Family Ties (John Taylor Book 5)

by Travis Starnes

  “Sure, although don’t think I’m doing this as a favor. You’re going to pay for intel just like everyone else.”

  “Of course,” Taylor said while wincing inside.

  He’d hoped Bryant would do it as a favor, one old soldier to another. While Taylor did okay for himself and didn’t spend on much besides living expenses, Bryant normally sold to governments, and Taylor imagined his prices were adjusted for those deep pockets.

  “Actually, I did have one other thing,” Taylor said, almost apologetically. “Considering someone already tried to kill me, I’d feel better if I could actively defend myself next time.”

  “You know the Germans are sticklers for unlicensed firearms, right?”

  “I do, but I still would prefer to have one.”

  Bryant grunted but didn’t say anything. Instead, he walked back into his office and closed the door. He was gone long enough Taylor started to think he’d almost pissed the man off and ended their conversation. He was trying to think of other ways he could find the gunmen’s identity in case he’d soured Bryant on helping him when the office door opened back up and Bryant returned carrying a small case.”

  “Make sure if you’re caught with this, you don’t mention my name.”

  “Sure,” Taylor said, opening the case.

  The case looked fairly nondescript on the outside, like something he’d expect a repair shop to use to return merchandise. Inside the case was a padded lining holding a fairly new HK45 Compact, a box of ammo, several empty magazines, and a belt holster. What caught Taylor’s attention was that on the side where the serial number should have been, there was an empty plate. It wasn’t scored or burnt off, just a blank, unstamped plate. Taylor couldn’t imagine how Bryant had managed that feat, but he knew better than to ask. He also knew that if this gun ended up in the hands of the German police, it would elicit a whole range of questions beyond just why Taylor had an unlicensed gun.

  Bryant promised to reach out to Taylor when he got the information, and Taylor said his goodbyes. Considering the neighborhood and the case he was carrying he caught a cab back to his hotel. Once safely back in his hotel Taylor emptied the contents of the case, loading the magazines and getting the gun safely concealed under his shirt. Thankfully, even though he hadn’t come to Germany armed, he bought most of his clothes these days with the idea of concealing a weapon.

  While it was still fairly early, Taylor was a little at a loss for what to do next. This was the point he hated the most in a case. He’d find a thread that looked like it would lead to whoever he was searching for, but he had to wait for someone else to do their job and tell him what the thread meant.

  The best case was Bryant said the gunmen had nothing to do with the Russians, the tattoo was just a coincidence, and Graf found something on the men that lead them to Whitaker. Worst case the gunmen worked for the Russians, the attack was payback for the events a year ago, and Taylor was back at square one. Either way, he had to wait for Bryant - and potentially Graf, if Bryant couldn’t tell him who the guys were - to find out the men’s identities.

  While that all left Taylor very little to go on, it didn’t take away all his options. One of the few things he’d decided on before passing out the afternoon before was that his best option now would be to backtrace Whitaker’s investigation.

  Despite Graf's denials, Taylor knew that Whitaker was still their main suspect for her aunt's murder, which also meant that the authorities would have target blindness for anything else. Since Taylor knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Whitaker wasn’t the murderer, it stood to reason that the woman's death had something to do with Whitaker’s investigation into her uncle's death. He knew Whitaker enough to know that her aunt's murder would have caused her to double down on that investigation.

  That meant that if he figured out what Whitaker had been looking into regarding her uncle's death, he could also figure out where she was, or at least where she would be if he could get ahead of her. That was no easy task. Whitaker was a damned fine investigator and had a hell of a head start on Taylor. She’d also had whatever the old woman had told her, something Taylor didn’t have.

  Taylor’s first step was to do some research on Whitaker’s Uncle Frederick. He might not be the investigator that Whitaker was, but this was right up his alley. He had a wide array of databases and tools that he’d used over the past several years when finding people.

  His first step was various public records searches such as marriage, criminal, asset, business, and license records followed by public legal records such as court cases and public financial records. While putting all that information together wouldn’t tell him everything about a person, it would give him a fair picture of a person's life.

  The main thing Taylor learned is that Frederick had been fairly involved in his family businesses until five years ago. The Wissler family had made their fortune in factories during the early nineteenth century and really hit its stride in the late nineteenth.

  By the First World War, they were one of the leading industrialist families in Germany and had even managed to buy their way into minor branches of the European royal families. While they had already been fabulously wealthy for several generations, it was Germany's build-up towards the inevitable clash between Germany, Russia, and France that put them into the upper echelons of German society. The family sold most of their factories to Krupp Industries as it consolidated. They’d made the right call again after the war to move their holdings out of Germany before the devaluation of that country’s currency and the rise of the national socialists and returned after reunification.

