Joe stared at Blake slack jawed.
“You see what happened? There was only one king in that room—a baby named Jesus. They laid the symbols of their power at the feet of a baby. He received the tokens of their power. That means the forces that frighten you are under submission to God. They cannot prevail. No, I do not worry about Harry Potter. Some persons may become enthralled by what he represents and lose their way, some may actually practice dark arts and lose their souls, but for the rest of us, Harry Potter and his gang are no more threatening than the unlikely gang from Star Trek.
“So to answer your question, I am concerned about our children. If you want me to sign a petition to do something about child pornography, child abuse, or homeless children, by all means, bring it around, but this one—no.”
Pinned in behind the table, Sam had no choice but to listen. She did so with considerable admiration. Without realizing it, she’d worked her way through a half dozen cookies as her gaze shifted from one man to the other. Her appreciation of Blake had previously been attached only to his sermons, which she usually enjoyed. Otherwise, positioned at the front of the church, costumed in a white alb and stole, and backlit by candles, he seemed a remote and foreign presence. She had not seen this determined side. And at that moment, she began to realize that her drift from the church was occasioned as much by a perceived lack of intellectual challenge, as by its archaic forms and substance. Karl or no Karl, she decided she would stick with this church business for a while longer. As she left, she glanced back at Blake and for a fleeting moment wished he were a few inches taller.
Chapter 41
Karl Hedrick sat in his section chief’s outer office for an hour past his appointment time. He supposed the psychology ploy was meant to intimidate him. He found himself growing angry instead. At eight-thirty he stood to leave.
“Tell Bullock I will be in my cubicle when he’s ready.”
“Mr. Hedrick, he’s expecting you to wait. I’m sure he’ll only be a minute more.”
“Frances, I will not get on your case, because you are only doing your job, but I know, and you know, there is no one in there with him. He is playing head games and I am not willing to participate.”
Just then the door swung open. Frances must have depressed the talk switch and Bullock heard what he’d said.
“Inside, Hedrick,” he said, and lumbered back in his office. Frances gave Karl a weak smile and shrugged.
The next forty-five minutes consisted mostly of Bullock haranguing Karl, who listened as patiently as he could for as long as he could. Then, when Bullock came up for air, Karl recited the list of mistakes, misconceptions, and plain errors that had marked the operation to date. He reminded Bullock that it had been the Picketsville police who had saved his bacon in the past. He pointed out that going into the town and interviewing possible victims in the open invited their man to skip town, and then rounded on the idiocy of employing an incompetent answering service.
Bullock’s jaw dropped. His face turned cerise. Finally he sputtered that Karl would be on probation starting immediately and that he, Bullock, would recommend his termination. In the meantime, Karl would be well advised to rethink his words and perhaps his career choice. Karl knew there was a process and he could not be fired in anything less than ten working days unless he posed a clear threat to the Bureau. He thanked his boss and left the building. He didn’t feel like clearing out his desk just yet, if ever. The possibility existed that this last set of errors might catch up with Bullock long before the process to terminate began. He found his car, having packed it earlier, and drove southwest to Picketsville. He had a job to do.
***
T.J. arrived at precisely three o’clock. If Sam had been watching, she would have noticed that he also arrived at two forty-five, two fifty, and two fifty-seven. She had picked the hour when she would go off shift and could spend the time without a conflict. Ike had okayed the use of a cruiser.
Sam met T.J. at the door. “Are you ready?” He smiled and nodded. “Okay, then let’s roll.”
“Let’s roll,” he repeated.
They crossed the parking lot to the black and white. T.J. climbed in the passenger side. Sam settled behind the wheel and snapped her laptop into its docking station on the dash. They drove onto Main Street and toward the Covington Road.
“We’ll just cruise to the edge of town, make a loop to the north and hit the interstate. We have a limited jurisdiction there, but it’s easy riding.”
“Can we make the siren go?”
