Текст книги "Airtight"

Автор книги: David Rosenfelt

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Her first words when I finished were not the ones I wanted to hear. “We need to go to the FBI with this.”

“I’ve thought about that, Julie, but I don’t see the upside, at least now.”

“The upside is that maybe they’ll catch him; maybe they’ll save Bryan. How can you not see that?”

“Catching him doesn’t save Bryan; it probably does exactly the opposite.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe you’re right, and we need to get as much information as we can about Chris Gallagher so we can make that judgment. But for now Bryan is alive, and our doing what Gallagher asks keeps him alive.”

“Maybe he’ll kill him…,” she said, as her voice cracked and I thought she was going to break down. But she pulled it together. “… No matter what we do.”

“If that’s the case, then Bryan is probably dead already.” When she reacted, I added, “I’m sorry, Julie, but that’s the truth.”

She nodded her understanding, but said, “We have knowledge of a crime, Luke. It needs to be reported.”

“I’m a cop; consider it reported.”

We talked about it some more, and she reluctantly agreed to go along with my approach. I was relieved, but not as much as I expected. I was not confident that I was right; I just couldn’t think of a better way to go. With my brother’s life on the line, I would have liked to have greater conviction.

“So what can I do?” she asked, the professional in her kicking into gear.

“Can you start gathering information on Chris Gallagher?”

“Of course,” she said. “And I know a judge advocate at Quantico. We worked on a case together last year; a Marine got into a fight at a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike and killed a guy. I let the military handle it, so he owes me a favor.”

“Great; call it in,” I said. “We need to know who we’re dealing with.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to investigate a murder and pretend it’s not already solved.”

The door opened and I was looking straight ahead at a man’s chest.

I was at the late Judge Daniel Brennan’s house in Alpine, and I expected to be greeted by his wife, not a man who looked to be seven feet tall. But he obviously expected me, because the voice from up there asked, “Lieutenant Somers?”

I looked up. Way up. “Yes,” I said, to a face I recognized but in the moment couldn’t place.

He held out his hand. “Nate Davenport. Friends call me Ice.”

I shook his hand. We were just meeting for the first time, but I knew all about Nate “Ice Water” Davenport. He was the center for the Detroit Pistons in the late seventies and early eighties. He was one of the early big men who was also a great athlete; he could grab a defensive rebound and lead a fast break up court.

The “Ice Water” nickname came from the coolness that was said to run through his veins when it came time to take the key shot at the end of a game. He was a great clutch player, and though I wasn’t sure if he was in the Hall of Fame, he was certainly a candidate for it.

I’m not a huge pro basketball fan; I prefer football and baseball. But I read enough of the sports pages to have in the back of my mind that Davenport became an agent for players after he retired, though I wasn’t aware of a relationship with Judge Brennan when he played for the Celtics.

“Come on in,” he said. “Denise will be down in a minute.”

Denise was the recently widowed Mrs. Brennan, and my starting point in the investigation. “Good. Thanks.”

“I’m a longtime friend of the family; would you object to my sitting in on your talk? She would prefer that.”

I saw no problem with that, and said so. I wasn’t trying to trap her; I just wanted information, and the more at ease she was the more likely she was to provide it. “Whatever makes her comfortable.”

It was almost fifteen minutes before Denise Brennan came down the stairs, and if she spent that time trying to make herself appear not to be devastated, it was a wasted effort. She was a small, thin woman, and my guess was she looked a lot smaller and thinner than she had before her husband’s murder.

She apologized for keeping me waiting, and offered me coffee, which I accepted. Then, “Thank you for your efforts, Lieutenant. I share my husband’s disdain for capital punishment, but I must admit I wasn’t sorry to hear about the resolution of this situation.”

By “resolution,” she meant my putting three bullets into Steven Gallagher. “I understand,” I said, because I did. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions about your husband.”

“You don’t have any doubts about who committed the crime, do you?” asked Davenport.

I shook my head. “None. But in a situation like this, we have to tie up all loose ends,” I said, neglecting to mention that among the loose ends here was the fact that my brother had been kidnapped and in six days wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Had your husband ever mentioned Steven Gallagher, in any context?”

