Back-Tracker

by Bob Blink

  “Just who are these two agents?” Spangle asked.

  “I don’t know,” Agent Wang replied honestly. “I intend to return to the office and have a talk with my boss and see what we can find out. I don’t like the way this is being handled. It’ll be some time before you can get this one booked, and even if he survives the wounded one will be sedated until later today.”

  Alisha flashed Rudy a warm smile, and then asked. “It would be very helpful if you could have all of them printed for me. Send me the prints at my office and I will expedite the processing.”

  Rudy Spangle melted under the force of the smile, and slowly nodded. “I’ll send someone to the hospital and have prints taken before the wounded suspect goes into surgery. The other we can print once we get him to the station. You implied you want the dead guy printed as well. I’ll call the morgue and make sure those are taken first thing. Anything else?”

  Agent Wang smiled again and shook her head. “I’ll let you finish here so Ghirardelli Square can get back to normal. I’ll call you from my office once we have the print results and maybe by then we’ll have a better understanding what is going on. I’d like to be there when you question the suspects.”

  Detective Spangle nodded, and looked at the two items he’d been handed, and after a fleeting smile at Agent Wang, he turned and yelled, “Terry,” as he held out the items toward his partner.

  Special Agent Alisha Wang watched the video with Detective Rudy Spangle that had been recovered from the cell phone that Agent Laney had given her. She had read the written report a while earlier in her own office. At the moment she was at police headquarters in Rudy Spangle’s office.

  “We’ve got the body, and this video of them hauling the corpse from the stairwell into their van. We also have the written report from two of your agents that they witnessed the victim go into the restroom at which time Charles Watson replaced him and these same two individuals exited the restroom where the body was discovered. That ties all three of them, as well as the other members of the dinner party to the murder.”

  Agent Wang nodded, but a frown marked her features.

  “What’s wrong?” Spangle asked.

  “I talked to my boss, who wasn’t pleased with what happened this morning. A little checking shows that Agent Laney works with one of the Senior Agents in Washington D.C., but there is no record of an Agent Trask.”

  “What?”

  “It appears that Agent Laney wasn’t being truthful when he identified Mathews as an FBI agent. There is something we don’t understand going on here.”

  “Does that mean this report might be false? Is it possible that Laney and Trask aren’t being truthful about what happened?”

  “I don’t know what it all means,” Agent Wang said truthfully. “My boss is pursuing the matter with the Director.”

  Detective Spangle was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He glanced at the caller ID and said, “It’s from the Bureau.”

  Spangle answered the phone, and after a moment handed the receiver to Alisha.

  “It’s Nick Morely,” he said.

  Alisha accepted the receiver, and after a moment signaled Spangle for a pad and pencil. She listened and wrote down some information, then hung up.

  “Nick had the results of the fingerprint search. The dead man is Henry Ray as Agent Laney claimed. The other two are freelance hoods, who are known to work for whoever can pay them. Both have long rap sheets, and this event will guarantee them a long stay in prison. Perhaps that will loosen their tongues. The man you have downstairs is Tom Erickson, and the one in the hospital is Glenn Marshal. Charles Watson is who he claimed to be, but here is a catch. He is the eldest son of one of the Mob’s more senior people in Chicago where Watson comes from.”

  “Perhaps it is time to have a talk with the two individuals we have here,” Detective Spangle suggested. He’d made certain that each was aware the other had been arrested, so Watson and Erickson knew that their whole scheme had been unraveled. Spangle was especially anxious to talk with Watson. He wanted the names of those who had been at dinner with him at the time of the murder. Agent Laney’s report had indicated that another male and two females were present, but hadn’t provided any names.

  Chapter 22

  Jake and Agent Laney were back at the house in San Jose. They had just begun the second secure teleconference with Susan Carlson who was still in Washington D.C., a call that she had initiated. The two men had returned to the house earlier after they left Ghirardelli Square, a departure that had been necessary if they were to avoid having to answer questions they didn’t wish raised. They had contacted Carlson and brought her up to date with the morning events during the initial call. Afterwards they had gone to brunch with Karin, who was now off shopping with Janna.

  “Are you certain that direct questioning wouldn’t have been more productive?” Carlson had asked during that initial conference. She knew that Jake used some unorthodox methods that often yielded useful results.

  “I tried that,” Jake replied. “It didn’t work. These two aren’t going to talk. They are more afraid of whoever hired them than me. I suspect it would take someone trained in extracting information and the proper environment to learn anything by force.”

  Carlson had accepted Jake’s assessment of the situation.

  “I’m bothered by what Agent Nick Morely revealed,” Carlson had said. “He wasn’t on our list, but he clearly has heard of Bob Trask and has some idea that he has an unusual talent, even if he hasn’t made the leap as to what you can do.”

  “That suggests there may be more than we feared who have an inkling what happened in D.C.,” Jake had agreed. “Did you learn anything about the others on the list?”

  “Nothing useful. None of those in the Agency are useful candidates for what has been happening to you. The only way to know who they might have talked to about what they know about you would most likely mean truth drugs and controlled interrogation. It could be done, with you back-tracking around the interrogation afterwards so it never happened, but it would be slow.”

