Friendly Fire (14 page)

“There you go, then. And I agree. From where I sit, there are only so many different places that uniforms can go after they're here.”

“You're telling me that you did in fact count the shipment?”

“Of course I did,” Dale said. “And I'm more than a little insulted that you would have thought otherwise. Those uniforms went someplace else, but not from my hand.”

“Then by whose hand?” Cletus said. He heard his voice rising and he lowered it. No sense shouting at one another.

“You tell me,” Dale said. “As far as I know, there's a direct line between my contact with the shipment and yours. What have you been doing with the uniforms?”

Cletus was dumbstruck. “You think
I
took them?”

“No,” Dale said. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. He looked smug as hell. “But I'm saying that if you really want to push this, the burden is going to fall on you to prove that you're as on top of things as you pretend to be.”

Cletus gaped.

“And it's not just uniforms, is it, Bangstrom? Over the past year or so, there's been a steady trickle of stuff getting lost in the system.”

“You know that because I told you!” Cletus said—nearly shouted. “I've told you all along. It's pilferage.”

“But whose?” The smile went away as Dale leaned forward and planted his elbows on the edge of his desk. “Have you been helping yourself to the company store?”

“How dare you!”

“How dare I what? Your inventories
come up short
”—he used finger quotes—“and you need to deflect the blame. You report it to me and blame unknown parties. Today, you try to lay it at my feet. You work with cops, you know. We're not stupid about how crimes are committed.”

Cletus's heart raced. There was absolutely no truth in anything Dale was saying.

“I get it,” Dale said. “Or at least I think I do. You're only a few weeks from no longer having a paycheck, and you're trying to feather the nest a little. I imagine that's a hard temptation to resist.”

“I did not steal anything!” This time it was definitely a shout, and he startled himself. He dialed it back in. “I never have.”

“And in a few weeks, you'll never even have the opportunity again,” Dale said. “I'm willing to let it slide. And I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm really not. If I was, then I'd be obliged to investigate more deeply, and I don't think either one of us wants that, do we?”

“I didn't steal.”

“Fine,” Dale said. “Let's just leave it at that. Now, if you don't mind, I have to get back to work.”

Chapter Fourteen

J
onathan Grave considered himself to be a gourmet cook. At his core, he had a taste for fine food, and in his travels over the years he'd picked up a taste for cuisine from all over the world. Even England had fine cuisine, he'd found, though most of it was found in Indian restaurants in London.

Over the years, he'd developed a tradition where on every third Thursday, as long as he was in town, he'd have people to his house for dinner. The invitations were more often than not spontaneous, driven by what was going on at the time. If there were no pressing issues to be discussed from the covert side of Security Solutions, he might invite some of the junior investigators, and he often included friends like Dom D'Angelo or Doug Kramer.

Tonight, though, the topic for table discussion was destined to be compartmented, so the guest list was the one that was most typical: Boxers and Venice. It was a list that brought tactical advantages, too. For too many years, Big Guy and Mother Hen had been crossways with each other—for any number of reasons—and Jonathan felt that by breaking bread, they could develop a bridge that would help them get along better. At least that's what he told himself.

Every good meal began for Jonathan with a good martini, a delicate balance of six parts Beefeater gin, one part dry vermouth, and two olives. Boxers' meals began as they ended, with one very large part scotch whisky—the more expensive the better, especially if it came from Jonathan's liquor cabinet. Venice was a moving target, most often bouncing between a glass of sauvignon blanc or a Kir Royal, but tonight was one of her wild card nights of a cosmopolitan, poured with Ketel One vodka, Cointreau, and cranberry juice.

Years ago, when Jonathan bought the old firehouse and converted it into his home and offices, he did little to change the layout of the kitchen from the way it was when he was a boy and he hung out here with the fire crews. All the appliances and finishings had been upgraded, of course, but he maintained more or less the same footprint, with the main fridge, cooking, and prep surfaces occupying the long wall on the left, and the longer-term storage along the corresponding wall on the right. The far end of the rectangular room was left for the pantry, sink, dishwashers, and drain board. Down the middle of the eighteen-by-twenty-four-foot space, where the guys back in the day had tucked three picnic tables end to end, Jonathan had installed a granite-topped table capable of comfortably seating sixteen people in butt-friendly padded wooden chairs that had been designed specifically for the space. He had a formal dining room as well—what used to be the day room for the firefighters—but he could count on two hands the number of times he'd used it. Let's face it: no matter how much space you had, people always gathered in the kitchen.