She shook her head. “No, he didn’t bring home his work. Once he took off the robe, that was it. His life on the job and his life at home were separate.”

“So he never felt threatened by anything that happened in court?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, a few times. He never spoke about it, but I could tell.”

“How?”

“Sometimes he didn’t want me to go out somewhere, or he would go with me, even if it was shopping, or something else he didn’t like doing. And a few times I noticed some people that I think were security.”

“But he never told you why he was concerned, or who he was concerned about?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. He never addressed it in any way.”

“Was there anything unusual about the way he was acting recently? Any changes in mood? Anything that you noticed?”

She considered that for a few moments, and said, “I think he was feeling some stress, good kind of stress, over the Appeals Court appointment. When he testified before Congress, he was a little nervous. Dan rarely got nervous, so it surprised me. But it was more excitement than anything else.”

I basically asked the same questions a few more times, but this woman obviously had no information that would help me. I told her I appreciated her talking to me, and let Davenport walk me to the door.

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

“Strange way to spend yours.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you’re not sure the Gallagher kid did it. Otherwise what would be the difference if Danny had enemies?”

“Gallagher did it.”

“I hope so. But if the real son of a bitch is out there, let me know how I can help.”

“Will do.”

When we got to the door, he opened it and I stepped outside.

“Danny was a complicated man, but a good one,” he said. “A very, very good one.”

It was a strange thing to say. “Complicated how?”

He just shook his head very, very slightly. “He was my friend.”

I took one of my cards out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Call me if you want to talk about your friend some more.”

Tommy Rhodes considered that night’s job beneath him.

It wasn’t a big deal, and he certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. He was only thirty-four years old, but he thought of himself as an old-school guy, which meant that you did your job and moved on to the next one.

Of course, the fact that he was being paid enough money to last him until he was a hundred and thirty-four years old made him even more sanguine about the situation. He was a mercenary, pure and simple, and that was fine with him. As such, it wasn’t his job to strategize; it was his job to accomplish the mission.

This was an easy assignment. He didn’t really need Frankie Kagan there. Kagan had no experience in these kinds of operations; his talents were more in the areas of guns and knives. In this case he was there to provide protection for Tommy while he worked, though it was extremely unlikely that any problems would arise.

Tommy was resentful of Frankie’s role as leader of their end of the operation, but he realized that it was Frankie who had the connection, and who brought Tommy in. There might be a time when Tommy would try to move up in the hierarchy, but he would have to be careful; Frankie was very, very dangerous.

So for now Tommy just focused on the work. The jobs he would be doing would grow progressively harder, and considerably more dangerous, but nothing that Tommy couldn’t handle.

The toughest part was learning the terrain. His employers were smart enough to go outside the area to recruit, and had done their homework. Tommy was from Vegas, as was Frankie, or at least that’s the place they had been working. So finding their way around upstate New York was not that easy.

They didn’t want to use a GPS; if it was ever confiscated, the fact that it contained addresses of all of these criminal acts would be rather incriminating. So they did it the old-fashioned way, with a map, which was a bit of a pain in the ass.

Tommy didn’t really know what was going on, and he didn’t care. He had vaguely assumed that it had something to do with this mining thing, something about natural gas, and the fight that was going on over it. His target tonight confirmed that suspicion, but it really didn’t matter to him either way.

The house was on a secluded street, which was understating the case. It wasn’t really a street in the normally accepted sense; it was an estate with no other houses within a quarter of a mile. Tommy parked outside the property, and they walked towards where they were told the house would be, though it couldn’t be seen from there.

It was a long walk, and only when they got close did the lights from the house pierce the total darkness. It was certainly not a hardship for Tommy, who was in extraordinary physical shape, even though he was carrying a bag that weighed the equivalent of two bowling balls.

The house looked massive, triggering a vague childhood recollection of his parents taking him to Virginia to see where Thomas Jefferson lived. Tommy remembered seeing the slave quarters on the property, and thinking that Jefferson must have been an asshole.

