Fatal Decree

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “True,” Jock said, “but if Mariah was after information for Fuentes, why kill the agents?”

  J.D. said, “Maybe Fuentes had inside information from the mole as to who these agents were and where they would be at a certain time. He could have had the agents kidnapped, tortured, and wrung dry of information, and then have them killed and dumped. Your agency would think they had been killed by the cartels they had infiltrated.”

  “That’s a pretty good hypothesis,” said Jock.

  “I don’t understand why Mariah hired Bert,” I said. “If she were going to have Perez killed, that’d make some sense. But Bert could have taken Perez out at any time after he got to the safe house.”

  “Maybe,” said J.D., “Mariah had Bert as a safety valve of sorts. Let Fuentes exact his revenge on Perez, but have somebody in place in case Fuentes ran into trouble. She might not have trusted him to keep his mouth shut.”

  “That has a certain twisted logic to it,” I said. “Perez seemed to be of the opinion that Mariah ran things and that Fuentes was just the figurehead. Maybe she always considered her husband expendable.”

  “I’m not going to feel safe until we get all of this wrapped up,” said J.D. “I’d also like to find that cretin Flagler or Worthington or whatever his name is.”

  “He’ll turn up somewhere,” Jock said.

  “If we find him, that pistol could have put him on death row,” said J.D. “Now we’ll never be able to use it as evidence. Jock, did you even think about that when you turned it over to your people?”

  “I thought about it,” said Jock. “But we were never going to be able to get a warrant to search that apartment on what we had. No warrant, no gun in evidence.”

  J.D. sat quietly, chewing her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said finally. “You’ve got a good point. But we still can’t do anything without the pistol.”

  “I can,” said Jock.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said J.D. “I’m beat, guys. Time to turn in.”

  We paid the tab, said goodnight to Susie, and went out into the night. We drove J.D. back to her condo, and Jock and I headed for my cottage and a good night’s sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  I slept like a rock and didn’t get out of bed until a little after seven on Thursday morning. Jock had left the house. Out for his morning run, I assumed. I made coffee and popped a pastry into the microwave. Not much of a breakfast, but I was still tired from the day before. If I’d dreamed during the night, I didn’t remember it, but as I watched the coffee drip, somewhere in the far distant reaches of my mind, I heard the faint screams of men being roasted in a palmetto patch. I shook my head to clear the image and took my coffee and pastry to the patio. Maybe the morning newspaper would take my mind off the events of the previous day.

  I thought about calling J.D. The mere sound of her voice would brighten up the gloom that surrounded me. Then I thought better of it. She’d had a bad day as well and would need a little time to bounce back. Knowing J.D., I was sure she’d gone back to work. That was the way she handled bad moods and rare fits of depression. She simply worked at her job and stuffed the bad feelings back in the part of her mind that she could seal off.

  The first bars of The Girl from Ipanema jangled me out of my reverie. J.D. was on the phone. “We got Worthington,” she said. “He’s in jail in Tampa.”

  “How?”

  “A Tampa PD officer found him in an abandoned building early this morning. It seems he had lived there a long time ago when the building was part of a public housing project. It was owned by the county and had been abandoned a couple of years ago.”

  “Was he living there?”

  “No. He was searching for some papers he’d hidden there before he went to prison.”

  “I doubt they would be there if he left them that long ago. He’s been in jail for the past fifteen years.”

  “He found them. He’d apparently placed them in a hole in the wall of the bedroom and then plastered it over. He said he’d put them there for safekeeping.”

  “What were the papers?”

  “Documents, actually. There was a driver’s license and a passport in the name of Geoff Woodsley. They had pictures that were probably of Worthington the way he looked before he went to prison.”

  “The names are similar enough,” I said. “Makes it easier for him. How did Tampa PD get to you?”

  “Once we figured out Flagler’s real name, Bill Lester put out a bulletin to all police agencies that we were interested in Worthington for the murders on Longboat and Anna Maria. When the fingerprints came back, Tampa called us.”

  “That’s good news. Things are starting to fall into place.”

  “I’m going up to Tampa to interview him. You and Jock want to go?”

  “Jock’s out running. I’ll call him on his cell and let you know if he wants to go with you. I think I’ll sit this one out.”

  “I’m surprised at you,” she said.

  “I’m tired of these assholes,” I said. “I’ll let you handle this one. I’ll call Jock.”

  I called Jock and told him that J.D. was on her way to interview Worthington and she wanted to know if he wanted to join her.

  “Can’t do it, podna,” he said. “I’m on my way to the airport to meet Dave Kendall. He’s back from London and he’s flying here. Said it was very important that we meet as soon as possible. Tell J.D. to be sure and follow up on the Guatemalan connection.”

  I called J.D. She told me she’d come by when she got back from Tampa and fill us in on what Worthington had to say. I decided to jog the beach.

