Salvage: A Shadow Files Novel

by A. J. Scudiere

  In the meantime, she and Walter were expected to do some heavy-duty interrogation. GJ winced. Though she understood what this meant from her NAT courses, she didn’t like the sound of it. If anyone overheard this call, they would be more concerned that it wasn't lessons from Quantico, but Guantanamo, that were being ordered.

  Westerfield was ready to sign off, their assignment having been handed over and thoroughly described, but GJ stopped him. "Sir, there's one more problem."

  "What's that, Janson?" he said, the tone in his voice indicating that he didn't want to hear it.

  Well, too bad, she thought. They’d come out here. They’d caught two of the perpetrators, and they were bringing them in. He could suck it up. "Sir, we believe there's a third assailant. We're standing outside the car right now, where we have our two adequately tied up. We can make the trip and bring them in. However, if he's here, he could open fire on us at any moment. We have no clue where he is. We haven’t seen any evidence that he’s here. We don’t even know that there are only three of them. This could be it, or there could be a battalion in the woods. As soon as we can, we need to get somebody out here to search the area. See if they can find another car. I’d stay, but with these two, I wouldn't split Walter and me up."

  "Hadn't intended to," he said, "but it's a valid point. I'll send Eames and Heath in to take a look. I’m bringing de Gottardi with me—"

  "Sir, is that wise?" she interrupted. "Wade should not be interviewing the people who shot and probably killed his boyfriend."

  "No shit, Sherlock," Westerfield replied. "I'm not going to let him run the investigation. However, I'm sure he'll have insights, and can help us phrase questions to get the maximum value out of our work. He wasn't there, but he was around, and he does know his family."

  GJ conceded the validity of that, and also—as Walter had pointed out—how unlikely it was that this case was ever going to sit before a jury of her peers.

  With everything settled, she and Walter climbed into the front of the car. Walter allowed her to take the steering wheel, even though she generally didn't like riding shotgun. GJ started the car and rolled them back along the dirt road, bumping in reverse along the rutted tracks until she found a point where she could turn around. Just as she got the car aimed forward, the air cracked and the back windshield blew out.

  25

  Walter leaned in as she tried to put a little more of a conspiratorial tone back into her voice. At this point, she couldn't tell if the woman was buying it or not. Though Walter had done this kind of interrogation before, Quantico hadn’t quite prepared her to interrogate a prisoner whose gun she’d stolen and then aimed at her. Clearly, this woman wasn’t forgetting that Walter had talked like a friend for a moment, but then forced her onto her knees and—at gunpoint—cuffed her and zip-tied her into the back of a car. So, this time around, the tactic might not work as well.

  Walter was aiming for an I know why I want them dead. Why do you want them dead? kind of tactic. But it wasn’t working. This time the woman only said two words: “They're evil.”

  Walter couldn't quite work with that. She wanted to know what kind of evil. She'd already admitted that she'd seen them pop and roll their muscles. That she’d seen them change. But she wasn’t getting anywhere. Just the repeated phrase, “They’re evil.”

  Before they’d given up and called Westerfield, Walter and GJ thought it might be best to go to a local police station, to interview these two there. As the FBI, they should be able to walk their perps in, use a room, and walk them out later. But the problem, as she and GJ had quickly seen, was that the interview rooms were hardwired, and there was no way they could have this conversation in front of the local cops without blowing the de Gottardi and Little families’ secret wide open.

  So, they were at the hotel Westerfield had set up for them. Having rearranged the furniture, they were now trying to interview two perpetrators in separate bedrooms on either end of the generic suite. As far as Walter could assess, it was not going well. She looked at the woman again and aimed for her best version of a sympathetic expression. She tried to summon her inner GJ.

  "I get it. They shift, and they change, and that's not natural." She worked hard to keep a straight face as she thought of her own metal, wire, and rubberized limbs—things that were as unnatural as anything Donovan or Wade could do. But she looked to the woman, eyes sincere as she could make them, and waited.

