Tell Me Lies: A completely addictive and unputdownable crime thriller (Detective Max Carter Book 1)

by Ed James

  James Rickards. A slimeball lawyer, the kind who didn’t want his clients ever getting inside a courthouse. His curly black hair was pulled over in a side-parting, held down by a ton of gel and hairspray. Regulation black business suit, pink shirt, lavender tie. “Maxwell.”

  “It’s just Max.” Carter took out a notebook and clicked his pen. “Need to ask you a few questions, Mr. Olson. Kinda convenient that your lawyer just happens to be here.”

  “We’re just having a drink.” Olson raised his glass, but didn’t offer any to Carter. “Now, what brings you back, huh? Thought you’d have found Avery Holliday by now.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “You hear this, Jimmy?” Olson laughed hard.

  “Your lawyer being here saves us a lot of dicking around.”

  Olson shook his head. “Me and Jimmy here have been shooting the shit.” A fresh VR headset rested on his desk. Olson picked it up and took a look at it. “Finally got some contracts through for this hunk of junk.”

  Rickards nodded. “That’s correct.”

  Carter focused on him. “Thought you were a criminal defense attorney.”

  “Oh, Mr. Carter.” Rickards curled his lip. “Just because you’ve only seen your dog hunt doesn’t mean it can’t raise pups or guard your home. Criminal defense is but one string to my bow. Mergers and acquisitions is actually my specialty.”

  Carter felt Nguyen’s glare burn into his neck. He tossed the document on the desk. “Need you to explain why money’s passing from Caymans accounts to GrayBox.”

  Rickards rolled his eyes but didn’t join in laughing. “I presume you have better evidence in support of this serious allegation against my client?”

  Nguyen stayed standing by the window, the spotlights catching her hair. “Richard, we’re duty-bound to investigate any allegation involving child abduction.”

  “And this relates to child abduction, how?”

  “Mr. Olson, I’m going to ask you straight here.” Carter got up and walked over to the display of baseball memorabilia. “The man who took Senator Holliday’s children did so to obtain information about a military operation in Seattle. His son died during that operation and another boy went missing.”

  Olson put the headset in his desk drawer. “Who do you think I am? You think I paid someone to take his kids to chase around getting information?”

  “Their strategy worked.” Carter pressed his finger into the document. “This proves a connection to GrayBox. I’m not accusing you of doing the actual abduction, but I think you know what happened that day.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Layla al-Yasin.” He left him a space, but Olson’s poker face was good. “It was her son who went missing during the military exercise your operatives were involved in. The exercise you received dirty CIA money for.”

  Olson took a few seconds to think it through, then smiled at Nguyen. “Can you give us the room?”

  She gave Carter a long hard look, her cheek twitching. Then she tilted her head to the side and left.

  Olson watched her go, eyes narrow, then he held out a hand. “I need your cell, Mr. Carter.”

  “Why?”

  “Never know who’s listening to an FBI agent’s cell phone.”

  Carter held it out, but didn’t give him it. “Why did you ask her to leave?”

  “Because now it’s just you, me, and my lawyer.” Olson tried to reach for the phone. “So, are you going to give me it?”

  “Fine.” Carter passed him the cell.

  “Good boy.” Olson turned it off, then put it in a drawer. “Now I know that none of this is on the record.”

  “I will get you in an interrogation room if there’s anything I deem pertinent to the well-being of Avery Holliday.”

  Olson sat back in his chair, arms folded. “You can leave, then.”

  Carter took his seat again. “Fine. This is off the record.”

  “I built this company up from nothing to becoming a Fortune 500 business. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. I’ve made the world a much safer place.”

  “You needed Karen to leave for that?”

  Olson settled back with a sigh. “Listen to me. We had a good chat earlier, you and me. I think I can trust you. Your heart’s in the right place. You should know that Senator Holliday isn’t as innocent as he makes out.”

  “Go on.”

