The Aspen Account (36 page)

Spreading out to both sides of the oncoming jet’s path, they held their formation until the jet’s beacon lights were in sight on the horizon. Both fighter craft slowed to 500 miles per hour so they would be visible to the pilot of the approaching aircraft. As the jet grew closer, the fighter pilots pulled away at the last moment, screaming past the jet with calculated precision that left no doubt about who controlled the situation.

After passing the private jet, the two fighters turned around in a crossing pattern and came up on it from behind. One of the pilots made radio contact, stating that the private jet was being placed under military detainment and would be escorted to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. If the pilot did not comply, it would be shot out of the sky. Without any hesitation, the private craft gradually banked right, following the lead of the front fighter. The pilot of the second fighter radioed back to Homeland Security, reporting that Chapman had been intercepted and that the military police should be expecting them at the security landing strip in less than an hour.

“If Lucas Seaton was part of Chapman’s investigation, then why would Chapman kill him?” Kano asked Troy Glazier in a small back office at the Aspen airport.

“He wouldn’t,” Glazier said, backhanding the air in front of his face, as if batting away the question. “This all has to be a mistake.”

“Then why would he run?” Kano said, with an edge to his voice. He was obviously still upset about Michael’s escape. “And why would he assault the officer in Glenwood Springs and then flee the scene as a fugitive.”

The half-dozen other men in the room were growing uneasy at the escalating argument. Glazier’s voice rose to match Kano’s. “You have to understand how smart he is. I assure you, whatever it is, he has a very good reason for what he’s doing.”

“You can ask him yourself,” Kano replied. “I just got word that Seaton’s jet has been forced to land at Peterson Air Force Base. The military police have set up a teleconference in an interrogation room, and they’ll patch us in as soon as Chapman’s situated.”

“I understand your situation, Marshal, but I’m asking you to give us some leeway here.” Glazier felt his frustration building. He and Michael had worked too hard just to let some uncooperative marshal stall their investigation. “If Michael wasn’t willing to give himself up, it was because there’s something he needs to do first. He knows that given time, I can resolve this situation for him. We’re in the middle of an investigation. I urge you to listen to what he has to say and to consider releasing him on bail. You can always conclude your investigation in a few weeks after we’ve finished our fraud case against X-Tronic.”

“Accounting frauds don’t concern me as much as murders do—I’m not about to authorize his release.”

“Damn it!” Glazier yelled. “You’re not hearing me. We’ve been working undercover for over two years to—”

“No. You’re the one who’s not listening,” said Kano. “He’s a fugitive wanted for murder. I’m not releasing him; that’s final!”

Glazier glared at Kano, trying to control his seething anger. He thought of every possible favor that he could call in. He even considered the Treasury Secretary’s influence over the Homeland Security Department. But even then it would take at least twenty-four hours to work through the red tape of the convoluted legal process that allowed one cabinet department to take precedence over another.

“Sir, we have a phone call for you,” a deputy announced, handing a phone to Kano.

“This is Marshal Kano,” he announced into the phone. His face muscles hardened as he listened to a voice on the other end of the line. “What! How is that possible? Keep questioning him! I want to know everything!”

Kano slammed down the phone and looked at Glazier. “That was Captain Gavin at the Air Force base. Chapman wasn’t on the plane. They found the pilot and an Aspen sheriff’s officer, Deputy Spencer Lincoln.”

“Lincoln?” Glazier gurgled, dribbling coffee down his chin.

“Yes,” Kano said. “The same deputy that called in and claimed to have seen Chapman taxiing onto the runway in the jet. Chapman must not have ever gotten on it, or he jumped out before it left the hangar. Christ! It was a decoy. The man that informed us of Seaton’s jet on the radio must have been Chapman, pretending to be Lincoln. Damn it! We had every officer trying to prevent the jet from taking off. Chapman could have stolen Deputy Lincoln’s clothes and police vehicle, and he would have had no problem slipping out through our checkpoints in a policeman’s disguise after we already thought he escaped in the jet.”

