by Diane Capri
“Name David Downing,” Neagley said. “And before you ask, yes he was dead when I got here. Gunshot wound to the back of the head. Just like O’Donnell.” She took a deep breath. “Probably happened at least eight hours ago, judging by the blood.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Kim asked.
“Meaning did talking to me and giving me that report get him killed?” Neagley replied. “I’d have to say it’s likely, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Kim said. Even though there were at least a zillion other possibilities, Neagley’s was as good a working theory as any. And it could have the happy result that Neagley would be incarcerated for life, at least.
“Did you call NYPD?” Gaspar asked.
Neagley glared at him but didn’t reply.
“Did you find anything useful when you searched his office?” Kim asked.
“What makes you think I searched?”
“Fairly obvious, isn’t it?” Kim said. “Besides, whoever killed him would have forced him to turn over what they wanted before they did it instead of searching around after. Just in case he didn’t have it stashed here.”
Neagley raised her eyebrows and nodded as if to begrudgingly acknowledge that Kim might be slightly smarter than a fifth grader after all. “He had no office surveillance installed. Strictly a low-rent amateur operation.”
“Low-rent operation is probably why he was chosen,” Gaspar said. This time, Neagley turned her condescension his way. He grinned. “You can’t possibly think we just fell off the turnip truck, Frances.”
“I told you not to call me that,” she fairly growled.
Gaspar smirked. It made Kim feel better. Maybe that’s why he did it.
Kim said, “What were they looking for?”
Neagley said, “Something small. But vital.”
Kim said, “Such as?”
Neagley replied, “Dunno. A key, a flash drive, a note, a photo. Could be anything.”
“What about the original copy of the man’s report on Dixon? Did you find that?” Gaspar asked.
Neagley glared at him again. “No. Unfortunately.”
“So we still don’t know who hired him?” Gaspar asked.
“We know,” Neagley said, “but we don’t have time to go over that now. I wanted you to see this for yourselves. Now we can go. We’ll call 911 from a pay phone on the street if we can find one. Come on.”
Neagley waited in the dingy corridor while Kim and Gaspar took a fast but better look around. Kim used her smartphone to video the rooms in less than a minute. There was very little to record. She collected a business card from the holder on the desk and made sure she got a still photo of his license hanging on the wall.
Neagley stuck her head into the room. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”
Kim ignored the prod, pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and stretched them on. Then she patted him down looking for his cell phone. When she found it, she dropped it into an evidence bag, sealed it, and slipped it into her pocket. Gaspar watched without comment.
After that, she ran quickly through the desk drawers, which were mostly empty. Whatever the PI’s clientele expected of him, they rarely came to this office. His was an I’ll-meet-you-anywhere operation, from the looks of things.
Kim stood briefly beside the investigator’s body, putting herself in his field of vision. What had he seen? What had gotten him killed? Where had he hidden whatever the killer searched for and didn’t find?
Gaspar said, “Let’s go, Sunshine. Now.”
They joined Neagley in the corridor and made their way to the elevator. Neagley said, “I came up the stairs, so I’ll go back that way. You two should go up a few floors and get off the elevator and wait a few minutes and then come back down. When you’re asked, you can say who you were visiting up there and describe it accurately. I’ll meet you down the block, out front.”
What Neagley suggested made sense, so that’s what they did. But when they got outside, Gaspar opened his untraceable cell and called the Boss.
“We need interference,” he said again, for the second time in the past three days. While Gaspar finished his call, Kim saw Neagley half a block down. She’d hailed a cab and stood waiting for Kim and Gaspar with the door open.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saturday, November 13
6:06 p.m.
New York City
When they approached the cab, Neagley said, “Get in.”
“Just hold on,” Kim objected. “We need to find Dixon before she ends up like the PI back there, don’t you think?”
“You won’t find Dixon.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve already looked and I know her better than you do. If I can’t find her, you can’t find her,” Neagley said.