  “After you left this afternoon, I was pissed that the FBI were looking at my company. So I did some more digging. Remember that missing document? Well, I found it.” Olson opened a drawer and took out a hefty wad of paper. He held it there, then rested it on the desk. “And so did you, but only part of the story. The second-last thing I want to find is evidence of money transferring from a CIA shell company to Frank Vance’s offshore accounts through my company. The last thing I want is the FBI knowing about it too.”

  Carter stared at the document. This wasn’t finding Avery Holliday, but it was something.

  “I’m a smart guy, Mr. Carter. I run a keylogger on all my exec’s machines. Amazing little bit of tech that logs every single keystroke they make. Means I had Frank Vance’s passwords. Means I have access to this account in the Caymans, saw the money coming in from a known CIA shell company in Bermuda. Means I found a cool half-mill payment to one David Quiroga. And Vance somehow had a record of all of Mr. Quiroga’s substantial gambling debts, totaling just shy of half a mill.”

  “So Vance paid him off?”

  “Sure enough. Also, he paid two mill to Holliday’s PAC.”

  “That isn’t under Holliday’s control.”

  “Maybe not, but somehow Harry Youngblood has a login to the account, and I traced that payment—all two million bucks went to Holliday’s own account in Bermuda. The accounts list it as a service charge, but Holliday pocketed blood money from two corrupt operatives.”

  “That evidence going to stand up in court?”

  Olson looked over at Rickards. “Jimmy?”

  “This has all been independently audited. Our firm can provide concrete proof of these transactions.”

  “Proof that Harry Youngblood, Frank Vance, and Chris Holliday made them?”

  “Accounts like these, that handle transactions of a certain size and nature…” Rickards flattened down his hair. “They require a higher level of security and biometric identification than your cell phone banking app would. That these men made these transactions is indisputable. Of course, I trust your own experts will validate that for you, so don’t just take my word for it.”

  Carter gave a nod. Don’t commit to anything yet.

  Olson opened the document and flicked through to a point. “The name Tony Smith mean anything to you?”

  Carter nodded again, still keeping quiet. Let them spill what they want to and see what sticks.

  “The sports coach at that school, there when Faraj was taken, and when Jacob died. Body found in Duluth, right?”

  Carter grimaced, feeling a tightness in his gut. “How did you know that?”

  “I have my sources.” Olson tapped his nose, then swiveled the document around on the desk. “Turns out Frank Vance was in Duluth that day. Two days later he cleared out Tony Smith’s apartment. Very charitable of him, huh?”

  “Very.”

  The lawyer handed Carter a folder. “This is the evidence my client has to back up Senator Holliday’s involvement in the matter. You should, of course, repeat some of the searches yourself to validate the evidence trail. The security credentials to access Mr. Vance’s accounts are in here.” He licked his lips. “And there is, of course, a message trail between Youngblood, Vance, and Holliday regarding the payments for covering up activities.”

  “Messages? I thought this would be done on the golf course.”

  “They needed to process the transactions, hence a last-minute discussion of account numbers and amounts between the parties. Access credentials to the accounts are in there. Again, biometric security provides proof that the messages were be
tween those individuals.”

  Carter sifted through the folder. Senator Holliday’s involvement in the abduction of Faraj al-Yasin. Conspiring with two dead men to break federal law for the CIA. Enough to bury a man. He rested the document on the edge of the desk. “One last time, Mr. Olson, do you know where Avery Holliday is?”

  “I wish I did. That kid’s poor mother…” He shook his head slowly, like he cared about what Megan Holliday was going through.

  So there it was. Everything Olson had, all of his evidence against the three men he believed had acted against his company. It was all there. The facts, the evidence, the motive. But it didn’t quite add up, did it?

  The why was there. Why Faraj had been taken, and who by. But it stopped there, the story ending too soon. Like a financial transaction, you needed a party and a counterparty. Someone who gained, someone who lost. This was only one side of the coin—Olson’s truth.

  Mason and Layla had taken two children. Mason had killed two people. And yet he barely featured in this. Mason and Layla were everything.

