Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  She gathered her wits and strode into the front lobby, trying to look like a crime victim slightly peeved that she had to come in and deal with more bureaucratic annoyances.

  A female officer at the front counter looked up her name in a computer and had someone escort her to an interview room on the first floor. They promised her an Agent Arias would be in to speak with her momentarily. She took a seat and waited.

  The room looked comfortable enough. It had none of the features years of TV cop dramas had taught her to expect in an interrogation room. There was no one-way mirror on the wall. No way to fasten a suspect to the table. It looked like a small government office with aged carpet and a table covered in cheap plastic veneers meant to look like wood. Perhaps she really wasn’t a suspect.

  She was startled by the door opening, and then a man entered. He was tall and slender, perhaps forty, with serious eyes and a crooked smile. He wore a tan suit. She looked for a gun but didn’t see one. He had a manila folder in one hand.

  He smiled and they shook hands. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Agent Roberto Arias, Special Investigation Bureau.” He offered her a business card from his inside suit pocket. “You’re Dr. Melissa Simon?”

  “That’s right,” she said as she released his hand and sat back down again. “Have you found the men who attacked my lab yet?” She hoped that was what someone would say in a case like this. Then she noticed Arias look back up at her.

  “Did you say there were more than one?” he asked suddenly, his hand pausing in the act of placing the folder on the table.

  She took a second to recover her composure. “Well, they did a great deal of damage. I suppose it could have been one man. But it would have been a lot of work.”

  Arias nodded. “Of course. To answer your question, I don’t believe there has been anything to report regarding your case. I should make clear that I’m not the investigating officer. My role is to oversee the investigation, to make certain that it is handled appropriately.”

  Melissa wasn’t sure what that meant. She smiled and waited for him to continue.

  “You told the responding officer that this attack came after several previous incidents where valuable equipment was damaged outside the building. In the forest.”

  She nodded. “That’s right.”

  He paged through the documents in his folder. “You’ve contacted the police about these incidents on two occasions,” he said. “Most recently on March nineteenth of this year.”

  “I don’t remember the exact date,” she said. “That sounds right.”

  “It would help me to understand the nature of your project,” he said. “What kind of scientific research are you doing?”

  She explained the project to him—the layman’s version of the elevator speech. That part was certainly easy. She’d delivered it hundreds of times. Arias nodded, took notes, asked the occasional question.

  “And your team usually works in the lab on the weekends,” he said when she’d finished. “Is that correct?”

  “That’s right. Nobody was there when it happened because I had to leave Puerto Rico to talk with my backers about the damage to our sampling equipment.”

  “It’s expensive to replace,” he offered.

  “That’s right. I had to make the case for more funding. So I gave the team the weekend off while I was gone. Thank God I did!” she added, feeling pleased with her improvisation. “If we’d been there when they came…”

  He looked at his papers again. “But you returned to Puerto Rico on Friday evening.”

  She felt a sudden rush of panic and fought it down. The cop who’d come out to the lab hadn’t cared where she’d been. Why was this one poking at her story? Christ, he did suspect something. Crane had been wrong. An answer. She had to answer him.

  “I didn’t know when I’d be back when I left,” she said. “Plus we haven’t been able to collect much in the way of samples lately anyway, with the lost gear.”

  “So there isn’t much work to do,” he said, nodding and noting something down on his memo pad.

  “Right. And honestly, this has been really hard on me. I just needed some time away from it. I stayed at home for the weekend and tried not to think about things.”

  “This is the address in Ocean Park?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you own a firearm, Dr. Simon?” Arias asked suddenly.

  “What? No!” Again that trill of panic. She felt the adrenaline rush, felt her flesh tighten, the hairs on her arms standing up. She hoped it wasn’t obvious to Agent Arias, but she was afraid it was. She tried to turn it back on him.

  “Why would that matter? Are you suggesting I shot up my own lab?”

