Watch Your Back (61 page)

Stevie grimaced. ‘Because his pants were down around his ankles and he had a lipstick smudge, and not on his collar. The autopsy report said that the bullet had been removed. Cut right out of him. His killer was never found.’

‘Looks like we just found him,’ Hyatt said grimly.

‘Sonofabitch,’ Stevie said, incredulous. ‘Robinette kills Rene, marries his widow, then kills her too? And then keeps the bullet on his desk, hidden in his pal’s childhood toy as a trophy?’

‘All for control of the company,’ JD added with a shake of his head. ‘How much net worth are we talking about?’

‘Hard to say,’ Stevie said. ‘They’re privately held. That made it hard to get information on Robinette’s business dealings eight years ago. If the blood on this bullet matches Rene’s, that
has
to be enough for a warrant.’

‘I agree,’ Joseph said. ‘Given Elizabeth Morton’s testimony, we might already have enough.’ He called Daphne, gave her the information. ‘She’s revising Grayson’s warrant as we speak, but says we still need physical evidence. She’s going to ask the judge to be on standby and rush him the warrant once we have the physical evidence in hand. Novak, you look like you’re about to spew. Do you have something to share with the class?’

‘I do indeed,’ Novak said. ‘I have several things. First, Robinette’s posse. Stevie, your sister knew where your camera was, but we didn’t need it. She’d downloaded the photos to a CD years ago and put them in her safe deposit box for the day you were ready to look at them.’

Oh
. Stevie’s heart melted at her sister’s thoughtfulness. ‘That sounds like Izzy.’

‘She also kept copies on her hard drive so she emailed me the pictures you took at Levi’s funeral. There were four people around Robinette. Brenda Lee Miller, Jean Henderson, Michael Westmoreland, and this man.’ Novak turned his laptop around, showing them the photo.

The man was very handsome, Stevie thought, his dark blond hair carefully combed, his black suit fitting him well. ‘Now that I see the picture, I have a vague recollection of him back then. But I’ve seen him more recently – on Filbert Labs’s website. He’s the head chemist. James something.’ The piece fell into place in her mind. ‘Fletcher. James Fletcher.’

‘We read his profile,’ Clay said. ‘There’s no mention of military service.’

‘You’re right,’ Novak said. ‘But he did serve in Iraq during the time Henderson and Robinette served together. He was a doctor, but he got a dishonorable discharge.’

Clay’s brows went up. ‘Oh. Do we know why?’

‘Not yet. But . . .’

Stevie narrowed her eyes. Novak clearly had something bigger to spill. ‘But what?’

‘He’s currently in custody, a guest of the German BKA. They grabbed him as he walked off the plane in Frankfurt, about ninety minutes ago.’

The questions came flying from around the table. ‘Why?’ ‘How?’

Stevie leaned close to Clay. ‘What’s the BKA?’ she whispered.

‘Their FBI,’ Clay said. ‘The
Bundeskriminalamt
.’

Novak’s odd eyes were sparkling with excitement. ‘Stevie, I heard you say as I was leaving that Robinette would have needed a new head chemist because he killed the last one along with Julie. I called the factory and asked to speak to Fletcher, but he wasn’t there. I went by his apartment and his neighbor said he’d seen him leave yesterday morning with a large suitcase so I started a check on the airports, to see if he’d left town. While I was waiting, I got the photo files from Izzy, so I knew I was on the right track. A few minutes later I found he’d flown out of Reagan National to Toronto, transferring to DeGaulle, then to Frankfurt. Luckily for us, he’s traveling on his own passport. Anyway, I put out a BOLO with Interpol.’

‘You’ve been busy,’ Stevie said.

‘Which was why I was so happy you brought lunch. I didn’t have time to eat.’

‘Poor baby,’ Joseph said dryly. ‘So the Germans grabbed him after seeing your BOLO?’

‘They did and they’re holding him and have seized his luggage. They can keep him for a few hours while we figure out what we need to do.’

‘Well done, Deacon,’ Joseph said and Novak gave a single hard, pleased nod.

‘What about me?’ Coppola said with a frown. ‘I went through the garbage.’

‘Rich people’s garbage,’ Novak pointed out.

‘Still garbage.’ Coppola grimaced. ‘Still nasty.’

‘Well,
I
went to prison,’ Stevie chimed in. ‘Do I get an attaboy, too?’

‘You all get gold stars,’ Joseph said. ‘We have Brenda Lee under surveillance and the BOLO we filed for Westmoreland yesterday is still in effect. Now we need Robinette.’