Lights were on in the house, so Tommy assumed that people were home. He had no idea if Richard Carlton was there or not, and it didn’t matter to Tommy at all.

The guesthouse was off to the left, and that was where Tommy headed. It was dark and hard to see; the sky was cloudy and moonlight was almost nonexistent. Tommy was sorry that he didn’t bring his night vision glasses, but it wasn’t a big deal either way. He could see well enough to know that he had never lived in a house as nice as this guesthouse.

But those days were in the past. In six months he’d be living in a palace or, better yet, in a suite at the Bellagio.

The windows on the main floor were unlocked, as Tommy expected they would be. He opened one and climbed inside, signaling Frankie to stay outside and watch for intruders. Tommy did not wear gloves, and was not concerned about fingerprints.

Once inside, he entered an interior room and took out his small flashlight, shining it into the bag he was carrying. He emptied the contents, and spent the next twenty minutes positioning the explosives strategically around the house.

The army training had served him well; Tommy operated with an expertise that was instinctive, and a complete confidence that he was doing things correctly. The fact that there was no basement in the house made it easier, though only marginally.

Once he was finished, he did a check of his work, to make sure everything was in good condition. There was no hurry; he was not going to be detected. The only reason for moving quickly was that there was a basketball game on television later that night that he was anxious to see. He had a bet on the game, for an amount of money that in the future he wouldn’t be wasting his time on.

Tommy left through the front door, closing it and all the windows behind him. He didn’t want there to be anywhere for the air to escape, though that was just him being more cautious than necessary. He took pride in his work, and even though there was no chance of failure, he still wanted to do it exactly right.

“All good?” Frankie asked softly once Tommy was outside.

“All good.”

Thirty feet in front of the guesthouse, they stopped and Tommy took out the remaining items in the bag that he was carrying. They were a can of red paint and a brush, and he slowly and methodically painted letters on the driveway. It was difficult because of the darkness and the small light given off by the flashlight.

Once he was finished, he took his time to make sure the message was legible.

You will not hurt our children.

Satisfied with his work, Tommy took the now empty bag with him. He jogged back to the street, not because he was fearful of being caught but simply so he could get to his television and basketball game sooner. Frankie, not being a basketball fan, was not pleased, but since Tommy had the keys to the car, he was obliged to jog as well.

Once in the car, they drove about a half a mile, and then stopped. It would be close enough to confirm that the operation was a success, but far enough to ensure an easy getaway.

Tommy opened the window and dialed a number on his cell phone. Within two seconds of his pressing the last digit, he saw the flash of light in the distance, and then heard the explosion.

“All good?” Frankie asked.

“All good.”

If Richard Carlton was going to have guests any time soon, they’d be staying in a hotel.

Michael Oliver had a very important job.

It didn’t make him famous; it didn’t make him stand out at all. He could walk down the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, as he did every day on the way to and from work, and never be recognized.

Oliver was chief engineer of Hanson Oil and Gas. They didn’t have traditional titles there, but if they did, he probably would have been a Senior Vice President, or maybe an Executive Vice President. Which made him pretty high up the ladder.

But his significance was even greater than it appeared. As the head of a very small department, Oliver’s job was to analyze land for its potential to provide energy, be it oil or natural gas. Once this was completed, a cost-benefit analysis was done to determine how expensive it would be to extract that energy, versus how much it could be sold for.

Hanson was a middle level player in the industry, but it still had a market capitalization of over six billion dollars. It didn’t get that big by making mistakes, and Michael Oliver was the mistake preventer in chief.

When Oliver gave the go-ahead on a find, Hanson literally would take it to the bank. And if Oliver said the potential was not there, they did not go near it.

It was Oliver who personally did the analysis of the land near Brayton. It was he who determined that the shale was porous enough to yield natural gas and that it was set in a formation that could be harvested efficiently and very profitably. And it was he who estimated the immense amount of energy that could be derived.

For doing this, he was very well paid. But now, by simply putting another set of diagrams in an envelope and sending them off, he would have taken the final step towards ensuring he would get far more money than that.

