Under the color of law kk-6

by Michael McGarrity

  "I am. But I've never skied here before and I'd rather follow someone down who knows the terrain. Would that be an imposition?"

  "Not at all," Randall replied.

  The woman flashed a big smile.

  "Super."

  They got off the lift. Randall waited while the woman adjusted her bindings.

  People flowed around them and skied off.

  "New equipment," she explained apologetically as she buttoned up.

  "Cat Skinner is to the left," Randall said.

  "Lead on," the woman said.

  "Get me pointed in the right direction and I'll beat you to the bottom."

  Randall smiled at the prospect of some friendly competition.

  "We'll see about that."

  A third of the way down, Randall Stewart picked up good speed. He caught some air on a small bump and the woman stayed right with him.

  The woman took a quick look back. No one was behind her. She ran Stewart off the powder and into a tree. The glancing impact sent him careening, spinning wildly on his backside, his left ski twisted awkwardly under his body. He slid to a stop and tried to get his leg untangled, but the pain was too intense.

  The woman reached him as he lay in the snow under some trees out of sight of the run.

  "Jesus, why the fuck did you run into me?" Stewart asked, panting from the pain.

  The woman took a handgun from inside her parka, bent over, slammed it full force against Stewart's forehead, and heard his skull bone shatter.

  That should do it, Agent Applewhite thought, as she watched Stewart's breathing slow and finally stop.

  The snow fell harder now as the cloud dipped over the mountain. Soon their ski tracks would be completely covered.

  She turned away from the body and continued her run down the mountain, feeling a rush of adrenaline as she cut through the fresh powder.

  Chapter 8

  Detective Bobby Sloan returned to headquarters, took possession of an empty office assigned to the crime prevention unit, and spent the rest of the morning and part of the early afternoon going through the paperwork in Father Mitchell's briefcase, viewing some of the videocassettes found in the locker at the college, and sampling excerpts of what looked to be at least ten hours of audio tapes Mitchell had also stashed in his briefcase.

  In a general way the video- and audiotapes Sloan previewed explained a good deal about Mitchell's research. The priest had been probing into intelligence matters. But it was hard to see what his focus was.

  Mitchell had conducted interviews about the U. S. Army School of the Americas, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Security Agency, the U. S. Army Intelligence and Security Command-Sloan now knew what INS COM stood for-and a host of other agencies that included the departments of state, treasury, and defense.

  A number of interviews touched on a government institution he'd never heard of before, a Joint Military Intelligence College that offered undergraduate and graduate spy-craft degrees to care fully selected military and civilian intelligence personnel.

  It was all eye-opening, informative stuff about the scope of government intelligence operations. But it was also all over the map, and Sloan couldn't get a handle on what the priest had been trying to accomplish.

  However, he was willing to bet the farm that Mitchell's murder was directly tied to his research. That at least gave Sloan a start on figuring out the motive for the killing.

  Mitchell had kept copies of some important personal and professional documents in the briefcase. His army retirement papers showed that his last posting had been at the School of Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia. There was a letter from the secretary of the army to Mitchell's mother, expressing condolences regarding the death of the priest's brother, another letter from a U. S. embassy official that reported the colonel had been attacked and killed by bandits, and a copy of the resignation letter Father Mitchell had submitted to the college where he'd been teaching. The priest had quit his job a month after his brother's death.

  Sloan pawed through an envelope stuffed with credit-card, hotel, and airplane-ticket receipts. Mitchell had been doing some whirlwind traveling during the last three months, taking short trips to places like San Antonio and Tucson, and many longer jaunts to Washington, D.C." and Georgia.

  Sloan arranged everything by date to get a clear picture of Mitchell's schedule, then totaled up the charges, which ran over five thousand dollars. Bobby wondered how the priest had been able to pay for such travel on a retired major's pension.

  Sloan fanned through a pocket notebook filled with the names and addresses of people Mitchell had kept track of. He'd known a hell of a lot of folks scattered all across the country. Some addresses correlated with the places Mitchell had recently visited, some names had stars or checkmarks next to them, and some entries had been crossed out.

  Bobby put the notebook aside and went through two correspondence files from the briefcase. One held six years' worth of letters Mitchell had written to the secretary of the army requesting more specific information about the death of his brother under the Freedom of Information Act. Each request had been turned down. All Mitchell had received for his efforts was an official army criminal investigation report that basically repeated the facts contained in the letter from the embassy.

  The second file contained letters to the Armed Forces Records Center in St. Louis demanding the release of his brother's military service records.

  Those requests also had been rejected. There was, however, a recent letter from a former officer who'd served with Mitchell's brother when he had been deputy commandant at the U. S. Army School of the Americas.

  The correspondent wrote that he had no information that would be helpful to the priest but wished him good luck with his research.

  From his time in the service Sloan knew that immediate family members of deceased veterans were, by law, entitled to those records. What was the army hiding about the brother's death?

  Mitchell had kept his checkbook in a briefcase sleeve. Sloan scanned through the entries. Two five-thousand-dollar deposits had been made the past three months.

