Sweet Hearts (28 page)

“Hmm . . . probably so.”

“As long as Tito renewed the box,
the mail could just continue to pile up. I could verify by questioning the
manager there, but my guess is that at some point Tito realized this would be a
long-term thing and he just paid the rent for five-years or so—maybe longer.”

“It would explain why no one ever
cleared out the box even though the mail stopped coming.”

Beau picked up the next envelope
in sequence, but Sam found herself getting impatient. Some of the later ones
were bigger. They had to contain more information. One was a padded mailer, the
kind with bubble wrap on the inside. Like a kid at Christmas she couldn’t stand
waiting for it.

She reached for it and ripped it
open by the little tab. Inside was a scuffed leather-bound book, no wider than
an index card. The covers were well worn and the pages were held closed by a
rubber band, which broke and flew across the table when she touched it, hitting
Beau in the chest.

The pages of the small book
contained Tito’s tight handwriting.

“Whoo—we may have just hit the
jackpot,” Sam said.

Sam turned to the first page. The
same handwriting filled it but nothing made sense. The letters and numbers
formed some kind of code. She flipped through the entire book but it was all
the same.

“That thing looks like it’s been
through the wringer,” Beau said, eying the small notebook.

“Or hidden in someone’s dirty
sock for a long time,” Sam said. “But what can we do with it? It’s written in
some kind of code.”

“Let’s keep going. Maybe the rest
of the letters will help explain.”

Sam hated to admit it, but he was
right. Without some kind of code key, the little book would do them no good.
She sighed and reached for the next envelope in the chronological stack.

The letters kept them going until
well past midnight, each reading and sharing new information as it came out.
Eventually, though, they were both struggling to keep their eyes open and when
they finally fell into bed somewhere around two they didn’t even have the
energy to do more than cuddle into a ball in the center of the king-size bed.

When Beau’s alarm went off at
five, he groaned and rolled over, but Sam found herself alert with that kind of
adrenaline exhaustion that could keep a person going who was way past tired.
She tucked the covers close to him and made her way in the pitch-blackness to
the bathroom where she borrowed his robe off the back of the door and snuggled
into it.

Downstairs, she reheated some
coffee they’d brewed the previous evening and stared at the nearly-finished
pile of Tito’s letters. They’d learned that during some of the years Tito was
gone he’d actually lived among the cartel in Mexico and continued to gather
evidence, but since the dangerous men were with him 24/7 he couldn’t contact
anyone. He would occasionally mail these handwritten pages he’d clandestinely
created whenever he was able to cross back into the States, at the same time he
sent the cards to his family. It must have been awful, living in fear for his
life, keeping the little leather journal hidden somewhere on his person,
praying that he wouldn’t be discovered, knowing that if they figured out what
he was doing they would murder him without a second thought.

His trips back to his homeland
were rarely unaccompanied. He skipped around when he could but could never
check in with his DEA contacts, not knowing who would help him and who would
rat him out to the cartel. And he could never see his family; the risk was far
too great to them. He’d somehow found out, more than a year after the fact,
that his wife had died. Sam cried openly when she read the letter where he
detailed that. But since there was nothing he could do about her death, and
knowing that Jolie was safe with her grandmother, he’d stayed silent and in
hiding.

Mainly, he gathered evidence in
hopes that when the day came, he could present a strong enough case to take the
entire gang out at once. Including those bad apples within the Agency who’d
threatened his very existence.

Now, Sam tucked her feet up onto
the sofa and held the warm coffee mug with both hands, tempted to get into the
final few letters that they hadn’t finished but thinking she should wait for
Beau. One cup of coffee later, she felt too jittery and impatient to wait. She
reached for the top letter in the stack.

Two lines into it she felt an
electric jolt.

The proof is documented in my
notebook,
he’d written.
I don’t dare spell out the code here. Anyone
finding this would know where I am and who I’m working with. So I’m going to
write it out and mail it in a series of short messages.