So he put them in the envelope, and then drove an hour and fifteen minutes to a UPS store in Stillwater. He sent the package under an assumed name; it was the first illegal act he had ever committed, and he was not about to take any chances. It was why he did not simply e-mail the diagrams; e-mails lasted forever, and could not be shredded.

Oliver was not recognized in Stillwater, just as he was not recognized in Tulsa. But that didn’t make him any less important. And what he had just done, simply sending that package, had been the most significant act of a very significant life.

“Nothing has changed,” Barone said. “Overtime expected, vacations postponed, until we wrap this up.”

I had requested that he call the meeting, and he didn’t hesitate. There had been a letdown in effort on the case; cops have a tendency to stop focusing on a case when they believe it’s been solved and the bad guy killed.

Detective Johnny Pagan asked the obvious question. “Wrap what up?”

“The Brennan murder,” Barone said. “We want to nail Gallagher on the facts, not just because he pulled a gun on Luke. Shit, you know how many times I’ve wanted to shoot Luke?”

“What about the bloody clothes, and the DNA?” Pagan asked.

Barone hesitated for a second, so I jumped in. “It’s evidence, significant evidence, but it’s not everything. There’s a huge amount of attention focused on this case; we need to be right, and we need to demonstrate it beyond any doubt. So the Captain wants to handle it as if it’s going to trial, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Nobody in the room except Emmit had any idea what the hell was going on, but nor did they want to question it any further. They would work on the case, that’s their job, and the opportunity to get some overtime was just an added plus.

Emmit took over the meeting and gave out the assignments we had discussed. He would ride herd on them; Emmit was good at that. I saw no reason to tell anyone the seven-day deadline, but Emmit would see to it that they would be very busy days.

It was on the way back to my office when I felt a buzzing sensation in my pocket. All Sergeants and up are given BlackBerries, the purpose being to eliminate any semblance of a private life. The buzzing meant that I had an e-mail.

We are prohibited from using the devices for personal matters, so very few people outside of the department had this e-mail address. The only ones I could think of were Julie and Bryan, three or four prosecutors, an aunt in Florida, and a woman named Jeannie who I dated for four months. I gave it to her because she set what remains the record for my longest relationship, crushing the previous record holder by six weeks. The way things were going, you could say Jeannie was the Joe DiMaggio of my girlfriends.

I took the device out of my pocket and looked at it. I got what felt like a physical shock when I saw that it was Bryan’s e-mail address. My first thought was that it was Julie using it, though it would have been the first time that I was aware of.

I clicked on it.

Lucas … I’ve been kidnapped and imprisoned by the brother of the kid you shot. He said he was going to find you and demand that you do something before he will release me. He is dangerous. Don’t know where I am … he said it was underground. I only have seven days of air. Limited power on computer … don’t want to waste it … will check every ninety minutes.

Tell me whatever you can … please.

Bryan.

I read the message twice. It didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, but the fact that Bryan sent it was enormously significant. It opened up the possibility that he could aid in his own rescue; there might be something he saw or heard that could help us find him.

There might also be a way for us to locate him through the e-mail itself, though that was way out of my area of expertise. To that end, I wasted no time in heading for Deb Guthrie’s office, which was located one flight up, at the far end of the building. I took the stairs two at a time.

Deb was a state police Lieutenant, as was I, but she occupied an entirely different world. She was in charge of the cybercrime unit, which is to say that I did not understand a single thing that she did. My computer proficiency was such that it was lucky I was able to open the e-mail.

I could see through the glass into her office; she was meeting with some guy in a suit, a meeting that was about to end. I barged in and said, “Deb, I need to talk to you.”

Deb and I have a really good relationship, and she could tell from my entrance and the tone of my voice that this was serious. “Kevin, let’s pick this up later,” she said, and the guy obligingly got up and left.

“What’s up, Luke?” she said when the door closed behind him.

“If someone sends you an e-mail, can you trace it to where they are located?”

“We can get their IP address, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“I don’t even know what an IP address is. Is it like a real-world address?”

She shook her head. “No, but it’s close. We can certainly narrow it down to a specific area. What have you got?”

“Deb, I’m about to show you something that I need your help on. But in the process I’m going to be putting you in a difficult position, because you cannot tell anyone about it.”

