Tag Man Page 24

  “You know Julie Johnson?” he asked, out of the blue.

  Sally’s mouth half opened in surprise. “From school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “She was tortured by Jordan in order to find you.”

  “What? Oh my God. Is she all right?”

  Joe frowned. “No, she’s not. He didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But why?” Sally demanded, increasingly baffled. “What did I do?”

  Joe’s more pleasant demeanor returned. “Sally, you’re a very bright girl. I asked. Everyone says good things about you. You tell me: Is this happening because of what you’ve done? Or because of who you are?”

  He stumped her there, posing the question in an almost classroom manner. She furrowed her brow, trying to sort through the possible answers. Thankfully, she settled for the truth, triggered in part by her curiosity.

  “My dad?”

  Joe rewarded her with a smile. “That’s what I think. You were a pawn—a way to get to him.”

  “Which is why he grabbed me,” she suggested.

  “Yup.”

  “But what does he want with my dad?”

  “Come on, Sally. Put it together.”

  She became quiet and sat back in her chair, her gaze on the floor.

  “You ever hear of Willy Kunkle?” Joe asked softly.

  “No.”

  “He’s a friend of mine. A colleague. Works for the VBI. He and your old man go back a few years. Dan played a big role on that case involving Nicky King, when you and I first met.”

  She stared at him, astonished. “Nicky?”

  Nicky, now locked up in a psychiatric facility, had been a boyfriend of Sally’s when she and her father had lived with Nicky’s mother, over a year ago. An odd arrangement made stranger when it came out that Nicky had also killed a man in a psychotic break with reality.

  “Your father helped us figure that out,” Joe told her. “He’s helped Willy a lot over time. He’s a keen judge of character, for all his eccentricities.”

  She smiled at the reference.

  “Unfortunately,” Joe continued casually, “those eccentricities got a ball rolling with Jordan that hasn’t turned out too well.”

  Sally made a face. “I guess not.”

  “And because Jordan got away after you crashed, I’m not so sure what trouble your dad may be in now. Jordan’s getting desperate, and he no longer has you as a bargaining chip to keep things civilized.”

  She was silent at that, mulling it over.

  “We need to find Dan so Jordan doesn’t kill him, Sally,” Joe said softly.

  Her eyes moistened. “But I don’t know where he is. What about that Willy guy? Did you ask him?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “He has no clue. You know how Dan is—makes a hermit look like a frat boy.”

  She knew the truth there. She rubbed her face in frustration, caught between protecting her father and saving him from a menace she now knew personally.

  As if reading her mind, Joe then said, “Sally, let’s start at the beginning—or at least some kind of beginning—when you and Dan visited Gloria Wrinn, looking for Paul Hauser.”

  “You know about that?”

  Joe leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “Tell me what you know, Sally,” he suggested kindly.

  She scowled in concentration. In the end, however, she followed her instincts, and trusted what she saw in this man’s eyes.

  * * *

  “We’re here.”

  Ben Underhill opened his eyes and gazed out the van’s side window. It was raining, and the streetlights reflected off the puddles across the parking lot in an almost festive manner.

  “Boss? You awake?”

  “Heard you,” he said softly, stretching his legs and arms.

  He knew that riding in a van went against the grain of most guys in his line of work—and it sure as hell embarrassed his bodyguards. They were all supposed to like Caddies, or at least high-end SUVs with tinted windows.

  But this was roomy, comfortable, with captain’s chairs and a TV, a full communications setup. Not to mention bulletproof. Plus, for its size, it was all but invisible—just another soccer mom’s means of transportation. More than once, he knew he’d coasted by a surveillance team only because they hadn’t registered a run-of-the-mill van.

  He operated the control by the side of his seat and brought it out of recliner mode—another plus for the rig.

  “They ready for us?” he asked his driver.

  “Ready when you are,” was the answer.

  The routine was the same—a perimeter check, a phalanx of armed and armored men, a quick but dignified march from vehicle to previously vetted building. He’d seen the same thing supplied to the president of the United States, which pleased him. Ben Underhill might not have been on that level—and who would want to be? But he had his hard-earned status, and no problem being protected from people wanting him dead.

  After all, he’d wanted a few dead himself.

  Which now they were.

  Enjoying the cool night air, Underhill stepped from the vehicle and crossed into the building beside them—the back of a closed restaurant in Fitchburg, Massachusetts—one of a dozen or more locations across the state that he used for private purposes.

  Although tonight’s was known only to him. Through a phone number used only by a select few, his people had received a call from a man saying that he knew of a threat to Underhill’s financial integrity—an unusual and curiously arresting choice of words.

  Not to mention that the trace they’d put on the call had been stopped dead in its tracks. Not the sign of any average snitch or turncoat. Nor—the movies notwithstanding—the obvious handiwork of any underpaid and ill-equipped cop, federal or otherwise.

  And it hadn’t ended there. The caller had recited a few facts and names from documents he’d claimed to possess that had caused the call to be routed directly to Ben, despite his standing order never to be awakened.

  That had been a good move—and the reason for the long drive out here in the middle of the night.

