The Kill Wire

by Nichole Christoff

  “I’ll see if he’s in, Agent…”

  “Sandoval,” Marc said. “He knows me.”

  The woman nodded, offered me a sympathetic smile, and disappeared down the corridor that ran off to the right.

  “She thinks I’m a victim,” I whispered, leaning close to Marc. “Or a witness. Or both.”

  Marc took advantage of my proximity to buss my cheek with a quick kiss. “Well, I wouldn’t set her straight at this point, babe.”

  Just as I treated Marc to a particularly withering glare, the brunette returned.

  “The AUSA will see you, Special Agent Sandoval.”

  She buzzed us through a swinging half-door to her side of the reception counter. We followed her down the same corridor she’d just traveled. Conference rooms opened off of the leeward side of it, silent spaces dominated by long tables and rolling chairs. But along the right-hand side, an archive of some kind stretched behind panel after panel of reinforced glass.

  Like a little reference library, a laminate desk with a green-shaded lamp and a computer parked on its corner kept guard in front of aisle after aisle of bookshelves. Instead of books, however, these shelves housed file boxes, each as big and bulky as a crate of oranges. There must’ve been hundreds of them. And three-quarters of the way down one aisle, while a woman who could’ve passed for a librarian directed the action, a man in a steel-gray windbreaker and red baseball cap shot the bar codes plastered on the ends of heavy cardboard file box after heavy cardboard file box with a laser gun, while his buddy, wearing the exact same uniform, shifted them onto a flatbed trolley as if to cart them away.

  I didn’t get to stand and gawk, however, because the brunette led Marc and me into an inner office suite. On the left, a red rose in a bud vase and a brass nameplate perched at the edge of this particular desk declared this to be the domain of MRS. LUANN CZARSKY, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE AUSA. But Mrs. Luann Czarsky had apparently decamped for lunch.

  Before leaving, though, the good lady had cleared every scrap of paper from her desktop—which was more than I could say for Ms. Tiffany Beech, whose desk was on the right. Orphaned files as thick as big-city phone books formed stacks this way and that, and an enormous tote bag squatted on top of them. Ms. Beech didn’t have a fancy nameplate like Mrs. Czarsky, but I knew the desk and the bag belonged to her, because she’d left her government-issued identification card clipped to one of its fabric handles. And it wouldn’t be long before Ms. Beech regretted it. Since her ID was a smart card, she wouldn’t be able to do much—like access this section of the building after her lunch break—without it.

  “You must be Special Agent Sandoval,” a beanpole of a man announced from the doorway at the end of the room. “I’m Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly McKenna. Please, come in.”

  Male-pattern baldness had caught up with McKenna, leaving him with nothing more than a ring of silky brown hair circling his head like a tonsure. The rest of him was built like a long-distance runner. Judging by the calluses on his hand as he clasped mine in a friendly shake, and the popular pastimes in the area, I figured he was really a rock climber, though.

  Whatever McKenna was, the brunette didn’t depart until she saw us situated in the leatherette guest chairs inside his office and he’d hiked a hip to sit on the edge of his desk. She must’ve given him a heads-up about my eye when she’d announced us. Because once she was gone, he quit talking to Marc and started talking to me.

  “How can I help you?” he asked softly.

  Truth be told, I appreciated McKenna’s kindness. After all, kindness can be pretty scarce in this great, wide world of ours. But I sent him my you-should-see-the-other-guy smile.

  “Hopefully, you can share a little information with Special Agent Sandoval and me.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he promised—and looked at Marc quizzically.

  “To be honest,” Marc said, “I expected the AUSA to still be Sam Brewer.”

  “Oh.” McKenna chuckled. “Sam decided to quit working for a living. He left government service to open his own law firm about five years ago. Said it gives him more time to horse around with that hobby of his, and I suppose it does. No worries, though. He taught me the secret handshake before he left. So, what do you need, Agent?”

  “I need to know the new identity and present whereabouts of Lucy Ribisi,” Marc replied.

