Rose City Free Fall

by DL Barbur

  Interesting. Bolle and his people had this kid wired in tight. It was a shame they hadn't been on him the night he killed Heather.

  "So right now we're in a holding pattern. We're waiting for Todd or Marshall to make a move. Hopefully, the pressure of the arrest will force a move and we'll be able to figure out what they are doing."

  I found it interesting that nowhere in there did Bolle mention any concerns about Marshall getting away with killing a teenage girl.

  "Where are we at from a technical perspective Henry?"

  Henry cleared his throat and gave a nervous glance around the room.

  "We're waiting. Marshall's landline phones are covered, his internet connection is covered. If he gets a new cell phone, we'll pick up on it pretty quick. If he drives off in the new van, we've found good spots to 'poon him, no matter what way he goes."

  Bolle nodded his head, satisfied.

  I spoke up. "What do you mean 'poon him?"

  I had a long list of things I wanted to do to Marshall, but that wasn't on it, at least not until I figured out what it was.

  Henry looked pleased that I had asked. From the cargo pocket of his pants, he pulled out an electronic gadget. It was two black boxes stuck together, each about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

  "This is an electro harpoon, or 'poon for short. You hide it on the likely path of travel of your target vehicle. We like using the back side of a speed bump, but just about anywhere will do. When he drives over it, you pull out your remote." From another of many, many pockets, he pulled out what looked like a garage door opener.

  "And pull the trigger." There was a hiss of compressed air and the top box shot off the bottom. It almost made it to the ceiling before coming down and putting a scratch on the table.

  "The top box is a GPS receiver and a cellular transmitter with a very strong electromagnet to stick it to the bottom of the car. It actually uses the car body as its antenna. The GPS unit reads the car’s position. The cell transmitter feeds me the info. As long as he's within range of a cell tower, we can track him."

  I had a passing familiarity with surveillance gear, but I'd never heard of that one, much less seen one. "Who's there watching him, waiting to activate this thing?"

  Henry started to open his mouth, but Bolle cut him off.

  "We have other assets in place. May, do you have any insights into Marshall's behavior?"

  May's voice was dry, professional. "The inactivity is chafing on him. All his drugs were confiscated and he hasn't had a chance to purchase more. He's had no sexual contact, so all of his preferred methods of mood regulation are closed to him. His ego will make him want to retaliate, against Mr. Miller in particular if given the chance. Marshall can't tolerate the slightest insult without overreacting, and he sees his arrest as the ultimate insult. I'm frankly surprised Todd has kept him stationary for this long. I expect some kind of action from him in the next twenty-four hours. He won't be able to contain himself much longer."

  Bolle nodded. "Thank you, May. So that leaves us waiting, which frankly I'm not satisfied with. All of our intelligence up until now indicated that Todd and the people at Cascade Aviation were planning something big. Does anybody have any ideas?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I do." All eyes turned towards me. "I might be able to get a full picture of what Marshall was doing before he killed that girl. I'm not sure if it is related to this Cascade Aviation thing, but it might help."

  "How?" Bolle asked.

  "I need to meet with a contact. It needs to be face to face. And I need to be alone."

  "Dent, you're supposed to be in jail, for Christ's sake," Al protested. "We can't let you go run around the city."

  I shrugged. "My source isn't going to meet with you. And the meeting has to be face to face."

  Bolle put a hand on Al's arm. "It's ok. If he can help us let him go."

  I almost smiled. I'm sure the fact that his staff could track me with GPS transmitters had something to do with his easy acquiescence.

  Bolle stood, looked at Eddie. "Get Dent set up with a package. We need to get this thing rolling."

  Apparently, one of Bolle's “packages” consisted of a new ID, a car, a cell phone and a gun. Henry took a couple of digital photos of me against a grey background. Twenty minutes later he handed me a driver's license, a concealed handgun license, and a Visa gold card, all with the name "Harlan Stephenson." The address on the licenses was the house we were standing in.

