The Sin Keeper

by Gary Winston Brown

  “We’d like to see his office,” the second man said.

  “I’m sorry,” Elena said, “I can’t permit that.”

  The man smiled. “We’re not asking for your permission.”

  Elena leaned back in her chair. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “You’re very charming and all, and much better looking than your friend. But I’m sure you read the sign on the door on your way in. This is a law office. You may find this a little hard to believe, but around here we actually know a thing or two about the law. So unless you have a court order to search the premises, this counter is as far as you go.” Elena’s phone rang. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Verenich you stopped by.” She reached for the receiver.

  The second man leaned over the desk, placed his finger on the button and disconnected the call.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Elena snapped.

  The man picked up the receiver. “Call Verenich.”

  Elena dropped the files on her desk and crossed her arms. “Your visit is over gentlemen,” she said. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  “I won’t ask a third time.”

  “That’s it,” Elena said. She held out her hand. “Give me your credentials. I’m calling your office.”

  “No problem,” the man replied. He opened his jacket, removed his silencer-fitted pistol and shot Elena twice - one bullet between her eyes, the second through her heart- thwup! thwup!

  Elena’s head jerked back with the first shot, fell forward with the second. The shooter walked around the reception desk, lifted the dead woman’s body out of her chair, rolled it under the desk and slid the chair back into place. Cast-off blood and brain matter speckled the floor behind her.

  The assassins moved through the office quickly and efficiently.

  Seated at a conference table, Verenich’ support team became their first victims. Thwup! thwup! thwup! thwup! thwup! thwup! thwup! Less than five seconds. Seven staff members, all wiped out.

  In the supplies room, one of the clerks was busy making photocopies while a second filed the printed documents into white three-ring binders. They looked up as the strangers entered the room and fired their weapons - thwup! thwup! Both men fell dead.

  In the vault, Verenich’ admin staff were pulling files to be sent out for digital imaging. Two bullets ended their conversation and their lives.

  A male voice called out from the office on the opposite end of the floor. “Elena?”

  The men stopped and listened, determining the man’s location.

  Corner office.

  Verenich?

  They raised their weapons and advanced down the corridor in the direction of the voice.

  The man called out again. “Elena, you there?”

  Footsteps coming toward them. The assassins waited.

  The man stepped out of the office, saw the strangers and their guns and turned to run. Thwup! The first bullet ripped through his leg. Thwup! The second round found its mark in the small of his back. He fell across the threshold of Taras’ office, tried to crawl inside. The shooter walked up to him and pushed his foot into the bullet hole in his leg. The clerk screamed.

  The first man opened his cell phone, looked at the picture he had been emailed of their second target, showed it to his partner and shook his head. “It’s not him,” he said. The shooter man pressed the hot muzzle of the silencer into the base of the fallen man’s neck.

  “Verenich. Where is he?”

  The man tried to move, couldn’t. The second bullet had left him paralyzed. He struggled to speak. “I don’t know!”

  “Who are you?”

  “Holt… J-James Holt. I’m just a clerk,” he said.

  “Bullshit. The burn box. Where is it?”

  “The what?” The shooter pressed the tip of the silencer against Holt’s temple. “I swear to God I don’t know anything about a burn box!” the man cried. “All I know is Mr. Verenich has a safe.”

  “Where?”

  The man tried to point. “On the wall. Behind the picture.”

  “What’s the code?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Thwup! A third bullet tore through Holt’s shoulder. He screamed. The gunman pressed the silencer against the back of his head. “You sure about that?” he said.

  “4-9-2-8!”

  To his partner, the gunman indicated the Rockwell painting mounted on the wall behind Taras’ desk. “Try it.”

  The man walked into the office, ripped the painting off its wall track and exposed the safe. Verenich’ burn box, the repository in which he was required to keep all files about Company matters would be locked safely inside it.

  His partner entered the code. The door clicked open. The burn box sat on the bottom shelf.

  “Got it.”

  “Get the files.”

  The man pulled out the box, opened it. Empty. “No joy,” he said.

  “Verenich, you prick,” the shooter said. He stood up, pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the back of Holt’s skull. He stepped over the dead man’s body, inspected the empty box, then threw it across the room.

  “Shit,” he said, “He’s not going to like this.” He took out his cell phone and placed a call.

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, the Los Angeles office has been closed as requested.”

  “And the second package?”

  “Not on the premises.”

  “Need I remind you how important it is that it be found?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Get back to me when you have it.”

  “Yes, sir."

  The caller hung up.

  The two men walked to the reception area, rummaged through Elena’s purse, found her keys to the office, turned off the lights, locked the door and took the elevator to the main lobby.

  Holt’s killer dropped the office key into a garbage container outside the entrance to the office building.

  They walked across the street, took the elevator to the upper deck of the parking garage and resumed their surveillance.

  Yesterday they had lost the Ferrari when it sped through the lights ahead of them.

  They would continue to watch the building.

  Sooner or later Verenich had to return to his office.

  When he did they would kill him.

  CHAPTER 60

  “LONG BEACH is going to remember last night for a very long time,” Anne Ridgeway said.

