by Kyle Mills
Michaels looked a little worried. “Based on the records I was able to pull, Mark, these aren’t people you want to mess with … “
“And you should remember that. What about Sines?”
“Sines sounds like he’s probably part of this group. Ex-military—resigned for no apparent reason shortly after being promoted to major. He’s forty- one. Lists the church as his employer and Kneiss’s compound as his permanent residence. No criminal record. I couldn’t find anything relating to what he does for the church—just that he works there. Same as Renslier.”
Beamon opened the manila envelope in front of him and wrote each of the names it contained on a piece of legal paper, adding the name of the man watching his condo to the bottom. “I’ll be back in a second.”
He walked across the office and stuck his head into Skinner’s cubicle. “Hey, Craig.”
“It’s only been a few minutes, Mark!”
“Calm down, son,” Beamon said, holding out the paper in his hand. “I just want you to run these names against that list I gave you.”
“I told you, Mark. Layman made me delete that file.”
Beamon rolled his eyes. Skinner had a hacker’s heart. There was just no goddamn way he’d deleted that file. “Run the fucking names, Craig.”
“Well, uh, maybe there is a way to reconstruct the file,” Skinner said, reaching hesitantly for the sheet.
“Uh-huh,” Beamon said, starting back toward Michaels’s desk.
“What else you got, Chet?”
Michaels turned his palms upward. “I’m sorry, Mark. Nothing. David Passal’s known acquaintances are a dead end—and I don’t mean that I couldn’t find anybody he knew who might fit the profile—I mean I can’t find anybody he knew. The guy was a freaking hermit. Otherwise, there are no local sex offenders with MOs even close, or for that matter the opportunity. Our national search of people who have been involved in this kind of thing so far is a big zero. Recent parolees? Another big fat zero. And we’ve got nothing on the physical evidence side.”
Beamon looked blankly at the young agent. “That’s quite a laundry list of things you don’t know. So what do you think happened here?”
Michaels let out a loud breath. “Maybe it does have something to do with the church. Or maybe the whole thing was a big coincidence. A fluke.”
“How so?”
“What if Jennifer’s dad just went nuts? Killed her mom, then himself? Jennifer saw it all. She panics. Runs out into the street where she flags down a passing car. Turns out that the guy who picks her up is a bad seed. Things get out of hand and he kills her. I’m starting to think that one way or another, we’re gonna find her when the snow thaws.”
“Why didn’t she just use the phone? Call for an ambulance?”
“Couldn’t stay in the same house with what was left of her folks.”
“Reasonable. Why’d she take the gun?”
Michaels shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about that. She’s completely freaked out. She falls to her knees and cries for a while beside her parents’ bodies. She’s got no relatives living, so she’s totally alone. She can’t take it. Picks up the gun, puts it to her head, then chickens out. Forgets to drop it when she runs out of the house.”
“Why wouldn’t she just go to a neighbor’s?”
“Maybe the guy in the car saw her running without a jacket toward a neighbor’s house and offered her a ride. She’d have probably taken it.”
The phone on the desk started to ring, but Michaels ignored it.
“I don’t think so, Chet,” Beamon said, speaking slowly. “It’s good piece of reasoning, but my gut just says its wrong.”
“Mine too, actually. That leaves us with the church, but Layman’s pretty much shut us down there.”
Beamon had purposely kept many of the individual components of the investigation—his visit to Sara, much of the information he’d gotten from Ernestine Waverly—from the young agent. He had a feeling that the less Michaels knew, the better off he’d be in the end.
“Chet!” D. yelled, holding her phone in one hand and waving with the other. “There’s a guy from the Oklahoma City office on the line. Says you’ll want to take the call.”
“Could you put it through, please?” He picked it up on the first ring.
“Hi, Terry. Nothing, huh? Nothing on the commercial flights, either? Hey, thanks for doing this so quick. Yeah, I’ll tell him …”
Beamon reached out and plucked the phone from Michaels’s hand. “Terry. Mark Beamon.”
“Mr. Beamon. How are you, sir?”
“I’m good. Hey, I just wanted to tell you myself how much I appreciate you jumping on this like you did.”
“If there’s anything else I can do, Mr. Beamon, please let me know.”
“Actually, there is, Terry. Tomorrow afternoon I want you to try to pull that flight plan again.”
“We’ve never had problems with the FAA before, Mr. Beamon. I think the information is accurate …”
“I’m going to have to ask you to humor me on this one. It’s important.”
“Of course. I’ll call you tomorrow evening.”
“Thanks, Terry. I owe you one.”
Beamon replaced the handset and looked into the confused face of Chet Michaels. “Another hunch,” he explained. “Chet, keep going where you’re going on this case. Make sure we didn’t miss anything and I’ll concentrate on the church. Stay away from that. Okay?”
Beamon grabbed the scraps of papers that had accumulated in Michaels’s IN box and walked back to his office.
After going through them, all but two were in his garbage can. He took out a Post-it, wrote his name on it and put it in between the one with his secretary’s and Michaels’s names.
