The desk officer made the call. “He’ll come down,” he told her, “but it may be a few minutes. You’ll find the bench is more comfortable than the chairs.”
“Thanks.” She settled in to wait, out of habit pulling out a paperback she was reading. She didn’t mind the wait. Today was as close to a vacation day as she’d had this year, and if she could pass one more case off her desk, all the better. She planned to head home after the game without much of a voice left and half sick on hot dogs and popcorn, and if she timed it right she’d be at the ballpark early enough to watch batting practice and get an autograph or two.
“Officer Silver.” The check-in officer nodded toward the man getting off the south elevator. “There he is.”
She got up from the bench and waited while Agent Falcon came through the security barriers. He was a tall man with authority in his stride, wearing a business suit that didn’t come off the rack. She had done enough digging to know his reputation and what was on his desk. Despite his rank and seniority, he stayed working cases rather than lead a bureau office. He was as far from the politics of the bureau as a murder cop could get, and that made him the guy who could do something with what she had. He was presently working on too much caffeine and not much sleep, she thought, noting the coffee mug in his hand and the grim tightness around his eyes. She would wonder at why, but she’d spent too many days working without sleep herself to find it unusual.
“Agent Falcon, this is Officer Ann Silver.”
She stepped away from others in the lobby, opened her flight bag, and removed two photos. She didn’t bother to explain; she simply offered them. He took the photos. His watch looked expensive, and the ring was FBI academy. She had assumed he was married, but his left hand was bare.
She saw the flare of heat in his eyes as he recognized the murders. Since the photos were copies of ones in his own files, she had assumed they would hit a chord. His gaze shot to hers. She took the punch of annoyance in his gaze because she deserved it, because she had set him up for it. She had chosen those two murders out of the thirty the lady had done for a reason, but the photos themselves were merely cover for her visit. The news she had come to share wasn’t something she planned to write down anywhere. “I’ve got the guy who arranged her services in my morgue,” she said quietly, simply, and let the words hang in the silence between them. She knew their implications.
He did too. He studied her face, weighing the way she had said it, scanned the badge displayed on her belt, and nodded toward the elevators. “Come up with me.”
The check-in officer smiled as he handed her a visitor pass. She clipped it onto her jacket, followed Agent Falcon to the security scanners, and emptied her pockets into the basket.
“You’ll need to check your weapon, ma’am, and pick it up when your business is done,” the security officer said.
“No. You can issue me a weapon clearance. Please do so.”
“I can’t issue a clearance without—”
“I’ll vouch for her.” The bureau’s Midwest counterterrorism chief coming around behind them interrupted. “Give her the weapon clearance. How you doing, Ann?”
“Catching the game tonight.”
He was now at the elevator, but he held the door before stepping in. “Yeah? Want company?”
“Lisa beat you out.”
“My loss. Call me before you head home. I got your wiretaps approved.”
“You couldn’t keep that news to yourself until after the game?”
He grinned. “Take good care of her, Falcon. I still owe her for two speeding tickets.”
She clipped on the weapon clearance and re-stuffed her belongings into her pockets. She waited until they were alone in the elevator. “His mom is my next-door neighbor,” she said, not needing to explain but figuring it didn’t hurt to cut politics out of the equation.
Agent Falcon half smiled. “I didn’t ask.”
“Didn’t have to.”
She followed him onto the sixth floor and down a long hallway. Paul worked in a decent-sized office, but both chairs across from his desk looked uncomfortable. She chose the one near the wall and dumped her flight bag on the other one. She set her recorder on his desk and clicked it on.
