by G. K. Parks
“Mark doesn’t believe in those.”
“And I don’t believe in ghosts, but that doesn’t mean I’m not haunted.” Heathcliff took another sip of coffee. “Steele escaped a little over two weeks ago. He didn’t catfish Lawson until Saturday. He shot Jablonsky Sunday and killed Cooper. If that was his plan all along, why didn’t he bust out of prison, grab a gun, and go take care of business? Why the delay?”
“He had to gather intel. He had to figure out where his targets would be most vulnerable.” I squinted at the timeline, following the various paths and photos.
“The first time someone spray painted my front door was seventeen days ago.”
“The day Steele got out of prison. You think he did it?”
“I don’t know, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought it was a punk kid. I’m not one to sound the alarm. We have enough on our plates. And that was before we knew Steele was on the loose.” He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, slamming the mug down harder than he meant to. “I washed it off. The next day, he broke a window. I found a baseball inside my apartment. Again, I thought it might be the kids in the neighborhood. I filed a report and had the window fixed. A few days after that, all four of my tires were slashed.”
“Derek…”
“I didn’t think it was that serious. No direct threats. I had no idea it could be him. After the stunt with my tires, I set up a few pinhole cameras in the halls, had one facing the backyard, and found somewhere else to park my car. The problem stopped until Sunday.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “I could be reading too much into this. It could be the neighborhood kids. Steele has us all so twisted around I might be jumping to conclusions here.”
“You think he started harassing you the moment he got out of prison.”
“Timeline fits, and he didn’t have to do any research. He already knew where I lived. I might have just gotten lucky to have been at work when he came sniffing around. My schedule’s been unpredictable these last few weeks.”
“Have you told Moretti about this?”
He nodded, a flicker of his personality resurfacing. “Didn’t you see the teeth marks on my ass?”
“I wasn’t looking at your ass. I’ll have to make more of an effort in the future.”
“Ouch.” He snickered. “Techs are scouting the area, but they haven’t found anything. There aren’t any security cams nearby. It’s a safe neighborhood, usually. I know they won’t find anything.”
“What about a canvass?”
“I asked around after each incident. I’m not a total moron. Plenty of people want a piece of me, so when shit happens, I take precautions.”
I bit my tongue before saying, Like sleeping in the conference room.
“I asked my neighbors if they’d seen anyone, but they hadn’t. They would have told me if someone had been lurking outside my door or messing with my car. He did it when no one was around or paying attention. Late at night or early in the morning. I’ve been working a lot of nights lately and pulled a few doubles. He had plenty of opportunities to mess with my stuff, just not many chances to mess with me,” Heathcliff said.
“He might have done the same to Mark.” I dug my phone out of my bag and called Martin. “Hey, is Mark awake? I need you to ask him something.”
“He’s barely coherent, Alex. I’m not sure how helpful he’ll be.”
“That’s okay. Just ask if anyone vandalized his house or if anything weird occurred in the last two weeks prior to the shooting.”
“Hang on.”
Heathcliff gawked at me, and I realized I hadn’t told anyone the good news. “Mark woke up last night for a few minutes.” Just saying those words made my voice crack.
Derek smiled. “That’s a relief.” He glanced at the closed conference room door. “When you get a chance, you better tell Moretti. He’ll want to hear the good news.”
“I will.”
“Alex, are you still there?” Martin asked, and I picked up the phone and took it off speaker.
“I’m here.”
“Mark said the screen on his back window had been cut.”
“Did he say anything else? Do you know when that happened?”
“No.”
“How is he doing today?”
“It’s early. The doctors said he didn’t sleep well. They want to incrementally increase his pain medication until they find a level that’s tolerable without knocking him flat. I told them to go ahead.”
“Should he be in that much pain?”
“He’s missing three inches of intestine and has a hole in his chest.”
“You’re right. I’m not awake enough to think straight.”
“Are you okay?” Martin asked.
“Just busy. New developments.”
“Anything I need to know?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay,” Martin said, “I’m heading to the office now. The medical staff said they’d send me updates every hour, and if something changes in between, they’ll call me.” He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe I should stay.”
“Go to work. You need a break.” I turned away from Heathcliff and whispered, “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
When I turned back around, Heathcliff was digging through a box. “Someone cut the screen on Jablonsky’s window.” He flipped to the photos taken of the townhouse. “The one in the photo isn’t torn.”
“Jablonsky might have replaced it or fixed it.” I closed my eyes, recalling the scene. “Mark keeps his windows locked. They don’t open.”
“But no one would know that unless they tried to force one open from the outside, and you can’t do that with the screen in the way.”
“Steele wanted to find a quiet way inside. He probably figured the window would work and would be undetectable. And when that didn’t pan out, he must have found Mark’s spare key.”
“Has anything strange happened to you?” Heathcliff asked. “Any attempted break-ins?”
I thought about it, but nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. “Steele can’t find me. The last time he did, he got my address off your phone. But my apartment building burned down. He has no idea where I am.”
