“Can he? No one’s seen him. No one knows who he is. Honestly, he’s probably a wimp and the first time we push back he’ll run away. There are other people we can work with. Marquez, for example. We did that deal last year with him, and everyone was happy all around. I say we do more with him and cut all ties with Tobias and his people. Though losing those guns—he’ll probably be dead within a week.”
“James is endorsing my opponent.”
“Then James can go to hell. I have more dirt on him than anyone else. It won’t help before the election, but after the election I’ll destroy him. Okay?”
“He knows things about our operation.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t say a word.” Rob buttoned up his shirt and grinned. “I’ve always solved all your problems, haven’t I, Adeline?”
She started to relax. “Yes, you have. But that girl—”
“Is just a whore.”
She bristled. “If you ever have sex in this office again, I will fire you.”
He raised an eyebrow and said in a low voice, “You’re the one who wanted me to seduce Jessica and keep her close. Which I did. And that means either she stops traveling with us to D.C. so I can fuck whoever I want in my own apartment, or you get me a second place.”
“You can’t just refrain? Or find a girl with her own place?”
“Why should I?” He sat down at her desk and started making fundraising calls.
That girl. That whore was here in San Antonio. Had Rob … No. He couldn’t have had Harper killed. What a ridiculous thought! Yet … that whore was here, had been with Harper in the motel, and now Harper was dead.
Rob walked into her office. He looked irritated. “I’d just gotten back to the office when Joseph called and said it was an emergency. What’s going on?”
Adeline whirled around. “Shut the door.” He complied, without mouthing off this time. She must look like a fury. “Your young whore from D.C.? What is she doing in San Antonio?”
He blinked in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That hooker I caught you screwing on my desk!”
It took him a second. “Elise? She’s not here. You’re seeing things.”
“Like hell I am. The FBI came in with her photograph. She was in Harper’s room when he died. When he was murdered. He was murdered. By your whore. Tell me you didn’t do it—when I told you that Harper was acting strange, you had that look—”
“Shut up. Hell no. I had nothing to do with Harper’s murder. Oh my God, Adeline, I would never … I just don’t get it … Elise is in D.C. She couldn’t possibly be here.”
“She is. And the FBI is looking for her. It just can’t possibly get worse than this.”
“I’ll find out what’s going on. I promise, Adeline, I will get at the truth.”
She believed him. She didn’t know why that mattered to her, but she did. He seemed just as confused and worried as she was.
“Everything is falling apart!”
“It’s not. You have to be strong now more than ever.”
She shook her head and said in a low voice, “Tobias sent me a picture of Harper, dead. Told me he would frame me for his murder unless I paid him back the money I kept when he lost the guns. I needed that money to pay back the buyers—why he didn’t just accept the loss—when it was his fault!—I’ll never know.”
“Pay him.”
“I tried to reach his people after the FBI left, but every number I have is dead. He’s going to destroy me.”
“He can’t.” But Rob didn’t sound confident. Now he was beginning to look as scared as she felt.
“I have to leave. Until this dies down.”
“You leave, that’s it. You’ll never win the election.”
“And I won’t win if I’m in prison or dead.”
“Give me forty-eight hours to figure this out.”
She was nervous, but she nodded. “Okay. But be careful.”
Rob left, and she turned back to the rose garden. She didn’t know if she could wait forty-eight hours.
The time that Tobias had given her to pay him back was almost up … and he wasn’t returning her calls.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After Lucy talked to Tia, she repeated the conversation to Barry. “Elise was found with two gunshot wounds near Guadalupe and South Laredo late last night. She’s still in recovery, we won’t be able to talk to her for a few hours. Tia said she’d let us know when Elise is awake.”
“Then let’s check out that area where Harper’s car was spotted the week he cancelled his business meeting.”
It was a good plan, though Lucy itched to go to the hospital. Elise was the key and she desperately wanted to talk to her. But they’d simply be standing around waiting, and Tia was already there.
As Barry drove, Lucy closed her eyes. “I thought you looked tired,” Barry said.
“I am, but that’s not it. I’m replaying the conversation with Adeline over in my head. She was lying about something, but now I can’t remember what it was.”
“She was lying about everything. She didn’t ask how Worthington was murdered. She didn’t seem surprised. She didn’t have a good reason for having so much security, and she was scared and angry.”
He was right about everything. Lucy said, “It was something else. Just give me a second, I’ll figure it out.”
Fortunately, Barry didn’t say anything. Lucy mentally reviewed the case in her head, at least the parts that directly related to Adeline Reyes-Worthington. History, marriage, being cut out of the will …
Jolene’s Southern drawl popped into her head. Those are parcel numbers.
Lucy jumped. Barry had parallel parked on a wide street in central San Antonio.
“I thought you’d fallen asleep. We’re here.”
“Adeline said she didn’t know what the numbers were.”
“And that means something?”
“She was in real estate for twenty-some years. She must have recognized that they were parcel numbers. Jolene did.”
Barry hit the steering wheel with his fist. “Dammit, I should have caught that. Remind me to let you have a cat nap more often.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“You snore.”
