M-9

by Marvin J. Wolf

  §

  Clad in a stunning brocade kimono and wearing an ornate wig of real human hair, a Japanese woman set a small lacquered tray on the table between Cheryl and Chelmin. On it were two pieces each of tuna, salmon, shrimp, and flounder sushi. She bowed and withdrew.

  Chelmin poured sake into the tiny cup before Cheryl. She topped off his glass with a few ounces of beer.

  Chelmin lifted his glass and Cheryl her cup.

  Chelmin said, “Campai!” but before his glass touched her cup, the room shook, a hard jolt that sent the tray of fish skidding across the table and onto the floor.

  Overhead, ornate chandeliers tinkled as they swayed.

  “It’s only rock-and-roll,” Chelmin said, reaching across the table to take Cheryl’s hand.

  A few seconds later came a distant sound, unmistakable to Chelmin’s ears.

  “That was an explosion,” he said, “maybe an electrical transformer.”

  The room rocked a second time, somewhat less violently, and the lights flickered.

  After a few seconds, the hum of conversation resumed.

  The kimono-clad server returned. “I apologize for the inconvenience, sir,” she said in accented English.

  “If I’d known you had flying fish, I would have ordered some,” Chelmin said, his eyes twinkling.

  Cheryl smiled, but the joke was lost on the server, who removed the ruined sushi and bowed again before leaving for the kitchen.

  The sound of an approaching siren pierced the air. Then a second and a third siren was heard.

  As the sirens faded, the server returned with a new platter of sushi.

  “Please enjoy your meal,” she said, bowing.

  §

  An hour later, hand in hand, Chelmin and Cheryl strolled down the sidewalk toward her street. As they turned the corner, they encountered two uniformed policemen. Beyond them was the blasted hulk of a car beneath the jagged stump of a big tree that been blown into kindling. Two fire trucks blocked the street, and firefighters sprayed water at the park, where wooden picnic tables and scorched grass still smoldered.

  “Sorry, sir,” one of the cops said. “This is a crime scene. You can’t come any closer.”

  Chelmin produced his badge and ID card. “Federal agent,” he said. “Who’s in charge?”

  The cop pointed to a tall, lean, black man in a protective vest. “Captain Kline, of the Bomb Squad, is the incident commander.”

  Turning to Cheryl, Chelmin whispered, “Stay here a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  Chelmin walked over to Kline and held up his badge.

  “Chelmin, Army CID. That was my car. Anybody hurt?”

  Kline shook his head. “Not unless someone was hugging that tree when the bomb went off. We haven’t looked under the timber yet.”

  “What’s your best guess about the bomb?”

  “Hmmm. Hmmm. I guess that someone doesn’t like you. And I guess that the bomb was equipped with a trembler switch. If you had climbed in and moved it, that would be the end of the bomb, the car, and you. But that little quake we had triggered it.”

  sixty-six

  Will said, “Can you tell when a picture was posted?”

  Hector nodded affirmatively. He clicked on a photo on Kendra’s home page, then moved the cursor to highlight a date to the right of the photo. “This photo of Kendra and Gene was posted last June. Then somebody downloaded the image, flopped it, and cropped Kendra out. They posted the new image, which was a part of the old image, on January 26th.”

  “Kendra disappeared a few days before that. We found her body a few days after that.”

  Hector’s face lit up. “Then we discovered a new clue? Is that right, Detective?”

  Will smiled. “Yes. You discovered the clue. Now, can you tell me who uploaded this photo?”

  “Uh-uh. But it was uploaded from ...”

  Hector pressed several keys and a number with several periods and zeroes appeared on the screen.

  “... from Kendra’s computer at work. Or another computer on her network.”

  Will said, “You’ve been very helpful,” he said.

  “It was fun, Detective.”

  “It was. Now you must forget that password.,That Facebook page is evidence, and if you or anyone else were to go back into it, that would ruin its value.”

