Fatal Dawn

by Diane Capri

  Fernandez said, “Makes sense. Could have happened that way.”

  “Have you been in the house?” Jess asked.

  “Not yet. Haven’t had a chance.” Fernandez shook his head. “After I dropped you off, I parked in the driveway behind the cruisers, heard shots, saw the man running out the back. I circled the block and picked you up.”

  A uniformed KCPD officer approached. “We’ve called the alarm company to send a tech before we go in the house. But the garage is open. You can take a look, but it’s an active crime scene.”

  “Understood,” Fernandez said. “Thanks. What’s in there besides the two bodies?”

  “I want to see them,” Jess said.

  He replied, “One’s mangled badly. You’ll need a strong stomach.”

  Jess flashed back to the moment she saw Morris shot and all the blood on his clothes. Her skin tingled, but she squared her shoulders and marched forward.

  She nodded to the officer and followed Fernandez to the side door of the garage. The frame was smashed and the door hung half-open. Fernandez handed her a pair of gloves and paper booties. She gloved up, slipped the booties over her shoes, and stepped through into the garage.

  The officers had set up some lighting inside the garage. Jess saw a dark gray Suburban parked on one side and two bodies sprawled on the concrete floor. One was Belk, the other was face down in a large, congealing pool of blood.

  Fernandez circled the second body, careful to stay out of the blood. “Multiple stab wounds to one side and a gunshot to the head.”

  Jess turned her eyes away from the horrific sight on the floor. She asked the officer, “Any ID?”

  “We’re waiting for a full crime scene team before we touch anything,” he replied. “But I’m pretty sure it’s Henrik Metcalfe. Local thug with a reputation for violence.”

  On the far side of the Suburban, flower pots and garden implements were piled in a heap on the floor.

  “A garden fork could produce the kind of results we’ve got over there,” Fernandez said, jerking his thumb in that direction. “And you saw Hallman running away with a garden fork. Put two and two together, Hallman was probably responsible for this.”

  “He didn’t seem like a cold-blooded killer, though.” She nodded toward the bodies. “What happened to Belk?”

  Fernandez shrugged. “The marks around his neck suggest he was garroted.”

  “Garroted? That’s an intense and close physical act. Requires a lot of guts, not to mention strength, to do something like that face-to-face,” Jess said. “I don’t think Hallman had it in him, either physically or mentally. He didn’t seem like that kind of man to me.”

  “Okay.” Fernandez looked at the bloody body for almost a full minute. “So the dead guy here kills Belk. And then Hallman kills Metcalfe?”

  Jess cocked her head to think about it. “Hallman was definitely hiding behind the tree at the drive-by shooting. When this guy, Metcalfe, drove up in the Toyota to pick him up, he hesitated.”

  “So you’re thinking Hallman was improvising. Making it up as he went along.”

  She nodded. “Gotting, Norell, Belk, and Metcalfe were connected somehow when this whole thing started. But Hallman, the one who called to blackmail me, is at the center of all of this.”

  “You think blackmailing you was Hallman’s plan alone?” Fernandez asked.

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?” she said. “Gotting had baby things at his apartment, but he doesn’t have a baby. Belk was a family lawyer, an obvious link in the chain to make my son a part of another family.”

  Fernandez replied, “I guess it makes partial sense. Quite a few missing pieces, though.”

  Jess nodded. “The important thing is that Hallman was trying to blackmail me. He wanted three million dollars. He didn’t claim to have Peter. Which probably meant he knows where Peter is.”

  “Or thought he knew,” Fernandez said.

  “Or thought he could find out,” Jess added and knew she was grasping. “Which means we could find out first. We have more resources than he does. Hallman might have learned about all of this from Gotting while they were in Humboldt Prison. With Hallman dead, we need to get into their backgrounds. Gotting, Belk, Metcalfe, and Norell. All of them. Work, finances, family, friends, everything. Find the connection, we’ll find Gotting. Then we’ll find Peter.”

