by Dale Mayer
“What’s upset you so badly?”
She shot him a look. “I should have remembered. When I realized James was involved with the phone calls, even then I should have remembered.”
“Why? What does one have to do with the other?”
“He knew I was the one who had reported him.”
“That could explain the harassing phone calls. But why a year later?”
Deli shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“And,” Jackson continued, “if nothing came of your report, and he was off the hook, why bring more attention to himself?”
“But I don’t know for sure that nothing came of it. That’s the thing. Once you hand over information to the MPs or your superior, you know what it’s like. It moves up the chain of command, and you never get any more details. It’s like sending an email into cyberspace with the wrong address. It’s gone, leaves your hands, and you have no idea where it ends up.”
“True enough,” he said. “The thing is, it does connect that garage where the rig was with James and your phone calls. So now I think this is all connected. And maybe it does make sense that he ran off when we arrived. Maybe he figured out he’d been made.”
“Ran off where?”
“To whoever he’s working with,” Jackson said. “Because that’s what makes the most sense.”
“That’s a very disturbing thought,” she muttered.
They hopped out of the Jeep, waited for Kanen to pull up in his black truck, and the three of them walked in to the navy garage. Deli stopped to survey the vehicles. And then pointed. “It’s that one.”
“How do you know it’s the same one?” Jackson asked.
She just shot him a look.
He grinned and took her word for it. He wandered over to take a closer look, and, sure enough, he could see the bullet hole in the radiator.
Kanen looked at him. Jackson nodded. Kanen’s grin was wide and bright. As he walked past, he said, “Like I said, a keeper.”
Kanen was lucky he was out of reach because Jackson was ready to cuff him one across the head.
Just then a call came out from behind them. “Who are you, and why are you here?” It was a booming voice.
Deli grinned. “Hey, Carney. It’s me.”
Carney looked down at her, and a big wide grin split his face. And what looked like a sumo wrestler became a teddy bear in front of them. “Hey, Deli. What are you up to?”
“I came to see you,” she admitted. “And I hate that you’ll think I only want to see you when I need something, but I do need something.”
Instead of being offended, he chuckled, his great big belly rolling up and down in a wavelike motion. “That’s good,” he said, “because at least then you do come see me. Now what can I help you with?”
“I need to check when this vehicle was brought in,” she said. “It was still fully loaded. My understanding is everything was removed, and everything on the manifest was checked off. Do you have this particular corner on video?”
Carney glanced at the vehicle, checked where cameras were and nodded. “I think so, yeah. Why? Is something missing?”
“Quite possibly,” she said. “And then there’s the fact we have multiple murders.”
His expression changed. “Murders?” he repeated.
She told him about James. He shook his head. “Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad.”
“Why is that?” Jackson asked.
“Because we had those guys in here about a year ago, asking questions about James in regard to the thefts of tools. Remember?” Carney asked Deli.
“Yes, I do remember,” she said. “That’s why I was wondering if he had anything to do with this more recent activity with the possibility of thefts of government property. And the fact he’s now dead.”
Grim-faced, Carney said, “Come on. Let’s take a look. What I don’t want to do is accuse the wrong man, and, because he’s dead, he can’t defend himself, and that makes him a hell of a scapegoat for others.”
Jackson appreciated that viewpoint. Too often people were more than prepared to blame anyone but themselves. And, if James was innocent, it would be good if they could find that out too.
Kanen came up behind him. “You take a look at the video. I want to inspect the inside of the truck.”
Jackson said, “If you don’t mind, Carney, I’ll come with you.”
Carney looked at him and frowned.
Deli reached out, patted his hand and said, “He’s one of the good guys.”
“I am one of the good guys, and I’m very grateful to Deli for saving my life a couple times,” Jackson admitted. “Now I’m trying to make sure that whoever was after James doesn’t come after her.”
Carney’s face turned dark, like a thundercloud. “That is not cool. It’s bad enough they went after her at all. Best we stop this before it goes any further.”
Chapter 11
She followed Carney to the security room. “How is the wife doing, Carney?”
His face split with a big grin. “Expecting baby number four,” he said proudly. “We’re really hoping for a little girl this time.”
She was delighted for him. He was such a great guy. “Now that is good news. You two make great parents.”
He chuckled. “It helps a lot when you want the kids. The wife and I, we’ve got twelve siblings between us. We love family reunions. But it’s not for everyone.” At the door up front, he unlocked it and entered. The room was empty except for computer equipment and a handful of chairs.
She glanced around to see four monitors running off of four cameras. “Okay, so what we need to do is go back to the day before yesterday,” she said. She turned to Jackson. “What’s your guess?”
“Why don’t we run the videos from the time the truck arrived,” he said. “That way we won’t miss anything that happened here.”
She nodded.
Carney sat down, started playing on the keys, bringing up the feeds that had been stored. As soon as he started on Thursday’s feed, they fast-forwarded until the vehicle was towed in. He hit Stop, then Play.
