by Al Boudreau
“Maybe later on. I’m on my way to Framingham, Mass, and I’m about to press a convict for any information we might be able to use to find Sarah. If I’m lucky enough to get something out of her it, I might ask you to do some internet searches while I’m on my way back.”
“Okay. Good luck.”
I eased my foot off the accelerator as I put the finishing touches on the artistry surrounding my eye. It looked as though I’d had one too many shots of tequila the night before and picked a fight with the wrong biker.
I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up as MCI Framingham filled the view outside my windshield. I’d never done a deed serious enough to merit a stint behind the walls of a prison, but had spent plenty of time inside speaking with folks who had. Prison is not the frightening, lonely, dark place most people think it is. It’s worse. Wrapping up those visits always brought a huge sigh of relief.
I made my way inside and picked up the requisite visitor application paperwork in order to report for my reason for visiting, as well as to inform them whether or not I had a criminal record. I winced as I almost made the mistake of writing down my real name instead of my alias.
After reviewing my information and making a copy of my alternate NH driver’s license, one of the guards insisted I remove my leather jacket and boots. He tossed them in a visitor’s locker, then handed me some disposable slippers to wear. Five minutes later I was led through a series of security doors to a waiting room.
This was a first for me. My previous experiences had involved being escorted directly to a designated visitation area, usually just a large open room full of tables and chairs.
“Wait here,” the guard said as he unlocked the steel door to the small, windowless space and motioned for me to enter. I obliged and took a seat on the room’s lone piece of furniture, an old wooden bench. The fact that I was inside a correctional facility was unsettling enough, but got much worse when I heard the door close and latch.
A door with a piece of security glass about 12 inches square and no inside handle. I was lucky I wasn’t claustrophobic. Wait here. Like I had a choice?
Sarah was on my mind non-stop as I sat watching the sweep-second hand spin round and round on my old Seiko wristwatch. I dug deep to stay positive, fighting the urge to agonize over where she might be and what condition she was in. I kept telling myself that being here was the best first step I could take in my effort to determine her whereabouts. The kidnapper was dead, leaving his wife as the closest source of information I could come up with. I had to make this interview count.
If it ever happened.
Twenty minutes had passed when I noticed a guard’s face appear on the other side of the window. Finally.
He opened the door partway. “Can I get you a bottled water, Mr. … Steel?”
“What’s the deal here? I’ve been sitting in this closet for nearly half an hour now.”
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” he said and closed the door.
I squeezed the thick wooden base of the bench so hard I thought my fingers would break. “Sonofabitch,” I muttered, pissed-off that while my sanity was in complete meltdown mode these clowns were taking their sweet-assed time.
Five more minutes had passed when the same guard opened the door again, this time accompanied by a fifty-something Marine Corp type dressed in a three-piece suit and looking less than pleased. “Mr. Steel. Good afternoon. May I ask what your business is with Ms. Webber?”
His direct approach caught me completely off guard. I thought about asking who he was and, as a result, took too long to answer his question.
“Sir, stand up and hand me your identification.”
I did as I was told.
He gave my license a cursory glance then motioned with his fingers for me to hand him my wallet. He slid the two credit cards out and glanced at them.
Then slid all three inside his breast pocket.
He reached out, pressed his thumb against the skin directly below my fake black eye and dragged. He then reached inside his jacket for a handkerchief to wipe off his makeup-covered digit. “Mr. Peterson, the chief of police in Bridgeport tells me you’ve cooperated with and assisted his department in a number of investigations over the past several years. Which is the only reason I’m allowing you a get-out-of-jail-free card this afternoon.” He turned around, walked into the corridor, and pointed down the hallway. “Go home.”
I wasted no time in making my way down the hallway before he changed his mind. I gathered my boots and jacket then proceeded to the parking lot, still wearing the throw-away slippers.
I should have been scared witless, but I was too busy seething with anger.
I reached for my phone as soon as I was inside the car and placed a call to Detective James, who answered just as my tires were screeching out of the parking lot.
“Why on earth would you throw me under the bus like that? Sarah’s life is at risk and you pull a stunt like this? If you were here right now I’d punch you square in the jaw, you idiot.”
“Whoa, slow down. What are you talking about?”
“Are you kidding me? Some government spook just showed up at MCI Framingham and kicked me out. They wouldn’t let me anywhere near Rachel Webber. You’re the only one who knew I was coming down here this afternoon.”
“It wasn’t me. I would never do that to you. It had to have been the chief. The man didn’t get the position he holds by being stupid. He’s intuitive. And probably figured you’d take the course of action you did.”
I calmed myself down. “Okay, then I’m pissed off at the wrong guy, but I’m still angry as hell.”
“Listen, I understand, but you should get back here as quickly as you can. We found a piece of information in those redacted docs that will not only jumpstart our search for Sarah, but might also explain why the chief shut you down.”
Chapter 6
I spotted Detective James’s car sitting in its usual spot at the Bridgeport PD lot. I pulled in and parked, still sore about the chief undermining my efforts in Massachusetts, but knew I had to stuff my temper if there was any hope of further cooperation from the department. I took a few deep breaths before heading inside.