  I rubbed my thumb over both IDs. They were excellent. I'd seen my share of fake documents and I saw no way of telling that these weren't real.

  "Are these backstopped?" I asked Henry.

  He looked wounded that I would suggest otherwise. "Of course, all the way through an NCIC check. You have a driving history, excellent credit, the works. The gold card has a five thousand dollar credit limit."

  Outstanding. A cheap fake ID will only hold up to cursory inspection. If a police officer ran the ID number through a Department of Motor Vehicles or criminal history check, it would be quickly revealed as a fake. Henry had told me these documents would hold up to close scrutiny. I had no way of testing it, of course, but I hoped that he was being straight with me and that the data quality of the documents matched the physical quality.

  Henry handed me a cell phone. There was one number programmed into memory.

  "That's the duty phone here," he said, pointing to a phone on the table. "There's somebody here to answer it all the time."

  And no doubt Henry could track me to within a few blocks by the pings the cell phone transmitted. Most people don’t realize that even when you aren't talking on your phone, it periodically communicates with cell towers in your immediate vicinity. Anybody who has access to the cell system’s computers can triangulate and locate your position to within a few dozen feet. I was willing to bet Henry had access.

  Eddie led me over to the storage shelves. "Let's get you a gun," he said.

  "Got any .45's?" I asked.

  "I got anything you want, as long as it's a Glock and it's 9mm."

  He had a couple of different sizes. I chose the model 19, the medium frame. It would conceal pretty well under the un-tucked shirt I was wearing. I made sure the piece was unloaded and did a couple of practice draws.

  I walked over to a mirror and checked myself out, making sure the gun didn’t cause a noticeable bulge.

  Eddie followed me over. "You look smashing 007." He did a surprisingly good British accent. He handed me two loaded magazines for the Glock. I loaded the gun up with one and stowed the other one in a carrier on my left hip.

  "Now you need a car." Eddie opened a lockbox and started hunting around inside. "I’ll go get one ready.”

  He headed up the stairs and Al walked over.

  "Look, Dent, I wish you'd reconsider this and at least tell me where you're going."

  "It'll be ok, Al. I meant it when I said my source would get spooked if anybody but me showed up."

  For all I knew, Casey did contract work for the Feds too, but Al didn't need to know that, at least not right now.

  Al looked pained. "Look, Bolle doesn't know how far to trust you. He put both your name and the Harlan Stephenson identity on the Feds No-Fly list. He's afraid you're going to hop a plane and take off on him."

  "I’m not planning on running, I just need to meet my source."

  He shrugged. "I just thought I should tell you."

  I walked upstairs without another word. Eddie was standing in the driveway next to a Dodge Charger. He'd pulled it out of the barn for me. He tossed me the keys and I caught them.

  "Thanks."

  "No problem. Don't scratch it and bring it back with a full tank."

  I nodded and slid behind the wheel. There was something about Eddie I liked. I drove through the streets of Tigard at exactly the speed limit, signaling each turn and stopping fully at each stop sign. I felt like there was a big sign attached to the back of the car: "escaped prisoner inside." Although I guess I wasn't technically
escaped. After all, the Feds had sprung me, gotten me a fake id and given me a gun.

  It was getting dark and traffic was picking up. Soon the evening rush hour would begin. I'd have no choice but to sit through it.

  I rolled up I-5 North, keeping an eye out for cars behind me. Traffic wasn't as bad as I'd feared, just heavy enough to actually work to my advantage. As I rolled across the Marquam bridge, I sped up, weaving in and out of traffic. It was a calculated risk, I was attracting attention and breaking the law, but I knew traffic cops hated stopping people on the bridge, and I wanted anybody following me to have to speed up and show themselves.

  The cell phone Henry gave me sat on the seat next to me, its little green light blinking. As the exit for Interstate 84 eastbound came up, I shut the phone off. For all I knew the car might be wired for sound and equipped with one of Henry’s electro harpoons, so I resolved to pull out the battery and lock the phone in the trunk, first chance I got.