They pulled up chairs and sat beside him. There didn’t appear to be too much going on. Guys walking around back and forth, but nobody was interested in that particular vehicle. Not too much later she arrived, did a check on the vehicle itself and never checked what was inside the back.
“Is that normal?” Jackson said.
“I was worried about the mechanics,” she explained. “I wasn’t worried whether it had anything in it. As there didn’t appear to be any damage to any of the exterior, I wasn’t thinking there would be damage to the interior. I was also on a short time frame, trying to make the best use of my time.” She castigated herself now because she should have taken a look at the contents. Even a quick look.
The video feed kept going until all the men left. No mechanics worked on the night shift. But somewhere around two a.m., movement was detected by the camera. Carney leaned forward. “Whoa, that’s not good.”
“Who is it? Do you know?” Jackson asked.
Carney stopped the feed, backed up slightly, took a frame, moved it off to a different monitor, and there he digitalized it into a larger size, zeroing in on the man’s face.
Deli sighed. “It’s James,” she said sadly. “I don’t know what he was involved with, but it was not good.”
“No, it sure wasn’t,” Jackson said.
As they watched, James hopped into the back of the rig in question and, a couple minutes later, came back out, carrying several boxes. He disappeared after a quick glance around and then returned and did the same thing again.
“They aren’t very big boxes,” she said slowly. “They could be anything. I’ll have to double-check what was on the manifest in order to consider what could have come in boxes that size.”
James did it one more time, having removed six boxes total.
Jackson asked, “Carney, can you freeze a couple of those frames so we can get the siz
e of the boxes?”
Carney backtracked, picked up several of the feed frames, zeroing in on the boxes. There were no names or labels that they could see. He turned to Jackson and asked, “Who am I supposed to send it to?”
Knowing it was a dicey issue, Jackson answered cautiously, “How about Mason?”
“He’s got clearance.” Carney sent six different images to Mason.
Deli added, “And Jackson is on the investigation team. Can you copy that email to him too?”
Carney nodded once more.
Jackson thanked Carney, stepped away and called Mason.
Deli could partially hear the conversation as the images went through his email, letting Mason know what to expect. “I guess I don’t get access, do I?”
Carney glanced at her and said, “What’s your involvement in all this?”
“We were the last ones to see James alive as far as the police are concerned, and both Jackson and I were shot at because of this rig. We figure they were trying to get whatever was inside and were hoping to take the two of us out.”
“This is ugly business, it is.” Carney thought about it for a moment and then said, “I guess, for the sake of inspection purposes, we should at least send this to somebody to confirm what it is.”
“Exactly. Send it to Billings. He’s the investigating MP officer,” Deli said. “Now that I’ve seen this, let’s go through the proper channels to make sure whoever is behind this gets caught.”
“I can do that,” Carney agreed.
As soon as he was done, she said, “Would you mind going back to the feed? I just want to make sure nobody else is in the garage.”
Carney brought up the feed, and they continued to watch. Just when she was ready to call it quits, another figure moved through the garage. She leaned forward and said, “Is that someone else coming to the truck?”
“Yeah, looks like it,” Carney muttered. “I’ll have to check and see who was on night shift that evening because, from the looks of this, they must have been sleeping to not see these guys.”
Just then, with his face partially away from the camera, the man jumped into the back of the truck. There was no sound on the camera, just the video feed. He jumped out of the back of the rig, looked around, but his hands were empty and his back rigid. He turned and kicked the tire furiously.
At that, Carney sucked in his breath. “I know who that is,” he snapped.
“Who?”
“Magnus. He’s security too and was on night duty that night.”
“Do you think he’s involved?”
“Either he just saw the feed and came to see what might have been taken and knows he’s in trouble for not seeing what was going on, or he came to take it himself and lost out because James got there before him. Either way he’s pissed.”
“A double-cross?” she said on a low note. “This is getting more interesting by the moment.” She looked over at Carney. “When does Magnus come back on again?”
“Tonight, I think. I’d have to check the schedule.”
“Would you mind doing that for me now? And please take several sets of these frames and send them off to the same people.”
“But Magnus might not have anything to do with it,” Carney warned. “I don’t want to get him in trouble for nothing.”
She patted his shoulder. “You’ve got a big heart, Carney. If Magnus was just checking, knowing he would be in trouble because he missed something, then that’s understandable. Not everybody would have seen James in there. He knew where the cameras were, and he came for a purpose. But, if Magnus is involved and was trying to get some of those supplies for himself, or was hired to retrieve it and lost it because James got it first, then we need to know.”
With a dour face Carney nodded. “Let’s go check the schedule.” He got up, left the monitors alone, ushered them ahead of him and locked the door as they left. Going into the lunch room, he pulled the schedule off the wall and held it up. “He’s due in tonight. But a note is here, saying he called in sick.”
“Does it say he called in sick, or did someone call in sick for him?” Jackson asked.