James was standing next to the chief’s desk inside his office. He and the chief appeared to be involved in some type of disagreement. The door was closed, so I tried to read their lips.
Turns out I’m not so hot at reading lips.
James saw me standing next to his cubicle and held up a finger so I’d wait. I nodded, then focused my attention on his desktop. A number of redacted docs were sitting front and center, sections of which were highlighted with a yellow marker. I assumed they related to our case and scanned the paperwork.
Two of the pages had the words Danforth Mills and Troy, NY circled, while a third document had the tail end of a word highlighted that appeared to have been meant for redacting. It looked as if the individual doing the editing had failed to black it out in its entirety. The letters itz remained. One line down, Scranton, PA was circled.
“That was fun,” James said as he appeared by my side. “He just reamed me out a second time for failing to inform him you were heading down to question Rachel Webber. Apparently he took some heat from Homeland Security. Their agent wasn’t too impressed with your fake ID. Or your attempt to fool facial recognition with your fake black eye.”
I turned and took several steps in the direction of the chief’s office when James nearly yanked my arm out of its socket. “Carter, do not go in there. The guy is hot. And he doesn’t want to see you right now. Let it go.”
I caught the chief glaring at me through the floor-to-ceiling window-wall of his command sanctum. Before I could make some smart-assed comment, James put his hand on my shoulder blade, grabbed the redacted documents, and herded me toward a conference room where we’d be out of the sightline of his perturbed boss.
“The last thing either of us wants to do is antagonize him right now.”
“From wher
e I’m standing he did us both wrong this afternoon,” I said, wanting nothing more than to go in and tell him so right to his face.
“Actually, we’re the ones who were wrong,” James shot back, taking me by surprise. “It was wrong of me to suggest the chief might have ratted you out. And you were wrong for getting caught wearing that stupid, fake black eye.” He held up the papers I’d been looking at on his desk and said, “Chief’s the one who put the pieces together to give us our first solid lead.”
I pulled out a chair and sat. “Well, okay, what’s the verdict?”
“We’re flying to Troy, New York. Tonight.”
“What’s in Troy, New York? Where is Troy, New York?”
“It’s next to the intersection of New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts. It’s an old industrial city on the Hudson River. And it’s the location of Danforth Mills.”
“What...”
“C’mon, let’s go. You can ask me anything you want once we’re on our way. Time’s wasting.”
James was right, and I was grateful for his sensibilities right now. Mine were obviously somewhere else. He waved to the chief on our way out of the building. I begrudgingly followed suit.
“We’ll take my car to the airport,” he said.
“How’d you get a plane on such short notice?”
“Chief set it up.”
It was becoming obvious I’d been too quick to judge the chief. “Thought he was pissed at me.”
“He knows you’re hurting, Carter. The guy can be a real pain in my backside, but he’s a good man to have in your corner. And he’s a good cop.”
I stopped to grab my pistol out of the glovebox of the Buick. I tucked the weapon in between the waist of my jeans and the small of my back, then climbed in the cruiser and we got under way. I was about to ask James what Troy PD had uncovered when he took a corner so hard I almost ended up in his lap.
“Geez, I’m gung-ho to get moving too, James, but let’s get there alive, okay?” My comment only made matters worse. He flipped on full lights and siren and punched the throttle. It was going to be a wild ride. Thankfully the airport was only five miles away.
“They’re waiting for us,” he said.
“They?”
“Troy PD.”
“Are you going to make me drag this out of you, or what?”
“The name Roland Creitz mean anything to you?” he asked.
“Never heard of the man.”
“Well, neither had we, but apparently Troy’s local cops, New York State Police, the Feds, and everyone else has. Creitz owns Danforth Mills and about twenty other industrial properties throughout the northeast. The place is a condemned steel factory right on the edge of the Hudson River. Apparently that property hasn’t had any activity in and around it for years. But ten days ago the power company got a request to begin supplying electricity to the place again. The code enforcement officer caught wind of it and decided to make a site visit this morning to determine what Creitz was up to. A couple of goons headed the code enforcement guy off before he could get very far. They wouldn’t let him in.”
“How does all of this relate to Sarah?”
“I had one of my men question that nurse who let Mike Webber leave the hospital with Sarah. She claims Webber drove to her apartment half a dozen times over the past 24 hours to coerce her into working with him. He showed up in his van every time except the first. The first time he came around, yesterday morning around 8:30 am, she watched him leave. Said he got in the back of what she described as a fancy black car with New York license plates.”
“You mean to tell me she had the presence of mind to jot down the license plate number?”
“No, but they’d pulled right into her driveway. She remembered the tag having three letters followed by two numbers. We took that information and checked it against what the chief managed to glean from the redacted docs. Turns out Creitz owns a mega-mansion in the Glenmaura section of Scranton, Pennsylvania. We ran the address through the state’s motor vehicle records and got a hit listing a late model Mercedes S-class sedan, black, with the registration RHC63. Bonus points if you can guess where that Mercedes is parked right now.”
