The Curator: SG Trilogy Book 2 (Abby Kane FBI Thriller 8)

by Ty Hutchinson

  The sliding window closed. The three men in the back would complete a full accounting of Nadia Ulrich. This included collecting hair, skin cells, blood, and saliva, and notating her weight, height, eye and hair color, as well as any noticeable moles, birthmarks, scars, and tattoos.

  Min thought of checking in with Devlin but decided against it. Earlier he had pled with Devlin to reconsider attending the performance. It was too risky. The FBI had already spoken to him, and it would seem like more than a coincidence for him to attend a fundraiser where the night’s entertainment went missing. Devlin had told Min that if he did his job correctly and kept Nadia no more than ten hours, they would have nothing to worry about. It would look as if she’d wandered off on her own.

  Min drove along Irving Street. Coming up shortly was 6th Avenue. From there, the clinic was about half a mile away.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Thanks to red tape, Reilly wasn’t able to prepare the affidavit and warrant until after midnight. Finding a judge to sign it at that time of night would be near impossible. We would have to wait until morning. Kang and I were in it for the long haul, though. We had already figured our surveillance duty would be an all-night affair. Plus, we took some comfort in knowing that we weren’t the only ones working around the clock. There was an entire crew at the silo.

  At about four in the morning, Leland Miles, the agent leading the forensic investigation, called.

  “This is Kane.”

  “It’s Miles.”

  “Tell me you found something connecting Barnes to the silo.”

  “Hate to burst your bubble, but so far we haven’t found anything. In fact, we didn’t find a single trace of DNA in the entranceway space, which made me curious. We should have found something—insect remains or rat droppings or something. What we did find were signs of a cleaning agent.”

  Miles had confirmed my earlier fears. Someone had cleaned the area.

  “It’s been wiped, hasn’t it?”

  “I think so. We’re not having much luck with the missile chamber either, and we’ve gotten about a quarter of the way through the tunnel. I’m doubtful we’ll find anything in here. If that tunnel was used to transport things or people from the clinic to the silo, they most likely were on some sort of hand-operated transport, possibly a pushcart or a hand truck or even a wheelbarrow. Odds of finding DNA in that amount of space will be hard. I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear.”

  “It’s not. I appreciate the update.”

  It felt like the pieces of the puzzle were slowly falling away from me. The high I had experienced that afternoon had been squashed into a black piece of nothingness.

  “It’s not looking good at the silo,” I said to Kang.

  “There’s still the warrant, which we expect to be granted. We’re not totally screwed.”

  A team of fifteen agents, including Kang, Reilly, and me, swooped down on Cerberus Fertility at exactly nine a.m. One by one, the employees were rounded up by agents and corralled into one of the many empty conference rooms. Other agents began the task of confiscating laptops, hard drives, servers, and anything else that might contain information that could help the investigation.

  Kang and I headed straight for Devlin’s office. We knocked but didn’t wait for an answer before pushing the door open. The office was empty. No personal belongings, no briefcase, no cup of coffee, no sports coat. Nothing.

  “Looks like he hasn’t shown up for work yet,” I said.

  “Or he’s decided not to come in,” Kang added.

  We made our way back to the area where the staff was being held.

  “I’m Agent Kane. I’m looking for Mr. Devlin. Does anybody know where he is?” I asked the group.

  The employees turned to each other and whispered amongst themselves.

  “Somebody here must know. Does he arrive early, late, or whenever he chooses?”

  A woman meekly raised her hand. I recognized her as the young lady at reception.

  “Mr. Devlin comes in every day, usually before the start of business hours.”

  “You’re positive of this?”

  She nodded. “He always checks in with me.”

  “Would you mind following me?” I led her down a hallway, away from everyone.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Claudette Lyons.” Her voice shook as she folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. “I remember you two from the other day. Am I in trouble?”

  “No you’re not, Miss Lyons. I just want to ask you a few questions. That’s all.”

