Nelson, page 14
part #21 of SEALs of Honor Series
“We need names, and we need faces.”
“I ain’t got nothing to give you,” Hogarth said.
“We don’t need anything from him,” Taylor said. “I’m taking photos of the emails and forwarding them to my email as well. I need about ten minutes to get this done.” He worked as fast as he could with Nelson standing guard. “The cops should be here soon. How much time, do you think?”
“When you want them, they never come,” Nelson said. “But when you don’t want them, chances are they’ll get here way too damn fast.” Just then sounds of footsteps were heard out in the hall. He groaned. “Taylor, you’re running out of time.”
A knock came at the door. Nelson went to answer it and let in the two cops who had spoken to them down on the dock. When they came in and saw Hogarth tied up, they frowned and turned to Nelson.
He held out his hands. “This is the guy blackmailing the men who saw the murder of Peter. Don’t look at me.”
“Did you tie him up?”
“I very nicely stopped him from beating the crap out of me,” Nelson said. “I’m much bigger and much stronger, and I didn’t want him to hurt himself.”
His tone was so solicitous Elizabeth almost laughed, but she managed to keep her voice and face calm and bland.
The cop looked at her. “Were you here for all of this?”
She shook her head. “We just arrived. This lowlife walked past the restaurant we were in. I pointed him out walking down the street. Nelson went after him then and caught him before we joined him.”
The officers nodded. They walked over to Hogarth. “Did you see the murder?”
Hogarth stared at them without saying anything.
Nelson pulled out his cell phone and hit a button. A video he had taken without Hogarth’s knowing started to play. Hogarth’s voice filled the room.
The cops nodded in satisfaction. “That’s very nice. That’s what we need, fine upstanding citizens like Hogarth.”
“At least that proves I didn’t kill him,” Hogarth protested. “You got nothing on me. You can’t lay no criminal charges on me for not being a great public citizen.”
“That’s very true,” Taylor said. “But you were blackmailing the men in question.”
“You knew the men who killed Mr. Patnik?” The taller cop zeroed in on the most important point.
Hogarth shrunk. “I knew a couple of them.”
Taylor held up the laptop. “We’ve got three names here. We got a Kurt Jones, a Barry Mulgrew, and it looks like this is a Warren … I think that’s Mckinley.” He handed over the laptop with the emails open so they could see.
The first cop read it and whistled. “Oh, we can use this. Attempted blackmail is definitely a criminal offense.”
“Big deal,” Hogarth said. “So what? You throw me in jail. It’s overcrowded. I act as good as gold, and I’m out on the streets in a few months.”
He didn’t appear to be too bothered by it. “I guess that way you get three decent meals and a bed every night too, huh?” Elizabeth asked, motioning to the place around her. “Might be healthier than this garbage.”
“Hey, I didn’t invite you into my place,” he snapped. “Highbrow bitches like you don’t know what the real world is all about.”
“You’re right,” she admitted. “But I am learning. And I’m still trying to find information on my brother. So tell the policemen what you said about my brother being in the shadows.”
Hogarth related what he had heard when the guys were threatening Chris to be their next victim.
The two cops looked at each other, then at her. “So it looks like your brother may not have had anything to do with the murder of his friend.”
“He never had anything to do with that,” she snapped. “I told you that.”
“We still track down every lead.”
“And when is it you start doing that?” She got up and paced the small room. “You were ready to throw my brother away for life for a crime he didn’t commit. It took us finding this guy to get the truth.”
“We still don’t have all the truth though,” the taller cop said. “We have to find these men and speak with them and confirm what we know.”
“I’ve got photos,” Hogarth said. “But that’s only if all charges are dropped on my side.”
There was instant silence in the room.
“What kind of photos?” Taylor’s voice was hard. “And where the hell would you get photos?”
“It’s what I do. I like to watch people. I like to keep mementos of people’s actions,” he said with a sneer. “Nobody ever thinks anybody’s out there. But somebody’s always watching. There’s always somebody to catch what you’re doing. Particularly if it’s illegal.”
“So do you have photos of the men in question with the victim?”
“Yes. He was unconscious when they carried him down to the dock,” he said. “I figured he was already dead.” He shot a look over at Elizabeth. “I did.”
She studied him for a moment and realized what Peter’s body would look like if it were being packed by several men. She nodded. “He was probably unconscious, but, until an autopsy is done, we won’t know if he was breathing the water in when they held him under, or if he was already dead.”
“Where are those photos?” the tall cop asked.
“What do I get for it?” Hogarth asked in a crafty voice.
She hated the negotiations over something that could clear her brother. “For God’s sake, just tell them where the pictures are.”
“Hell no,” Hogarth snapped. “I’m not going to jail—especially here—when I have the proof you need to clear your precious brother.”
“So what do you want for proof?” she asked the two policemen.
“I already told you,” Hogarth yelled. “They know how this works. I’m small fry for them. They just want the information so they can close their cases. That’s all they give a shit about.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but what I care about is finding my brother.”
Just then Taylor’s voice broke through the conversations. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just found one of them.”