  I took the exit for I-84 at the very last second. I waved an apology at the driver behind me and floored the accelerator. I kept the ponies running until I got to the Hollywood exit, then darted off the freeway.

  I was counting on Bolle having limited resources. He couldn’t use any of the people I’d met to follow me. I knew what they looked like. He'd indicated that he had more people working, keeping Marshall and the Cascade Aviation people under surveillance. One of the reasons I'd wanted to get out of the house so fast after announcing my intention to go alone, was that I didn't want to give Bolle enough time to set up an effective surveillance team.

  Each time I made a crazy maneuver, it made it harder to keep a good overwatch. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.

  Casey lived in Gresham, a town east of Portland. But before I stopped at her place, I had shopping to do. I pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot, in a dark corner of the lot where the video cameras wouldn't pick up my plate. I put my ball cap on, held my head down and tried to slouch for the sake of the video cameras at the front door.

  Inside, I bought a prepaid cellular phone with cash, and a few sundry other items I thought might come in handy. I was in and out in a matter of minutes. I’d used an automated checkout so there would have been no clerk to remember me. It seemed like sometimes our goal in society was to eliminate human interaction. I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about that. It would probably cut down on the number of homicides, I guess.

  After driving around randomly for a few minutes, I tried Casey’s number. There was no answer, and no message on her voice mail, just like always. Just a beep.

  I drove around for a few more minutes, hoping for a callback. Then I decided to go straight to her place.

  I'd been to Casey's once before, to drop off a laptop I'd seized as evidence in a homicide. Her combination of business headquarters and crash pad was in a light industrial area. I'd never found out the full extent of what she did. I knew she did contract work for computer investigations and forensics for a variety of clients: police departments, private business, it was rumored even some alphabet agencies.

  I did know she specialized in Internet kiddie porn cases, would stay up for a week at a time living on herbal tea and vegan stir fry to roll up a ring that might stretch over three or four continents. She was probably responsible for putting more truly bad guys in jail than half the detectives in my office put together. It was a wonder to see her in court. She could explain the most complicated web of computer geek knowledge in a way that a Neanderthal could understand. I'd thought about asking her out more than once. She was cool, and I thought I could get over the nose ring and tattoo thing. But she had a tendency to keep the world at arm’s distance. Besides, there was Audrey now.

  I found a dark parking spot a couple of blocks away from her place, got out, and shut my door quietly. I stood there for a minute, just soaking in the surroundings and listening. It was just after nine, and this part of town was quiet. All the businesses were shut down for the night. There was no traffic, a good thing, and a bad thing. Anybody coming would be easy to hear, but I'd stick out like a sore thumb. I hoped no eager beaver cop would decide to cruise by while I was walking around.

  I kept mostly to the shadows. Luckily, I was wearing my usual dark, earth-toned clothes. They would blend into the shadows and half-light of a night time urban environment better than solid black and had the added bonus of not making me look like a wannabe ninja. I paused at the corner of the building next to Casey's. Her car was parked in the lot, everything looked quiet and normal.

  I walked across the parking lot quickly, then up to the heavy steel door. There was a speaker grill next to the door and the fisheye of a surveillance camera. I frowned. The front door was ajar, open just an inch or two. This wasn't right. One of the reasons Casey had picked this place was so she could turn it into a miniature fortress. There was no way in hell she would just leave the door open.

  I drew my Glock almost without thinking about it, held it down behind my leg. I paused for a second, feeling an unfamiliar pang of indecisiveness. Casey had a fondness for shotguns, and I'd feel awful silly if she blew me in half because I walked in unannounced through a door she'd forgotten to lock.

  But the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I knew something was wrong.

  Ordinarily, I would have waited for some backup before charging in, but now I was on my own. It was time to either go through the door or get back in my car and drive away.

  I took a deep breath and moved through the door. I knew I'd been right when the rich, meaty smell of blood filled my nostrils.

  Chapter Twenty

  My foot slipped in a puddle of blood by the front door and I almost fell down.

