Fatal Decree (24 page)

“And the leaker showed up again. Recently?” asked J.D.

“We think that’s what happened. We lost another agent last Sunday.”

“You think it’s related to the other two?” I asked.

“We think so. At least the manner of death was the same.”

“Maybe the agent screwed up,” said J.D.

“I don’t think so,” said Jock. “This agent was a friend of mine. He was about the best in the business. He had gotten himself embedded with one of the drug cartels in southern Mexico. He was born in Los Angeles, but his parents were Mexicans who came from the same area where he was working with the cartel. He fit right in.”

“What was he doing?” I asked. “I mean, was he tracking the drugs into the U.S., taking out the cartel leaders, what?”

“He was trying to track the drugs back to their source. We know who the cartel leaders are, and we’re trying to find where they are so that we can figure a way to take them out. We were about to put another agent in place.”

“Why is your agency so interested in the drug business?” I asked.

“It’s not really the drug business we’re worried about. Not as such. It’s the money that flows from it into terrorist groups around the world
that interests us. If we can disrupt the drug flow, we make a dent in the cash flow and maybe eventually put the terrorists that depend on the money out of business.”

“You’ve got the first two murdered agents dealing with guerrillas in Columbia and another one taking on the drug cartels in Mexico,” I said. “How do you see the connection?”

“The only one that makes sense is that the same leaker is dealing with different groups. Maybe he’s expanding his reach. It’s probably not ideological since the Mexicans seem to believe in nothing but making money. I think FARC, even though it’s involved in the drug business, actually believes in Communism. But who knows for sure?”

“Was your friend’s body dropped at the embassy in Mexico City?” asked J.D.

Jock shook his head.

“Where did you find him?” I asked.

“In front of a U.S. Agency for International Development office in Flores.”

“Where’s that?”

“Guatemala.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, the idea of a Guatemalan connection coursing across the synapses of our brains, raising more questions than we had answers. Jock had been right. Maybe the men who tried to kill J.D. and me were really after Jock.

“Did you know about this on Friday when you said something about the Guatemalans getting you and me mixed up?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ve operated in that area of the world and I thought it reasonable that I might be a target. It made no sense to me that either you or J.D. would be in the gang’s sights for some reason.”

“I’m still not sure why or how they could make a mistake like that,” I said.

“It actually makes some sense, now that I know what Gene was doing. Suppose they—whoever they are—knew that Gene was working on the problem of the leaker and they had somebody watching him. Maybe a loose surveillance or something. They see me with Gene, probably take a photograph and send it to the leaker. He identifies me as an agent, and thinks I’m probably here to protect Gene. It never connects with them that I came here because of Matt.”

“Then how did I get in their sights?” I asked. “Or J.D.?”

“These guys aren’t the smartest people on the planet,” Jock said. “It may be something as simple as them finding out that I’m staying in your house and didn’t realize that anybody else was here. There was a different shift watching the house, one who hadn’t seen me. They saw you come and get in your car. They followed you downtown, thinking the man coming out of the house had to be me. They took their shot when you came out of the police station.”

“That kind of stupidity is a little hard to believe,” I said.

“Probably. But you can paint a lot of scenarios as to how they thought you were me. None of them need to make a lot of sense. Maybe you did something to piss them off. Maybe it’s a big coincidence that some Guatemalan gangbangers took a shot at you at the same time we’re closing in on a leaker with some sort of Guatemalan connection. Maybe the guys shooting at you aren’t related in any way to Gene’s death.”

“So, maybe they were after me,” said J.D.

“Who knows,” said Jock, “but I’d like to talk to the gangbangers.”

“Jock,” J.D. said, “I’m not sure the Mexicans on that landscaping crew were telling me the truth about there not being a stranger along with them on Friday. You speak Spanish, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What if you talked to them?”

“I’d like that, but not at the police station. I’d want to come at them without any government connections.”

“You think they’ll be more likely to talk to you than if they thought you were with the police?”

