M-9

by Marvin J. Wolf

  “Is that why she split early from Costa Rica?”

  “Well, no, I don’t think so. I mean we never spoke of it while we were down there. We just enjoyed ourselves. Walked around San Jose, the downtown area, went into the shops and even a couple of office buildings, just to look around. And we went on day trips—to the cloud forest at Monteverde and to see a volcano. And then suddenly, she’s packing her bag.”

  “She didn’t say why?”

  “She just said that I should stay, finish the tour—we’d already paid for the hotel and roundtrip airfare—and that she’d see me back in Barstow. And she left.”

  “Did she return to Barstow?”

  “Yes, yes. She was here when I got back. And that’s when she started talking about moving to Texas. And she asked if I want to go with her, that we could both look for jobs together.”

  Will took another swig of his coffee. “But you didn’t want to go to Texas?”

  “No, not really. See, I was, I’ve been given to understand that I’m in line for a big promotion. A full grade, to GS-13. Division manager. My own office, a secretary, and the possibility of moving up to head the department in a couple of years. That was huge. I could have gotten out of debt. And my kids—they’re both in Riverside, and I can see them a few times a month. All that would change if I left the state. Left this job. At least for a year or so. I told her that. I said that, after my promotion, in a year, I could put in for a transfer.

  “Moving to Texas immediately—I’d have to find another job, and that would have meant coming in no higher than GS-12. GS-12, for technical and scientific people, is the big bottleneck. The pyramid narrows very sharply after that. So, I didn’t want to move to Texas, at least right away.”

  “And she did?”

  “She was adamant. And she couldn’t wait. She didn’t want to put in for a transfer; that could take months. There were some jobs open, data-processing jobs, that’s her area. In San Antonio, where she grew up, where her parents still lived. And where her ex lives. He’s a pharmacist at that big Army hospital. Fort Sam Houston, I think it’s called.”

  “It was your impression that she was in a hurry to move?”

  “Yes. And she wanted to take her son, Spencer, back to live with her parents until she could work out a move. She seemed very anxious to do that.”

  “But you don’t know why?”

  Alter wiped his glasses again. “She wouldn’t tell me. But I had the feeling, just a feeling, that she was afraid of something, and that’s why she wanted to move.”

  “Was she afraid of you?”

  “God, no! Of course not.”

  “She accused you of stalking her.”

  “That’s not true,” Alter whispered, his face pale. “No. Never. Nothing like that.”

  Will got up from the table. “Mr. Alter, the vandalism of Mrs. Farrell’s car is not a federal offense—it happened on private property. Nevertheless, I will inform the Barstow Police. They may wish to take action. I would advise you to retain an attorney.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Will shook his head. “Not at this time.”

  “Oh, God. Are you going to tell my supervisor?”

  Will shook his head. “No reason to, not yet. But don’t leave town. If the city is going to bring charges, they’ll let you know pretty quick.”

  Will tore a page from his notebook and handed it to Alter. “Write down how you got to Costa Rica, the airline and the dates, the flight if you remember it, and when you returned.”

  Alter took his phone from a pocket, turned it on and found an app that he turned on. He looked at the phone and then wrote, in a very neat hand, Jet Blue, Las Vegas to San Jose, 20 November 2015. Returned 30 November on Jet Blue. He handed the paper to Will, who tucked it in his pocket.

  Alter got to his feet. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Will nodded.

  “How did you know it was me? Trashing the car?”

  Will smiled. “I didn’t But you lived in the same building, and Kendra said some unkind things about you on her Facebook page, so it was worth a shot.”

  Sixty-one

  Will parked his squad car in the department lot and went inside. He found his father in the computer room. His jacket hung from a hook on the wall; with the assistance of a tall, skinny teenager named Horace, Arthur Spaulding had pulled the case off a server and was cleaning the interior with a small paintbrush, a can of compressed air, and a box of cotton swabs.

  “Just the man I was looking for,” Arthur said and put the brush down.

  “What’s up, Chief?” Will said, in deference to Horace, who worked part-time after school and on weekends in the computer room.

  “Damned machines are always so filthy,” the chief replied. “That causes them to overheat. Then they shut down in the middle of something important.”

  “You want me to help clean the servers?”

  Arthur Spaulding laughed. “No, no. Didn’t you tell me, a few months ago, that Homeland Security was giving grants to police departments to improve computer security?”

  Will nodded. “Yes. Up to $100,000. And the FBI has some IT grants, too.”

  “Can you get me all the information for those? The forms, all that?”

  “Sure. But then what? Do you know what we need? Horace?”

  Horace shook his head. “Nope. I can help you with software, a little, but I’m not the one who knows about all the rest of it. Maybe Mrs. Ashley would know.”

  Will smiled. “I’ve got a better idea. Chief, could we have a word in private?”

  “I can take a hint,” Horace said and pushed past Will and out the door.

  Will told Arthur about his conversation with Eugene Alter regarding Kendra’s car. “Before I could Mirandize him, he confessed, and then explained his reasons. I told him that it was not a federal matter and that Barstow PD would decide to charge him or not.”

  Arthur shook his head. “We can’t blackmail him into working for us. Not legal, not ethical, no way. You know better than that, son.”

