I was not looking forward to my conversation with Julie.
She was in the reception area waiting for me when I got off the elevator. I could see the tension on her face, but I couldn’t hear it in her voice, because she didn’t say a word. She just turned and started walking back to her office, a silent invitation for me to follow. It was as if she didn’t want to delay hearing whatever news I was about to deliver by engaging in idle chitchat, like saying “hello.”
We went into her office, and she closed the door behind us. “How did it go?” she asked.
“How did what go?”
“Didn’t you speak to Bryan?”
“No.”
She seemed confused. “You never heard from him? Then why are you here?”
“Julie, I’ve got something important to tell you; this goes way beyond the level of marital spat.”
“It was more than a spat, Luke.”
“Then this goes way beyond the level of marital earthquake.”
“What is it?” She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself for the news.
“Bryan has been kidnapped by the brother of the kid I shot.”
I watched as her mind tried to compute what I was saying. It was so unlike what she expected that it took her a few moments to process it, and even then it didn’t make sense. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I went on to tell her the story, exactly as I related it to Emmit. I watched her intently as I spoke; Julie watching is something I’ve spent a lot of time doing over the years. She seemed to go back and forth between horror-stricken wife and law enforcement professional. It was the latter I needed to help me.
Her first words when I finished were not the ones I wanted to hear. “We need to go to the FBI with this.”
“I’ve thought about that, Julie, but I don’t see the upside, at least now.”
“The upside is that maybe they’ll catch him; maybe they’ll save Bryan. How can you not see that?”
“Catching him doesn’t save Bryan; it probably does exactly the opposite.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Maybe you’re right, and we need to get as much information as we can about Chris Gallagher so we can make that judgment. But for now Bryan is alive, and our doing what Gallagher asks keeps him alive.”
“Maybe he’ll kill him…,” she said, as her voice cracked and I thought she was going to break down. But she pulled it together. “… No matter what we do.”
“If that’s the case, then Bryan is probably dead already.” When she reacted, I added, “I’m sorry, Julie, but that’s the truth.”
She nodded her understanding, but said, “We have knowledge of a crime, Luke. It needs to be reported.”
“I’m a cop; consider it reported.”
We talked about it some more, and she reluctantly agreed to go along with my approach. I was relieved, but not as much as I expected. I was not confident that I was right; I just couldn’t think of a better way to go. With my brother’s life on the line, I would have liked to have greater conviction.
“So what can I do?” she asked, the professional in her kicking into gear.
“Can you start gathering information on Chris Gallagher?”
“Of course,” she said. “And I know a judge advocate at Quantico. We worked on a case together last year; a Marine got into a fight at a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike and killed a guy. I let the military handle it, so he owes me a favor.”
“Great; call it in,” I said. “We need to know who we’re dealing with.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to investigate a murder and pretend it’s not already solved.”
The door opened and I was looking straight ahead at a man’s chest.
I was at the late Judge Daniel Brennan’s house in Alpine, and I expected to be greeted by his wife, not a man who looked to be seven feet tall. But he obviously expected me, because the voice from up there asked, “Lieutenant Somers?”
I looked up. Way up. “Yes,” I said, to a face I recognized but in the moment couldn’t place.
He held out his hand. “Nate Davenport. Friends call me Ice.”
I shook his hand. We were just meeting for the first time, but I knew all about Nate “Ice Water” Davenport. He was the center for the Detroit Pistons in the late seventies and early eighties. He was one of the early big men who was also a great athlete; he could grab a defensive rebound and lead a fast break up court.
The “Ice Water” nickname came from the coolness that was said to run through his veins when it came time to take the key shot at the end of a game. He was a great clutch player, and though I wasn’t sure if he was in the Hall of Fame, he was certainly a candidate for it.
I’m not a huge pro basketball fan; I prefer football and baseball. But I read enough of the sports pages to have in the back of my mind that Davenport became an agent for players after he retired, though I wasn’t aware of a relationship with Judge Brennan when he played for the Celtics.
“Come on in,” he said. “Denise will be down in a minute.”
Denise was the recently widowed Mrs. Brennan, and my starting point in the investigation. “Good. Thanks.”
“I’m a longtime friend of the family; would you object to my sitting in on your talk? She would prefer that.”
I saw no problem with that, and said so. I wasn’t trying to trap her; I just wanted information, and the more at ease she was the more likely she was to provide it. “Whatever makes her comfortable.”
It was almost fifteen minutes before Denise Brennan came down the stairs, and if she spent that time trying to make herself appear not to be devastated, it was a wasted effort. She was a small, thin woman, and my guess was she looked a lot smaller and thinner than she had before her husband’s murder.
She apologized for keeping me waiting, and offered me coffee, which I accepted. Then, “Thank you for your efforts, Lieutenant. I share my husband’s disdain for capital punishment, but I must admit I wasn’t sorry to hear about the resolution of this situation.”