  She looked very young, no more than twenty-five years of age. She was wearing a lavender, long-sleeved blouse and a form-fitting black skirt that came down to just below her knees. Her chocolate-brown hair matched her big doe eyes.

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “About a year.”

  “Do you know everyone who works here?”

  “Yes, it’s part of my job. I know where everyone sits and what their duties are as well. Mr. Devlin wanted me to know all of that.”

  “Did you report to Mr. Devlin directly?”

  “No, well, I mean, I guess everyone here reports to him. I have a direct supervisor, but I think Mr. Devlin took a liking to me and would call me personally whenever he needed something.”

  “You said earlier that he always checked in with you. Was that only when he arrived, or was it whenever he came or left?”

  “It’s more like I checked in with him in the mornings when I arrived. Because he was already here, like I said. I’d always call his office. He wanted me to. Today, he didn’t answer. I can count the number of times I’ve arrived before him on one hand.”

  “So Mr. Devlin doesn’t have a designated assistant?”

  “No, but Min is his second in command. They’re always together.”

  “Is Min his first name or last name?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. He’s just Min. That’s what we all call him.”

  “Can you point him out in that room?”

  “He’s not there.”

  “Do you have the same check-in routine with him that you have with Mr. Devlin?”

  “No.”

  “Can you take us to Min’s office?”

  Claudette nodded.

  A few minutes later, Kang, Claudette, and I were standing in an empty office. It seemed Min had skipped work that day as well.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Reilly immediately dispatched two teams—one to Devlin’s home, the other to Min’s—but we were too late. The agents reported back that both places looked as if the occupants had left in a mad rush: empty drawers in the bedrooms along with missing toiletries. Both had home offices, and it appeared as if both men had rummaged through items in and on their desks, leaving a mess. The agents said they would know more after a thorough search.

  “It appears your initial visit to the clinic spooked them,” Reilly said.

  We were standing in Devlin’s office. I had wanted to search it personally, and I had. Kang had taken the task of searching Min’s office.

  “Clearly. How could we have known?”

  “You couldn’t have. But we’ve uncovered something big here. What exactly, I’m not sure.” He rested his hands on his waist.

  Just then Reilly's radio crackled, and a voice spoke. “We’ve found a door that’s locked. It’s different from all the other office doors. It’s reinforced.”

  My eyes popped wide. “I wonder if that’s the door that connects to the tunnel.”

  I texted Kang and told him to meet us where the employees were being held. When he arrived I asked Claudette to escort us to the locked door.

  “Are you aware of this room?” I asked her as we walked hurriedly down a corridor.

  “I am. As far as I know, it’s just used for storage. No one ever goes in there.”

  Claudette led us to the rear of the building. The door was located on the first floor. It was painted the same off-white color as the walls o
utside, but the texture of brushed steel was clearly visible beneath the paint. I rapped my knuckles against it. It made a low, dense sound.

  Another agent arrived with a bag of tools. He removed a battery-powered drill, inserted a bit, and placed the tip against the keyhole to the deadbolt and started drilling. When he finished, he pushed the door open.

  Reilly found the light switch and flicked it on, revealing a room with overhead surgical lights, a multi-functional operating chair/bed, a vital-signs monitor, respiratory ventilators, defibrillators, and even an anesthesia machine. It was a fully equipped examination room.

  I turned to Claudette. “Did you know this had been turned into an examination room?”

  “I had no idea. Like I said earlier, as far as everyone here knew, it was just an old storage room. No one ever paid it any attention.”

  “What the hell are these two up to?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Good question,” Reilly answered.

  “There’s a door there.” Kang pointed to the other side of the room.

  It wasn’t reinforced, but it was secured with a padlock. A quick snip with the bolt cutter, and we had access. On the other side, we found two agents, sweaty and tired.

  “It’s about time,” one of them said as they both stepped through the doorway.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  We had two suspects: Sid Devlin and Min. We were pretty sure they were responsible for the abductions. What was missing, besides them? Motive. What was it about Geoffrey Barnes, Johnny Ellis, Lyle Hammond, and Evaristo Damiani that had led to their abductions? And what could Devlin and Min have done with them in such a short time?

