In the backseat Billie had picked up on the change the moment he stepped out of the Chamberlain house. No longer was she content stretched out on the backseat, her body upright, pacing the cramped confines.
Reed could feel the car swaying from her movement as he wound toward the precinct, thinking nothing of it, knowing he would be doing the same exact thing if given the chance.
At a quarter before 6:00 in the morning, the parking lot to the precinct was virtually deserted. For the third time in as many days Reed didn’t bother with the staff lot, going for a visitor stall out front. It was still more than two hours before the building officially opened for the day, meaning with any luck he would be long gone before a concerned citizen happened to show up in need of assistance.
Grabbing up the printouts off the passenger seat, Reed climbed out, leaving Billie free to roam at his side. She fell in a foot from his hip as he ascended the two short steps and passed through the front door. Inside, most of the building was still dark, shrouded in shadows, save a single light just barely visible beyond the frosted glass of the executive suite.
“No way,” Reed muttered, slapping his thigh once to let Billie know of the redirect and heading toward the light. A moment later he passed through the door and knocked on the frame of Grimes’s office, the rest of the wing void of life.
“Do you ever leave this place?” Reed asked, taking a step forward.
Seated behind his desk was Grimes, his uniform fresh, but everything else looking like it had been through the wringer many times over. Dark circles underscored each of his eyes and his cheeks sagged on either side of his face.
If Reed were to guess he would project it had been days since the man slept, though he wouldn’t say a full week was out of the question.
“I could ask the same of you,” Grimes said, his voice even more graveled than usual, coming out as little more than a grunt.
“I’m the guy you assigned to track down whoever shot two of our detectives,” Reed said by way of an explanation, taking another couple of steps forward. “What’s your excuse?”
“Two of our detectives got shot,” Grimes said, not a moment of pause, not a hint of self-reverence in his tone.
For a moment Reed felt his lips part, the words to respond evading him. He held the stance for a moment before stepping forward and dumping himself in the seat across from Grimes, not waiting for an invitation.
He held the printouts up in his hand and said, “I just came from my computer expert’s house.”
“Do I even want to know how much Mr. Chamberlain cost us this time?” Grimes asked.
“No,” Reed said, “because I covered it. But even if I didn’t, it would have been worth it.”
The left eyebrow of Grimes arched upward, an expectant look on his face.
In quick order Reed rattled off everything that had been found, beginning with the commonalities between the detectives and Weston and finishing with the hand notations of Gilmore’s initials in 11 different files. As he spoke, the frown on Grimes’s face grew incrementally deeper, almost reaching his jaw line on either side by the time Reed finished.
“Who are the 11 people?” Grimes asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Reed replied. “That’s why I’m here. Figured I would run all of them, see what they were picked up for originally, how our guys figured in. From there, I’ll give BCI a call, see where it goes.”
“Hmm,” Grimes said, nodding. “You haven’t talked to Investigator Glenn yet?”
“No,” Reed said. “Figured I’d wait another 10 minutes until 6:00 and then start calling.”
Grimes paused a moment, seeming to consider the statement, before nodding a second time. “Goes without saying, you need any clearance or anything in your search, you just have to ask.”
Reed opened his mouth to respond before pausing. He tilted his head and glanced out the window, the sun just a smudge on the horizon.
“You know there’s a good chance we’re going to end up pissing the FBI off on this.”
“Sounds like Agent Gilmore has it coming,” Grimes said.
“I agree, but just the same, if you know anybody that could ease the landing a little bit over there...”
As Gilmore had alluded to the day before, the two agencies did enjoy a fairly good working relationship. What Reed was holding would no doubt dent that a bit, but there was no reason to let one itinerant asshole bring it down completely.
It all depended on how things were handled.
“I’ll make a few calls,” Grimes said. “Can’t promise anything, but I’ll wake some folks up, get them to clear the way.”
“Appreciate it,” Reed said.
Grimes nodded. “Just the same, if I can’t find anybody, you know what still needs to be done.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Reed didn’t make it all the way until 6:00. At three minutes before the hour he phoned Glenn, not in the least bit surprised when she answered after only a single ring. Completely ignoring all apologies or salutations, he launched straight into what Deek had been able to pull.
Twenty-four minutes later she was seated by his side, two of only five people in the entire building, Billie sitting vigil between them on the floor. Her hair was still wet from the shower, the collar on her suit coat flipped up in the back, as she drug over the same chair Grimes had used the morning before and sat less than a foot from Reed, both having prime viewing of the screen.
“Okay, what have you found so far?” she asked, alternating her gaze between the screen and the twin stacks of printouts in front of Reed.
“These here are ones I’ve already looked into,” Reed said, dropping his fingertips atop the closest pile and sliding it her direction.
She snatched up the pages the moment his hand was lifted away, pulling all six pages, just over half of the total, onto her lap and rifling through them.
“So all 11 of these originated with your guys,” she said, reasoning through things out loud.
