Fatal Dose (2 page)

He walked out of the room and into center of the warehouse before taking out his cell phone and hitting a speed dial number. When he was connected, he just said, “He’s dead. He wouldn’t talk, but I’m sure it was him.”

Two men carried Brice across the empty warehouse to the freight elevator. They removed his coat and tossed it on the warehouse floor. The plan was to create the appearance that he had been crushed by the elevator. The leader walked toward the stairs. “I’ll go downstairs and override the safety circuit on the panel. Lay him face down so he’s halfway in the warehouse and halfway in the lift so it will look like he was trying to climb out of a stalled elevator. When I call out, reach in and press the third floor button. Get your hand out real quick. It’s gonna happen fast and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

He rushed down the stairs. After a few seconds, he called up, “Okay, hit the button.” One of the men reached in and pressed the floor three button. The elevator lurched upward, but came to an abrupt stop as Brice’s body wedged between the elevator floor and the top of the second floor door frame. An eerie sound came from the body on impact. Within minutes, the stench of urine filled the air as Brice’s bodily functions gave out.

“Oh, my god,” one of the men gasped as he looked up at Brice’s bulging eyes.

The leader returned to the second floor after resetting the safety switch. He looked up at the wedged body and grinned. “That looks great. You guys did good.” He reached up to a dangling arm to double-check for a pulse. As he expected, there was none.

Vennuti was watching the operation. He walked up to the trio, took one look at the body and smiled his approval. He, too, reached up to check the dangling arm, not being one to take any unnecessary chances. “It looks like he tried to get off while the elevator was still moving.” He shook his head. “What a tragic accident. He was so young,” he said in a mocking voice. “The safety mechanism must have failed.” He turned toward the stairs. Half laughing, he said, “I guess we’ll have to take the stairs down. It looks like the elevator is going to be out of service for a while.” He stopped to pick up Brice’s jacket. “Here, toss this into the elevator.”

As he was handing the jacket to the leader, Marco felt something hard around the left shoulder pad. He felt around the lining and found a narrow slit. He pulled at the opening and a metal object fell to the floor. Vennuti picked it up. It was Brice’s FBI shield. He checked the lining again and pulled out Brice’s ID. “Oh fuck, he was a Fed. Didn’t you assholes search him when you picked him up?”

“Sure we did, Marco. We didn’t find anything,” the leader said.

“For Christ’s sake, does this look like nothing? It was right here by the shoulder pad. How could you possibly miss it?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Vennuti, but that just means that you were right about him. He’s gotta be the rat. Anyway, there’s no harm done. If we found the shield on him, you would have off’d him anyway. Right?”

“Yeah, of course, but that doesn’t excuse your sloppy work.”

Marco didn’t appreciate hired thugs telling him what he would or would not have done. It was obvious that he needed to rectify this flagrant security breach. It was bad enough that a federal agent had infiltrated his company, but to have incompetence in the ranks was just too much. If his boss had found out about the FBI being involved he would have held Marco personally responsible. The best he could do now was clean up this mess and take care of the security issue later.

“We’ve got one thing going for us,” Marco said. “To the Feds, it will probably look like an accident; like he was doing his job snooping around and just made a fatal error in judgment. Now, let’s get out of here. Toss that jacket into the elevator. I’ll get rid of the shield and ID. I don’t want the local cops finding them. You guys do your best to establish an alibi for the next couple of days. I want lots of visibility, but keep your mouths shut about this.”

Vennuti continued, “Its Friday night. The cleaning crew went through earlier so the body probably won’t be found until Monday. By that time it will be hard to determine the exact time of death.”

The leader turned to his men and said, “You heard the boss. Look around and make sure you haven’t left anything behind. Wipe the place clean. Then, let’s get out of here.”

They spent a half-hour cleaning the storage room and wiping prints from any part of the warehouse they walked through. Satisfied that it was clean, they went down the stairs and exited the building.

The Durango pulled away from the warehouse first, followed by Vennuti’s Lincoln Town Car. Marco was back on the phone. He needed to finalize his report to his boss on the informer’s “accident.” They decided it would be best if the three men involved disappeared. Marco gave his boss the names and addresses of the three men, assuring him that they would be easy to find.

