Chasing the Captain

by Terry Shepherd

  “Okay, Bob. I believe you. It had to be something horrific, or you wouldn’t put your reputation at risk. Thank you for the honesty.”

  Goulding was standing now, leaning forward with his palms on the top of his desk. “What will you do now, Officer Clark?”

  “I’ll talk it over with Detective Ramirez.”

  Everything about Goulding’s narrative felt like slime. But somewhere inside that suit, there had to be a shred of character.

  “We all get into the game with high ideals,” Ali said. “They crumble when we see the world as it really is.

  “Here’s the thing, Bob. We took these jobs because we believe in justice and the search for truth. We are sworn to protect the innocent and pursue the guilty. For whatever reason, someone forced you to do the antithesis of everything you stand for. That’s troubling. I appreciate the slice of candor. But, like you, I need more evidence before rendering judgment.”

  The sweat was running down the DA’s sideburns. Whatever this was, had him shook. “If you don’t stop this, what you’re looking for will come to you. And it won’t be pretty.”

  Ali felt genuine empathy for the guy and tried to communicate it. “Thanks, Bob. I’ll watch my back. You had to know that this would all come out at some point. I hope you have a plan-B.”

  The DA nodded. There was resignation in his expression. “Be careful, Officer Clark. You have no idea what’s inside of this powder keg you are opening.”

  Ali was asking Goulding’s admin where she could find a coffee shop with some Wi-Fi when they heard the gunshot. The woman beat Ali to the door.

  District Attorney Robert Goulding’s torso was bent over his desk. His head rested on its chin like a bearskin rug. A Taurus Judge revolver smoked in his right hand. The .410 slug cleaved his skull from side to side, painting the far wall with a crimson and gray mixture of a troubled existence.

  Whatever Jess was into was enough to force the man to take his own life.

  The admin froze, clearly in shock. Ali put her hands on the woman’s shoulders and focused on her stunned expression.

  “Call 9-1-1. Let’s get some help.”

  The admin nodded and left the room.

  Ali had only seconds to scan the place before she would have to bail. She saw it on the edge of the desk, about a foot from the hand that pulled the trigger.

  It was a sheet from the DA’s personal notepad with two names and an address. Above the scrawl was Ali’s name, underlined.

  She slipped the paper into her pocket. “Now you’re tampering with evidence in a murder case, Alexandra,” she said to herself, deciding that it was time to get the hell out.

  She saw the suits in the lobby. Identical down to the sunglasses. They were kind enough to wait until she was on the street before accosting her. At least there were more options out in the open.

  “Alexandra Clark?”

  “What do you want?”

  “You must take a ride with us, ma’am.”

  “I prefer my own company, thank you.”

  A hand grabbed her arm. Ali could see the other man reaching under his suit coat, where she knew guys like him carried their heat.

  The voice was cold, insistent, official. “This isn’t optional.”

  He pointed to a blue Ford sedan with an open door. There was a small crack in the windshield on the passenger side.

  The grip was firm but not firm enough. Ali broke it with ease and sprinted south toward Bank Street. The lunch hour congestion on the sidewalk was thick. It was an advantage, and Ali needed any advantage she could get.

  The suits had as much trouble threading through the maze of humanity as she did. But Ali had about ten steps on them. That was enough.

  She made the left turn on Bank and ran in the street against traffic. Ali was fifty yards ahead of them when she took another left on First Avenue and melted into the thicket of people and trees in Bicentennial Park.

  27

  FBI Headquarters—Washington, DC

  Terry Taylor recognized the number. The boss almost never called his cell. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation preferred the privacy of his office, where confidences had a better chance of preservation and verbal promises could easily be broken.

  “There’s a problem with the Nashville matter.”

  Terry frowned. Directors came and went. He had served a dozen of them. This one was particularly wedded to the inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The director was smart enough to give Terry his freedom. Sometimes that freedom came with a political price tag.

  Taylor could hear his boss inhaling a Marlboro on the other end of the line before continuing.

  “Two Illinois yokels are asking questions.”

  Taylor rubbed the Marine crew cut that had been part of his brand since Parris Island. Friends said it stimulated his thinking.

  “Civilians?”

  “Law. Handle it.”

  The gravel voice disconnected the call before Taylor could affirm the order.

  28

  Met Headquarters—London

  Jess twirled the two 4x6-inch passport photo cards through her fingers like a magician knuckling a silver dollar. She sat next to Lee in the small cubical Research kept for temporary visitors. The detective felt her phone vibrate and saw Ali’s icon pop up as an incoming call.

  The connection was excellent. Ali sounded as if she were sitting at the next desk.

  Her partner’s voice dripped with its usual combination of sarcasm and excitement. “This is getting interesting.”

  “Talk to me, partner.”

  “The DA shot himself in the head after my visit. Two goons in suits tried to abduct me when I left the building. And there are guys with guns and sunglasses watching my rental car. I’m guessing a few more people know about your little trip to London.”