  “And not certain,” Laney added. “They might have let slip something accidentally without even recalling having done so. If so, we wouldn’t necessarily learn what we need.”

  They had dropped the matter knowing they didn’t have any answers and allowed Carlson to go to work back in Washington. She would track the identification requests from San Francisco and see what the fingerprints revealed about the persons of interest, and see if she could obtain the interrogation results of the two prisoners. That had resulted in the call they were currently engaged in.

  “We’ve been busted,” she said wryly as soon as they began the conversation. “Alisha Wang went to the Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco office with the events of this morning. That has resulted in a number of calls to the Director. They know that there is no Agent Bob Trask, and that you scammed them. The Director called me a short time ago demanding an explanation. Only the fact that it is Saturday and he was in the Virginia countryside bought us some time. He is heading into D.C. now, and expects a full explanation from me upon his arrival. He assumes I have good reason to have you posing as an agent. However, it is clear that he is not happy, and we have to conclude this before he arrives.”

  “Did we learn anything?” Jake asked. He hoped all the maneuvering hadn’t been for nothing.

  “Most definitely,” Carlson replied. “The prints clearly show that the dead man is the real Henry Ray. No more imposters. That says that it isn’t Ray who will be behind the attacks that brought you into this mess. Someone was simply using him and his sister Pati to control your response to gain what they want.”

  “They want Mark Lobue dead,” Jake said.

  “So it seems, and as we decided earlier, that suggests who is behind all of this. The fingerprints of the others substantiate what we suspected.”

  “What did you learn?” Laney asked.

  “Charles Watson is the most interesting,�
�� Carlson replied. “That is his legal name by the way, and he does live in Chicago as he told you. However, despite what he claimed under the police interrogation, which I’ll tell you about in a moment, he was born Paolo Lonza. He’s the eldest son of Benito Lonza, a senior member of the Chicago Mob.

  “It keeps coming back to them, doesn’t it?” Laney said.

  The monitor showed Carlson nodding. “Benito Lonza is part of the same family that Franco Boitano heads up there in San Francisco, and the same Mob family that both Tom Erickson and Glenn Marshal, the two other men you helped subdue this morning frequently are associated with. It’s also the same family that is believed to be responsible for the killing of Mark LoBue.”

  “It sounds like it all makes sense,” Jake said softly. “This verifies I have a much bigger problem than I thought, but explains how so many resources could be targeted toward me.”

  “It also indicates it isn’t a problem that can easily be resolved. It is almost certain that Boitano knows about you, but he certainly isn’t the person who found out. The number of people in the organization who know about you has to be substantial. Some will know more than others, but this kind of an action would have to be approved at the highest levels of the family. Rooting out all who know about you isn’t going to be a simple matter.”

  “You implied that Watson talked,” Jake said. “What did he reveal?”

  “Watson initially claimed he was contacted over the phone and ordered to fly to San Francisco to substitute for Ray. He claims he owes the Mob money and that he had no idea that a killing was planned. When he saw Erickson and Marshall kill the real Ray, he knew he had to keep quiet or he’d share the same fate. He’d hoped to fly home and put it all behind him.”

  “Obvious lies,” Laney said.

  “Of course,” agreed Carlson. “Despite changing his name several years ago and trying to put distance between himself and his heritage, his father obviously made it clear he was needed for a task and left him little choice in the matter. Watson would have had to know that Ray was being targeted for removal. Nothing else makes sense.”

  “He knows he’s an accomplice to the killing, but the only person he can likely implicate is his father,” Jake pointed out. “They wouldn’t have shared with him why Ray was being killed, nor who ordered the hit.”

  “That’s what I surmise as well,” Carlson agreed. “The police know he is lying, but haven’t been able to get any more out of him. Watson is smart enough to know that he needs to be quiet. When the police confronted him with his birth name and the fact his father was a known gangster, he shut up.”

  “What about Erickson?” Laney asked.

  “He hasn’t said a word. He refuses to talk beyond asking for a lawyer. Even when they showed him the video of him and his partner hauling the body of Ray out of the trashcan and into their car, he simply shrugged and said it wasn’t him. It is expected that a Mob lawyer will show up later today. Probably has by now. That will be true of Marshal as well. He is still sedated, and by the time he is coherent, one of their lawyers will be there for him. I don’t see them being able to question him with any hope of learning anything. I’m sorry Jake. I had hopes we would discover something useful.”

  “We have discovered who is behind it all, that’s what I needed.”

  “But it’s too big,” Laney objected. “You can’t contain it. You can’t take on the Mob.”

  “Just a moment,” Carlson said. “I’ve got a call coming in from the Director. It looks like he is in the building. I believe I’ll have to break this off.”

  Carlson turned away, muting the audio to the secure conference link while she answered her telephone. Jake and Laney could see her talking, but couldn’t hear what was being said. After a few moments, she hung up and came back on line.

  “I’ll have to leave in a moment. The Director is quite annoyed and wants me in his office to explain an operation being conducted the way it was without his knowledge. Jake, I believe we’ve learned what we can from this. Can you back-track, perhaps to the time when Laney arrived there, and unwind this situation?”