  McKenna’s good humor dissolved. He circled his desk, dropped into the chair behind it. “I don’t have that information, and if I did, I certainly couldn’t give it to you.”

  “But obviously,” I interjected, “you’re aware of Lucy Ribisi’s connection to this office.”

  McKenna’s mouth hitched in half a smile. Eyes on me, he spoke to Marc. “Really, Agent Sandoval, you could’ve left your lawyer behind.”

  “If she were a lawyer, we’d all be in trouble,” Marc replied.

  “What if,” I asked, “we told you Lucy Ribisi was spotted in Manitou Springs last week?”

  “She met with a woman,” Marc added, “who subsequently went missing.”

  McKenna steepled his fingertips, peered at us over the point they made. “I see your interest, and I’d like to help you. However, even if I could release the details you’re requesting, I don’t have that information in my office any longer.”

  I said, “Is that attorney-speak for I’ve got those files in the records library down the hall?”

  McKenna could’ve thrown Marc and me out on the street right about then, and I wouldn’t have blamed him one bit. After all, I’d essentially called him a liar. But to my surprise, he burst out laughing.

  “You don’t quit, do you?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I admitted.

  “I really wish I could help you,” McKenna said, “but once a case is closed, the documents are moved to secure, off-site, long-term storage.”

  And with secure being the operative word, there’d be no way even a DEA agent like Marc could take a casual look at them. He’d surely have to register a request, or at least sign in with some facility’s information control clerk, to take a peek. That would leave a paper trail that could potentially lead right back to the mess Elena was in—and ruin Marc’s efforts to handle it off the record.

  “I’m sorry I’m a dead end,” McKenna announced, rising to his feet. “If your boss has a long conversation with my boss, Agent Sandoval, we might be able to work something out. Until then, you could always try sweet-talking the U.S. Marshals. They’d have that information.”

  “Sure,” Marc said. “They’re such good listeners.”

  McKenna laughed heartily, and even Marc cracked a smile. Law-enforcement professionals of all stripes enjoyed plenty of alliances and tons of inside jokes, and few organizations worked as closely with one another, or knew one another’s peculiarities, as the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. So, I chalked up Marc’s punch line and McKenna’s mirth to some obscure insight unknown to me, rolled my eyes, and got to my feet.

  Leading the way, the men nattered on while McKenna escorted us through his outer office, where neither Mrs. Czarsky nor Ms. Beech had returned from lunch. Ms. Beech’s pass remained clipped to her bag, looking so forlorn. But I was delighted to see it.

  With a quick reach, I nipped the thing from the handle of the tote bag. And before McKenna or Marc was any the wiser, I slipped the ID card into my jacket pocket. Because, as McKenna had noted, I don’t quit. And I certainly wasn’t going to let a little thing like a carefully controlled information environment stop me.

  Chapter 16

  Cool as a cucumber, I followed McKenna and Marc through the heart of the Colorado Springs branch of the United States Attorney’s Office—and right past the records library where those two red-capped men were still hard at work, stacking file boxes full of records onto their trolley. The stack, however, was significantly shorter than when Marc and I had followed the brunette on the way in, which meant the fellows had already delivered one load to their truck or van. Wherever that
might be.

  I didn’t ask McKenna about it and he didn’t tell. Marc thanked him for his time. We both wished the brunette with the tuna sandwich well—and then we caught the elevator.

  “That got us absolutely nowhere,” Marc grumbled as he hit the button for the lobby.

  “Not necessarily.”

  Perusing the elevator’s control panel, I zeroed in on the card slot next to a particular button. This button would send the elevator to the lowest level of the underground parking structure. But the card reader meant that level was off-limits to the general public and the likes of Marc and me, undoubtedly because it served the AUSA’s office in some capacity.

  I didn’t belong to Kelly McKenna’s office. But I had Ms. Beech’s ID card burning a hole in my pocket. And dollars to donuts, I was willing to bet the ID allowed access to that restricted level.

  Without a second thought, I zipped the pass through the card reader. I punched the button beside it. And sure enough, the indicator light lit up like Times Square’s crystal ball on New Year’s Eve.