“But he remembered your phone number.”
“That hasn’t changed.” I looked down at the cloned burner. “That’s why he came to the hospital and left me a phone. He realized he had no way of getting to me. He couldn’t get my details off Mark’s phone. Cooper didn’t possess that information. Steele had no choice but to go to the hospital and deliver his message. Now he thinks he can track me, except as far as he knows, I haven’t left the office since last night.”
“How do you think he got Cooper’s information,” Heathcliff asked, “let alone Jablonsky’s?”
“Those are very good questions.” Unfortunately, I didn’t have any answers.
Twenty-eight
“What’s with the Men’s Warehouse convention?” Lucca asked as he entered the conference room. “For a minute, I thought I was still in the federal building.”
“They’ve been at it all day,” Moretti grumbled. “First, we had the Marshals, who called the DEA, who probably called Homeland or the ATF, or who the fuck knows at this point.” Moretti glared into the bullpen. “They’re helping. Can’t you tell?”
“Sure,” Lucca said, afraid to disagree.
“If you don’t have anything useful to add or you plan to mouth off like this one has a habit of doing,” Moretti jerked his thumb at me, “then you can sit out there with the rest of them with your thumb up your ass.”
Lucca gave me a confused look, and I shrugged. Moretti hadn’t slept, which clearly made him cranky. Lucca just happened to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. “Did you get Lawson’s statement?”
Heathcliff held it up. “Nothing new. Parker and Cross Security updated us last night. We already questioned Sarah, checked with the dating sit
e, and pinged Steele’s phone a few dozen times. It’s still turned off.”
“Actually,” Lucca pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket, followed by a chain of custody form, “I can help you out with that one. I just need a signature on this.”
“Is that Steele’s phone?” I picked up the bag containing the smashed cell phone.
“Yep.” Lucca took the form back from Moretti and tucked it in his pocket. “Steele’s prints are on it. The number matches. We plugged it in, but there’s nothing interesting on it. No saved contacts. No personal notes or dastardly plans. We have his call log and text messages, but I’m sure you’ve already gotten all of that from the phone company.”
Moretti held out his hand for the bag. “Where did you find it?”
“Tossed next to a dumpster a few yards from where Steele parked. Have you finished analyzing the car?” Lucca asked.
“We found another Stop N’ Shop bag with Steele’s prints. Nothing else. Nothing on the bag either. No drugs. No gunpowder. Nothing to indicate where he is or what he’s planning,” Heathcliff said.
Moretti rubbed his eyes. “All right. I’ll be in my office if you need me.” His features softened, and he gave me a nod, his eyes twinkling. “Thanks for updating me. Jablonsky will be back in fighting shape soon enough. Let’s try to nail this asshole before then, okay?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
Moretti clapped me on the back on his way out of the room. And then I told Lucca the same thing I had just finished telling Moretti. Despite the good news, no one felt much like celebrating, not while Steele remained at large. We continued to theorize as to Steele’s whereabouts, but we had no leads.
“Considering Steele had been a big deal in the gang, he’s a loner. No one knows where he goes or what he does. He just disappears.” Heathcliff followed a yellow string across the wall. “It goes back to his upbringing. As a kid, he learned to make himself scarce with the men his mother paraded in an out of their house. His few brief stints in foster care didn’t stick. He’d leave and wouldn’t surface again for days.”
“Any idea where he’d go?” Lucca asked.
“No one knows. There’s no mention of it anywhere.” Heathcliff turned to face me. “Did he happen to share that information with you?”
I thought back, but Steele had only given me limited facts about his childhood, mostly to illustrate he was a badass who could take care of business. “Unfortunately not.”
“Back to square one,” Heathcliff mumbled.
“We can’t keep doing this.” I hoisted myself onto the conference table, the colored strings and papers blurring together. I bumped my heel against the table leg. “We’re trying to move in too many directions, but we just keep going round and round in a circle.”
“That’s because everything we look at is a dead end. The evidence leads nowhere,” Heathcliff said.
“So let’s figure something else out.”
“What do you want to do?” Lucca asked. “I’m all ears.”
Heathcliff crossed his arms over his chest. “This ought to be good.”
“We don’t know where Steele is, but we know he’s far from finished. He has at least three more targets on his list. Four, if you count me. We have eyes on his preferred convenience store, and those who might be involved are being held for questioning. That means they can’t contact Steele. If he returns to the store, we’ll grab him, but I don’t think he’s planning on repeating previous behaviors.”
“He keeps changing things up,” Lucca said. “Like with the phone calls.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“We’re monitoring the other businesses he contacted. We have plainclothes cops positioned near known KXD locations, places Steele used to hang out, and the list of businesses you gave us last night. Even if he changes it up, these are familiar places. Safe places. He might show up at one of them, especially if he runs out of places to go,” Heathcliff reasoned.
“He hasn’t so far,” Lucca said.
I stared, unseeing, at the wall. “We know how he got your address, Derek. We still have no idea how he got Jablonsky’s or Cooper’s.”