“Four weeks ago there was a wreck on Interstate 72. The driver died. Something was off about the scene, and the patrol officer called me in. Think heavy rain, absent quarter moon, and truckers hauling grain in a steady parade as the barges on the river got jammed up by a damaged lock gate. Not an ideal situation for working a car crash. The car rolled, flipped, smashed, and ended upside down in a bean field. It took out a small metal storage bin, six fence posts, and twenty feet of electric fencing and barbwire. The Angus bull in the field with the downed barbwire was not happy with the flashing cop lights and constant truck traffic, and since he was worth six figures, the bull for a time got as much attention as the wreck, once it was confirmed the driver was dead and that it would take the fire department to cut him out.”
She watched Agent Falcon as she talked and gave a half smile as she reached for the pause on the recorder. “Get a drink, pace, make faces at your window, whatever, because I tell long stories, enjoy the telling, and don’t plan to repeat myself to whomever else you want to hand this case to later. So I’ll tell it my way, record it, and you’ll have what I’ve got. I’m not inclined to fly north again just because I missed a detail you might one day need.”
She was enjoying herself, Paul thought, and she was going somewhere interesting with her narrative. She’d delivered her statement in the lobby with exquisite timing. She had the tempo of a good storyteller. She liked telling stories. And he had a feeling she would back up that initial statement with just as exquisite timing. “What can I get you to drink?”
Ann decided she liked Paul’s smile and offered a full one of her own. “Caffeine-free Diet Coke if you’ve got it, hot chocolate if you want me to shut up for a while, lemonade if you’re being ornery.”
He opened the small refrigerator under his desk and handed her a Diet Coke, no caffeine, pulled a root beer out for himself, and settled back in his office chair.
“Brownie points for it being extra cold.” She popped the tab and started the recorder again. “As the patrol officer was a suspicious sort, and I run that way on even my good days, we took enough time to flip a tarp over the car before we dealt with the six-figure and very angry bull. The tarp couldn’t do anything for the flood dumping out of the sky, but it kept the volume of water accumulating in the wreck to a minimum.
“The Caldwell County Fire Department arrived to cut open the car frame, the ME removed the body, and everything that wasn’t dirt, beans, or grass was hauled onto a flatbed, covered with the tarp again, and taken into evidence for review at a secure and thankfully dry warehouse.
“There is enough video and stills of the scene to count as being there, including a large number of fascinating lightning strikes that washed out otherwise perfectly focused shots. Lightning split three trees that night, and one tree closed a lane of the Interstate shortly after three a.m. I figure we earned the overtime. I doubt the front row of a rock concert would have been any louder than that storm.” She paused to take a long drink before continuing.
“The patrol officer didn’t like the car crash. It didn’t make sense to him. I had the same sense of unease. Why was the guy speeding during bad weather? Unless he had suicidal intentions, his actions made no sense. He wasn’t a twenty-something who thought he’d have fun hydroplaning on a wet highway. He didn’t have a heart attack and swerve around with chest pain. He simply decided to go a hundred plus on an Interstate, weaving around truckers and running faster than his lights could see in the rain. He was going to crash, and he had to know that. So why was he speeding?”
She let the question hang in the air while she stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, trying to accommodate her body to the chair that was not very comfortable.
“Truckers on that stretch of Interstate are a fri
endly bunch in the middle of the night. We’ve got a string of eyewitnesses to the wreck and its aftermath, most interviews done verbally over the open air of the radio, but real-time enough and varied in detail enough they piece together a mosaic.
“According to two truckers, the sedan pulled onto the Interstate at mile marker thirty-five. The sedan was rolling with traffic until mile marker fifty-two, when he began to speed. By mile marker sixty-five we’ve got truckers complaining to each other about the idiot speeding around them. A patrol officer hears the chatter, turns around to come back on the Interstate.
“The driver lost control and crashed at mile marker eighty-two. Overlapping radio calls reported the crash to the emergency dispatcher at 10:19 p.m.
“Statements from four truckers confirm a second car stopped to render assistance. A white sedan with Missouri plates, two guys in jackets and ball caps. All said it looked like the two guys were attempting to assist the driver. We’ve confirmed the second vehicle was two miles back when the crash occurred.
