Counterfeit Road

by Kirk Russell

  Raveneau got absorbed in another set of photos, several of which were of a younger Thomas Casey. He looked up as Candel tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘How’s it coming, dude?’

  ‘There’s a young woman in here. I’d like to know her name.’

  ‘I saw her. She’s hot.’

  ‘Ask him her name.’

  ‘That’s easy.’

  ‘And see if you can find out when he took most of these.’

  ‘Why don’t you sign up and I’ll see if he’s cool about adding you.’

  ‘Or my partner since she’s already signed up.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, want me to text him?’

  ‘Sure.’

  An answer came back within seconds.

  ‘He says that’s fine.’

  ‘What’s fine, friending la Rosa or do I have to sign up?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right, hang on.’ Raveneau heard the return ping. ‘He wants you to sign up.’

  ‘What’s the matter with my partner’s page?’

  ‘Want me to ask?’

  ‘No, I’ll sign up.’

  ‘I’ll help you. It won’t take long.’

  It didn’t and then it didn’t matter because Matt Frank didn’t respond. Raveneau shut his computer down. He knew there was something more Candel needed to say and it came out as they left the Hall.

  ‘Matt said it got weird after you left that day. His uncle is seriously angry about you going into Dad’s house. He also ripped him for showing you the memorial. He told Matt he’ll be the reason his dad’s remains end up in a box in some police storage building. His uncle doesn’t think much of the police, dude. And he gets super tweaked when people show up uninvited and blow off the No Trespassing signs on the gate.

  ‘But still, Matt’s pretty cool about his uncle. He said he owes him for just about everything. He said Dad acted closer to people he had just met than him, that he liked new people more than he liked people he knew, but Uncle Thomas isn’t like that. His uncle is his main investor in the coffee thing.’

  ‘Ask him how his uncle made his money.’

  ‘I already know. They had land, dude, like a whole lot of it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it wasn’t in Hawaii. He like sold land here and bought that ranch. He says his uncle has megabucks. But bottom line is Uncle Casey is planning to get even with you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t really know. He told Matt to do like a video of what he saw when he went up to our dad’s house and you were there. Matt was supposed to FedEx it out today.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yeah, I think he did.’

  ‘So it’s on its way here?’

  ‘Yeah, like FedExing to your boss, whoever that is. He said it would get here tomorrow.’

  FORTY-SIX

  Late that night a new storm out of the Gulf of Alaska arrived and this one lived up to the hype. When the phone rang at 3:00 a.m. Raveneau automatically reached for it as he had so many years when he was on-call. But it was the alarm company calling for Celeste to tell her the power was out. It was out here too and on the roof the cold rain blew sideways and he didn’t see any lights on south of Market Street.

  By 5:30 Celeste was anxious to get to the bar, worried about food spoiling with the small walk-in and the refrigerators down. The power was still on where her chef, Bo, lived and she wanted to get crab meat and a few of the more delicate things over to his refrigerator. Raveneau drove with her and loaded the food in the back of his car. It was raining so hard he barely heard his cell ringing when he got in his car.

  ‘Is that rain?’ Coe asked.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well, that’s not good. Drury wants to talk to you. I want to get you on a flight this morning out of SFO. I’ll be going with you.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘Colorado. He’s at ADX Florence.’

  ‘What plane is going to take off in this weather? SFO will be backed up for hours.’

  ‘We’ll get out on the corporate side. How are you with turbulence?’

  ‘Oh, I love bouncing around in the air not knowing if the plane is going to come apart. That’s my idea of fun.’

  It was anything but fun when they crossed over the Sierras. Underneath them, the interstate was closed, not even the snow plow drivers were out. As they crossed into Nevada the plane dropped suddenly and way too long for Raveneau. He heard the engines power-up, and the long fall ended in plane-shuddering turbulence that slammed the jet sideways, and wrenched his gut. He thought anyone who didn’t notice these storms were getting more intense wasn’t paying attention.

  An hour and forty minutes later they were on the ground in a black Suburban eating sandwiches and crossing flat plain covered in snow, rolling toward what Coe jokingly called San Francisco’s sister prison because of its nickname ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies.’ The Unabomber was here. So was the ‘Shoe Bomber,’ and Timothy McVeigh before his ticket got punched. Ramzi Yousef had a cell, and others.

  Drury was in solitary. Raveneau slowly ate the turkey sandwich and thought about that.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Coe said. ‘You’re thinking the FBI has too much money.’

  ‘Why is Drury all the way out here?’

  ‘He’s out here because I really don’t know where the threat to him might come from. Weren’t you the one who said he might be our one link?’

  When they turned off Highway 67 Raveneau looked from the guard posts to the snowy mountains beyond. They went through the gate and then it took awhile before Raveneau sat down with Drury.