“No, sorry about that, but unless we are in hot pursuit or want to alert someone, the siren stays off.” T.J. looked disappointed. When they’d driven west a few miles, Sam called in their location and Essie, whom she’d primed before they’d left, answered with a stream of official-sounding directives. T.J. sat up, eyes bright. He turned and pointed to the computer.
“What does that do?” he asked.
“It’s a computer on a wireless network. It talks to the ones in the office and the state’s database.” T.J. had a blank look on his face. “Okay, say we are following a car and it is doing something suspicious, like weaving back and forth. I can type in the license number and the computer will tell me all about the car, its owner, and anything else I might need. Watch.” She typed in the number of an old Honda Civic in front of them. In a moment the data flashed on the screen. “Can you read that?” T.J. squinted and studied the words.
“It says Honda Civic and has a man’s name. There is a year here, too. Is that the year of the car or of the man driving it?”
“Which line?” T.J. pointed to the screen. “That one is the year of the car. This one,” she pointed to another line, “should be the DOB of the owner.”
“DOB?”
“Date of birth—the year the owner was born.”
They drove up an access ramp and headed north on I-81. T.J. alternately looked forward and then at the equipment in the car. Sam explained each switch and variation on the dash from the cars he’d driven. Finally he sat back in his seat to enjoy the ride. As they pulled up behind a silver sedan, T.J. asked if he could work the computer. Sam smiled and nodded. He carefully tapped in the license number. The data shifted to this new parameter. Sam glanced at the screen.
“See? There you go. That’s the license number and the description of the car.”
T.J. studied the information he’d created. He frowned and looked up at Sam.
“Deputy Sam, that’s the wrong car. It’s supposed to be a Ford Crown Victoria and that’s a Mercury Grand Marquis.” Sam looked more closely at the screen. T.J. was right. The two vehicles appeared essentially the same, and easy to confuse. The license number did not belong to that car.
“Okay, T.J., now you can use the siren but—wait a second—first, throw that switch there. That will turn on our lights. Now, for the siren, just turn it on for a second and then off again. We don’t want to make too big a deal out of this.”
T.J. did as he was told and the siren growled. The car in front slowed and pulled to the side of the road. Sam called in her location and the 10-37, suspicious vehicle she had stopped, on the cruiser’s radio.
“You wait here, T.J., and watch. If anything looks funny you pick up the transmitter—that’s this thing—push the send button—like this—and say 10-31. You understand?”
“Ten thirty-one. Yes.”
Sam stepped out of the car and approached the driver’s side. As she did so, she unsnapped her holster strap and freed her Glock. The window on the Sable slid down. Sam stepped up and looked in.
“Mrs. Morse, is that you?”
“My word, Samantha, don’t you look smart in that uniform. I heard you left the college but now I see it’s true what they said—you’re a deputy sheriff.”
“Yes ma’am, I am.” Estelle Morse worked in the personnel office at Callend College. “We have a little problem here.”
“I wasn’t going too fast, I’m sure of that and—”
“It’s no
t speeding, Mrs. Morse. You have someone else’s plates on your car.”
“Excuse me?”
“It appears someone switched license plates with you.”
“Oh dear, is that serious?”
“Maybe. Stay right here.” Sam walked back to the police car. “T.J., what’s the owner’s name on the Ford?”
“That license belongs on a car belonging to someone named Enterprise.”
“It’s a rental. Okay. Essie, 10-63. I have a car out here belonging to Estelle Morse from up at the college wearing plates from an Enterprise rental. See if they are missing a car. It’s probably already at the chop shop, but give them a buzz. I’ll send Mrs. Morse to you for a set of temp tags and you can explain to her what she needs to do next. Handle the stolen plates with gloves at the edges just in case the mope who took the car was stupid and left us some prints.”
“Ten-four.”
Sam returned to Mrs. Morse and told her what she must do next. She also assured her several times that she was not in trouble and that everything would be fine. When she slid back in the cruiser, she saw that T.J. had been looking through the material on her clipboard.
