Direct Evidence, page 28
He swerved through traffic, trying to navigate his way through this foreign city and get to his partner.
“Floyd? You hear me? Floyd!”
“Y-y-yes,” Floyd stuttered. “Tate, it has to be him. I-i-i-i-it has to.”
“Don’t worry about that now. Just get the fuck out of there!” Tate leaned on his horn, cursed, then pumped the gas.
“But it’s him, right? It’s over now?” Floyd whispered in a voice that made it clear this was an internal query.
Tate answered anyway.
“Yeah, sure. Just keep it together.”
“Keep the train moving. Choo… choooooo.”
Jesus, he’s lost his fucking mind, Tate thought. Two minutes ago, Floyd had called him, but it had taken a good five to figure out why.
Eventually, Floyd admitted that the man he’d been visiting, Paul Wenkler, had shot himself in the head.
Fast forward ten minutes, and Tate, exhausting the full capabilities of one of Stu’s supercars, arrived at Paul’s house. But, despite his urgings, Floyd was still standing on the front walkway.
He was also still holding his gun.
Tate parked and leaped out of his car. So far, no sirens infiltrated the sweltering air. But while the neighborhood wasn’t exactly upper crust, somebody heard. Some stay-at-home mom or housewife. The cops would be here soon.
Tate grabbed Floyd by the shoulders and spun him around. The man’s eyes were wide and his face pale, but he didn’t resist.
“C’mon, Floyd, let’s go. Let’s get out of here.’
Tate dumped Floyd into the passenger seat of his car. Then he looked around, trying to locate their rental. He found it a half block over, parked on a side street. It was barely visible from the front of Paul’s house. This wasn’t ideal—hopefully, no one noticed it and they could pick it up later—but it wasn’t the worst thing either. At least Floyd hadn’t parked in the driveway.
Tate locked the car with Floyd in it and then walked briskly, not quite a jog, up to Paul’s home, glancing in all directions to make sure no one saw him.
At this point, it didn’t really matter, though.
He found Paul in the kitchen where Floyd had said he would be. The man crumpled on the floor, his back partially pressed up against a table, was dressed in desert fatigues.
There was no doubt that he was dead. Even if it hadn’t been for the bullet hole in his left temple and the surprisingly minimal amount of blood, just a thin stream that dripped down the side of the man’s face and neck, his open eyes and slacked jaw were telling.
Tate grimaced as he instantly understood why Floyd had been desperately asking or telling him that this was the guy. Because even at three feet from the man, he knew that this wasn’t who they were looking for. To be absolutely certain, Tate got closer still, leaned down and peered into the man’s mouth.
His front teeth were intact.
“Fuck.”
Tate made sure that Floyd hadn’t left anything in the house—his badge or a card—and then quickly returned to the car. On the way back to Stu’s house, he called Chase.
She didn’t answer.
Floyd didn’t utter a single word until they pulled into Stu’s driveway.
“W-w-was it him? T-T-Tate, tell me it was h-h-him.”
Tate parked and then stared at his hands as he wrenched the steering wheel.
“No,” he said flatly. “No, Floyd, it wasn’t him.”
When his partner didn’t reply, he turned his head. Tate expected the man to break down, to weep, to bury his face in his hands, or simply turn to dust. But the man did none of these things.
Floyd just nodded.
“What are we going to do?”
Tate’s eyes narrowed. He wanted to ask if Floyd was okay, he wanted to tell him that they could talk about it, but the man’s grasp on reality seemed tenuous at best.
“I’m going to take Will with me and go back to get the rental,” Tate said, speaking slowly and clearly. “Then I’m going to place an anonymous call about a gunshot.”
Tate got out of the car and then went around and opened Floyd’s door for him.
“I’ll go with you. No need to get Will involved. I’m okay, Tate. Really.”
Tate believed this like he believed Isaac Lomax had no idea Jake had continued to work on Cerberus after he’d told to drop the project. But Floyd had made a miraculous recovery, going from a mannequin standing with his gun out—now holstered, thankfully—to looking and acting like a hardened FBI veteran.