“I think they’ll be more likely to be scared shitless of me if they think I’m not official.”

“More scared of you than of the gangbangers?” she asked.

Jock grinned. “Bet on it.”

I changed the subject. “Was Gene making any progress in identifying the leaker?”

“We think so. He called the director Thursday afternoon and said he needed to see him as soon as possible. He couldn’t talk about anything over the phone and was afraid to send anything over the Internet, even with the encryptions they were using.”

“And they never got together,” said J.D.

“No,” said Jock. “When I called the director on Friday to tell him about Gene’s death, he was just leaving his office to fly down here.”

“Did he tell you why?” asked J.D.

“Not on the phone. He just asked me to come to Washington.”

“And your interest in the laptop when you called me on Saturday was that the director thought information about the leaker might be on it,” said J.D.

“Right,” said Jock. “The laptop was so sensitive that the director didn’t want Gene to fly to Washington. He was afraid that something might happen to the computer on the way.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched,” I said.

Jock shrugged. “I agree, but they didn’t want to take a chance on the plane crashing, the laptop getting stolen, Gene having a heart attack, anything. It was that sensitive. That’s the reason the director was coming to Longboat Key to see Gene.”

“Did the director have any idea what Gene had learned?”

“Nada,” said Jock. “Not even an inkling.”

“But somebody knew what was going on,” said J.D. “We didn’t think to check for bugs on his phone. Maybe people were listening to his conversations.”

“Don’t think so,” said Jock. “Both Gene and the director were using encrypted satellite phones to communicate. Gene would never have used his home phone on something this important.”

“We didn’t find either a cell or a satellite phone,” said J.D.

“I’m not surprised,” said Jock, “but the phone wasn’t particularly important. Unless somebody has the encryption code, they won’t be able to use it.”

“What about the missing laptop?” I asked. “Do you think somebody can break that code?”

“I don’t know,” said Jock, “but that’s probably not important. We think Gene had somehow developed information that would give us the leaker’s identity. That’s probably what’s in the computer. Since the leaker obviously knows who he is, that information isn’t going to help him. The loss of it will certainly hurt us.”

“If we found the laptop, could the director get into it?” J.D. asked.

“Sure,” said Jock. “He knows the key.”

“So it would seem that the best way to find the leaker is to find the laptop,” said J.D.

“Yes,” said Jock. “But it’s probably somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf by now.”

She sat quietly for a couple of beats, chewing on it. Then, “That may
not be the case. That might depend on how sophisticated the hitter was.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Think about it,” she said. “Suppose he was just some low-level gangbanger who happened to be convenient for the leaker to hire to kill Gene. Even if he’d been told to take the computer, he might decide that he can make more money by selling it back to the leaker. Or for that matter, he might be so dumb that he’d try to pawn it. He might not have any idea how valuable it is to the leaker.”

“You’ve got a point,” said Jock, “but I was under the impression you thought the murderer was probably a professional.”

“It looked that way, but I really wasn’t thinking about Guatemalan gangs. I thought you were off base on that one.”

Jock smiled. “Wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“Those gangbangers grow up killing people,” she said.

“Usually in a blood bath,” I said. “This one took some finesse.”

“Or maybe just practice,” said J.D. “What if the gang has a designated hitter, so to speak? One they use for their contract murders when they don’t want it traced back to them.”

“Could be,” said Jock. “Can you get me the name and address of the landscaping crew chief? The shooter couldn’t have gotten onto that crew without the crew chief’s knowledge.”

“It’s in my file back at the station. I’ll get it for you tomorrow.”

“I’d like to go see the guy tonight,” Jock said. “You up for a little action, Matt?”

I nodded. “I’ve got nothing else going on.”

“I’ll go with you,” said J.D.

Jock shook his head. “J.D., this is the place where you should bow out. There’re some things an honest cop shouldn’t be involved in.”

“I thought we were going to be a team,” she said.