“D.!” he yelled at the open door to his office. She leaned around the corner.
“When did you sign up for NickeLine?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was probably around the same time I took this job. So about a year and a half ago.” Beamon heard the phone on her desk start to ring and she disappeared to answer it. Her head reappeared in his doorway a moment later. “It’s Ken Hirayami from Athens.”
“Put him through, please,” Beamon said, picking up his phone.
“Ken! What’d you find out?”
“No record, Mark. As far as Turkey’s concerned, he’s not in the country.” There was a pause over the phone. “Now are you going to tell me what the second favor is?”
“Yup,” Beamon said. “Tomorrow afternoon I want you to run the same check again.”
“The same check?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know if I want to do that, Mark. I think the Turks would find it a little insulting. It’d look like I was saying they didn’t know how to do their jobs. And they do.”
“Ken, I got fifty bucks that says they find a record of Kneiss’s visa this time through.”
“What’ve you got cooking over there, Mark?”
“Will you do it?”
“I guess I can find someone else to run the search and hope it doesn’t get back to the first guy. Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Ken. Oh, and Ken?”
“Yeah.”
“I want my fifty in American.” Beamon pushed the lever on the phone down with his index finder and stared at it like it was the enemy. He had to do it, he knew. He had to make the call. But he knew he was going to live to regret it.
He pawed through his Rolodex and dialed one of the numbers he found there, grimacing as it started to ring.
“You’ve reached Goldman Communications Consultants, leave a message at the beep,” a mechanical voice told him.
Goldman Communications Consultants. It sounded so benign. The Goldman part was Jack Goldman. They had worked together years ago when Beamon was just starting with the Bureau and Goldman was just getting ready to retire.
Goldman had started as a telephone repairman when he was still in his early teens and when phones in private homes we
re probably more the exception than the rule. After he got busted placing bugs for AI Capone’s organization, J. Edgar Hoover had taken him under his wing and Goldman had become the king of the FBI’s “black bag men.”
When Beamon first met him, Goldman was already older than God. And about as cantankerous a sonofabitch as had ever walked the earth. That little personality flaw aside, though, he was the best. Always had been, always would be. The man could bug the incisor teeth of a rabid Doberman.
Despite his undeniable skill, the government wouldn’t work with him anymore. His corporate clients, though, were more than happy to put up with his colorful demeanor in return for his ruthless efficiency at finding—and most likely placing—any eavesdropping device ever invented.
“Mr. Goldman, this is Mark Beamon. I have a question that might be up your—”
There was a momentary screech of feedback and then, “Mark! Goddamn, boy, I can’t remember the last time I heard from you. Someone told me that you’d screwed the pooch one too many times at headquarters and they sent you off to pasture!” His voice shook with age.
“Uh, hello, Mr. Goldman,” Beamon said slowly into the phone, already starting to regret the call. “I’m in Flagstaff now.”
“Jesus, son. They did put you in a one-horse town. What do you do there, investigate shoplifting?”
“It’s actually a pretty good size—”
“Uh-huh. So what do you want? I’m a busy man, you know.”
“Yes, sir. I have a theoretical question. If I bought one of those phone companies where you dial an 800 number and enter your PIN before you call long distance, could I listen in on all the calls that went over those lines?”
“No.”
Beamon was momentarily confused by Goldman’s answer. Could he have been wrong? “You couldn’t? It’s impossible?”
“Shit, I don’t know if it’s possible or not. But why the hell would you want to? Think for once in your life, boy! Why buy a goddamn phone company for millions of dollars when you could hire one of my more unscrupulous colleagues for a few thousand? And then you’d get the goddamn local calls, too.”
“But what if you wanted to spy on a group, Mr. Goldman? Let’s say you hated, I don’t know, Jews. You could offer a great long-distance rate to influential Jews through the mail and get a feel for what they were doing though their long-distance conversa—”
“You saying that we kikes’ll do anything to save a few cents a minute on long distance?”
“No, sir. I was just using it as an example—”
“Think we’re stupid?”
“No, I—”
“That’s an interesting theory you got there, Marko. It’s clean—almost no chance of detection. Elegant—except for the part about not getting local calls. I’d have to research it, but off the top of my head I can’t think of a reason it wouldn’t be technologically possible. Of course, you’d have to have serious computer power to monitor the number of lines you’re probably talking about. And a hell of a lot of storage space, too, it wouldn’t be practical to have people listening in real-time.”
“So, it’s possible?”
“What did I tell you? I’m going to have to look into it. it’s an interesting concept, though. Interesting. Maybe I should come out there. Get the lay of the land. Yeah, get a feel for what you’re into.”
Beamon bolted upright in his chair. “No! Uh, thanks anyway, Mr. Goldman, but there’s no way I can get authorization for your fee … “
“We could work that out, Mark. I’ll tell you that I’m getting good and goddamn sick of sweeping the offices of a bunch of fatcats for bugs. Not one of them’s got a damn thing to say that anybody would want to listen to, let alone record. Yeah. Maybe I’ll come out and give you a hand …”
Beamon desperately switched gears and tried another approach. “You know, Mr. Goldman, it’s really not much of a case. Embezzlement. I’ve spent the last three weeks reading through a ten-foot- high stack of paper filled with about a million numbers. Starting to go blind.” He paused to see if his words had any effect and then added, “It’s not even about that much money,” for good measure.