‘We have the blood samples from Levi Robinette’s autopsy,’ Brodie said, ‘and I’ve already started the lab on the DNA analysis, but it’ll be tomorrow before we have results. Now that I have Robinette’s suits from the garbage, I can search for hairs on the fabric. Hopefully we’ll get a match to the hair we found at the beach.’

‘Do it,’ Joseph said. ‘As soon as you have that, we’ll get our warrant. I’ll assign teams to search Robinette’s home and factory.’

Stevie had opened her mouth to say she was accompanying them when Novak gasped.

‘Oh my God. Joseph, wait.’ Novak looked up from his laptop, his eyes no longer sparkling. ‘The Germans just arrested Fletcher. He was carrying enough sarin to kill everyone in the airport if the seal on the bottle had broken.’

Stevie heard the shocked gasps, her own included. ‘Whoa,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect that.’

Clay sat back in his chair, his jaw lax. ‘That sonofabitch,’ he hissed. ‘Robinette’s making chemical weapons. That’s why he wanted control of the pharmaceutical company so badly. How did the Germans find the sarin?’

‘The BKA was searching Fletcher’s luggage,’ Novak said, ‘and were about to open what he’d labeled a perfume bottle when he stopped them, all pale and panicked. They were suspicious because of how well it was packed, but they really hadn’t planned to open it. They were just bluffing to give us some time. But then Fletcher blurted out what it was.’

‘Can’t say that I blame Fletcher for panicking,’ Brodie said, shuddering. ‘Good God.’

‘What was Fletcher’s final destination?’ Joseph asked.

‘Lagos. From there he could have hooked up with any number of terrorist cells.’

‘Which would have been
just
what we needed,’ Joseph said sardonically. ‘I’ll let Daphne know so she can amend our warrant.’ He dialed Daphne again then began mobilizing SWAT units and HazMat teams.

Clay drummed his fingers lightly on the table. ‘We didn’t find Henderson’s passport, did we?’ he murmured, quietly enough so that he didn’t interrupt Joseph’s calls.

‘No,’ Novak said. ‘She has one, but it wasn’t on her. It may have been destroyed along with her apartment in that fire.’

‘Westmoreland has a passport in a different name,’ Clay said. ‘I’ll bet Henderson does, too.’

‘Where are you going with this?’ Stevie asked.

‘I can’t imagine Fletcher was the primary deliveryman,’ he said, ‘not traveling on his own passport and carrying it in his checked luggage.’

‘It is amateurish,’ Brodie agreed. ‘Robinette seems too smart for that.’

‘Fletcher was running away and probably needed money to live on the run,’ Clay said, ‘so he took the sarin, planning to sell it. He wouldn’t have had to look hard for customers.’

‘What if they’ve done this before?’ Stevie asked quietly. ‘What if Robinette’s been using his factory to make weapons of chemical warfare for the last eight years? He’d need deliverymen with passports that couldn’t be traced back to him. Like Westmoreland.’

‘We’ll get the facial recognition software going,’ Novak said, ‘to see if we can find Westmoreland and Henderson in the crowds at the major world airports.’

‘For the past eight years?’ Brodie protested.

‘If we have to,’ Novak said grimly. ‘But I’m betting we’ll get a hit at Lagos sometime in the last year. If Fletcher is an amateur, if he hasn’t been involved in previous deliveries, and if they have done this before, Fletcher may have picked a previous customer he knew of.’

‘That’s a lot of ifs,’ Brodie said doubtfully. ‘But I guess it’s a place to start.’

Novak shrugged. ‘Plus Fletcher might give the Germans some information once it sinks in that he’s been caught. Anybody traveling on their own passport with a chemical weapon in their checked luggage is probably not going to hold up under interrogation too long. I’d give up Robinette in a heartbeat if it were me.’

‘This is why Robinette needed you dead, Stevie. It was never about his son,’ Clay said.

‘I know.’ It made more sense now. ‘I was looking into all the old cases. If I’d opened his again, I might have caught on to his sideline business. He had the perfect opportunity when people started shooting at me.’

‘He took advantage of the fact that other people wanted you dead, too,’ JD said. ‘Bastard.’

Joseph came to his feet, holding his phone. ‘Daphne just got our warrant for his house and the factory. SWAT teams are on their way to both places. JD, Deacon, Kate, you’re with me.’

‘I’ll get back to the lab,’ Brodie said, ‘and prepare it for any sarin samples you find.’

Stevie stood up. ‘I’m going, too, Joseph. I’ll stay out of your way, but I deserve to see Robinette brought to his knees.’