  The Assistant Director had requested the agent’s presence in the boardroom. Their discussion centered on the bizarre and unusual events that had occurred over the past week. Jordan and Chris sat at the front of the room. Agent Hawkins presented his findings to the team.

  “I spent the better part of yesterday with my team digging through the Rosenfeld’s computers,” Hawkins said. “We concluded that all the murders, to one degree or another, are related to this man.”

  Behind him, Jason Merrick’s picture filled the wall monitor.

  “Hallier’s target,” Ann Ridgeway said. “Dr. Jason Merrick.”

  “Correct,” Hawkins replied. “Dr. Merrick - or more specifically what happened to him - has been the key to this case. And we might not have made the connection if DARPA hadn’t asked for our help.”

  The picture on the screen changed. It showed an evidence photo taken of the flash drive found at the Rosenfeld crime scene.

  “It came together for us with the flash drive you retrieved from Dr. Rosenfeld’s mouth,” Hawkins said. “At first, we thought the ‘AWP’ file contents were strings of code. Turns out they’re account codes; one for each victim. You may recall the first letter refers to the victim’s surname, the second letter to their given name. In other words, “DA” represents Dowd, Aaron, RI for Rosenfeld, Itzhak. GA is Granger, Ashley, HJ is Harper, Julie. The remaining two files, VT and PM, stand for Verenich, Taras, and Puzanova, Marina.”

  “Chris and I met with Verenich yesterday,” Jordan said.

  “You believe he’s a target too?” Chris asked.
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  “I’d bet on it,” Hawkins replied. “And after what happened yesterday there’s a chance he’s already dead.”

  Ann Ridgeway interjected. “For now, let’s proceed on the basis that he’s still alive. As soon as we locate Mr. Verenich we’ll offer him protective custody until we can determine the degree of danger he’s in.”

  “What’s the connection between Merrick, Rosenfeld and the other vics?” Jordan asked.

  “That goes back ten years, to the murder of Paige, Dr. Merrick’s daughter,” Hawkins said. “Her body was found in South America. Merrick and his wife thought she was still attending class at Cal State. It turned out she’d left the University in favor of a new career as a high-priced escort. That’s where these three come in.”

  The photos of Ashley Granger, Taras Verenich and Marina Puzanova stared back from the screen.

  “Granger, on the left, was Paige’s mathematics professor at Cal State. The two were close, perhaps even pursuing more than a student/teacher relationship judging by their social media posts. But what the University didn’t know about Professor Granger was that she was leading a double life as an executive escort. The working theory is that Granger encouraged Paige to join her in the business. This is where Marina Puzanova comes in. These two go way back. Puzanova’s a key player in a Russian crime outfit that calls itself The Company. She controls the prostitution side of their business. Their center of operations is Moscow, but they conduct business globally catering exclusively to the uber-wealthy primarily providing women, luxury automobiles, fine art, illegal adoptions… even harvesting human organs for private surgery transplantation. We think Granger was being paid by Puzanova to recruit new girls into the operation.”

  “How do they acquire the children for adoption?” Chris asked.

  “Conception farms,” Hawkins replied. “Babies conceived specifically for the purpose of sale to the wealthy.”

  “Jesus,” Chris said. “And the body parts?”

  “Remember when I searched Rosenfeld’s laptop? We found a fake link at the bottom of the Verenich Law homepage. Clicking on that link opened a search box. The files labeled Account 1 and Account 2 contained the profiles of hundreds of girls. When we traced them, we found they all had two things in common. First, they were highly-educated or academically gifted. Second, they all came from affluent families. The girls in Account 1, the younger group, were all high school seniors and honor students. Most of them had been offered scholarships to major universities. The women in Account 2 were either attending university or alumni.”

  Jordan said, “So the girls were targeted?”

  Hawkins nodded. “We think that was Granger’s job. We also believe she’s just one of many such recruiters working for Puzanova and The Company that have been placed in educational institutions around the world. But that’s only part of it. We think they were selected because of their genetic superiority. Professor Granger and operatives like her lured them in with the promise of big money, which they paid out handsomely. Later the girls were used to meet supply and demand on the other side of the business. If one of the girls met the genetic profile a particular client couple was looking for she’d be “rewarded” by The Company with a fully-paid luxury vacation. What the girl didn’t know was that this was a one-way ticket to a Company conception farm where she would be impregnated with the client’s sperm. Girls sent to the farm served two final purposes for The Company. The first was to produce babies. When she was no longer considered valuable she’d be killed, and her organs sold to Company red market brokers.”

  “The luxury vacation was a death sentence,” Jordan said.

  “Correct,” Hawkins replied.

  “What about Marina Puzanova?” Chris asked. “Any idea where she is?”

  Hawkins shook his head. “No. And even if she set foot on American soil tomorrow we couldn’t detain her. We’ve got nothing substantial on her. She’s only one cog in the wheel of an organization whose influence stretches across continents. Taking down The Company requires assembling a multi-agency operation on a global scale. We’ve reached out to the Russian government. As usual, their policy on matters like this is to handle them on their own. Interpol has agreed to assist. But without Russia’s direct cooperation it could take years.”

