by Diane Capri
“Was she treated at a veterans hospital?”
“Initially, she was. But after she moved in with her sister, she transitioned to private care.”
“Were her injuries severe?” Otto asked.
He nodded. “Severe and disfiguring. She’d acquired an intractable infection, too. She needed quite a bit of medical attention. She said she had a long way to go, but she said Reacher was responsible for saving her life.”
“I see,” Gaspar said as if the news troubled him somehow. “Did she mean that literally?”
Simpson’s gaze met Gaspar’s, and he nodded once. “Yes.”
He turned to Otto. “You’ve read Reacher’s file. His career with us was…unusual. He was a star. But he also cut corners, brutally. He got away with it too many times. His methods became his way of life. Ingrained now. Habit. Instinct, really. You must already know you can’t expect him to follow the rules.”
“We do,” Otto replied.
“You asked me for my impressions and evaluations of Reacher. Frankly, his Army file is unorthodox and potentially threatening.” He paused as if he might not say more. Until he added, “My brief interactions with him gave me no reason to question the file’s contents.”
Gaspar nodded without comment.
“How so?” Otto asked.
“Reacher left the Army of his own volition. But he was only half a step ahead of a court-martial. I’d say his adjustment to a normal civilian life is unlikely, no matter how long he’s been out there.” Simpson looked at Gaspar and back to Otto a moment longer before he gave a curt nod.
“Which is why you’re trying to reach him, right?” Otto asked. “To tell him Sanderson needs his help again?”
His eyes widened, but he said nothing. He turned to leave.
Otto called him back with another question, “We know you’ve been in touch with Sanderson the past few weeks, General. Lots of long chats on the phone. What’s going on? What were you talking about?”
“Medical care, mostly. The kind of care she needed was expensive. She wanted advice about that,” he said.
“What kind of advice?”
“She wanted private care. She wanted the Army to pay for it. I tried to help, but…” he shrugged. “She was free of her infection, but she needed expert, expensive plastic surgery. We’re not set up to handle injuries like hers. Last time she called, she thanked me and said she’d find a place she could afford.”
Gaspar said, “Did she mention her sister?”
“Only that her sister’s husband was a philandering asshole. Her words,” Simpson said.
Gaspar asked, “Sounds like Sanderson wasn’t too pleased with her sister’s choice.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Simpson nodded.
“I’ve met the husband. He’s unstable. Maybe violent,” Otto said. “We need to find her. She’s in trouble. And we’re not the only ones who are looking.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Agent Otto.” Simpson’s last words were a warning. “Reacher won’t care that you’re FBI. He went to a lot of trouble to find Sanderson and save her life once. He’ll be doubly protective of her this time, should he learn that anyone is trying to harm her again.”
“Rex Mackenzie is the one who should be careful,” Gaspar replied. “Neither Sanderson nor her sister have anything to fear from us. We’re the good guys.”
Simpson left, but his warning lingered in the cool air until Otto noticed that she was shivering. “Let’s go. It’s freezing in here.”
CHAPTER 33
Saturday, February 12
11:15 a.m.
San Antonio, Texas
The sunshine on her shoulders felt heavenly, even if the temperature was still a little cool at only sixty-nine degrees. The forecast called for low seventies later in the day. Given the sub-zero February she’d be returning to in Detroit, Otto planned to bask in the Texas warmth as long as she could.
Gaspar strolled along beside her until they reached the rental sedan and ducked inside. He took his position in the driver’s seat.
Gaspar was number two on this assignment. Number two was always the driver, he’d insisted from the very first day they’d worked together. Arguing with him was useless; she’d given up long ago. He started the engine.
She settled into the passenger seat and retrieved an alligator clamp from her pocket. She fastened the lap belt, pulled the shoulder harness loose, and positioned the clamp at the retractor to give herself some wiggle room.
From behind his aviator sunglasses, Gaspar grinned and asked, “Where to now Dragon Boss Lady?”
“Let’s find out.” She reached for the Boss’s phone and made the call.
He picked up, which was a bit surprising. Since he hadn’t made the first move, she’d figured he was involved in other matters. She put the speaker phone on so Gaspar could hear the conversation, and she wouldn’t need to repeat it later.
“Have you found Mackenzie and Bramall yet?” she asked before he could ask anything.
“You’d have been the first to know if I had,” he replied. “They landed in Las Vegas. They checked into the Bellagio, just like Mackenzie said on the plane. The two women are not at that hotel, and Vegas is a big place. So they’re trying to figure out what to do next.”
“Do you have any video or anything else that’s helpful?”
“Still checking,” he said. “I take it you haven’t heard from Noble?”
“Should I have?”
“He’s making some progress. Still no ID on the dead woman. But he’s made the connection to the U Store Stuff facility in St. Louis. He’s headed there.”
“What does he expect to find?”
“He’s pieced together a few things about Mackenzie.”
Gaspar said, “Like what?”
“He suspects Mackenzie has been laundering money for Bavolsky’s crime syndicate for a number of years. He’s probably right about that.” He paused. “Chicago PD speculation is that Mackenzie was forced to participate early on, got in deeper, and now wants to get out. Bavolsky is not keen on the idea.”
