The Color of Death

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “June of last year,” she said in a flat voice, reading the time line they had been working on for too many hours already, with nothing to show for it but a headache and dirty coffee cups. “Arthur McCloud buys blue sapphire rough at a CGSI auction. Six bidders. Presumption is that McCloud bragged about Seven Sins to one or more of the unsuccessful bidders. Same six bidders attended a different auction in Texas on the day Lee is presumed to have been killed and the sapphires stolen.”

  “Put those bidders on the Last Resort list,” Sam said, lifting a cup of cold coffee. “Even if they bailed on the morning of the Texas auction instead of the afternoon, they’d have had a hell of a time getting in place in time to pick up Lee at the airport and follow him to the SoupOr Shrimp. So far, their alibis look good. Someone in headquarters is running their financials for me. If something pops, we’ll take a look at it. Until then, forget it.”

  Kate pulled pink sticky notes with six names listed and put them on a legal tablet whose heading read Last Resort. None of the notes had opportunity or means written across the bottom. The motive—greed—was represented by a big G on each note.

  “In addition to McCloud, three other people were known to have information about what was in the missing courier’s packet,” Kate continued. “The cutter, the owner of Mandel Inc., and the owner’s wife. None of these four—”

  “They don’t even make the Last Resort list,” Sam finished when Kate paused to turn to a new page. “McCloud has no motive except money, and he’s got plenty of that. Money isn’t a motive that flies with you or your parents. And even if it did, there’s not one clue in anyone’s financial records that hints at money from a questionable source. Yes, we have a forensic accountant working on your family in case I missed something, but my gut isn’t buying it. Without motive, opportunity and means don’t add up to spit. Put those four names on the When Pigs Fly list.”

  Kate duly transferred the white sticky notes to another legal tablet with the appropriate heading.

  “It’s probable, but unproved,” she continued reading, “that Norm Gallagher knew what Lee was carrying, and when. As for motivation, so far there isn’t any. I haven’t been able to reach Norm to ask him if he knew.” I haven’t even been able to tell him that the FBI is assuming Lee is dead.

  Not that Sam would have let her. That was privileged information. Even her parents had promised to tell no one about their son’s near-certain death.

  Sam peeled the note with Norm’s name off the table and pressed it onto the tablet labeled Active.

  “Approximately two days after the courier’s death,” she read, “Seguro Jimenez is approached by a man or a woman who may or may not have been blonde and blue-eyed. Said unknown person had one of the Seven Sins. Seguro claims not to have purchased it.”

  Sam reached out, pulled the red sticky note with Persons Unknown on it, and stuck the note to a third legal tablet, which was labeled Prime Suspects. Seguro’s name, on a pink note, went to another tablet labeled Pipeline.

  With a stifled yawn, Kate went back to reading aloud. “The first investigation into the missing courier was conducted by…”

  While she recited the dreary facts that had led nowhere in an investigation that had interested the various local, state, and federal cops not at all, Sam watched Kate with a gentleness and hunger he kept hidden from her. If nothing else came of the past tedious hours, at least she could now recite the facts surrounding her half brother’s death without flinching. It wasn’t much, but he’d learned through the years that a little something was a whole lot better than nothing at all.

  She flipped the page without transferring any sticky notes anywhere. None of the investigations had turned up anything worth pursuing, period.

  “You think the coffee is done yet?” Sam asked.

  “I think you drink too much coffee.”

  “You too. You want a cup?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the coffee is ready.”

  Sam went to the kitchen, inspected the state of the coffeemaker, and decided it was close enough for government work. He poured two mugs and headed back to the workroom. As he did, he automatically checked the status lights on the alarm system.

  All green.

  “Want some pizza with it?” he asked, setting the mug in front of her.

  She shook her head, frowning at something on the page in front of her.

  “You sure?” he asked. “There might not be any left if you change your mind in a few minutes.”