  The woman again only replied, "They're evil."

  Walter gave up. This was a brick wall, and she was done hitting her head on it. "Who shot out the window of the car as we left?"

  Though the urge to stay and fight had been strong, Walter and GJ had run. They already had two perpetrators in the back seat of the car with barely enough space between them to keep them separated. If they hadn't been tightly zip tied, they could have worked together and made trouble, caused an accident, or maybe even overturning the car while they were driving away. Knowing how to do that herself, Walter didn’t put it past anyone else. Adding a third person into the back would have compounded the problems by tenfold.

  GJ had displayed some excellent tactical driving while Walter had pulled out her phone and called Will Little, explaining to him that he needed to alert the entire family that at least one active shooter was up on the ridge. Walter had sent photos that she'd taken of the two they had in custody. Their faces were not smiling in those pictures.

  Both Art and Burt agreed that these looked, as best they could tell, like the people they'd seen in the woods the night Randall had been killed. They also each agreed they couldn't put their finger on it for certain, given the darkness, the fear, the way everyone had scattered, and the fact that their perpetrators had been in the distance on the long end of a rifle.

  So it might be a different woman. Walter wasn’t getting much of anywhere as Ms. Huntress was not speaking right now. The forced mugshots and the perp walk into the back of a nice hotel hadn't done them any favors making friends. The woman continued to stubbornly refuse to answer questions, and Walter wondered if GJ was having any better luck than she.

  If anyone could do this, it would be GJ. Her partner had rocked this at Quantico, and just as Walter felt the thought pass, a message pinged up on her phone, a silent low buzz that came directly from GJ. Two words flashed on Walter's screen where she had it slightly propped so Ms. Huntress could not see it: “No luck.”

  Well, shit.

  "One moment please." Walter looked up at the woman sitting across from her, the scowl now permanently etched into her features. She tried to be polite and act like this was a casual interview. As though the woman across from her did not still have her hands zip tied behind her back and anchored to the chair; as though her ankles were not tied to each of the chair legs. The hotel chair, while padded, looked pretty but didn't come across as actually feeling very comfortable. Walter had ceased to care.

  She tapped out a quick message back to GJ. "I'm invoking the name of Dr. Murray Marks."

  Then she set the phone down and looked at Ms. Huntress. She was going to play a game now. She was going to pretend that she knew everything and hope that Ms. Huntress corrected her when she was wrong. Ready? Set?

  "We have the body of the man you killed,” she opened with. And for the first time, she saw a flicker of surprise, though the woman held it well before quickly resuming her sour expression.

  "His name was Randall Standish. When you checked his—"

  There it was. Walter tried not to pause as the flicker across the woman's face told her she found an error in Walter's reasoning. But Walter was ready to keep going. Time to prove she knew more than the bitch in front of her.

  "His name was Randall Standish," she repeated. "I understand that when you checked his pockets, he had an FBI agent badge, and that you read his name differently. But you see, he'd borrowed another man's clothes because he didn't have the kind of clothing he needed to go out on a night run. And unfortunately, when he borrowed the clothes, he didn't reali
ze he also got the wallet down in the pocket of the cargo pants. So, the problem right now is this: no matter what you and I may think of these guys and what they can do, you didn't kill one of them. You killed a human man."

  Walter let the last sound linger and hang heavy between them, even though she didn't believe it. What she said insinuated that Wade and Donovan were not human, and not worthy of the respect that Randall was getting. However, she couldn't afford to stand on ceremony here. She couldn't afford to say what she really believed. That was one of the things both she and GJ had learned at Quantico: any means necessary to get the information. Anything that didn't violate the Geneva Convention, and maybe sometimes, a few things that did.

  Walter was surprised all the lessons were still sticking. But here she was, staring at the woman who was staring back. Though the expression was still ugly and angry, it had changed. It was clear she was surprised by some of the information that Walter had.