  Chris asked, “Why was Rosenfeld targeted in the first place?”

  “They found his Achilles heel,” Hawkins replied. “His weakness for fine art and antiquities. Which he found a way to get more of through Verenich. Dr. Rosenfeld was a good man, but he let greed get the better of him. He met Verenich at a FreeSurge fundraising auction to which Verenich had contributed a very expensive piece of French art, no doubt for the express purpose of getting his attention. He probably told the doctor he had unlimited access to such one-of-a-kind priceless pieces.”

  “Like the Codex Leicester and the Pont Neuf displayed in the anteroom outside the bedroom,” Jordan said.

  “Exactly. Both were stolen. Our forensic search of Rosenfeld’s computer proved he was laundering money through FreeSurge and several of his other enterprises for Verenich. We think he was doing this in exchange for acquiring new pieces for his private collection that no one else in the world would ever have access to. What he didn’t know was that the pieces he was receiving from Verenich were coming through Alexi Vasiliev and Vyachlov Usoyan – two high-placed leaders in the Solntsevskaya Bratva who report directly to the head of The Company, Anton Kastonov. The Russian mob has a nickname for Kastonov. They call him ‘Grekh Khranitel’ or ‘The Sin Keeper,’ so named because of his reputation for using his top girls to extract detailed and often secret information from highly-placed Company clients and then using that information to blackmail and extort huge sums of money from them at a later date in exchange for his silence and protection.”

  “So Rosenfeld was in bed with the Russian mob and didn’t even know it,” Jordan said.

  Hawkins nodded. “We also think Dr. Merrick used his Department of Defense privileges to access the supercomputers at Dynamic Life Sciences and launch his own private investigation into what happened to his daughter. He probably started by looking into Granger, connected her to Puzanova and Verenich and finally Verenich to Rosenfeld. That’s how he found out about The Company.”

  “I’m quite sure the Department of Defense isn’t about to confirm your suspicions anytime soon,” Ridgeway said.

  Hawkins agreed. “Not likely.”

  Agent Cobb knocked on the meeting room door.

  “Yes?” Ridgeway said.

  “Sorry to intrude, ma’am. Colonel Hallier from DARPA is on the line. He says he’d like a word with you.”

  Ridgeway motioned to the conference phone in the center of the table. “Put him through.”

  “Right away.” Cobb closed the door. The phone rang.

  “Good afternoon, Colonel,” Ridgeway answered.

  “Thanks for taking my call, Ann.”

  “My pleasure.” The agents stood to leave the room. Ridgeway gestured for them to stay. “My team and I are recapping the case right now, Colonel. Agents Quest and Hanover are with me, as well as our head of Cyber Support, Agent Hawkins. Do you mind if they listen in?”

  “Not at all,” Hallier replied. “I want to thank you and your team for your assistance. You all did a fine job under very difficult circumstances. It would be my pleasure to work with you again, anytime.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. The feeling is mutual.”

  “I also wanted to let you know about a development in the case as it pertains to Dr. Merrick.”

  “Oh?”

  “I received a call this morning from Sergeant Cowell, LAPD SWAT. He told me the uniforms who took eyewitness statements at the scene connected a car and motorcycle parked outside the main entrance of the university to Merrick and Egan. Fingerprints confirmed it. Both were stolen.”

  “Has LAPD interviewed the owners of the vehicles?” Ridgeway asked.

  “One’s dead, the manager of Acadia Motor Inn in Laguna Be
ach, who owned the car. Uniforms interviewed his wife. She’d noticed that the car was gone and assumed her husband had stepped out to run a few errands. But then she found the front office door locked and no one on duty. She looked through the window and saw him lying beneath the counter in a pool of blood. A pen was stuck in the side of his neck. The prints on it matched Merrick.”

  “Murderous bastard,” Ridgeway replied. “And the owner of the bike?”

  “Dr. Brian Harvey, an emergency room physician at Mercy General Hospital. He’s fine. Apparently, the doc had just bought the motorcycle. Only had it for a couple of days. He stepped out on his break to check on it, saw it was missing and called the police right away. The prints on the bike were Egan’s. Responding officers also found a missing squad car from a neighboring jurisdiction in Mercy General’s parking lot. Turns out it was one of three missing units.”

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “They haven’t been able to reach five of their officers since yesterday. Total loss of radio contact. No one knows what's going on. Their department is in a complete panic.”

  “Have they announced a General Alert?”

  “Yes, within an hour of their disappearance. All off-duty emergency services personnel have been called in to assist in the search. Fire and rescue too.”

  “I’ll put in a call. If they want our help they’ve got it.”

  “I’m sure they’d appreciate that, Ann. Again, thank you.”

  “Anytime, Colonel. Keep in touch.”

  “Will do.”

  ADC Ridgeway disconnected the call. “Anything else Agent Hawkins?”

  “No ma’am,” Hawkins replied. “That’s everything we’ve been able to ascertain thus far.”

  Chris stood up. “If that’s that case then I’d like to make a suggestion. Lunch is on me. Massey’s Steak House. Ten minutes.”