  “What’re you doing?” Marc demanded.

  “McKenna said this office transfers old records to a secure, off-site location,” I told him.

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And where do you think those guys in the spiffy red ball caps are headed?”

  “Listen, babe, you can’t just walk into a secure document-storage facility and ask to see Lucy Ribisi’s file—”

  “No. You can’t walk into one. Because places like that pay attention to who comes and goes. And you, Special Agent Sandoval, can’t be seen asking too many questions that might eventually point toward Elena Preble.”

  Marc shook his head. “Jamie—”

  “I’m going to get answers,” I interrupted. “I’m going to get them for Cody. I’ll find out if Lucy’s connected to Elena in any way. If she isn’t, you might not have to break bad news to your son.”

  Marc couldn’t argue with that line of reasoning.

  But the worried crease in his forehead suggested he wanted to.

  The elevator pitched to a stop at the lobby; its doors slid open.

  “Going down,” I chirped brightly. “But you get off here.”

  Marc’s mouth twisted as if he were chewing glass. For a second, I thought he’d refuse. But he disembarked, the keys to our SUV already in his hand, and when the elevator doors swept shut, I was on my way.

  Eyes wide open and ears on the alert, I stepped from the elevator when it came to a halt. I found myself in an ugly concrete alcove, separated from the rest of the garage by a wire-mesh screen. Like a lych-gate, a doorway of sorts had been built into the screen, and there’d be no fooling the card reader or the electronic lock that held it closed.

  On the far side of the thing, a fluorescent scoop-light flickered green. Its light danced across oil slicks on the garage floor and made rainbow patterns in the stains before blinking out and back on again. Sedans, SUVs, and pickup trucks occupied a collection of parking spaces, marked by yellow numbers—and just shy of the ramp that led up through the structure to the street above, a hulking heavy-duty van, with a gray-and-red logo for a company called DocuDefense splashed across its flank, waited in the yellow-striped loading zone.

  Bull’s-eye.

  I slid Ms. Beech’s ID across the gate’s reader. With a buzz, the lock let loose and I was through. Two stories above, tires squealed as an unseen car took a corner a little too quickly. The gate clanged shut behind me. And just past the van, beyond the closed doors of a mechanical room, I heard the gears and pulleys of the building’s freight elevator, housed in an alcove of its own, grind into motion.

  To me, the sound was like a starter’s pistol—and it meant I didn’t have much time. I took off at a fast clip, circling wide past the parked cars to approach the van at an oblique angle. If someone was in the driver’s seat, he wouldn’t catch me in his rearview mirror, or see me coming until I knocked on his window. But when I peered into the van’s cockpit, it was empty. And to my chagrin, its doors were locked. So were the doors to the cargo space, but that was no surprise. Secure document storage was a sensitive business. And companies that served government clients could lose more than market share if they made mistakes.

  As the freight-lift doors thundered open, I retreated behind a Hyundai Sonata parked among the vehicles in the regular spaces. Peering over the curve of the car’s trunk, I got a clear view of the van. And of the two red-capped men who emerged from the elevator to wrestle their fully loaded trolley into position behind it.

  “…so I told her,” one of the workers said to the other, “baby, you’ve only got two feet. Why do you need so many shoes?”

  His compatriot, a wiry man with a lush goatee, snorted with laughter—and unlocked the van’s back doors.

  With a screech, they pivoted wide.

  “You got boots for winter,” the first man said, zapping a file box’s bar code with his fancy gun, hefting the container high, and shoving into the vehicle. “You got sneakers, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Mr. Goatee cocked his red ball cap on the back of his head. He climbed into the van to drag the cardboard crate deeper inside.

  “You got flip-flops,” Baby’s one-and-only continued, “or something for when the sun’s shining. I understand that. A nice pair of high-heel shoes to wear with dresses and such…”

  He scanned another box on the stack on the trolley, shoved it into Mr. Goatee’s waiting hands.

  “…but where do you draw the line?”

  On and on, he complained.