  When he did, Drury was sullen and angry. He was disconnected. His answers came sporadically and he looked away purposefully. Contempt radiated from his eyes. He was nothing like the social animal Raveneau saw at the bar in San Leandro and that wasn’t all that long ago.

  ‘Do you know where you are, John?’

  ‘Prison.’

  ‘But do you know where?’

  ‘I don’t fucking care where.’

  ‘You’re in a supermax in Colorado.’

  Drury rattled his shackles and spittle worked its way to the corners of his lips.

  ‘I’m here because I made a deal with scuzzbag liars.’

  ‘You didn’t keep up your end.’

  ‘Fuck you, man.’

  ‘I went back to the cabinet shop; I’ve figured some things I want to talk with you about it.’ Raveneau waved his hand slowly at the walls of the room. ‘But, I agree, you don’t belong here.’

  ‘So get me out now.’

  ‘Your lawyer is working on it. Remember, you wanted to do everything through your lawyer.’

  The table was concrete and bolted to the floor. Drury’s shackles looped through an iron ring set in the concrete floor. This was a prison that worked on prisoners until they were broken down enough or old enough to get fed into lesser security prisons. Drury had the energy of a young man and was not aware of how systematically and relentlessly his psyche would get destroyed.

  ‘Where are you at on the police officer who was killed?’

  ‘He pushed me. I tripped and fell backwards into him. He fell on to the freeway. It was an accident.’

  ‘Do you think you should do time for the accident?’

  ‘I’m already doing time.’

  ‘Five years, ten years, two years, what do you think?’

  ‘It was an accident. With the woman I got scared the police were going to kill me.’

  ‘They probably were.’

  ‘They definitely were so I didn’t have a choice.’

  Drury stared and then surprisingly allowed, ‘I know I’ll do some time.’

  ‘OK, then what’s a fair sentence?’

  ‘Fuck your games, man.’

  ‘Give me a number and then we’ll talk about how to get you out of here. It’s why I flew out from SF this morning.’

  ‘Three years.’

  ‘That might be right.’ Raveneau paused. ‘
But I think it’s going to be longer. Here’s where you really are, right now. You’re where the rule of law doesn’t matter, despite what your lawyer tells you. You’re being looked at for possible terrorism charges and once they do that they can keep you forever. I mean literally forever. This isn’t your parents’ United States any more. They can keep you and never charge you. You could go ten years, twenty years, your whole life, just like the guys in Gitmo, and I’m not exaggerating at all. So what you need to do is get yourself back to the place where the rule of law applies, then get sentenced and do your time and get out. You do that by giving up the guys you’re protecting.’

  ‘I’ve already told you everything. I told you everything and then you fucked me.’

  ‘After I last saw you I went back to the cabinet shop and then drove your route from there. When I did, something occurred to me. Do you want to hear it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Do you want me to leave? Because I don’t mind leaving. The FBI asked me to talk to you but I don’t need this. I’ll leave and I don’t think you’ll have many visitors for awhile. Whatever your lawyer is feeding you won’t happen. Terrorism charges trump everything. But you decide. You’ve got five seconds. Should I leave?’

  When Drury didn’t answer immediately, Raveneau ran a hand through his hair, pushed back his chair and stood.

  ‘You’re here because of choices you made and I may as well fly home.’

  ‘I’m not getting screwed again.’

  ‘Do you want to talk or not, yes or no?’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Raveneau still stood with his hands on the chair back.

  ‘There’s another reason you’re in a supermax and that’s because they want to keep you alive. Once you don’t own that information and it’s out there circulating no one will try to kill you. Right now, the trick is to get you first.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Other people have died since you got locked up. When I drove your route I included the stop to switch the plywood. I drove everything up to the actual delivery and then I went back to the stop before you picked up the plywood and the one after it. You told the FBI the plywood switchout was a five minute stop. You said you backed up and the forklift driver was “super quick,” your words.

  ‘I took the time it was when you called in from your stop before that and added five to ten minutes for the plywood stop and added that to the time difference between when you called in on the stop prior to the plywood and the one after it. I did that and I couldn’t make it work. No matter how I added it up there was still a missing fifteen or twenty minutes, so I ran that by some other homicide inspectors and then the Feds and realized there was another stop.’

  Drury started to deny that and Raveneau shook his head. He pulled the chair back. He sat down across from Drury.

  ‘This is it, John. This is last chance, and let me tell you something else. When they get tired of waiting for you to break down and talk, they’re going to use you as bait. I promise you that’s what will happen. Look, you made another stop. But it didn’t hit me until later that it wasn’t material you were picking up or delivering. It was a person. It was the shooter. Probably you didn’t know what was going on when you picked him up, but you sure knew afterwards. You’ve got to start talking today. It may save you.’

  Drury looked away as he said, ‘I’m not going to get screwed.’

