Under Cover of Darkness

by James Grippando

  “Who is it?” He sounded as though he were talking into a trash can.

  “It’s Gus Wheatley. I just got off the phone with you.”

  The chain rattled. Three dead bolts clicked. The door opened. Kirby was standing in the doorway. He was perhaps two years out of law school, still sporting the chubby look of a kid who drank too much beer in college. He wore a bad brown suit, the exact shade Gus told the young lawyers in his firm never to wear unless they wanted to look like a walking turd.

  “Come on in.”

  Gus thanked him and entered. The dowdy suite bore no resemblance to a law office. It was two rooms, counting the tiny reception area. There was no receptionist, just an ugly metal desk and an answering machine.

  “Want some coffee?”

  The pot on the credenza looked as if it had been there since Mr. Coffee was in diapers. “No, thanks.”

  Kirby poured himself a cup and led Gus to the main office. Dusty venetian blinds cut the morning sun into slats on the rug. Overloaded banker’s boxes were stacked on the desk and couch. Kirby made room for Gus on the couch and took a seat in the squeaky desk chair.

  “Just moving in?”

  “No,” he said, a little offended.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought—”

  “I know, I know. It doesn’t look like the cherry-paneled offices of Preston and Coolidge.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “You didn’t have to. It was written all over your face.”

  “Really, it’s not like that at all. I have a lot of respect for a young guy who tries to strike out on his own.”

  “Yeah, sure you do. I think you mentioned that somewhere in the rejection letter I got from you in law school. Dear Mr. Toombs. Thank you very much for your interest in our firm. It gives us all great wracking belly laughs to dump on the drones who aren’t top ten percent and law review.”

  Gus turned cautious. The guy was a little off. “It’s a competitive market, Kirby. You can’t take rejection personally.”

  “How else am I supposed to take it?”

  “It’s…business.”

  “Easy for you to say, hot shot. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be fired?”

  Gus felt a twinge inside. He thought of the way the executive committee had so abruptly removed him as managing partner and replaced him with Martha Goldstein. “I can imagine.”

  “No, you can’t. It hurts, man. And I’m not just talking about your ego. The word gets out on the street. You’re damaged goods. I wasn’t a bad lawyer. I just didn’t get along with the more important people over at the P.D.’s office. So they fired me. Now look at me. There’s not a law firm in the city who wants a reject from the public defender’s office.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t land on your feet.”

  He leaned forward, anger in his eyes. “Look around, asshole. I’m practicing law out of the trunk of my car.”

  “Who knows? I may be joining you someday.”

  “Go right ahead. Make jokes.”

  He wasn’t joking, but there was no point in explaining. He changed his tone. “Is this why you wanted to meet in person? You want to chew my ass out because you can’t find a job? Well, let me tell you something. Two weeks ago I would have been the last guy to say this, but there are worse things in life than losing a stupid job. So if we don’t start talking about Shirley Borge in the next thirty seconds, I’m walking right out that door. I don’t have time for this.”

  Toombs leaned back smugly, as if it pleased him to irk a man of Gus’s stature. “You want to talk about Shirley Borge? No problem. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “All I need is a check.”

  “A check?”

  “Yeah. My time is money.”

  “You want me to pay you for information about Shirley Borge?”

  He shook his head, grimacing. “That has such an un-seemly connotation, the way you put it. Let’s just say I want to be compensated for my time and inconvenience.”

  Gus didn’t have time to lecture the kid on ethics. He laid his checkbook on the desk and started writing. “Fine. I’ll pay you for an hour of your time.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Make it five thousand dollars.”

  His hand froze. He stopped writing. “You’re joking.”

  “Do I sound like I’m joking?”

  “This is robbery.”

  “That’s probably what your clients say when they see your bills. Payback sucks, doesn’t it, Mr. Wheatley?”

  Gus hated to give it to him, but he thought of Beth on the other end of the phone, unable to speak, maybe even tied up and gagged. He thought of Shirley slamming the door on him, taking her secrets about Beth back to her cell. This was no time to stand on a five-thousand-dollar principle. He wrote the check and signed it.

  Kirby reached for it. Gus snatched it back.

  “First, you answer my questions.”

  Kirby clearly wanted the check first, but the harsh tone made him back away. “All right. What has Shirley told you so far?”

  “Not much. Most of what I know is from my own research, newspaper accounts of the trial and such. I know she was convicted of conspiracy to commit a murder that was planned but never carried out.”

  “That’s the bare bones of it.”

  “Then fill me in.”

  “Supposedly, Shirley and some friends saw some movie on television where homeless people started getting whacked, so they decided that might be a fun way to liven up their weekend.”

  “They were just going to kill a homeless person at random?”

  “That’s the story.”

  “How did they get caught?”

  “Well, they didn’t just rush out and do it. They started planning it. They got hold of a gun. And then Shirley started bragging at bars and places that they had this plan.”