  This stunning development came close to cracking Jess’ legendary game face. Close, but not close enough for Lee to realize that there was trouble. “I’m pretty sure that Marie Culpado is alive, Ali. Or at least she was when she and her boyfriend snuck into the UK with fake passports ten years ago.”

  “Are you listening to me, Jessica? You’ve got a tiger by the tail. I think it’s time to talk to Michael Wright about this. I smell FBI all around me.”

  The name triggered a flood of conflicting emotions that Jess didn’t want to process. The dinner. The exquisite night of passion. And the new, uncomfortable feeling of missing Michael when he dropped her off at Dulles.

  She wore his necklace, but she was still unsure if she could ever wear his ring.

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m at a Wi-Fi coffee shop. Got the countermeasures turned on. If these guys are, in fact, federal, they already have talked to Chief O’Brien and can track my cell, so I’ll keep this short. DA Goulding left me a love note before he pulled the trigger. Names and an address. Do Rufus and Charlene Yates mean anything to you?”

  They did. Just unusual enough to make an impression on a cop with PTSD, forced to witness an execution.

  “Yes. They are supposedly Marie Culpado’s parents.”

  “Well, that’s my next port of call. The late Mr. Goulding left me that morsel.”

  “Be careful, Ali. I’m regretting getting you into this mess.”

  Jess’s partner laughed. “Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had since you almost got me killed in Flagstaff. You be careful, partner. Do you want to call Michael, or should I?”

  She could feel Ali sensing the hesitation. Partners in the police profession got good at that sort of thing.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll call him after I visit Rufus and Charlene. Geez, you’d think they could come up with more innocuous aliases.”

  “You’re the best, partner. Watch your back.”

  “You watch yours. I’m not over there to watch it for you.”

  Jess had Ali on speaker so Lee could hear the conversation.

  “I’m wishing I had not dragged you into this, Lee. Things might
get dicey for you.”

  Lee focused on typing a query into her terminal. “I grew up in Johannesburg, Jessica. It was open warfare down there, especially for ‘colored people’ who look like me. I’ve seen friends shot dead and have had guns pointed at my face. This feels like a vacation.”

  Jess knew she was underplaying it. Ali was rarely serious. Her words of warning were sinking in. Jess slid a finger along the indentation that ran from the wrist to the elbow of her right arm, a past battle scar she treasured to remind her of that place where courage and stupidity intersect.

  It felt like she was at that very intersection now.

  Lee finished typing and hit the return key. “Now, let’s see what one of the world’s most sophisticated databases can tell us about our friends, Marie and Jonathan Blair.”

  It didn’t take long. In what seemed like an instant, the screen beeped, and a red box appeared with the words “Information Restricted—IT Security Notified” inside.

  Lee grimaced. “Oops. That’s not good.”

  “What just happened?”

  “Well, whatever covert research we may have been doing off the clock just got everyone’s attention.”

  Her cell lit up. The word “Maddox” appeared on the screen.

  “Bollocks. That’s the boss. I’m feeling a chunder coming on.”

  She opened the connection. “DI Evans speaking. Yes, sir. I’m in the building. Yes… I will report to your office now.”

  Lee shot the detective a glance. It was an expression Jess knew well. The heat was coming, and she was preparing for it.

  “Wait here.”

  29

  Nashville

  Rufus and Charlene Yates. You have to be kidding me. Someone probably picked those monikers out of an old phone book.

  But they must still exist, or Goulding wouldn’t have given Ali an address with the names.

  She abandoned any idea of retrieving the rental car and flagged a passing Uber. No telling if spies were watching her Internet traffic. The driver was at the end of his shift and willing to take another fare without sharing a cut with his contract employer.

  Ali handed him an address and a twenty while she tried to add up the equation.

  They sacrificed Culpado to protect his wife, who was now allegedly living underground in London with another husband. It took some major pressure to get a district attorney to be complicit in what was essentially murder one.

  Why?

  What was it about Marie Culpado that made her that valuable to the United States Government?

  It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots. She had to be under protection.

  It was still too early for Ali to put that theory into stone. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Yates could enlighten her.

  She had the Uber guy drop her off a block away from the address. Ali flipped him two more twenties and asked him to hang around for a few minutes.

  As the home came into view, she could see a phalanx of police cars and EMS on the street. A uniformed cop kept a knot of neighbors at bay.

  She joined the gawkers, asking nobody in particular, “What’s going on?”

  A woman Ali assumed to be one of the local gossips put a hand next to her mouth, the universal symbol for sharing a secret she wanted everyone else to know.

  “Someone killed Rufus and Charlene. I heard the shots and called 9-1-1.” She pointed to a gurney with a black body bag on it, flanked by two men with coroner jackets.

  “That has to be her. She was the short one.”

  Ali made a mental inventory of the scene. Four black and whites, an ambulance, the coroner’s van, and three unmarked units. One jogged a memory. She recognized the blue Ford with the cracked windshield.