“Danforth Mills.”
“Bingo. We should touch down in New York State just before sundown.” James pulled up next to a small turboprop aircraft.
We got settled in the plane and were streaking skyward within minutes. “This sure beats having to go through security at Logan,” I said.
“Definitely. We don’t have that kind of time right now.”
“Do you have those government files handy?” I asked. James handed them over. As I scanned the paperwork again I couldn’t help but feel impressed with how much progress the chief had made within such a short period of time. “These docs came from Homeland Security?”
“They did. Chief got them from the agent you met down at MCI.”
I shook my head. “Met isn’t exactly the right term. The guy never showed me his credentials. In fact, I don’t even remember him telling me his name.”
“Caldwell,” James said. “Dominic Caldwell. He’s with the Federal Protective Service. Boston office.”
“Well, that makes sense. They kept me waiting for over 30 minutes. He must have driven in from the city.”
“Apparently this Caldwell guy knew all about your tactics. To be honest, I’m surprised he didn’t push the issue and have you arrested. Anyways, Caldwell told Chief Goodhue that Rachel Webber was a protectee, in which case he was well within his purview to stand in your way.”
“A protectee? I thought that kind of attention just applied to heads of state and such.”
“You’re not really that naïve, are you Carter? The rules changed after 9-11. All of them.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“No offense, but you need to watch your back from now on. You may not have someone with power and authority close by to vouch for you next time.”
I ignored James’s last comment and held the documents up in front of him. “How’d the chief get so good at breaking down docs like this?”
“He was a cryptologic linguist in the Army for eight years before getting into law enforcement.”
“Yup, that explains a lot,” I said. My attitude toward the chief was shifting from anger to gratitude. “I would have been staring at these documents for weeks without drawing the conclusions he made in a few hours.”
“You should do an internet search on him later on. Type in Staff Sergeant Clyde Goodhue. You’ll be amazed at the chief’s accomplishments in the service. He’s somewhat of an unsung hero.”
“If we manage to locate Sarah unharmed tonight he’s going to be my loud-sung hero. I’ll be singing Chief Goodhue’s praises from the roof of the highest building in Bridgeport. That’s a promise.”
“Loud-sung hero,” James repeated then laughed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re odd, Carter?”
I smiled. “Only about once a day.”
“On a more serious note,” James said, “I cross-referenced the business where Rachel Webber worked with every stitch of information we could come up with on Roland Creitz and his holdings. So far I’ve come up empty.”
“That doesn’t mean much these days,” I replied. “It wouldn’t be too tough for him to have ties to Hy-Tek Solutions and not have his name show up on any of their filings.”
“True,” James said.
“How many millions is this guy worth, anyway?”
“Somewhere between 35 and 40.”
I whistled. “Sorry I asked.”
“Yeah, call me cynical, but I have a hard time believing one guy can amass that kind of scratch without breaking a lot of laws,” James said.
“That’s not being cynical, that’s just common sense talking.”
James was about to respond when the pilot asked him a question. A few words into his conversation I put my head back and closed my eyes.
I felt a bump and saw metal buildings outside the window.
&nbs
p; “You were really out,” James said. “I started to tell you a story about another crooked millionaire I helped take down. A couple minutes into it you were fast asleep.”
“How long?”
“How long were you out?”
“Yeah.”
“Nearly an hour.”
I felt like a complete loser. Sarah was in trouble, and I was snoozing on the job. “I’m about as useful as a buggy whip right now.”
“Where is this coming from?” James asked.
“Sarah needs me ...”
“C’mon, Carter. We both know you’re all over it. Think of it this way. Now that you caught a few winks you’ll be more effective when we rush our key suspect.”
“Nice of you to say, but I feel as inept as I’ve ever been. Sarah means everything to me, and I haven’t contributed a damn thing to this search.”
“Having someone close to you go missing is a tough position to be in, Carter. That’s why it’s important to have people in your life who support you. You and Sarah have made a huge difference in the close rates of multiple cases in the department. Time for Bridgeport to return the favor.”
“I appreciate that … I really do.”
The plane came to a stop and an unmarked cruiser pulled up next to us. James backhanded me in the chest before climbing out. “Turn your phone off.” I nodded. Last thing we needed was to have a phone ringing just as we’re about to breach the building.
Within minutes we were rocketing down the highway toward downtown Troy, NY, lights and siren filling the night sky. I sat in the back while James rode up front with the officer who’d come to pick us up. I tried to keep my outlook positive without feeling like I was setting myself up for a tremendous fall. The reality was that finding Sarah here in Troy was a long shot, but hauling Roland Creitz in for questioning could bring us closer to determining what had become of her.
The officer killed the siren and switched off the blues, telling me we were getting close to Danforth Mills. My heart rate began to climb as I imagined how this action might play out. I was grateful James had paved the way for letting me be there for the raid. The act of having a civilian involved in any police action was generally prohibited, and for good reason, but James knew I used to be on the force. He often said to me, Once a cop, always a cop.