Goldman didn’t seem to have even been listening. “Yep. Sounds like you’re in over your head again.” The phone went dead.
Beamon began banging his head slowly and repeatedly on the blotter that covered his desk. How could this day get any worse?
When he sat back up and looked through the window into the outer office, he saw Jake Layman, flanked by two rather serious-looking men in dark suits. The speed at which they were moving his way seemed to answer his question.
“That’s them over there,” Layman said, pointing to the boxes stacked along the wall. He looked up at Beamon. “Are those all the Davis files?”
“Afternoon, Jake. I’d ask you to sit down, but my chair is otherwise occupied.”
“Are those all the files?” he repeated angrily.
Beamon watched the two men who’d burst through his door alongside his boss struggling to lift the overflowing boxes. “That’s all of them.”
Layman balled his fists and pressed them against Beamon’s desk as he leaned toward him. “I got a call from Travis Macon today.” Beamon recognized the name of one of Arizona’s senators. “You know what he said?”
Beamon shrugged.
“He said that he got a call from one of his constituents at the Church of the Evolution yesterday. That you went to one of their most sacred buildings and started throwing around threats.”
Beamon smiled weakly. He didn’t regret the way he’d handled his meeting with Sara Renslier—he needed to shake this case loose. What he was starting to regret was the way he’d handled Layman. His boss probably wasn’t a bad guy. Just trying to play it smart and not suffer the repeated screwings that Beamon had brought upon himself. That was fair.
“Look, Jake. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone in there without talking to you first; sometimes I can be kind of an … asshole. Tell your guys to go get a cup of coffee and we’ll shut the door and I’ll lay out what I’ve got on this case. I think once you’ve heard—”
“I didn’t ask you what you think,” Layman yelled. “I just spent two hours on the phone getting a lecture on the meaning of religious freedom from one of the most powerful senators in the country! You are off this case, Beamon. I told you twice—clear enough for even you to understand—to back off. I’ve written a full report to headquarters about your conduct and I’m telling you that you don’t have many fuckups left. You’re lucky to still have a job.”
Beamon suddenly came to the realization that every time he tried to be reasonable and maybe even lightly kiss an ass or two, it was like throwing gas on a wildfire. It was time to face the fact that he just didn’t have the gift.
“I don’t feel lucky, Jake.”
Layman stormed over to the remaining boxes, picked up one that was too heavy for him, and refused to put it back down. He looked a little like a penguin as he teetered out of the office toward the elevator.
35
BEAMON HAMMERED ON THE DOOR OF THE small house again, this time harder. “Ernie! It’s Mark! Open up.”
He knew she was home. There were no tire marks in the driveway and little chance that she could negotiate the snow-covered walk on foot or in her thin-tired wheelchair.
Beamon bent at the waist and put his face close to the peephole so that she could see him. A moment later he heard a chain rattling on the other side of the door.
“Ernie! Damn, I was starting to get worried.”
“I’m sorry. I was downstairs,” she said, backing her wheelchair away from the door.
He followed her as she glided down the hallway, trying to decide what he was going to do. “I lied to you, Ernie.”
She stopped for a moment but didn’t turn around. “The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.” She gave the wheels another push and they passed through the door to the cluttered office at t
he back of the house.
“Albert Kneiss?”
“Minna Antrim. But it was one of Albert’s favorite quotes.” She picked up a piece of pizza from her desk and slid the steaming end of it into her mouth.
“I told you that the questions I was asking about the church didn’t relate to the Jennifer Davis case. That isn’t entirely true.”
She peered out at him through the folds of flesh on her forehead but seemed to be seeing something else. “I know,” she said finally.
There was a casual thoughtfulness in her voice that for some reason made Beamon believe her. “How did you know?”
“Because I dream about her, too.”
Beamon questioned his strategy for the fiftieth time since leaving the office. Spilling everything he’d learned and suspected about Jennifer and the church to a morbidly obese woman prone to ecstatic visions seemed a little stupid. But what choice did he have? Layman would make damn sure he wouldn’t have access to the Bureau’s resources to run down the church. And he wasn’t going to get this done alone.
He took a deep breath, forcing his doubts from his mind. At this point there were no other options. But if she started showing any signs of stigmata, he was history. “Do you understand the connection between Jennifer and the church, Ernie?”
She shook her head. “God hasn’t seen fit to reveal that to me. I assume that’s why He sent you.”
“This is just between us, right, Ernie? You, me, and God. I’m about to tell you some things even the guys at my office don’t know.”
“Of course.”
Beamon hesitated. Getting her involved in this wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her job. What the hell was he doing here?
“Are you all right, Mark?”
“Look, Ernie. You’ve come up against the church before and look what happened. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” He started to stand. “I’ve changed my mind. You don’t need to be involved in this.”