But Tate wasn’t buying it.
“Will is just going to drop me off at the rental—I’ll make up an excuse. He doesn’t need to know anything. Floyd, you’re not going anywhere. Sit tight, talk to Stu. If he asks, tell him that you found nothing. That neither of the guys you visited knew anything about Cerberus. Me and Chase will finish the list. Just…” Tate hesitated. “Just take it easy, okay?”
If Floyd heard this last part, he didn’t acknowledge it.
“Did you get a hold of Chase?”
Tate frowned.
“No, I’m beginning to think that she’s not a huge fan of cell phones. Either that or she just doesn't like us. Probably both.”
Tate was trying to elicit a laugh, at worst a smirk, from Floyd but it didn’t work.
Something wasn’t right with him, and Tate couldn’t help but think that it was all his fault.
Chapter 67
“This is not a good idea,” Will stated for the sixth or seventh time. “Not a good idea at all.” Eight now.
Stu didn’t stop frantically texting.
“What do you mean?”
Will rubbed his eyes. Stu hadn’t slept at all since making bail and even though he’d told—forced—his lawyer to go home yesterday, at least for a few hours, he didn’t think that the man had gotten much shut eye either. Stu was grateful for his help, however. Pretty much everyone had abandoned him the second he’d been arrested: his company’s board of directors, his colleagues, the few ‘friends’ he had.
So much for innocent until proven guilty.
But Will had stuck by him. Will, who was his corporate lawyer and friend, was doing yeoman’s work while his crack team of criminal attorneys was… where were they, exactly? Last he’d heard, Colin Sachs and Mike Portnoy were sifting through the minutia of disclosure and analyzing the chain of evidence.
They wanted to get him off on a technicality.
They didn’t give a shit if he’d killed Jake or not.
In essence, they were doing nothing.
The ragtag group of off-duty FBI Agents led by Chase Adams were the only ones really accomplishing anything.
And maybe a select few others, like Big Roddy.
“It’s just—anything they find is going to be inadmissible. You know that, right?”
Stu nodded.
“I know, but I don’t care. We need to find the guy who killed Jake—the guy with the teeth.”
“Stu, I know you think that finding this guy will solve everything, but if there’s evidence that—“
“I don’t care,” Stu repeated sternly. He knew that he was being stubborn but couldn’t help it. He also knew that his attitude was bordering on Pollyanna, thinking that if they simply found the man who had actually committed the crime then he’d be instantly exonerated. Except, that wasn’t the way the legal system worked, and he knew it. Stu wouldn’t be the first person to be imprisoned even after exculpatory evidence came to light. American justice was often as much about saving face as it was about making sure the right man was behind bars.
Or strapped to a chair.
Yet, there was an intensely personal motivation at play that Stu was desperate to understand. If not understand at least know.
“Did you find out anything about the men on the list?”
Will made no effort to hide his displeasure, but he knew better than to argue with Stu when he got like this.
He pulled up a Word document.
“Five of the six people on the list are army veterans, just like Chase said. And the army is pretty tight-lipped when it comes to discharge, honorable or not, so I couldn’t really tell why they left or what was the nature of their dismissal. Except for Paul Wenkler. Apparently, he was at the heart of a controversy involving a civilian death in Afghanistan. Paul and his crew were clearing a house when someone burst through the front door. The soldiers, including Paul, claimed that the man was armed. Only, an investigation concluded that he was a civilian and had no weapons on him. He was shot and killed, and Paul was discharged.”
Stu had no idea how this related to him as he had nothing to do with the military.
“Who was visiting this Paul guy?”
Will cocked his head.
“Floyd.”
“Hmm. I’ll give him a heads up.”
Stu had known Floyd for some time, known him back before he was an Agent and was just Chase and Stitts’ driver. He was caring and kind, maybe a little naive. Probably not the best personality traits for an FBI Agent. The way that Chase and Tate, Chase in particular, babied him likely wasn’t helping, either.