  “Maybe they’re tracking them,” Reilly suggested. “They bring them here, insert some sort of tracking device inside them, and then cut them loose.”

  “Most likely it’s something that’s embedded under the skin, through a minimally invasive procedure,” Kang said.

  “All right, let’s send some people out to them to conduct a thorough physical examination,” Reilly said.

  I was still mulling over Reilly’s tracking-device theory when I received a call on my cell phone. It was Detective Sokolov.

  Strange. He normally contacts Kyle.

  I answered, “Agent Kane.”

  “Hi, Abby. It’s Pete. Can you and Kyle come to the Mark Hopkins Hotel now?”

  “What’s this regarding?”

  “Your abductions. I think I’ve come across another one.”

  At the hotel, we were directed upstairs to one of the suites. Inside we found Sokolov and his partner Bennie.

  “Thanks for coming,” Sokolov said, ignoring the bruising on my face. He’d seen me like this before.

  “No problem. So, what happened here?”

  He quickly brought us up to speed on the missing person, Nadia Ulrich. “A hotel driver should have driven her to the airport this morning, but she never showed up in the lobby.”

  “So she didn’t use the hotel’s transportation to the airport. How did you go from this to ‘abduction’?” I asked.

  “She’s a VIP guest. The manager started asking staff if they had seen Miss Ulrich leave the premises. That led him to looking at the security-camera footage on this floor. Two men posing as hotel employees showed up at Miss Ulrich’s room with a room-service cart. They enter, and a few minutes later, they leave, with the cart. The manager is positive the two men are not employees of the hotel. That confirms abduction. We’re here to determine if we’re now looking for a body.”

  “So if it is an abduction, what makes you think it’s connected to our investigation?”

  “For starters, she’s some famous cellist. Kyle, I think you mentioned that all the cases you’d flagged were people who stood out in their field of expertise.”

  “That’s right,” Kang said.

  “The second thing is this. Bennie, show them the thing you found.”

  Detective Bennie held up a plastic bag. Inside was a circular piece of foil, about a quarter of the size of a dime.

  “What is that?” I asked as I looked closer.

  “It’s the foil from a medicine vial. You tear it off the cap so you can insert a syringe.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “My grandmother was diabetic. The vials that contained her insulin had aluminum caps with a tear-out center. I’m positive the lab will confirm it.”

  “Any chance she might be a diabetic?”

  “Sure,” Bennie said, “but all her belongings are still here, and we didn’t find a diabetic kit or an insulin syringe anywhere. Probably be faster to have your guys analyze the foil.”

  Since we were sharing and cooperating, I told Sokolov and Bennie what we had discovered that morning.

  “They built a secret tunnel from the clinic to a military silo? You’re kidding, right?” Bennie asked.

  “We still need to confirm that the tunnel wasn't military, but from what our guys are saying, the tunnel, the doors… it doesn’t look like it’s more than five years old. That silo was built more than sixty years ago and decommissioned fifteen years later.”

  “Did you guys look at the security footage?” I asked.

  “We’re about to.”

  The four of us were in the hotel security office, looking at the footage of the two men arriving at, entering, and then leaving Ulrich’s room.

  “Any of them look like your guy?” Sokolov asked.

  I shook my head. “Devlin has a beard. One of them could be Min. We never met him so we can’t confirm.”

  “I have a picture of Devlin,” Kane said. “I downloaded it from the website. I’ll text it to you just in case.”

  Do the security cameras pick them up elsewhere?” I asked.

  We waited while he searched the video feeds. He found the two men on the loading dock. They were pushing the room-service cart it into the back of a white utility truck with a sign painted on the side: Young’s Laundry. Unfortunately, the angle of the camera didn’t show the license plate.

  Kang did a quick Google search for Young’s Laundry. “I’m not finding any business named Young’s Laundry.”

  “Could be a fake,” Sokolov said.

