Gone Dark (A Grale Thriller Book 2)

by Kirk Russell

  “Are you certain it was ammunition?”

  “We have video we’re going to show you.”

  “Who took it?” I asked.

  “An undercover agent tailing Clark.”

  “Before we watch the video,” I said, “let me tell you what Julia told me after the Knowles box in her car turned out to be stolen bullets. She said she’d delivered—as a favor to Knowles—a box for Clark that was similar but marked ‘books and clothing.’ He showed her a couple of books before he taped the box shut and loaded it in her car.”

  “How do you know she didn’t know what she was delivering?”

  “I take her at her word,” I said.

  Mara looked away and Fuentes flinched. I didn’t blame either. What kind of answer was that from an agent?

  “Why did Clark become a person of interest?” I asked.

  Fuentes stepped in and fielded that one. That was a lazy fly ball for him. He was fluid and confident.

  “It stemmed from her contradictory and hostile witness account of the Signal Hill shootings. A decision was made to investigate whether she’d been tipped to be there in that booth just before closing. There’s more, but that’s where it started. Where it’s leading may be very bad for her.”

  “Are you going to tell me where it’s leading?”

  “Not yet,” Fuentes said, “and as you well know, showing you this video is something we really shouldn’t do. We’re justifying it by saying you may see something we don’t. You know your niece. You’re a career FBI agent. The expectation is you won’t forget who you are.”

  “Let’s see the video,” I said.

  Neither Fuentes nor Mara was adept at getting the video loaded and playing. I wanted to think about what Julia had told me so I didn’t step in and help them. They fumbled around until they got it.

  “We can’t say Julia knew the ammunition was stolen when she delivered it,” Mara said. It seemed to be his job to coach me since I was one of his. “In the March 12 video we’re about to watch, there’s a cardboard box similar to the more recent one. You’ll see in the video she was standing alongside Clark as the box is opened.”

  “Why don’t you run it and I’ll tell you what I see. Where was the agent who videotaped this?” I asked.

  “Across the lot.”

  “With an angle to see into the box?”

  Mara said, “No.”

  “Let’s play it.”

  Mara started the video. Julia and Samantha walked toward Julia’s car. Julia pointed her keys at the car. The rear taillights flashed as the door released. She lifted the hatchback. When she did, a brown cardboard box was visible. “Books and clothing” in black magic marker was fairly easy to read. Julia leaned in and pulled it toward her, first one side then the other. From how her legs tensed and muscles rose on her arms the box was heavy. That was reinforced when Clark reached in to help. They carried it about thirty feet to Clark’s car.

  When they got there, Clark tried to balance her end of the box on her left knee as she unlocked the trunk. She tried twice, and both were laughing as they put the box down so she could manage the keys. Clark rested the box on her sneaker so she could get her fingers easily under to lift it again. When they inadvertently tipped the top of the box toward the camera, the video caught gray duct tape crosshatched across the top.

  “Stop it there,” I said. “I want a good look at the duct tape before they lower it into the trunk.”

  Mara froze it, and I got a look. Julia straightened and laughed after they lowered it. I read that as Julia laughing about how hard it had been. She wiped her brow as Clark looked around before leaning in and picking up what looked like a knife. She kept her hand low so all we could see was part of the blade.

  “Aware that someone might be watching,” Fuentes said.

  I looked at him and nodded. That’s what I saw too, but that someone might be Julia. Clark turned and smiled at Julia, then turned to the box, and I saw her right arm moving back and forth as if sawing through the tape.

  “Verifying the contents,” Fuentes said. “But who knows why she didn’t just peel the tape off.”

  Clark straightened and looked down into the trunk, with Julia alongside her looking also. Julia shrugged in a familiar way, and Clark leaned over the box. She was working at it again. I saw her arm moving. Julia was no longer looking in the trunk and had turned and walked out of the video.

