Every Wicked Man

by Steven James

  The two agents exchanged glances, and then the one who’d been taking notes closed up his notepad while the woman handed Jake her card.

  “Call me if you think of anything.”

  “Okay.”

  Finally, when they left, Jake hastily returned to his office, only to find a note on his desk from Gracie: Ibrahim called again. Sounded urgent. He didn’t leave a message. What do you want me to do if he calls back?

  He wanted nothing more to do with this.

  He left Gracie a message not to accept any more calls from Ibrahim and, hands shaking, shredded the note and deleted the voice message waiting for him without listening to it.

  His concern sent his thoughts spinning off sideways to home, to his wife, to his son, to Heather rushing out, to getting Toby ready, to changing the boy’s clothes after he’d spilled juice on his shirt. Then positioning him in the car seat, buckling him in, almost getting into that fender bender—

  Sometimes riding in the car helped Toby fall asleep. Heather and he would take turns driving the boy around when he got fussy just to get him to go to sleep, and then—

  Focus.

  Think.

  Asleep.

  Wait.

  Day care.

  The next thought came at him fully formed, and as it did the bottom dropped out of the moment as if he were plunging down a roller coaster, as if he were caught in that hover-quiver breath-holding gasp of time when you know you’re about to plummet three hundred feet after just a few more slim clicks of that chain on the track beneath you, but you haven’t quite started the descent yet.

  But then you do.

  You were supposed to drop Toby off at day care. You were supposed to—

  The descent.

  One heading straight for hell.

  You never swung by the center. You never dropped him off.

  Your son is in the car. Toby’s still in the car.

  It’d been over two hours already, and with today’s heat, that was probably more than enough time to—

  “Oh my God.”

  The chain clicked.

  The plunge.

  The descent had come.

  Jake Reese bolted for the door.

  46

  Jake seemed to have no strength in his legs as he rounded Gracie’s desk, her questioning look and the words, “Is everything okay?” hardly registering as he whipped past her.

  Every parent’s worst nightmare.

  Please, God.

  Oh please.

  He threw the outside door open and the wall of heat met him like a thick, living thing, oppressive and grim and stifling.

  All Jake could think of were the news stories that came out each year about the hot car deaths of young children, about how quickly vehicles can heat up and the insane temperatures they can reach in just fifteen or twenty minutes. A distracted mom or dad forgets their baby in the car. Maybe Mom goes shopping or Dad goes to the golf course and the child dies of—

  No.

  A distracted parent goes to work.

  Like you.

  No.

  And the child succumbs to heatstroke and—

  No!

  As he darted through the parking lot, a driver who was backing out of his spot smacked into Jake hard enough to send him careening into a parked minivan six feet away.

  The driver jumped out and shouted about What was he doing? and Was he okay? and how He needed to look out for cars in a parking lot like this, but Jake ignored him, ignored it all, found his footing and sprinted toward the street, disregarding the throbbing pain in his leg.

  He imagined what it would be like for a child—for Toby!—to be in his car seat, strapped in, getting hotter and hotter, sweating, crying, screaming, helpless and trapped and dying alone.

  A child being roasted alive.

  Oh, God.

  Jake tugged his keys out of his pocket.

  He came to the street and punched the unlock button on the key fob.

  A different car was parked where his had been.

  And his sedan was gone.

  * * *

  +++

  Blake heard from his contact: “It’s done.”

  “The boy?”

  “Yes. I think we have Mr. Reese’s attention.”

  “And you’re confident he won’t contact the authorities?”

  “Not if he wants his son back alive. And not if he wants to stay out of prison for his role in all this. We made that crystal clear in the voicemail we left for him.”

  “Don’t trust a voicemail. Call him. Don’t leave anything to chance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  +++

  Jake’s phone rang.

  Ibrahim’s number.

  He stared at the screen, trying to decide if he should reach out to the federal agents he’d just met or contact the police . . . Or if he should answer this call from the man who’d gotten him involved in all this in the first place.

  The earlier calls that’d come in for him were on his mind.

  His gut knotted up with apprehension as he accepted the call.

  “Hello, Mr. Reese.” It wasn’t Ibrahim but another man, a voice Jake didn’t recognize.

  “What have you done?”

  “I might ask you the same question. Leaving your kid alone like that in the car?”

  “Where is he? Is he safe? I swear to God, if you hurt him, if you even—”

  “Oh, he’s not hurt. Yet. We were going to pay Toby a visit at his day care center, but imagine our surprise when you didn’t even drop him off. You must have a lot on your mind, Mr. Reese, to be so distracted. What will your wife say when she finds out what you did? When she receives the video we took of that little boy in the car and—”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  “Unless you did it on purpose. Did you do it on—”

  “Let me talk to him!”