  The majority of the family’s money was now in the Wissler trust, which invested in businesses in every major western nation. Since Frederick was from a minor branch of the family, he wasn’t part of the trust's board but was instead tasked with overseeing some of the businesses in which the trust bought controlling interest.

  In this, he was like many of the various scions, although from Taylor’s research, a particularly successful one. He managed to work his way up over fifty years of service to become one of the families troubleshooters, brought in to fix or take apart troubled businesses or fix mistakes made by less successful members of the family.

  It seemed to Taylor he was well regarded by the family, which made the sudden reversal of five years ago so surprising. Overnight, Frederick had been removed from every board and charity he’d sat on, some he’d been part of for a decade or more. The family had put out a notice that he was retiring due to ‘medical concerns.’

  His obituary listed the cause of death as complications from middle-stage Alzheimer's disease. While that would explain why he’d need to be removed from positions of responsibility, it didn’t explain why it had happened all at once with apparently little notice given. Taylor didn’t know a lot about Alzheimer's, but he was pretty sure it was a progressive disease that worsened in stages, not something that popped up overnight.

  The other thing that caught Taylor’s attention wasn’t a surprise since Whitaker’s being in Berlin was a direct cause of it. Days after Frederick died, Frieda had filed the first of many lawsuits to try and force a new autopsy and the police to reopen the investigation into Frederick’s death. All had been dismissed fairly early and from some of the filings, it looked like the Wissler family had sided against Frieda.

  The summaries of the cases all read the same that Frieda believed her husband was murdered and the medical examiner either missed the evidence or covered it up. Nowhere in the complaints did she specify who she thought killed him, how they killed him, or why. While Frieda probably told Whitaker about it, nothing in the documentation available to Taylor helped shed any light on what Frieda thought actually happened. Of course, the fact that she was murdered and Whitaker was implicated suggested this was more than just the imagination of one old woman.

  He just needed to find the thread that connected Frieda’s suspicions with her murder.

  Chapter 5

  Tayl
or spent several more hours poring over documents with no luck before shutting his computer down. He’d found some general background information, what he really needed wasn’t going to be found in searches. There were two possibilities he could see at the moment for getting more direct information, but both would require help to get.

  He decided to call back to the States first. It was still morning back home, but the help he needed would have to be started soon before it got too late in Germany.

  “Senator Caldwell’s phone,” Loren answered.

  The volume of noise in the background suggested that the Senator was again at some kind of function. Considering how much the campaign season was heating up, that wasn’t a huge surprise.

  “Loren, its Taylor. Can I speak with the Senator a moment? I’m calling from Germany.”

  “I’m aware of where you are, Mr. Taylor. Hold one moment.”

  The campaign must have been taking its toll on the Senators' aid. Dashel was normally obnoxiously polite, even when it was clear Taylor annoyed him, and rarely came back with snippy responses.

  “John, how’s everything going over there? Have you found Loretta?”

  “Not yet, Senator, but I do need a little help. I need to get in to talk to someone from the Wissler family about Frederick Wissler, Whitaker’s relative, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that. I’m guessing for people at their level I can’t just go round and ring the doorbell. I was hoping you could call them and get me the high society pass for a meeting.”

  “There’s high society, and then there’s ‘old’ money. I don’t know anyone from the family personally, but I’ve dealt with their peers before, and they usually consider anyone from our side of the pond as nouveau riche. Still, I’m not without my charms. I’ll make some calls and see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, Senator. I’m sorry for having to ask for so many favors lately.”

  “Don’t worry about it, John. Just remember this the next time I need you to come speak at an event.”

  Taylor groaned internally. Her tone suggested she was playing with him, although that didn’t mean she wasn’t serious either.

  “You can count on me, Senator.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you back after I work my magic. It will take some time, so I can’t promise it won’t be until very late there.”

  “That’s fine, Senator. Call me as soon as you can.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Taylor dialed the next person he needed to speak with.

  “Mr. Taylor?” Graf said.

  “Yes, Inspector. How’s the arm?”

  “It’s fine. The bullet fragment just passed through some muscle. The doctors said that, in a month or so, I should fully recover.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it. Any news on the files or the shooters?”

  “The files are just a mix of records, old photos, things like that. We will keep going through them, but on first pass, there doesn’t look to be anything pointing towards your friend or the reason for Frau Wissler’s death. It is pretty clear someone has gone through these files, which means there’s a good chance that anything important was already removed.”

