“That was patronizing.”
“That was the truth.” He turned her toward the door. “Come on, I’ll tuck you in. Which is the only way I can be sure you’ll go to bed. It’s not as if these next few hours are going to make a big difference. It’s two days until the twenty-fifth. We have a little time.”
“Maybe.” She reluctantly let him lead her from the room. “We’re not making much progress. Every time we think there may be a clue that might lead us to Red Star, we draw a blank. I draw a blank.” She ran her hand through her hair. “You’re right, I’m blurry when I should be sharp. Do you know all the facts and figures and possibilities you and Monty threw at me tonight? Nothing is meaning anything. I’m not stupid. Why can’t I fight through this haze and have it all come together? Hu Chang said the rule is always to be the best you can be, and I’m not doing that.”
“May I suggest that you stop beating yourself up?” He opened the door to her bedroom and nudged her inside. “I’m not Hu Chang, but I know if you weren’t doing the best you could, you wouldn’t be suffering all this angst.” He pushed her down on the bed and lay down beside her. “And it will all come together for you.” He was holding her close. “Did it occur to you that I have a small amount of responsibility myself?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t change mine.” She looked at him. “You’re here in bed with me. Does that mean you want to have sex?”
“No, that’s not what it means.” He closed his eyes. “What am I saying? Of course I do.” His eyes flicked open. “But that’s not the purpose at the moment. I wanted to comfort you and try to make you relax and feel better about yourself.” He got up on one elbow and looked down at her. “Because there’s no one who could have done better or worked harder.” He brushed his lips across the tip of her nose. “You’re an extraordinary woman, and after four hours rest, I’m going to demand extraordinary results from you.” Then he was on his feet and pulling up the throw at the bottom of the bed and tucking it around her. “I’ll see you in a little while. Then if I seem a little blurred, you can send me off for a nap. That’s only fair.”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s only fair.” Her eyes were closing and she didn’t see him leave. Everything he’d done had been fair and smart and, in spite of her accusation, not patronizing. He had made her feel valued, treasured, and yet respected.
And if he was going to ask extraordinary things from her, she should let the whirling thoughts in her mind settle and function so that she could respond …
* * *
She didn’t sleep the full four hours. It was only a little over three hours and twenty minutes when she came wide-awake. Her eyes flew open, and she stared unseeingly at the French doors across the room.
Stepfather!
It could be. She couldn’t quite remember … it was before they had shifted to studying Monty’s satellite. But she thought it might be …
She tossed the throw aside and was on her feet heading for the bathroom. After washing her face and running a brush through her hair, she was out of the bedroom and running toward the library.
“You’re early,” Brandon said as he turned to her. “I should have expected—”
“Hush. I think I might have found it.” She sat down at her computer and pulled up the records they had on Fasrain. She flipped through two other related pages and found what she had been searching for. “Yes!” Rachel turned to Brandon, her eyes shining with excitement. “The docks. You thought that might be a possibility when you were checking earlier. Remember when you thought there were too many workers scheduled for the time of night at Port of San Francisco docks?”
Brandon nodded. “But you checked it and said that the schedulers had verified that it was all in order because of a shift in the arrival time of a Guatemalan ship due to a hurricane threatening the Panama Canal.”
“They did, but I think we should go back and check again. We’re looking for a reason Huber would choose an accountant for his grand mission? Boring. Maybe less suspicious? But definitely no interesting or valuable contacts that would be helpful.” She gestured to her computer screen where she’d pulled up the State Department report on Fasrain. “But when he was in college, his mind wasn’t always on numbers. His roommate during his junior and senior year was Michael Talcek. I didn’t check his background in depth because I was focused on Fasrain. But Michael Talcek’s application listed his legal guardians as mother, Nora, clerk, and stepfather, William Brady, salesman.” She repeated, “Stepfather. And I realized I hadn’t investigated anything about his roommate’s real father. Michael’s father was Allan Talcek, whom his mother divorced when he was eleven. Michael Talcek’s father worked the docks from the time he graduated from high school. Over thirty years. Michael was at the university on a scholarship, but his records show he moved back in with his father during his senior year. So he must have stayed close to him during those years.”