“Good job, T.J., I might have missed that.”
“I was reading your papers.”
“They’re just the latest things we’re working on and some forms,” she said.
“There are pictures here.”
“Yes, they are pictures of people we want to talk to.”
“Why do you want to talk to Donald and Hollis?”
Chapter 42
Ike didn’t expect to hear again from Bolt. He’d spooked him back into the mountains or wherever he had found sanctuary and nothing short of a major upheaval would pry him loose. No matter. He called his opposite number in Floyd County, who said he’d keep an eye out for Bolt and ask his people to keep their eyes open as well. At that moment, Bolt and Kamarov were at the bottom of Ike’s list. The person he wanted, and wanted badly, was the owner of the pickup that had been involved in Whaite’s death. He wanted to know if he should be looking at a hit and run or a murder, and if the latter, what had Whaite done, or said, that had triggered it. Either way, his top deputy was gone and he was angry. Jurisdiction belonged to Floyd County and he feared Whaite’s death might not rate the sort of effort he wanted. Jurisdiction or no, he aimed to find a way in. He just hadn’t figured out how.
“Well, well, looky what the cat dragged in. What do you want around here, backstabber?”
In all the years he’d known her, Ike had never heard Essie speak rudely to anyone. She remained the one cheery voice among a crowd of variously grumpy ones. Except for a rare brush with PMS, Essie could be counted on to have something upbeat to say to anyone walking through the door—from known felons to the town gossip. Ike stood up to get a better look at the object of this amazing outburst. Karl Hedrick stood frozen in place, mouth open, and hand on the knob of the still open door.
“Shut the door before you give us all pneumonia,” Essie added, “preferably from the outside.” Ike made a mental note to never have Essie angry at him.
“Karl,” he said and waved him into his office, “you’re a little off base, aren’t you, or did your boss finally figure out we had his man, in a manner of speaking—oh, and in the same state as the last time you barged in here.”
Karl let the door fall to and stared first at Essie, then at Ike.
“I don’t know what either of you are talking about. Maybe I should go out and check the address. I could have sworn this was the Picketsville Sheriff’s Office. I must have made a mistake.”
“You made a mistake, all right,” Essie said. If she’d been authorized to carry a gun, she looked like she might have used it.
“Hey there, Karl,” Billy Sutherlin said. “How you been?”
“Don’t you talk to him, Billy, he’s an enemy.”
“We need to talk,” Ike said and waved at him again. “In here.”
Karl, looking perplexed, walked in and at Ike’s gestured invitation, sat down. Ike closed the door.
“Cutthroat,” he said.
“What?”
“We know you are with Cutthroat and we know you’ve been tracking Kamarov. You must have cross-checked John Does and figured out that we have him.”
Karl stared at Ike as if he wanted to find some part of the speech he could respond to and had failed.
“You got me, Ike. Except for ‘John Doe,’ I don’t have a clue.”
“Karl, you know Sam is our wizard of cyberspace. She just finished in a dead heat with the gurus up at Langley for snooping. She found Cutthroat before they did and she found you. You want to fill me in. If you do, I might be able to keep her from using her sidearm on you when she gets back.”
“Wow. That is a load. I can’t help you, Ike, because I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I just drove down here from a session with my section chief, Bullock—you remember him? And he reamed me out pretty good, but he could take a lesson from you guys. What do you think…no, how about this? I tell you what I have been doing and why I am here and then you can tell me what I’ve done wrong.”
“You really don’t know?” Karl shook his head. “Okay, talk, but be quick. I expect Sam back within the hour.”
Karl explained he’d been in Picketsville Thursday and Friday of the previous week and then was called back to DC to meet with Bullock that morning. He described his cross assignment to the fraud squad, how they’d been tracking Brent Wilcox and since he, Karl, knew the territory, he’d been sent in.