  Underhill stopped inside the restaurant’s empty, shadowy kitchen, enjoying the quiet as his men fanned out and double-checked what the people already there had gone through before his arrival.

  No one took offense. They’d all been caught by surprise in the past, one way or the other. To these folks, life was a transient enjoyment, best protected and never taken for granted.

  “We’re good,” one of them eventually murmured in his ear.

  “He here?” Ben asked.

  “Has been for half an hour. And he’s clean.”

  Ben went forward alone, through the swinging kitchen doors into the darkened dining room. All the curtains had been drawn, only one table light was on, and, aside from the slender man seated at the same table, no one else was in the large room.

  As Ben approached, he noticed that his guest had arranged the lamp, the salt and pepper shakers, and the small sugar-pack container in a meticulously tidy manner. The man himself looked perfect—clean, unwrinkled, precisely postured with his back straight and his palms flat on the tablecloth before him.

  He looked up as Ben sat opposite him. Neither man offered to shake hands.

  “Pleasant drive here, I hope?” Ben asked.

  The man nodded.

  “Were you offered anything like coffee or something to eat? I gave orders.”

  “Yes,” the man answered. “They asked. I’m fine.”

  Ben nodded. “So who are you? You know my name.”

  “Dan,” he said.

  Ben waited for more, but nothing was offered. Still, he was curious enough to allow for more leeway than was standard.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I broke your code.”

  “I kind of guessed that. It couldn’t have been easy. You have help?”

  “It wasn’t that hard.”

  Ben studied
him, slowly realizing the depth of the man. Whoever he was, he was being totally straight. For some reason even he wasn’t sure of, Ben knew that much at least to be true.

  “Well, let’s cut to the chase, then, Dan,” he said. “You want to show me what you have?”

  Dan pulled several sheets of notepaper from his pocket and slid them across the small table.

  Underhill didn’t touch them immediately, glancing at them first, controlling his reaction. Merely seeing what was written across the top sheet triggered a complicated adrenaline rush of dread, confirmation, and deep-seated anger.

  He slowly reached out and read what Dan had delivered, while the latter sat as still as a statue, waiting.

  Ben took his time, translating the arcane coding in his head, while dealing with his emotions. This strange, thin, silent man had just saved him a great deal of potential trouble—trouble he’d feared was lurking just out of sight, but which he’d never been able to prove actually existed.

  The document in his hand was a lifesaver for him and his business—and a death sentence for the man who’d written it.

  “You going to tell me how you got hold of this?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You going to swear on your life that this is it, and there aren’t any copies?”

  “That’s a sample only. You know that,” Dan told him. “I made no copies and the rest is with the guy I took it from.”

  “And just so we’re on the same page,” Underhill said, “let me ask who it is we’re talking about. We can’t make any mistakes here.”

  Dan’s eyes were unwavering on his. “Lloyd Jordan.”

  Ben looked at him thoughtfully before saying, “You obviously know the value of this. What are you expecting I’ll do with it?”

  “You asking me what I want?”

  “That, too. But answer the first question.”

  Dan blinked and glanced at the papers between them. “Those are photocopies of documents that he shouldn’t have and that you don’t want out of your control. The fact that they exist tells me they were made for insurance—call it blackmail-in-waiting if you want. I wouldn’t be too happy with that, in your shoes.”

  “You think I should deal with him? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? So I’ll take care of your problem?”

  “I thought it was our problem.”

  “Which I’m used to taking care of, and you aren’t. Am I right?”

  “Maybe.”

  Now that Ben had confirmation of what he’d long suspected, and was suddenly feeling quite relieved, he decided to stretch this out a little more.

  “Will you tell me what Jordan’s done to you, to make you hate him so much?”

  “No.”

  Ben crossed his legs and sat back comfortably. “What if I choose not to do anything?” He tapped the papers with his fingertips. “This is ancient stuff.”

  “We’re sitting here, aren’t we?” Dan challenged him.

  Ben conceded the point. “Still,” he said. “Humor me.”

  “I have a letter to Jordan from Susan Rainier.”

  Underhill filled in the gap. “Ah, the old girlfriend.”

  “And the ironclad alibi for the night Jordan’s first wife was killed,” Dan added, having spent hours reconstructing the case in his white room.

  Ben smiled. “True. Don’t tell me you’ve got the smoking gun.”

  Dan was about to answer when a buzzing went off in his pocket. He pulled out a cell phone and studied its screen, his expression a mixture of confusion and sheer joy.

  He looked up at Underhill with his eyes shining. “Only one person has this number.”

  Ben was amused by now. What the hell else was this crazy man going to pull? A phone call? Here?

  “Go ahead,” he urged.

  Dan opened the phone. “Sweetheart?”

  Underhill watched as Dan listened, and saw the man’s features transform from the pure tension he’d first witnessed to relief, then concern, finally to tenderness, and at last to something teetering on tearfulness.

  A few minutes later, Dan closed the phone and replaced it in his pocket. “Thank you.”

  “Good news?”

  “The best.”

  “You were telling me about Jordan’s alibi.”