“Good idea,” Will said. “While you’re at it, give Chase a call, too.”
Stu raised an eyebrow.
“Why’s that?”
Floyd might be the least experienced, but Chase was definitely the most volatile.
“The guy that she was going to visit? Tony Metcalfe?”
“Yeah?” The name meant nothing to him. “What about him?”
“He’s not like the others—I can’t find any evidence that he was ever in the army, navy, anything like that. Can’t really find out anything about him at all.”
A strange expression crossed Will’s face.
“And?”
“Nothing,” the lawyer said, shaking his head.
“No, not nothing. What is it? What’s bothering you?”
“I just have a bad feeling about this one, that’s all.”
Stu stared at his friend for a few seconds before addressing his phone again. He’d already pulled up Floyd’s contact but instead of clicking send, he scrolled to Chase’s name and called her. When it rang and rang and rang without her picking up, Stu started to share Will’s feeling of discomfort.
When Chase didn’t answer on his third attempt, discomfort transitioned into something more sinister.
Chapter 68
Chase’s head throbbed, a drum roll of pain emanating from the side of her skull and spreading around to her forehead. She opened her eyes and found herself in foreign surroundings. The ground beneath was earthen, brown soil, but she didn’t remember going outside, didn’t remember anything after—
Chase scrambled to her feet. Her equilibrium was still off and that, coupled with the soft ground beneath her shoes, caused her to stumble forward. Her vision was still blurry and that didn’t help either; she didn’t see the bars right in front of her. Her left elbow and chin banged off the metal and she cried out. The pain in her skull and face balanced each other but now her elbow throbbed.
“Hello? Hello?” Her words echoed back to her, earthy and moist.
It was the familiarity of this sound, this echo, which made Chase lose what little composure she had left.
Her entire body was suddenly and inextricably frozen… except for her eyes. While they weren’t quite immune to the fear-induced frost that gripped her—they moved in their sockets as if shivering—Chase could at least take in her surroundings, which she immediately recognized as Brian Jalston’s dungeon.
She was back in the place where she and her sister had been brought after they’d been kidnapped from the fair.
“Hello?” she whined.
Chase thawed in a flurry of pins and needles.
“Louisa?”
She managed to turn her head and look into the cage next to her. Chase staggered again but this time she was too far from the bars to break her fall. Her knee dug into the dirt, sending a small, almost pathetic puff of dust into the air.
She was floored.
It was Louisa.
“Chase?”
“What’s happening?” Chase gasped.
“He—Bryan got me,” Louisa said, her voice wavering. “He got me again and he brought me back here. To this place. What—how did he get you?”
Tears streamed down Chase’s cheeks.
“I don’t—I don’t know,” she admitted. Tony Metcalfe—the name appeared in her mind out of nowhere. As did a photograph taped to the wall and roughly circled dozens of times with a red pen. “I was hunting for a—wait, where’s Georgina? Where’s Georgina?” Desperation fueled her movements and Chase wrenched her aching body up off the ground. She grasped the bars and pressed her face between them. “Georgina? Georgina!”
Louisa stared, dumbfounded, and Chase asked again.
“Where’s Georgina?”
Louis licked her lips.
“She’s—she’s dead.”
Chase felt her vision narrowing, and her grip on the bars loosened.
It was too much. It was all too much.
“How?” she croaked. This was her penance, knowing every detail of how Bryan murdered her niece. To relive every moment until she either exacted her revenge or succumbed to her sorrow. “His own daughter…”
“Georgina was killed by Mark Kruk, Chase. You know that.”
“What?” Chase clenched her jaw, which sent shooting pain around her head like motorcycles in a sphere of death. “No, not my sister… my niece. What happened to my niece, Georgina?”
Louisa’s expression remained blank.
“Georgina was killed by Mark Kruk, Chase. You know that.” The same words, the same intonation.
