The Program (Jack Carpenter series)

by James Swain

  “Sit…”

  “It will kill her if that comes out.”

  “What are you talking about. Kill who?”

  “My mother. Adam was her favorite. Did you see how she drinks? She started doing that after my father died. What do you think will happen if the police tell her that Adam was a murderer? It will throw her over the edge. You had no right to do that.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

  Wayne lowered his arms. He returned to the chair and dropped his head, his eyes glued to the floor. “How did you find out?” he asked.

  “I never believed you were a killer,” she said. “I don’t think you have a mean bone in your body. That meant someone else killed your mother’s boyfriend. Since it was Adam’s bayonet, I started with him. I contacted the national Armed Services web site, and requested Adam’s army record. Sure enough, your older brother got a ten-day leave the Christmas your mother’s boyfriend was murdered.”

  Neither of them spoke, the window unit humming noisily.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” Wayne finally said, his voice barely a whisper. “I picked Adam up at the airport. He’d been drinking on the plane, and was messed up. We came home and mom was passed out on the couch with a black eye. Adam got his bayonet and made me tell him where the boyfriend lived. It was only a few blocks away, so he ran over and killed him. I tried to stop him.”

  “So your mother never knew.”

  “Shit, no. No one knew Adam was home, so we kept it that way.”

  “Taking the blame ruined your life.”

  “I didn’t want Adam to go to prison.”

  Another silence. Vick picked up the confession from the desk. “You’re going to have to tell the police we had sex, and you’re going to have to tell them about Adam,” she said. “We can figure out a way to break the news to your mother so it won’t destroy her.”

  “What do you mean, we?”

  “The police and the FBI. They have psychologists who know how to handle situations like this.”

  “What good will any of that do?”

  Vick crossed the office and put her hand on his shoulder. “It will do two things. It will set the record straight, and it will clear your name. In the end, it will be the best thing for everyone involved. You have to trust me on this.”

  “You’re sure this is right?”

  “Yes, Wayne. I’m sure.”

  He looked up at Vick. Her hand still rested on his shoulder. He took that as a sign that she cared about him as deeply as he cared about her.

  “I want something in return,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to see you again.”

  Vick lowered her hand. He thought she might storm out, and that he’d never see her again. He didn’t think he could deal with that.

  “Just to talk,” he said. “You know, over a soda or something.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Wayne.”

  “Why not?”

  “It just isn’t.”

  “But I care about you.”

  “I know you do. You saved my life. I’m never going to forget that.”

  “Then why can’t we see each other?”

  Vick started to reply, then thought better of it, and walked out of the office. Wayne followed her out of the barn and into the parking lot.

  “You leaving?” he asked.

  Still nothing. He opened the driver’s door of the Audi for her. Climbing in, she stuck the key in the ignition, the engine hardly making a sound when it came on.

  He knelt down next to her window and stared through the tinted glass. Please don’t leave without saying goodbye, he thought.

  The window lowered, their faces a few feet apart.

  “I’ll do what you asked,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Vick said.

  “Why won’t you see me again?”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “Come on, say something,” he said.

  “You’re ten years too late,” she said.

  Wayne wasn’t sure he understood what Vick meant. He watched her car until it disappeared, then went back to grooming the horses.

  Chapter 57

  Vick drove to the FBI’s office in North Miami, and spent the rest of the morning at her computer responding to several hundred emails.

  She hoped she hadn’t hurt Wayne, or broken his heart. Despite what had happened to him, he was still a boy, and still innocent to much of the world. She hoped he stayed that way for a long time, and that these dark days were behind him.

  At noon, she got an email from Linderman, inviting her to lunch. She knew what that meant — sandwiches at his desk, pouring over a case. They had not had a meaningful conversation since she’d taken down Mr. Clean, and she accepted his offer.

  A half-hour later she was in her boss’s office, eating an inch- thick corned beef sandwich from the Jewish deli that delivered to the building. Linderman ate a Reuben dripping with thousand island dressing with his necktie flipped over his shoulder.

  “There’s a memorial service for Roger DuCharme tomorrow,” Vick said. “I was planning to go. Care to join me?”

  “I’m leaving town,” he said. “I’m taking a couple of weeks off to look for Danni.”

  Vick put down her sandwich. The look on her boss’s face was troubled, his eyes without their usual hard focus. Like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of his sails, and it hadn’t come back. The invitation took on a different meaning. He needed to talk. She waited until they were both finished eating before speaking.

  “Do you have a new lead?” Vick asked.

