The Manuscript (12 page)

“No, it isn’t. I did a search on the reporter, and he died a few days after it was published. And you’re going to love this. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head,” Samantha deadpanned.

“Come again?”

“The police found him in his apartment, where he’d apparently shot himself in the base of the rear of his skull with an untraceable pistol he happened to have lying around. No note, and it only took the cops an hour to determine it was a regrettable example of self-destruction,” she explained.

“Isn’t it pretty unusual to shoot yourself in the back of the head and not leave a note?” Michael asked, already knowing the answer.

“I can tell you how unusual, actually, because that was my next search. Of the roughly seventeen hundred or more folks who decide to end it all with a gun every year in Canada, tracking data back ten years, can you guess how many shot themselves in the back of the head?”

“One?”

“We have a winnah! Our boy was one in almost twenty thousand.” Samantha paused, possibly for effect.

“Tell me there isn’t more,” Michael said.

“The reporter was scheduled to come out with part two of his investigative report a few days after he killed himself. That obviously never got published. He’d apparently decided to destroy his hard disk before going to meet his maker, per the police report – another quirky bit of mischief you don’t see too often. Are you starting to see any problems with this?” Samantha wondered aloud.

“You don’t say.”

“Here, write down this url – it’s to the first article,” Samantha said, and dictated a web address to Michael.

“Wait a second. That’s a wayback machine article, not a current site,” Michael observed after reading the info.

“Correct. Seems the original article no longer exists. I had to use a little trickery to find this – it’s as though every trace of it had been expunged,” Samantha finished.

“Samantha, I don’t want to scare you, but how cautious were you when you were rooting around?” Michael asked.

“I’m way ahead of you. I always mask my IP address out of habit and use a software program that bounces it all over the world every few minutes, so I’m clean. Professional paranoia. But I was going to warn you to do the same before you pull up the site. It’s a little freaky how the guy kills himself and his files go missing almost immediately after publishing his article. Makes you kind of go, hmm,” Samantha said.

“I owe you a great big one, Samantha,” Michael responded.

“Surprise me with something. I like fast, red and Italian.”

Michael hung up and signed onto an IP masking site, then went to the internet archive to read the reporter’s work. He quickly scanned the article, noting that it confirmed some of the claims in the manuscript. What was particularly troubling was the attention to detail in the article and the matter-of-fact way events were described. To Michael’s ear, it had the ring of truth.

The suspicious circumstances surrounding the reporter’s death lent considerable weight to the likelihood the article was factual. He’d been around the block long enough to understand that when a death that was so obviously a murder was resolved as a suicide, something besides a pursuit of the truth had been in play during the investigation. That it had occurred in Canada and yet was still swept under the carpet, underscored the power and reach of whoever had wanted the reporter silenced. That was consistent with the article’s contention of CIA involvement.

Michael now knew for sure that he had a real problem. This was shaping up in an ugly way, and he had to assume it would get uglier. But he still had too little data to make a reliable decision as to how to proceed. Sure, the article made a compelling case for a black ops team run amok, as well as a shadow government action of gargantuan implications. However, it was just a single article – which wasn’t exactly the ideal broad support he needed. He hoped Samantha would be able to dig up some more dirt, but the problem was that if the manuscript was accurate, the chances were there was no news coverage of any of it.

So how to proceed?

Michael re-read the web page and noted the name of the man who claimed he’d been a CIA wet operative for decades in Central America. John Stubens, who, as of the date of the article, resided in Nevada. Doing some quick math in his head, Michael computed the man would have to be in his sixties, assuming he was still alive and the name used for the reporter’s sake was his real one.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained
. It wasn’t as if Michael had a lot of other leads to pursue. He typed in the name of the online service he used to investigate skip tracing and entered his password. The familiar screen came up and he completed the form with the slim information he had. Michael hit enter and waited as the computer elves did whatever they did, scouring thousands of databases for relevant data.