“The second vehicle was not at the scene when the patrol officer arrived.
“I now have security-camera footage from every truck stop, warehouse, and business that faces the Interstate from mile marker twenty to mile marker one hundred for the night in question. The second car was also speeding, but not excessively. The two cars were never closer than a mile to each other. It wasn’t a bump and crash or a high-speed chase. After stopping to render assistance and then departing, the white sedan left the Interstate between mile marker eighty-five and mile marker ninety. The only options along that stretch of highway are back-country roads, which suggests the men were locals who knew the area. Four weeks of poking around should have given me another look at the car if it was local, but it hasn’t been spotted again. So it’s a mystery.”
She wasn’t one to like a mystery, even though she spent her workdays solving them, and she frowned a bit as she thought back on the search for the second vehicle. She’d managed to peel back most of the layers of this case, but a few unknowns remained. She glanced up, found Paul watching her. She appreciated a guy who could listen without interrupting. “Because I’ve got a curious streak to go with my suspicious bent, I backtracked the driver for the day before the crash.
“The dead man entered First National Bank in Dorado Springs, Missouri, at 11:17 a.m. on the day he would die and closed a safe-deposit box. The teller who assisted him with the box stated it was eight by seventeen by two, heavy when he carried it to the privacy booth and empty when he returned it to the safe-deposit box vault. He had rented the same box for thirty-eight years. The security tape has a decent photo and shows him carrying a black briefcase in and out of the bank.
“He ate a late lunch in Jefferson City and carried the briefcase inside with him where he set it on the bench beside him but did not open it. He had roast beef, ate alone, and the waitress remembers a quiet guy who paid cash and left a generous tip. He filled up with gas at the Shell station in Farber. Security cameras show him alone. He pulled onto Interstate 72 at mile marker thirty-five and was dead at mile marker eighty-two.” Ann paused, struck again by the sadness of the last day of his life. She could find answers, but not change the tragedy.
“Back to the crash. At dawn, the patrol officer and I walked the bean field and the roadside, compared notes, and then headed to the evidence warehouse where the wreck had dripped mostly dry.
“The first thing recovered from the car was a nice Glock, two full clips, no shots fired. It was taped under the passenger side seat.
“The glove box held an owner’s manual, car registration, insurance card, half a roll of quarters, and maps of Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.
“The trunk was crumpled shut, forced open, and found to be empty but for a spare tire, jack, and an extra gallon of windshield wiper fluid, now busted open and splashed around the space.
“A hanging clothes bag in the back seat had one change of clothes, toiletries, and a pair of dress shoes. Nice stuff, but not new.
“Miscellaneous items recovered from the mud under the car once it was removed from the bean field were a fast-food sack from McDonald’s, a windbreaker, and two old pocket day planners, brown and blue covers respectively, from ten and thirteen years before.
“A broken briefcase handle was pulled from the mangled passenger door frame. The clasp had sheared off the case. We still haven’t recovered the damaged briefcase itself. It wasn’t in the car wreck, and it wasn’t in the bean field or thrown out on the roadside.
“Personal effects taken into evidence at the scene were eyeglasses, a nice watch, a plain wedding ring, and a current day planner from his shirt pocket. His wallet had forty-eight dollars in cash, two credit cards, a gas card, driver’s license, and a receipt from a bookstore in Missouri for two newspapers. No photographs. No health insurance card. No checkbook.
“He had no phone on him. We went back through the wreck looking for a phone or any signs a phone had been there—a charger, a case—and came up with nothing. Security tapes of him in the twenty-four hours before the crash never show him on a phone.” Ann was still surprised she hadn’t found a phone.
“We headed from the car wreck to the ME’s office. The deceased is a Caucasian male, early to mid-seventies, one sixty, five nine, hazel eyes, in good health, taking no prescriptions. The cause of death is impact injuries.
“His fingerprints are not on file. His DNA gave no match. There has been no missing-person report filed anywhere in the U.S. that matches his description.