  His retirement pay went into the account automatically. From the looks of the checks Mitchell wrote, he lived frugally and was a heavy supporter of a group that politically opposed the continued operation of the School of the Americas.

  Sloan filled out evidence inventory sheets and then got on the Internet and started surfing for supplemental information that might help him fill in some of the blanks. When he was done, he checked the clock.

  Day shift was over, and he hadn't even started writing up his supplemental report.

  Bobby decided to talk to the chief first. He dialed Kerney's extension and the chief picked up immediately. Sloan started talking about Mitchell's briefcase filled with intelligence goodies. Kerney cut him off and told him to meet him in the staff parking lot with the evidence in five minutes.

  Sloan toted everything out the back door. The chief was waiting in his unit with the motor running and the passenger door open. He got in, wondering where in the hell they were going and why. Kerney's jaw was tightly set and his mouth formed a thin, compressed line. Sloan decided it was probably better not to ask.

  Kerney took Sloan to the downtown library, where they settled into the second-floor audiovisual room. Bobby gave him a quick review of the Mitchell evidence.

  "Also, Brother Jerome told me that an envelope mailed to Father Mitchell was missing from his office," Sloan said, "so we've got a connection between the homicide and the burglary."

  Kerney gazed out the window that overlooked Washington Avenue and the bank building across the way.

  "Don't you think it's odd that we have two homicides involving national security?" Kerney asked.

  "According to what I heard, the feds took that issue off the table in the Terrell case," Sloan said.

  Kerney turned away from the window.

  "Two things you told me put it back on the table. During his military career Ambass
ador Terrell served as commandant of the School of the Americas and later was the commanding general of army intelligence."

  "That's interesting," Sloan said.

  "Do you think Mitchell was trying to get something on Terrell?"

  Kerney sat in a straight-back chair and shook his head.

  "I don't know.

  Mitchell's brother was at the School of the Americas long after Terrell's retirement. But he was killed while serving as a military attache in Venezuela.

  That raises two additional points. Embassy attache assignments are heavily geared to intelligence gathering. And Terrell is a member of a trade mission to South America."

  "You're racking up a whole lot of coincidences here, Chief."

  "Give me your thoughts on Mitchell's research."

  "It's a real slumgullion. At first I thought Mitchell was concentrating his investigation on the murder of his brother in South America, six years ago. That seemed to be what got him started. He left his teaching position right after his brother's death and wrote dozens of letters to the army trying to get more information about it.

  The army stonewalled him."

  Sloan took a sip of coffee from the jumbo-size takeout container the chief had bought him on the way to the library. It was cold and bitter tasting.

  "But when you watch the videos you'll see that they jump from one subject to another, so I don't know where Mitchell was going."

  "We can start with the fact that Mitchell didn't buy the story of his brother's death," Kerney said.

  "Okay, at the very least a cover-up took place," Bobby said.

  "Maybe the priest's brother wasn't whacked by banditos who simply wanted his cash and his car. But based on what I saw on the videotapes I watched, that theme isn't even touched on. There's an interview that concentrates on vague accusations that the army has been burying a sizable amount of money for the last five years in DEA aid to Colombia.

  There's a Q and A with a U. S. Treasury official about drug money being laundered through banks in Panama. In another tape a retired army major is talking about the time he spent at the Fort Benning School of the Americas with the priest's brother that doesn't reveal diddly."

  "Let's watch the tapes," Kerney said.

  Some of the videos were brief, and none ran over twenty minutes. An ex-Canadian intelligence officer talked about the National Security Agency sending cryptologists to Brazil for an unknown purpose. A former DEA agent revealed that the Joint Military Intelligence College had developed a field-intelligence and drug interdiction curriculum for the Ecuadoran army. A professor of economics explained "dollarization," an effort to persuade Latin American countries to join Panama and Ecuador in adopting U. S. currency as their official legal tender.

  A treasury official detailed information about a financial crimes advisory on Panamanian drug-laundering schemes. An expert on international banking summarized the ways in which large sums of money were electronically transferred between foreign and domestic financial institutions.

  Kerney quickly ran through the tapes Sloan had previewed and then clicked off the VCR with the remote.

  "What do you think, Chief?" Bobby asked.

  "I've been thinking about geography," Kerney said.

  "Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil. If I'm not mistaken, all of those countries border Colombia. Some political analysts are saying that Colombia could be our next Vietnam. Half of the country is controlled by rebels, including a lot of the coca-growing regions.

  Maybe the government is getting all their ducks lined up before they send in the troops. That kind of planning can't be done openly. It would raise too much of a stink here at home."

  "A secret trade mission might be the way to go," Sloan said.

  "I'd say a major clandestine military and civilian intelligence operation has been launched," Kerney said.

  "A trade mission could well be part of that strategy."

  "We always seem to come back around to the ambassador," Sloan said. His butt felt numb. He shifted in his chair to ease the discomfort.

  "It does seem that way," Kerney said. He straightened the leg with the blown-out knee and rubbed the sore tendons.

  Sloan yawned.

  "This stuff about banking, money laundering, and international finance may have something to do with cutting off the drug money flowing in and out of Colombia."

