Full Disclosure

  Paul saved the conference video with Ann to his personal files, then played it back. He pressed pause when she turned toward the screen with a smile. He hit the print button. A photo of her scanned to the image printer. It was raining there, for her hair was curling and damp around her face. She was dressed tonight as she had been when she came through Chicago, a comfortable shirt and jeans, with a jacket covering her side arm. She had expressive eyes, that was what he had noticed that first day when she sat in his office and told him the story. He paused the video again as she spoke of the case that had sent her to Nebraska. Those pretty eyes were blue and, tonight, sad. The murder of a young girl wasn’t going to easily be put away, even when it was solved. He’d heard it in her voice, the weight of it, and could see it in her face, the pain of it. It bothered him in a way that he couldn’t explain, that she was in a hotel room tonight with a murder book and alone. “She could use your help, God. To find the truth and clear the innocent, to name the guilty, but more, to just get through this.”

  He played the video through again, then closed down his work and left the home office to turn in for the night.

  He was still mulling over the call when he stopped, struck by a thought. Ann hadn’t really been alone in that motel room. If the books she wrote were any indication of what her relationship with God was like, she knew God intimately. She hadn’t been alone. And quick behind it came another truth. God knew her. The inside Ann where she thought about people and books and pieced together murder cases. God knew Ann like no one else did. Paul wondered what it would be like to know her that well. What he knew so far interested him, and it looked like it barely skimmed the surface.

  7

  Paul could feel the hooks and jabs he landed on the heavy bag rippling back into his body rather than forcing Sam to lean into the bag to hold it steady. Years ago it would be Sam with his eyes narrowed and sweating, trying to take the assault. Now Sam was practically taking a nap on the other side of the bag. Paul attacked it until his blood was pounding and his breath coming in gasps. He was getting old, and the case was getting cold. He could feel the lady shooter case slipping back into a block of ice and couldn’t figure out a way to heat it up again. She was “Miss L.S.” and still as much a vapor as before.

  The lady shooter was a careful planner. She tailed her quarry to decide where to make the kill. Maybe there was a witness out there. Maybe someone who had hired her, and knew she was out there, had seen her trailing her victim as she planned the murder. Maybe someone remembered seeing her and could describe her. Maybe.

  And he knew he was grasping at straws.

  Paul tossed a final jab at the bag and stepped away. He leaned over, his gloved hands on his knees, and lowered his head to get his breath back.

  Sam let the bag go and shook his head. “You want to go for a run next?”

  Paul looked up at his friend, shook his head. Trust Sam to rub it in. He couldn’t get a breath deep enough to answer. “It’s going cold, Sam,” he gasped out.

  Sam hugged the bag and considered Paul’s statement. “Our problem is the fact the case never fully got hot. We profiled her as working alone, arranging her own travel, doing her own surveillance and planning for the murder, using the same weapon. Now we know she dealt with the same middleman for every one of the murders, and he handled the client and the money. He’s dead. And we’re cold. There are no more ways in.”

  Sam stepped back and tossed a couple of open-handed hits at the bag. “The only way forward now is if she generates it. If she makes a mistake, or makes a new move. Maybe someone finds the weapon. Maybe she commits a new murder. Maybe she tries to blackmail one of the people who hired her. But short of her walking into an FBI office and confessing, there may not be another thread that can reach her if she stays quiet and keeps her head down.”

  Paul knew Sam was right all the way down the line. It was possible she’d never be found. The thought burned. They had been working the paper they had brought back from the middleman’s home for two weeks now, and the case was stalling out.

  “Want to hit the bag some more?” Sam asked, considering him.

  Paul waved him toward it, took a few more shots.

  Paul blocked the sunlight coming across the monitor with his hand while scanning messages which had come in overnight. He mentally sorted what he could push off and what he would prioritize in on his list. He had learned early in his career that the first half hour at his desk was about the only slot he could expect to control—the job was simply too responsive to events. There were a lot of other cases climbing up to demand his attention.

  Sam tapped on the door, held up a tape. “You want to watch it here or upstairs?”

  “Here. I heard it’s long.”

  Sam settled into one of the guest chairs. “Four hours plus. Lincoln said we’d find it worth the time.”

  Paul pulled out an orange juice from the refrigerator and passed it over, then got one for himself. He popped the tape into the machine and pressed play. “Let’s see what the currency thief has to say.”

  The Treasury guys were thorough, that was clear within the first thirty minutes. Paul listened to the interview and forced his mind to stay focused on it so he wouldn’t have to listen to it again. An hour into the tape, he sat up straighter. The thief was talking, his voice low but clear.

  “He would call you; say he had work if you wanted it. If you said yes, he would play you the tape of what the buyer wanted. The tape was his insurance that the buyer would honor the terms of the deal. You did the job; he paid you and gave you the tape. Now it was your insurance in case the buyer ever tried to put the crime back on you. You had proof he had paid to have it done. I liked it. No one could welsh on you, and they had equal risk. It kept things quiet. He was always professional about business.