  “Not at all,” he said softly. “It’s quite all right, Dr. Simon. Please calm down. I ask because we haven’t been able to identify the weapon or weapons used in the attack. I was wondering if it was possible they used a weapon belonging to you that they found on the premises.”

  “Well… no, none of my team has a gun. Certainly not at the lab, at least. I’d know about that.” This time she couldn’t tamp down her fear. She was convinced he knew something more than what she’d told the uniformed cop. Somehow he knew she was lying. She was convinced of it.

  “I have one more question,” he was saying. He pulled a sheaf of photos from his binder. “Can you tell me if you recognize any of the men I’m about to show you.”

  “Of course.” She leaned forward as he lay down an eight by ten headshot on the table. It was a man in perhaps his middle thirties, dark hair and eyes, a military bearing.

  “No, I’ve never seen him before. Are these the men who sabotaged my project?”

  Arias didn’t answer. He laid down another photo, not unlike the first. Then a third. Both times Melissa shook her head no.

  Then, the fourth photo. It was a face she could never forget. She could still see Crane pulling the blood-soaked ski mask away, the horrible quiet sound as bits of skull came away with it, and that face, still in death. She involuntarily drew in a breath and looked up to see if Arias had noticed. His serious brown eyes met hers, and she knew that he had seen her react. He knew she recognized him.

  “This one you have seen?” he said.

  Melissa thought furiously. “I don’t know where,” she said. Then the answer came to her and she knew what to say.

  “That’s the policeman who was killed,” she said as if just realizing it. “He was on the news.”

  “Hmm,” Arias said, and she detected disappointment in the sound. “That he was…”

  “Are they all policemen?” she said. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not important,” said Arias. “Thank you, Dr. Simon.” He collected his papers and closed the folder—without bothering to show her the one photograph remaining in the stack. “I don’t have any more questions at this time. On behalf of the Puerto Rico police, let me thank you for your cooperation.”

  “Are we done, then?” she asked.

  “That’s all I have at this time,” he repeated. “We’ll continue to investigate what happened at your lab, and someone will be in touch if we find a suspect.”

  He guided her around the table and out the door. “In the meantime, if you think of anything or have any questions, you can always reach me at the number on my card.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said. Then he ushered her out into the main lobby and she was walking toward the front doors. She tried very hard to keep her pace comfortable and slow, but all she wanted to do was run out of there into the warmth and the sunlight.

  She made the door, half afraid Arias would call her back. Then she was outside, crossing the parking lot to her Jeep. She fumbled with the key and realized she was shaking. She took several deep breaths, started the Jeep, and pulled out onto the street. She lurched out on the Avenue Franklin Delano Roosevelt and cut off a taxicab. The driver honked and shouted something at her, but Melissa didn’t care. She just wanted to get as far away fro
m here as she could and call John Crane. She hoped he would know what to do.

  Chapter 17

  In a post office parking lot, John Crane sat in a rented Hyundai and watched the police headquarters building across the street. Melissa was in there, giving her statement to a detective. He’d coached her on what to say, and the story was simple enough. It was more believable than the truth, in his opinion. Crane didn’t expect there to be any trouble. He was here because of what he expected to happen when she left.

  Crane knew there would be pushback from the adversary, whoever that was. They didn’t know anything about him, but they obviously knew a lot about Melissa and her project. So they would use her to try to get to him. In turn, he would use that to get to them.

  He waited another few minutes until Melissa emerged from the building and hurried across the parking lot to her Jeep. She looked flushed through his telephoto lens, and she was moving a little faster than normal. Something must have spooked her.

  She started the Jeep and pulled out onto the side street. And a few moments later, a black Charger pulled out after her. It was the same one he’d seen at the funeral. Crane smiled to himself and started up the Hyundai. Game on.