  Fernandez said, “We’re already on it. We’ve got guys on the way to Humboldt, too. Nothing yet.”

  “But there must be a connection. We just need to find it. We’ve got a trail of bodies. All of these men who were probably involved in Peter’s kidnapping.” She heard the desperation in her own voice that she’d felt every day in her heart for years.

  Fernandez shook his head. “Seems like a lot of muscle for one baby.”

  “If it was only one baby. This seems like a broader criminal enterprise to me.” She raked her hand through her hair and took a long breath. Despite the grisly scene behind her, she felt a spark of hope lighten her heart.

  Fernandez nodded but didn’t reply.

  “Regardless, this is way more than I’ve ever had to go on before.” She stepped out of the garage and waved to Fernandez to follow as she hurried toward his Crown Vic. “Come on. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Peter’s waited long enough.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Tuesday, November 28

  8:05 p.m.

  Kansas City, Kansas

  Fernandez called to get a contact at Belk’s offices, Somersall-McCree, and persuaded the office manager to meet him there without explaining much. He parked on the street in front of the building’s entrance, which was a wall of glass. A security guard let them in when Fernandez showed his badge and directed them to the desk to wait.

  A tall, thin man in a dark suit and vivid blue silk tie walked out to join them when the elevator doors opened. “Jasper Quinn. Senior partner with Somersall-McCree.”

  “Emilio Fernandez, FBI, and this is Jessica Kimball.” They shook hands. “I’m sorry to bring you the bad news. Please keep this confidential until next of kin has been notified. Your colleague, Ammerson Belk, has died.”

  Quinn looked down as he paused to compose himself. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. He’s been a friend and colleague for twenty years.”

  “I understand.” Fernandez nodded. “I’m afraid he’s been murdered.”

  “What?” Quinn’s eyes widened, and his lips pinched. “Someone killed him? But why?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you have any idea who might have done this?” Fernandez asked.

  Quinn shrugged. “No. But it’s safe to say that lawyers rarely make all sides happy if we’re doing our jobs well. Family matters like we handle here are especially difficult. People are very emotional about personal issues. You’ve probably seen plenty of evidence of that, yourself.”

  Fernandez nodded.

  Jess couldn’t argue, either. She’d reported way too many cases of domestic homicide to doubt the truth. “Does your firm handle family law matters exclusively?”

  “Yes, but that covers a lot of ground. Family law extends to marriage, divorce, wills—”

  Jess said, “Adoptions?”

  “Certainly,” Quinn nodded. “All the time. Across the country and the world. Adoptions are one of the happier types of legal work we do.”

  “Do you represent corporations?”

  “You mean in adoptions? I’m not sure corporations can adopt children in this country.”

  “In any type of matter.”

  Quinn frowned. “Sure. Family owned corporations and other types of business entities. Prenuptial agreements, trusts, that sort of thing.”

  “I see,” Jess said.

  Quinn gestured toward the circular guard desk. “I understand you wanted to see what happened when Mr. Belk arrived here tonight.”

  The guard played recorded video of Belk arriving and leaving not very long ago. The recordings showed him in the parking lot, the foyer, and on the l
anding in front of the doors in his office. Two men were with him. One was Metcalfe. The second one was Hallman. Jess had seen him twice and believed he was her blackmailer. The three men talked with each other, but the recording lacked sound.

  “You don’t have cameras in the elevators, or in the office area?” Fernandez asked.

  “The camera in the elevator isn’t working,” the guard said.

  “And we don’t believe in spying on our employees,” Quinn added with a frown.

  “Do you recognize either of the two men with Belk?” Jess asked.

  The guard shook his head. “Never seen them before.”

  “I work on the top floor, so I don’t generally see Mr. Belk’s clients,” Quinn said.

  Fernandez pointed to the elevator. “We’d like to see his office.”

  Quinn seemed unsure. He paused briefly before he made up his mind. “You’d better come this way.”