His part of the job was done. He avoided any mention of the FBI being involved. That would be too difficult to explain. On the way home he spotted a barrel fire on a construction site that was left to burn out. Marco dropped Brice’s ID into the barrel and watched as the flames devoured it. He kept the shield as a memento.

Marco was having a private war with the FBI. Two months earlier, he was at O’Sheas bar and overheard a conversation between four young women who appeared to be employed by the FBI as technicians. One in particular, the others called her Marcia was complaining about making ends meet. She sounded desperate enough for Marco to offer his help. When he did, she accepted his request to provide certain information about any activities at the FBI that involved the company he was employed by, Atronen Pharmaceuticals. Even though Marcia placed limits on how far she would go, it was a good start. He now had two spies inside the FBI. A Special Agent was already on his payroll, but Marcia would be especially valuable because she sometimes did work for the Pharmaceutical Drug Squad, a special group of Agents investigating the spread of counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

The scoring was now
Vennuti-3, FBI-0,
he thought to himself.
Two spies on board and one dead agent.
He smiled at the idea of keeping score. He’d always enjoyed competition. Since the FBI was looking into his affairs, he reasoned that there would be additional contests that would add to the score. It was nice to start off with a good lead.

CHAPTER TWO

Two years ago, Mark Matthews joined the FBI as a covert Special Agent; his cover being a private investigation business that he opened six years ago in his hometown of Centerville, Ohio (a suburb of Dayton).

Mark lost his partner and lover Susan Harrigan to a car bomb explosion around twelve months ago in what was a revenge killing in retaliation for a successful FBI sting that cut off millions of dollars being funneled to terrorist groups overseas. Special Agent Susan Harrigan spearheaded the sting against the National Rare Blood Association that was funding the terrorists. The bomber, suspected to be Mel Tarkington, was never apprehended, despite an ongoing international manhunt.

Mark does much of his FBI work out of his home computer center. When the call came from Special Agent in Charge Dennis Peterson to meet with him in Cleveland, he assumed that there was a break in the Tarkington case. He quickly packed two duffel bags with clothes, overnight toiletries, his Glock, slide holster and half a dozen cartridges. He hit the road around seven in the morning. The traffic was light and at twelve on the dot he entered the Cleveland Field Office of the FBI on Lakeside Avenue. Mark checked in at the security desk and headed straight for Dennis Peterson’s office.

Dennis Peterson has been Special Agent in Charge of the Cleveland Office for five years. He recruited Mark as backup for Susan Harrigan, who had operated covertly as the owner/operator of a computer software company.

Mark and Susan worked together in Washington, DC during the second Clinton administration and had a brief, but very torrid, love affair. They had little contact over the intervening years until they ended up working together on the FBI sting against the NRBA. When she was abducted and subsequently rescued, Susan and Mark picked up where they had left off. They were planning a lifetime together at the time of her death.

Her assassination was also very painful for Dennis Peterson. He felt personally responsible for not providing her with adequate protection. Mark could sense this in Peterson’s voice whenever they discussed the Tarkington manhunt.

During the last nine months, Mark has been working out of the FBI’s super computer center in the basement of his home in Centerville. It was equipped to work in tandem with Susan’s computer center, which was moved to the Cleveland FBI office when she died. One of Mark’s strong points is finding people, however, in the case of Mel Tarkington he has drawn a blank. Tarkington has not left much of a trail. Several leads turned out to be so far off base that Mark began to think that they were deliberately planted to mislead his pursuers, either that or Tarkington was incredibly lucky.

Mark’s hatred for Tarkington grew stronger as months went by. The FBI was no closer to apprehending him. Mark couldn’t understand how anyone could snuff out the life of someone for the pure joy of doing it, although this was not atypical behavior for a sociopath. Tarkington evaded the NRBA raid in Denver and apparently had enough money to live comfortably in seclusion. There was absolutely nothing for him to gain by Susan’s cold-blooded murder, especially since it exposed him to possible capture and earned him a top slot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He embodied the word nihilist to a “t”. Mark’s earnest hope was that Tarkington would be found before he crawled back down into the rat hole that he must have emerged from.

