking down sheepishly.
As Robe
rt was about to start the car, he heard a knock on his window.
“Can you drop me off some place from where I can get a cab home?” Kiara asked as he rolled down the window. Robert looked at Jake, who threw his hands in the air, suggesting that it was Robert’s call.
“Yeah, get inside,” Robert said. Kiara got into the backseat and looked at Jake, who was too pissed to acknowledge her presence.
There was no talking the whole time. Robert glanced at them a couple of times, but both kept staring at the road. After ten minutes or so, they entered the city .
“You can take a cab from there,” he said while looking at her through the rearview mirror.
As Kiara got off and they were about to leave, she knocked at Jake’s window. He opened it reluctantly but did not make an eye contact.
“Can we talk for a minute?” she urged.
“There is nothing to talk about,” Jake said while staring at the road.
“Please,” Kiara almost pleaded.
Jake gave a loud grunt and got down. “What is it?”
“You were right: every criminal makes a mistake,” she said.
“What?”
“She planned everything and we fell for it, but there were things that were not in her control,” she said, raising further doubts in Jake’s mind.
“Like what?” he was still not in a mood to forgive her, but at least now he had begun to respond.
“She planned all the thefts and the ring was the last piece of that. She was supposed to end her operations after that and leave the country. In an ideal scenario, she would have stolen everything she had wished and nobody would have filed any complaint. She could have collected everything, eliminated Brendon and Ralph, got Rebecca charged with stealing her jewelry, and then left the country anonymously. No one would have ever come to know about her existence. But …”
“But, we disrupted her plan,” Jake said with astonishment. “First the idols in the car crash and then the ring.”
“Right. A person who’s been planning everything for years will be agitated by a simple disruption, and she would have also,” Kiara thought aloud. “And, she must have made a mistake. We need to find that mistake and to find that, I have to think through everything that we know about her.”
Mystery: Double Cross - The Davenport Mysteries (Suspense novel series of adventure mystery books and Crime mystery thrillers) Page 17