“Any sign of a relationship between the father and Fasrain?”
She shook her head. “No, not as far as I could tell. But Michael and Fasrain were roommates for two years. Their lives must have merged during that time. I’d bet that Fasrain made a lot of contacts on those docks while he was visiting the local bars with Talcek or his father.”
“Guesswork,” Monty said.
“Maybe. But two college kids sowing wild oats? They wouldn’t do it on Fasrain’s turf, too boring. No, they’d go down to the docks to raise hell.”
“You seem to know a lot about raising hell.” Brandon grinned. “You must tell me about your experiences sometime.”
“I didn’t spend all my time in the chemistry labs while I was at college,” she said, her gaze on the screen. “I know my life must seem dry as dust to someone who played Huck Finn over most of the oceans in the world, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep the mockery to a minimum.”
His smile faded. “No mockery. I was joking. No one could call your life dry as dust. But I can’t see you as a hell-raiser either.”
And thanks to his talk with Hu Chang, he was probably still having moments when he looked at her as some kind of victim, she thought wryly. “You haven’t known me very long.” She reached for her phone. “I found a phone number for Michael Talcek. I’m going to give him a call and see what I can find out about his old friend, Fasrain.”
“And verify if you’re on the right track,” he added.
She nodded while she listened to the phone ring. She said to Monty, “Check all the docks that are anywhere near San Francisco again, will you?” The phone was answered, and she said quickly, “Mr. Talcek? I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but it’s something of an emergency. I understand you roomed with Lawrence Fasrain while at the university. I wonder if you could answer a few questions. It’s very—”
“What’s wrong with you?” The voice on the other end was rough and angry. “Who the hell are you? More detectives? Can’t you leave me in peace?” His voice was hoarse with pain. “I told you that I don’t know anything. And now you’re bringing up my son’s friends? Are you going to tell me they were selling drugs, too?”
She froze. Something was very wrong. “Your son? This isn’t Michael Talcek?”
“You know it’s not, you ghoul. This is Allan Talcek.” His voice broke. “You know my son is dead.”
* * *
After fifteen minutes Rachel hung up the phone and drew a deep breath. Staying on that call and forcing that poor man to talk to her had been incredibly difficult. She felt drained and like the ghoul Allan Talcek had called her as she turned to Brandon. “Michael Talcek was shot in the head the night before last in his car, which was parked behind a bar in Oakland. There was drug residue in the glove compartment which led to a search, and a kilo of heroin was found in the rim of his tire. The police are thinking he was dealing and was murdered by one of his suppliers.”
“How convenient that the police were able to find the heroin, and yet the supplier who murdered him couldn’t,” Monty said dryly. “Was he a user?”
“No needle marks that would be a sign of frequent use, but there was heroin in his blood. But they don’t have the complete autopsy report yet,” Rachel said. “His father wasn’t aware that his son was an addict, and he denies that he’d ever deal. As far as Michael’s relationship with Fasrain, he said he didn’t believe they saw much of each other anymore. He probably might know because his son moved in with him before he graduated and they were very close. But when they were roommates, he said Fasrain did hang out with Michael on the docks.”
“Bingo,” Brandon murmured.
“But Michael told his father that Fasrain was into some weird shit with the women he picked up at the bars, and he couldn’t take it. He started to distance himself.”
“Little girls?”
“Michael wouldn’t say, just that it made him feel weird. After he graduated, he met a girl and didn’t see much of Fasrain. They traveled in different worlds from each other. Michael got a job on the docks, but because of his university background he became an inspector for the union. He was making decent money, and he’d just given his girlfriend an engagement ring. His father said that there was no way he’d give all that up to become a drug dealer.”