What followed were a few lines of
his cleverly constructed code—partly letters and numbers, with a few math
symbols and small cryptic designs thrown in. It was almost like stenography in
places, where one little curlicue represented an entire word; at other times
numbers meant letters and vice versa. The letter in her hand covered less than
a third of the alphabet. Sam dropped it and grabbed for the next letter.

It, too, covered a few letters of
the alphabet plus a few whole-word translations. She flattened that page, as
well, and opened the rest of the envelopes. Spread over ten separate
communications, Tito’s special code was revealed. He’d invented symbols to
represent places. Special codes for dates and times. An ingenious plan to avoid
the most common repetitions that allowed code-breakers to solve puzzles easily.

She picked up the small leather
book and flipped it open again. It would probably take weeks to decipher it
all, word for word. But when it was done, she had no doubt that the evidence
therein was complete and thorough. From the key sheets, she found symbols for
names, and two of them jumped out at her: Rick Wells and Javier Espinosa.

At a glance, she could tell that
those two names featured heavily in the book of secrets, often together.

She and Beau truly had discovered
the bonanza.

Thin shafts of sunlight showed
through the barren tree branches outside, casting faint shadows across the
pasture. In the still air she heard the horses whinny softly. It must be after
seven.

She picked up the letters with
the code and the little leather-bound book and dashed up the stairs.

“Beau, wake up! I’ve discovered
the answer!”

He moaned and she felt badly about
waking him. He’d put in such long days recently. But when he saw the letters in
her hand his eyes came fully open.

“I haven’t translated any of the
book yet,” she said, “but in this code . . .” She shuffled through them. “Rick
Wells is the mole inside the DEA. Tito says the coded messages in the book give
all the evidence.”

Beau rubbed at his eyes and then
squinted at the letter she held out to him.

“I’ll bet that Tito’s messages
get more explicit toward the end of the book. Can I try it?”

He nodded. “I’m going to take a
quick shower. Is there any coffee?”

“I’ll have it ready when you get
downstairs.”

She dashed back to the kitchen,
excited over the find, and dumped the old coffee to start a new pot. At the
dining table she spread out the ten letters which revealed Tito’s code. He’d
purposely not put them in any alphabetical sequence, so it was slow going. Sam
figured there was no real need for her to translate the whole book—the
authorities would do that anyway. She turned to the final page, wanting to know
Tito’s thoughts as he neared the end of his investigation.

The date on the last page
corresponded to the postmark on the envelope from which the small book had
come. One letter at a time she figured it out and wrote it down.

When Beau came downstairs ten
minutes later, smelling like fresh soap and shave cream, she pointed to the
page.

“This is what I have so far. We
need to get Jonathan Ernhart in on this,” she said.

“He’s not involved?” Beau asked.

“Look through the code sheets.
There are symbols for Rick Wells, for Javier Espinosa, for a bunch of other
names. Nothing for Ernhart. If Tito didn’t make a code for his name, I’m
thinking he’s not mentioned in the book. Therefore, not involved in whatever
was going on.”

“Makes sense,” he said as he
walked into the kitchen and poured coffee into his mug.

“Beau, there’s something else. In
his final letter, the one that was mailed about two years ago, Tito spells it
out. He thinks Wells might kill him. He says, quote, ‘Rick Wells and a few
others in Washington are in this up to their necks. I have to go to DC and find
out. To pinpoint them I’ll have to come out of hiding, and that’s going to be
dangerous. Details are in the book. Wish me luck.’ ”

“Well, we have to tell someone.
This is more than my office can deal with. Your idea of calling Jonathan
Ernhart is a good one.” He set a fresh mug of coffee on the table beside her.

While Sam reorganized the
letters, Beau made the call. She heard him say something about meeting at his
office in thirty minutes.

“I thought he went back to
Albuquerque yesterday,” she said.

“Nope. He stayed at a hotel here.
Something about Javier Espinosa. I didn’t ask a whole lot at this point because
I’ll see him pretty soon.” He caught the look on her face. “
We’ll
see
him pretty soon.”

