by Roger Johns
“I don’t know. I think I’ve got some kind of stomach flu, and it’s keeping me on a short leash. Do you need me to go back in?”
“No, thank you. No need to spread that around. Unless this flu business is just a con so you can have a long weekend in Vegas.”
“Not this time,” Don laughed. “Which is too bad because I’m feeling pretty lucky at the moment. So, how long will you be in Baton Rouge?”
“Until I can get some clarity on who killed Overman and why and where the extra cocaine is coming from. Whether it’s a turf war or there’s some new science in the picture.”
“Are you staying near the capitol building?”
“I’m staying at the Istrouma Hotel, downtown, so it’s not too far away,” Mason said. “Why do you ask?”
“You know how some guys want to see a game in every major league baseball park? Well, my dad’s bucket list was to tour every state capitol building. We never finished the list, but Baton Rouge was one of the ones we made it to. In the lobby, you can still see the bullet holes in the wall where some crazy guy gunned down Huey Long, the former governor. It’s kind of creepy, but it’s worth seeing. And, from the top of the building, you can get this view of the Mississippi River that’s really just unbelievable.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, if I have time for any sightseeing. Listen, I have to go,” he said.
A tall, barrel-chested man had entered the room and started pawing through the papers on Wallace’s desk.
“Sorry I missed that meeting, yesterday,” the man said to Wallace as she strode back into the room. “Did I miss anything important?” He followed her gaze to Mason, then he looked back at her.
“Mike, look, if you’re not going to take this assignment seriously, then tell Burley you want something else,” Wallace said.
“Why are you climbing up my ass? I miss one little meeting and you think the whole world’s come to an end.”
“You haven’t returned my calls or my messages, either. Where were you?”
“I told you, in the note I left. I had some personal business that came up.”
“What kind of personal business?” Wallace pushed.
“The none-of-your-business kind.”
She motioned him close and spoke in a low voice. “It wouldn’t be the kind that would keep you from passing a random piss test, would it? That might make it hard for us to get along.”
“Fuck you,” he spat, turning away.
“Answer my question,” Wallace demanded, cocking her head to the side, studying him carefully. Others in the room had begun to pay attention to them.
Playing to the audience, Mike shifted into full bullshit mode, an open expression on his face, his palms outward in surrender. “Hey, that stuff’s behind me,” he insisted. “I’m cured, now. Praise Jesus, I’m all cured,” he sang, feverishly clasping his hands and raising them heavenward like a revival-tent supplicant.
“You’re skating on thin ice, mister.” Wallace lifted her hand when she saw him gearing up for more theatrics. “Don’t. I don’t like being lied to. Especially not by a partner.” She cut him off, again, when it looked like he was going to say something. “You just do the work I put in front of you, but don’t expect anything more out of this.”
“This ain’t how partners work,” Mike intoned, tick-tocking an index finger side to side.
“It is when one isn’t being truthful with the other. When one isn’t willing to put her life in the hands of the other.” She thought back through her first encounter with Mike since his return, less than thirty-six hours ago. She didn’t need a drug test to tell her what his pageant of moods and his secretive, erratic behaviors meant. He had fallen off the wagon. Her anger gave way to concern and her expression softened.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he said, a hurt expression taking over his face.
“Mike. Sit,” Wallace commanded. “You have to be patient with this. Detective work is different from your other gig. Colley started me on research and—”
“Now you’re patronizing me. I can see what you’re thinking. Just write down what you want me to do, and leave it on the desk. I’ll be back.” He hurried from the room.
“Mike,” Wallace hollered after him, then dropped into her chair.
“Your new partner?” Mason asked.
Wallace looked up to see him staring at her. Everyone else in the room had returned to their work, apparently unimpressed by the low-caliber drama. For some reason, Mason’s gaze was making her feel embarrassed and tickled at the same time, like when the cat drags a dirty bra into the living room just when the new hot guy comes over for the first time. She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut, fighting hard not to laugh. When she opened her eyes, he was still looking at her, and she gave up the fight.
“Ever see one of these before?” she asked, once she stopped laughing. She pulled the final autopsy report from the envelope and placed it next to Mason’s tablet. “It came in while we were gone.”
“No, but gruesome doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you’re worried about. But before we get into that, look at this,” he said, holding up his tablet for her to see. “Just since I’ve been sitting here my office has forwarded more news on Echeverría’s last movements. It’s not much, but the Mexican authorities confirmed that his plane was headed south at the time it went down, and they back-traced its flight plans as far north as Monterrey, Mexico.”
“So he could have been on his way home from points even further north.”
“He could have, but there’s no way to know from this.”
“Will whoever is sending you this information be able to trace the flight plan further?”
“I don’t think so. There are too many unregulated airfields in that part of Mexico, and no one in Echeverría’s position is going to give the government any more information than they have to. His pilots could have filed a plan for one destination but taken him somewhere else, instead. So it’s possible that what I’m showing you now is not entirely accurate.”
