Masters, page 6
“It’s a lot of things,” he noted, “and we’re missing a ton of information, but the bottom line is, we need to find out what happened to your brother, and we still need to sort out what is happening with Mason.”
“Nicholas is my brother, so it’s hard to even think that Mason’s investigation is taking precedence over the disappearance of Nicholas,” she admitted, “but I guess it’s not so much that as the new versus old information involved.”
“That’s a good way to look at it,” he pointed out. “Cold cases stay cold until something triggers a new lead. In this situation, Mason’s case could be good for finding out more about your brother.”
“In that case, I should reach out to the navy again.”
“Or don’t,” he said, with a wry look. “Let’s not have anybody think you guys are connected to the sniper shooting of Mason.”
Astonished, she stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously,” he stated, “because we don’t know what’s going on here, not with Mason and not with Nicholas. Thus, we don’t want anybody to start making assumptions. As investigators, we are looking for patterns, for connections, for who might have told something to whom, and you could end up on the chopping block next,” he reminded her. “And that is something we don’t want. … This may sound very James Bond-like, but I suggest we have a code word from you, where if anything were to happen and you needed to alert me, and only me, you could casually use that word. That way I would know you’re in trouble. So then I would drop everything and ride to the rescue.”
She snorted. “I’ve never had a code word. Although … my brother and I did something like that when we were kids, but it was more about having fun.”
Masters nodded. “I’m not talking about fun right now. I’m talking about safety.”
Her laughter died when she realized he was serious. She slowly nodded and added, “I’ll use the same one we used back then—ice cream.” When he laughed, she shrugged. “Whenever one of us was struggling with life, we used to ask about ice cream, so it became a code word of sorts. When times were tough, it meant I needed help. And often,” she shared, with a smile. “Even as adults one of us would come over with ice cream.”
“Good enough. So, if I happen to find Nicholas somewhere and told your brother that his sister has ice cream, would he recognize the reference?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she declared, eyeing him. “It’s funny how nobody else even thought to ask me something like that.”
“No, of course not,” Masters replied, his lips twitching, “because nobody was thinking along these lines. Since I’m expanding all aspects of the investigation, I want to find out what happened to him. If he’s alive, let’s get him back home, or, if he needs help, let’s get him someplace where he can get it.” After they shared a quick breakfast of toast and eggs, Masters departed. With a promise to check in, he left in his car and headed toward the office. As he walked in, Jasper was there, waiting for him. Masters motioned to Jasper’s office. “Let’s go in here and talk. You got coffee?”
“I’ve got coffee,” he murmured, leading them both to the back office that Jasper still used. He closed the door and pointed to his own coffee machine. “Is it so bad that you need coffee?”
“It’s not that it’s so bad that I need coffee, just that I could use some more,” Masters clarified, with a smile, already pouring a cup. “I did have two cups already though.”
“Which is more than I expected you to get.”
“Right? Anyway she’s doing better this morning, not quite so worried, so I was glad to see that.” He sighed, as he sat down. Taking a quick sip of coffee, he set his cup on Jasper’s desk.
“Do you think there’s any connection here?” Jasper asked.
At that, Masters frowned, checking that the door was shut and that they had some privacy. “Any chance you’ve got any cockroaches around here?”
At that, Jasper’s gaze narrowed, as he understood the reference. He walked over to the nearby closet, pulled out a small black box, and quickly did a sweep of the room. When no signal came that the room was bugged, he turned back to Masters. “Happy?”
“I’m happy that we checked,” he replied. “And I’m happy that nothing is here right now. However, that is something you’ll want to do on a regular basis.”
Jasper grimaced. “I still haven’t cleared everybody who works in this department.” With that check done, and the black box returned to the closet, he sat down again and asked, “Did you have any particular reason for wanting that done?”
“No specific reason except that whatever was done with the initial investigation into Nicholas disappearing, nothing’s been followed up on, at least not to the extent that it should have been,” he stated in a low voice.
Even though they didn’t find any bug, he wasn’t at all assured that this room was not still compromised in another way. He just didn’t have any way to check it out right now.
Jasper nodded. “I was wondering about that too. I looked at Nicholas’s case file, and, while an investigation was done, it doesn’t seem to have been done as thoroughly as you or I would have liked.”
“Exactly, and we have somebody concerned that her brother’s case was fobbed off for another reason.”
“What reason would that be?” he asked curiously.
“That’s what we don’t know. Now, if you’re about to ask if I’m being influenced by feelings for her, the answer is no.”
“I wouldn’t say any such thing,” Jasper noted in a mild tone, yet with a hint of a smile, “but now that you brought it up …”
“I spent the night, yes, and I slept on the couch. There is concerning information on this USB key.”
“It’s more than worrying.” Jasper looked grim.
“You’ll need to get the rest of this team checked out pretty damn fast,” Masters muttered.
“I know it,” Jasper replied, “and I would normally ask Tesla to look into something like this on a private level. However, … with everything going on—”
“I think you should still ask her,” Masters stated.