“Yes,” Reed said, “the arresting officers in all 11 were Ike and Bishop. From there, whether it was directly after sentencing or after bouncing through the system for a while, they ended up over at Franklin Medical under Weston.”
“And eventually they all were released within a month of Dan Gilmore’s initials showing up in the file.”
“Also notice that his name is the last thing in every one of them,” Reed said, looking over from the CPD database on his screen to the pile in her lap. “Once he got involved, the docs became completely hands off. No more check-ins, no more follow ups.”
Shuffling through them, Glenn checked the veracity of the statement before lowering the pages in front of her and staring out through the window before them. At half past 6:00 the sun was still not fully above the horizon, the earlier orange hue giving way to an orb the color of cornmeal. In the lot, a pair of middle-aged women met up behind their respective cars and walked toward the building, purses hitched up on their shoulders, lunch sacks in their hands.
“Also note, there’s no real rhyme or reason to the timing of their release,” Reed said, pulling up the next person in line and grabbing a pen to begin making notations.
“What do you mean?” Glenn asked, pulling herself back into the moment, turning to face him.
“Some of the guys were close to their parole date,” Reed said, “but some of them still had a ways to go. Look at this guy here.”
Extending the bottom of the pen toward the screen, Reed tapped at the line indicating the initial sentencing. “He was inside for multiple counts of GTA, was supposed to serve another four-plus. Suddenly Agent Gilmore shows up with his magic wand, and...”
“Out he walks a free man,” Glenn said.
Like himself, he could sense a certain urgency rolling off of Glenn. Her words were clipped, her movements sharp as she went through the forms.
Reed knew the feeling extremely well, having been operating under it since leaving Grimes’s office less than an hour before. There was so much infor
mation to be obtained, all of it within reach, he just needed to force his mind to move fast enough to absorb it all.
For two long days he had been following procedure, going through his paces, putting everything together that he needed to. Despite that, not once had he felt like he was really that close to anything resembling a breakthrough.
This was different. This had all the earmarks of pointing him in the right direction, for the first time being able to shift from reactive to proactive.
Oftentimes, that was what made all the difference in an investigation.
Pushing his attention back to the screen, Reed made a couple of notations. Using the free space along the right column, he wrote down the crime the man was convicted of, the sentence that was handed down, how much time remained on it, and the date of the infraction.
There were scads more information he could fall back on if he needed to but for the time being he was content to hammer on the major categories, hoping some sort of pattern would emerge.
It took less than 10 minutes for him to go through the remainder of the list. When he was finished they fanned them out over the top of the desk, standing shoulder to shoulder, Glenn with her arms crossed, Reed with his hands thrust into the front pockets of his jeans.
“Okay,” Glenn said, opening things up, “right off, we’ve got five drug dealers – three for meth, one each for heroin and cocaine – and three armed robbers.”
“We’ve also got solo offenders for grand theft auto, sex trafficking, and gun running.”
“All charges that would make use of a crew, most likely committing more than a single offense,” Glenn said.
Reed nodded. “Which makes sense. As Deek put it, Gilmore was using Franklin Medical as his own private informant farm league.”
He paused and glanced over to Glenn, “It’s a baseball thing, like a minor league system.”
“The Clippers play five miles from here,” Glenn snapped. “I know what a farm team is.”
Under any other circumstances Reed would have apologized, this time choosing to let it go. Instead he focused in on the pages before him, staring at the blue ink scrawled across them in his own handwriting, trying to make things fit.
“It doesn’t make sense though,” he said. “If someone sprang you early from incarceration, would you target them? Or worse yet, would you target the officers that arrested you and the warden that oversaw you?”
He glanced across to see Glenn open her mouth to respond before pausing and matching his look. “Good point. Why would they go after them at all? They had to know that after they became informants they were in the state and federal system. If anything started happening, that would be first place people looked.”
This time it was Reed’s turn to respond by opening his mouth before pausing. He remained that way, processing what was on the sheets in front of him, recalling as many of the files on the screen as he could.
“Not if you were dead.”
The statement seemed to originate from somewhere deep inside of Reed, his subconscious blurting it out before his active mind even had a chance to fully process it yet. As the words escaped him he could sense Glenn turning to stare beside him, almost feel Billie doing the same from the floor.
Inches from his ear Glenn said something, though the words failed to register as Reed lowered himself back into his chair and began clicking back through the files.
“This one,” he said, reaching over and tapping a sheet on the far edge of the desk.
“This one,” he added, moving to one a bit closer.
“And these two,” he finished, shoving over a pair of printouts closest to him.
Standing on the opposite corner, Glenn shuffled all other papers together and set them aside, leaving just four sheets in a row before them.
“These four died not long after being released,” Reed said.
He leaned forward and ran his gaze over each in order, stopping on the last one. His heart rate spiked as he stared at it, all moisture fleeing his mouth.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
Beside him Glenn pressed in tight, her hip flush with his as she read the same thing he was staring at.
