Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  “Nothing. We were in the middle of talking about Jennifer. It’s the only time we can talk without you and Nick in the room,” James said.

  She wasn’t sure she believed him at all, but she felt the need to berate him none the less. “Oh, God. Please don’t talk about it. She’s suffering enough, and I don’t know what I’ll do if everyone’s information comes out. But if it does, you know we’ll all be subpoenaed to find out how much we knew about her sister.” She shook her head. “I swear I’m going to kill Halpert myself.”

  And in fact, she hadn’t known anything about it until that day. She shook her head in disbelief. Jennifer had felt comfortable enough to tell the team, but not comfortable enough to tell her when they’d been alone together. Of course, Lara had screwed that up entirely. Jennifer had thought they were friends, and Lara had made it abundantly clear—albeit unconsciously—that they were just colleagues. Sometimes it just felt as if she was in the team but working remotely. She was apart from them in every way that mattered.

  “No, you won’t,” James muttered. “That’ll be my job.”

  Lara shook her head, this time with determination. “No, you won’t. You want to, I know you do. And someone else may let you take that shot, but I won’t. If you kill him, he will be with you every day. Every day for the rest of your life. He’ll be a part of you forever. I don’t want that for you.”

  James remained silent, but she could feel the tension pulsing through him, right down to his clenched hands.

  She took one hand off the steering wheel and laid it on his arm. “Calm down. We’re going to find him, take him alive, and make him spend the rest of his life in a prison with no internet access. That kind of torture will be much worse than the simplicity of a bullet.”

  James made a disbelieving noise.

  She let it go. They were all so fucked up over their secrets and families, it was getting difficult to draw a straight line between anything. It was like the case had become one of those dot-to-dot puzzles with half the numbers missing.

  They were closing in on Greg Byrne’s house. “We’re going to get Halpert, and we’re going to make him pay for what he’s done. And that’s it. That’s our job.” She pulled up outside Byrne’s house and removed her seat belt. She was about to get out when he spoke again.

  “I know what you’re saying. I do. But there’s no part of me that doesn’t want him dead.”

  The sick feeling returned to her stomach again. “I know. Use that feeling to find him. Then wash your hands of him.”

  Miraculously James didn’t reply.

  Byrne’s car was in the drive. “Do you want me to go around the back?” James asked.

  “I don’t think he’ll run. He was a good cop. Just disillusioned. I’m hoping he’ll want to help.”

  She rang the doorbell and stepped back from the screen door. There was a bang and then a shout from inside. Lara’s hand automatically unclipped her holster. James moved to one side of the door.

  “Mr. Byrne? Everything okay in there? It’s Agent Grant from the FBI. Remember me?” Lara called through the wooden door. Was it possible they’d got to Byrnes just as Halpert tried to kill him, or abduct him like he had Clarke?

  She nodded to James and stepped away from the door, pulling her weapon. James took a step back for momentum so he could kick in the door.

  Just at that second, Byrne opened the door, bleary-eyed.

  Adrenalin still pulsing around her body, she leveled her weapon at him. “Is everything okay in there, sir?” she said, trying to see around him into the dark house.

  “What?” He rubbed his eyes and then seemed to focus on Lara. “What the... What’s going on? Why have you come back?” he asked, nervously looking around at his neighbors’ houses.

  “Is there anyone else in there with you?” James asked.

  “What? No. Just me and my clumsy dog.”

  Lara holstered her gun and clipped it into place. “Can we come in?”

  “Sure, sure. Quickly, though. I don’t need my neighborhood watch thinking I’m trouble. They’re pretty militant.”

  James held out his hand to have Lara go first into the house.

  Once they’d sat down, and refused Byrne’s offer of iced tea, Lara started. “Before we tell you what we’re doing here, I need your reassurance that you won’t blog about this, or put any information, anonymous or otherwise, online.”

  “Sure, sure. You think I haven’t learned my lesson?” He looked around the house as if seeing it through Lara’s and James’s eyes. “My life went down the toilet, you know. It’s my fault, I know. But nothing’s been the same since. My wife left, the union looked the other way...” His gaze rested on piles of newspapers, magazines and the odd take-out soda cup. At least he’d cleared away the take-out boxes, she guessed.

  She wanted to apologize to him for wrecking his life, but all she could think of was that because of Byrne she’d lost her friend and greatest supporter in the bureau. But then, he’d witnessed something illegal and just couldn’t live with it. She was so conflicted. “I’m really sorry to have to come back but we’re looking for the New York bomber. We’re going through your blog to see if we can track him down. You never used Victoria’s actual name in your posts, so how do you think he found out?” James asked.

  “I don’t know. I never told him. A bunch of people communicated with me about my posts, but not him,” Byrne said, seemingly suddenly overwhelmed with the need to tidy up. He jumped up and started clearing away the trash. At least some good would come of this interview.

  “How do you know you never told him?” Lara asked.

  “Because I only told one person Russo’s name, and that was only after I’d done a background check and made sure she was kosher,” he said, picking up Garden & Gun magazines from the floor. She guessed he was only interested in the guns part, since he had no garden to speak of.