  “So that’s who turned them in? Someone from the bar?”

  “No, actually it was Shirley’s mother.”

  Gus suddenly recalled the polygraph exam, where Shirley had said she didn’t know if her mother was dead or alive. “Why?”

  “Shirley had always been a problem kid. So when her mom heard she was getting mixed up in some plan to kill a homeless person, that was the last straw. She decided to put a little scare in her daughter. She went to the police. Turns out the police had more in mind that just scaring her. They put a wiretap on the home phones and recorded Shirley talking about her scheme. The conversations were pretty explicit. Not an easy case to defend. They talked about the time of the hit. The weapon they would use. How they’d dispose of the gun. What they would do with the body.”

  “So they arrested Shirley before the murder.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t they arrest her friends?”

  “It was only one friend, actually. At least that’s all they had on the tape. No one knew who he was. Both he and Shirley were very careful never to mention his name on the phone. Whenever he called Shirley, he always called from a pay phone, so there was no way to trace it.”

  “That’s the guy the police wanted Shirley to identify?” asked Gus.

  “Right. We could have gotten Shirley off pretty easy if she had given up the guy’s name. But she wouldn’t. So she’s living at WCCW.”

  “She did mention how she refused to rat out her friend. She seemed proud of that.”

  “I don’t know if it was pride so much as fear that kept her quiet.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Good reasons.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Let’s have the check.”

  Gus reluctantly laid it on the table. Kirby grabbed it, stuffed it in his coat pocket, and said, “You didn’t hear this from me, okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Everything I just told you is the story that came out in trial. But that’s not the real story.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. What’s
real?”

  “Shirley was mixed up with something weird. This wasn’t just some friends who watched television and decided it might be fun to kill a homeless person.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Some kind of gang, maybe.”

  “Shirley told you this?”

  “Not in so many words. This is mostly my take on it.”

  “Why did they want to kill a homeless person?”

  His expression turned very serious. “There was never a homeless person.”

  “But what about the recorded phone calls? Surely they must have mentioned the target was a homeless person.”

  “They did. But it was like a code, you know. The homeless lady. Like Monica Lewinsky referring to Bill Clinton as the big creep.”

  “Then who was the real target?”

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “The woman who turned her in.”

  “Her mother?”

  Kirby nodded. “Her mother.”

  The wheels were turning. Gangs. Serial killings. Targeted mothers. Missing wives. It wasn’t quite as good as Shirley telling him precisely how she knew where Beth was, but it was another promising lead. “This could be very helpful.”

  Kirby rose. “I aim to please. But if you’ll excuse me, I actually have a client to meet at the courthouse in less than five minutes.”

  “I won’t keep you.”

  Kirby flashed a cheesy smile. “If there’s anything else you need,” he said as he tapped the pocket that held the check, “I’m sure we can work something out.”

  He extended his hand. Gus didn’t shake it.

  “I’ll see you around, Kirby.” He let himself out and headed down the stairs. As he hurried from the building, the words scum bag came to mind, but he settled on two others.

  Stop payment.

  He jumped in his car and sped away.

  Forty-six

  Andie caught an overnight bus back to Seattle and was back in the office on Wednesday in time for an impromptu but important team meeting. So important, in fact, that Isaac Underwood cleared his calendar to attend, along with Lundquist, her supervisor; Haveres, her contact agent; and two other members of the Wheatley kidnapping team. At Isaac’s request, Victoria Santos participated by speaker phone from Quantico. Based on the advance briefing Andie had given him by phone, he expected to call on the expertise of a profiler experienced in the ways of New Age cults.

  They met in a small, windowless conference room adjacent to the ASAC’s office. Isaac made short work of the preliminaries and turned the meeting over to Andie. She quickly summarized the experiences at Second Chance clothing store that had led her to the gathering at Eagle Trace Motel, then spent several more minutes describing the impressive performance of Steven Blechman. She offered to play the videotape she had purchased, but it was too long for this meeting. The real groaning started when she mentioned the weekend retreat she wanted to attend. It was from Lundquist.

  “I knew it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Knew what?” asked Isaac.

  “This is the problem with using inexperienced agents for cameos. We send her out on a three-day assignment, and before her three days are even up she’s back asking for an extension. Before we know it, we’re into a full-blown undercover operation with no way to pay for it.”

  Isaac said, “The most this could ever amount to is a Group Two operation with a seventy-thousand-dollar maximum. We don’t even need headquarters approval for that.”

  “We don’t even need anywhere near seventy thousand dollars,” said Andie.

  Isaac hedged, as if he knew how quickly costs mounted. “Let’s put the budget aside for now. I want to know what you plan to accomplish and how you plan to do it. You got the floor, Andie. Sell us.”

  She silently thanked him, then moved the speaker phone closer so Victoria Santos could hear. “None of this makes any sense unless you back up and take a look at a few key facts about Beth Wheatley.