“I suppose the chances of someone having seen him here, or along the way, are pretty slim.”
“We should certainly ask this guy, Stacky Vincent, when we get our chance to question him.”
“Any luck getting into the camera feeds from Matt Gable’s house?” Wallace asked.
“Not yet, but promises continue to be forthcoming. Let’s look at the autopsy report.”
She flipped first to the section on cause of death. The killer had forced a hypodermic syringe with a large bore needle deep into Overman’s left nostril, puncturing the cribriform plate—the paper-thin floor of the cranium just behind the bridge of the nose—and injected a massive dose of a highly concentrated cocaine solution directly into the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding Overman’s brain. The coroner estimated that such an abrupt and massive chemical insult would bring death within five to seven minutes.
“Shit. Whoever did this is a real humanitarian,” Wallace intoned.
“This is one of Echeverría’s known methods for winding down the party.”
“Does this make you more or less convinced that Echeverría is in the picture?”
Mason shrugged. “It could be a copycat, but it would have to be a copycat with some inside knowledge.”
“Here’s something interesting,” Wallace said, pointing to the External Examination section. “Now we know how the killer got Overman to sit still long enough to be strapped to the board.”
Two small, closely spaced puncture wounds were discovered just above Overman’s Adam’s apple, indicating that he had been Tasered.
“Overman would have frisked anybody he was meeting. The Taser had to come in with someone he didn’t know was there. Our hypothetical third person?” Mason proposed.
“Unless someone went to the warehouse early and hid the Taser,” Wallace said.
“We’re getting nowhere. We need a physical link between the players at the warehouse.”
“Well, we may be able to
get a little clarity on that,” Wallace said. She recounted her visit with Colley and her subsequent conversation with Connie Butterworth at the crime lab.
“How come it took all day for you to tell me this?” Mason asked, obviously irritated. “Everything I get, I’m shoveling in your direction, the minute I get it. I thought we had a deal.”
“We do. I’m sorry,” Wallace said, clearly contrite. “I wasn’t holding out on you. We just got caught up in so many other things today, it slipped to the back of my mind.”
“When will the results of these tests be available?” Mason asked, defrosting a bit.
“I don’t know. Connie is running the cocaine we seized at the Overman scene right away. Then she’ll test whatever we bring her from Matt’s lab as soon as we can figure out which are the output pieces.”
“Then let’s make sure that apparatus gets reassembled as soon as possible,” he said, then returned his attention to the report.
They paged through the remainder but found nothing of interest.
“I’m heading out,” Wallace said. “Can I drop you at your hotel?”
“Sure. In an hour I’m meeting with two state police investigators at a restaurant a block from my hotel. Just don’t forget to call me once you get Stacky Vincent on the hot seat.”
6:00 P.M.
The meeting with the state police investigators was short and unhelpful. They had no concrete data or any anecdotal evidence that would support or undercut either of the theories Mason and Wallace were currently considering. Maybe his meetings tomorrow with the sheriff’s investigators and two special agents from the FBI’s Baton Rouge field office would prove more fruitful.
After he returned to his room, he showered and put on fresh clothes. He fired up his tablet and found an email from the technician who was working on the birdhouse cameras. The email had a link to a website, along with a password. The homepage of the website had password-protected links for “Front Camera” and “Back Camera.” The password was for the “Back Camera” link, which took him to a page with a list of dated video files.
FIFTEEN
6:30 P.M.
Traffic was heavy, so the drive from the crime lab to her house in Bayou Sara took Carla over an hour and it gave her a headache. It had taken her and the evidence tech until nearly five o’clock to uncrate and lay out everything. Just being at the crime lab had put her in a prickly mood. Having to return the following morning felt like cruel and unusual punishment. All she could think about was a hot meal, an icy gin and tonic, and being left alone. Then the doorbell rang. She looked through the peephole and saw a man standing a few feet back from the door. “Who are you and what do you want?” she asked, trying to sound as inhospitable as she felt.
“Detective Capelle with the Bayou Sara Police Department,” he drawled. “I’m following up on the missing person report you filed on a Mr. Matt Gable.”
“Have you found him?” she asked, a note of hope creeping into her voice.
“Don’t know. I got some photos—actually they’re screen grabs from security cams—taken at two businesses, the last couple of days. If you wouldn’t mind lookin’ at ’em and see if you can verify it’s him in the pictures.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “Show them to me.”
“This one’s from a gas station outside Shreveport,” he said, holding a grainy image up to the peephole. “The other one’s from a restaurant in Tyler, Texas.”
“I can’t make out anything. I’ll let you come in, but show me your ID first.”
“I ’preciate your caution,” he said, holding a leather placard with a badge mounted in the center. He quickly flipped the placard around and held it close to the peephole. A card behind a scuffed plastic film identified him as Detective Casey Capelle.
“Come in, Detective,” she said, pulling the door open. “The place is a mess, sorry.”