  "That's why the bones didn't work," Walter added. "You brought him back, and you thought you had one of them, and you even thought you had an FBI agent. But the fact of the matter is, you were wrong. You killed a human being. What are you going to do about it?"

  Another small crack appeared in the façade, though Walter couldn’t tell if the woman was thinking or growing angrier. It was right now when she thought about how quickly she'd taken the gun off this woman, and how long GJ had run to catch up with the man she had winged. She thought of how she had excelled at marksmanship and all the physical aspects of their job. But right now, she wished she had a little more of GJ's powers.

  GJ, of course, had needed to interview the man. Given her superior medical skills and her ability to question people regardless of their demeanor—like, say, while they were in pain—this had been the natural solution. And Walter wasn't getting anything until the last moment when the woman looked at her and said, "It wasn't me. It was Harry."

  26

  "Which part?" GJ whispered to Walter where they sat in the center area of the suite, the bedroom doors pulled almost closed on their prisoners. It wasn’t a good solution, just the only viable one.

  She whispered again. "The part where I checked his wounds several times? Each time pressing my finger into it and causing him more pain. Well, I don't know if it worked, but he said another guy shot Randall.”

  Judging by the look on Walter's face, that wasn't a good answer. She thought that she'd achieve something by getting that out of the interview.

  "What was the name?" Walter asked.

  "Harry." She answered from memory even as she flipped through the little paper pad she’d written on. She’d been recording and copiously writing down everything she could.

  "At least they both gave the same name. However, it's highly plausible that they simply gave the name of the one who got away. Blame it on the guy who isn’t here to fight back.”

  “Or it might even be a fake name they're prepared to give," GJ lamented. "Either way, neither of them is taking the blame for the shot that killed a person.”

  She worked to keep her tone low, even as her irritation shot up. They were sitting in the central room of the suite, with one person tied to a chair in each room on either side of them. They’d pulled the doors mostly closed to block the sound, but it also blocked their vision. The concern was that anything their prisoners overheard would be like showing their cards in the middle of a poker game.

  Westerfield was on his way and he was bringing Wade. The logistics of using Wade would be as bad as the issues of using a hotel suite for a police-style interrogation. They needed Wade to help with the interview, but neither of the perpetrators could be allowed to see him. If either one spotted a family member coming to the interview, they would know it was all over. Though GJ didn't believe either of their perps bought into the idea that the FBI was on their side, she still didn't want to just blow it wide open by admitting it.

  They would have to wire Wade into the interviews with an ear piece. Let him listen and coach them on what to say and hope that he could stay calm throughout the process, while he listened to these two describe how they had killed his boyfriend.

  GJ wasn't looking forward to any of this. As much as she was relieved Westerfield would arrive and take over the investigation, the whole thing was getting far too personal. The disregard for certain protocols was making her squirmy, but she kept her mouth shut because she had no rights there. She’d once stolen a skeleton from an FBI branch office and interfered with an investigation. Nope. No right to bitch about protocol. So she stuck to staying quiet and hoped her boss showed up soon to take responsibility for this clusterfuck.

  Her wishes were granted by a ping on her phone.

  Here. Her text message showed. De Gottardi and I have arrived.

  She watched as Walter looked at her own screen, seeing the same message on the group text.

  Sit rep. Westerfield demanded.

  "Situation report," GJ thought how much she didn’t like this one. While Walter watched, she tapped back an answer about how they had the perpetrators in separate rooms, how they were in the middle, and how Wade could not been seen, which meant he couldn’t step foot into the suite. Though they hadn’t heard anything, the doors were mostly closed, and they hadn’t confirmed their perps weren’t moving around.

  That was probably just an unnecessary reminder for Westerfield, who figured out all of these things ahead of time. But GJ, still getting used to being called Agent Arabella Janson, wasn't taking any chances that she might miscommunicate and fuck things up. Not only was it her first case, it was Wade's boyfriend. It was her grandfather. And none of this was good.