  Jake heard crying in the background. It became louder as the man brought the phone closer to his son. Jake spoke reassuringly to Toby, and then, when he heard him say, “Dada!” it was all he could do to keep from crying himself.

  “Dada’s here. I’m coming to see you. I love you.”

  “Love you, Dada!”

  Under his breath, Jake cursed the man who’d taken his son, but he stilled his tongue so he wouldn’t upset Toby’s captors and put the boy in any more danger than he was already in.

  The man came back on the line. “You have something that we need shipped. Once you’ve delivered the canisters to our people at the airport, we’ll deliver your son to you. Don’t call the authorities. If you want to see Toby alive again, you know what you need to do. We want the canisters there within the next two hours.”

  “I don’t have a car! I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to!”

  “Use the car that’s parked in the spot where yours was. It’s unlocked. The keys are under the driver’s seat. Make the delivery. You do, and little Toby will be fine. You don’t, and we’ll park your car somewhere in the desert where no one would think to look, and we’ll leave him inside it, strapped in that car seat just like he was when you left him to die. In fact, we might be on our way to doing that right now. Time is ticking, Jake. You have two hours and not a minute more.”

  * * *

  +++

  It took me a while, but I found a story about the death of a blogger from Baltimore named Thomas Kewley.

  He died two months ago, chewing on razor blades until he bled to death. I couldn’t find any evidence that his death had been broadcast live online when he died. There was no suicide note.

  Kewley was found at home, and I added the location of his residence to the case files. Perhaps analyzing the location and timing in connection with the other suicides would be enough to discern so
mething about the travel routes of the observer who was present during the deaths.

  If it was even the same person in each instance.

  And if he was even there at Kewley’s place.

  It was worth a closer look.

  So, mobile phone records.

  Your cell phone is constantly tracking you as it looks for greater signal strength—and that means it’s searching for and connecting with different cell towers. The resultant data is used by phone companies to help them develop their networks. Subpoenaing those records is common for law enforcement. Yes, there has been pushback from privacy rights and civil liberties groups that have brought lawsuits regarding when and how we use that information, but so far the Bureau has managed to justify the searches and they’ve remained legal.

  All that—not to mention what NSA does on the books and off them—provides us with robust resources for tracking the pathways of mobile phones and smart device locations. Between the phone companies and NSA, tracing where a person has been is not nearly as difficult or implausible as it was just five years ago.

  To better identify any connection between the suicides, I sent in a request to Cyber for the phone records of the previous victims. Incoming calls, outgoing ones, locations, anything. Since they were suicides and not homicides, I was notified that it might take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to get the data.

  “I’ll take it as soon as I can get it,” I said.

  Sasha had mentioned that Blake had killed a man named Aaron Jasper and had brought up the Matchmaker in relationship to him. We had Aaron’s prints on file, but they didn’t match any prints found at the senator’s house.

  Maybe the Matchmaker was the person watching the suicides. If so, what, if anything, did that have to do with the death of the blogger Thomas Kewley?

  I didn’t know.

  Then, thinking of what Greer had said about convincing someone to harm himself, I tried following up with Ralph, who was looking for people who might’ve benefited from the suicide victims’ deaths, but he didn’t pick up.

  I spent some time reviewing the security footage of Mannie’s escape. He didn’t appear to speak with anyone. The fight with Thurman was brief and it didn’t look like words were exchanged. DeYoung still needed to give me approval for the work records of the staff who were on duty when Mannie fled.

  Alright.

  Back to the suicides.

  Timing and location.

  Somewhere there was a link between these victims. I just needed to figure out what it was.

  47

  50 minutes later

  Blake evaluated things.

  Within the hour he would know about the canisters, and Reese’s little boy would either be returned to his daddy or would be on his way to experiencing a tragic and rather frightful end.

  So that was one thing on his mind.

  Then there was the matter of the email with the picture of Julianne Springman’s corpse—who’d sent it and why—and the information he was expecting on the quantum encryption findings. It would provide more security for his transactions overseas, especially with the arms dealers he was in communication with.

  And, of course, who was the person who gave up the location of the condo? After meeting with Ibrahim at the greenhouse, Blake had become convinced that the jihadist was not the leak.

  He was thinking that through when Mannie returned.

  “I found the origin of the email with the photograph of Miss Springman,” Mannie told him. “Or, at least I believe I have.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The routing bounced around, pinballed across the globe through half a dozen countries, but from what I can tell, it looks like it originated from a computer in the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building downtown.”

  “What?”

  “I know.”

  “You’re saying it was from the FBI?”

  “It could’ve been, yes. Or the postal service or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They have offices in that building as well.”

