by Henry Hack
Bob Willis adored his family. His wife would never believe that story, but Jason knew better than to protest further. “Of course,” he said.
“We’re done here then,” Mark said. “Thank you, again for your help, Joseph.”
13
When ten o’clock came and went that evening and Pop hadn’t called in, John McKee dialed his apartment. He got his machine and said, “Hi, Sam, give me a call as soon as you can.”
“What’s the matter?” asked John’s wife, Dorothy.
“I’m worried about Pop. If he had dinner scheduled for six, he should have been home by now – or at least he should have called.”
“Did you try his cell phone?”
“That would be dangerous if he’s with the bad guys. We have a prearranged conversation, but I don’t want to take the chance yet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find him,” he said, dialing Nick Faliani.
“Nick, I haven’t heard from Pop. I’m worried. You have the key to his place, right?”
“Right.”
“Call a couple of the guys and go check it out. Wait there for me to call. I’m going to call a couple others and I’m going downtown to the restaurant.”
“Should I alert the whole team, just in case?”
“Good idea. Talk to you later.”
The restaurant was closing up when John McKee, Danny Boyland and George Washington entered. The maitre d’ did remember the gentleman they described and also gave a good enough description of Pop’s two companions for them to realize they were probably Mark and Number Five. “Can you remember which way they went when they left?” John asked.
“No,” he said.
“How about the time they left?”
“It had to be just before seven, because I filled their table again at seven.”
“Thanks,” John said, “you’ve been a big help.”
They went outside and called Nick who said, “Pop’s not here, but nothing’s out of order.”
“No note? Any messages on the machine?”
“No note and the only message was yours.”
Danny grabbed John’s arm and pointed to the subway entrance. “That’s the PATH train to Jersey,” he said.
“Nick,” John said, “get the rest of the team to meet us at the office. We’re suiting up and going to Jersey.”
“You think Pop may be at Mark’s place?”
“I hope so… but then I don’t hope so.”
“Understood. We’re on our way.”
It was well after midnight when John McKee and the six members of the Task Force, dressed in battle gear and heavily armed, crept closer to Mark’s house. There were no lights on and they were able to approach the house easily. The blinds were drawn so they could not see inside. Danny slowly tried to turn the knob on the front door, “It’s unlocked,” he whispered to his partner. A minute later Nick came around from the back and whispered, “The back door is unlocked, too”
“Okay,” John said. “On my shout, I want three to enter from the front and three from the rear. It’s a small house and Mark is probably sleeping. Locate him first.”
When they were in place, John yelled, “Now!”
Within seconds the two teams had poured into the house and found the lights – and found Pop Hunter. “John!” Nick yelled. “Get in here quick!”
The rest of the teams searched the empty house in a couple of minutes then found their way to the living room where a stunned John McKee stood with his hand on Pop’s shoulder with tears streaming down his face. Nick cried out, “Pop! Pop! Look what they did to you!”
They paid silent homage to their friend and partner for several minutes until John said, “I’m not sure how to handle this. We have to call Harry and Walt.”
After absorbing the devastating news, Walt and Harry forced themselves into their professional roles. “My inclination is to get Pop’s body out of there and not to involve the local police,” Walt said.
“I agree,” Harry said. “I’m not fond of cover-ups, but in this situation we have to play it close to the vest. Take a few pictures and then bring him back to the office. I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll be there too as soon as I make a few calls,” Walt said.
Susan awoke as Harry was getting dressed. “Where are you going? It’s after one o’clock.”
“Something terrible has happened. I have to go.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and started to ask what could be so terrible, when he turned toward her. “You’re crying!” she said.
“Susan, they killed him. The murdering bastards killed him.”
“Who, Harry? Who?”
“Pop Hunter. He’s dead. The Romens killed him.”
She took him in her arms as his tears turned to deep sobs. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Poor Pop – and poor, poor Vera.”
They brought Pop’s body back to Task Force headquarters in Manhattan and placed it on the bunk of an empty cell gently covering it with a blanket. Before the sun rose four hours later, with the collaboration of the chief medical examiner based on a call from the Secretary of Homeland Security, Pop’s body was released to a Long Island funeral home with a signed death certificate attesting Charles E. Hunter died of a sudden, massive heart attack. An acute myocardial infarction was the exact medical terminology on the paper. The funeral director, a former law enforcement officer, had handled “special” cases like this before and promised to do thorough and undetectable repair work to the two bullet holes in Pop’s head.
A forensic team had been dispatched to Mark’s home, but the search for physical evidence came up empty. All fingerprints had been wiped from the surfaces most likely to retain them. Two teams of four agents each were sent to the two locations they knew housed disciples Number Two and Number Seven as previously reported by Pop. Both premises had been vacated and the follow-up forensic examinations again proved fruitless.
As the team digested all the bad news of the early morning hours, the sun broke through the slatted blinds in the conference room. Harry blinked and said, “We have to tell Vera.”