Gaspar just shrugged and entered the cab, leaving Kim standing on the sidewalk facing Neagley.
Neagley sighed. “You two have some sort of beacons on you, right? Tracking devices? It’s not like your boss won’t know where you are.”
“True,” Kim said, although she didn’t feel as confident that the Boss knew her every move as she had before the stairwell attack. “Why should we trust you?”
“You shouldn’t,” Neagley replied. “God knows I don’t trust you. We can still be useful to each other. Up to you.”
Kim nodded, followed Gaspar into the cab. Neagley tucked in beside her and slammed the door. “Kennedy, please,” she told the driver. “United.”
Clearly, Neagley was a woman used to being in charge. Kim waited to see what she would do next. This was Neagley’s party. For the moment.
Gaspar said nothing. Maybe he was waiting, too.
Neagley turned slightly in the seat to face them. She studied them as if she had some sort of machine in her head that would evaluate them. Maybe she did.
“I’ve got a flight to Chicago,” Neagley said. “I’d like to talk before I go.”
Kim said, “Did you contact Reacher like we asked you to?”
“I tried.”
Gaspar said, “That’s true.”
Kim tried to cover her surprise, but knew she didn’t do it as well as Neagley covered hers. How could Gaspar possibly know Neagley had tried to contact Reacher?
Kim would ask that question when they were alone. Now, she needed to get what she could from Neagley. “Where’s Dixon?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Neagley said. “When we reach a quiet place for conversation.”
Kim understood that she meant a place free of eavesdroppers and metadata collection. Good luck with that. Perhaps there were such places somewhere in the country, but Kim thought not.
Neagley settled back into her seat. Nothing else was said for the remainder of the drive. When the cab pulled up in front of the United terminal, Neagley opened the door and stepped out. She handed the driver a bill and said to them, “Are you coming?”
They scrambled out of the lumpy back seat and followed as Neagley strode through the airport without regard for Kim’s comfort or Gaspar’s limp. Both agents kept up with her. They followed her down what looked like a service corridor and through an unmarked door into a small, white-walled conference room. Maybe she reserved it while she waited outside the investigator’s office.
She waved them to sit at the conference table and then they watched as she pulled two small objects from the overnight bag she’d been carrying—a sleek portable device clearly designed to detect surveillance equipment, and a small black box Kim decided must emit interference at high decibels which would, presumably, prevent eavesdropping and perhaps block the tracking devices contained in their cell phones.
Kim didn’t mention that FBI equipment was designed to penetrate such devices. Neagley should have known that. Otherwise, Kim would be carrying a couple herself.
When Neagley had everything set up to her satisfaction, she retrieved a smartphone from her jacket, located a photograph, and showed it first to Kim and then to Gaspar.
/> “Five years ago, this man claimed to be a rocket scientist. He used the name Edward Dean.”
Kim knew a few rocket scientists and this guy looked more like a coach at some third-rate high school. He had a shock of sandy hair. Maybe forty years old in the grainy photograph. He looked like he’d just been rudely awakened from a sound sleep. The photo was cropped about mid-chest, meaning Kim couldn’t judge his height or weight. He wore a wrinkled grey T-shirt. Kim imagined he was wearing jeans or sweats. Maybe no shoes, if he’d been sleeping when Neagley shot him.
Neagley found and displayed a second photograph. “Yesterday, as you know, this woman showed up at my office. Five years ago, she claimed to be a human resources director. She used the name Margaret Berenson.”
The photo seemed to be some sort of publicity shot. She wore a tailored black jacket and white blouse. Her hair was brown, cut in a style popular back then. Berenson, too, looked to be about forty. For the publicity shot, the scars on her face were maybe airbrushed or something. But they were visible under her makeup. Her photo was cropped like Dean’s, but Kim had seen this woman yesterday. She was still slim enough, medium height, medium build. Bigger than Kim and Neagley but smaller than Gaspar.