“Sometimes parents don’t know their own children,” Monty said. “Mine didn’t.”
“But you operate on a different planet,” Brandon said. “Not many of us understand you.” He was frowning thoughtfully. “And I’m leaning toward believing that the heroin was planted to give a motive why Talcek was killed. Rachel’s reasoning about the docks being the target is looking good to me. It wouldn’t be strange for Fasrain to give his old friend a call and ask him to have a drink to celebrate the coming nuptials.”
Rachel nodded. “But why? What’s the motive? And why kill him?” She was trying to figure it out. “Maybe the same reason he killed Cindy Naris? Tie up loose ends? He must have realized he should never have revealed what he did to her. Maybe he felt safe boasting because she was a hooker, and he knew he was going to kill her later.”
“But if what Michael Talcek’s father said was true about their estrangement, Fasrain wouldn’t have been confiding his plans to Michael,” Brandon said. “So he must have wanted something from him.” He was silent a moment, thinking. He suddenly snapped his fingers. “He was a union inspector, right? What does a union inspector have that Fasrain could want?”
“ID.” Rachel could see where he was going. “Entry passes for him to go wherever he wanted to go on the docks.” She reached for the phone again. “I didn’t ask his father if he had missing ID. I assumed that the police would have to have found ID when they discovered the body.” She was dialing the number again. She hated to do this to Allan Talcek, but she had no alternative. She just hoped he’d pick up the call.
“No more,” Allan Talchek said wearily when he answered. “I can’t take any more, Dr. Venable. I believed you when you told me that you didn’t think my son was a criminal, but I won’t let you—”
“Just a couple questions and I’ll hang up. I promise I won’t bother you again. Did the police return your son’s personal effects?”
“Yes, last night.”
“Was there ID with them?”
“Of course, his driver’s license, his phone … I was making a list of his friends to phone and tell about his death when you called tonight.”
“What else?”
“Car insurance and his union documents.”
Then maybe they were wrong, Rachel thought. Don’t give up. Go another step. “You said he was a union inspector. Were his inspections limited to only one dock?”
“No, he was qualified to inspect any dock in the area. He wasn’t a rookie. He had to work his way up. That’s why he’d never—”
“And how did he gain entrance to those docks? Did he just have one ID and badge to access all of them?”
“No, he had to have an ID and pass for every area. It was a security measure Homeland Security demanded after 9/11.”
“And all of his union passes were returned to you with his personal ID?”
Silence. “There were so many. The police didn’t say they’d noticed any missing. I didn’t go through them.”
“Would you do that for me now.” She paused. “Please. I realize it’s an imposition.”
“Yes, it is.” Silence. “But it means something to you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.” She didn’t try to hide the desperation she was feeling. “And I believe it might mean something to you, too, later. Your son deserves to have the truth known.”
“Stay on the line. I’ll go get them.” The phone went dead.
Rachel looked at Brandon. “It may all be for nothing.”
“It’s not nothing to Allan Talcek any longer,” he said quietly. “You’ve made it important.”
“It was already important,” she said. “Not only to prevent a disaster but to keep Fasrain from making that father have to live with the ugliness of the nasty stain he painted on Michael.”
“I have them all on the desk in front of me.” Allan Talcek came back on the line. “Driver’s license … Gym membership. Insurance card. There’s so damn many of the union docs.”
“Would you know if any of them were missing? Do you remember all the—”
“I worked on the docks for thirty-two years,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll remember every one of them.” Another silence. “They all seem to be here … No, wait. Oakland is missing.”
“Oakland?”
“The Port of Oakland Dock. Michael had to go there twice a month, and he was always complaining about the drive over the bridge. He said he always hit it at rush hour.”
“You’re sure it’s not there?”
“I said it, didn’t I?” he growled. “No Oakland entry pass. Is that all?”