  “I could save the page, all her pages, as they are right now. Would that help?”

  “It would. Then we could save that on a flash drive or something and put it in the evidence locker.”

  “Five minutes. I’ll bring you a flash drive,.”

  “But you still have to forget that password, Hector.”

  “OK, I get it.”

  Sixty-seven

  An hour after chatting with Captain Kline, Chelmin was behind the wheel of Cheryl’s five-year-old Honda headed north on a freeway. In the trunk were two suitcases, packed with whatever Cheryl had been able to grab from her apartment.

  Chelmin said, “OK, now you can ask questions. And thanks for putting up with all this.”

  Cheryl asked, “Where are we going?”

  Chelmin said, “FBI safe house.”

  “What is that, exactly, a safe house?”

  “It’s a secure location where you can stay for a while and not be afraid.”

  “Are you going to be with me?”

  “No. I’ll be trying to find the men who tried to kill us.”

  “Then I will be afraid for you, Rudy.”

  “It can’t be helped, Cheryl. I’m sorry about that, but it’s just how things are at the moment.”

  “Is this your life now, Rudy? People trying to kill you all the time?”

  Chelmin shook his head. “Not really. I’ve been a CID agent almost twenty-six years, and in all that time, only two people have even threatened to kill me. Not counting what’s happened in the last week, of course.”

  “Then what is going on, Rudy?

  “I—we, Spaulding and me—seem to have stumbled into something that is very important to organized crime, to one particular gang, I think. And even if we still don’t know what it is that we’re onto, someone has decided to kill us to stall the investigation.”

  “What is it? Why is this so important?”

  Chelmin shook his head again. “It must have something to do with a connection between that gang, called the M-9, and something going on out at the Marine Supply Base. Weapons, I’m thinking. Maybe they’re stealing guns. Or money.”

  “How long will I have to stay in this safe house?”

  Chelmin shook his head. “I don’t know. “

  “I could lose my job, Rudy.”

  Chelmin nodded. “I think that would be a good idea. Your boss knows I’m your brother-in-law. And he’s got some connection to that gang. If he can’t kill me, he can kidnap you.”

  “But I need that job!”

  “You need to leave Orange County. Maybe you should move up to Salinas.”

  “I don’t know anyone in Salinas.”

  “I live in Salinas,” Chelmin said. “You could stay with me, for as long as you like.”

  “But I don’t have a job there, Rudy. I can’t impose on you.”

  “Here’s something to think about, Cheryl. I’m pretty much crazy about you. I think you like me, at least a little bit. Why don’t we see if we can stand each other for a few months, and if we can, we could get married.”

  Cheryl was silent for long enough that Chelmin took his eyes off the road and turned his head to look at her. She was crying.

  Chelmin said, “I guess maybe that was a little sudden. Look, come up to Salinas, and I’ll help you find a job on the base. I know quite a few people there. When you get settled, you can find your own place.”

  Cheryl reached over and put her left hand on Chelmin’s right arm.

  “Rudy, you just made me so happy that I couldn’t talk. I’ll move to Salinas. I’d love to share a home with you. I’m just as crazy about you as you are about me.”

  Chel
min glanced in the mirror for a long moment.

  “Cheryl, do you have a phone with GPS and maps?”

  “Sure.”

  Can you take it out, turn on the GPS, and tell me what’s ahead on this freeway, over the next five miles or so.”

  As Cheryl took her phone out, Chelmin looked in the mirror, pulled on his turn blinker, then cautiously moved two lanes to the right, one lane at a time, until he was in the slowest lane.

  Three cars back, another vehicle changed lanes and slid in behind the Honda, still two cars back. Its headlights were high off the road, and Chelmin thought that it might be a pickup truck or a big SUV.

  “Rudy, we’re coming up to the Santa Ana Freeway.”

  “Yes, I see the signs. What’s farther up the road?”

  “In about four or five miles, the Riverside Freeway.”