The squad room was empty when they arrived, although Sam could
hear voices from the other end of the building where the two holding cells
were. Ernhart arrived first and was waiting near the front desk. Beau offered
coffee, which they all declined, and then showed the FBI man into his office.
He closed the door firmly, Sam laid the stack of Tito’s correspondence on the
desk and they took seats.

Beau laid it all out for Ernhart:
the computer disk, the mail drop, the years’ worth of documentation Tito
Fresques had accumulated.

“Sam actually came to the parts
where Tito revealed his coded system for keeping evidence,” he said, holding up
the small leather book.

When Jonathan looked at her Sam
met his gaze. “I’m sorry to say that he names Rick Wells as the mole inside the
DEA.”

Ernhart shook his head and stood
up. “I’d like to say that I don’t believe it, Beau. But there have been a few
recent signs.”

He paced the length of Beau’s
small office.

“Little things he said about Tito
when we began this investigation. A couple of comments about Javier Espinosa.”
He rubbed at his temple. “I just didn’t put it all together.”

“The book has a lot of references
to Espinosa, too,” Sam said. “It will take awhile to translate the whole thing,
but I spotted the code mark for his name.”

“The bureau has code-breakers we
can put on it. With several people working it, we can probably decipher it
pretty quickly.” He stopped in mid-pace. “We’ll have to move on this pretty
fast, I think. Rick has been acting jumpy lately. Yesterday at the funeral, I
couldn’t figure out what was eating at him.”

An image materialized to Sam. “He
drives a black Suburban, doesn’t he?”

Ernhart nodded.

“I’ve had two really close calls
in traffic in the past week, once in Albuquerque and again on the road north of
Taos. Both involved a big dark SUV.”

Beau stared at her.

“Sorry I didn’t mention it.
You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

He gave her a look that basically
meant
we’ll talk about this later
.

“Rick travels back and forth
between Washington and Albuquerque. But this week he’s been in New Mexico,”
Jonathan said, starting to pace again.

“So, what now?” Beau asked. “We
need a plan.”

Jonathan flopped back into his
chair and blew out a long breath. “First, we pull all the names we can get from
this book. There will have to be warrants. It would be a mistake to arrest one
of the suspects and not get them all. Timing is going to be crucial, to be sure
no one is able to phone or text a warning to the others.”

Beau nodded. “Absolutely. How
soon?”

Ernhart looked at his watch,
drummed his fingers on the desk. “It’s Sunday. That’s going to make it a little
trickier to get enough people on the job of decoding the book.”

“Look, I’ve spent a little time
with this,” Sam said. “Even though it would take awhile to decode the entire
book, word for word, I noticed that Tito created special symbols for most of
the names of people. That’s how I spotted Wells and Espinosa on those final
pages. So, what if you looked only for those names at first? Wouldn’t that be
reasonable enough suspicion to bring them in?”

Ernhart nodded again, and Beau
seemed eager. “Worth a little of our time, I’d say.”

They tossed ideas around and amid
the legal jargon, with talk of warrants and probable cause, Sam felt her
eyelids growing heavy. The three hours sleep weren’t holding her very well.

When Jonathan took the letters
out to the squad room to make copies, she turned to Beau.

“Looks like you boys don’t need
me for this part. I think I’ll go on home and try for some rest.”

Nestled into her bed, Sam was soon
dead to the world, but when she awoke it was suddenly and completely. Faint
sounds came from the living room, the drone of the TV. She gathered some fresh
clothing and took a long, hot shower. Fluffing her hair, she padded into the
kitchen to find her daughter staring into the refrigerator.

“Just thinking about dinner,”
Kelly said.

“Geez, what time is it anyway?”
Sam looked at the clock. After five. She’d slept away eight hours in dreamless
oblivion.

“Is it okay if I just make mac
and cheese?” Kelly asked.

She smiled at her daughter, the
kid who would never quite grow up. In fact, it actually sounded good, some
old-fashioned comfort food. “Do enough for two.”

“Mommy?” Kelly said as they sat
on the sofa with bowls in hand. The reversion to childhood might as well be
complete. “You know what I’d really love to have with this?”