  She half smiled and waved toward the remains of their hasty dinner. “I’m sure. Knock yourself out.”

  He pulled the mostly empty pizza box closer and settled in to clean up everything but the grease spots on the cardboard. While he chewed, he listened, waiting for the instant when the same facts assembled in a different way would lead to new insights, new suspects, something.

  When Kate got to the part where she received the death threat, he tried not to think about how satisfying it would be to strangle the cowardly son of a bitch.

  I have to catch him first. One fact at a time, one step at a time, go over it again and again, repeat as necessary. Something will pop. It has to.

  Kate transferred another red note to the Prime Suspects tablet. This note said Person Unknown/Death Threat. When she started to recite the list of dealers who had attended the same conventions in the months since Purcell surfaced with one of the Seven Sins, Sam interrupted.

  “I’ve got Mario on those,” Sam said. “Unless a name appears on another tablet heading, put them all under Long Shot.”

  Both of them already knew that none of the dealer/civilian expert names appeared under any other heading, except for Peyton Hall, CGSI, Purcell, and Sizemore Security Consulting. But even after their names were stuck to the Active tablet, the tablet labeled Long Shot still sprouted so many notes that it looked like a drunken checkerboard.

  “What about Mandel Inc.?” Kate asked. “They’re civilians.”

  “Your parents said no one in the organization had access to the courier routes, times, or goods.”

  “Someone could have hacked into the files.”

  Sam almost smiled at her determination to treat everyone as an equal suspect. When he’d told her that each time they went through the facts again, they had to treat it like the first time, he hadn’t expected the level of intensity and unrelenting concentration she’d given to the job.

  “The Mandel Inc. computer that deals with routes, couriers, and so on, isn’t connected to the Internet, so it can’t be hacked into,” he reminded her. “Only your parents have the computer entry code. Same for Sizemore’s company and CGSI. Unless you tell me something new, your parents stay in the When Pigs Fly category. The jury is still out on the rest of the folks.”

  “Okay.” Absently, Kate rubbed her neck. “Now we’re at the part where it gets complicated. Your turn.”

  Without meaning to, both of them looked at the table that was nearly covered with sticky notes waiting to be assigned. Many of the names were duplicates, which was one way of keeping track of how many “hits” each name had in the course of the investigation, and whether the hits came under motive, opportunity, and/or means.

  Sam picked up his own tablet and began reading. “Crime strike force personnel. Pending further investigation, assumed motive is money.”

  Another flurry of notes were lifted from the table and put into tablets. All but one name went into the Active category. Sam’s name went on the Last Resort list.

  “When Pigs Fly,” Kate said, yanking off the note and putting it on another tablet.

  “What if all this is an elaborate ruse on my part to—”

  “Oh, bull,” Kate interrupted. “Don’t waste my time.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  She rolled her eyes, then saw that he was serious. “There are some things a man can’t fake.”

  “Emotions? Darling, I hate to tell you but—”

  “Erections,” she sa
id succinctly. “You might screw me once just because I was handy and you were horny, but it takes real passion to do it four times in a row.”

  “Stamina too.”

  “Exactly.”

  “For you too.”

  “You noticed?”

  He smiled and touched the corner of her mouth. “I noticed.”

  She kissed his fingertip. “And you’re gentle with me. At least you are now that you don’t think I’m a crook. You weren’t very nice before that.”

  “I’m not paid to be nice.”

  “See? There you go. But you’re nice to me and you’re innocent.” She looked at the tablet he was holding. “How many of the people on the strike force had a previous connection to Lee or Mandel Inc.?”

  “As far as we can discover from your parents’ records, no one.”

  “What about Sizemore Security Consulting?” Kate said. “Lee worked for them a couple of times.”

  “Sizemore’s company isn’t part of the strike force.”

  “Puh-lease. Are you telling me that the Legend doesn’t know everything that jerk Kennedy knows?”