  “Yes. It came from Crutch. I don’t know if it will amount to anything, but I have to run it down.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Crutch said that Simon Skell had abducted Danni at the University of Miami six years ago. Skell was going to kill Danni, only my daughter established a bond by baking cakes and cookies for Skell. It was something that I could see Danni doing.

  “Crutch said that Skell sold my daughter to a man in Florida soon after this. The man purchased Danni to cook for him, and to be a sex slave. Crutch said that Danni understood the arrangement, and had agreed to it. It was the kind of detail that made me think Crutch was telling the truth.”

  He spoke with the same flat tone that he used when working on a case, only the pain in his face spoke otherwise. He was hurting deeply inside.

  “Have you run a profile through NCIC?” Vick asked.

  “Yes. Unfortunately, nothing popped up. But that doesn’t mean this person hasn’t committed a crime in Florida. Many police departments in the state don’t have funding to send their records to NCIC. I’m going to do a road trip and visit police departments around the state, and manually search their data bases.”

  “That could take forever.”

  Linderman did not reply. He had traipsed through abandoned fields, dug through landfills, and navigated alligator-infested swamps in the hopes of finding some trace of Danni. This was one more journey on that road.

  “May I make a suggestion?” Vick said.

  “Of course.”

  “I think you should take another tact, and scrap this idea for now.”

  Linderman clenched his jaw, his fingers drumming the desk.

  “What are you suggesting?” he asked.

  “Put yourself in Danni’s shoes,” Vick said. “Only one thing is going through her mind during this ordeal. How am I going to escape? That’s all she’s thinking about. It’s what gives her hope, and keeps her going.”

  “Is that what you thought about when Mr. Clean held you captive?”

  “Yes. Every waking minute.”

  Linderman gazed out the window at the neighboring office buildings, his face taking on a faraway expression. It was an angle that he hadn’t considered.

  “What else is Danni thinking?” he asked.

  “Your daughter may have tried to reach out to you,” Vick replied. “Most people who are
held captive do. They try to make phone calls, or get messages out in some way.”

  “Like Wayne did at the fast-food restaurant.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Where would you suggest I start?”

  “You said that Danni established a bond with Skell by cooking cakes and cookies for him. Start there.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “I’m guessing your wife taught your daughter how to bake. Lots of homemade recipes.”

  “Good deduction. Muriel is a master baker.”

  “Ask your wife if there are any special ingredients that she uses in her cakes and cookies, or any special cooking instruments. More than likely, your daughter is having her captor purchase these things for her cooking. Those purchases might lead you to her.”

  Linderman squinted his eyes as if seeing something for the first time. Vick glanced out the window, then looked back at him.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  “Granny’s special holiday cookies,” he said. “It’s a secret family recipe. Muriel’s mother passed the recipe on to Muriel, who in turn passed it on to Danni. The cookies are made with dark chocolate and caramel, and are out of this world delicious. Danni would have used those to get on Simon Skell’s good side.”

  “And her present captor as well.”

  “I think so. A gastronome would crave those cookies.”

  “Are there any special ingredients that you remember?”

  “Yes. A square of toffee is placed atop each cookie. The recipe called for Tom’s Toffee, which is handmade by a family-owned confectionary store in Maine. When Danni was a little girl, she used to go out to the mail box each day when she thought our shipment was coming in.”

  “Is the company is still in business?”

  “They were as of last Christmas. Muriel baked the cookies for a party. I saw the bag on the kitchen counter, and remembered how Danni used to pine for it.”

  “Call them, and see how many shipments they’re sending to Florida,” Vick said. “Your daughter’s captor may be one of their customers.”

  The fire in her boss’s eyes was intense. He rose from his chair and came around the desk. Vick rose from her chair as well, and met him halfway. He hugged her so fiercely that she thought he might break her ribs.

  “You’re a star,” he said.

  Part IV

  Ten days later

  Chapter 58

  A rhythmic tapping lifted Linderman’s eyes from his morning newspaper. Two taps, followed by two more taps, then a hard knock.

  He went to the motel room door, threw back the chain, and opened it. Jack Carpenter, the avenging angel, stood outside, his trusty dog by his side.

  “Good morning,” Linderman said.

  “The eagle has landed,” Carpenter replied.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s an old line from the movies.”

  “Guess I missed that one.”

  Linderman ushered Carpenter and company inside and shut the door. Of all the law enforcement people he’d worked with, Carpenter was easily the most annoying, and had an uncanny ability of getting under his skin. His use of old movie lines was a good example. They were irritating as hell, yet Carpenter kept right on using them.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Linderman said.