  Dan was still smiling, and became suddenly more eloquent, as if he’d finally been told that he could breathe again. “I didn’t know it when I got hold of it, but Rainier’s letter makes it clear that the dates don’t line up for what she told the police after Jordan’s wife was found dead.”

  “The blackmailer was being blackmailed?”

  “So it seems.”

  “And you’ll give that to the cops if I don’t do something about him?”

  “I will, especially now.”

  Ben pointed at Dan’s pocket. “The phone call.”

  Dan chose his wording carefully. He was loath to tell Underhill too much about himself, even though he was aware of the man’s resources and abilities. As joyful as he was feeling, Dan remained cautious to the core.

  “Jordan took something very important from me,” he said slowly. “I came here to enlist your help and to make it worth your while. Now, through dumb luck, what was stolen’s been returned.” He indicated the financial paperwork. “That was supposed to be my buy-in, so to speak—a way to win you over. But I don’t have any reason to be here anymore. You’re free to do with that stuff whatever you want.”

  Underhill absorbed that quietly for a few seconds. “But you are still planning to send the letter to the cops?”

  Dan frowned. “He’s a bad man. I think he did a bad thing.”

  Ben laughed gently. “He did more than one. Trust me.”

  He stood up and extended his hand for a shake, which Dan accepted after standing up in turn.

  “Let me put it to you this way, Dan—assuming that’s really your name: You can do with the letter what you want, but when and if the cops get around to rounding up Lloyd Jordan, I’d be amazed if they find him alive.”

  With that, he bowed his head, turned on his heel, and walked off whence he’d come, leaving Dan in the darkened dining room as before, alone and with a new set of mixed emotions with which to wrestle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “What do you think?” Joe asked.

  The room was in the basement of the municipal center, its door locked against any accidental intruders, including anyone falling outside this investigation.

  They weren’t looking for more input. Already there was Joe’s entire team, along with Ron Klesczewski, J. P. Tyler, and their boss, Tony Brandt. Between them, they were already baffled enough.

  Spread out across several tables under the harsh overhead lighting were the six albums they’d secured from the car that Paul Hauser had stolen and driven to the racetrack and his own death.

  “I think they’re bogus,” Willy said with his usual directness.

  “I can’t tell,” J.P. commented, ever the cautious scientist. “And I’ve been studying them for over an hour.”

  “I think they’re scary,” Sammie said quietly.

  “They are that,” Brandt agreed. “But are they real? We’ve already ruled out that they’re connected to the Connecticut River Valley murders.”

  Tyler was back to analyzing them with a powerful, illuminated magnifying glass made especially for scrutinizing photographs. His face was inches from one of the open albums as he recited.

  “Six albums; six women. Each book laid out in an almost cinematic style, more or less, starting with general shots and ending with a series of close-ups. They’re old photographs, taken with film. None of them are recent, and none of them look doctored, which would be easier to detect with these than with digital images. And each album is accompanied by a hank of cut hair.”

  “Who cares?” Willy challenged them. “The point is, we don’t have any missing women fitting any of this. These are staged. That crazy bastard probably used them to jerk himself off.” He waved a hand ove
r the whole array. “What d’you want to bet you’ll find every one of these women selling Dunkin Donuts or waiting tables, with five kids each at home?”

  He pointed to one picture for emphasis. “Look at her eyes. She’s covered with blood; it’s all over her and the picnic table underneath—enough to float the Titanic. But her eyes are clear and her pupils are small.”

  “That wound looks pretty real,” Joe said about the same picture. “I’m not saying it couldn’t be makeup; maybe a glued-on rubber phony like they use at disaster drills. But with either the focus being off a bit or just the lens being crappy, it’s hard to tell.”

  Tyler straightened and switched the position of two of the albums so that they were side by side. “Could be those two are the same woman.”

  Sammie approached and stood beside him. “Wearing a wig, you mean?” she asked, pointing.

  “The earlobes look different,” Ron said.

  “Different angle,” Tyler told him. “That can alter how things look.”

  “Okay,” Joe announced with finality. “We’ve been doing this enough. We clearly have nothing right now. We’ve checked our databases, we’ve sent all the hair samples and other stuff to the lab for analysis, and despite how old this all seems to be, we’ll send out what they return to us to the FBI and whatever other clearinghouses we can think of for open cases and missing persons. But that’s about all we can do for the moment.”

  “I wouldn’t mind getting a plant expert in here to see if we can match these outdoor scenes to some specific region,” Tyler mentioned.

  “Works for me,” Brandt said, covering the logistics of who might pay for it.

  “I’m not saying we should just close the book,” Joe added. “Now that we have Hauser on ice, we can chase his prints and DNA and see if we can build a history. If he has a criminal record or a decent background report, maybe we can trace where he’s lived or traveled and see if we can’t narrow our inquiries.”

  “I wouldn’t put a ton of effort into that,” Willy counseled.

  “I think we got your opinion,” Sam told him. “You want to be the father in Albuquerque who never finds out his daughter’s dead because some dumb redneck in Vermont got lazy?”

  Willy usually received with aplomb what he dished out in insults, but that crack got him red-faced. Sammie had struck home.