  In the light from my flashlight, I saw Rolf, Casey's dog, lying in a bloody heap, his head misshapen. I stepped over him and kept moving, following the walls and trying to move fast. I only used my light when I had to, turning it on for a quick flash to orient myself and then moving away from the spot where I’d been standing. My guts kept twisting tighter and tighter. I was waiting to see a muzzle flash and hit the floor before I even heard the boom.

  Casey's place was a warren of rooms, full of computers, monitors, oscilloscopes, stereo equipment, more stuff I didn't even recognize. The three rooms in front were business, the three in the back were personal. I moved through them all, not finding anybody.

  In the back I found a heavy steel door leaning drunkenly against the wall, held up by only one twisted hinge. On the floor were four blue spent shotgun shells. They were from special "lockbuster" rounds. The projectile inside was made out of powdered metal bound together with epoxy. It would blow the hell out of a metal or wood door frame, or a set of hinges, then disintegrate into powder.

  The room inside was empty, but I could see that the walls, ceiling and floor were reinforced with heavy marine grade plywood. Part of our contract with Casey had specified that she maintain a secure room to store evidence. Apparently, this was it.

  I found the rest of the story in the bedroom. A pistol gripped shotgun lay on the floor, an empty shell half ejected from the action. The floor in front of the door was chewed up by a blast of double-ought buck, but I didn't see any blood on the floor or the walls. Two probes from a Taser lay on the floor, the thin wires trailing out behind them.

  Satisfied that I was alone, I walked back through the building, putting the pieces together. Somehow they'd gotten in the front door. I wasn't sure how, as the door showed no sign of being forced. Then they shot the dog. When I went through the front room again, I found a fat .45 ACP shell casing I'd missed before. The dog’s body was still warm. This hadn't happened too long ago.

  Maybe Casey had been asleep, maybe not. She kept odd hours. But anyway she had just enough time to fire one round from the shotgun. I wondered if they had Tased her at about the same time she had pulled the trigger. That would explain the shot being jerked low and into the floor. Then they'd blown the doors off the hinges and cleaned out the evidence locker.r />
  It spoke of desperation. They were willing to attract more attention, up the ante of violence to make the evidence on the servers disappear. I wondered what was on them. I was willing to bet it was more than a simple Internet porn scheme.

  Casey was gone. So was the evidence. I stood there for a minute, trying to figure out what to do.

  I realized I was technically an escaped felony suspect, standing in the middle of the scene of a kidnapping that was a possible homicide. That got me moving. I'd had one thing pinned on me, I wouldn't have another.

  There was a duffel bag at the base of Casey's bed. I dumped the mess of smelly gym clothes on the floor and put her shotgun inside. It wouldn't have been my first choice of a weapon, but it wasn't bad. I pulled a washcloth out of the bathroom and wiped off everything I'd touched.

  I left the front door open, and as I walked across the parking lot in the direction of my car, I dialed the number Bolle had given me.

  Al answered.

  "Al, do you remember Casey? The computer contractor?"

  Al had viewed Casey's association with the Police Bureau with a jaundiced eye. He'd always been a little conservative about certain things.

  "Yeah. Little blond gal, blond some of the time anyway?"

  "That's her. She had the servers from Marshall's place. Somebody just killed her dog, Tased her and took the servers. They took her too, I think."

  "Why didn't you tell me you had evidence there? We could have protected her."

  "I’m still not ready to put all my cards down in front of Bolle. The question is, what do we do now?"

  "They're getting desperate. Whatever fallout this kind of behavior will cause, it must be worth it to tie up loose ends, get any witnesses out of the way."

  When he said "witnesses" and "loose ends" my stomach went cold. It was obvious. Why hadn't I thought of it right away?

  "Dent," Al said. It was hard to hear him through the buzzing in my ears. I started running towards my car. "You need to come in. If Todd or Marshall find you, they'll kill you. We've stirred up some kind of hornet's nest here that is bigger than we imagined."