  My mind wandered back over the past few days as I jogged on the hard sand just above the surf. Things were coming to an end, and I marveled at the parts that fate and stupidity play in the biggest events of life. Two crazy people, Caleb and Mariah, had decided that J.D. had to die, but in the process they would take down other people whose only involvement was the happenstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nell Alexander and the prostitute from East Bradenton had been killed on a whim, picked out of the great mass of people simply because they were available when the killer needed a victim.

  Fuentes was a murderer, but at least most of his kills made sense in a twisted way. He was running a business, moving and selling illegal drugs, and when somebody got in the way he had to be taken out. It was just business as usual in the dark underworld of the druggers. But in the recent murders, he’d been following his wife’s orders and even though he knew they made no sense, he went along because of either his love, or more probably, his fear. Now he was dead at the hands of his wife’s hireling.

  Perez went along with the plan. He’d been stealing from the people for whom he had worked for years, and they were people who would think nothing of killing him if they found out about his scheme. He was taking care of his retirement plans and didn’t let a little thing like murder bother him. He may have been the worst of the bunch. He set up the murders out of sheer greed. And now he was dead at the hands of the man he’d duped, his old pal Fuentes.

  The three men involved directly in the murders of Nell Alexander and the prostitute and the knifing of J.D. were dead, two of them at the hands of Worthington, their buddy from the years spent in prison. Their deaths seemed fitting to me. Live by the sword, as the man said, and die by the sword.

  Worthington was in jail in Tampa and would probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Perhaps his death would be hastened by the state at the end of a needle filled with the drugs used for executions. He deserved whatever he got.

  Mariah was still out there somewhere. We had to assume that she would continue with her quest to kill J.D. Crazy people just don’t think rationally. That’s the reason they’re crazy, I guess. The fact that her husband was dead and her drug business was crumbling around her wouldn’t be reason to give up her plans. She’d carry on until she was in jail or dead.

  The Guatemalans were a puzzle. Maybe the mole in Jock’s agency had bee
n responsible for pointing Cantreras at Gene Alexander and the fact that we found Fuentes’s fingerprint on the flap of an envelope that Cantreras had saved, didn’t exclude the possibility that other people used the same drop for contacting the hit man. Fuentes swore that he hadn’t set up the hit on Gene, and I tended to believe him. He was too scared at the moment to lie to us. Some of the most ruthless men are cowards at heart and will do anything to escape the pain that they’d so gleefully visited on others.

  So, we needed to run down the Guatemalan connection. I was pretty sure Mariah had set that up on her own. She would have known how to contact the Guatemalan gangbangers and Cantreras. I still couldn’t see any reason she would have wanted Gene Alexander dead unless she was afraid he knew something about the killers or the reason for the murders. The mind of a crazy woman was beyond my ability to fathom, so we might never know, even if we eventually found her.

  I wondered why the director wanted to see Jock so urgently. It was likely a problem out there in the world somewhere, some threat to the homeland that would take Jock back into the shadowy world of terrorists and assassins.

  By the time I finished my run on the beach, my mind was as tired as my legs. Too much thinking can do that. I’d learned years ago when I practiced law that exercise would loosen up the parts of my brain that I used for problem solving and solutions would come to me. When it didn’t work, when I finished the run as perplexed as when I started, my brain wanted to shut down, think of pleasant things or nothing at all.

  I decided I’d do just that. Go home, crack a beer, and think about nothing at all. I couldn’t have contemplated the news Jock would bring back from his conference with the director, news that would change my view of the world in which Jock lived, that world I had been on the periphery of for so many years. News that would seal J.D.’s decision on moving back to Miami.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Jock’s cell phone wrenched him out of a deep sleep. He was instantly awake, a habit honed by his many years of clandestine operations in some of the world’s most dangerous places. The caller ID was blocked. He glanced at his bedside clock. Six o’clock. He answered on the second ring. It was his agency’s director, Dave Kendall.

  “Jock,” he said, “I’m boarding a plane at Reagan Airport as we speak. I’m flying down to Sarasota to meet you. Can you be at Dolphin Aviation by eight?”

  “I’ll be there. What’s up, Dave?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.” The call ended.

  Jock dragged himself out of bed, took a quick shower, dressed, and left Matt’s cottage. He stopped at the 24-hour Starbucks on St. Armands Circle, ordered a large vanilla latte, a pastry, a Wall Street Journal, and a New York Times and took them outside to one of the cement tables that lined the sidewalk.

  He lingered over his coffee, the espresso giving him the jolt of caffeine he needed. He scanned the papers, looking for some clue as to what part of the world he might be headed. He hadn’t been unduly alarmed by the director’s call. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Jock knew he was the go-to guy when the director needed an immediate response to a problem, and often the director would meet him somewhere to deliver the orders and documents or weapons that Jock would need.

  Nothing jumped off the pages of the newspapers. Not that he’d really expected it to, but sometimes he could discern inklings of issues that he might be called on to address. He finished his coffee and went back into the shop. He dropped the used cup and napkins in the wastebasket and put the papers in the community rack for other people to read. By the time he pulled into the parking lot at Dolphin Aviation, Dave’s jet was being waved to a parking spot on the tarmac.