  Will shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking of making it blackmail. I was thinking that I would go see him again, tell him that we couldn’t use his confession and that we have no other evidence, and there will be no charges. And then ask him if he would be willing to volunteer to do an IT survey of our facility, see what government grants are available, and then prepare the proposal or proposals. And if he says no, then that’s the end of it, no hard feelings, no reprisal, no surveillance, no nothing.”

  “Better yet,” Arthur said. “Let’s offer him a stipend. I can find $500 in the budget. See if he’ll go for that. And don’t say anything at all about the car he vandalized.”

  “Maybe someone else should call Alter and make that offer,” Will said.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Arthur said.

  §

  Back at his desk Will got out his notebook and called the Naval Construction Battalion at Port Hueneme. Petty Officer Marshall’s executive officer told him that Marshall had entered the service from Billings, Montana, where she was born and went to school.

  Will then called Special Agent Blair and asked for his help in determining when and where Kendra Farrell had returned from Costa Rica. Blair gave him a phone number and a name in Washington at the Department of State. Half an hour later, Will learned that, on November 25th, Kendra had entered the United States at Houston. She had departed Houston on United Airlines the same day and returned to Houston, again on United Airlines, two days later.

  Where had Kendra been for those two days?

  A call to United Airlines and an hour crawling through the corporate bureaucracy netted the answer: She was in Belize, which was much closer to Costa Rica than it was to Houston.

  Will decided that he wanted to know why she had gone to Belize by way of Houston, instead of flying direct. Google delivered an answer in less than a minute: There was no direct flight between the two countries. The only transportation available was local bus
es that took as long as four days and as few as two to go from San Jose, Costa Rica, to Belize City.

  Sixty-two

  Chelmin parked his rental car under a large, bare tree near the edge of a small city park across the street and a hundred meters or so down the block from Cheryl’s apartment. He had made much better time than expected from San Bernardino and was forty minutes earlier than Cheryl expected him. As he got out of the Ford, an old Chevrolet turned the corner behind him and burned rubber. Just before it blew past him, Chelmin hopped sideways out of the car’s path. He looked up to see a Latino youth giving him the finger.

  When the car disappeared around the far corner, Chelmin walked slowly and deliberately up the street, glancing around the unfamiliar neighborhood and glad for the chance to stretch his legs. His stump rarely bothered him if he was walking. Kneeling, squatting, climbing stairs, and anything that required him to use the muscles in his thigh for unusual purposes put strains on the stump. But a prosthesis was much better than a wheelchair, Chelmin reminded himself.

  At the end of the block, he paused and looked around. Something was wrong. It was a feeling. A slow scan of the street, illuminated by sodium vapor streetlights, and then the park, yielded no visible threat. Chelmin was left with a vague but palpable feeling of unease.

  I’m getting jumpy, he told himself. Too many gun battles for a man his age. Shoot, for any man.

  He carried two phones now. One was for Cheryl, the other was for all else. So, he was surprised when Cheryl’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the caller’s number, so he let the call go to voicemail. He retrieved the message: A man with a thick Spanish accent asking, in English, to speak with someone named Henry, then hanging up without leaving more of a message. A wrong number, Chelmin thought. Perhaps Henry was the person who had used the number before he got it. No matter. He put it out of his mind.

  A moment later, his other phone rang: FBI Special Agent Blair, in San Bernardino.

  “You’re working late,” Chelmin said, by way of a greeting.

  “I’m headed home,” Blair replied. “Hey, I’ve got something on Malone and Cardenas.”

  “I’m all ears,” Chelmin said.

  “They did spend some time in the same boot camp unit in San Diego. But Cardenas didn’t graduate.”

  “He was kicked out? An entry-level discharge?”

  “No, a medical. He got a stress fracture in one leg, his tibia, during the seventh week of training. What we used to call shin splints. He was on light duty for six weeks, and when he returned to duty, he was recycled—sent to another unit that was starting its training cycle. That’s where he might have met Malone. They were in the same unit, but I can’t tell if they were in the same platoon or the same squad.

  “Anyway, Cardenas was in that company only another six weeks. Then he fractured his other tibia, and after rehab, he was offered a medical discharge. He took it, and about a year later, he started in the Orange County Sheriff’s Academy.”

  “That’s in Santa Ana?”

  “Tustin, a few miles north. After graduation, he spent two years as a prisoner chaser in the county jail, then five years as a patrol officer. Then he quit and hooked up with the Santa Ana department.”

  “Sounds like he didn’t know Malone for very long.”

  “That’s right, but boot camp, you will recall, is a very intense and life-changing experience. You make a friend there, he might well be a pal for life.”

  “It’s certainly possible,” Chelmin conceded.

  “But wait, there’s moooooore,” Blair intoned, a fair take on a late-night cable television pitchman.

  “I got the rosters for both boot camp units, and ran all the names, looking for anyone with an arrest record. There were several. Except for a couple of rapes, not too serious—a couple of DUIs, a few burglaries, a few assaults. But one name really jumped out.”

  “Don’t tell me: Dalton Guerrero,” Chelmin said.