  They rode up the elevator in silence. The doors opened onto a small but well-appointed reception area. A young man sat behind the receptionist’s desk playing games on his phone. In one of the client chairs, a woman was reading a book. Both jumped to their feet.

  Quinn introduced Barbara the receptionist and Jeremy from IT. From his tone and their terrified faces, Jess figured their employment would be terminated in the morning.

  Fernandez shook his head and held out his FBI badge for Barbara and Jeremy to see. “Mr. Belk returned to the office a couple of hours ago with two men. Did either of you see them while they were here?”

  Barbara shook her head. “We left to grab dinner at five-thirty. We came back twenty minutes ago because Jeremy had to check some software upgrades or something.”

  Jess asked Jeremy, “When Mr. Belk and the two men went into his office, can you tell us what they were doing?”

  Barbara shook her head. “We don’t have cameras or anything in the offices, I’m afraid.”

  Jeremy said, “If he used his computer, we could find some things. A keyboard logger might help, but we don’t have one. It’s against company policy. What we can do is find anything he looked at on the company servers. We can also track outside websites he visited. But it’ll take a day or so to do any of that.”

  “Why so long?” Fernandez asked.

  “We don’t have the passwords we’d need for the routers. The guy who does is on vacation. Hiking in the Appalachians. No cell coverage for most of the time.” Jeremy shrugged.

  “No one else knows the passwords?” Jess asked, incredulously.

  Quinn said, “They’re locked down. For security. We never imagined anything would be so urgent that we’d need a backup system.”

  “Can you tell us what cases Belk was working on?” Fernandez asked.

  “We can’t disclose our clients’ names or their confidences. Surely you know that would be unethical. Get a warrant, and we’d be happy to comply,” Quinn said, starchily.

  “He always had a lot going on,” Barbara said, helpfully. “Workaholic, I thought.”

  “We need the names,” Jess replied.

  Quinn shook his head. “Sorry. Like I said, not without a warrant.”

  Jess spun around to face Quinn. “Belk was just garroted, minutes after he left here. One of those two men with him was murdered with a garden fork. Another man died in a traffic accident. We suspect they were all engaged in the interstate kidnapping of at least one boy. We need facts. Now. Before anyone else dies.”

  Quinn squared his shoulders and raised his chin to look down his patrician nose. “And you shall have the facts. When you get a warrant. It’s not a matter of failing to cooperate, Ms. Kimball. I’m ethically and legally obligated to protect our clients’ privacy. Ammerson Belk would certainly understand that. He wouldn’t give you that information, either.”

  Jess turned back to Barbara. “We need to see Belk’s office.”

  Barbara led the way down the corridor to the door. She opened it and stood aside, allowing them to enter.

  The office was long and narrow. Golden tan carpet and dark, fine-grained wood furniture. A table for meetings was closest to the door, and farther back was a large desk with a computer. The office smelled musty as if the door was closed most of the time, which it probably was.

  Fernandez told the employees to stay out of the room.

  Jess walked in and began to look around. She didn’t touch anything because she didn’t have another pair of gloves.

  One wall was lined with neatly arranged books. Large collections bound in matching covers with long titles that she’d never heard of. She skimmed over them but saw nothing out of place.

  The room was immaculate, no pens or paper anywhere. “Why is there nothing on his desk?” she asked.

  “The firm’s policy. To protect client confidentiality.” Barbara said from the doorway.

  The computer was cold. Jess looked at Jeremy. “You can’t find anything in his browsing history?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “It gets deleted every twenty minutes. Privacy.”

  Jess sighed. “Let me guess. The firm’s policy.”

  Jeremy offered a restrained smile.

  “Do you know what cases Ammerson was working on?” Jess asked Barbara.

  Barbara nodded.

  “Do the names Gotting, Norell, or Hallman mean anything to you?”

  “No,” Barbara said.

  “Kimball? Peter Kimball?”

  Barbara shook her head.

  “Can we see the records for his cases from thirteen to fourteen years ago?”

  Quinn said, “Not without a warrant.”