  “Thanks. Now put your phone away, push your seat way back, snug up your seatbelt, and grab onto something.”

  Chelmin heard the seat go back, then the belt-tightening.

  “What’s happening, Rudy?”

  “I think we’re being followed. I’m going to lose them.”

  As the off-ramp approached, Chelmin abruptly turned the wheel left and sailed across five lanes to a second off-ramp, barely escaping cars in each of the left lanes.

  The ramp ended at a signal on a busy street. it turned green, Chelmin turned right, then right again after a long block. The street led to an on-ramp; a minute and change after zooming across three lanes, Chelmin was back on the same freeway, still headed north.

  “Did I scare you?” he asked.

  “A little,” Cheryl said. “Are we still being followed?”

  “Not by that guy. But let’s see if there’s anyone else.”

  Chelmin moved to the center lane, glancing in the mirror. Nothing caught his attention.

  Three minutes later, as the Riverside Freeway approached, he passed a Highway Patrol car in the slow lane. Signaling, Chelmin moved one lane to the left, then a second lane. Behind the Honda, three cars back a set of headlights mirrored his moves.

  He increased speed to the posted limit. Ahead were signs for the HOV lanes. High-occupancy vehicles, or carpools, could avoid much of the traffic around freeway intersections by using these special connections, usually, lanes that went around and above the busy interchange.

  Without signaling, Chelmin moved across the barrier area and onto the HOV lane.The headlights followed. Almost immediately, the Highway Patrol car turned on lights and siren. Chelmin sailed over the bridge to the Riverside Freeway and headed east. There was no one behind him in the HOV lane as he slipped back into the fast lane.

  Twenty minutes later, with Cheryl consulting her GPS and calling out the turns, he left the freeway and drove a short distance north, then entered a tract of upscale, two- and three-story homes. After turning into a cul-de-sac, he stopped, pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it to Cheryl.

  “Call that number, please,” he said.

  She dialed. The other phone rang once, and at the last house before the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, a subterranean garage door rolled open.

  Chelmin eased the car into the garage alongside a Toyota compact, and the door closed behind him.

  Wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved dress shirt, Blair entered through a door.

  “Agent Thomas Blair, FBI, meet my…”

  “Later, Rudy. Make yourself comfortable upstairs. I’ve got to retrieve one my undercovers from the clutches of the California Highway Patrol.”

  Cheryl burst into laughter.

  Chelmin shook his head. “If that’s the guy who was trying to follow me up a carpool lane onto the Riverside Freeway, then I’m sorry. Had no idea he was one of yours.”

  “Serves him right,” Blair said and went back into the house. By the time Chelmin had carried Cheryl’s suitcases into the kitchen, Blair was gone.

  sixty-eight

  Cheryl’s phone rang. Chelmin recoiled in horror.

  “Don’t answer that,” he said in a low but measured voice. “Let it go to voicemail.”

  “Why, Rudy?”

  “Does your supervisor at work have this number?”

  Cheryl nodded, yes. “Of course.”

  “Sorry, but we’ve got to get out of here. Leave the suitcases.”

  “Rudy, you’re scaring me again.”

  “I’ll explain in the car.”

  A few minutes later, threading their way out of the subdivision, Chelmin reached over and squeezed Cheryl’s hand.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “I made a terrible mistake. If you know someone’s phone number, and their phone has a GPS, you can track their location.”

  “I thought that was only on TV.”

  “No. It’s for real. And if the gang has police on their payroll, they are certainly tracking us right now.”

  “Isn’t this where you tell me to take the battery out of my phone?”

  Chelmin snorted. “I should have thought of that, hours ago. We were only at that place for a few minutes. And now we’re moving again. I’m going to let them track your phone, but you won’t be anywhere near it.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Across from the subdivision was a large shopping center. Chelmin found a drugstore, took Cheryl with him to go inside and buy a roll of duct tape.