  Carter leaned forward, resting on his elbows. “You know when hacker kids on the internet strip someone of their anonymity they call it doxxing, right?”

  A frown twitched on Olson’s forehead. “Okay?”

  “Something to do with documents, I think. Anyway, I suspect that’s what happened here, right? You told me this afternoon about how you found some people sullying the good name of your company. Just some keyboard commandos, saying GrayBox was involved in some military operation at a school. But that got to you, Richard, didn’t it? Stung you. So you doxed them. Found their real identities, their real names and addresses. Layla al-Yasin and Mason Wickstrom. And everything clicked into place for you. They’d lost their sons. Both of them, the same day. So you used them to look into what happened. Gives you plausible deniability, right?”

  Olson just grimaced.

  “Come on. You helped Layla. Got your goons to bring Holliday to the sports hall. Let Layla tease him with his daughter and torture him for what he’d done to her son, but more importantly to your company.”

  “We’re done here.” Olson waved at the door and beckoned Nguyen back in.

  She entered, pouting.

  Olson gave her a smile now. “I can only apologize for my company’s involvement in this sorry mess. I gather that Harry Youngblood and Franklin Vance are sadly dead, so you’re unable to prosecute either of them. I’ve given Special Agent Carter here evidence against Senator Holliday, covering his involvement in a clandestine operation that I had no knowledge of. I will ensure all employees of my company fully support the investigation.” He held out Carter’s cell phone.

  Carter got to his feet and took his phone back. “I will get you for this.” He followed Nguyen out into the hallway, heading to the elevators, knowing that he’d lost.

  Olson had played off two desperate people, tormented Holliday’s kids, all just to protect the name of his company.

  But he’d also found evidence of a cover-up, of corruption at a high level.

  Did it balance out?

  Carter didn’t know, so he said nothing, just waited for the elevator. He handed the document to Nguyen. “That’s enough to—”

  “The walls have ears, Max.” She raised her eyebrows. “Wait until we’re outside.”

  Carter got in the driver’s side of the SUV and looked over at Olson’s office. He could pick him out in the window, playing with his fresh VR visor. Rickards stood next to him, staring down at them, his lips moving.

  They’d won.

  By their covert means, they’d cleaned up GrayBox and removed their bad apples, with neither taking any blame.

  “I want to take him down.” Carter gripped the steering wheel. “Olson’s responsible for this. He goaded Mason Wickstrom and Layla al-Yasin, fed them information. Okay, so they kidnapped the kids, and they’re responsible for Brandon’s shooting, and the deaths of Harry Youngblood and Frank Vance. But Olson pulled their strings. It’s all on him.”

  “Whatever you think, we have less than no chance of charging Olson with anything.”

  “Come on, Karen.”

  “I know how this gets to you, Max. Whenever there’s a case that you don’t solve, it eats at you. You’ve chosen to specialize in a particularly harrowing crime. Every time some kid goes missing, you’re the one who shoulders the responsibility.” Nguyen flared her nostrils. “Mason Wickstrom is going to burn for what he’s done. Chris Holliday, if he’s done what that document says he has, then he’s in deep, deep trouble. Richard Olson hasn’t done anything other than let some bad people commit some barbarism on his company’s time.”

  “You didn’t hear what Olson said to me.”

  “And I don’t need to.” She held up the document. “We’re going to investigate his company. That’ll accelerate Delgado’s investigation. Richard Olson will suffer, believe me.”

  “Karen, he’s…” Carter leaned back in his seat, bumping against the headrest. “That’s not enough.”

  “Max, Avery’s still out there. Still missing. That’s your focus. Okay?”

  Carter looked over at her. “It’s time I spoke to Holliday.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Holliday

  The door opened and that FBI agent marched in like he was the boss. Carter. He sat opposite Holliday and pulled out a paper file, spreading the documents across the table in front of him. “Senator.”

  Holliday gasped. “You have her?”