“We’re investigating a Ponzi operation. He’d been selling shares in a Public Lands Access program and promised huge returns to his investors. He says he has an inside track on the natural resources reclamation in several national parks and trust lands. It all sounded legal. He quoted statutes that allow it and so on. The trouble is, he’s not filed a single application to access the lands, and he’s collected huge sums. You with me so far?”
“A Ponzi scheme?”
“When I realized that you were out of the loop, a deliberate move on our part, by the way, I complained. That’s when I moved into Bullock’s crosshairs. He’s still angry about the other thing.” The other thing referred to a murder investigation earlier that Ike had worked and that made the FBI look bad. Ike sat back and smiled. He loved it when he guessed and got it right.
“I know Wilcox. You should have told me you were coming. He’s not stupid and I could have helped. In fact, there is nothing I’d have liked better.”
“Yeah, I pointed all that out to the boys in DC and they suggested I consider a career change. I’m on probation pending a hearing to terminate.”
“You weren’t involved in Cutthroat?”
“Never heard of it, and I am just pissed enough to blow the cover of anybody in the Bureau right now. Sorry. What or who is Cutthroat?”
“It’s a long story, Karl, and since you remain in the bosom of J. Edgardom at the moment, I can’t tell you. Right now, I need to figure a way to keep Sam steady while we sort this out. See, she found your name in a personnel list for what we believe is a black program out of the FBI. You said you’d been reassigned and there you were. That upset her, but not sufficiently to want you sent to the moon. It was the woman in your apartment who answered your phone that finished her.”
“Oh, man, I don’t believe this. Ike, there wasn’t any woman in my apartment. It was an answering service Bullock hired. He got it into his head that answering machines posed a security threat or something. He shut down our machines and then, to make the whole operation a complete FUBAR, he ordered us to cut off all communications to anyone and especially you all. I told you, he’s a pretty dim bulb.”
“No other woman?”
“No, and I’ve been trying to reach Sam for days and either get her voice mail, dropped, or, lately, a recording saying the number is out of service.”
“Two problems—she can’t use the phone when she’s driving—new town ordinance and her phone died
anyway. She has a new one complete with new number. She didn’t want to keep the old one.”
“This is so bogus. I’m being hammered from both sides because my boss is an idiot. Worse—I have to go to hearings in the next week or so to keep my job…so I can still work for him.”
“You have my sympathy. Offhand, Karl, do you know if the Bureau has any other special agents named Hedrick?”
“No, but I can find out. Can I use Sam’s computer?” He said Sam’s computer. Everyone did, as though it had nothing to do with Ike’s operation. Ike let it pass. The truth? Without Sam, he probably wouldn’t have anything going in that area at all.
“Make it quick.”
Karl hustled around the corner to Sam’s space, ignoring the dirty look sent his way by an outraged Essie Falco.
The door burst open and Sam entered with T.J. Harkins in tow. Ike held up his hand to silence Essie, who looked like a volcano ready to explode.
“Ike—you have to hear this. Tell him about the pictures, T.J.”
Chapter 43
“In here,” Ike said and stole a glance at Sam’s office door.
“In a minute, Ike, I need to get copies of the rest of the pictures for T.J. to look at.”
“That can wait. In my office—now.”
The outside door opened again and Colonel Robert Twelvetrees came in, his hand on the booking counter to make sure of his footing. “Where’s my driver? Sergeant, where are you?”
“I’ve got him, Colonel. He has some information for me. As soon as we’re done, he’s yours. You can have a seat at that empty desk. Essie, help the Colonel.”
He had Karl in one room, Sam in another, and Essie playing avenging angel.
“This is looking more and more like a Restoration farce,” he muttered, “and this is Act One.”
Once Colonel Bob was settled, Ike took Essie aside. “Ditch the bad attitude, Essie, we have some serious work to do here and I don’t think Karl is the bad guy. In fact, I think at the end of the day, you are going to owe me my jelly-filled back. Now go in Sam’s office and tell Karl to sit tight. If he finds the answer to my question, show him how to call me in my office.”
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