Furious, Kano yelled for a search to continue within a two-hundred-fifty-mile radius of Aspen. He had the feeling that they would never get as close to catching Michael again. As the room galvanized into action, Glazier had to turn his face away from Kano to hide his grin.

The all-wheel-drive police SUV had no trouble keeping traction on the snow-covered mountain roads. Michael had gone through five checkpoints coordinated by the U.S. Marshal’s Service. He was still wearing Deputy Lincoln’s uniform and had managed to roll through each police barricade with no more than a wave, while the highway patrol troopers gave every other car a meticulous check.

He hadn’t planned to use the deputy’s identity to escape, but when the man got out of the jeep and slowly approached the hangar through the blowing snow, he knew he had no choice but to stop him. Waiting until the deputy was peeking into the hangar, Michael had lunged out from the shadows and put him in a choke hold, rendering him unconscious in seconds. He had dragged the deputy into the hangar while Captain Steiner was busy going through the preflight checks in the cockpit. He removed the deputy’s uniform before dragging him onto Seaton’s jet and handcuffing him to the bed frame in the bedroom at the back of the fuselage. After shutting the bedroom door, he told Captain Steiner it was time to leave, without ever hinting to him that the deputy was aboard. Once the pilot closed the cockpit door moments before taxiing onto the runway, Michael pushed the button and watched as the airstair slowly folded up into the side of the jet. But just as it began the closing process, he took a running jump out of the jet, over the side of the staircase, to land hard but unhurt on the concrete floor of the hangar. He ran to the office behind the jet, threw on the deputy’s uniform, and then circled outside, in the snow, to the idling police jeep. After assuming Deputy Lincoln’s identity on the radio, he reported in a winded voice to Marshal Kano and started the false chase of the escaping X-Tronic jet. And then, just as every police vehicle was chasing the jet down the runway, he calmly drove through the airport’s checkpoint—just a uniformed officer in a patrol jeep.

He had assumed that the jet would either be intercepted in flight or be traced by radar and apprehended once it landed. Almost three hours had elapsed since he left Aspen. He figured that Kano would soon find out he was not on the jet. 

Hitting the last downhill stretch of I-70 toward the Denver skyline, he felt good to be home. He was still a fugitive at large, though, so he must take precautions. He needed to get to the Brown Palace Hotel, where Don Seaton had reserved the presidential suite. He would have the most lavish hideout in town. The X-Tronic shareholders’ meeting was in four days, and he would need every minute to work on the presentation and press release if he hoped to help Don Seaton expose the conspirators without destroying the company. However, it would be dangerous to drive the Aspen Police Department SUV all around downtown Denver. Before he reached the city, he needed to make a phone call.

63

IN HIS ROOM at the downtown Hyatt, Lance Seaton laid his cell phone beside a silver laptop on the desk. The computer’s liquid-crystal screen displayed four minimized windows. Two were secure links to offshore bank accounts, one was a user connection to a freight transport company in Los Angeles, and the last was a member sync-up with a GPS satellite service. He poured a second drink of Grey Goose vodka into a heavy tumbler with a sparkling Hyatt logo cut into the glass. Taking a sip, he felt the pleasant burn in his throat, which conjured memories of his brother and him drinking together atop of Aspen Mountain during a full moon party years earlier. Then his happy recollections turned to fury at the thought of Michael Chapman.

He had more than enough money stashed away to start a new life anywhere in the world he wanted. With the conspiracy at X-Tronic on the verge of exposure, he had no doubt that future indictments would eventually expose the murder of Kurt Matthews. But while he played through scenarios of a new life in hiding in Switzerland or New Zealand or Panama or Malaysia, he knew he couldn’t leave Colorado before avenging his brother’s death. The two calls he had just finished would help him conclude this final bit of business Stateside before he left the country forever.