  "Maybe so," Kerney said.

  "Without money the jefes couldn't fund their private armies and pay off the rebel forces they do business with."

  "So what did Father Mitchell learn that the government didn't want him to know?"

  "That's what we've got to find out," Kerney said.

  "Have you dug up any more background about him?"

  "A couple of things. Like his brother, Mitchell pulled a tour of duty at Fort Benning. In fact, that was his last post before he retired. He could have probably stayed on active duty if he'd wanted to. I cruised the Internet and learned that army chaplains are in real short supply.

  He made some trips back to Benning recently, but I haven't found any documentation by Mitchell about it yet. Maybe something will surface on the audiotapes.

  "Mitchell ran up travel expenses of over five thousand dollars in the last three months. You don't have that kind of money to throw around on a retired major's pay, especially if you're sending half your pension to a group called the School of the Americas Vigil Committee. I think somebody helped Mitchell out financially. He made two recent deposits totaling ten thousand dollars."

  "Follow the money, Bobby," Kerney said.

  "First thing in the morning."

  "What's this School of the Americas Vigil Committee all about?"

  Sloan swallowed hard and pinched his throat to cut off the bile.

  "It's run by a peace and human rights advocacy group. They want the school shut down and refer to it as 'the school of assassins." They say it violates U. S. foreign policy, doesn't promote democracy, and infringes on human rights. If that's true, I can see their point."

  "Let's wrap it up," Kerney said, eyeing Sloan's tired face.

  "I want you to make a complete copy of everything we've got-the papers, letters, videos, and audiotapes-everything. Do it first thing tomorrow and get it to me. Nothing goes into evidence until I say so."

  "You've got it, Chief."

  "Tell no one in the department about this," Kerney added.

  Sloan nodded.

  Kerney helped Sloan pack up. They carried everything downstairs, where library staff were roaming around announcing closing time.

  "Remember when this building was city hall?" Sloan asked.

  Kerney nodded.

  "City hall, the jail, and a fire station combined."

  "Doesn't seem that long ago," Sloan said.

  "Stop it, Bobby. You're making me feel old. Let me buy you a late dinner."

  Sloan rubbed his gut.

  "No, thanks, Chief. I've had this gas thing in my gut all day."

  Kerney drove through the quiet plaza. The stores were closed, only a few people were out, and traffic consisted of one car turning onto Palace Avenue. Crystal snowflakes drifted slowly past the streetlamps, glistened briefly in the soft light, and then melted away on wet sidewalks. At night downtown Santa Fe still felt like a small town.

  After a quick run down Cerrillos Road he dropped Sloan at headquarters and headed home. He couldn't shake the notion that Charlie Perry and Agent Applewhite might be staying on in Santa Fe to monitor the Mitchell homicide investigation. What else was there for them to tidy up? If that proved to be the case, Kerney didn't know how he'd react.

  He decided he would have to play it by ear and watch his back as much as possible.

  Charlie Perry waited until the lights went out in the second floor room of the public library before stopping the tape recorder. Applewhite pulled out her earphone and shut down the video camera.

  "That's it," Perry said.

  "We only got half of it," Applewhite said.

  In
the darkness Perry gave Applewhite a nasty look. After tailing Kerney and the detective to the library and spotting them with binoculars in a second-floor room, he'd hustled to find a way to gain fast entry to the bank office building across the way. Fortunately, the Internal Revenue Service housed criminal-investigation agents in the building, so he'd been able to get in after cooling his heels waiting for the man with the keys.

  Perry had called Applewhite as soon as he had a fix on Kerney's location. She'd breezed in well after Charlie had the sensitive long range directional recording equipment up and running. Where she'd been all day and what she'd been doing, Perry didn't want to know.

  "This cop may not be as dumb as you make him out to be," Applewhite said.

  "Anybody can connect the dots," Perry replied.

  "Even Kerney."

  "You sound agitated, Charlie," Applewhite said as she lowered the blinds and turned on the lights. Her look reminded Charlie of his second-grade teacher just before she unleashed a scolding.

  Perry gave her the finger.

  "Calm down, Charlie," Applewhite said, dismissing the gesture.

  "All I'm saying is that, based on what we heard, Kerney's deductions are reasonable. But he doesn't have anywhere near the information he needs to figure out what's going on. The last remaining link in the paper trail between Phyllis Terrell and Father Mitchell has been secured."

  "You should have been the one to do the job at Brother Jerome's office,"

  Charlie said.

  "No, I take that back, you would have pistol whipped him."

  Applewhite smiled sarcastically and shook her head.

  "Let's wrap it up for the night, shall we?"

  "What about the evidence Detective Sloan has in his possession?" Perry asked.

  "I'll take care of that," Applewhite replied.

  "How?"

  Applewhite crossed her heart and smiled.

  "I promise there will be no pistol whipping, Charlie," she said, although the idea obviously held some appeal.

  Bobby Sloan didn't get home until late. After Kerney dropped him at headquarters, he'd decided to get everything duplicated while the building was quiet. That way he didn't have to worry about when he could get to use the copy machine or the other equipment he needed.