  On the front porch, Ali’s two boyfriends were in a heated exchange with what looked like the cop in charge. She couldn’t make out the words, but she knew the look. The locals don’t like it when federals flex their muscles.

  The guy who tried to grab her arm seemed to be the senior player. He made a cutting motion with his hand as if to signal that the conversation was over.

  Ali could hear the head cop’s voice calling after the two in blue as they walked toward their vehicle. “We’ll see about that.”

  Badges were hanging around their necks. Even from a distance, she recognized them.

  FBI.

  30

  The G8 Summit—Brussels

  Governor Darell Sisson and his party compatriots sat across from the Group of Three. The memory of watching the aircraft he was originally scheduled to fly drill into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean was still intruding on his concentration. He tried to shake it off and focus.

  Each man in the trio had a cadre of bodyguards in tow. It felt to Sisson as if there were more soldiers at the meeting than there were participants.

  In the hotel’s main conference room, the world press listened to leaders mouth the same, tired political sound bytes.

  Things only change, Sisson thought, when you talk with the people in charge.

  It occurred to the governor that these were the new “knights of the round table” as he studied the configuration of the gathering. The adversaries sat in two semi-circles. Sisson and his fellow governors were almost shoulder to shoulder on one side, binders with economic data before them. The three oligarchs with ties to Russia, China, and India, sat on the other. Although each was clearly fluent in English, earbuds connected them to translators who sat at a separate table off to the side. Identical digital note pads were the only accouterments in front of them.

  Sisson stood, walked around to a break between the two semi-circular tables and entered the space between them, facing his foreign audience.

  “Let me begin by thanking each of you for taking the time out of your busy schedules for this extraordinary conversation. I won’t spend any more of it with platitudes or a long introduction. We are here to discuss the efficacy of the American consumer market, a juggernaut that is still the largest in the world and a powerful force for commerce and profit.”

  The governor waved a hand, and a bar chart flashed on the wall behind him, denoting the world’s markets. The United States was, by far, the longest bar, dwarfing even the countries these three powerful men represented.

  “Unfortunate messaging about the United States becoming a ‘dying nation’ being spread by misinformed individuals on social media has bled into the mainstream. It is a subject of discussion by the politicians in the auditorium next to our little gathering.”

  Another sign and the image behind Sisson dissolved into a series of headlines: “America is Impotent on the World Stage. US Consumers are overextended. High debt. Can’t afford what they buy.”

  Sisson continued, “We know that each of you controls vast media empires that may contribute to this misinformation. And we felt it was important for you to know that it is not representative of the hard-working men and women each of us represents.”

  Sisson took a step closer to the three men. He could see the row of bodyguards tense.

  “America is a confederation of individual states. Our presidents come and go. The shifting sands of federal policy ultimately have little impact on history. The states are the engines of commerce that continue to make America great.”

  The Chinese billionaire who sat, hands flat on the table, to the right of his Russian and Indian counterparts, bent a palm upward.

  The governor halted his presentation, bowing in the man’s direction.

  The voice was quiet but powerful and foreboding. Sisson could feel the room temperature drop.

  “These are the facts, Governor Sisson,” the oligarch said. “Consumer debt in your country tops fourteen trillion dollars. That’s forty-two thousand two hundred and ninety-six dollars in debt for every man, woman, and child in the United States. The median household income in your country is slightly over sixty thousand dollars a year. Your constituents spend nearly every cent they earn. You save just four point nine percent of your income. Your economy is growing at
just two point three five percent per year. You rank one hundred fifteenth out of one hundred ninety-three nations.”

  The man paused for effect.

  “The world knows that America is in trouble and can’t pay her debts. Despite this admirable overture, we have little confidence that this will improve. We fear it will soon do quite the opposite.”

  Sisson could see his grand meeting disintegrating. “But the stock market,” he began.

  Another raised palm shut him up.

  “The American stock market is the realm of gamblers. When a small group of people on a social network can band together to raise the stock price of a failing company, that is proof that your markets reflect unreasonable exuberance, rather than the true value of your economy.”

  The Chinese oligarch pressed his chair backward. His two counterparts followed suit.

  “We must prepare for a global community, where the United States is no longer an economic powerhouse, nor a reliable partner. That, gentlemen, is our conclusion.”

  Darrell Sisson was never at a loss for words. He worried his fellow governors would note the change. Before he could gather himself to respond, the three men and their security entourages disappeared through a side entrance.

  Governor Chris Buchanan stood. Sisson’s chief rival in the early polls of possible presidential contenders spoke to the stunned group of leaders. “Well, gents, we’ve just seen Darell’s oval office prospects vaporize before our eyes. We may wish we were all on that plane that took a dump in the Atlantic before this debacle is over.”

  Outside of the conference room, the Group of Three exchanged wordless glances. “Are we still in agreement?” the Indian said.

  All nodded in affirmation.