  “I’ll get an APB issued for this vehicle,” Bennie said as he dialed a number on his cell phone and exited the office.

  “Could you email me a digital copy of the footage?” I asked the head of security. I placed my business card on the desk.

  “If Devlin and Min are behind this, they should have brought Ulrich back to the clinic, no?” Sokolov asked.

  “We might have spooked them with our earlier visit,” I said. “Probably took her to some other location.”

  “Pretty ballsy of them to abduct this lady, knowing the FBI was already looking at them,” Sokolov said. “Maybe they’re not that bright.”

  “Or they think they’re smarter than we are,” I said.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  We parted with Sokolov and Bennie and headed back to the clinic. They said they would call us if they found Ulrich. If Devlin and Min had abducted her, then we expected her to pop up sometime soon, if she hadn’t already. The problem? She wouldn’t immediately know where she was or who she was.

  We met up with Reilly in the secret examination room. He had been exploring the tunnel and had just returned to the room.

  “Abby, Kyle, what did SFPD find?” he asked. He had taken his jacket off, and the sleeves of his dress shirt were cuffed up to his elbows. There was a little wetness on his brow.

  “Another person was abducted last night,” I said.

  We filled Reilly in with the details and showed him the footage of the two men who had entered Ulrich’s room. He agreed that it smelled of Devlin and Min.

  “They were on to us.” Reilly removed his glasses and patted his face with a handkerchief he kept in his pocket. “This place has been cleaned. Forensics is having a hard time finding any evidence to support our claims. Right now, everything we have is circumstantial.”

  “I
want to show this footage to Claudette and see if she can identify these men.”

  Just then Kang received a call. “You did? Where? Okay, email me that footage.” He disconnected the call. “That was Sokolov. They have footage of Devlin at the fundraiser.”

  “So he attends the fundraiser, probably to keep an eye on Ulrich, and then later, he and Min abduct her from the room.”

  “You two work on finding Devlin and Min,” Reilly said. “I’ll stay and oversee the investigation here.”

  We didn’t argue and did an about-face in the examination room. I was eager to see if Claudette—or any of the other employees—recognized the men in the video. Back inside the conference room, we showed the footage to Claudette. She didn’t know who the men were. Thus began the painstaking process of showing the footage individually to every person. We got lucky with the tenth person.

  “Are you sure this is Min?” I asked. “Take a closer look.”

  “I don’t need to. I know it’s him. He dressed this way for a Halloween party I threw - fake mustache, goatee, sideburns. Looked exactly like this.”

  We had placed both Devlin and Min at the hotel. We needed to find them. Claudette was able to dig up a photo of Min without the disguise. Kang updated Sokolov and texted him the picture. They hadn’t found Ulrich yet, but they had issued an APB for her as well.

  “It’s a matter of time with the truck, unless they dumped it someplace desolate,” Kang said.

  “While we wait for the truck or Ulrich to show up, let’s take a look at Devlin’s residence.”

  Devlin lived in a luxury high-rise in SOMA, south of Market Street. When we arrived, the evidence response team was still conducting their investigation. Agent Oliver Barber, the lead forensic examiner at the scene, met us.

  “Agent Kane, Agent Kang. Glad you could stop by. Rough week?” he asked, glancing at my face.

  “Long story,” I said. “What do you have for us?”

  “We found DNA that belongs to a male. It matches the DNA found in Devlin’s office. Aside from that, there’s nothing in here to identify Devlin. No pictures, no passport or driver’s license, no utility bills or paperwork of any kind. It’s very strange. We also found two sets of fingerprints. One set belonged to Sheila Davis—she has a couple of priors; misdemeanor drug possession. Her driver’s license expired four years ago, and she’s no longer associated with her last-known address. The other prints we found we assume belong to Devlin, but somehow he’s managed to keep his fingerprints out of any type of government database. Security-cam footage shows him leaving the building yesterday, late afternoon, dressed in a black suit. He never returned. Cerberus Fertility is listed as the owner of this penthouse; I’m assuming Cerberus also pays the utility bills.”