“That’s all, thank you. I really appreciate it. I’m sorry for your loss, sir.” She pressed the disconnect. “Oakland. But wouldn’t it be unsafe for Fasrain to use Michael’s documents? Everything has photo ID these days.”
“Photos and info can be changed on documents. It’s the material of the ID itself that can’t be easily duplicated. In some areas they have to be read by machines so they’re specially coded. It’s almost like a counterfeit dollar bill, there are all kinds of ways to trip up. With that many passes, it was fairly safe to accept that one of them wouldn’t be missed. Particularly since the death was staged to be drug-related and have nothing to do with Michael’s profession. All Fasrain had to do was turn the document over to one of Huber’s experts, and within a few hours, he’d have a valid document for entry.”
“Oakland…” Monty was adjusting the satellite to view the area. “Not small at all. I’m sure it would be as well protected as the other docks in the San Francisco area.” He was enlarging the viewing scope. “At present there are three ships unloading there…”
“But how many will there be on the twenty-fifth? And what kinds of ships? An attack would be planned for maximum impact.” Rachel was typing in a request for scheduling information on the twenty-fifth. “Nothing until 7:30 A.M. in the morning. The Katrina Notalo…” She froze. “Shit.” Her gaze flew to Brandon. “It’s a supertanker.”
He went still. “How big?”
“Does it matter? No matter how big it is, it could be a nightmare.” Of course it mattered. She was just so horrified that it had stunned her. “Big. Huge.” She was reading the cargo manifest. “Over two million barrels of crude oil loaded in Saudi Arabia. The captain is Peter Van Deek who was hired eleven years ago by LetroFan Oil in Amsterdam.” She shuddered. “That could definitely change the California coastline. It could change everything for everyone living here, not to mention the wildlife. Blowing up an oil tanker would poison the wildlife and destroy the fishing industry for decades to come.” She moistened her lips. “We’ve got to stop it.”
Brandon nodded. “But the question is how?”
“Keep that supertanker away from shore. Don’t let it near the docks where Fasrain
could blow himself and that supertanker into the stratosphere.”
“And proof? Supertankers don’t cancel unless there’s proof of intent of sabotage. There’s an oil glut going on, and tankers are lined up to unload their crude these days. Giving up their place in the schedule would put them at the end of the line again. It would cost a hell of a lot of money to their stockholders.”
“I don’t know how we get proof.” She jumped to her feet. She couldn’t just sit there. She wanted to run out and do something. “We just have to stop it. It all fits, Brandon. Fasrain and his ravings about angels and paradise. Michael Talcek’s death. His missing credentials for Oakland. The supertanker due to arrive at 7:30 A.M. on the twenty-fifth.”
“I’m not arguing. But I’m just saying we’ll get an argument when we try to stop that supertanker. Our best bet is to go after Fasrain, and we can probably get help to apprehend him. But if we don’t capture him, or he doesn’t show himself as a threat, then no one is going to want to keep that supertanker away from those docks. Big money will be involved. You saw how Claire Warren reacted about Nemesis. She’s going to want to see proof.”
She didn’t want to be reminded. Her panic was growing, and she could only think of that supertanker heading for the coast like some dark bird of prey. “We’ve got to stop it,” she repeated. “Do something. You pulled a damn satellite out of your bag of tricks, didn’t you? Do something like that.”
“Sorry, Rachel,” Monty said. “A satellite wouldn’t help this time. We know where this threat’s coming from.” He turned to Brandon. “Drones? I’m very good with drones.”
“Not unless we want to blow the supertanker up ourselves,” Brandon said. “But drones aren’t a bad idea. Supertankers aren’t the only targets that can be blown up. If we can’t stop the tanker, we might be able to stop Fasrain.” He reached for his phone. “I’ll call Catherine and see where she is right now. She might be able to trace Fasrain’s location through his dock pass and see where he might turn up on that dock in Oakland. The only problem might be if he thinks the pass is too risky and finds another way to get on the docks.”
Vendetta Page 29