JoeDog hovered at the base of the cooking area. Jonathan took a pull on his martini, then opened the fridge and removed the sea scallops that had been soaking in milk for the past fifteen minutes. The beast shadowed every step as he walked them over to the pan where the hot unsalted butter and olive oil were waiting.

“Okay, Ven,” Jonathan said. “What do we know now that we didn't know a couple of hours ago?” The scallops were big—nearly the size of a half-dollar—and they sizzled perfectly as he placed them into the pan. He looked at the clock. He need three minutes per side. JoeDog needed a miracle where a scallop would abandon the pan and jump to the floor. It had never happened, but hope sprang eternal.

“Your friend Henry is a very nice man,” Venice said.

“Konan?” Boxers asked.

“Right. But that's for you to call him, not me. In fact, he called himself Henry on the phone. Anyway, he called me on my encrypted line—please tell me you gave him the number, that he didn't just figure it out for himself.”

Jonathan laughed. “Yes, I gave him the number. But now that you mention it, he
is
NSA.”

“So, he called me, and shared some very interesting news.” It was Venice's way to set bait when revealing details, enticing her listeners to ask for more. Jonathan knew it was the one habit of hers that evoked the greatest and most frequent ire from Boxers.

“And what might that be?” Jonathan asked. It was a reflex. He turned his attention to the bed of sunflower sprouts he had prepared as the garnish for his scallops appetizer.

“One of the burner phones the NSA had been tracking was found in Stepahin's pocket.”

“So that confirms Dig's theory,” Boxers said. “The asshole was here to kidnap somebody.”

“Seems that way to me,” Venice said.

Jonathan said, “How does that help us advance what we know?” He returned to the pan and lifted a scallop to see how it was advancing. Almost time to turn it.

“Try to control your enthusiasm,” Venice said.

He'd hurt her feelings. That was not a hard thing to do. “I don't mean to offend, but confirming what I already know doesn't exactly move the ball down the field.” He turned the first scallop and was delighted to see perfect caramelization. He turned the others.

“At least we know more for sure than we did before,” Venice said.

Jonathan shot her a look and smiled. “Yes, we do. Thank you.”

“So how do we figure out who he was trying to snatch?” Boxers asked. “Or, that he was trying to snatch anybody at all? Bad guys don't necessarily have to specialize.”

“No,” Jonathan said, taking another sip of martini. “They don't have to specialize, but most of them do. If he were a shooter, we wouldn't expect him to snatch somebody. I don't want to close down the possibility, but I also don't want us to get distracted.” Another check. Almost time to serve. “Is there a way to track where that phone went while he had it on him?”

“There are ways,” Venice said, “but they're very low probability when you're dealing with a burner. He did have another phone on him, though, and the BCPD are trying to follow his steps through that, but for whatever reason, they're not putting it up on ICIS.”

Jonathan lifted the first scallop out of the pan and plated it on the sprouts. Two scallops per plate. “JoeDog,” Jonathan snapped. “Git. Out of the kitchen.” Head and tail both hanging low, the beast retreated to the threshold that separated the kitchen from the living room.

Jonathan served the plates.

“What, am I on a diet?” Boxers grumped with a smile to sell the fact that he was kidding.

“There have been worse ideas,” Jonathan said without dropping a beat. “And there are three more courses after this one.”

“It looks delicious,” Venice said. It's what she always said. Funny how routines like this develop their own script over time.

Jonathan set the third plate on the table for himself, retrieved his martini, and sat down. A freshly opened sauvignon blanc sat between them for anyone who needed more hydration.

“The phone,” Jonathan said, getting the conversation back on track. “Is there a way for
you
to track it? Do we need to depend on ICIS?”

Venice took her first bite. “Oh, my God, this is delicious.”

Jonathan smiled his appreciation. She was right. He did scallops better than most.

“If I had more information about the phone I could,” she said.

“If only we knew someone in the most effective eavesdropping organization on the planet,” Boxers said. His scallops were already gone. In another sip, he'd be able to say the same about his scotch.

Venice looked to Jonathan. “How many times can we go to that well?”

He shrugged. “As many times as it takes until he cries uncle. I don't think we're close to that point yet. Did he give you a way to contact him?”

“Yes, but with rules.”

There were always rules when it came to clandestine contacts. “Follow them and reach out,” Jonathan said. “The worst he can tell you is no.”

“Actually,” Boxers said, “the worst he can do is mark you for death and order a drone strike. Just sayin'.”

Jonathan pretended to ponder that. “Don't you think rendition and torture would be worse than a quick drone strike?”

“You've got a point.”

“Okay, boys,” Venice said. “Can we move on?”

Jonathan bit into his second scallop. Every bit as good as the first. “You've got more?”

“I've always got more.”