  While they waited, she and Walter stalked the suite and checked to be sure their prisoners were still tied up and sitting in the center of their rooms. Unsure what would greet her from the other side of the door, GJ slowly pushed it open. Though the man was a good two feet to the left of where GJ had originally placed him, she only looked down at the spot on the floor where he’d been and then glared at him. At least he knew that she knew he’d been scooting around. She closed the door on him, letting the adrenaline slowly fade.

  Inside of fifteen minutes, Westerfield and Wade were ensconced in a second room directly across the hall. GJ headed over with her phone line open to Walter. Her partner stayed back in the suite, in between the other two, listening for noises and ready to tackle anyone who managed to get out of their zip ties or make any kind of a run for it.

  Walter, unable to speak openly, was texting back answers as they spoke. GJ had no problem interrupting to read them out loud, but watching Westerfield pace in front of her was making her uptight. They all agreed they didn’t like that both prisoners blamed “Harry.”

  “We don't know who Harry is and we don't yet have Harry's last name,” GJ offered. “Mostly Walter's woman just repeated ‘they’re evil’ over and over. My guy only stared at me. The fact of the matter is, we zip tied them and dragged them away while the third one shot at us. So I don’t think playing the sympathy card is going to fly anymore.” Then she thought of something. “Who's out there right now checking on the shooter we left behind? And on Will and the families?”

  She’d said it like it was part of the case, and it was, but it was also the family of the man standing in front of her.

  "I have another agent headed in," Westerfield said, scratching at the back of his head and scowling as though the case was ballooning out of control.

  And it was. GJ didn't like this one bit. Why couldn't she have a neat, clean, money laundering case? But no such luck.

  "Heath and Eames?" GJ asked.

  Westerfield shook his head. "They're still trying to catch up with Marks. But as of yet, no one has figured out where he is."

  GJ's heart constricted, but she kept her face flat. "Any leads?" Though he was her grandfather, in this case, he was just another perpetrator in this case.

  "Nothing yet." Westerfield shrugged with the smallest of empathy smiles. "But Will Little apparently gra
bbed a couple guys and headed up to the ridge thanks to your warning."

  GJ couldn't tell if it was a sarcastic response or not. Nobody wanted the Littles or de Gottardis involved in today’s mess. No one wanted them out shooting guns. To be fair, it was their land and they were the ones getting shot at. So she wasn't sure there was any way to stop them.

  "We considered invoking my grandfather's name." GJ said, bringing the conversation around to the interviews again. "But neither of us ever got around to saying it. It's still on the table."

  Westerfield nodded, scratched his head again, and said, "I've got a plan."

  It was much later that same night when Walter sat across the table from Will Little again. She looked the man in the eyes and wondered what he might be hiding from her now. Westerfield and Wade had taken over back at the hotel with the two prisoners that GJ and Walter had brought in earlier.

  Westerfield had GJ and Walter help implement the start of his “plan,” and the two prisoners had been searched and fingerprinted to confirm what GJ and Walter found on their IDs. GJ and Walter didn’t have a field kit well enough stocked for that kind of tech analysis, so they’d been stuck matching the names and photos on driver’s licenses and doing a passable check to be sure the IDs weren’t fake. They’d purposefully not looked until after the questions were done. They’d been aiming to come off as sympathetic interviewers—a weird, cross-purpose game when you had someone chained to a metal table or, in this case, zip-tied to a hotel chair.

  With Westerfield and Wade on the case, they pulled up information quickly. They found the woman, Jean Ah, was in the system for petty violations and minor infractions. Because she'd been fingerprinted, Westerfield was able to pull her file up with relative ease. The man, John Kramer, was not, but a search of DMV records revealed that they actually had the right name there, too. Nothing between the two of them popped or linked to anything for the third man supposedly named Harry, and neither of them was giving up a last name. Both seemed chagrined that they'd given up their partner’s first name already; now they were doubling down on silence.