Carney narrowed his gaze as he looked at Jackson. “It doesn’t say. I didn’t take the phone call. Why?”
Jackson looked at Deli.
She stared back, her stomach sinking. “Because we already have a trail of dead men,” she said slowly. “If he’s involved, or if anybody even thought he was involved, there’s a good chance he won’t be coming in again ever.”
It didn’t take long for them to roust out Magnus’s home address. Leaving Carney with their thanks, telling him to report what he’d seen to the MP investigators, she left with Jackson at her side.
“What about Kanen?” she asked.
“I texted him. If we need him, he’ll join us at Magnus’s house.”
Using the GPS, they located Magnus’s address, which was not on base. It was fifteen, almost twenty minutes by the time they pulled up outside a small set of townhomes.
Deli looked at them intently. “This is mostly a family neighborhood.”
“He could have a family,” Jackson said. “We can’t make those kinds of assumptions.”
“No, we can’t,” she said as they drove in to the main area.
They parked and worked their way around to Unit 21. They walked up the front steps and knocked. No lights were on, and nobody answered the door. She frowned and looked around. It was a fairly calm, quiet area, and nobody was outside playing or coming or going.
Jackson knocked again, then looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
She shook her head. “You know we have no right to go inside.”
“Except we’re concerned friends,” he said quietly. He pulled the hem of his T-shirt over his hand and turned the knob. It opened underneath light pressure.
She frowned. “Why isn’t it locked?”
Jackson shrugged, poked his head inside and called out.
She wanted to stop him. But, as he stuck his head around the door, he turned back to look at Deli. She frowned and said, “What’s wrong?”
“The smell,” he said harshly. He pulled the door closed and picked up his phone. “We need to bring in the police.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” She grabbed his arm and squeezed. “What if he’s just really badly hurt?”
He shot her a look. Just then somebody at the other end of his phone answered. “I’m at a house with a suspected fatality.” His voice was low, harsh. “I need to go in and check to make sure that’s the case.”
Mason’s voice could be clearly heard. “I’m surprised you waited.”
“I’m trying to be circumspect,” Jackson said. “I’ve seen too many bodies in the last few days.”
“Understood. Walk through very quietly and make sure that’s what we’re talking about.”
She didn’t want to go in.
Jackson held up his hands and whispered, “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” And he disappeared into the house.
She shouldn’t have tried to stop him earlier. They should have checked to make sure the man was deceased, but then she smelled the odor as it wafted out the open doorway.
Jackson was back in a second, his face grim. He was no longer talking to Mason. “Mason is marshalling the forces. MPs will be here soon enough.” He motioned at the steps. “Have a seat.”
She shook her head, pointed to the vehicle where a woman was unloading groceries. “I’ll talk to her first.” And she bounded down the steps and headed over.
As she approached, the woman looked up and smiled.
“Hi. Any idea when you last saw Magnus?” she asked, pointing to the house. As she glanced back, she could see Jackson sitting on the front step, watching her.
The woman shook her head. “I haven’t seen him today,” she said. “Though I don’t have too much to do with my neighbors, he’s been fairly regular coming and going. He’s always been friendly enough with a smile. Why?” She turned back to Deli with a frown. “Is
something wrong?”
“That’s what we’re trying to decipher. We can’t enter illegally of course. We’re just trying to locate him.”
The woman nodded. “I have no idea. He doesn’t tell me his plans. As far as I know, he goes to work and comes home, like the rest of us.” She ended that with a light laugh.
Deli nodded. “Thanks. I was just wondering if you happened to see any of his associates or a girlfriend around.”
“There’s been one guy back and forth a couple times. I’ve never seen a girlfriend there.”
“Any idea what this other guy looked like?”
“He was big.” The woman laughed. “As in really big. Maybe six feet four inches, three hundred pounds, something like that. I never did see much of his face, but he’s been here a couple times.”
“How did you know it was the same man each time?”
“He drives the same vehicle as I do, which seemed really odd. This is just a small SUV that holds my kids,” the woman said. “You expect a huge guy like that to drive a big truck or a Hummer or something.”
“So he looked very alpha male–ish?”
“Very. And he was big but not fat. He just looked like a huge brute.”
“White skin?”
The woman nodded. “White skin, dark hair, mustache. Tattooed. He had one with a funny flower-snake on his arm. I can’t really describe it.”
“The police may need to talk to you about that,” Deli said. And then seeing the woman’s face, she rushed to add, “Only if there’s something wrong of course.”
The woman’s face cleared. “Whatever. I’d probably recognize the tattoo again,” she said. “It’s hard to describe.” She grabbed the groceries, carried them up the steps and walked into the house without another word.
Deli could understand. Nobody really wanted to be questioned about neighbors, but no doubt something had gone wrong in Magnus’s life. She mentally sorted through all the men she knew. Six feet four inches and three hundred pounds was fairly discernible. She couldn’t remember anybody who might fit that description. Dark hair, tattooed, heavily muscled, big but not fat.