  Clark turned and glanced at her, then returned to the box. As Julia came back into view Clark straightened and shut the trunk hard. I asked Mara for the controller and started the video over, then fast-forwarded to Julia and Clark lowering the box into the trunk.

  I turned to Fuentes. “Has Julia been wiretapped?”

  “Others have, and she’s been on some of those calls.”

  “How do you mean ‘on them’?”

  Fuentes said, “Speakerphone.”

  This was awkward for Mara, and he cut in. “There hasn’t been a wiretap request on Julia.”

  “Why didn’t you wiretap her if you had this video?”

  “We needed more proof of what was in the box. The box in her car after the accident corroborated that.” Mara continued, “That Detective Allred has a witness who saw her help Knowles carry the box to her car doesn’t prove anything but is another aspect.”

  “He doesn’t have a witness.”

  “He told me he did. It was part of his narrative in getting a search warrant for your house.”

  “He was fed a story by someone who promised to give their name later but hasn’t come forward. Probably someone Knowles got to make a phone call to Detective Allred. But keep going,” I said.

  “There was a surveillance app on your niece’s laptop,” Mara said. “It was erased last night, and her phone is down. Have you heard from her today?”

  “No, but how did that app get there? Did you run some sort of phishing campaign targeting her that got approved in the name of antiterrorism?”

  I realized no one thing yet was enough to justify a warrant on Julia, and whoever was surveilling the Long Beach house didn’t know what had gone down last night. Unless I was fed a story by Clark and Dora, but I didn’t see that. Clark wanted something from me, and Dora I read as genuine. It struck me that agents under Fuentes intended to get a FISA warrant, and Julia would get swept up in it. Mara and Fuentes didn’t know how I’d react, and another thought occurred to me, a darker one. They lost their phishing app when Julia’s computer got baked along with her phone. Showing me this video would cause me to look for her. Agents could tail me. But like I said, just a thought.

  “Even if Julia wasn’t my niece I’d say you’re moving too fast with too little evidence.”

  “No actions have been taken yet,” Mara said. “It’s part of why we’re having this conversation.”

  “Her laptop and phone are down because she laid them in a fire pit and melted them. I saw them today. Someone Julia and the others in her circle know has created software that picks up on surveillance apps. She knew her computer had an intruder. She had talked to me about it.”

  “Where is she now?”

  I said, “That’s why I was there. I’m trying to find her. At the house, one of her roommates gave me a grocery bag with her laptop and cell phone. I can show you. I can’t confirm they’re hers, but they’re destroyed. Both are Apple devices, which is what she had. She’s closed her Verizon account. Her roommates say she was distraught when she left.”

  “Do you have any idea why she wrote a $15,000 check or where she got that kind of money?” Mara asked.

  “She got it from the sale of the family house, from the savings my sister and her husband had, and from a modest life insurance policy. The car in the video belonged to my sister, Melissa. They had a living trust, and I was named as executor and guardian of the children. I gave Julia control when she became an adult in Nevada at age eighteen. It’s looking like a mistake.”

  Mara cut in. “I’m sorry we have to do this. I’m sorry it’s so unc
omfortable.”

  “I’m fine with it, and if Julia hasn’t committed any crimes I don’t know what there is to be sorry about.”

  “You just watched the videotape,” Mara said.

  “If you’re saying she saw what was in the box, I’m not seeing that. If that’s what you think makes it so compelling, pass me the controller. I want to run that section in slo-mo.”

  Mara slid it across to me and once I got located in the video I found Julia and Samantha looking down at the box in the trunk of Clark’s car. Clark was smiling.

  “She’s happy about the guns and ammo,” Mara said.

  “Watch Julia, she’s going to shrug. I know that shrug.”

  I rewound it and played it again. “That was her teen attitude shrug. I know it very well. Okay, this next bit is a big deal, and you’ve got to watch Clark’s right hand.”

  I froze the video where the knife blade showed best. Clark involuntarily raised her hand as she turned to watch Julia walk away before leaning forward and sawing furiously.