“So the operating theory is that Bavolsky killed Mackenzie’s wife just for fun?” Otto asked.
“It’s hard to say with specificity before they identify the woman’s body. But they think Mackenzie has something on Bavolsky and is using it for leverage. Wants Bavolsky to let him go, free and clear. Which, of course, is not how gangs work. The murder in Mackenzie’s mansion might be a reply to Mackenzie’s efforts to shake himself loose.”
“Not a warning. He’s sending a message,” Gaspar said, swiping a hand through his hair. He fidgeted in the driver’s seat, trying to get comfortable. “Bavolsky is saying not only no, but hell no. Mackenzie serves at Bavolsky’s pleasure, or he dies.”
The Boss replied, “That’s what Chicago PD thinks. Noble says it makes sense and fits with all the facts.”
Otto glanced at Gaspar. “Which means you didn’t tell Noble about those two dead Bavolsky soldiers?”
“He’ll figure it out soon enough. As long as he’s occupied with all of that, we don’t have to worry about him interfering with your mission,” the Boss said.
“Did you find the two dead thugs?” Gaspar asked.
A long pause followed.
“Not exactly,” he said.
Otto closed her eyes and shook her head. Finlay wasn’t the only one who always had a hidden agenda. The Boss was ten times worse, and he was supposed to be on her team. This work was never straightforward or obvious.
Gaspar picked up the thread. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning we know where the bodies are, but we don’t have public confirmation. Noble will probably get that in a few hours if he stays on task,” the Boss explained. “If he doesn’t get distracted.”
Gaspar said, “Do we have recorded or transcribed contents of General Simpson’s conversations with Rose Sanderson?”
The Boss was quiet for a long time.
“So what do we do now?” Otto a
sked, assuming he didn’t have the audio. Or if he did have it, he wasn’t sharing right now.
“You could ask Finlay,” he snapped. “Otherwise, you’re smart. Surprise me.”
Gaspar punched the button to disconnect. “He took that well, didn’t he?”
Otto shrugged. The tension between Finlay and the Boss had become a way of life. She was sick of dealing with it. Let them figure it out.
Gaspar grinned. “Where to, Suzy Wong?”
She considered the question. “Do you like baseball, Cheech?”
“Yeah, I guess. Sure,” Gaspar replied, both eyebrows arched.
“My dad is a big Tigers fan. Baseball is almost a religion in my family. All my brothers played. Anyway, Dad also loves to read. One of his favorite books is a memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin about growing up in New York with her family and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dad read her book to us when we were kids.” She paused and smiled at the quizzical expression on Gaspar’s face. “Anyway, Dad always says you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”
“Which means….” Gaspar said.
“Scorecards were sold at the stadiums back in the day. Probably before baseball uniforms had names and numbers. Definitely before public address systems and broadcasting. They’re an elegant way to keep track of the players and the game. The art of scorekeeping, Doris Kearns Goodwin called it.”
Gaspar shook his head. “Sorry, but you’ve lost me, Sunshine.”
“That’s precisely the point. We’re lost. We need a scorecard. We’ve got too many players, and we don’t know where they are on the field. We’ve got big gaps in our intel, too.” She paused and found her personal phone. “First thing we need is a place to work. Let’s find a hotel.”
San Antonio had many to choose from, but she located a hotel on the Riverwalk downtown. She reserved a small suite with a conference room and requested a whiteboard with markers and an urn full of coffee. She also requested an atlas. The car’s GPS provided directions, the valet parked the sedan, and they were ready to work within the hour.
“Where do you plan to start?” Gaspar had stretched out on one of the chairs with an unobstructed view of her whiteboard.
“Everything seemed to be running smoothly for Sanderson. Until it wasn’t. The big question is what triggered all this,” She wrote the word triggers at the top of the whiteboard followed by five question marks.
“Why did she disappear, you mean?” Gaspar asked.
“Noble said we have five missing persons. Let’s start with them.” She listed the names on the whiteboard as she spoke. “Rex Mackenzie, Jane Mackenzie, Rose Sanderson, Terry Bramall, and Jack Reacher.”
“We’ve added more names since then, though,” Gaspar said. “The real estate agent. What’s her name?”
“Brooke Malone,” Otto said, writing the name on the board. “We also have two unidentified men who arrived at the Mackenzie mansion and again at Mackenzie’s dry cleaner business.”
“Noble said neither one was Bramall nor Mackenzie. They might have been Jimmy Two and Little Hugh, but we don’t know. So let’s call them X and Y for now,” Gaspar suggested. Otto wrote the names on the board. “For completeness, let’s add Big Mike Bavolsky, too. And General Simpson.”
“Why?”
“He’s been talking to Sanderson about something. He’s put a message out to Reacher. He knows more than what he told us,” she replied.
Gaspar nodded.
“We need to assume that X and Y could be neither Jimmy Two nor Little Hugh, though. So let’s list all four,” Otto said, writing it all on the board. “We can always combine them later if they turn out to be the same people.”
She stood back and looked at the list. “We have at least eleven players and maybe twelve. Enough to field a baseball team and some spares.”