After a few minutes, a screen appeared.

Bingo.

There were eight men with the name John Stubens in Nevada, but only one who had ever served in the military.

John Carlton Stubens, age 64, living in Henderson, Nevada. Single. No kids. Owned his home, had a modest mortgage he’d been paying down for twelve years. One car registered to him: Toyota 4Runner, 2007. Retired. Army pension. Not much else. One credit card, paid current, zero balance, ten thousand dollar limit. A few creditors – the gas and electric company, the phone company, cable TV.

Which was strange. It was almost impossible to go six decades on the planet and not leave larger tracks. The system Michael used would show everything – credit cards, recent medical bills, any internet sites he’d posted a message on, employment history. The works. This basically showed a house, car and associated bills, and that was it. He’d served in the army from 1966, achieving the rank of lieutenant, until 1979, when he had received an honorable discharge. Which was also odd, given that most who stayed in the service for over a decade tended to stay in as lifers. But that fitted with the reporter’s story, which had represented him as a covert operative throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

So Michael now had an address and a phone number. It was a start. On impulse, he lifted the handset of the internet telephone and dialed the Nevada phone number. He listened as it rang, and then heard the distinctive click of an answering machine picking up. A gruff male voice advised callers to leave a message. Michael hung up. He realized his pulse was racing and took a few deep breaths to get himself under control.

There was no imminent threat, now that he had ditched his apartment. For the moment, he had options, but they would quickly be reduced if something happened to put him back on the radar. One thing he was dreading was Ken escalating his murder investigation and asking Michael to come in and leave a formal statement – it was probably just a matter of time before that happened, and he didn’t like his odds once he was at the police station; there was no telling how much reach the surveillance team had or how much information they had access to. He knew that the CIA was barred from doing anything operationally in the U.S. but also was pragmatic enough to understand that in ‘special’ circumstances, the prohibition was likely ignored. It wasn’t like he could ring Abe up and ask him who had been the last person he’d seen, and inquire as to whether he’d shown his ID before slamming him in the back.

All he could realistically do was wait for more information to come in so he could better understand his predicament.

It was the classic wait and see scenario, and while he had the discipline to be patient, his temperament was more geared towards taking action. He sighed and returned to the computer, resigned to a long day of research.

Chapter 7

Ken leaned back in his worn chair and studied the mottled ceiling of the squad room. It looked like he’d need to follow up on the Abe investigation and speak with the man’s co-workers and friends. The crime team had quickly gone through Abe’s flat with no breakthrough results. As he’d feared, any promising evidence had been contaminated by the paramedics moving through the hallway and removing the corpse. CSI had taped off the scene and was going over the office and remaining rooms, but he knew that was a long shot, at best. These kinds of crime were always the worst. No obvious motive, no suspicious next of kin, no real suspects to speak of. Just an old man who’d reached the end of the line, helped by a blow from an unknown assailant or assailants.

Ken checked the time. Two forty-five. He tried to come up with a convincing reason not to head to the old man’s office downtown and drew a blank. Ken had been on the force for eighteen years and had worked himself up to detective rank, where he’d maxed out on his career possibilities given his penchant for speaking his mind and being bluntly honest. If you wanted to climb the ladder any higher, you needed to be willing to invest a lot of time in scheming, back-stabbing, sucking up, and generally doing things unrelated to catching criminals, which didn’t interest him – he’d become a cop because he wanted to nail perps to the wall and right wrongs, not play politics in the Byzantine world of the New York Police Department.

His partner and longtime friend, Chuck Barron, looked over from where he sat fiddling with his ancient computer monitor. It occupied a third of his desk and had the bulk of a small television. Budget freezes meant that the department’s once high tech gear was now years out of date. In scowling frustration, Chuck slammed the side of the old contraption with his open hand.

“Dude. Calm down. All that anger can’t be good for you. Peace and love, you know?” Ken counseled.