  At the intersection with Avenue FDR, Melissa pulled out at the wrong moment and cut off a taxi amid honking horns. The Charger waited for the taxi to clear the intersection and then the cars that had backed up behind it. Then it turned and followed Melissa’s Jeep north. Crane pulled out and kept an eye on it. He stayed well back. He doubted he would lose the car; plus, he had the advantage of knowing where Melissa was going.

  She led the entourage back across town to Ocean Park, where she parked up the street from the guest house where she stayed. She was walking back up the sidewalk as the Charger slid past, and then Crane’s Hyundai. She didn’t see him, but she had her phone out, nervously punching at the screen. A moment later his burner phone rang. Crane put it on speaker.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “How did it go?”

  “They know something!” she said, and he could hear the nervous energy in her voice. “It wasn’t like you said at all!”

  “Calm down and tell me what happened,” said Crane. For a moment, he considered turning around and going back to her. But he didn’t want to lose the Charger. It turned around the block and headed back out of the neighborhood to the south. Crane gave it a few moments to pick up some distance, and then followed it.

  “The detective knew more than he was telling me,” Melissa said. “He had a picture of the man you… and some others too. He asked if I owned a gun!”

  “How many others?”

  “Three,” she said. “Does that matter? Wait, there was another one that he didn’t show me.”

  “It’s interesting,” said Crane. It could mean a couple things, he thought. Some more helpful to him than others.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” she said. “I’ve lied to the police!”

  “It’s going to be fine,” he told her. “Nobody’s after you. If they’re trying to rattle you, it’s to get you to lead them to me. That’s why I’m keeping my distance. It’s why we’ve got these phones.”

  Ahead of him, the Charger took an on-ramp to the expressway, heading east. Crane slipped through a yellow light to follow.

  “You just keep a low profile,” he told Melissa. “Stay close to home. Don’t go back to the lab or talk to anybody else from your team.”

  She sighed. “I’ve got some reading I can catch up on.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “If I end up in prison, I swear to God…”

  “I’ll smuggle you a file,” he said.

  She laughed at last, and they finished the call.

  The Charger led Crane east, into the Carolinas district. It dropped off the expressway and followed a twisting course through side streets, eventually pulling into a bar off the Avenue Monserrate. It parked next to the silver Mustang from the funeral. There were a couple of marked Ford Taurus police cruisers in the lot as well.

  Crane parked on the street half a block up and watched in the side mirror as the driver walked into the bar. Crane got out and walked back up the sidewalk, looking around for any curious onlookers and concluding that no one was paying attention to him. In his pocket he had a collection of the tiny GPS tracers Josh had sent him. He walked through the parking lot, between the rows of parked cars, and slipped a tracer into the Charger’s wheel well. The magnets leaped from his fingertips and thumped into place. He dropped another one on the Mustang and then crossed the lot and tagged the two police cruisers as well. He continued through the lot to the next street and walked around the block to return to his car.

  Back in the Hyundai, he switched on his tablet and there were the traces, a tight group of four red dots pulsing away on the street map, right up the street from Crane’s blue dot. He assigned them labels. PV for the personal vehicles, CR for the police cruisers. The Charger was PV-2, the Mustang PV-3. He was saving number one for the leader of the group. Crane hoped he was in the bar and would claim one of the cruisers when they came out.

  While he waited, he pulled up a page on his phone about the PR Police. The colloquial term for them was La Uniformada—the uniformed. They were a layer above the municipal police, the equivalent of a state police force on the mainland. They were organized into thirteen geographic regions covering the island. At the moment, Crane and his band of rogue cops were in the middle of the Carolina region, so Crane assumed that was where they were assigned. Canovanas and Benitez, and Melissa’s lab, were also in the Carolina region.

  Eventually the group left the bar together and split up in the lot. Crane recognized the leader, in duty uniform now. He crossed to one of the cruisers and pulled out. Crane tagged it CR-1 on his tablet. The other one became CR-4.