“We are,” said Jock. “I’ll give you all the information we get, but you don’t need to be involved in how we get that information.”

“I’m not sure I like that.”

“You wouldn’t like the way I work, either.”

“I’m not a kid, Jock. I watched you work over a bad guy once.”

“And it made you sick,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment or two, chewing on her need for evidence and her gut-level hatred at the methods Jock was sometimes required to use. But she knew there was more at stake here than solving Gene’s murder or the whale tail killings. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. Finally, she raised her arms in a show of surrender. “Let’s go to the station.”

The man standing in the doorway of the ramshackle house was big and beefy, a vision of adiposity rapidly overtaking muscularity. His long hair was tied in a ponytail, his face showing annoyance at being bothered at home. His name was Chico Suarez and he was the crew chief we’d come for.

The yard was dirt and dark, no street lights in this disheveled neighborhood in East Bradenton. A king cab pickup was parked in the yard, a van-type trailer still attached to it. The Islandwide Landscaping Service logo was on both. The sound of a Spanish-language television station blared from the living room. Jock was speaking English to the man and asked him if he was indeed the Chico Suarez who was the crew chief for Islandwide.

“Yeah,” said the man. “What do you want?” His English was very good. I wondered why he’d told J.D. he only spoke Spanish.

Jock punched him in the abdomen, a quick, powerful blow to the solar plexus that brought Suarez to his knees, gasping, trying to catch his breath. Jock grabbed the ponytail and was pulling him farther into the yard, Suarez scrambling on his knees, trying to keep up, his breath ragged. Jock rolled the man onto his back, straddled him and poked a .45-caliber pistol under his chin.

“Who was the Guatemalan you let on your crew on Friday?” Jock asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t think this is a good time to be lying to me, amigo.”

“They’ll kill me.”

Jock screwed the barrel of the gun further into the tissue beneath the
man’s chin. “If you don’t start talking, I’ll kill you right now,” he said. “Save the gangbangers the trouble.”

“No. Don’t shoot. What do you want to know?”

Jock pulled the pistol back and pointed it at Suarez’s face. “This better be good.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” said Suarez.

“With what?”

“The killing.”

“You know about that?”

“Yes. It was on the television news. And the cops came around asking a lot of questions about it.”

“How did the Guatemalan get on your crew?”

“Some guy with a bunch of tattoos came to see me early Friday morning. Told me he would be working with my crew. It was about to rain. I told him we didn’t work when it was raining. He said we would work that day, and I should call my men and get them ready to go. Said he’d kill me if I didn’t. He had a gun.”

“Were you scheduled to work in Emerald Harbor that day?”

“Yes. We always work there on Fridays.”

“But you weren’t planning to go out there in the rain.”

“No. We’d work Saturday if we had to. If it rained all day on Friday.”

“How did the man with the tattoos know about your Friday schedule?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’d seen our truck out there on other Fridays.”

“What did you do?”

“I did what he said. I called my men and went to pick them up.”

“What about the tattooed guy?”

“He went with me.”

“What did you tell your people about the new guy?”

“Just what I’d been told to say. That he was joining the crew.”

“What happened when you got to Emerald Harbor?”

“We went to work. The tattooed guy told us to do one of the houses last. He sat in the truck until we were about finished with that house and then he went around the back of it. He came back a few minutes later and we left.”

“Did you hear a pistol shot after he went to the back of the house?”

“No, but we had all the equipment going.”

“All of it?”

“Yeah. Mowers and blowers and edgers. He told us to make as much noise as possible.”

“You didn’t find that a little odd?” asked Jock.

“Odd as hell, but what was I supposed to do? I was just hoping he wouldn’t kill us all.”

“Was he carrying anything when he came out of the house?”

“I didn’t know then that he’d been in the house, but he was carrying a laptop. And what looked like a big cell phone.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. We loaded up and drove back to our shop in Bradenton. We had to clean the equipment.”