Mark was in that frame of mind when he entered Peterson’s office. Dennis was on the phone and gestured him to a chair in front of his desk. He talked for another two or three minutes, then got up and leaned across his desk to shake hands.

“It’s good to see you again, Mark.”

“Same here, sir. I got here as quickly as I could. What’s so important that you couldn’t discuss it on the phone?”

Peterson motioned for Mark to close the door. “I’ve got another missing agent situation, Mark, and I’m hoping that you can help us locate him.”

Disappointment was evident on Mark’s face. “I’m sorry, Dennis,” he said. “You took me completely by surprise. I was hoping that this was going to be about Mel Tarkington.”

“That’s my fault, Mark, I apologize. I guess I should have given you some idea about what’s going on, but I suspect a leak here at the Bureau and I didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. The young man who is missing has been working undercover on an important drug investigation. The last time he called he mentioned that he thought he was being followed. I offered to pull him, but he said that probably he was just being paranoid. That was Friday afternoon and that was the last time I heard from him. He was due to call again last night. I sent someone over to his place, but there is no sign of him or, thank god, any sign of foul play.”

Peterson sank down in his chair. “Mark, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another soul. I’ve come to hate undercover investigations; having to assign agents to work closely with violent criminals, knowing that if they are found out, they’re as good as dead. It’s just so physically, mentally and spiritually draining. First Susan, now this kid Brice Bennett. I’m not sure I can do much more of this.”

The mention of Susan’s name pierced Mark’s heart. Any reminder was painful.

Dennis took note of Mark’s expression. He cleared his throat before he continued, “There I go again. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive, Mark. Please excuse me.”

Mark replied, “It’s not you. I know it can’t be helped, Dennis. I’m the one that should be apologizing for my sensitivity, but it’s still difficult for me. Please go on.”

Peterson was a big man; his athletic six-two frame was well proportioned. His rugged looks were a perfect fit for the manner in which he carried himself. In college he boxed and even qualified for an Olympic tryout. He made the team as a backup, but never participated in the games. The soft side, that Mark was seeing now, didn’t fit Peterson’s persona as the leader of an FBI field office, but in this special instance Mark was comfortable with it. They were sharing the same pain.

Mark got back on track. “Tell me about this young man. What was he working on?”

Dennis regained his composure. He picked up a file from the desk and scanned through the contents, giving him time to figure out what he would say next. After a few minutes he tossed it down. “Our office has a Pharmaceutical Drug Squad that investigates major drug trafficking. Pharmaceuticals companies are the most profitable and fastest growing legal businesses in the world. Unfortunately that has attracted the worst elements in our society, each looking for a piece of the action. Some of the cases we’re working on involve long-term, very complex investigations. We’ve had a bunch of successes, but unfortunately we can’t keep up with the explosive growth of counterfeit drugs and drug thefts. There’s a ‘drug mafia’ in our country that is just as organized and dangerous as La Cosa Nostra was a few years back. Some of the same people are involved with this new venture.

“One of their major revenue sources involves the manufacturing and distribution of fake meds that have caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, nationwide. Most of the fatalities have been among the elderly, where the cause of death is often attributed to natural causes. Investigators don’t always gather up the victim’s prescriptions and have them tested, so we suspect that the few hundred cases that we are sure about is only a small sampling of the actual total.

“Our unofficial statistics have the nationwide death toll in the tens of thousands. We’ve shut down several of the repackaging facilities where they remove about half of the original drugs from the bottle, replace them with fake pills and reseal and repackage the bottle. They make a point of putting some genuine pills in every bottle so that if something happens and the pills are tested, there is less chance that the fake pills will be discovered. Often the counterfeit pills provide a ‘placebo effect’ and go unnoticed for some time. The real pills that are removed from the bottles are sold in bulk to legitimate franchised drug packagers through a network of jobbers. It’s such a large business that it is very difficult to monitor because they don’t use the same jobbers every time.