“It’s just that fucking thing is flickering constantly, and no matter what I do it keeps doing it. It’s giving me a headache,” Chuck complained.

“That’s probably the incipient tumor in your brain.” Ken switched to a sympathetic countenance. “I’m so sorry. Maybe you should take the rest of the week off and put your affairs in order?”

“Your wife will be heartbroken, that’s for sure. She says my visits while you’re in the field are the only things she looks forward to in her otherwise drab and depressing life,” Chuck fired back.

“She’s been like that ever since she contracted AIDS,” Ken shared helpfully.

The banter was a longtime fixture of their relationship, as was the gallows humor, aimed at making more bearable what was at times a mind-numbingly boring job that was punctuated by horrifying scenes of death and violence. Ken’s wife, Sheila, was pregnant with their third child. She’d been Ken’s high school sweetheart, so the disparagements were simply bids to one-up each other in the shock and awe department.

“I suppose since we’re both staring at our navels, we might as well go interview the people our latest stiff worked with,” Ken stated in a desultory tone.

“That sounds like a hoot,” Chuck said. “I’m sure one of them will be able to lead us directly to the killer. I love how that always happens – ‘Officer, I wonder if it’s relevant that the pasty-faced man with the artificial leg who’d sworn to kill him was lurking outside the office every night for the last month?’ You think we can knock it out in an hour? I really don’t want to get stuck in rush hour traffic.”

“It’s probably a small group, but who knows? Let’s just do the deed and see what happens.” Ken had resigned himself to an afternoon of drudgery.

They donned their blazers and headed for the precinct front entrance – an unlikely couple. Ken’s gray jacket was stylishly cut. He resembled a moderately successful small-business owner, whereas Chuck looked like he’d been given his clothing that morning by a homeless shelter; he exuded a rumpled look, as though he’d been sleeping in his outfit for a week and had just awakened moments before. This image was also bolstered by their physical differences. Ken stood at over six feet tall, genetically thin and lanky, whereas Chuck was six inches shorter, chubby and almost completely bald. Yet, they had been partners for half a decade and worked well together. Chuck’s slovenliness was limited to appearance; he was extremely detail-oriented and methodical. Ken often referred to him as a Pitbull because he was inordinately tenacious and given to working long hours on minutiae that often resulted in breakthroughs they might have missed were it not for his efforts.

Ken was more intuitive and fast-moving, although his breezy demeanor concealed a rigorously logical personality. The pair were a good match, with each man’s strengths complementing that of the other; it was a successful teaming, reflected by the fact that their crime solution rate was the highest in the department.

They climbed into their NYPD plainclothes car, a four year old Chevrolet Malibu, and twenty minutes later pulled to the curb in front of Abe’s office building. Chuck flipped an NYPD official business placard up onto the dash so they wouldn’t get ticketed – the only open spot being a stained, crimson curb; the red zone reserved for emergency vehicles.

Ken had filled Chuck in on the high points of the case on their way downtown – he hadn’t accompanied Ken to Abe’s flat because he was working another case, and a simple stop-in while CSI was doing their thing didn’t justify an extra detective’s involvement. There wasn’t anything other than the preliminary findings on the blow to the kidneys to go on. Ken wasn’t enthusiastic about their prospects.

The pair rode up in the creaky elevator to Abe’s seventh floor offices. They opened the door and were relieved to see there were only four desks and a reception area. A twenty-something man with a pallor that spoke of years without sun looked up from the nearest computer at the two men standing in the foyer.

“May I help you?” he asked in a rattled kind of tone.

Ken flipped out his badge. “NYPD. I’m Detective Ken Romer and this is Detective Charles Barron. We’re here to speak with everyone about Abe Sarkins. And you are…?”

“Doug Pelzer. I’m an associate with the firm,” he said. His words had a different rattle now. He motioned at two women in their early thirties sitting at two of the other desks. “And this is Dinah Stark and Ellen Bowers, also associates.”