“His license is a nice forgery. His credit cards are clones for cards owned by a man in hospice in Oregon. The VIN numbers on the car don’t match the registration. The car registration and plates belong to a junked same-make-and-model in Indiana. The gun trace disappears into a police stolen-items report from a gun store robbery six years ago in Nevada.
“The day planner in his pocket reads like gibberish, as did the two day planners recovered from the mud under the car. One from ten years ago, another from thirteen years ago, a current planner in his shirt pocket. Where are the rest of them? I figure the ripped-open and now-missing briefcase had a stack of them.
“Working assumption—he emptied out a bank safe-deposit box, someone knew that, tailed him, planning to acquire the contents of the box. He made the tail, tried to outrun them, failed miserably and crashed. They stopped, confirmed he was dead, retrieved the briefcase and probably a phone, and got as far away from the scene as they could before the patrol officer arrived.” She paused and tipped the soda can toward him. “A nice story, since I like to tell them, and a pure guess, but it’s a tidy theory.”
She couldn’t tell if Paul liked her tidy theory or not, but it was a good one just the same. He was turning his pen end to end, his fingers sliding down and turning it a hundred and eighty degrees in a steady twenty-second beat, and he was still carefully listening. She liked a guy who could listen to a story, appreciate its telling, and not interrupt the flow of it. She would know she had him when that pen stopped its graceful path, and what was the point of a good story if she couldn’t touch a moment of surprise in its telling? She settled her cold drink back on the coaster and turned the story to the reason she was sitting in his office on, for her, a rare vacation day.
“A day planner written in some kind of code had my attention even in the rain of a stormy night, and it was still holding my attention over the next few days as leads to chase worked themselves into the weeds. My driver remained a mystery, and I was stalled for a name. As the day planner in his pocket began to look like my best chance of identifying him, I started working on the code. Being stubborn along with suspicious, I kept eliminating what it was not, on the assumption I’d eventually find what it was.
“I cracked the code four days ago. He was offsetting his alphabet based on what day of the week the first day of the month came on, reversing his numbers right to left, and swapping first and last digits. It was the same code in all three day planners. He’s been a c
reature of habit through the years.
“The day planners are boring reading on the whole.
“He recorded the price of gas, baseball game scores, the DOW index closing price, and occasionally lunch expenses. Nothing looks like a phone number. There are some appointments—place, time, and initials—including several appointments coming up over the next few months. By the time I transcribed and read the three planners there was a nice tug going on about a few of the notations. Toss out everything trivial and they stand out as unusual.
“Since the only thing I like to do better than tell a story is to remember odd and trivial facts, you’ll have to trust me for now that the following quotes are accurate.
“MAY 22, 1999
Call from TM
Called Miss LS
JULY 7, 1999
Saw news YM died
JULY 20, 1999
TM $250,000 deposit cleared
Paid Miss LS $220,000
“And another:
AUGUST 14, 2002
Call from GN
Called Miss LS
OCTOBER 7, 2002
Saw news VR died
OCTOBER 25, 2002
GN $300,000 deposit cleared
Paid Miss LS $270,000
“July 7, 1999, and Saw news YM died, turns out to be a rather unique combination. My search turned up the name Yolanda Meeks. And I landed in the middle of your murder investigation.”
His pen stopped moving.
“VR and October 7, 2002, gave me Victor Ryckoff. And there I was again. In your murder investigation.”
She waited a beat. She had him.
“So—I know it is thin, but is it enough I can dump this guy and this wreck off my desk and onto yours?”
“I’ll take it all.”
She grinned. “I knew I’d like you.”
He had gone from politely listening to seriously focused, and she could almost see the speed of his thoughts as he ran the prior cases in his mind looking for initials. He’d probably interviewed one of the people who had hired the lady shooter to make a hit. She would not want to be in Falcon’s crosshairs when he came hunting with this new information.