  Carpenter drew an overripe banana from the pocket of his cargo pants and peeled away the skin. “A bag of Tom’s Toffee was delivered to the grocery up the road last night. The manager put it on the shelf behind the register, waiting for it to be picked up.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Yeah. I was just in the store.” From his other pocket came a second banana, which he handed to Linderman. “Eat this. It will make you feel better.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat it anyway.”

  Linderman went to the curtained window and sat down in the chair next to the telescope. He peeled the banana while spying on the grocery up the road. It was called Mel’s Foods, the owner a displaced New Yorker with a ponytail and a suspicious nature. The register was by the front door, an old silver machine that was manually operated. On the shelf behind the register sat a bag of Tom’s Toffee, the shiny silver and red colors hard to miss. He felt his heartbeat quicken, the sound reaching his ears a split-second later, like a slow, steady drumbeat.

  Carpenter pulled up a chair. “Now we wait.”

  He munched on the banana. He’d called Carpenter when he’d discovered that the company which made Tom’s Toffee had been shipping to a store in Marathon in the Florida Keys for the past six years. Carpenter knew Florida better than anyone, and had explained the Keys to him.

  “You have to watch your step down there,” Carpenter had warned him. “There’s a lot of dirty business going on. Drugs, smuggling, that sort of shit. The natives are a tight knit community who don’t take kindly to strangers. You start poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and soon everyone will know.”

  “I think Danni is being held in Marathon,” he’d said.

  “I’ll help you find her, if you want,” Carpenter had replied.

  He’d taken Carpenter up on his offer. The decision had pissed off everyone in the FBI’s North Miami office, only he didn’t care what his fellow agents thought. Carpenter knew how the natives thought, and was the right person for the job.

  They’d driven down to Marathon together. Carpenter had made several suggestions which Linderman had decided to follow. He’d made Linderman grow a beard, get a sun tan, and change his wardrobe to sandals, ragged T-shirts, and Bermuda shorts, the idea being to make him look like a Conch, which was what the locals called themselves.

  Carpenter had also made him pick a team of agents who could pass as Conchs. No pasty-faced guys with short-hair cuts, or women with toned bodies and steely gazes. People in the Keys could smell a policeman a mile away, and they could smell an FBI agent five miles away. The team had to look right.

  Linderman had picked four Latino FBI agents for his team. Their names were Jesus Aguilla, Frank Sanchez, Nester Eslava, and Javier Nocerino. The four agents had worked undercover in Miami infiltrating the drug cartels, and knew how to keep a low profile. They were checked into another motel down the road, pretending to be construction workers.

  The fifth agent he’d picked for his team was Vick. Considering what she’d been through, it had only seemed right. Vick was staying in the same motel, and had colored her hair with silver streaks, and taken to smoking and walking around barefoot. She looked like a teen runaway, and fit in with the denizens that populated the area.

  “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll keep watch while you’re gone,” Carpenter said an hour later.

  Linderman was tired and out of sorts. All the waiting was eating a hole in him. He threw on his sunglasses and floppy hat and went for a walk.

  His motel was a stone’s throw from the highway, and he walked with his back to the oncoming traffic to the marina just down the road. The marina was small and dingy, the fishing boats it harbored sporting names like Not Home and To Each His Own. He stood on the edge of the dock and drank in the scenery.

  It was hard not to fall in love with the Keys. Every view was a postcard just waiting to be shot. Yet knowing that Danni was being held here darkened his perspective. His daughter’s captor had chosen to live here because the locals were prone to keeping their mouths shut, even when they saw questionable things. That didn’t mean they were bad people. It just meant that bad people were able to live among them.

  A boat with an inboard motor puttered into the harbor. The man at the wheel had slicked back hair like a flamenco dancer and a diamond stud in his ear. He waved to Linderman and tossed him a rope. Linderman tied him up, and he jumped out.

  “Muchas gracias,” the man said.

  Linderman spied a fishing pole lying in the boat.

  “How the fish biting?” Linderman asked.

  “Don’t ask me,” the man replied.

  The man walked
off the dock and headed up the road. He was well dressed — designer jeans, leather shoes with no socks, a glittering Rolex — while his accent was hard on the vowels, perhaps South American. Like so many people Linderman had encountered in the Keys, it was impossible to know what his story was.

  Linderman’s cell phone vibrated. Muriel calling. His wife thought he was out of town on an investigation. He hated lying to her, but did not want her to share the burden of his search. She had already been through enough.