By “resolution,” she meant my putting three bullets into Steven Gallagher. “I understand,” I said, because I did. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions about your husband.”
“You don’t have any doubts about who committed the crime, do you?” asked Davenport.
I shook my head. “None. But in a situation like this, we have to tie up all loose ends,” I said, neglecting to mention that among the loose ends here was the fact that my brother had been kidnapped and in six days wouldn’t be able to breathe.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“Had your husband ever mentioned Steven Gallagher, in any context?”
She shook her head. “No, he didn’t bring home his work. Once he took off the robe, that was it. His life on the job and his life at home were separate.”
“So he never felt threatened by anything that happened in court?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes, a few times. He never spoke about it, but I could tell.”
“How?”
“Sometimes he didn’t want me to go out somewhere, or he would go with me, even if it was shopping, or something else he didn’t like doing. And a few times I noticed some people that I think were security.”
“But he never told you why he was concerned, or who he was concerned about?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. He never addressed it in any way.”
“Was there anything unusual about the way he was acting recently? Any changes in mood? Anything that you noticed?”
She considered that for a few moments, and said, “I think he was feeling some stress, good kind of stress, over the Appeals Court appointment. When he testified before Congress, he was a little nervous. Dan rarely got nervous, so it surprised me. But it was more excitement than anything else.”
I basically asked the same questions a few more times, but this woman obviously had no information that would help me.
I told her I appreciated her talking to me, and let Davenport walk me to the door.
“Thanks for your time,” I said.
“Strange way to spend yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you’re not sure the Gallagher kid did it. Otherwise what would be the difference if Danny had enemies?”
“Gallagher did it.”
“I hope so. But if the real son of a bitch is out there, let me know how I can help.”
“Will do.”
When we got to the door, he opened it and I stepped outside.
“Danny was a complicated man, but a good one,” he said. “A very, very good one.”
It was a strange thing to say. “Complicated how?”
He just shook his head very, very slightly. “He was my friend.”
I took one of my cards out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Call me if you want to talk about your friend some more.”
Tommy Rhodes considered that night’s job beneath him.
It wasn’t a big deal, and he certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. He was only thirty-four years old, but he thought of himself as an old-school guy, which meant that you did your job and moved on to the next one.
Of course, the fact that he was being paid enough money to last him until he was a hundred and thirty-four years old made him even more sanguine about the situation. He was a mercenary, pure and simple, and that was fine with him. As such, it wasn’t his job to strategize; it was his job to accomplish the mission.
This was an easy assignment. He didn’t really need Frankie Kagan there. Kagan had no experience in these kinds of operations; his talents were more in the areas of guns and knives. In this case he was there to provide protection for Tommy while he worked, though it was extremely unlikely that any problems would arise.
Tommy was resentful of Frankie’s role as leader of their end of the operation, but he realized that it was Frankie who had the connection, and who brought Tommy in. There might be a time when Tommy would try to move up in the hierarchy, but he would have to be careful; Frankie was very, very dangerous.
So for now Tommy just focused on the work. The jobs he would be doing would grow progressively harder, and considerably more dangerous, but nothing that Tommy couldn’t handle.
The toughest part was learning the terrain. His employers were smart enough to go outside the area to recruit, and had done their homework. Tommy was from Vegas, as was Frankie, or at least that’s the place they had been working. So finding their way around upstate New York was not that easy.
They didn’t want to use a GPS; if it was ever confiscated, the fact that it contained addresses of all of these criminal acts would be rather incriminating. So they did it the old-fashioned way, with a map, which was a bit of a pain in the ass.
Tommy didn’t really know what was going on, and he didn’t care. He had vaguely assumed that it had something to do with this mining thing, something about natural gas, and the fight that was going on over it. His target tonight confirmed that suspicion, but it really didn’t matter to him either way.
The house was on a secluded street, which was understating the case. It wasn’t really a street in the normally accepted sense; it was an estate with no other houses within a quarter of a mile. Tommy parked outside the property, and they walked towards where they were told the house would be, though it couldn’t be seen from there.
It was a long walk, and only when they got close did the lights from the house pierce the total darkness. It was certainly not a hardship for Tommy, who was in extraordinary physical shape, even though he was carrying a bag that weighed the equivalent of two bowling balls.
The house looked massive, triggering a vague childhood recollection of his parents taking him to Virginia to see where Thomas Jefferson lived. Tommy remembered seeing the slave quarters on the property, and thinking that Jefferson must have been an asshole.
Lights were on in the house, so Tommy assumed that people were home. He had no idea if Richard Carlton was there or not, and it didn’t matter to Tommy at all.