“How are we gonna do it?” Nick asked.
“I’ll go out there soon – give her time to wake up.”
“And I’ll be with you,” Nick said.
“So will I,” said John McKee and Walt Kobak almost simultaneously.
“Okay,” Harry said. “let’s get some breakfast and head out to Long Island.”
It was 8:30 when they drove up to the neat ranch house in Westbury Harry knocked at the front door and when Vera opened it she smiled, but only for an instant as she saw the look on his face. She staggered, weak in the knees, and stumbled forward into Harry’s arms. “It finally happened,” she said. “I’ve been dreading this moment for over forty years.”
Harry helped Vera inside followed by Walt, Nick and John who each hugged and consoled her. They all sat down in the den and Harry told her what had actually happened, including the phony heart attack story concocted as a cover-up.
“Of course,” Walt said, “Pop will get all the honors due him and you will get all the benefits due the wife of a federal law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty.”
“Thank you, but that won’t bring my Charles back to me, will it?”
“No, unfortunately it won’t. I just meant…”
“I know, Walt. Don’t you worry – don’t any of you worry. I’ll go along with the cover-up. I know it’s necessary. But you’ve got to promise me something – and I mean you, Harry.”
“Yes, Vera?”
“My Charles loved you like the son he never had. From the time you were in rookie school together, to the time you were in trouble on your beat, to the shootouts in Jackson Heights and Brooklyn with OBL-911, and now with the Romens, my Charles was with you all the way. I know when they shot him – I just know he said something like – ‘go ahead and shoot me you coward, wacko bastards, but my friends will get you – my friend Hoppy will get you
r terrorist asses."'
They all smiled in spite of the situation and Walt said, “That’s just about what we figured he said, too.”
“Then all of you get out of here and get to it. I have to call the funeral parlor and I have to pick out a suit…”
Vera burst into tears and had a long cry in Harry’s arms. When she finished, she straightened up and said, “Now go. It’s on you, Hoppy. You get them for me. You get them for my husband.”
“I’ll get them,” he said, the tears now streaming down his face. “As God is my witness, I’ll get them.”
On the ride back into Manhattan, after a good twenty minutes of silence, Harry said, “I just made a promise to Vera back there, and it was a promise I fully intend to keep. Help me out here. What do we have on these guys? What’s in the hopper?”
“Now we have nothing,” John McKee said. “Absolutely fucking nothing.”
“You have nothing at all on these guys?” Susan asked as she and Harry sipped coffee that afternoon in the kitchen of their apartment.
“No,” he said, hoping the caffeine would keep him awake after being up all night, but more importantly energize his brain. “Pop wasn’t in the Romens long enough.”
“What about the guy who introduced him?”
“Huh?”
“The guy where Pop worked undercover. Didn’t you tell me he introduced Pop to the disciple who got him into the Romens?”
Susan's question had difficulty connecting the right neurons in Harry’s brain – still groggy from lack of sleep, and in shock over the death of his friend.
“Harry?”
“Yeah… yeah, I think I got it – Bob Willis.”
“Go get him and grab him by the balls and squeeze until he tells you who his cousin the disciple is, and where to find him.”
“Goddamn, Susan. You’re right! I’m embarrassed. I’m supposed to be the cop in this family.”
“You’re tired and gloomy. You would have thought of him eventually.”
“Thanks for the sympathy, Detective Susan, but more importantly, thanks for the lead. Now I have to make some calls.”
While Harry and Susan were discussing Bob Willis, the Task Force members sat dejectedly in the conference room. “Any ideas?” Carl Petersen asked.
His answer came in the form of silence, bowed heads, shuffling feet and muted coughs. Finally, Nick Faliani said, “Carl, we need a fuckin’ break.”
“Good cops make their own breaks,” he said. “Let’s all do something, anything but sit around here moping and feeling sorry for ourselves. Hit the streets, hit the computers, hit the telephones. Do something!”
Petersen stomped out of the room and they got up and tried to figure out what exactly to do. Alicia said, “Carl’s feeling the heat, I see.”
“I understand the situation,” McKee said, “and I wish I had some advice for you guys. I know you don’t believe in make-work and spinning your wheels. Neither do I – but we have to do something.”
“John,” Nick said softly, “we need a fuckin' break.”
The telephone rang and John picked up. He listened awhile then said, “Will they be expecting us?”
He hung up and said, “Here’s something, and it could be the break you said we needed. That was Harry. He just got off the phone with Sheldrake Associates. They’re assembling all of Pop’s UC reports he submitted while working at Henderson-Sparr. They should be ready for pick up in twenty minutes. Will you go, Nick?”
“Sure, but what could be in there to help us?”
“The address of Bob Willis, who was the guy who introduced Pop to his cousin – Disciple Number Five.”
“Holy shit! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“For the same reason none of us here, or Harry himself, thought of it. We’re all sitting here in a funk with our heads up our asses, that’s why,” John said.
“But Harry…” Nick began.