  Blair made a noise like a game show buzzer.

  “No grand prize for you, buddy. The name was Sebastian Alvarez,” he said. “He’s dead now, but in the nineties, he was Guerrero’s mentor, his first crew boss, when Dalton was coming up in the M-9 and making his rep as a stone killer.”

  “Did Alvarez and Cardenas ever cross paths while Cardenas was a deputy? Maybe in the jail?”

  “Real good question. I’ll look into that.”

  “Was Alvarez in boot camp with Cardenas, or was he in with both Cardenas and Malone?”

  “Only the first outfit. With Cardenas.”

  “So, if there’s a connection between Guerrero and Cardenas, it ran through Alvarez. But does it extend to Malone, as well?”

  “Don’t know. But I do have one more piece of the puzzle. When I ran all those names, I found four who were still in the Marine Corps. One is Sergeant Major Edward Bailey. He might have known both Malone and Alvarez, and he’s stationed at Twentynine Palms.”

  “Is that Edward Lewis Bailey? Lewis L-E-W-I-S? And Bailey with an ‘e’?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I was his squad leader in Kuwait,” Chelmin said. “I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s an amazing coincidence, Rudy.”

  “Not in the way you might think. Five hundred guys in two boot companies and, twenty-five, twenty-six years after boot camp, four are still in the Corps? That’s one percent. The truly amazing thing is that Bailey is a sergeant major. Lance Corporal Eddie Bailey was the platoon fuckup. Could hardly take his rifle apart and put it back together without a part or two left over. Slept on guard duty. Always late. Couldn’t button his utility jacket correctly. And we didn’t dare let him near a grenade—he’d have killed us all.”

  “Go see him for me, right?”

  “Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, anything on Cardenas’s financials? On Barney Lynch?”

  “Patience, Rudy. This isn’t prime time TV. Things take as long as they take.”

  “I’ll call you in a day or so,” Chelmin said, “after I talk to Bailey.”

  “Do that.”

  Sixty-three

  At one minute past seven p.m., Chelmin rang Cheryl’s doorbell. Almost immediately, the door opened, and there stood Cheryl in a simple blue dress that emphasized her curves and stopped above the knee, setting off her slim, muscular legs to good advantage.

  Without a word, she wrapped herself around Chelmin and all but dragged him into the apartment. In silence, they held each other for a long minute.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

  “Couldn’t help myself,” Chelmin said. “I ought to be investigating a murder, but all I can think about is you.”

  “Let’s make love. Now. Before I change my mind.”

  “I’ve only got one leg, you know?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s been a long time. Years. I don’t know if I still know how,” Chelmin said.

  “Me either. But I’ll bet we can figure it out.”

  They did.

  Sixty-four

  Will went into the computer room and found Hector reading a technical manual.

  “I need your help,” Will said. “How familiar are you with Facebook?”“Very. What’s the problem?”

  “I have a signed warrant to see Kendra Farrell’s Facebook account. They sent her password. I want to know when certain posts were made and, if possible, who made them.”

  “Who is Kendra? Why do you want to look at her Facebook posts?”

  “She was murdered. There are some posts on her page that accuse her ex-boyfriend of stalking her. He denies it. Is it even possible that someone else could have posted to her page?”

  “Sure,” Hector said. “They’d need her password. Or they’d need to be a good hacker and break in. I know a few guys who could do that.”

  “Kendra was held about a week before she died of exposure and dehydration. Whoever did that could have gotten her to give him the password just by promising her a little water.”
/>   “This is very spooky shit, Detective Will.”

  “It is that. Can you help me?”

  “Piece of cake. Do you want to use one of these computers?”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to do it out there in the detectives' room.”

  Hector slid off his bench, moved to a desktop PC, and turned on the monitor. “First, we go to Facebook,” he said, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Then we log in. Her Facebook name and password?”

  Will held out a page torn from his notebook.

  Sixty-five

  Cheryl said, “There’s a big mall only two blocks from here. Several very nice restaurants.”

  Chelmin said, “Do they have an Argentinian joint? Big side of roast beef? Handsome carvers in gaucho getups?”

  Cheryl giggled. “Not again. What are you hungry for?”

  “It doesn’t much matter. But I am getting hungry.”

  “Let’s get up and get dressed. It’s a five-minute walk. We can leave our cars here.”

  “Do they have sushi?”

  “The best,” Cheryl said. “But it’s a little expensive.”

  “Cheryl. I’m single for more than thirty years. My job pays a little more than $106,000 a year before taxes. I have no dependents. The Marines gave me medical retirement, and every cent of my tax-free pension is invested in a retirement fund. I own a small house in Salinas, free and clear. I don’t chase women—present company excepted—and I haven’t been drunk since Noreen passed. I rarely take vacations, and when I do, I usually spend them at home fixing something. I have seven suits, including one that’s just for funerals and such. The only thing I buy for myself is socks and underwear and once a year some new shirts. My car is four years old and paid for. I can afford to buy any kind of dinner your heart may desire.”

  Cheryl giggled again. “You make me feel like a teenager.”

  “Are you saying that you’re not still sweet sixteen?”

  Cheryl sat up. “Only in my heart.”