  “That would give us the chance to save Ray,” Laney said eagerly. He’d never been happy they let the reporter be killed knowing that it was planned.

  “We can’t do that,” Jake objected. “If we alter their plans by saving Ray and exposing their replacement, they will know I have learned about them. That will cause them to take a different action, and everything I’ve learned will be changed.”

  “What do you propose doing?” Carlson asked.

  “I’ve got to go back farther,” Jake said. “I need to go back to when this started and catch the leak before it can get this far. That would also save Ray,” Jake pointed out to Laney.

  “Can you do that?” Carlson asked, the worry clear in her voice. “From what you said, the long back-tracks were pretty harsh.”

  “I’ll have to try,” Jake said. “I appreciate all your support through this. Once I go back, it’ll never have happened.”

  “You might as well stay for dinner,” Jake tried to convince Laney for the last time. The Agent had packed and was headed to the airport with the plan of flying back to Washington. Carlson would be getting reamed by the Director, and he felt he needed to be there to support her, even if he knew that as soon as Jake jumped, this would all cease to have happened.

  Karin tried as well, but despite Laney’s brain telling him how this all worked, his gut told him otherwise.

  “Good luck, Jake,” he said and offered his hand. “Once again we worked together and I won’t ever know of it I guess. Goodbye, Karin.”

  Karin smiled, and wished Laney a safe flight. After Laney had driven away, she took Jake’s hand as they headed back inside.

  “You really have to go back farther?” she asked.

  “Too many people know about me,” Jake replied. “I can’t see a way out of this without cutting off the source of that knowledge.”

  They sat down in the study where they could talk without being monitored. There he summarized what he now knew for Karin.

  “Henry Ray, who supposedly started this, is dead. He was killed four months before he supposedly initiated attacks on you and our friends. The need to save his sister Pati is all fake. They really want me not to save Mark LoBue, who exposed their secret operation and cost them a lot of money. That’s what this is all about. How the Mob initially learned about me and what I can do is still uncertain, but it probably all started during the D.C. terrorist thing, when several people became aware of me, or at least Stan Mathews. That would be consistent with when we think the microphones were installed, although they really moved quickly with that. It’s grown out of control already. Now it’s November. Carlson called me about the terrorist fear on August 26th. That’s just over two months. I have to go back then and see what I can do.”

  “Two more months, Jake!” Karin objected. “Are you sure you can do that? You said the last jump was horrible, and that was considerably less.”

  “I’ll take it in stages,” he promised. “And I’ll rest between each jump. Perhaps break it into three segments. That way it shouldn’t be so bad.”

  Karin still wasn’t comfortable with Jake’s plan, but knew there was nothing she could say that would stop him at this point. They had the dinner she had prepared when she expected Laney to spend the night, and then put Janna to bed. Jake looked at his daughter for a long time. The next time he saw her she’d be barely seven months old. His little girl was becoming a baby, and he wasn’t comfortable with the change, even knowing she’d grow up again. Then Karin and he went to bed, making love before drifting to sleep. Waking sometime in the middle of the night, Jake began his jumps back toward August.

  Chapter 23

  Jake didn’t recognize the hospital, nor had he any idea how he’d come to be there. He’d woken alert, with no sense of having been sedated, although surprised at the disorientation of waking in a place he didn’t recognize and with no ability to recall how h
e’d come to be there. It was a reasonably sized room, and he was the lone patient. There wasn’t a second bed, so he’d been given a private room. Jake was aware of the antiseptic smell that he associated with such places and could hear the soft voices of people beyond his door, which was open about a third of the way. He was certain he would be heard if he shouted, but he wasn’t yet ready for that. He wanted to try and sort out his thoughts before having to deal with the inevitable questions.

  Nothing identified where he was. The room was windowless, so the hospital could be located anywhere. It could also be anytime of day or night. Surrounding his bed, which was slightly elevated where his head rested so he could easily see down the length to his toes under the white sheet, were any number of electronic units. The usual flat screen display that monitored his heart was showing a repeating pattern across its surface, and an automatic cuff that periodically took his blood pressure was connected to his arm and presumably provided input for one of the traces. The only thing he could read and understand was his temperature, which appeared normal at ninety-eight point seven. Other units, mostly idle, were positioned around the bed. A pair of drip needles were inserted into the back of his right hand and taped into place so he wouldn’t disturb them. At the moment one was disconnected, but the other connected to a half empty bag of some clear solution that was supported on a rack next to his bed.

  Quietly, he took a private inventory of his condition. Maybe there were clues that would bring back a memory of whatever had transpired. He slid the sheet down and examined his arms and chest. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary as near as he could tell. Nothing hurt, nor were there any marks. He slid the sheet aside and slid his right leg out, the bare leg visible under the flimsy hospital gown that he was wearing. Idly he wondered where his clothes might be. The right leg looked normal, and the toes wiggled at his command. The left was no different. The only anomaly he could point to was his head. His brain felt too large for his skull, and he felt as if he were observing the room from a long distance away. That suggested something, but he wasn’t yet prepared to go there.