  “Two things here,” I said. “The blade is very dull, and she’s hurrying so she can see inside before Julia returns.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t she open it somewhere else or after Julia left?”

  “I don’t know. She’d have to answer that.”

  Mara said, “What I see is Clark closing the box up.”

  “If she did that she’d put the knife down. Clark is trying to hide how hard she’s sawing, but you can see her right elbow moving. She’s cutting. The knife is dull and the tape sticky. It’s the same motion as before. She was joking earlier about the dull blade when she was smiling at Julia, and Julia didn’t care. Julia gave a shrug and walked away.

  “She didn’t wait around to see the clothes and books. She wanted to deliver the box and go. She told me she called Knowles at work to let him know she’d gotten to Needles and was just about to meet up with Clark. She’d spotted Clark’s car. Turns out Knowles wasn’t at work. She was told he hadn’t come in that day. That after asking her to make the delivery for him,” I said.

  “That box held ammunition from the hijacked truck. We know that now,” Mara said but looked perplexed. “Play that again.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “What do you mean you know? If you knew, we wouldn’t be having this meeting. You don’t know and you’re trying to sell me on your assumptions.”

  I replayed the video and Fuentes said, “Grale, you might be right, but I still don’t see why Clark’s opening it with Julia there if she wants to hide what’s in it.”

  “Okay, I’ll throw down an idea. Julia had told Clark earlier that Nick showed her a few of the books in the box. Maybe Clark just wanted to be sure. Maybe she’s got questions about Knowles. She wouldn’t be the first person with those.”

  “All right, we can debate all day,” Fuentes said, “and we don’t have all day. We’re worried about the $15,000 check she wrote. That would buy a lot of ammonium nitrate. The agents working this are confident that money made its way to the offshoot group. That raises the specter that your niece is part of what you’re trying to solve, even if she doesn’t know it.”

  That was my fear too.

  I said, “Here’s what I see. My niece, reeling from the breakup with Knowles and the revelation he wasn’t who he said he was, was left distraught and humiliated. She got an offer to move into the Long Beach house at a time when she was trying to figure out what comes next. One of the roommates was a high school friend who vouched for the house and the people sharing it. She’d been talking about moving out for months and made an impulsive move driven by a video Knowles posted.

  “For six months Julia had talked about moving out. The breakup and what may have been a date rape made her get away from Las Vegas and go somewhere no one knows her to start again. If she wrote a check for $15,000, she thinks she’s supporting something worthwhile and probably expects to get something back in return. This is a tough young woman and nobody’s fool. She inherited money when her family was killed, and they must know that. She’ll figure out that she’s getting used and stop writing checks.”

  “Would you agree she’s susceptible?” Fuentes asked.

  “She calls herself a pacifist and is against all violence. Within a year of losing her family she embraced pacifism and has stayed with it. And when I say she’s tough, I’m not just talking. Julia is not naïve. I’d say she’s with this group because of their aspirations for how to live. She’ll figure it out and leave them.”

  Fuentes didn’t respond. Neither did Mara. They thought the pacifism talk was all smoke. They were going to fall back and conference with each other, but I wasn’t quite finished here.

  “Show me proof,” I said. “You haven’t.” Then I demanded, “Do either of you know where she is, or do the agents who’ve worked the surveillance?”

  Neither knew, which disturbed me more than anything said earlier.

  “You lost her?” I asked.

  It was Mara who nodded. Fuentes had already figured the meeting was going nowhere, and he had other things to do.

  36

  Mission Hills, LA Basin

  After I left Fuentes and Mara, I called Jace. She was laughing at something as she answered the phone. Coming off the serious meeting I’d been in, hearing her contagious laugh was like warm sunlight on a cold morning.

  “Drake Brown, the manager at the Tracy substation, left me a message,” I said. “He went through more video and found the same Chevy Tahoe as three weeks before.”

  “Same decal, same dents?” she asked.