“Marco Sanz, died October 23, 2014. Exactly one year ago today.”
Her voice was no more than a whisper, the words just barely penetrating Reed’s psyche.
“Was pulled over by Iaconelli and Bishop for driving with a busted taillight, found to be wanted for questioning in connection with nine different car thefts.”
The words hit Reed in the stomach, driving the wind from his lungs. He rose to full height and ran his hand back over his scalp, his short hair feeling like bristles against his palm.
“The first crime scene the other night,” Reed said, “it was staged. Somebody lured them in to make a point, to take them down just the way they had Sanz.”
“And giving Weston a choice,” Glenn said, pushing back from the paper and matching his stance, just a few feet separating them. “Just the way Sanz was probably presented with a choice – turn informant or stay inside another five years.”
Reed nodded, moving through the progression. Whoever was doing this had already taken out the arresting officer and the overseeing warden. “We have to get to Gilmore. If this is the anniversary, whoever is doing this has been setting things up for today.”
“He’s next in line,” Glenn said.
“I just hope we’re not already too late,” a voice said from behind them.
Both Reed and Glenn turned at the same time to find Grimes standing less than 10 feet away. In the commotion of the previous few moments neither had heard him approach, had any idea how long he’d been standing there.
“What’s going on?” Reed asked.
“I made a few calls after our meeting,” Grimes said, the frown on his face every bit as pronounced as it had been in their previous encounter.
“Agent Gilmore was expected to be in for an early briefing this morning. As of this time, nobody has seen or heard from him.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
For the first time since moving to the 8th and collecting his own department-issue sedan, Reed had someone riding shotgun. It made the small confines of the front seat feel cramped, the few things he normally kept on the passenger side stowed in the middle console between them.
Not to be left out, Billie pushed her muzzle up close as well, her hot breath landing on Reed’s bare forearm.
“Dammit,” Glenn spat, venom dripping from the word. She kept her arms folded tight over her torso, her chin drawn back into her neck, before shooting out her right hand and smacking the dash. “Dammit dammit dammit.”
The sound of her palm slapping against hardened plastic echoed through the car. Inside the cramped space it sounded like gunfire, three quick bursts.
On cue a low growl rolled from Billie, her body pushing forward another inch.
“Down,” Reed snapped, the growl stopping mid-stream, Billie retreating back to her seat. There she rested on her haunches, her head fully visible in the rearview mirror, attention focused on Reed.
The interaction gave Glenn pause, her hand just a few inches above the dash, poised to smash down again. Her mouth hung open half an inch, surprise on her face, before she too fell back in her seat.
“Sorry.”
Reed brushed past the apology with a quick shake of his head, glancing between the road and the GPS mounted above the radio. Outside, the morning traffic was well into the early throes of rush hour, cars lined up at every light, the freeway beyond moving at just a crawl.
“She just doesn’t know you that well,” Reed said. “And she gets her cues from me, which isn’t helping.”
He could see Glenn turn in his periphery. “But you aren’t saying a word.”
“No, but she also reads my body language, can tell when I’m amped up or pissed off.” He rolled his head to the side to glance at Glenn and added, “Trust me, she knows I’m every bit as angry as you right now.”
Glenn’s eyebrows tracked a bit higher as if she might comment before turning back to face the street. “I’m just...can you believe they actually said we give our agents a certain level of autonomy, they don’t have to be accountable to us 24 hours a day?”
Reed’s past brushes with the FBI were blessedly limited, though based on stories he’d heard from other guys on the force, that sort of approach wasn’t terribly unheard of. Even if every single person at the branch office was scared shitless for Gilmore and they were sending a full search party out to retrieve him, they’d never stoop so low as to let a local detective and a state investigator know it.
Damned sure wouldn’t invite them in on anything.
Despite that, this time Reed had the impression that their response had nothing to do with a jurisdictional pissing match. While condescending as hell in the delivery, what they had said wasn’t incorrect. Their agents most likely did have a great deal of autonomy.
That’s what had allowed Gilmore to set up his side venture with Weston in the first place.
“You want to try him again?” Reed asked.
Working in silence, Glenn took out her cell phone and scrolled to the most recent listing in her call log, a number Grimes had secured for them from one of his contacts. Three seconds later she lowered the phone back into place, the grimace on her face even more pronounced.
“Straight to voicemail.”
“Great,” Reed muttered, checking the screen on his GPS, pushing as fast as the mid-morning slog would allow. More than once he had wanted to turn on the sirens, had even discussed it with Glenn, but the fact was they had no reason to believe something was afoul beside someone not answering their calls.
There were any of a number of different explanations for it. The man could have gone out to watch Monday Night Football the previous evening and had a couple too many beers. He could be entertaining a lady friend. He might simply not want to answer a call from an unknown number, Reed very much the same way.
Knowing so little, they were forced to fall in with the rest of the working world, pushing straight in from Franklinton toward German Village.
The Kid: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 3) Page 17