*     *     *

Michael knelt as he watched another pair of headlights circle the parking lot.
Come on, be her!
he thought. He waited for the headlights to flash, but when they didn’t, he ducked his head below the window and cursed. He was crouched in the driver’s seat of the SUV, parked in one of the large ski shuttle lots between the Front Range and Denver, where people left their cars before carpooling into the mountains. He had thought about calling Alaska for help but hadn’t wanted to involve her in his problems. Besides, it was Sarah who had helped put him on the path to discovering the fraud, and she understood the risks involved in helping him.

His eyes caught a new shifting pattern of highlights sliding along the ceiling of the SUV. He hadn’t even had time to lift his head before he saw their rapid flashing. He opened the door and ran up to the red jeep. 

“Go!” he said.

Sarah zoomed out of the lot, and as they turned onto the entrance ramp and merged onto I-70, they saw a Denver police cruiser with flashing lights race down the exit ramp across the highway, toward the parking lot.

“Is that for you?” she asked.

“Christ, of course—the SUV must have LoJack! Damn that was close!”

“What the hell’s going on Michael!”

“They think I killed Lucas Seaton,” he said.

“You’re involved in that!” she said excitedly. “I knew it. I tried to call your cell when I saw on the news that he died, but your phone was off.”

“I pulled the SIM card out after Vail,” he said.

“What happened?”

It was time to tell her everything. As they raced along the highway toward the lights of Denver, he told her about Glazier and about being recruited as a federal agent for the Treasury Department. He told how twelve members of his cadet class had pulled different assignments throughout the country, focusing on the public accounting firms where fraud seemed likeliest. “Seattle, San Francisco, L.A., New York, Dallas, Chicago, Phoenix, Boston, Miami, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Denver,” he rattled off to show he was not alone. 

“So you knew something illegal was going on at X-Tronic
before
my brother’s death?” she said.

“No. I didn’t even know if anything illegal was going on with any of the firm’s clients. After the flood of financial scandals years ago, the Treasury Department decided to experiment with a shadow operation, sending agents under deep cover inside the high-risk areas of the financial world: essentially, the largest international accounting firms.”

Another police cruiser, coming the other direction on the highway, flew past them with lights flashing. He leaned back in the seat, feeling suddenly exhausted.

“Hell, no one ever expected to actually stumble onto the next big fraud. These things are almost impossible to recognize from the outside—Treasury was only fishing. Prototype government agencies are routinely set up to experiment with new types of investigative procedures for all kinds of federal crimes in other sectors, so someone in Washington decided it was time to try something bold in the financial world. No one ever expected it to work this well. At most, we thought we’d get a clearer picture of the level of fraud prevention that firms were actually doing.” He paused, looking at her, gauging her reaction. “I didn’t even
begin
to suspect fraud at X-Tronic until after Kurt’s death, and I hadn’t found the right place to start looking until you e-mailed me about his notes. You brought ’em with you, right?”

“You said you needed them. They’re in the back.”

“Great! I also need some documents I have stored in a bank downtown. I’ll be working nonstop in the Brown Palace, making the presentation that outlines the fraud, and it’s too dangerous for me to move around Denver in the daylight. I can contact the bank and clear it for you to pick up the documentation Monday morning.”

“Whatever you need,” she said, “just as long as we bring Kurt’s killers to justice.”

“Bet on it.”

The lights from downtown spread out in front of them. The snow had been cleared from the main highways and streets, but here in town he could see sand trucks with flashing yellow lights plowing through snow-covered neighborhoods that looked in deep-winter hibernation. The city seemed strangely quiet considering that in just a few days it would have the attention of the entire financial world.

64

BY MONDAY AFTERNOON, Michael had been working in the penthouse of the Brown Palace Hotel for thirty-six hours straight. He had compiled half his findings into a summary report for Don Seaton to present at the annual shareholders’ meeting. Exhausted from the relentless work, he needed a break. He grabbed the phone and dialed a number.

“Glazier,” the familiar voice answered.

“It’s Chapman.”

“Chapman! I’ve been waiting for you to call. Everyone on my team is impressed you were able to slip past the authorities in Aspen.”

“I shouldn’t have to be slipping past anyone,” Michael said, annoyed. “I’m a federal agent. Why hadn’t you cleared my name?”