  “She?” James asked. “What was her name?” He exchanged a look with Lara. Could he have an accomplice? Had they been wrong about this the whole time? No wonder they’d been spinning their wheels.

  “It can’t be her,” Byrne said. “I was talking with her for months. We became pretty close.”

  “You met her?” Lara said, her heart sinking. Was another lead about to bite the dust?

  Byrne looked embarrassed. “No. We just talked online.”

  She paused. “What was her name?”

  “Claudia Goldman,” he said. “I have her email address.” He reached for his tablet, got into his email, and turned the screen to show the agents.

  James took a photo of the screen.

  Lara suddenly wondered when her notebook and pen had become that obsolete. “Send it to Christina. Tell her we want an address right now.”

  “Done.” James laid his phone on the table. “Was it just Claudia who was interested in the Oscar Mackworth case?”

  “I got comments and emails from people who wanted to know who the agent was. I mean—Russo wasn’t the only agent on the case. There were about twenty-five FBI agents working that case, and that was just in the New York area. It could have been any one of them who tampered with the evidence. Only I knew who it was. But I never told. That wasn’t the reason I blogged about it. I just—I was sick with how powerful the government had become, to be honest.” He held up his hands. “No, I’m not an anarchist, or an Edward Snowden, but when you’re trying to do your job as well as you can, and you see people above you do things with information they shouldn’t have in the first place, it makes you question everything, you know?”

  Lara had about 50 percent sympathy for him. The other 50 percent of her still wanted to flush his head in the toilet.

  James’s phone vibrated and he picked it up. “Wow. Christina’s on fire. I’ve got an address and background record for her. She lives nearby.”

 
; “Really? Oh, man, I could have met up with her. I never asked, but I wanted to. She understood me.” His voice trailed off as he gazed unseeing into his kitchen.

  Lara tossed him a bone. “Well, it’s possible she’s a psychotic serial killer, so, you know. Look on the bright side.” She nodded James toward the door and got up, ignoring Byrne’s crestfallen expression.

  She followed James out of the car. “What else did she send?”

  “Claudia Goldman looks squeaky clean, to be honest. I’m not sure this is a real lead. She donates to the local animal shelter, she’s a hairdresser who also volunteers at the homeless shelter—” he looked up and shrugged “—there’s an article online about her giving free haircuts to the homeless people there. She pays her taxes, owns her own home and doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket.”

  Lara was suspicious. “If she sounds too good to be true, she’s going to be too good to be true.”

  James didn’t look convinced. “She’s very attractive, too,” he said mildly, as if awaiting a loaded response from her.

  She didn’t give him what he was waiting for. She just grabbed his phone. There was a photo of her attached to the article. The woman was cute in a pixie-cut, brunette way. Lara had to admit it: she wasn’t cute, she was beautiful. “Okay, fair enough. I guess I’ll let you take the lead on this interview. Her hair salon is even closer, so let’s try that first, even though it’s getting late.” She looked at her watch. Since this case started, she’d totally lost track of time. She didn’t mind because she didn’t want her mind insisting she sleep just because her watch told her it was time to. Also, she didn’t want to be reminded of the ticking clock.

  James used their flashing lights whenever they approached traffic and they made good time. They pulled up in front of “Curl Up and Dye” just as Claudia was showing out her last client. As they got out of the car, she turned the sign in the window from Open to Closed.

  Lara rapped on the glass and pressed her credentials against the door.

  The door opened immediately. Her clear, bright eyes widened with concern. “Officers? Is everything okay?”

  Lara looked at her credentials quickly and held them up again for her to see. “We’re FBI, ma’am. Can we come in?”

  “Of course, of course.” She opened the door wider and gestured for them to enter. “Please, take a seat.”

  Lara sat in the nearest chair and had to grab for the counter as the seat swung away, spinning her around. So smooth.

  “Sorry, they’re hairdressing chairs. They have a good spin on them.” Lara could tell she was trying not to laugh. So, she wasn’t a total goody-two-shoes despite how she looked on paper.

  James sat with a lot more grace than she had. “We’re sorry to bother you at the end of your day, but we have some questions about your conversations with Greg Byrne.”

  She went behind the reception desk and pulled a large appointment book toward her. She opened the book. “Do you know when he came in? The name isn’t familiar.”

  “No, no. He wasn’t a client, I don’t think. You would have been in contact with him by email.”

  She looked bemused. “Really? What about?”

  “About some posts he wrote on a blog called The Truth is Out There dot com?” James kept eye contact with her, as he’d been trained, not allowing her to look away, as people who were covering something up invariably tried to.

  “The truth is out there dot com? I’m afraid you must have mistaken me for someone else. I was never a fan of The X-Files. I was more into Roswell back then.” She smiled, dimples popping in her cheeks.

  “It’s not an X-Files site, ma’am, it’s a...” He looked at Lara. “I don’t know what you’d call it?”

  “I guess, a conspiracy site?” Lara said. “Ring a bell?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” She was either telling the truth, or she was a remarkably good actor. “What is this all about?”