  “Same everything and a readable license plate. I ran it and got an address in Mission Hills, west of San Bernardino. Hofter and I are about to go there. I’ll let you know what we find.”

  At the Mission Hills address, a middle-aged man opened the door and immediately read us as law enforcement. He was balding and genial, dressed in baggy shorts, sandals, and a T-shirt.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “FBI. We’re looking for Evan Gavotte.”

  “That’s me.”

  “We’d like a look at an SUV registered to you,” I said.

  “It’s not mine anymore. I sold it to my son a year ago. He may not have completed the registration change. He’s still a kid in a lot of ways.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-three. He lives in a large warehouse along the Sylmar–San Fernando line that they call the ‘Colony.’ Jody’s an artist, or wants to be. Another artist owns the building and carved it up into living spaces. I’ll show you the Tahoe. It’s in the garage. He can’t always park where he lives so brings it here. Tell me why you need to see it.”

  “It showed up on a surveillance camera, and we need to talk to Jody.”

  “He’s just a stupid kid who thinks he’s Hertz or Budget. I couldn’t count how many times I’ve argued with him about it. I’ll guarantee you it wasn’t Jody driving.”

  He pointed at a car at the curb. “The garage door opener is in my car, or I can hit the button inside the garage if you want to follow me.”

  We followed him through the house to the garage. When he hit the button, the garage door creaked, shuddered, then rose. Sunlight bathed the rear of the old Tahoe. Its paint was fading, its tires worn. I verified the plate numbers, and we compared the blown-up images of the left rear panel dents to the real deal. Mark took several careful photos, then walked out to the edge of the driveway and called for a tow truck.

  “Jody has strong opinions and he’s caught up in politics, but he’s a good kid,” his dad said. “I’m hoping he’ll get over the artist thing. He’s not making any money selling his paintings.”

  The tow truck and Jody Gavotte arrived at the same time. Jody got out of the car agitated. The older sister I’d seen in the house probably texted him, and he’d gotten a ride here. He was wiry and energetic with a mane of black hair cut so it crested in a narrow band along the top of his head then flowed down between his shoulder blades. His neck and
his arms down to just above his elbows were tattooed, the half sleeves colored with red, black, and blue ink.

  For our benefit, he asked his dad in a loud voice, “What’s up with the suits?” Then he confronted me, demanding, “What’s up?”

  “Let’s see some ID,” I said.

  “Dude, I’m not playing the game. I don’t carry ID. I don’t do wallets. You’ve got my dad and sister right here. What the fuck else do you need for ID?”

  “Dial it down, Jody,” I said. “Your vehicle has showed up on video in two locations we’re investigating.”

  “I rent it out.”

  “Where are your rental records?”

  “I don’t keep any. I look at the drivers’ licenses and make sure they’re current. I don’t run credit cards. These are cash deals.”

  I looked at him. “You don’t keep track of who you’ve rented your vehicle to?”

  “This is like a B movie, dude. It’s not a V-E-H-I-C-L-E. It’s a Chevy four-wheel SUV. I’m saying I get a read on the people before I hand over the keys, and I don’t put out a vibe saying I’m worried about where they’re going or what they’re going to do. Positive energy attracts positive energy.”

  “We’re attracted to you, Jody. You’re coming with us to the FBI office. Your four-wheel-drive SUV is going for a ride too.”

  “Man, that’s such bullshit,” Jody said.

  “Do you want to be handcuffed and arrested?”

  “No.”

  “Then ease back.”

  Dad backed the Tahoe out and the impound driver loaded it. We let Gavotte Junior absorb watching it slide up onto a platform and leave.

  “Nice,” Jody said sarcastically as he got into the back seat of our car. Dad and the daughter, Kris, followed us to the office. In an interview room, the attitude and bravado left him when we played the PG&E video of the Tahoe pulling up alongside the Tracy substation and returning an hour later for several slow cruises. While we questioned him, an analyst completed a comparison of video footage.