  Jess wanted to throttle him.

  “Even if you had access to the records, they wouldn’t tell you much,” Jeremy said. “Years ago, the firm had a big server. Kept everyone’s work in one place. When it died, they discovered the backup system wasn’t working.”

  “What do you mean, wasn’t working? As in everything on the whole server was lost?” Jess asked.

  Jeremy shrugged. “I wasn’t here then.”

  “We have the paper records in the basement, though,” Barbara said.

  “Can we see them?” Fernandez asked. Before Quinn spouted off about the warrant again, he added, “We’ll need to describe what we want for our warrant.”

  Quinn nodded, but he didn’t look happy about it.

  They rode the elevator to the lobby. Fernandez put his hand on Quinn’s arm. “I have something to discuss with Mr. Quinn and Jeremy. You go ahead with Barbara, Jess. Make a list so we’ll have what we need for the judge.”

  Jess nodded and followed Barbara through a door and down two more flights of stairs. The last flight was an open staircase with a handrail on either side.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, she realized the basement was huge. It must have occupied at least half the area of the building. Stacks of bookshelves were lined up and disappeared into the distance.

  Barbara saw her staring at the stacks. “Somersall-McCree has more than a hundred lawyers. We generate a lot of paper. You’d be lost down here for days if you tried to find those old files on your own.”

  Barbara led her to a table surrounded by filing cabinets. She worked her way around the cabinets and found the one she wanted. She opened the third drawer down and pulled out a thick handful of papers from the rear.

  “I know who you are. I’ve followed your search for your son for a long time. I’m so sorry.” She gave Jess a knowing, sympathetic look. “Is it your boy you’re looking for, Jess?”

  Jess nodded, surprised when tears welled in her eyes. She was tired. That’s all. She’d cried all the tears she had in her body for Peter long, long ago. She blinked the tears away.

  Barbara sifted through the papers on the table, finally pulling out a couple dozen pages. She held them out. “Here’s a list of Mr. Belk’s cases from thirteen to fourteen years ago. They’re listed alphabetically by client.”

  Jess asked, “Can you write down the title of these documents, the dates, and where they’re k
ept in the files, so we can get the right information to the judge when we request the warrant?”

  Barbara pulled out a chair and found a legal pad. She spread the pages on the table. “I’ll do that now. Have a seat while I work through these.”

  She started at the back end of the pile, leaving the documents close enough for Jess to read. She’d scanned only half a page when she gave Jess a knowing look. “Shoot. I have to find a pen. You stay here. I’ll be back.”

  Jess understood Barbara’s motives perfectly. She nodded but said nothing, teary again at the younger woman’s kindness.

  Barbara placed a pad of sticky notes on the table and moved into the stacks out of sight.

  Jess pulled out her phone and scanned the relevant pages quickly. Every time she saw a matter listed as “adoption,” she took a photo of the entry. After several minutes she had marked nineteen adoptions.

  Almost two a month.

  Barbara came back with her pen. “You know, you’ll also want the full files, won’t you? These documents are just a list of the clients and matters during that time frame. Come this way.”

  Jess followed her as she navigated between the rows of bookshelves.

  The shelves were stacked with cardboard boxes, labeled with numbers and dates and names on the ends, one matter per box. The shelves towered over Jess. She ran her finger along the top of one of the boxes, revealing a thick layer of dust.

  Barbara stopped twice at intersections, checking the numbers on the end of the shelves before deciding which way to go. Moments later, she stopped in the middle of a row and pointed out several different boxes.

  She pulled a ladder over and climbed up to find the relevant boxes on the upper shelves, while Jess found the ones she wanted lower down. They arranged the boxes in numerical case order on the floor.

  Barbara winked at Jess and said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I need the list to get these organized.”

  Jess sorted quickly through the contents of the boxes. Several of the file numbers were missing from their boxes. Paperwork is always unreliable. Not like computer records. But fully twenty-five percent of Belk’s cases from the relevant time frame was missing.