What the fuck is going on?
Chase’s upper lip curled, and she pulled back just a little.
“Louisa, I’m not talking about my sister, I’m talking about my niece! What happened to my niece?”
Something happened then, something that made Chase queasy. Louisa seemed to glitch. There was no other way to describe it. The woman’s round face seemed to disassociate into two-inch horizontal strips that didn’t quite line up.
Chase gagged and moved backward, almost falling for a third time.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Chase examined her cell. It was the way she remembered it—the ground, the cage, the bars, they were the same as in Brian’s underground dungeon. Chase looked past glitchy Louisa and into the next cage. It was there, it was real, but beyond that, everything blurred a little.
“No, no, no,” Chase said, shaking her head. “This isn’t real, none of this is—“
“Chase!” a voice boomed. Like her earlier shouts, Chase’s name bounced off the earthen walls making it difficult to determine where it originated.
But Chase found the source in a thick figure approaching from the hallway that ran between the two rows of cages dug out of the dirt. Backlighting made it impossible to make out his features, but she didn’t back down.
“Where’s Georgina? Where’s my niece?” she demanded.
The man finally got close enough for her to see him clearly.
It wasn’t Brian Jalston. It was Tony Metcalfe. But unlike in the security video, his teeth weren’t broken in half. His face was smoother somehow, too, as if he’d expertly applied coverup.
“Hello, Chase. My name’s Tony and welcome to Cerberus.”
Chapter 69
Tate shoved the door to Stu’s mansion open and guided Floyd inside. One look at them, and both Stu and Will knew something was wrong. The latter opened his mouth to ask as much, but Tate shook his head.
“Long story. Haven’t found our man yet. Will, I need you to come with me.” Will made a face but didn’t protest. Tate offered a surreptitious glance at Floyd and then mouthed to Stu, Don’t let him leave.
“Is it Chase?” Stu asked.
Once again, Tate shook his head.
“No—wait, why would you ask that?”
Now it was Stu and Will’s turn to exchange glances.
“What?” Tate wasn’t in the mood and didn’t have time for this. They needed to retrieve Floyd’s rental before someone noticed it.
“It’s just—Tony Metcalfe isn’t a veteran,” Will said. His intonation suggested that Tate was supposed to know who the hell that was. He didn’t.
“Who?”
“A man on the list, one that Chase was visiting,” Stu clarified. “He wasn’t a veteran. Never was in the army.”
Tate shrugged, not seeing the significance.
“So?”
“So, it makes him an outlier.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll call her,” Tate said, formulating a plan in his head. “Come on, Will. Let’s go.” And then, just in case Stu hadn’t gotten the idea before, he added, “Stu, stay with Floyd. Please.”
On the way back to Paul Wenkler’s place, a silent ride with Will the lawyer clearly exercising his right to plausible deniability, Tate tried reaching Chase several more times.
No dice.
Where the fuck are you, Chase?
The one item of good news for the day was that the cops had yet to arrive on the scene. Tate pulled up beside their rental and pointed at the Nissan through the window.
“That’s our rental.” Tate passed the keys to Will. “Bring it back to Stu’s house.”
Will took the keys but didn’t get out.
“What? Don’t act like—“
“The GPS,” Will said. “All rentals have GPS trackers built in. We’re going to need to wipe it. Should I ask Stu to find someone?”
The question from the straight-edged lawyer surprised Tate and he didn’t answer right away. He also wasn’t sure how much Stu might be able to help, given his ineptitude when it came to all things computers.
It was still the middle of the afternoon, which meant that if Paul was expecting someone they might not arrive until the evening—a wife or girlfriend, perhaps. That was the worst-case scenario—best case, no one would come until the smell polluted the streets.
It was also a clear suicide, especially given the man’s history of PTSD. If someone happened to see either him or Floyd, well, depending on how much time passed between Paul’s death and the discovery of his body, they might not even associate the two.