  “So was I. I never took a job where I didn’t already have a buyer for the currency, and someone else paying all the expenses for a big crew and a lot of planning. I’d take thirty percent as my payment. Washing the cash was someone else’s problem. My job was to steal it clean and neat, and in big enough quantities that made the job worth the effort.”

  The interview concluded at four hours twenty-two minutes.

  “I wonder if Miss L.S. kept her tapes,” Sam pondered.

  “We find her, we can ask her.” Paul ejected the tape. “The suspect, in his own voice, giving the name of who to kill and the price he would pay. Thirty murders, lined up in a neat row. That’s a set of tapes I would love to have.”

  “They’re a death sentence for our lady shooter if their existence becomes known. Thirty people, with motive to kill her who already have demonstrated they have substantial financial means and the will. What are the odds this thief’s interview gets leaked? Or the fact the middleman had taping equipment on his phones gets leaked?”

  “It will eventually leak because it is news. The question is, do we have our lady shooter before then.”

  “She’s going to have to want to be found. We’re running on fumes here.”

  Paul had grown philosophical about it over the last few days. “We know the price she was paid for each murder, the initials L.S., T.M., and G.N., and the name of the middleman. It’s more than we knew last month. We’ll have to make it enough. The individual murders will give us something, or we’ll have another idea. We always do.”

  Paul wished he had a way to conjure up the tapes the lady shooter had pocketed for the thirty murders. Knowing good solid evidence was out there that he couldn’t access bugged him. He walked into his home, planning for a ball game and a pizza, and the phone started ringing. For a brief moment Paul considered ignoring it. He answered in the kitchen and quietly set his briefcase on the counter as he listened to the news. “Thanks for the heads up, Lincoln.”

  Paul stood motionless for a minute, phone in hand. The Treasury Department was about to give Ann an award for the capture of the currency thief. A large award. The bits of information he knew about Ann said he should warn her it wa
s coming. It was well deserved, she had earned it, but she wouldn’t see it as a good thing if it came as a surprise.

  He needed to alert her, in person if that was possible. They would find her and call her tomorrow with the news. So he had to get to her tonight. Where was she? Still in Nebraska? He hoped she was on the ground right now. If she was in the air, by the time she got on the ground to answer a call, he might not have time to tell her in person. This was one conversation he didn’t want to have over the phone, even a video conference call.

  He balanced the receiver on his shoulder as he checked his cash and pulled out fixings for a sandwich he could eat on the road. “Dave, can you find Ann for me, where she’s at now and for the next twelve hours? And can you do it without telling her I’m the one asking?”

  Dave had found her in Davenport, Iowa. It was shortly after ten p.m. when Paul walked into the Hyatt Hotel, headed to the reservation desk, and showed his ID. “I need Ann Silver’s room number.”

  “May I see that ID again, please? Yes, we were told to expect you, Mr. Falcon. There’s a note for you.” He retrieved it and passed it across.

  Paul opened it, read it, and nodded his thanks to the desk clerk. He headed outside.

  He walked across the hotel parking lot to the empty mall parking lot and started scanning the moonlit darkness.

  “Falcon, over here.”

  He spotted the motion and moved to join her. Ann Silver was sitting in a folding chair with a pair of binoculars, a book, and a sandwich all laid out on a foldout tray beside her. There was also a second chair.

  “Not the place I expected to find you,” Paul said.

  “I like to stargaze at night. It’s my way to decompress.”

  He wondered if she also had a rule about guys and hotel rooms that was part of this but didn’t mind the results. They could talk without interruption or chance of being overheard out on this massive piece of empty asphalt.

  He held up what he carried. “I brought the hot chocolate.”

  Ann smiled. “I like this visit already.”

  He handed her one of the two mugs, opened the thermos, and poured for them both before he sat down.

  “What was so important you had Dave tracking me down tonight? Don’t tell me you were just in the area.”

  “A four-hour drive put me in the area. Dave was to keep quiet the fact it was me asking.”

  “I asked Kate. She said Paul.” Ann shrugged. “A puzzle, but I figured you would tell me why. I thought you would be calling, not arriving. The note at the desk was just in case. As was the chair. There’s a problem with the lady shooter case?”

  He settled back and set the thermos on the pavement beside him. “Nothing beyond an upcoming budget fight on my part. I spent the day filling out travel requisitions for one hundred twenty-three interviews in sixty-four cities. We know how much the lady shooter was paid for each murder. It lets us narrow down the suspect list in each murder to just a few names. We’re going to go re-interview, see if anyone reacts to a photo of the middleman and the amount of the hit. It won’t get us to the lady shooter directly, but it will close individual murders and maybe give us new information to pursue.”

  “A good plan.”

  “Costly. Sam thinks I’ll get about ten approved a month, I’m betting about twenty-five, and then things begin to stall. It’s an important case, but it’s a cold case. If we close the individual murders, if we catch the lady shooter, and we do it this month or it takes until next year, it isn’t going to make a lot of difference when it has been on our board for twenty-two years. So I spent my day on paperwork hoping to be persuasive.”

  “I much prefer my job. No paperwork is one of the job mandates, and travel approval is looking at the sky to see what the weather is like.”