  Then they drove north to Interstate 10 and headed east for half an hour until a truck stop appeared ahead.

  Chelmin left the freeway, parked, then walked through the parking area until he found a set of doubles—a tractor-trailer rig with two identical trailers behind it. He taped the phone beneath the strut between the trailers, and they headed back to the safe house.

  Sixty-nine

  Working with information gleaned from Kendra’s Facebook account, Will had systematically contacted each of Kendra’s sixty-two Facebook friends. Only two had known that she was dead. He sent each friend a message and asked them to call him collect at Barstow P.D. Within the hour he found himself talking with Liana Morales in San Antonio, Kendra’s real-world friend since their time in the second grade in Seguin, Texas, a small city north of San Antonio.

  “Kendra changed her name when she graduated from high school,” Morales said. “She hated being Maria Fuentes. In just our school alone, there were twenty girls named Maria, two in our class besides her. She saw the name Kendra in some movie magazine and asked friends to call her that. She saved up the money, and when she turned eighteen, she went to the courthouse and got her named changed.”

  “So, she married someone named Farrell?” Will asked.

  “Exactly,” Morales replied. “Matthew Farrell was one of the most popular boys in our high school. A football player, debating team, student-body president. A year older than Kendra. After graduation, he went to Texas Tech. Kendra went a year later, and that’s when they started dating. They married right after he graduated.”

  Will said, “This has been very helpful. A couple more questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did Kendra speak Spanish?”

  “Of course. Almost everyone in Seguin speaks a little, even if it’s only Tex-Mex. We took four semesters of high-school Spanish together, but Kendra’s parents were native speakers. She was almost fluent even before high school.”

  “Last question. Can you think of any reason why Kendra would want to visit Belize? Or Costa Rica?”

  “No, not really. She made a few trips to Mexico with her mother when she was younger, to see her cousins. But not Belize—where is that, anyway?”

  Will said, “Central America. Used to be called British Honduras.”

  “I can’t imagine why she’d go there,” Morales said.

  After asking her to call him if she thought of anything else Will broke the connection.

  It was time to talk to Alter again, he decided. He must know more about why Kendra wanted to visit Costa Rica and then sud
denly, on her own, left for Belize.

  Seventy

  As Chelmin approached the entrance to the subdivision where Blair kept a safe house, he heard sirens. A police car, an ambulance, and then a second police car flashed by. When he steered into the cul-de-sac, he saw all three police vehicles and two more, including a large van, lights flashing, arrayed in front of the safe house. Near the center of the pavement stood Blair, conferring with two uniformed police.

  Chelmin stopped the Honda, asked Cheryl to remain inside, and took out his badge and credentials as he entered the circle of flashing lights.

  Blair seemed shocked to see him.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded.

  “Right after you left, I realized that Cheryl’s boss at Parking Enforcement had her cell-phone number and that the gang might be tracking her. So, we left. I found a truck going east on the Interstate and taped the phone to it. Then we came back.”

  “I was sure that they’d kidnapped you.”

  “What happened here?”

  “I had two undercovers in the Santa Ana area. The one in the pickup truck, Melendez, the guy that you lost on the freeway, eventually found his way back here. My other man, Hogan, was nabbed by the CHP on that traffic stunt you pulled. They were holding him because his cover ID brought up a raft of outstanding warrants. So it took me a while to spring him.

  “Time we get back here, the front door is open, Melendez is dead, and you two are gone.”

  “Do you think they tracked Cheryl’s phone here?”

  Blair shook his head, no. “Doesn’t make sense. You weren’t here more than three or four minutes. If they were tracking you, they’d know that you’d left and were headed away from the area.”

  Chelmin set his jaw. “A leak, then?”

  “Gotta be. And that means that my other safe houses are compromised, as well.”

  “And that means that I’m on my own, for now.”

  “I could go to the office and call Los Angeles. Or Phoenix.”

  “Safe houses are compartmentalized information?”