  As far as Blake knew, Timothy Sabian wouldn’t have clearance or access to any of those computers. So then, who would have sent it? Someone in the Bureau? But that didn’t make sense. How would an agent have gotten ahold of that photo? Was it faked? And again, why was it sent—and how would the sender have gotten this email address in the first place?

  The materials you gave Julianne? Maybe Timothy got your information from that—or he may have gotten it from her before killing her.

  “What’s your take on this?” he asked Mannie.

  “For a novelist, Mr. Sabian is either a lot more skilled at hacking or a lot more connected than I would have guessed.”

  “Or it wasn’t him.”

  “Yes.”

  Although Blake didn’t want to get distracted by this, he did want some answers. “Mannie, it’s time we find out more about that young man and what he’s truly capable of.”

  “And Reese? The canisters?”

  “It’s being handled by the team in Phoenix.”

  “What about his son?”

  “We’ll have to see how things go.”

  Mannie hesitated slightly. “Alright.”

  After his associate stepped away, Blake thought of one other place where the leak might have originated. He put through a call to the escort. “Sasha, it’s me.”

  “Hey.”

  “I’d like to see you.”

  “I’d like to see you too.”

  “You snuck out on me last night.”

  “I have . . . There are other clients that I work with.”

  “Of course. Are you free today?”

  “When?”

  “What about right now?”

  “I’m free.”

  “Where are you? I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

  “I can come to where you are.”

  “It’s not a problem, Sasha. I’ll send someone for you.”

  “Alright.” She told him a location on the Lower East Side. “I’ll be waiting.”

  * * *

  +++

  Sasha hung up.

  She had to decide whether or not to tell anyone that Blake had just contacted her. On the one hand, she wanted to keep it to herself to avoid alerting any personnel who might have been compromised from finding out. However, on the other hand, she knew that since she was working with the Bureau now, transparency was important.

  Greer was in the office with her and must have noticed how conflicted she looked because he said to her, “You alright?”

  “Yeah.”

  So, fill him in or not?

  Do it.

  Cooperate with the Bureau.

  She told him what was going on. “Do you think I should go? If we arrest the driver, that’ll undoubtedly spook Blake, and if he’s in the wind, we might have lost our chance of tracking him down. And his men are good. I’m afraid that whoever Blake sends will be able to make us if we have a team waiting.”

  Greer nodded in agreement. “Let’s keep this under wraps. Right now we don’t know who you can trust. I’ll back you up. Take a tracking device. When they pick you up, we’ll be one step ahead of them. I’ll follow you and call your DEA supervisor to get a support team in place as soon as we’ve confirmed a location. Blake is ours.”

  * * *

  +++

  “Hello?” Christie stepped through the front door of their apartment and tugged her luggage inside. “Tessa? Are you here?”

  “Hey, Mom.” The voice came from her daughter’s bedroom. “I’ll be right there.”

  Christie closed the door behind her and noticed five pumpkins on the kitchen counter just as Tessa came down the hallway.

  “Pumpkins?” Christie asked curiously.

  “Patrick’s been teaching me to drive. Those are the pedestrians. How was your trip?”<
br />
  “It was good. The pedestrians?”

  “I’m not supposed to run ’em over. You need a hand?”

  “Yeah, but first a hug.”

  Tessa was not a hugger, but Christie was glad that today she at least put up with a brief one before helping to navigate the luggage down the hall toward the master bedroom.

  “What’d you pack in this thing?” Tessa grunted. “Bricks?”

  “Books. Plus I bought a few at the gift shop.”

  “A monastery with a gift shop. Sure, why not?”

  They made it to the room. “So have you hit any yet?” Christie asked.

  “Hit any?”

  “Pedestrians.”

  “We might have started with a couple more, I guess, but I’m getting better. He won’t let me drive on actual roads yet, just the parking lot.”

  “One step at a time. You need that license first.”

  “Yeah, but it sucks. Oh, we went to church yesterday.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Boring.”

  “Okay.”

  Christie unzipped her suitcase and handed a shirt that she hadn’t worn to Tessa to hang in the closet.

  “The pastor told Patrick and me that we’re supposed to greet you in the glorious name of Jesus. So consider yourself gloriously greeted.”

  “Ah. So it was Dr. Williams.”

  “Amazing deduction there.”

  “What was the sermon about?”

  “Something about God. Oh, and Patrick tracked my cell phone. Can you believe that?”

  “What do you mean?” Christie was working her way through her suitcase, sorting out the clean clothes from the ones she’d worn. “What happened?”

  “I was waiting for him in the lobby of the federal building—he had some sort of meeting and brought me along—but I can’t really complain ’cause I always ask him to take me there anyway—but the point is, it was taking him forever, so I went to get something to eat and he freaked out.”

  “He was probably just worried.”