Neagley pulled back the smartphone, located a third photograph and displayed it. “Fifteen years ago, this man was U.S. Army Major Jorge Sanchez.”
This was the third photo Kim had seen of Jorge Sanchez. The first was his official personnel file headshot. And the second was the casual group photo she’d seen hanging in two places, O’Donnell’s office and Dixon’s home. Like those photos, the Sanchez grinning at her in this one looked durable. His eyes were narrowed. He showed a hint of smile that revealed a gold tooth. He looked almost content, Kim thought.
Finally, Neagley found and displayed a fourth photo. This one Kim recognized as a still shot edited from a video of some sort. Unmistakably the dead guy on the gurney in Neagley’s office.
As if they didn’t already know, Neagley said, “Yesterday, this man, also claiming to be Jorge Sanchez, arrived with Margaret Berenson and died in my office.”
In this photo, a decimated Sanchez looked nothing like the Army officer in the other photos, Kim thought. Neagley finished: “And then Berenson ran away. But before she left the building, she tried to kill you.”
Was Neagley saying that Berenson had attacked them in the stairwell? How could Neagley know that?
Neagley slipped the smartphone into her pocket, placed both palms on the table and leaned forward. “I know who and what you are. I know you’re working off the books for Charles Cooper, one of the meanest snakes that ever lived. And he’s watching you the way a hawk watches a field mouse.”
She stopped talking for a moment, maybe giving them a chance to argue.
When they said nothing, Neagley continued. “But what I want to know, Agents Otto and Gaspar, is why you are sniffing around my team. I want to know why Dave O’Donnell is dead and where Karla Dixon is and why you’re asking about Reacher. I want to know what you’ve done to piss Berenson and Dean off and why they want to kill you.”
Neagley waited a beat. Her voice lowered half an octave, slowed, and quieted. “This is your last chance to tell me what the hell is going on here.”
Kim was trained in interrogation techniques and she had a savant-like talent for profiling, all of which led to the inescapable conclusion that Neagley must be crazy if she thought Kim would tell her anything.
But she didn’t look crazy.
She looked, what? Determined. Serious. Her words were angry, but her demeanor was dead calm. Maybe that was crazy.
How far could Neagley be pushed before she did something psychotic?
“I’d like to know all of those things, too,” Kim said, in the same tone she’d have used to persuade a jumper not to leap off a skyscraper. “And I have a few other questions as well. Beginning with how you know Berenson and Dean, because we’ve never heard of either one until just now. We’ve never seen Dean before.”
Neagley’s pupils widened and then narrowed. The effect was eerily like a camera lens, opening to capture the truth and closing after reality was ensnared.
Kim’s tone hardened, “And I have no idea why Berenson was shooting at us, but I’d bet every last dollar in my retirement fund that it has something to do with you. Just like I’m pretty sure I have you to thank for this pain in my shoulder and about seven hours of missing memory.”
Neagley didn’t reply to any of Kim’s comments. Instead, she looked at Gaspar. “What about you? You’re following her lead, even if it gets you killed in the process? You’ve got kids and a wife who are gonna miss your paycheck, don’t you think?”
Gaspar’s jaw clenched, nostrils flared. Kim knew Neagley had done the wrong thing by mentioning his family. But he drew himself in, just that quickly, and hoisted the customary Gaspar flippancy into place.
“My family is resourceful and they don’t eat much.” Then he went very still, and said very softly, “I’d worry about your brother, Paul, though. He doesn’t look like he can fend for himself very well.”
Neagley’s expression calmed. It was chilling to witness.
Gaspar had clearly crossed a line of some kind, himself. Now he’d planted himself firmly on the other side as far as Neagley was concerned.
The acid churned in Kim’s stomach. Whatever line Gaspar had crossed, he’d made a deadly enemy. Another one. When they already had more enemies than they needed.
Neagley picked up her equipment. Turned them off. Returned them to her bag.