He held up the laptop, and, sure enough, she saw a picture. Though it was dark, it was under the streetlight of the pier as a group of men carried a body between them toward the water. There was even a date stamp on the bottom. She gave a happy sigh. “That’s the proof you need to clear my brother.”
The cops looked at it and whistled. “Wow, they must really hate you around here, Hogarth. The faces are barely visible but enough to see her brother wasn’t part of the group. That’s the photo you used to blackmail the killers with?”
“I just started with emails, hoping they wouldn’t force me to go a little deeper. I would try the photos next. That would have been a harder punch for them. But I also didn’t want to piss them off to the extent they’d come back looking for me,” he admitted. “If I saw something, that’s a different story than having proof of something.”
“I don’t think they would have cared one way or the other,” Nelson said. “Next time they came to port, they would have looked you up.”
“See? So this is a good thing. You’ll pick up these guys, and I won’t have to worry about them,” Hogarth said cheerfully.
“Look at this one.” Taylor held up the laptop, and there was Skunk standing in the shadows, just his profile and a little bit of light shining on his face as he looked at the pier with terror and confusion on his face.
“So they knew he was there. But he couldn’t stop them.”
“I wonder if he even tried to call the cops,” one of the policemen asked. “It would have gone a long way to help stop them.”
“No, it wouldn’t have,” Nelson said. “If they had any inkling he’d called the cops, you know he’d be dead by now.”
“We would have gotten there to stop it,” the cop said.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Hogarth said. “You wouldn’t have been there anywhere near in time. It was a done deal within minutes. I don’t even know that they knew the guy was there to begin with, as I was just minding my own business. I think he followed them. And, by the time he saw what they were doing, it was already too late. He did try to stop them but…”
“I hope so,” Elizabeth said. “I love my brother. And I know it’s hard to do the right thing all the time, but I really hope he was in a position where he couldn’t do anything but take off.”
“The question we want to know is, where is he now?” asked the first cop.
“Why?” she challenged the cop. “What do you want to do with him now?”
“First off, we need to know that he’s alive and well,” the cop said in exasperation. “And, second, it’d be nice to confirm what Hogarth is saying.”
“You mean the pictures aren’t proof enough?” she asked in astonishment. “How much more proof do you need?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Your brother’s a missing person. We need to track him down so we can close the case.”
“I have no idea where he is though,” she said.
“Hogarth said he took him to the bus depot too.” Nelson added. “Now whether I believe him or not, that’s a different story. And, of course, his freedom from here on in will hinge on him telling the truth.”
Hogarth glared at them; then finally his face fell. “Okay, so I don’t know where he went. I drove him out to the edge of town, and that was it.”
“What do you mean, that was it?” Elizabeth cried out. “There’s no it in that. You could have dumped him on the side of the road because he was already dead.”
“He got out of my vehicle and walked away. That’s all he did.”
“You must have seen which way he went then,” the cop said.
Hogarth shrugged. “Not really. But he was heading toward the bus depot. So, although I didn’t drop him there, I’m pretty sure that’s where he went.”
Nelson pulled out his phone and called somebody. When answered, he said, “Mason, did you ever check the bus routes out of here? We have a suspicion somebody dropped Chris close enough that he could have walked to the bus stop, then moved out.”
The voice on the other end spoke.
“Right, not under his real name.” Nelson turned toward Elizabeth. “Any idea what other name he would have traveled under?”
She chuckled. “Did he try Skunk?”
“He would need some ID, I presume?”
Silence.
They turned to look at Hogarth, but he stared up at the ceiling, then over at the far wall. “Hogarth, did you give him a false ID?”
He glared at Nelson. “Okay, so I might have had a driver’s license hanging around from some other poor guy. I just gave it to him and said he might try that. Nobody would ask for more information than that.”
“And what was the name on the ID?” the tall cop asked.
“Do I have to do everything?” Hogarth cried out. “You’re the cops. You do some investigating. You don’t have to nail my ass to the wall for it.”
“I don’t give a shit,” the cop said. “You can do six months and have all those pretty boys raking over your ass. If you don’t want to talk, then don’t talk.”
Hogarth glared at them. Finally he gave in. “David Lowe. And I think there was an E on the end of the Low.”
“And you just happened to find the ID?”
“I did. Some dude lost his wallet or had it lifted. When I found it, the driver’s license was still in it, tucked into one of those little secret pocket flaps in the back. I just took the driver’s license and kept it. You never know when you’ll need an ID like that.”
“So I presume this David and Chris were similar enough in looks that Chris could use it?”
“I think he was like five feet, eleven inches, blond hair, no glasses. He was pretty nondescript in the photo, and your brother’s pretty nondescript in real life. Didn’t take much for him to get away with using that ID.”
“And he had cash,” Elizabeth said. “So he didn’t need to use a credit card.”
The cops nodded.
She watched as Nelson relayed that message to Mason.
When he hung up the phone, he said, “Mason will get back to us in a few minutes.”
The cops looked at him. “You have somebody who can check the stations?”