  And little by little, the men loaded the van.

  When the final box had been stowed, Mr. Goatee emerged from the vehicle’s cargo area. He ratcheted the trolley’s handle down on itself and secured the collapsible contraption, snapping it into clips inside the van’s left rear door. He slammed the portal shut, just as his partner rounded the vehicle to climb into the driver’s seat. But if Mr. Goatee slammed the right rear door, if he bolted it, I’d have no way to get into the van. And no way to get at Lucy Ribisi’s records.

  Watching my best chance slip away made me sick to my stomach. I needed a diversion, a clever tactic to give me access. But all I had was a forgetful assistant’s ID card.

  Yet, I was a firm believer in working with what you’ve got.

  Before Mr. Goatee could slam that second door, I winged that card hard. Like a ninja’s shuriken, it cut through the air and clattered into the topline of the van. I held my breath, hoping it wouldn’t merely tumble to the concrete where I’d be in plain view of God and everyone if I made any kind of move.

  The plastic ID, however, spun up and over the roof. Its corners clacked across the sheet metal like rain on a windowpane. Mr. Goatee jerked as if stung. He grimaced. And leaving the right door wide, he stepped to the van’s far side to see what had happened.

  In the blink of an eye, I darted from behind the Hyundai, ducked low, and dashed across the garage. I planted a foot on the van’s rear bumper, grasped the doorframe, and scrambled to slide sideways into the gap between a stack of boxes and the closed left-hand door. Sucking in a breath, I made it.

  The interior of the van was dark. But even in shadow, my shape would stick out like a sore thumb against the angular boxes that filled half the cargo area. Skimming past them, I moved toward the front of the vehicle—just as Mr. Goatee slammed the remaining rear door closed. A bar lock screeched into place. And the van lurched into motion, nearly knocking me from my feet.

  Wedging myself against the wall of the cab, I shifted a stack of boxes with my shoulder, slid into the space behind them, and tried to make myself comfy on the utility van’s rippled floor. In my jacket pocket, my cellphone did the dance of an incoming call. Marc’s name lit up the caller ID and cast a glow on the bar code pasted to the box in front of me. Beneath its black hash marks, I made out a string of numbers and several letters: 649137-USAO-25634.

  When my phone connected with Marc’s, he skipped the friend
ly greeting.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “White panel van,” I told him. “It’s got a red-and-gray logo for DocuDefense on the side. And it should be pulling out of the parking structure right about now.”

  “I see it,” he growled.

  “Don’t lose me,” I advised.

  I disconnected before Marc could voice another complaint. And then I powered down my phone. I didn’t want it making any noises that could give me away.

  After an eternity of sharp turns and speed bumps, the van coasted to a stop. I felt it swing into reverse, and with the beeping of a backup warning, the vehicle zoomed backward for several yards. Hunkering down, I got ready for the cargo doors to screech open. When they did, I peeped between the boxes to see Mr. Goatee climb aboard. His pal scanned several cartons, hoisted them from a noisy loading dock onto the floorboards, and Mr. Goatee stacked them before hopping out.

  He slammed the van doors once again.

  Another hour or so went by. This time, we made a pit stop in a smelly alley. And once those boxes were onboard, Baby’s man hit the gas.

  The next time the van paused for longer than the length of a red light, I heard the metallic rattle of chain link sliding by outside. That, I figured, indicated a gate, and I imagined we’d finally reached the end of the line. But that dumped another set problems at my feet. I’d have to climb out of this rolling filing cabinet without being detected—and without getting arrested.

  Chapter 17

  Ready for anything, I got to my feet in my little hidey-hole. The van got going again—but it didn’t go far. From the sound of things, the tires crunched across crushed stone.

  The driver slowed to enter some kind of echoing structure. There, our brakes screeched and the engine died. Men’s voices called to one another—and after a scrape and a clang, the van’s rear doors flew wide once more, admitting artificial light and fresh exhaust fumes.

  “…so I told her,” a familiar voice said, “baby, if you wanna buy so many shoes, you’ve got to use your own credit card.”