“It’s business?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Does the Captain know about it?”

“He officially knows nothing.”

She smiled. “His favorite official posture. Let’s have a look, Luke.”

I showed her the e-mail, and she took her time reading it. “I assume you don’t want to answer any questions,” she said when she was finished.

“Correct.”

“Luke, the person that e-mailed you can find out the IP address himself, as long as he has Internet access.”

I hadn’t known that, but in any event it didn’t solve the problem. “No good,” I said. “His e-mails might be being read.”

She nodded. “OK. Give me your e-mail password.”

I did so, and she said, “I’ll call you as soon as I have the address.”

I left Deb’s office and went back to my own. By that point logic had overtaken optimism, for a number of reasons. For one, there seemed no possible way that Chris Gallagher had made a mistake in allowing Bryan to have the ability to e-mail. He had to have been completely confident that Bryan would not be able to aid in his rescue.

There was also a very significant possibility that it wasn’t Bryan e-mailing at all, but rather Gallagher using his account. He could be hoping to gain access to information in that manner. I would have to come up with a way to test that theory, and learn if it was really Bryan I was communicating with.

Even if it was Bryan, I had to assume that Gallagher had a way to monitor the account, and read our correspondence.

We still had a lot to learn about Chris Gallagher, but I suspected that we were going to learn he was smart, not the type to have made such a significant mistake. At the very least, he had to believe that he could not be hurt by Bryan being in contact with us, and more likely he saw it as a positive for himself.

As with our investigation, I would play it out the way Gallagher set it up, at least for the moment. I had no other choice. But first I had to answer Bryan.

Bryan … I spoke to Gallagher, and I’m working to get you released. Who was your favorite baseball player growing up?

Jonathon Stengel was a combination idealist/realist.

Certainly the prospect of a financially successful career influenced his decision to go to law school, but that wasn’t all it was about for him. He also respected the justice system, and thought he could do good and worthwhile work within it.

That was a significant factor in his decision, after graduating from NYU Law, not to head for the financial security of a large firm. Instead he was awarded a position as a clerk on the United States Court of Appeals, working for Judge Susan Dembeck.

And the time he spent there was all he had hoped it would be, and more. He got to work with brilliant people, on important matters, all the while getting a look at the intimate workings of the system. He decided he would stay for only a year, leaving when Judge Dembeck left, but felt and hoped that he would someday be back, with clerks of his own.

But Stengel also had a need to earn money, and a clerk’s pay was not going to get it done. Which was why he was susceptible to an approach from a fellow NYU alum, Edward Holland, the Mayor of Brayton, New York.

No money would change hands, but Stengel would supply information to Holland, who was arguing the fracking case before the court. Stengel rationalized it with the knowledge that it was not information that would give Holland an unfair advantage; all it would do was provide a “heads-up” for Holland. Advance information would then allow him to position things politically, since his audience was the electorate.

In return, Holland would use some of his significant connections in both the legal and political communities to aid Stengel in his career path.

A simple transaction with no losers, only winners.

To this point, there had been little for Stengel to provide, but now he finally had something. He did not want to make the call from home, and he certainly couldn’t do it from the court, so he found a rare pay phone on the street.

Holland answered on his home number, and immediately recognized Stengel’s voice. “What have you got?” he asked.

“Nothing good, but I thought you should know,” Stengel said.

“She’s staying on?”

“Yes, and she’s the deciding vote.”

Both men knew what that meant. The only chance Holland had to win the case on behalf of Brayton was for Dembeck to leave the court and be replaced by Brennan. Once Brennan was murdered, Dembeck’s deciding to leave anyway would have left the court deadlocked.

But the die was cast; Dembeck was staying, and Holland was backing a losing horse.

“I’m sorry,” Stengel said.

“Yeah. Me too.”

I never got to ask Steven Gallagher if he had an alibi.

My shooting him three times in the chest effectively derailed prospects for an in-depth interrogation.