  In theory, Crane didn’t need to follow any of the cars now. He could sit right here and track all four of them around the island. But he wanted to keep an eye on the leader, to see if he would lead him someplace interesting. So he gave the cars a couple minutes to disperse and then pulled back out into traffic and followed the red dot marked CR-1.

  He followed him around San Juan for the rest of the afternoon. He kept far enough away to remain unseen, but close enough to figure out what the officer was up to. Nothing of interest as far as Crane could tell. He patrolled stretches of the expressway, answered the occasional call. It looked like a routine day on the job. Crane didn’t expect the man to immediately lead him where he wanted to go, but this part of the job had always been his least favorite.

  He was following the Taurus up the expressway when a Boeing triple seven suddenly dropped out of the sky alongside him, on its approach run into Luis Muñoz International. Crane followed the cruiser into the airport but had to veer off when the cop flashed an ID card at a guarded gate and pulled into a secure area. There was a lot for people waiting for arrivals, so Crane pulled in. He swept the area beyond the chain link fence with his telephoto, but couldn’t tell what the cop was doing. But it looked as though Muñoz was in Carolina’s jurisdiction, not in San Juan proper. He looked it up on his phone and confirmed it. Now that was interesting. Crane could think of quite a few things a ring of corrupt cops could do with secure access to the island’s international airport.

  When CR-1 left the airport, Crane followed it back out again. It headed west now, across the border into the city of San Juan. Perhaps he lived there and was going off shift.

  Crane followed, again keeping well behind the trace so the cop wouldn’t notice him. The Hyundai was inconspicuous, but there was no need to take chances on his powers of observation. The cop drove across town to an area Crane’s map called Monacilla Urbano. When the trace stopped moving, Crane drove slowly past the spot. The leader lived in a working-class neighborhood of smallish houses with driveways and small front lawns of well-kept grass. Many of the yards were walled off and the driveways gated. The cop’s place wasn’t walled. Crane could see the Taurus in the driveway and the F-150
pickup from the cemetery parked beside it on a paved pullout.

  Crane drove past and left the neighborhood behind for the time being. He pulled over a few blocks away and ran a search on the address. The property belonged to one Javier Acevedo. That name belonged to a sergeant in the PR Police, assigned to the Carolina district. Crane found a photo of him and confirmed it. That was his man.

  “Nice to meet you, Sergeant Acevedo,” he muttered. Then he started up the car again and drove off. He found a place to fill up the Hyundai, grabbed a light snack, and waited for nightfall. When it was dark, he drove back and tagged Acevedo’s F-150 as PV-1. Then he knelt in the darkness between the two cars and took out something that looked like a smartphone but wasn’t. He called up an app and flipped through two long menus until he found “Ford” and “Taurus.” When he pressed the red button, the device’s radio fired off the appropriate codes until the cruiser’s doors unlocked with a quiet thunk. Crane opened the passenger door and slipped an audio bug under the seat. Then he closed the door, relocked the car, and was gone.

  It had been a productive day, Crane thought as he made his way back to his car. His tablet was now tracking three personal cars and two police cruisers, and he had a voice-activated recorder in the ringleader’s cruiser. All he had to do was wait, then get within range of the bug again, and it would download everything it had picked up in a burst transmission to his laptop. It had been a very good day, but a long one. He’d been meaning to find a place that made good mofongo. Now seemed as good a time as any.

  Chapter 18

  Javier Acevedo drove his cruiser down the expressway. The day was bright and warm. The city gleamed in the sunlight, and palm trees waved in the breeze. Acevedo rejected all of it. His thoughts were gloomy. His talk with the Little Russian’s boss had left a nagging fear deep in his bones. The man had threatened his family. The situation was spinning out of control around him. He had to do something, but he didn’t know where to start. He’d caught a glimpse of the man who killed Hector, but he wasn’t even sure he’d recognize him if they met on the street. He was just one more tall anglo with dark hair. The island was full of them.