“Was reminded of Willis by Susan, who, thankfully, did not have her head up her ass.”
The database research Pop had done on Bob Willis revealed his home address, wife and children’s names and the make, model and plate number of the vehicles he owned. One entry marked “Pending” said, “Submitted request to research unit to try to find all male cousins of Bob Willis.” The results of that request had not yet been returned to the file.
It was past five in the afternoon when Nick and Alicia Johnson pulled up in front of Bob Willis’s house in the suburban community of Livingston, New Jersey. The home was on a large treed lot in the neat neighborhood.
“Smell that country air,” Nick said as he and Alicia walked toward the front door.
“Doesn’t smell like the Jersey I know,” she said.
“That’s because we’re way away from the damn Turnpike. Nice house Bob has here. Not bad for an accounting supervisor.”
“Maybe that dough he was embezzling didn’t all find its way to the Romens.”
The door was opened by an attractive, but harried looking woman in her thirties. Nick and Alicia introduced themselves, but before they could ask to be let inside, Mrs. Willis blurted out, “Have you found him yet?”
“Pardon me ma’am?” Alicia asked, looking quizzically at Nick.
“Bob, my husband. Have you found him? You are the police, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but we’re from the New York Terrorist Task Force. Your husband is missing?”
“Yes, the local police are looking for him. I’m confused now. What are the New York police doing here?”
“Ma’am,” Alicia said. “May we come in? Then perhaps we can sort things out.”
“Certainly,” she said. “Forgive me, and please do come in. I’m Ann Willis.”
Nick explained their presence here was to speak to her husband about someone he might know who they were interested in locating. Ann explained Bob had taken a week of vacation beginning Monday to work on projects around the house, and he left at around nine this Saturday morning to go to Home Depot for deck lumber and other materials.
“And he hasn’t returned yet?” Alicia asked.
“No. When he wasn’t back for lunch, I got in my car and drove to the Home Depot which is about five miles away. I found our van in the parking lot and I went into the store. I walked through the entire place, but he was not there. There are two other stores nearby – a Best Buy and a Target. I searched both of them also to no avail. I called the police and they took a report and then they came home with me to get a photo of Bob.”
“Have you heard from them since?”
“Yes, they called about an hour before you arrived to tell me Bob had not used his Home Depot card or any other credit card at any of the three stores. And no one who they showed the photo to recalls seeing him in any of the stores today.”
“What did the police do with your husband’s van?”
“They’re towing it in to their regional laboratory for processing for evidence.”
“Good,” Nick said. “We’ll touch base with them after we leave here.”
“This person you think Bob knows – is it possible he may know something about Bob’s disappearance?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said, “but the person we are trying to locate may be Bob’s cousin.”
“Which one? He has a lot of them.”
“I have a photo taken from a long distance camera of a man we think may be Bob’s cousin. Perhaps you can verify that for us.”
Ann Willis squinted at the photo then reached over to the end table and put on a pair of glasses. “That’s Jason,” she said. “Jason Morgan, and he is Bob’s cousin.”
“Do you have an address and phone number for him?”
“Let me check our address book. Be right back.”
As she walked out of the living room Nick and Alicia looked at each other and held up crossed fingers – on both hands.
“His name is here,” she said, “and I think this telephone number is where he works.”
“Where is that?”
/> “Gotham Books in Manhattan. See, this is a 212 Manhattan area code.”
“Is that the huge store on Seventh Avenue around 14th Street?” Nick asked.
“I believe so.”
“Mrs. Willis, do you know if Jason ever worked at the New York Public Library? The main branch on Fifth Avenue?”
“Why, yes he did. He took Bob and I and the kids on a tour of the library a couple of years ago. He quit to take a manager's job at Gotham – more money, you know.”
“Do you have any idea where he lives?” Alicia asked..
“No. Maybe Manhattan, but he’s also lived in Queens and Brooklyn.”
“Family?”
“He’s not married and his parents are retired in Arizona.”
“Any causes? Is he devoted to a particular cause like politics, cancer research…?”
“The environment. So is Bob. They always talk about saving the earth, the oceans and the animals.”
“Is there anything else you can recall that could help us locate Jason?”
“No, not that I can think of now. Is Jason somehow perhaps connected to Bob’s disappearance?”
“Perhaps,” Nick said. “Did the local police ask you the standard embarrassing questions about why Bob might have disappeared?”
“You mean like girl friends, drugs, booze and gambling?”
“Yes.”
“No, no, no and no. There’s no money missing from our bank account. Bob is a devoted husband and father.”
“Mrs. Willis,” Nick said, “I’m going to tell you something that may upset you. Bob is suspected of embezzling funds from his place of employment.”
“What?” she cried. “My Bob stealing money from Henderson-Sparr?”
“We’re pretty certain of it.”
“You said you were from the Terrorist Task Force, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And I assume from what I see on TV you’re investigating the Romens?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe my husband is a terrorist – a Romen?”
“No, not at all,” Alicia said.