“I didn’t want to put too much on her,” Jasper explained, frowning at him. “She’s still staying at the hospital.”
“Yeah, but this could be instrumental in finding out what happened to Mason.”
Jasper rubbed his forehead as he thought about it. “Look. I’ll talk to her again. She was doing a little bit of work, but she was getting so tired that I didn’t want to add more.”
“At least ask her,” Masters suggested. “She won’t appreciate being kept out of it, and she is somebody who wants to be involved. I get that we need to keep her safe, keep her and the baby healthy,” he noted, “but mentally she would benefit from keeping busy and being included.”
Jasper’s lips twitched. “Maybe. I’m not so sure you’re right though. The late term of her pregnancy has her drained, not to mention the worry about Mason.”
“Maybe not,” Masters conceded, “and I’ve been wrong before, but I also know what it’s like to be kept out of the loop when it’s important, when something you could do might make it go faster or even smoother—or whatever adjectives we want to use,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “The wording doesn’t matter. Just give her the option and see what she says.”
“Will do,” Jasper agreed. “Now, this file on Nicholas. For the moment, we don’t know that any of this is related to Mason’s case.”
“But you’re considering that it could be, right?” Masters asked.
“Honestly, I don’t see how it can’t be.”
“Yeah, I get that there are likely to be multiple cases that Nicholas was involved in that could very well have impacted his disappearance,” Masters shared. “However, for something happening to Mason so soon after a navy investigator goes missing, I think we must consider the potential for a connection. Am I saying it is connected? No. Am I saying it needs to be investigated? Hell, yes. So is anything coming together on Mason’s shooting?”
Jasper winced. “Not in any positive or tangible way, no,” he admitted. “We’ve tracked down all the city cameras following all the vehicles leaving the base airport at the relevant time. We’ve tracked down the one vehicle we have determined to be the getaway vehicle. It was stolen. We found no DNA in or on that vehicle, though forensics is still going over it all. So far, nobody is plying me with anything positive in that direction,” he stated. “We both know how hard this investigation will be, since it appears to be a professional hit.”
“A professional hit on a base full of professionals,” Masters pointed out, “so definitely not an easy round of things to lock down.”
“But not impossible because, in order for it to happen here, somebody here had to be involved to some degree.”
“I agree with that,” Masters stated, “which is also why I’m clearing everybody here, from snipers to supply clerks. And, of course, we can’t let our personal feelings influence anything.”
“You mean, Sam. No, we can’t,” Jasper agreed, with a directed look at the room outside of his office. Jasper went on. “Just because Sam doesn’t appear to be a team player and is more than chafed that I appear to have some influence that he doesn’t know anything about, all that doesn’t make him a shitty person or guilty.”
“No, it doesn’t make him a shitty person, and neither does his sobriety struggle, but it does make him somebody that we can’t necessarily put our trust in at the moment,” Masters declared. “And we need all hands on deck for Mason’s investigation.”
“Exactly. I am heading off to look at ballistics today,” Jasper shared. “I have a few questions for our ballistics team.”
“About what?”
He gave him a look. “Apparently some anomalies were found in the bullet that they pulled out of Mason.”
“Anomalies?” he questioned.
“Yes. And I’m not saying that these were custom-made, but I’m thinking more along the lines that they were homemade.”
“Ballistics should have been able to tell you that already.”
“Yes, they should have, and, in a way, I’m getting what feels like a coded message that it’s quite possible. Still, I want to know why it’s not a clear-cut deal. Thus I have a meeting scheduled with them,” he explained, as he checked his watch, “in about an hour.”
“Did they set it up?”
He nodded.
“So, they found something then,” Masters stated, excitement in his tone.
“And yet they’re calling me,” Jasper pointed out.
“Right. Shit. So, we’re back to the potential for trouble here in the department again.”
“We’re certainly back to something. I just don’t know what. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on here, when you and I are so new here as it is,” Jasper noted. “And there’s obviously a lot of underplay happening.”
“Yeah, plus we have a missing investigator, whom nobody appears to give a crap about finding, which is a huge red flag for us, and obviously for his family as well.”
“I will keep you in the loop on this ballistics deal. Why don’t you take the Nicholas angle and run with it and see if you can find anything? In the meantime, if I need you to do something with Mason’s case, I’ll tag you.”
“Done.” Masters stood and walked to the door of Jasper’s office, then turned to look back at his boss. “We’re both playing in the dark here, and you know how dangerous that is,” he muttered, “so watch your back.” And, with that, he turned and walked out.
Chapter 5
‡
Elizabeth worked from home for most of the morning, getting buried in client calls and accounts. It was almost 11:00 a.m. before she looked up and realized just how much time had gone by. She got up, stretched, walked over to the kitchen to put on the teakettle, and stared out at her backyard.
She and Nicholas had planned to get puppies together at one point, hoping that, if one of them was traveling, the other could look after both. Having such a system in place, they could enjoy the benefits of having animals, yet share some of the load when they each needed to be gone.