“Or if he has yours yet,” Heathcliff said.
“What are you talking about?” Lucca asked, so I filled him in on our earlier revelation.
“Cooper’s last known address is included in his prison record. The prison guards and warden would have had access to it.” Lucca narrowed his eyes. “The Marshals took over that part of the investigation. Just give me a minute.”
The boy scout went out the door, grabbing it at the last minute for O’Connell whose arms were full. Heathcliff and I cleared off a section of the table, and Nick put the boxes down.
“Special delivery for Alex Parker,” O’Connell said, and I peered inside.
“What’s this?” I spotted the Cross Security logo at the top of a few forms.
“Didn’t you ask your boss to send this over?” O’Connell removed several files and leafed through the tabs. “This is everything we’d ever want to know about Tom Collins and his wife.” He grabbed another stack. “This appears to be stills taken of Steele inside the hospital. There’s enough here to make a flipbook.”
I reached into the next box. “Business profiles on the Stop N’ Shop locations, backgrounds on the employees you have in custody, and hard copies of surveillance photos with persons of interest and times circled.”
“And there’s more,” O’Connell said in a game show announcer voice. “We also have this stunning assortment of CCTV footage tracking Steele from the nightclub to his getaway vehicle.”
“Cross has been busy.” My boss surprised me. He insisted he didn’t want to help the police, but this would have taken all night. I wondered how much of this had to do with Martin.
I sifted through the files. Lucca had a feeling Steele had a corrections officer or two in his pocket, and based on what we knew, the theory tracked. Surely, Cross must have found something.
“Did you find anything hinky with any of the prison guards?” I asked.
“Nothing in their financials. Initial background checks didn’t turn up anything substantial. No one’s spotless if you dig deep enough, but no one has any immediate or close ties to the KXDs or any gang for that matter,” O’Connell said.
“Nothing on the alleged cartel connection either,” Heathcliff said.
Finding the proper folder, I flipped it open. “What about the administration and medical staff?”
“We didn’t get that far,” O’Connell said. “Too many distractions. Wasn’t Kendall looking into it?”
“Lucca said they were.” I separated the blinds and peered into the bullpen. Things had calmed down since I first arrived. Only a few windbreakers and suits remained on the other side. Those had been my people. Now they felt like an invading army.
I scanned the room. On my second pass, I spotted Lucca just outside the break room with Davis and the Marshal leading the task force. My old partner was on to something.
“It looks like Cross might have had the same idea,” O’Connell said. He dissected the file I abandoned. “Here’s the financial history and background information for the warden, the medical staff, and the professionals who rotate in and out. Shrinks, clergy, teachers.”
“Anything good in there?” Heathcliff asked.
“Interesting, but nothing solid enough to cinch this. We’ll have to conduct follow-ups.”
I read over O’Connell’s shoulder. Two of the doctors in the prison rotation recently had large amounts of money wired into their accounts. The routing numbers traced back to accounts held by pharmaceutical and medical supply companies. Another transfer came from a foreign numbered account. Cross didn’t include any additional information, but he highlighted it. This was where my boss had decided to draw the line.
“What do you think, Parker?” O’Connell asked.
“I think these might be kickbacks.” I scanned the background checks. “Dr. Via might have something going sou
th of the border, but the only reason I think that is because everyone has pounded the cartel theory into my head since the moment Mark got shot.”
“It’s a red herring. Ignore it,” Heathcliff said.
O’Connell read the profiles again. “We’re all jumping to insane conclusions. When I first read this, I thought the doctors might be using the prisoners as patients in human trials, which is all kinds of illegal.”
“That could also be,” Heathcliff said rather unhelpfully, “but it’s best to ignore that too.”
“God, we’re losing it.” I rubbed my eyes and turned to the next page.
Cross’s handwriting covered the margins. He even tabbed specific sections. Warden Gary Schuster had taken precautions to hide his tracks but not enough. Schuster’s bank account didn’t fluctuate, even though he just acquired a brand new luxury SUV and a cruiser yacht. Both were paid in cash and purchased in the last month.
Lucca returned to the conference room. “I know how Steele and Vega switched places.”
“Warden Schuster.” I held up the page. “Steele paid him to look the other way when he and Vega made the switch.”
Lucca deflated, annoyed that I had stolen his thunder.
“Are we bringing him in?” O’Connell asked.
“Agents are preparing to scoop him up,” Lucca said. “Our search of the prison didn’t yield any results.”
“But it’s Schuster’s house. He could have altered the logs, deleted entries, destroyed evidence.” I finished reading the page, feeling the familiar kink develop in my neck. “I told you we shouldn’t have wasted our time talking to him.”
Lucca glared at me. “He wasn’t prepared when we showed up. That preliminary search could have been helpful.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Shit.” Heathcliff dropped one of the files to the table and spread out several photographs. “This is where Steele abandoned the car.” Heathcliff pointed to the next photo. “He’s walking away. He changed outfits again.”