She stared at him wide-eyed, and Barry laughed. “Power naps work,” he said. “Definitely something going on with Adeline. But we need to tread very carefully. We need evidence, because there’s no way that the Bureau is going to let us formally question a sitting congresswoman without a pile of proof.”
“We may not be able to find the proof without getting a search warrant for her phone, computer, house—”
“Don’t say it. Because we don’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant. Not even if she wasn’t an elected official.”
The system sometimes frustrated Lucy, but Barry was right. They had nothing except the fact that Adeline had lied. And proving that she’d lied? Impossible. She could claim that she was distraught after hearing her husband had been murdered and hadn’t paid attention to the papers Lucy and Barry had shown her.
They needed more. Like a statement from Elise.
Barry and Lucy got out of the car. The narrow, squat strip mall certainly didn’t look like a place that someone of means would visit. Bars on the windows, graffiti painted over with several shades of beige or white paint. At least the businesses made an effort to paint over the graffiti. The tired apartment building across the street looked worse.
“Debbie’s husband must have been visiting his patient there,” Barry said. “Saw Harper’s car in front of this strip mall.”
“Bar,” Lucy said. “My guess is he met G.A. in the bar. But it could be the individual lived across the street, which is why they met here.”
“We’ll check both.”
Walking into the bar from the bright sunlight outside blackened Lucy’s vision, even though she’d been wearing sunglasses. She put her glasses on the top of her head and followed Barry to t
he counter as her sight adjusted to the dim light.
Though it was not yet noon, there were six men sitting at the bar. One guy slouched in the corner watching a baseball game on one of two small televisions. All seven men, plus the bartender, turned to stare at the two agents.
Barry showed his badge to the bartender. “We hope you can help us, Mister—?”
“Call me Al.” Al was the size of a linebacker, large and meaty with tattooed arms.
“Al, I’m Agent Crawford, this is Agent Kincaid. We’re trying to track down a patron who was in here about four weeks ago, on a Monday afternoon. Were you working on May eleventh?”
Al snorted. “I’m here every day. This is my bar.”
Lucy noted that the two men at the far side of the bar got up and left. Guilty of something? Or simply didn’t trust cops?
“The person we’re trying to find was with this man.” Barry showed Al a picture of Harper Worthington. “Well dressed, drove a dark Lincoln.”
“Yep. We don’t get many people in suits in here. I don’t remember the exact day, but it was a few weeks ago. He’d never been in before, and hasn’t been in since.”
“What about the man he was with? His initials are G.A.”
“Gary. He’s a semiregular.”
“Do you know his last name?”
“Nope.”
“Can you give a description?”
“Midfifties, but he looked older. Skinny, balding white guy. Pasty white. Had a scar on his head from here to here.” Al made a motion with his finger from his temple to behind his ear. “Might have been longer, the hair covered some. He limped from an accident he was in, he once said.”
“How often does he come in?”
“Once, twice a month. Has for a few years. Doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s about some wild-ass conspiracy theory after he’s had a few. You know, like Kennedy was assassinated by the Cubans or Hinckley was paid off by the Russians to kill Reagan and the government just used his obsession with Jodie Foster as a cover. Didn’t have a cell phone because he thought the government could track him. Shit like that.”
Al refilled one of his patron’s drinks, then returned to Barry. “He always drank from a bottle—and insisted he open the bottle himself. Afraid someone would slip something in. A kook, but a harmless kook.”
“Does he live around here?”
“Don’t know. He comes in on the bus, though. I know the schedule well, it drops off at the corner eight times a day. He’s usually inside a minute or two later. Always leaves before the last pickup, on the six forty-five or eight ten.”
“So you can confirm that this man”—Barry tapped Harper’s photo—“met with Gary here one time a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah. Gary was here first. The guy comes in, looks around, totally out of place and he knew it. He came to me, ordered a bottle, tipped me ten bucks. Ten. Bucks. No one here tips ten bucks on a four-dollar bottle. Took a table over there”—Al gestured to the corner where the old guy was watching the game—“and waited. Gary was at the bar a good five minutes before he went over to talk to him. I don’t think your suit had known Gary, didn’t recognize him. They had their heads together for twenty, thirty minutes. The suit didn’t even finish his beer.”
“And that was it?” Lucy asked. “Anything else about their conversation that stands out? Even if you don’t think it’s important.”
“Why?” Al asked. He was simply curious, Lucy realized.
Barry said, “We can’t tell you, this is a federal investigation. We really need to find this guy.”
“Well, I can tell ya two more things. First, Gary hasn’t been in since that day. He wasn’t really regular, but I’d see him every two or three weeks for the past couple years. Second, I didn’t hear any of the conversation. But Gary handed the suit a folder. That caught my eye, ’cause Gary had the folder hidden under his shirt. Oh—and Gary left out the back door, not the front. That was odd. He said he was using the bathroom, and then he just walked out.”
Barry gave Al his business card. “If Gary comes in, call me, anytime. My cell phone number is on the back.”
Al didn’t take the card. “You know, I don’t mind talking to you guys, I’m all for doing my civic duty, but I’m not going to rat out my customers if I don’t know what they’re wanted for.”