  ‘Dude, you’re already screwed. It’s just about how bad and how long now.’ Raveneau waited three beats then asked, ‘Did you know what he was going to do?’

  Drury shook his head.

  ‘Say something.’

  ‘I didn’t even know that’s where he was getting out.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘He was in the cab with a hoodie hiding his face. He never once turned his head. He told me if I looked at him he’d kill me.’

  ‘So you knew something bad was going to go down.’

  ‘That’s all he said to me. He didn’t say anything else.’

  ‘But you knew there was a reason.’

  ‘Yeah, but I thought it was something to do with the owner owing them money or something. I didn’t know. If anyone asked I was supposed to say he was a new driver I was training.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘The guy who hired me, the one I told you about. I was supposed to meet him that night and get paid but when you called I freaked out and went to the bar instead.’

  Raveneau nodded. That was probably why Drury was alive. It probably meant the gunman was dead. They would have broken the link but Drury could still give them the man who hired him.

  ‘And that’s why you gave us a bad description, you were scared?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, I can understand that. Now give me a better one, first the gunman sitting next to you in the cab. You saw part of his face. You heard his voice. White, black, what?’

  ‘I don’t know and I’m not lying, I couldn’t tell and I didn’t try hard to look.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How tall?’

  ‘Sort of average.’

  ‘How did you know where to pick him up?’

  ‘I got a text on the phone they gave me.’

  ‘Was he carrying anything?’

  ‘A brown bag with a zipper down the middle and he put it in the back at the very end and said not to touch it. He said he’d get it when the time came.’

  ‘What did you think was in the bag?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  He knew but that didn’t matter right now. Probably got very good money to deliver the man with a promise of an even larger payoff once it was over.

  ‘You’re going to be asked to work with a sketch artist to come up with an image of what he looks like and you’ll have to go back to zero and start over on the man who hired you. No one is going to question that the description may be different this time. That man is very important. With both you need to think about identifying marks, moles, skin aberrations, scars, tats, variance in the eye color. If the man who hired you has hair growing out his ears we want to know about it.

  ‘Now let’s go forward again. You’re at the cabinet shop. The plywood has been offloaded by Khan’s employee. Where is the guy who rode with you and the bag he brought?’

  ‘He’s gone to the bathroom.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did he know where the rest room was? Did he get out of the truck and say, hey, I’m going to the rest room? Had he ever been there before? Tell me how it went down.’

  Drury didn’t want to answer and Raveneau thought about Drury with a gun in his hand, adrenalized, the veins of his neck bulging, his face twisted with anger and fear as Raveneau entered the house in San Leandro. He looked at Drury’s scalp, the short hair.

  ‘I didn’t know he was going to do what he did. No one said anything to me about any of it.’

  ‘OK, you asked if he could use the bathroom, then what?’

  ‘Then we signed the delivery tags and I told the older guy that worked there – I can’t remember his name – that my guy was back in the truck and I needed to hustle.’

  ‘Did he watch you leave?’

  ‘Never does.’

  Never did, Raveneau thought, and knew Drury had rehearsed this. Drury and the man who had hired him rehearsed the moves at the cabinet shop. The shooter probably did sit silent and they brought him in with the plywood so there wouldn’t be any gap between delivery and taking out the employees. That probably said several things; one being they worried employees would open the unit of plywood and accidentally discover the bomb casings. And they made a cynical calculation that it wouldn’t get found during the murder investigation. He stared at Drury. No way was he still supposed to be alive. So they were making mistakes. They were stumbling, but they prepared for stumbles. They were good enough to adjus
t and send Khan in and get the casings.

  ‘Did you get money upfront and were going to get the balance afterwards?’

  ‘Yeah, the rest after.’

  ‘Do you know how I know you never collected it?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You’re alive. When was he going to give you the final payment?’

  ‘A week later.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Pete’s Corner.’

  ‘Is that the only place you met with him?’

  ‘Yes, but after the first time it was in her car in the lot there. She would text me.’

  ‘Not a man.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, but that’s over now, right? When I walk out and the FBI walks in, are you going to be ready?’

  ‘Will I know what’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘Just answer.’

  He nodded instead.

  ‘You help them on this and they’ll return you to the real world. You’ll still have to deal with everything else you did, but they will return you. This means you’re going to do the polygraph tests, everything.’

  Raveneau stopped at the door. He turned.

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘She came up to me at the bar at Pete’s.’

  ‘She knew who you were.’

  ‘Yeah, she just started talking to me. She said the bartender told her my name. She went home with me, man. Don’t try to tell me that was planned too. I know it wasn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  They stared at each other, Raveneau wondering if he was lying again but feeling he wasn’t. ‘It’ll be a lot more than just one interview. You heard me when I said lie detector, right?’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘So you’ve got to be patient, and then they’ll get you out of here. You only talk to Special Agent Coe about that, OK? He’s the one.’