  He smiled. “You do have the better of it.” He studied her and felt his smile fade. She looked exhausted, the lines around her eyes deep, and the smile there by effort. She had brought a sandwich out with her, but had yet to eat. “You’re not in Nebraska tonight,” he said. “There was resolution to the case you were helping with, the teenage girl?”

  She looked away to the horizon, where the lights of the town hid the stars of the sky. “Her father shot her in the back because she wanted to go with a boy he didn’t approve of.” The words were said with the calmness of a cop, but he saw the truth in her face. This one was still sitting raw on her emotions. “There was sexual abuse in the home that had been going on for a while. The boyfriend knew and wanted to get her away from it. We were looking for the boy since he had disappeared that night, but if he hadn’t eventually had the courage to stop running and let the cops talk to him, I’m not sure we would have put it together.”

  She looked back at him. “She was good at hiding her secrets—no diary, no confidences shared with a girlfriend, no mother to see the signs. We might have had ideas, but we wouldn’t have been able to prove it. That fact bothers me a lot. The father wasn’t an easy man to see as a molester or a murderer. Most of the town still doesn’t believe it.” She shook her head and turned her attention to the mug of hot chocolate. “But you didn’t travel four hours to ask me that. Why did you come?”

  “Not a good transition, I’m afraid, Ann. Let me sit and watch the stars for a minute and grieve the fact she had that father.”

  “It takes me a few days longer than it once did to put it in a box and leave it behind.” She took the lid off the tin beside her flight bag. “Want a brownie? I find lots of chocolate helps.”

  He considered the contents of the tin with some regret. “Dave says you’re a lousy cook.” He was still tempted to risk it. Maybe she couldn’t ruin chocolate. He glanced at her. “Yes, I asked him about you. He’s your friend. He would know the inside scoop.”

  The admission had been the right thing to offer. He saw her blink, and then she laughed. “I am a terrible cook, so it’s a good thing I didn’t make the brownies.”

  “Then bless my heart, I am partial to chocolate.” He chose the biggest brownie in the tin, and was pleased when she selected another for herself. He took a bite and sighed. “These are excellent.”

  She sampled hers. “They are indeed.” She snapped the lid back on. “If you can’t cook, know who can.”

  “It should be a golden rule.” He licked his thumb of icing. “I’ve got parents, three brothers, two sisters, six cousins, and a bunch of in-laws, nieces and nephews—there are at least thirty-four of us. You want the scoop on me, nobody spills it like family.”

  “Thanks for the heads up. How’s Jackie doing?”

  “She’s done better than I thought possible, getting past what happened. Falcons will reopen in just a few weeks, with a new interior look to the place.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He watched the stars and let nearly five minutes pass in silence. She didn’t break it.

  Paul finished his brownie, then turned to her. “Treasury wants to give you a reward for the capture of the currency thief. There was a bounty for information leading to the arrest, and you’re the one who cracked the day planner that directly led to his capture. Treasury is going to call you tomorrow. There’s a half-a-million-dollar award with your name on it.”

  She didn’t say anything, and her expression didn’t tell him much. He had expected surprise, shock, joy—anything but this stillness.

  “You’ve earned it,” he said quietly. “He stole more than fifty million, and he was still active. Treasury won’t lose more cash. They recovered a good amount of what was taken, and they’ll be able to round up the crew that helped him and the people who hired him to execute the thefts. All of that is worth the reward.”

  “I agree it is news. And I appreciate you tracking me down to tell me before I got surprised by it tomorrow.”

  She was quiet for a full minute, and then she sighed. “Let me make a call.”

  She picked up her mug and stepped away.

  She returned in less than five minutes. “I declined the award. Any more hot choco
late in that thermos?”

  He poured her another mug. “You declined it. You don’t want the money?”

  “I want a lot of things. I don’t want award money for doing my job. Would you?”

  He thought about it, shook his head.

  “So, it’s declined.”

  She finished the last of her brownie and companionably offered the last one in the tin to him.

  She stored the tin away and then gestured to the sky. “You know much about stars? I fly at night and love the sky, but I never know what I’m looking at. I’m trying to figure out this star map.” She clicked on a flashlight to show him the book she had open.

  Paul looked at the map, then at the sky, then at her. She’d just turned down half a million dollars and had spent less than ten minutes on the matter. She didn’t even dwell on it; she just made a decision and was already moving on as if the news hadn’t made even a small dent in her evening.

  She glanced at him. “What?”

  “You puzzle me, Ann.”

  “I puzzle myself at times.” She shrugged and pointed. “Do you think that might be this star cluster? If I kind of squint and ignore everything that doesn’t fit, it might be a match.”

  He laughed. “That’s true about most things. We need an astronomer. You know one?”

  “No. Best I can do, I probably know someone, who knows someone, who knows one.”

  “So close the book and just enjoy the view. Your evening will end better. You can study another night.”

  She looked at him and closed the book. “You’ve got a four-hour drive ahead of you, and work in the morning. You should get on the road.”

  “I should get going,” he agreed. He offered the thermos. “There’s one more mugful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s been a pleasure, Ann.”

  He headed back toward the hotel parking lot. “Oh, and Ann?”

  “Yeah, Falcon?”