  “I’m afraid not, but I need to ask you a few questions about—”

  “My daughter is still missing and you’re in here, acting like I had something to do with it?”

  Carter leaned back, his suit jacket splaying behind him, nodding slowly. “Senator, please don’t play that card. My primary focus is still on finding your daughter. But it’s not that simple, is it?”

  “What are you talking about?” Holliday held his gaze, but Carter wasn’t giving anything away. “Listen to me. I know the FBI director.”

  “So you told me just before you eloped from the hospital.”

  “Want me to call him and have a nice chat about you?”

  “See, if it was me and my kid was missing, I wouldn’t be so concerned about covering my ass.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’d be doing everything I could to find her. You’re not.”

  “This is ridiculous! You can’t just sit there and accuse me of this bullshit. You need to find my daughter!”

  “Senator, as part of the investigation into the abduction of your children, we found some troubling evidence. Evidence that you covered up a covert operation, then—”

  “You’re lying!” Holliday banged a fist off the table, sending a wave of pain up his arm. “Whatever you think I’ve done, it’s… These people have my daughter and you’re sitting here feeding me this bullshit!”

  Carter kept his gaze then pushed a page across the table. “Senator, GrayBox carried out a covert operation under the guise of a military exercise. Problem was, someone’s kid died during it, so they had to cover it up.” He handed him another page. “You helped, didn’t you?”

  “This is all Richard Olson! Everything, all that you’ve found, it all leads back to him! He put Mason up to this, fed him lies. It’s all him! That son of a bitch is framing me to deflect attention from his company!”

  “And you’ve got evidence of his involvement?”

  Holliday threw the pages back at Carter. “Someone abducted me, knocked me out, and took me to where you found me. Avery was there. My daughter. And that woman had her.”

  “Senator, I visited Richard Olson and he—”

  Holliday thumped the table, his fury building. “You should have him in chains, you hear me? That bitch has—”

  “Seriously?”

  “What, do you expect me to call her a princess? She has my daughter.”

  “I’ve checked it out. We’ve accessed Franklin Vance’s offshore bank records and found a depo
sit of four million, half of which stayed there and half of which went to your PAC.”

  “This is a lie!”

  “We then traced that money to a company you own, a service business in Bermuda. That’s wire fraud. Care to enlighten us as to what those services were for, Senator?”

  “This is a pack of lies.”

  “You’re involved in a conspiracy to cover up an illegal military operation for the CIA on American soil that resulted in three deaths so far.” Carter passed him another page. “Harry Youngblood and Frank Vance you know about. You were there for both of them. David Quiroga, the school principal, he shot himself. He took his own life rather than answer my questions. You paid him, right?”

  “No!”

  “This is Tony Smith.” Carter passed another page over the table. “He was the sports coach, in charge when Faraj al-Yasin was taken during the exercise. When Jacob Wickstrom died. Of course, you paid him off, but he felt so much guilt. Called Mr. Quiroga, so Vance visited him in Duluth. Made his death look like suicide.”

  “This is such utter horseshit. You should be looking for my daughter! I want that bitch in chains!”

  “You’re going to prison, Senator.” Carter patted a paper file. “You’ll be forced to resign your seat in the next few hours.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “Your superiors in your party have a different viewpoint. We’ll let them have a word with you when their flight gets in.”

  Holliday couldn’t breathe.

  It’s all falling down because some schoolkid had a heart attack.

  Vance said it was all going to be okay, that it was all going to be fine.

  The door jerked open and Carter’s boss walked in. Nguyen, or something. “Senator, there’s someone here to see you.”

  Megan stood in the doorway, brushing tears from her eyes. She couldn’t even look at him.

  Holliday stared at her, trying to make eye contact. “Everything is going to be okay, honey.”

  “What?” Megan lurched into the room. Nguyen tried to hold her back, tried to stop her from attacking him. But she failed, Megan’s nails scratching his bruised cheek. “You animal!” Carter grabbed her in a bear hug. “You subhuman piece of trash!”