  “What’s your email address?” he asked.

  “Lucky dot Claudia at Yahoo dot com.”

  “Not the same address,” he said to Lara.

  Lara’s heart dropped. Another dead end. But wait a minute. Someone pretending to be this innocent woman had conned Byrne into giving him Victoria’s name. So why choose her? She was about to ask Claudia more questions, when the hairdresser slumped into a chair.

  “That’s such a relief. I thought you were going to take all my money away,” she said. “I mean, phew, right?” She grinned at both of them.

  “Why would you think that? What do you mean?” James asked.

  “You don’t know? Oh, I guess it was the police who I reported it to, not the FBI,” she said.

  “Reported what?”

  “It’s nothing really. I mean, it started about eight years ago, just when I was leaving beauty school. I was struggling to make my rent payment—I mean really; I was about to be thrown out of my apartment—when a cashier check was shoved under my door while I was at work. For the exact amount of two months’ rent, plus the amount my landlord said I owed him for being late.”

  Lara wanted to get up and leave, this was a nonsense waste of time, when they had absolutely no time to waste. But something stopped her. Something told her that Halpert was involved with her somehow. Even if they had to listen to her batshit crazy stories to get at it.

  “That was lucky,” James said carefully, obviously trying not to offend her.

  “It would have been lucky if I’d cashed it, but I didn’t. I mean, it obviously wasn’t mine, so I didn’t want anyone who was expecting the check to go without, so I sent it back to the originating bank and thought nothing of it. At least until the next check came a few months later. This one was just for $500 straight. I wasn’t particularly in need by then, because I’d been lucky enough to find a better paying job in the city. Vidal Sassoon. They said they’d seen my work online and wanted to hire me. It was awesome. They trained me very well.” She turned to Lara. “I could totally sort your hair out for you—no charge.”

  Just when I was beginning to like her.

  “Anyway, this check had been sent to me, at my new address, so I figured...well I didn’t really know what I figured, so I bought a new dress, and then donated the rest to the animal shelter where my brother worked.” She frowned and Lara hoped she’d remembered something that would send them in Halpert’s direction.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I remember...” She smiled a little and Lara suddenly wanted to pull her perfect bangs out by the fistful.

  “Remember what?” She shuffled to the edge of her seat, which wasn’t easy in that damn chair.

  “The reason I really wanted to donate to the shelter was that I badly wanted to adopt a dog, but didn’t think it would be fair to the pup if I adopted one and then just left it alone all day while I worked. But now, I just realized that I can adopt one now. I mean, I have my own salon, so I can bring the little thing to work with me. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  Lara wanted to scream, and James, damn him, was smirking at Lara’s barely constrained anger.

  “Back to the money?” James said quickly.

  “Oh, I kept reporting the checks to the police, I mean they came about every other month. But then the police officer at the precinct desk accused me of wasting police time. So I stopped reporting it. I give away as much as I can, but you know, a girl can only be offered so much money before she actually uses it. I bought my apartment, and I rent this storefront. I guess I’m just the luckiest girl in the world.” She smiled a charming, wide smile.

  “Did you call the bank who issued the check?” Lara asked.

  “No. It was in Switzerland and I couldn’t afford an international plan for my phone.”

  Well she certainly could now. But Lara figured that in her position she may have done the
same thing.

  “I guess you are lucky,” James said with a smile. “Before we go, can you just have a look at this photo? Do you recognize him?” James flashed her the photo of Halpert.

  “Oh, Mitchy! I haven’t seen him in years!” Her face fell. “He’s not in any trouble is he?”

  Every molecule of blood in Lara’s body jumped. “You know him?” she said in disbelief.

  “Sure, I used to babysit for his mom. Well I used to babysit for him, while his mom worked at the hospital. Say, he’s okay isn’t he?”

  Lara didn’t want her to clam up so she downplayed her hand as much as she could when all she wanted to do was to punch the air in triumph. “He’s a person of interest in a hacking case we’re looking into.”

  “Oh, Mitchy,” she said like an indulgent aunt. “He always was a minx with the computers. He used mine all the time because his mom couldn’t afford one. He was so precocious! But I’m sure he hasn’t done anything wrong. Not really wrong. I mean, he used to push at his boundaries all the time. But he’d never do anything to hurt anyone. Did he hack the FBI? He always used to say that’s what he wanted to try to do when he was older. I don’t know why I didn’t believe him. He could do things on my PC that I’d never heard of before. And he was so young.” She smiled and shook her head.

  Lara paused to see if Claudia would put two and two together. Her face was so open Lara could almost see her connecting the dots.

  “Wait a minute. You came here asking if I’d been emailing a man. Was Mitchy emailing him using my name? Is that why...” She broke off, a confused look wrinkling her perfect brow.

  “Claudia. Mitchy sounds like he was a cute kid when he was younger. He’s not that way anymore. People have died because of the things he’s doing. Is there anything you can tell me that would help us find him?” James asked.

  Claudia’s gaze wandered.

  “Claudia!” James said, making her jump and turn back to him. “Look at me. Please concentrate. When was the last time you saw him?”