  “First, she has some signs of emotional instability. She falsely accused her husband of spouse abuse, she suffered from bulimia, and she was apparently the most wealthy shoplifter in the history of Nordstrom department stores.

  “Second, she physically resembles and shares some other personal characteristics with all three women who have fallen victim to our serial killer. But unlike the others, she may be alive. We’ve never recovered her body, her daughter got the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ phone call, and Beth’s fingerprints were found on the pay phone in Oregon from which that call was made.

  “Third, Beth had some connection to the Second Chance clothing store in Yakima. One of her dresses was found there.

  “Put that all together, you’re left with an emotionally unstable woman who mysteriously disappeared, who may be alive and held captive by a serial killer, and whose dress is sitting in a thrift shop frequented by members of a New Age cult.”

  “Andie?” The voice came from the speaker box. It was Victoria.

  “Yes?”

  “Has anyone checked to see if any of the serial killer’s victims had friends or family members who disappeared? By disappear I mean they just ran off and never came back, the way people sometimes do when they join a cult.”

  Lundquist answered, “That’s one of the projects our team is undertaking.”

  “Actually,” said Andie, “I already checked. None of the decedents had friends or family members who are unaccounted for.”

  “Good,” said Victoria. “Ruling out the obvious is always a good place to start. Now, tell me more about this supposed cult itself. I understand the philosophy, but what about its size, its makeup, its physical location?”

  “We have some information on that from the Yakima County Sheriff’s office. They own an old farm just outside Yakima. About thirty people live there. We have photos of some of the members because they were arrested in a peaceable civil disobedience where they chained themselves to the pipes when Water and Sewer tried to put an irrigation drainage ditch across the land adjacent to their property. According to the arresting officer’s report, they seemed like a rather peaceable but paranoid bunch, thinking the whole drainage-ditch project was just a government ruse to spy on them.”

  “Any other trouble with the law?”

  “No.”

  “How about the individual members? Any arrest records in the bunch?”

  “Not one of those arrested on the civil disobedience charge had a prior arrest record. They were just ordinary people, much like the people I saw at the meeting last night.”

  Isaac interjected. “So I take it this Shirley Borge over at WCCW has no official connection to the cult?”

  “None that we know of. She wasn’t part of the civil disobedience group, anyway.”

  “Not to ask a stupid question,” Victoria followed up. “But I don’t suppose Beth Wheatley’s picture was among the photos of cult members who were arrested.”

  “No,” said Andie. “And that’s not a stupid question. To address Isaac’s question at the outset, one of the things I want to accomplish with this assignment is to determine whether Beth Wheatley is a victim. Or an accomplice.”

  “Accomplice to what?” asked Lundquist. “Let’s not lose sight of the fact that this whole theory is based on a tip from a convicted felon who wants to get out of jail, collect a quarter of a million dollars in reward money, and move to Tahiti. We don’t have any evidence that Steve Blechman or anyone else from this so-called cult has ever met Beth Wheatley or any other of the victims of this serial killer.”

  “Which is exactly why I need to go on this retreat,” said Andie.

  Lundquist said, “Working in a used-clothing store in Yakima undercover was one thing. Infiltrating a cult is quite another.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Isaac. “That the assignment is foolhardy?”

  “I say that if it’s evidence we’re after, we get a search warrant and go look for it.�
�

  “You know as well as anyone that a search warrant has to be specific. We have to list exactly what we’re looking for in our affidavit.”

  “How about Beth Wheatley? That’s pretty specific. If we really think Beth Wheatley could be at the farm owned by Mr. Blechman’s cult, I say we get a search warrant and turn the place upside down till we find her.”

  Andie was about to speak, but Victoria beat her to it. “Bad idea,” she said loudly over the box. “Any overt action by the FBI could prompt the cult members to turn the place into a poison drinking fest, like Heaven’s Gate or Jonestown, or a deadly inferno, like David Koresh in Waco. Cult members are by definition suicidal, since they have already killed off their past life. From what Andie told us of Blechman’s teachings, this cult is no different. He preaches the need to sever ties with family and friends—everything that keeps you vibrating at a human level. Based on what I’ve heard, Blechman isn’t afraid to die. And he isn’t afraid to take his followers with him—whether they’re willing or unwilling.”

  Lundquist grimaced, seemingly unconvinced. “I’m just trying to strike a reasonable balance here. We have a serial killer who could strike again at any moment. I don’t want to get sidetracked on some expensive and protracted undercover operation that turns out to be totally beside the point.”

  “That’s a valid concern,” said Andie. “But storming the compound isn’t the answer.”

  “I didn’t say storm it,” snapped Lundquist. “I said get a search warrant. Don’t twist my words.”

  “Sorry. But I think the point Victoria was making is that the distinction might be lost on a paranoid group of cult members who went so far as to chain themselves to an irrigation pipe in order to stop the government from spying on them.”

  Lundquist was searching for a reply but was coming up empty. “Smartass,” he muttered beneath his breath.