Joseph looked at Clay. ‘You, too, I take it?’

‘If she goes, so do I. And she does deserve to be there.’

‘If I tell you no, you’ll just do it anyway,’ Joseph finally said. ‘I’d rather know where you are. Just wear body armor, get a gas mask, and stay behind the line.’

Wednesday, March 19, 2.55
P.M.

He wasn’t dead, but Robinette felt like his gut had been pulled out through his navel. He’d spent nearly twenty-four hours lying on Brenda Lee’s garage floor vomiting his insides up. When he got his hands on Fletcher . . . 
I will fucking kill the bitch
.

But first, he thought, staring at the screen of the ATM in his bank’s drive-thru lane, he was going to kill Lisa. And by God, he’d make it hurt.

‘What’s wrong?’

He turned to look at Cecilia Wright, who sat in the passenger seat of her minivan, watching him as though he was a striking rattlesnake. Brenda Lee’s best friend was a smart woman.

He’d hidden under a blanket in the back of Brenda Lee’s minivan to get out of his house and into her garage, thinking he’d put distance between himself and the Feds. They’d been outside his factory and his home – but then they’d also been outside Brenda Lee’s home. The Feds knew.

He knew he’d left blood at that farm – and he’d never left DNA behind before. His only saving grace was that he had no DNA profile on file anywhere that the Feds could compare the blood to. They’d ask him to voluntarily submit a sample, but he’d refuse and they’d never get a warrant to take his DNA, not on the circumstantial evidence they possessed. But knowing that the FBI congregated outside his property and outside Brenda Lee’s had left them both shaken.

He and Brenda Lee agreed that he needed to get out of town for a while. Somewhere that he could rest without being recognized. So he’d dragged himself into Brenda Lee’s bathroom and cleaned himself up, the razor she used to buzz cut her son’s hair aiding his disguise. His mustache and most of his hair filled a trash bag he’d taken away with him.

He’d leave no DNA behind that the cops could use against him.

Brenda Lee had smuggled him out of her garage under the same blanket, letting him out behind her son’s school. The private gate kept the Fed tail from following them onto school property where Cecilia Wright waited, having just picked up her own six-year-old daughter.

Edgy and pale, Cecilia had buckled her daughter into the backseat of Brenda Lee’s minivan, then had driven Robinette – hidden under another damn blanket in yet another damn minivan – past the Fed waiting outside. They’d stopped on a side street where he’d taken the wheel, tired of hiding under blankets.

His plan had been to first hit the ATM and then to drive to the airport where Cecilia was going to rent a car for him in her name. But step one had stalled out.

‘My bank account seems to be empty,’ he said mildly.

‘I . . . I can loan you some money,’ Cecilia said with a terrified stutter.

Idly he wondered what this woman owed Brenda Lee that she was willing to aid him. Then he remembered they’d taken her teenager into one of their programs when no one else would. If they hadn’t, the teen would have gone to juvie. Which was where the kid had belonged, in Robinette’s opinion. But Brenda Lee had begged and Robinette had allowed it.

He was damn glad that he had. ‘I might take you up on that. Give me a moment.’

Robinette dialed his home phone, intending to lure Lisa out. So he could fucking kill her.

‘Todd?’ Lisa answered, a relieved sigh whooshing out of her. ‘You’ve had me so scared. Where are you?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Why do I want to know?’ she echoed, sounding bewildered. Lisa did bewildered very well. ‘I suppose I understand why you’d ask. I was terrible to you yesterday. I was hurt that you only called me because there was no one else. I . . . was wrong.’

He liked the words. Didn’t trust the sentiment.

‘I seem to have a problem with our bank account,’ he said. He had other accounts but he couldn’t access them from here. He also had cash in his safes at home and at work. Had he not been puking his guts up the day before, he’d have cleaned those out. Of course he didn’t plan to tell Lisa about his cash reserves. She’d steal him blind. ‘There’s nothing in it.’

‘That’s because I moved the money, because I got visited by the FBI. Henderson is making outrageous claims. I figured if the FBI came looking for your assets, they’d freeze them.’

‘Where did you move them?’

‘To my account, the one I had from before we got married. But I took a large amount in cash in case you need to pay someone to deal with this Henderson mess for you.’

‘That’s what I pay Brenda Lee for.’

A long pause. ‘Then I suppose you don’t need the money,’ she said sweetly, and he knew he’d pissed her off again.

He gritted his teeth, kept his tone civil. ‘No, but I’d like to have it.’