What would otherwise have taken place was my asking him where he was at the time of the Brennan murder. He could have said that he was home, or at a bar, or performing La Traviataat the Met. Whatever he said, I’d then be able to check it out, with the remote potential to exonerate him, or the far more likely potential to implicate him by proving he had lied.

But all of that never happened, and with him in a drawer at the coroner’s office it wasn’t about to. So part of our investigation had to include trying to discover where Steven was at the time of the murder. The fact that we already knew he was in Judge Brennan’s garage swinging a knife was a complicating factor, but one that we had to overlook.

Emmit’s role was to sift through the investigative information coming in, alerting me to things I should personally follow up on. Unfortunately, we were learning that Steven was a young man who had pretty much cut himself off from the world, once he descended into his drug use.

A notable exception to that seemed to be Laura Schmitz. She was said to have been Steven’s girlfriend, though that relationship had apparently ended quite a while before his death. Steven’s phone records showed calls from Ms. Schmitz with some frequency, calls that continued pretty much until the time I shot him. So she was someone we needed to talk to.

Laura worked as a waitress at the Plaza Diner in Fort Lee. Emmit and I stopped at the cash register in the front, where the manager was handling the register. When I flashed my badge and told him we needed to talk to Laura, he pointed to a woman behind the counter.

“Laura, these guys are here to see you.”

She looked up, saw us, and quickly left the counter area, through an open door to the back. Emmit and I took off in pursuit.

It wasn’t a long pursuit. Laura was standing in a corridor, adjacent to the kitchen, staring at the floor and looking angry.

“You son of a bitch,” she said to me when we reached her. “You son of a bitch.”

“I’m sorry, Laura. I know Steven was your friend.”

“He was a beautiful person. And you shot him like an animal.”

“It was not something I wanted to happen,” I said.

She shook her head sadly. “You and me both.”

“We just have to ask you a few questions.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Laura, don’t make this harder than it has to be. If you won’t answer the questions here, then you’ll have to go down to the station with us. You could be there a very long time.”

She seemed to consider this, but didn’t say anything. I took it as an invitation to continue. There was an open office off the corridor, and I suggested we go in there. She didn’t answer, but went into the office, and Emmit and I followed.

“Laura, do you know where Steven was on Friday night, just before midnight?”

“He was home.”

“You saw him there?” I asked.

“No, but I spoke to him on the phone at about seven o’clock.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t remember?”

“He wasn’t making much sense,” she said, then added grudgingly, “He was using.”

“Did he say what he was planning to do later that night?” Emmit asked.

She frowned at the question, as if she considered it stupid. “He wasn’t planning anything. When he got like that, he didn’t go out. He stayed in his apartment and wasted his life.” Then she looked at me. “Until you ended it.”

“But you can’t say for sure that he stayed home that night?”

She wouldn’t give in. “I’m sure.”

“Did he sound angry?”

“The only person Steven Gallagher was ever angry at was himself,” she said.

“Can you give us the names of some of his other friends? Maybe people who saw him or spoke to him that night?”

“I was his only friend, besides his brother. And I wasn’t there for him.”

“Do you know where his brother is?” I asked.

“No.”

“Have you seen him in the last couple of days?”

She nodded. “The night before last, but I haven’t seen him since.”

I asked if she had an address for him, but she said that she didn’t, and I believed her. Then I asked her if she had anything else to say.

She did.

“The idea that Steven Gallagher found out where that judge lived, that he even remembered the judge’s name, is ridiculous. The idea that he went to his house that night is even dumber. The idea that he killed him is beyond stupid. And the fact that you murdered Steven Gallagher means you are going to rot in hell.”

As interrogations go, that one was not great.

Bryan Somers couldn’t wait three hours to check e-mail.

He made it to two hours and fifteen minutes, and turned on the computer, simultaneously vowing to himself to wait the full three hours next time. This was extra important, he said, because it would reveal whether Luke was getting the messages.

When the machine powered on, the first thing he looked at was the percentage of power remaining, displayed in an icon near the top. It said “96 %,” which pleased Bryan. He had been afraid that the simple acts of turning the machine on and putting it to sleep might have caused a more precipitous drop. If he was disciplined about using it, the computer would last longer than he would.