  Taylor knew that Graf meant Whitaker when he said ‘someone.’ He also knew that their check through the files was focused on clues that would lead to her. Since they had already written off Frederick’s death as natural causes, Frieda’s suspicions as the delusions of an old woman, and decided her death was at the hands of Whitaker, they had no reason to look beyond that. Which also meant they could have, and probably had, missed something. That didn’t mean that Taylor would be able to figure out what that something was that they missed since any clues into Frederick’s death and Frieda’s request to Whitaker would all be guesses at this point. He still had to try, though.

  “I know you’ve gone through them, but is there any way I can look through the files?”

  “I don’t think so. Those files are evidence in a murder and now an assault on a police officer. We can’t have you messing up the chain of custody.”

  “What if you had an officer stay with me while I looked at them at your station? That wouldn’t break custody, and I might find something that you missed. Whitaker had the address for this stashed away, and the files were still inside, so they had to contain something of use. Besides, if I’m wrong and you’re right and whatever was in the box was already removed, they wouldn’t help you at trial anyway.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a long time. He could hear small noises on the other end, so he knew Graf was still there and thinking it through, so Taylor waited him out.

  “I will let my department know you are coming and that you should be allowed to view the files under supervision only,” Graf said, emphasizing the last point. “None of those files are to leave, do you understand Mr. Taylor?”

  “Perfectly. What about the gunmen. Any word on them?”

  “We got back preliminary identification on them. They are local criminals known to work in that area. One was wanted in a recent armed robbery of tourists on the same street, in fact.”

  “It seems a stretch that we go to that specific address and would be jumped right before we went inside by street criminals. I find it hard to believe it isn’t connected.”

  “I admit the coincidence seems extreme, which is why I said our preliminary identification. We will continue looking into the men's’ background, but they are known to us. These men were common street criminals. They have no history of working as muscle for anything organized and have no association with anything that would suggest that. Everything in their history supports the conclusion that it was an unrelated attempted robbery, as farfetched as that seems. Still, I have men working through their known associates to track down their third friend as well as looking for a connection between them and this case.”

  “So no foreign connection, then?” Taylor asked.

  “No, like I said, common street criminals with no history of any kind of foreign contacts. Why?”

  “No reason, I’m just having trouble believing this is unrelated.”

  “I understand your misgivings, and as I said, I share them. We will continue to look into it.”

  Taylor had heard the tone Graf used in the past enough to know that he wasn’t planning on looking into it seriously. He’d go through the motions and maybe assign it to someone else, but despite his protestation, Taylor knew Graf was done with that angle.

  Taylor just couldn’t buy it. They might be just randomly hired armed muscle without any prior history, but there was no way that wasn’t planned. While Taylor knew coincidences happened, there were coincidences, and then there was this kind of thing. What he couldn’t do, at least not yet, was mention his suspicion of their being tied to the Russians. Graf was still keeping Taylor at arm's length, and if this was a specific retaliation by the Russians on Taylor, it was guaranteed to make Graf freeze Taylor out.

  “Ok. Well, I guess let me know if anything on that changes. I also had an unrelated request.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m tracking back through Whitaker’s actions before Wissler died. She made a stop at the medical examiner’s office to ask about Mr. Wissler’s death. I wanted to go and talk to the Medical Examiner and ask questions about that visit.”

  “We’ve already interviewed the medical examiner.”

  “I understand that, but I want to get a feeling for where her head was at and where she might be going. I know Whitaker, and I know how she conducts investigations. I might hear something in his answers that you missed. At this moment, it’s all we have to go on to find her unless you guys stumble across her by chance. You don’t have a lot of leads at the moment.”

  There was a long pause again while Graf considered. Taylor had played this card a lot so far, and, while it did lead them to the storage locker, it hadn’t gotten them any closer to Whitaker. Taylor had to be careful how many times he tried this tactic because eventually, Graf would stop buying into it.
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br />   “Fine. I will make a call for you to go be allowed in to talk to them. They will be closing shortly, so you will need to wait until the morning.”

  “That’s fine. I can still go and see the files today, right?”

  “Yes. I will call the precinct now and get you access.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call you if I find anything.”

  Graf hung up, and Taylor left the hotel and went to catch a cab to Graf’s precinct, where an officer was waiting to lead him into an interrogation room where they had the boxes of files waiting for him. An officer sat in the room the entire time, half watching Taylor as he read through one document after another, presumably to keep Taylor from taking any of the documents or messing up some part of the evidence.

  It turns out they didn’t need to worry. Taylor read for hours, long enough that the officer watching over him changed twice before he finished. He read through or at least skimmed, every document in the boxes, and nothing stood out to him. It was all financial documents from the Wissler family going back decades. There was a chance something in these boxes did shed light on Fredericks's death, but Taylor couldn’t see it. This was just the paperwork that builds over a person’s lifetime, important enough to keep but not important enough to ever look at a second time.