  “No. I’m telling you it’s an informal rather than a formal connection.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate muttered. “Any more formal and they’d be married.”

  Firmly she pulled up a slip with Sizemore’s name and stuck it to the Active file. Then she wrote “/Lee” on the note and looked at Sam defiantly.

  He was smiling.

  Then he took Kennedy’s name and wrote across the bottom of the note “/Lee?” The note went next to Sizemore’s in the Active category.

  “Why?” Kate asked.

  “They’ve been sharing information for thirty years. We’re better off assuming shared knowledge than burying our heads in the sand.”

  “I’ve always thought that sounded way uncomfortable.”

  “What?”

  “All that sand in your eyes.”

  Sam shook his head, picked up his tablet, and began reading again. “As much as I’d like to pin a rose on Bill Colton, so far all I have against him is his sweet personality. He’d cut my throat, and yours, to become SAC, but otherwise he’s clean.”

  Kate took the note with Colton’s name and put it on the Active tablet.

  “Why?” Sam asked, reaching for the note. “At best he’s a long shot.”

  She pushed his hand away. “I don’t like him.”

  “You’ve never met him.”

  “I saw him. That was enough.”

  “A woman of rare perception and taste.”

  Smiling, Sam went back to reading. “On to the civilian component. Sizemore Security Consulting had the means and opportunity to take out most of the couriers. Exceptions are noted next to the courier’s name.”

  Kate looked down the list of couriers. Nineteen in all. It shocked her each time she confronted it. Then she reminded herself that it was less than one percent of the jewelry courier runs in the U.S. in the same time period.

  “No connection to Lee, though,” Sam said. “But the motive is there. Money. Sizemore’s company has been in a steady decline for six years. Extra cash here and there would be welcome.”

  “But thanks to all these couriers getting hit when they were under Sizemore’s supposed security net, Sizemore is getting a bad reputation among its client base,” Kate said. “Whatever he got in the short run wouldn’t be worth ruining his own business, would it?”

  Sam grimaced. “You’re sure about the reputation thing?”

  “Very. People in the jewelry trade gossip. Sizemore Security Consulting isn’t getting any compliments.”

  “Well, damn. Unless he’s gone around the bend, he doesn’t have an obvious motive. Or maybe he’s socking away the proceeds of crime for his retirement.”

  “Does that fit with his personality?” Kate asked.

  “I’m no shrink, but it’s not sounding real good to me. On the other hand, who knows what makes people go postal? He could see old age closing in on him and all he has to fend it off with is an FBI pension and a failing company. And beer.”

  “True. And from what you said, he’s certainly arrogant enough to be a crook.”

  “Yeah.” Sam looked off into a distance only he could see. “In some ways the line between cop and crook is a lot thinner than we like to think about, much less talk about.”

  After a moment Sam shrugged and moved Sizemore’s name from Active to Suspect. At least it was a name rather than an unknown person or persons.

  “What about the other people at Sizemore’s company?” Kate asked. “Even if he’s innocent as a baby’s smile, there could be someone inside the company using or selling information, couldn’t there?”

  “We’re checking into that. So far no good. The son is a hard worker who wants to please Daddy. The daughter is a hard worker who keeps the operation together. The third in command, Jason Gallagher, is—”

  “Who?” Kate cut in, surprised.

  “Jason Gallagher.”

  “I think—I can’t be certain—but I think Norm’s brother is a Jason. At least, his nickname is Jase.”

  “You never said anything about a brother.”

  “That’s because I don’t really know much about Norm, except that Lee is—” She stopped abruptly, then continued after only a brief pause, “Lee was over the moon about him. That’s all Lee talked about when he called me. That and the fact that Norm was urging him to tell Mom and Dad. Norm’s family was very supportive of him.” Frowning, Kate pulled the clip out of her hair and rubbed her scalp as though that would stimulate her memory. “Lee said that was something he and Norm had in common. Jase supported Norm and I supported Lee. Given the context, I just assumed that Jase was Norm’s brother.”