“We won’t see each other again.” She turned and left the room.
When the door had shut behind her, Gaspar rose. “That went well, don’t you think, Susie Wong?”
“You’re not happy unless everybody you meet wants to kill you, Cheech?” She didn’t mention the glaring omission in Neagley’s outburst. Sanchez. Neagley hadn’t asked why he was dead or how that happened. Which probably meant she knew the answers and Kim could take a pretty accurate guess, too. But she didn’t want to speculate aloud just yet.
Gaspar shrugged. “She’s too controlled. Too cool. We need her to make a few mistakes. She won’t do that as long as she thinks she’s in charge. And until she screws something up, we don’t have a chance in hell of getting anything useful out of her.”
“All true,” Kim replied. She pulled out the Boss’s untraceable cell phone. Pressed redial. “But I’m sure glad it’s your guts she hates and not mine.”
Gaspar smirked. “Don’t feel left out, Sunshine. Neagley can kill you without hating you first.”
The Boss picked up before the first ring completed, confirming her suspicion that he’d been following along with events as they unfolded, as usual.
Kim said, “What the hell is she talking about? And what do we do now?”
“I’ll do some checking,” he said. “Meanwhile, you need to hustle or you’ll lose her. They’re holding your flight to O’Hare on American. I sent your boarding passes to your smartphones. She’s arriving thirty minutes ahead of you on United.”
He paused briefly.
“Otto? Answer your damn phone when I call you, not just when you feel like it. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything useful. Until then, stay out of her way.”
Before Kim could retort, he’d disconnected. She jammed the phone into her pocket and told Gaspar, “Time to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Saturday, November 13
8:56 p.m.
Chicago, IL
When the wheels touched the tarmac in Chicago, Kim felt the Boss’s cell phone vibrate in her pocket. She checked the screen. He’d sent two texts while she was in flight, unable to retrieve anything. The first message said, “Files available for download.” The second was, “Vehicle arranged as usual.”
They’d crossed into the Central time zone when they’d flown over Lake Michigan, but Kim’s body clock registered an hour later. She collected her equipment and nudged Gaspar awake as she trudged out p
ast his seat. She waited at the jetway exit.
When he joined her, they made their way to the special reservation counter and identified their vehicle’s location, which, due to Gaspar’s requirements, took longer than it should have on a Sunday night.
Kim had lost every debate and given up arguing about transportation with Gaspar after the first day they worked together. He was persuaded that no vehicle on the planet was suitable for their purposes except the Crown Vic Police Interceptor. He liked the powerful V-8 engine and tough, body-on-frame construction. Rear-wheel drive was better for rough driving over curbs and potholes and other urban road hazards. Reduced spin-outs, too. Problem was, Ford had stopped production in 2012 and the big tanks were a challenge to procure. As usual, the Boss could do what mere mortal FBI Special Agents could not. Which meant Kim could look forward to riding in a giant-sized vehicle with severe duty shock absorbers that tossed her lightweight frame around like a rag doll. After fifty miles, she always felt like she’d gone ten rounds with an Olympic champion heavyweight.
Finally, bags stashed, Gaspar behind the wheel, they were on the road headed toward Lake Forest and the address contained in the Boss’s text. Neagley’s house. The GPS estimated thirty-four minutes to travel 25.5 miles, mostly North along I-294, to the tony Chicago suburb.
Kim had been to Lake Forest before. The area reminded her of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She knew what they’d find before they arrived. Winding tarmac along Lake Michigan. Stately homes. Grass and gardens and brick pavers galore. She wondered how Neagley could afford to live there and why she’d want to. It seemed much more upscale than a retired soldier would be able to support or feel comfortable living in.
She set up the laptop and connected to the secure server to download the Boss’s encrypted file, which was larger than she’d expected. When she opened the zipped contents, she saw three individual files. One labeled “Berenson,” one “Dean,” and one “New Age Defense Systems.”