“Sure,” he said with a smile. “So do you.”
“Sure,” the cop said, “but that’s not really high on our priority list.”
“But it is high on ours,” Nelson said. “We’re down here to find her brother. Obviously we wanted to know what happened to Peter, and we are well on our way to getting that done as well. Mason now has the names of the three men Hogarth tried to blackmail. We’ll find from that two other men were linked to those three that led to Peter’s murder.”
“I said it was only four. The fifth guy was Peter himself.”
“Sounds like there were seven men involved,” the cop said. “Your brother, the four men who killed him, and the victim, and Hogarth.”
“True enough,” Nelson said smoothly. “But, having three names, we’ll find the fourth without too much trouble. And NCIS will pick them up and question them.”
“So we need copies of all the photos and the statements you get from this guy,” Taylor added.
“NCIS will get a copy,” the cop said in a dry tone. “We don’t have to give you anything.”
Elizabeth could see the frustration on Nelson’s face and realized how much they’d already done for the investigation. She smiled at the officers. “That’s true. You don’t have to, but, in the spirit of working together, it would be very nice if we could cooperate. At this point, a lot of information is flowing, and both of us have bosses who need to have case files and evidence properly logged in and tagged. You know what it’s like when shit goes missing.”
Both men nodded. “We’ll take it under consideration,” the second cop said in a noncommittal voice.
She didn’t know if that was a yes or no, but she figured a little sweetness would go a longer way than some of the frustration and rage flying around the room.
A few minutes later, the cops freed Hogarth, and, with one escorting him, they led him out of his room and down the stairs.
He stopped in the hallway, protesting that the men were forcing him along. “Make sure you lock my door. I’ll be back, and I’ll be pissed if all my shit’s gone.”
Elizabeth stood, glanced around the room and said, “Wouldn’t it be a hardship if all this was gone?”
Taylor chuckled. He led the way to the door. “I wish we could have kept the laptop. But the cops would take it right from the get-go, so I got what I could.”
“I think you got an awful lot off of there,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “We’re so much closer now. All we need to figure out is where my brother got a ticket to.” As they walked down the stairs, she said, “It’s already lunchtime.”
With an exclamation, Nelson turned to look at his watch. “I can’t believe how much time has passed already. You’re right. It’s eleven-thirty, heading into twelve.”
“So back to the hotel, or do you guys need more food?” she asked.
The two men looked at each other and shrugged.
“I suggest we pick up a couple sandwiches and go back to the room. We might even go home today,” Nelson said.
“Exactly,” Taylor said. “Depending on where Skunk purchased a ticket to, somebody else might pick him up stateside for us.”
There was a sandwich shop on the way back. They ducked inside, picked out sandwiches they would all enjoy, had them made fresh, and, with the bags in their hands, they walked toward the hotel.
Back in their room again, sitting down at the small table, Elizabeth realized just how much she would miss the camaraderie of having these men around her. She smiled at them. “So do I get to take you guys out for a meal as a thank-you when we’re back home again?”
*
Both Taylor and Nelson looked at her. Nelson nodded. “I think that’s a great idea.”
Taylor said, “That’s not fair. I’ll feel like a third wheel.”
Elizabeth looked at him in astonishment. “Why can’t I take you out for lunch and have him along too?”
He shrugged. “I guess I can deal with it. It might be fun to see if you guys survive this or not.”
She rolled her eyes at him, picked up her sandwich half and took a big bite.
“Or I could cook for you, and we can ditch this guy,” Nelson said, pointing at Taylor, laughing. Nelson was about to take a bite, but his phone buzzed. He checked the incoming text to see it was Mason. He read it and said, “Ticket was purchased to San Diego. A second ticket was purchased heading south.”
“So a diversionary tactic?” Taylor asked.
“It would make sense if he did, and San Diego won’t take him very far. But it will get him back to Coronado, and that’s base.” Nelson glanced over at her. “Which way do you think he’d go?”
“If he’s running, deep into Mexico. If he’s not running, then home,” she said calmly. “He no longer has a place of his own, but I’ve told him that he can come stay with me.”
“And where do you live?” Taylor asked curiously.
She beamed a bright smile at him. “I bought a house last year in San Diego. It’s got lots of bedrooms, so I figured my brother could stay there if he was at home.”
“Do you meet for lunches when he’s in town?”
“Usually he’s too busy,” she said. “But you can bet after this, I’ll be making a point of it.”
Nelson nodded. “Nothing like trouble to bring a family home again.”
Just then his phone rang. “Hey, Mason, what’s up?” After a moment, he questioned, “He didn’t arrive?” As he listened to Mason, explaining that they were getting the camera feeds from the bus station, it looked like her brother hadn’t made it to either destination. “Shit,” he said as he hung up the phone. “It’ll be a while before they can track down the feeds from the Mexican side, if they can ever get it. But it doesn’t look like Chris went to San Diego.”
“That’s where I was really hoping he’d go,” she said slowly. “What if he bought two diversionary tickets?”
“You tell me,” Nelson said. “He’s your brother. What would he do?”