  “Fair enough. And that would certainly connect Sizemore’s company with Lee in a big way,” Sam said. “If Lee told Norm what was in the courier packet, and Norm told his brother Jase, who also happens to be Jason Gallagher, and Jason mentioned it to his boss…”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” Kate said dubiously.

  “Yeah. But it’s a link we didn’t have before. Let’s see if it goes somewhere.”

  “Are you going to call Jase?”

  “First I’m going to be sure that we have brothers. If we do, we’ll assume linkage.”

  “Why not just ask Jase?”

  “Because if Sizemore is dirty, Jase could be dirty too.”

  Kate shifted unhappily. “Are you saying that Jase set up his brother’s lover?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know who’s dirty and who isn’t. Until I do—or can at least make a reasonable guess—I’m not going to go broadcasting my suspicions.”

  “But they were going to be married.”

  It took Sam a moment, but he made the connection. “Look, Jase could have tipped someone, or Sizemore could have, or someone else who had the information, without intending to harm anyone but the insurance company. Up until Lee died, the couriers weren’t killed.”

  “What changed that?”

  “Good question.” Sam fiddled with a piece of pizza crust and stared into the middle distance. “The Purcells were killed to keep them quiet about where they got the sapphire. I think the female courier was roughed up to change the MO so that the cops would assume South American gangs were at play, rather than the guys I call the Teflon gang. The female courier happened to have a thin skull, so she died. The courier who was shot in the parking lot is just one of those things that go down when crooks carry guns. A screwup. Otherwise it was a classic Teflon job—homemade remote key, inside information on the courier and the route, the courier isn’t around for the grab, no one is hurt, in and out and gone in thirty seconds.”

  “How many of these nineteen couriers fit that profile?”

  “Twelve, if I’m right about the female courier and the parking lot screwup, and one or two others where the MO is mixed.”

  “What does your boss say about your theory?”

  “My SAC says that his bo
ss told him that when we round up all the South American mutts, and the courier hits continue, then and only then will Kennedy start looking under his maiden aunt’s bed for Teflon ghosts.”

  “Got it. Kennedy’s not impressed.”

  “Neither is Sizemore. Kennedy controls the Bureau information pipeline, so nothing gets in the files that would make him unhappy. Sizemore has the media in his pocket, which only feeds the frenzy for South American gangs.”

  “That’s what you meant when you said facts that don’t agree with the brass don’t make it into the final report.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a wonder anything ever gets done.”

  He smiled wearily. “It’s not just the Bureau. It’s human nature. We don’t like the bearer of bad news. We reward the folks bringing good news. Guess which messenger gets ahead in the world?”

  Kate just shook her head.

  “Okay,” Sam said, “next civilian under investigation is CGSI. Raul Mendoza did a preliminary on them and came up with nothing interesting. Ditto the accountant. Only thing of interest is that they handle their own courier and security information, always.”

  “Dad has tried to interest them in using his company. No sale.”

  “Tell him not to take it personally. Sizemore got the same treatment when he tried to include them in his security umbrella for this show. They told him to go crap in his mess kit. A few other security companies tried, but they weren’t gem and jewelry specialists.”

  “Is CGSI any better off for doing its own security?” she asked.

  Sam turned and went to work on the computer keyboard. “They’ve been hit once in four years. South American gang MO. That was two years ago.” He tapped out a rapid series of commands, calling up an FBI evaluation of various companies involved in the gem and jewelry trade. The screen changed to a graphic representation. “Considering the amount and value of the stuff they move, CGSI is doing much better at not getting hit than the average company with the same volume of goods.”

  “That doesn’t make Mandel Inc. or Sizemore Security Consulting look very good, does it?”

  For a moment, Sam didn’t answer. “No, it doesn’t. But it could just be a factoid. It’s too soon to tell.”