The guesthouse was off to the left, and that was where Tommy headed. It was dark and hard to see; the sky was cloudy and moonlight was almost nonexistent. Tommy was sorry that he didn’t bring his night vision glasses, but it wasn’t a big deal either way. He could see well enough to know that he had never lived in a house as nice as this guesthouse.
But those days were in the past. In six months he’d be living in a palace or, better yet, in a suite at the Bellagio.
The windows on the main floor were unlocked, as Tommy expected they would be. He opened one and climbed inside, signaling Frankie to stay outside and watch for intruders. Tommy did not wear gloves, and was not concerned about fingerprints.
Once inside, he entered an interior room and took out his small flashlight, shining it into the bag he was carrying. He emptied the contents, and spent the next twenty minutes positioning the explosives strategically around the house.
The army training had served him well; Tommy operated with an expertise that was instinctive, and a complete confidence that he was doing things correctly. The fact that there was no basement in the house made it easier, though only marginally.
Once he was finished, he did a check of his work, to make sure everything was in good condition. There was no hurry; he was not going to be detected. The only reason for moving quickly was that there was a basketball game on television later that night that he was anxious to see. He had a bet on the game, for an amount of money that in the future he wouldn’t be wasting his time on.
Tommy left through the front door, closing it and all the windows behind him. He didn’t want there to be anywhere for the air to escape, though that was just him being more cautious than necessary. He took pride in his work, and even though there was no chance of failure, he still wanted to do it exactly right.
“All good?” Frankie asked softly once Tommy was outside.
“All good.”
Thirty feet in front of the guesthouse, they stopped and Tommy took out the remaining items in the bag that he was carrying. They were a can of red paint and a brush, and he slowly and methodically painted letters on the driveway. It was difficult because of the darkness and the small light given off by the flashlight.
Once he was finished, he took his time to make sure the message was legible.
You will not hurt our children.
Satisfied with his work, Tommy took the now empty bag with him. He jogged back to the street, not because he was fearful of being caught but simply so he could get to his television and basketball game sooner. Frankie, not being a basketball fan, was not pleased, but since Tommy had the keys to the car, he was obliged to jog as well.
Once in the car, they drove about a half a mile, and then stopped. It would be close enough to confirm that the operation was a success, but far enough to ensure an easy getaway.
Tommy opened the window and dialed a number on his cell phone. Within two seconds of his pressing the last digit, he saw the flash of light in the distance, and then heard the explosion.
“All good?” Frankie asked.
“All good.”
If Richard Carlton was going to have guests any time soon, they’d be staying in a hotel.
Michael Oliver had a very important job.
It didn’t make him famous; it didn’t make him stand out at all. He could walk down the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, as he did every day on the way to and from work, and never be recognized.
Oliver was chief engineer of Hanson Oil and Gas. They didn’t have traditional titles there, but if they did, he probably would have been a Senior Vice President, or maybe an Executive Vice President. Which made him pretty high up the ladder.
But his significance was even greater than it appeared. As the head of a very small department, Oliver’s job was to analyze land for its potential to provide energy, be it oil or natural gas. Once this was completed, a cost-benefit analysis was done to determine how ex
pensive it would be to extract that energy, versus how much it could be sold for.
Hanson was a middle level player in the industry, but it still had a market capitalization of over six billion dollars. It didn’t get that big by making mistakes, and Michael Oliver was the mistake preventer in chief.
When Oliver gave the go-ahead on a find, Hanson literally would take it to the bank. And if Oliver said the potential was not there, they did not go near it.
It was Oliver who personally did the analysis of the land near Brayton. It was he who determined that the shale was porous enough to yield natural gas and that it was set in a formation that could be harvested efficiently and very profitably. And it was he who estimated the immense amount of energy that could be derived.
For doing this, he was very well paid. But now, by simply putting another set of diagrams in an envelope and sending them off, he would have taken the final step towards ensuring he would get far more money than that.
So he put them in the envelope, and then drove an hour and fifteen minutes to a UPS store in Stillwater. He sent the package under an assumed name; it was the first illegal act he had ever committed, and he was not about to take any chances. It was why he did not simply e-mail the diagrams; e-mails lasted forever, and could not be shredded.
Oliver was not recognized in Stillwater, just as he was not recognized in Tulsa. But that didn’t make him any less important. And what he had just done, simply sending that package, had been the most significant act of a very significant life.
“Nothing has changed,” Barone said. “Overtime expected, vacations postponed, until we wrap this up.”
I had requested that he call the meeting, and he didn’t hesitate. There had been a letdown in effort on the case; cops have a tendency to stop focusing on a case when they believe it’s been solved and the bad guy killed.
Detective Johnny Pagan asked the obvious question. “Wrap what up?”
“The Brennan murder,” Barone said. “We want to nail Gallagher on the facts, not just because he pulled a gun on Luke. Shit, you know how many times I’ve wanted to shoot Luke?”
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