  Jock watched as the door of the plane opened and the stairs unfolded. He walked toward them and met the pilot coming down, the copilot right behind him. “Hey, Jock,” the pilot said, “The boss is waiting for you. Mark and I are going for coffee.”

  Jock climbed aboard the aircraft and found the director sitting in a chair with a table in front of it. A coffeepot and cups sat on the table. Nothing else. No documents, no weapons.

  “Good morning, Jock,” the director said. “I hope I didn’t roll you out too early.”

  “No problem, Dave. Good to see you. I could have come to D.C., you know.”

  Jock took the seat across the table from the director and poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip. It was bitter, as if it’d been in the pot too long.

  The director laughed. “Bad coffee is the government’s biggest failure.”

  Jock smiled. “Well,” he said, “it’s certainly one of them. What’s up, Dave? You didn’t come down here to pass the time of day.”

  “No, I didn’t, Jock. How long have we known each other? Twenty years?”

  “That’s about right.”

  “Have I ever withheld any information from you that I thought was pertinent to your assignment?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I’ve been a bit out of the loop for the past few days,” said the director, “but my deputy brought me up to date last night.”

  Jock said, “Then you know everything I do.”

  “I haven’t been honest with you, Jock. I’m sorry, and now I need to bring you up to date.”

  Jock was taken aback. This was not what he’d expected. His relationship with the director went back to when he was recruited into the agency. Dave Kendall had been a middle-aged, middle-level agent then, and he was responsible for Jock’s joining the agency. Dave had been in Jock’s chain of command and as he rose to director, Jock always reported to Dave. In the five years that Dave had been director, Jock had reported directly to him and gotten his assignments directly from him. Jock had never been given any reason to distrust his friend and boss.

  “Tell me about it, Dave.”

  Dave had a rueful look on his face and there was a hesitancy in his demeanor, as if he was about to deliver terrible news. He took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “I killed Gene Alexander.”

  “What?” asked Jock, Dave’s statement hit him like a shock wave, bringing disbelief and pain. “You killed one of our own people?”

  “I didn’t actually kill him, but I ordered it done. Gene was the mole.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Jock. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was. In all my forty years with this agency, this was the toughest call I ever made.”

  “Did you have Nell killed, too?”

  “No. That was one of those terrible coincidences that happens sometimes. Her murder was random.”

  “Tell me about Gene,” said Jock.

  “As you know, Gene was working with me on trying to ferret out the mole who was responsible for the deaths of our agents a few months back. He hit a dead end and we called off the investigation. But we left some traps in the computer system that would lead us to the mole if he ever started working again. Gene knew about the traps, but he didn’t know about all of them. That was my decision and the tech who set it up was one of my best and totally trustworthy. Plus, he didn’t know Gene.”

  “And you got him?”

  “Yes. After the last agent was killed a couple of weeks ago, the tech and I started our damage assessment. It took a few days, but we finally figured out that Gene was the one passing out the information to the cartels. He was responsible for the death of three of our agents. That couldn’t go unanswered.”

  “Why would Gene do something like that?”

  “We think it was all about money. We were able to find some bank accounts hidden away in the Cayman Islands that belonged to him. There was a lot more money in there than he ever earned.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Jock. “Money never seemed to mean much to Gene.”

  “I don’t think it did. But something changed. I think I know what it was.”

  “What?”

  “His autopsy showed that he had advanced prostate cancer. He only had a few months to live. My theory is
that when he found out about the cancer, he blamed the government.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Jock said.

  “Think about it. Are you familiar with how the Veterans Afffairs is handling some of these cancers in men who served in Vietnam?”

  “No.”

  “The docs finally determined that the medical evidence linking Agent Orange to certain cancers was so overwhelming that the VA had to do something. They came up with a matrix that essentially said if a person was in certain parts of Vietnam for a certain amount of time during a certain period of time and that person developed any one of several forms of cancer, then he or she would be entitled to benefits. In other words, the government was accepting the fact that the Agent Orange it spread over large parts of Vietnam was a carcinogen.”

  “Do you know when Gene was diagnosed?”

  “Yes. We found the medical records in his house. It was about three months before our first agents disappeared.”

  “I still don’t understand the money part.”

  “Gene was sixty years old. Nell was fifty-five. They had plans for a life together in Florida that would last twenty or thirty years. The cancer was going to put a quick end to that. I think he wanted Nell to have lots of money, sort of compensation for having to go through the rest of her life without him. I think he was just taking care of his family.”

  “At a great loss to other men’s families.”

  “That’s why he had to go,” said Dave. “You don’t kill our agents and walk away. Even if you just have a few months to live. And he could have done a lot of damage in a few months.”

  “Would you have had him killed if Nell was still alive?”

  Dave shook his head. “I just don’t know, Jock. Goddamnit, I just don’t know.”

  The look of pain that spread across Dave’s face told Jock how much the order to take Gene out had cost him. It was an unpleasant part of the director’s life, the ordering of the death of anyone, but Jock was pretty sure Dave had never had to order the death of one of his own.