“How about more food?” Boxers grumped. “Contrary to popular opinion, a mouthful is in fact not a meal.”

“Savor and listen,” Jonathan said. “Ven, you're on.”

“I've been keeping an eye on ICIS to see how the Braddock County PD are developing their case against Ethan Falk,” she said. “They're beginning to make me uncomfortable.”

She had both men's full attention.

“The detective in charge out there—a Pamela Hastings—is a pretty tenacious researcher. She keeps pushing until she finds answers.”

“I hear admiration in your voice,” Jonathan said.

“Of course you do,” Venice said. “You have to admire cops who go to the wall for their jobs.”

“Gotta fear them, too,” Boxers said.

“Yes, you do. This one in particular. Somehow, from the details she's collected by talking with Ethan, she's been able to triangulate back to an unsolved shooting incident eleven years ago in Ashland, Ohio.”

Jonathan felt a tug in his gut. “That's where we snatched Ethan from the bad guys.”

“Bingo,” Venice said. “And we don't know how they've categorized the incident because those were the days before ICIS.”

Boxers cocked his head. “What do you mean, how they've categorized it?”

Venice explained, “Well, on some of your ops where you leave bodies behind, the locals are able to put together that there was some kind of freelance rescue thing in play, and they don't push all that hard for answers. Sometimes, they don't connect those dots—or they do and they don't care—and those are the cases I worry about. In those—and I've never pushed too hard to track their progress because no activity on ICIS is truly invisible—there's a good possibility that some cold-case squad will pick them up in the future. I just don't know what conclusions the Ashland Police drew.”

“And that's important?” Jonathan asked.

“I think it can be. It's been eleven years, but if Braddock PD reanimates the otherwise dormant case, I think that can be a problem.”

Jonathan sucked another layer off his martini. “How do we find out?”

“Are you sure you want to?” Boxers asked. “Knowledge has value only if there's something you can do with it.”

“What's the expression?” Venice said. “Forewarned is forearmed?” She finished the last of her scallops and pulled on the cosmo. “There's one note in the ICIS file that says she'll be going to Ashland tomorrow to meet with the detective who investigated the case.”

Jonathan exchanged glances with Boxers. “I don't think we're exposed,” Big Guy said. “Clearly, we didn't leave any traceable trace behind, or they'd have already nailed us.”

Jonathan didn't like it. “Technology has turned over fifteen times in the last ten years. You never know what they can find now that they couldn't find then.”

“Plus, there's the triangulation issue,” Venice said.

Jonathan scowled.

“You've been told this before,” Venice reminded him. “In West Virginia, remember? You get enough incidents documented in police reports about unsolved killings that follow a certain pattern and occasionally include reports of some guy named Scorpion, and a picture starts to form via triangulation.”

“They still can't track us,” Boxers reminded.

“No, but they know,” Jonathan said. “The pressure is building to be more careful.”

“The pressure is building to move on to a different line of work,” Venice said, punctuating her words with an eye roll. She pulled her laptop computer out of the bag that she'd stashed at her feet. It was her electronic memory. “But since I don't expect you'll be doing that anytime soon, let me fill you in on the details of Detective Hastings' visit to Ohio.” She opened the computer, rubbed the mouse pad, and tapped some keys.

Jonathan rose from his chair and picked up the plates. Next up: a rather mundane spinach salad that he'd prepared, which had been sitting in the fridge for the past forty-five minutes. All it needed before serving was some fresh strawberries, which he likewise removed from the fridge and started to slice.

“The detective on the Falk op was a guy named Jim Dooley,” Venice said as she read her notes. “Hastings has an appointment with him tomorrow afternoon at two-thirty.” She looked up. “I wish we could have ears on that conversation.”

“I still don't understand what we'd gain,” Boxers said.

“Information,” Jonathan said. “Like they said in
Animal House,
knowledge is good. Maybe we can learn more of what they know. Since there are no such things as coincidences, maybe we'll find another connection to Stepahin.”

Boxers' face changed to an expression that looked a lot like dread. “You just said that like it was a thing that was going to happen.”

“Hey,” Jonathan said. “Who in their right mind would turn down a field trip to Ashland, Ohio?”

“Why?” Big Guy asked.

“If nothing else, to meet Detective Pamela Hastings.”

“Are you crazy?” Venice and Boxers said that in perfect unison.

Jonathan continued to concentrate on the strawberries. He didn't want to give them the satisfaction of eye contact. “If you want to gather intel, you have to meet with the people who have what you want,” he said. “And tomorrow evening, that will be Detective Pamela Hastings. Do you know if she's planning to stay the night?”