And yet it hadn’t worked out quite that way. Her brother was gone more often than not, and she was home most of the time, and still they’d never quite got around to getting a pet. She could have had a puppy or a cat anytime, and yet something always made her hold off. Right now she could use the comfort of having a furry animal here on a constant basis.
She forced herself to not open the files that her brother had kept on that USB, wanting, maybe quite wrongly, to somehow double-check his peace of mind. Yet, if he were dead, that was completely foolish. However, the longer he was missing, the more that his death seemed to be a distinct possibility. She knew that’s what the initial investigators had thought, both at the base as well as among the civilian cops she had spoken to. She also figured they assumed she had been involved in whatever had happened to her brother. They probably figured they would wait her out until the body was found, then pounce. After all, there was no statute of limitations on murder.
Elizabeth sighed.
As far as she was concerned, that was just a lazy excuse so neither the civilian nor the military investigators had to look any further. It was the easy way to fob off questions they didn’t have answers for. She didn’t know how to make that clear to anybody though, because nobody gave a crap about finding Nicholas, but she did. She wondered how many other people were caught in such an ineffective system, such an uncaring bureaucracy that claimed they were right and you were wrong, with no recourse when you had no proof, when you had nothing but that feeling that something seriously wrong was going on.
And when her brother didn’t come back, and nobody believed her, she was stuck with no place to turn. The unexpected arrival of Masters had definitely brought hope back to Elizabeth again, though she knew it was dangerous. She’d gone down a spiral of never-ending torment to the point that she had nearly jeopardized her job because she hadn’t been able to focus on anything but finding her brother. Only in the last month had she pulled back and given her job the attention it deserved.
Other people didn’t have to pay the price for whatever had gone on in her brother’s world, and thankfully Elizabeth still had the means to support herself. That her brother was worth a fortune, leaving her an incredible inheritance upon his death, didn’t matter to her in the least. She would do anything to get him back. Just something about knowing she could be the last one left in a long line of family made her realize what was of value in life, and it had absolutely nothing to do with dollars and cents.
With a fresh cup of tea, she walked out to her front porch and sat down in her chair, just sitting in the sun, enjoying the moment. When she heard a woman call out, Elizabeth looked over to see her neighbor Dolly waving at her. Remembering what Masters had asked of her, Elizabeth got up and slowly wandered over to the older woman, hopefully in a casual and natural manner.
When she arrived at Dolly’s porch, the woman patted the seat beside her. “It’s nice that you’ve got your own cup of tea,” she greeted her in delight, “because I have a cup too.”
Elizabeth sat down on the big swing bench with the older woman and smiled at her. “How have you been lately?” she asked.
“Oh my, I’m fine,” she replied, with a wave of her hand. “Obviously you aren’t though.”
“I’m doing better,” Elizabeth muttered. “Time does help heal wounds.”
“Oh, I’m sure it does. I’m sure it does,” Dolly reiterated, with a gentle tap on Elizabeth’s hand. “I’m so sorry for all the problems you’ve been through.”
“Thank you.” Elizabeth gave her neighbor a small smile.
“It seems that you have a new man in your life,” Dolly announced brightly.
Inwardly Elizabeth groaned because, if anything caused comments in her world, it would always be about a new male. “He’s just a friend,” she compromised.
“And that is exactly what you need now,” Dolly declared. “We all need friends in our difficult times.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” she muttered. She looked over at her brother’s house, easily seen from her spot on Dolly’s porch.
“And no word on your brother, is there?” Dolly asked.
“No, not yet, but I keep hoping.”
“And hope is what keeps us going day to day.”
Hearing the same platitudes she heard from so many people all the time, Elizabeth smiled and nodded. Unless people had been through something like this, they couldn’t understand just how painful and difficult this was.
“I did notice you over at your brother’s house,” Dolly added.
“I should be going over more often,” Elizabeth shared. “There was a window open that I hadn’t noticed. That’s not something I want to happen.”
“Oh dear,” Dolly replied, looking at her with interest. “Were windows supposed to be open?”
She shrugged. “Unfortunately I don’t remember. With my being over there so much, I tended to not notice.”
“Yes, yes, that happens. And, of course, a couple service guys were over there,” she pointed out. “They probably left it open.”
Hearing her words, Elizabeth stiffened slightly and frowned. “I don’t remember bringing in any service workers. Do you remember when that was?”
Dolly frowned and stared off in the distance, as if trying to remember when it was, but then she shrugged. “It wasn’t this week,” she muttered. “I can’t be sure if it was last week either,” she added apologetically, “but it wasn’t too-too long ago.”
“Hmm.” Elizabeth pondered that.
“Maybe you forgot to pay a bill for your brother,” she suggested. “When you’re dealing with so many things, I’m sure his bills aren’t exactly at the top of your mind.”
“No, that’s true, and I certainly found a few that needed to be caught up,” she admitted, “but I thought I got them all.” She stared off at his house.