“He’s just wanted for questioning,” Barry said.
Al snorted. “I don’t get a lot of cops in here, and never once a fed. My business is slow but steady, I have no employees, I’m here every day. I run a good business, honest, no drugs, no whores. Just guys who need a beer or two because they can’t get a job or work twelve hours for minimum wage or less. These guys need to believe I’m not gonna sell them down the river on some petty shit. Unless you tell me that Gary is a fucking pedophile, I’m not gonna be your snitch.”
Barry tensed and looked like he was ready to argue, but Lucy sensed that Al was done. She said, “Thank you for your time, Al. We appreciate it. By the way, is that the bus schedule?” She gestured to a bulletin board behind the bar. It was crammed with flyers and receipts, maybe months or years old.
“It’s my only copy.”
“Could I look at it?”
He eyed her suspiciously, but handed it over.
He had the bus route closest to the bar highlighted. She made note of the route number and the times, then handed it back to him. “Thank you.”
Barry followed her out. He was pissed. “You interrupted my interrogation.”
“He wasn’t going to give us anything else.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He told us everything he knew about Gary, including a first name, which we didn’t have before. You think the owner of a dive bar is going to let his regulars know that he’s snitching to the feds? Al doesn’t want trouble from us, or lost revenue. It could be a day, a week, a month before Gary swings back this way.”
Barry was still angry, but he didn’t comment.
“The regular bus driver might remember this guy, especially since he has a scar and limp. If he takes the bus everywhere, we may be able to find out where he gets picked up, and take it from there.”
“That’s a long shot.”
“Not as long as waiting for Gary to come back here.”
Both of their phones vibrated at the same time. Tia Mancini had sent them a group message:
Doc says we can talk to Elise for five minutes. Get your butt to the hospital before he changes his mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tia met Lucy and Barry outside the hospital. “It’s easier to talk here,” she said. “They’re moving Elise out of recovery into a private room, so we have a few minutes.”
“You didn’t tell us what happened,” Lucy said.
“Too long to text.” She pulled out her note pad. “This is from the primary witness, Mr. Peter Rabb, twenty-five, resident of San Antonio. I interviewed him earlier. His story holds, but I’ll send you his contact info. Last night, just after midnight, this girl—Elise—runs across Guadalupe and is nearly hit by a car driven by Rabb. He didn’t see a shooter, but heard two gunshots and when he gets out of the car to check on the girl, he sees that she’s been shot. He immediately calls nine-one-one and had competent enough first-aid skills that he slowed the bleeding. Two officers arrive, then the ambulance. They call out the crime scene techs because one officer notices the driver’s door has a nice big bullet hole.
“It’s not until the detective arrives at the hospital, has to wait out surgery—she was shot twice, once in the arm, and once in the upper shoulder, right in the back, that he recognizes the girl from my BOLO. Calls me, I come down to confirm, then call you.”
“Has she said anything?”
“She got out of surgery early this morning. They had her in recovery, and I texted you as soon as I cleared with the doc that we could talk to her. But then they decided to move her, so we have to wait. I ordered a cop on the door—since we don’t know exactly what or who we�
�re dealing with. All I know is she didn’t give the medics any information except her name is Elise Hansen.”
“You’ve run it?”
Tia nodded. “No pops on the name, might not even be real and she has no identification on her, but I’m going wider on it. My contacts at NCMEC are working on it, going through all missing girls with the first name of Elise who would now be between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, regardless of when they were reported missing. But my gut feeling is she’s been on her own for a long time.”
“She was on Guadalupe?” Barry asked. “That’s a long avenue.”
Tia pulled out her notes. “South Laredo and Guadalupe. Only a couple blocks from the White Knight Motel. Rabb was driving west on Guadalupe and Elise was running north on South Laredo. The cops canvassed the scene and found blood along a walkway between a closed business and a motel a block from the White Knight. I sent my guys back out looking for more evidence, because the first team found shit at night.”
“And the driver didn’t see anyone?” Lucy asked.
“No, but he admitted he wasn’t looking. He pulled her body around to the other side of the car because he was scared and didn’t know where the shooter was. Several other cars stopped, and her attacker fled. My guys are still out there, but so far nothing.”
“Evidence?”
“Not much. A partial shoe print, no bullet casings. Likely a revolver. I’ll let you know what else we find.” She looked pointedly at Barry. “Unless you want to take over?”
“No, Tia, just keep me in the loop,” Barry said.
“The first wound was superficial—a lot of blood, but not fatal. The second bullet went through the meaty part of her upper right shoulder. I saw the x-ray—it didn’t fragment, we should be able to get ballistics from it. Plus we have the bullet from the car. My guys already took both into evidence. Anyway, if that bullet was an inch lower, it would have hit her lung, two inches to the left and it would have lodged in her spine. But shooting her in the back? That’s just fucked.”
They went inside the hospital and Tia took them to the third floor. She met up with the head nurse. “Elise Hansen. The gunshot victim. Her surgeon said we could talk to her as soon as she was settled in her room.”
Best Laid Plans Page 22