“Not a problem.” He pushed the door closed as he followed her inside.
“The light’s better over here,” she said, heading for the cluttered table situated beneath the serve-through window that linked the dining area to the kitchen. “Things have been pretty crappy for me, lately. I’m almost afraid to be hopeful.”
“Hope lifts us high, so the snap of the rope is more … effective.”
“What an awful thing to say,” Carla said, turning to face the business end of the man’s gun.
“But true, wouldn’t you agree?” His drawl had disappeared.
Carla stood dead still. She noticed makeup smeared inexpertly under the man’s eyes and over the bridge of his swollen nose. The corner of a bandage was visible under the man’s curly red hair.
“Who are you?” she asked, backing away, struggling to hold her panic in check.
“Don Brindl. Does the name mean anything to you?” He scrutinized her face. “Does it?” he demanded, when she failed to answer.
“No. No, I’ve never heard of you. Please … just let me—”
“I’m going to give you a series of instructions. You must follow them precisely. First … and this is very important … move slowly. Second, keep your hands where I can see them at all times. If you make a sudden movement or if I lose sight of either of your hands, even for the briefest moment, I’ll put your brains on this lovely rug. Understood?”
Carla nodded slowly. The man’s calm tone, so inappropriate to the situation, caused her fear to spike.
“Sit,” he commanded. “Right here in this chair. I see you’ve noticed my amateurish attempts to cover some recently acquired battle scars. You’re not the only one who’s been having a crappy time of it lately.”
Carla’s lower lip trembled, and she was sweating profusely. A droplet of perspiration started to tickle and itch as it ran between her shoulder blades.
“Both hands flat on the table in front of you,” the man instructed.
She very badly wanted to scratch but, mindful of the man’s threats, she kept her hands where he could see them. Sweat began to bead on her scalp and forehead. A tiny rivulet prickled her skin as it slid alongside her nose, catching at the corner of her mouth.
Don studied her discomfort. “You’re doing very well,” he said, rubbing distractedly under his left eye, uncovering a deep bruise hidden by the makeup. “Excellent self-control. I know how tempted you must be to wipe away those little droplets. Maddening, isn’t it? Makes you appreciate the power of the legendary Chinese water torture. Although I think it may have actually been invented by an Italian.”
“What do you want from me?” she whined.
“I want you to tell me where every one of your communication devices is. Cell phones, tablets, laptops, hard line telephones, everything.”
As Carla told him, Don made a list of the devices and their passwords. After that, he persuaded her to reveal the personal email address she used to communicate with Matt Gable. Using plastic wrist ties, he fastened her hands through the slats on the back of the chair and her ankles to the legs of the chair. Then, he went through the house gathering the devices.
“Now, let’s get down to the reason I’m here,” he said, rejoining her at the table. He placed a small digital recorder on the table in front of Carla, then pulled a small stack of index cards from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“I’m going to show you these cards, one at a time. Each card will have a different message printed on it. You will recite what you see. I will record what you say. Simple enough?”
Carla slowly nodded.
He slid a card across the table until it was right in front of her. “Now, read.” He pushed the Record button.
“Matt, listen, I can only talk for a second. You have to call me. Please. I have to—”
“Wait,” Don said, pressing the Stop button. “Do it again. And this time, try not to be so wooden.”
“Why are you doing this?” Carla asked in a panicky whimper.
“Because Matt Gable is a fucking genius. He’s found something that will change the world. And I intend to have it.�
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“I don’t know about anything he’s found, and I don’t know where he is. I swear to God I—”
“But I’m pretty sure he knows where you are. So I need you to dangle the bait. I’ll call him using your phone, then play your increasingly frantic messages into the phone. Once I’ve got him sufficiently wound up, he’ll be dying to do the very thing he knows he shouldn’t.”
“Just call him. I’ll say whatever you want me to.”
“I don’t think so. A live performance is too risky. You might blow your lines and spoil the show. You might go off-script and shout a warning. Or maybe the two of you have some sort of prearranged code word, something totally innocent-sounding that you could use to secretly tip him off. Sorry, but we just can’t take those kinds of chances.”
“What if he doesn’t answer? I’ve been calling him for days, but he never answers and he never returns my calls.”
“That doesn’t matter. In fact, if he answers I intend to hang up. These messages will be for when he doesn’t answer. Desperate voicemails from you will have a more dramatic effect. So, let’s get back to our little project, shall we? Ready?” Don pressed the Record button and pointed at her.
“Matt, listen, I can—”
“Cut,” he shouted in mock exasperation. “I can see now that you are one of those people who just doesn’t take direction very well. But I have an idea.”
Stepping behind her, Don took hold of her right index finger and bent it backward until it made a gristly popping noise. Carla blanched and tried to recoil. A low, forlorn wail slithered from her lips as Don ground the muzzle of his gun hard into her right cheek.
“Now say it like you fucking mean it.”
SIXTEEN
7:00 P.M.