She drew a diagonal line through Jimmy Two and Little Hugh. “We know both of these guys are dead.”
Gaspar said, “One of the three women is dead, too.”
“Right. But until we know which one, we can’t do much with that.” She looked at the list again and shook her head. “Okay, let’s add locations.”
CHAPTER 34
Saturday, February 12
1:05 p.m.
San Antonio, Texas
Gaspar said, “Easy to cross off the two thugs. Since they’re dead, we probably don’t care where they are exactly.”
“He didn’t say so, but I suspect the Boss knows Jimmy Two and Little Hugh are cooling fast in one of those storage units in St. Louis,” Otto said, making a note to that effect on the board. She took a swig of water and stood back to look at the board.
“Anyone else we can nail down?” Gaspar asked.
Otto thought about it and finally shook her head. She made notes on the board next to the names as she said, “Mackenzie and Bramall are in Las Vegas. At least one of the three women is still in the morgue in Chicago. Bavolsky could still be in Chicago, too.”
“That doesn’t seem like a safe assumption to me,” Gaspar replied.
Otto put a question mark after Bavolsky’s location. She stood back again to look at the list and cocked her head. “Is that it?”
“For now,” Gaspar agreed.
She tapped her knuckle on her lips, staring at the whiteboard. After a few moments, she turned to him. “Let’s look at that flash drive now. I’ve got some ideas.”
While Gaspar opened the laptop and set up the secure hot spot, she refilled her coffee and paced the room to think. When he’d located the data, she took a seat next to him to look at the screen.
Otto selected a couple of dates at random and compared the spreadsheets to the bank records. She chose another set and then a third.
“We need a good forensic analysis of these documents,” Gaspar said.
“It looks like three things are happening.” She leaned back.
“Break it down for me.”
She moved to the whiteboard. She wrote the number one followed by collections. “One set of spreadsheets is a record of collections from many customers. The amounts vary. The dates are semi-regular, I guess.”
“Collection of what?”
“Given the amounts, the frequency, and who’s involved? I’d say these are records of either gambling debts or protection payments, most likely,” she replied.
“Drug sales, maybe?”
She shook her head. “I doubt it’s drug sales because that would create a paper trail even a congested bloodhound could follow.”
Gaspar grinned.
She wrote the number two on the whiteboard followed by laundered. “The collections are transformed by the magic of money laundering. The second set of spreadsheets are a duplicate of the first, same dates, same names. But the amounts are larger.”
“How much larger?” he asked.
“Again, it varies, but by a factor of about ten, I would say. Sometimes more. Rarely less.”
He nodded. “What about the bank records?”
“Like you said, lots of zeros. There’s several million dollars here in offshore accounts.” She wrote the number three on the whiteboard followed by the word theft. “Putting it all together, my best guess is these are records of illegal activity, money laundering, and a hefty slice of skimming off the top of the laundered cash.”
“The owners of Polish Brothers Limited would kill to protect that kind of revenue,” Gaspar said.
“You bet. In a cold Chicago second.” She refilled her coffee.
Gaspar asked, “How does any of this help us?”
“I’m not sure yet. But it feels like we’re getting somewhere.”
He arched his eyebrows and said nothing.
“Pull up the sitemap for U Store Stuff’s facility. That place is huge. But Bramall must have had a plan for those drugs when he arrived,” she said.
“Bramall might have high-tailed it out of there right after you did. Could be someone else cleaned up.” Gaspar clicked a few keys and pulled up a satellite view.
She leaned
over his shoulder to view the screen. The U Store Stuff lot had to be at least a couple of acres. She scanned the brick buildings.
She pointed to the building housing Unit D-6. “Jimmy Two and Little Hugh’s bodies were right here. Where are they now? We need better video. He circumvented the CCTV, but what about the satellites?”
“Good question.”
“Yes, it is.” She nodded. “That place is near a sizeable airport. Since nine-eleven, every commercial airport in the country is watched constantly. There should be satellite coverage all over the place.”
“If a video like that existed, don’t you think the Boss and your Boy Detective would have found it already?” He clicked a few keys. “Here’s what we’ve got. Nothing. According to this, you were never even there. Nor were Bramall or the two dead goons. In fact, Unit D-6 looks quiet and undisturbed for the entire night and straight into the morning.”
She folded her arms and leaned back on one foot. “Except we have my body cam and my phone video, so we know what really happened. And when I went back there later in the day, Unit D-6 was empty and under repairs.”
“Right.”
Slowly, she pondered, “When I left, Bramall was there, and two dead guys were on the floor. The drugs and the money were still there. So where is all that stuff now?”
Gaspar stretched his legs out in front of him and folded his hands over his stomach. “Bramall wasn’t murdered or kidnapped, because you were with him on that jet a few hours later.”
“The Boss says Bramall had an accomplice. He thinks the accomplice was Reacher.” She paused. “Because they worked together before. On Noble’s case.”
“He told me.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“Anything’s possible,” Gaspar replied. “But is it likely? I’d say no.”
“Why?”
Gaspar shrugged. “Doesn’t feel right to me.”
She grinned. “You hate it when I say that.”
