Collision

25

Bob Taggart’s den appeared to be a bizarre hybrid of a gun show and a used bookstore. Tall bookshelves covered one wall, jammed full with tattered paperbacks and battered hardcovers. Another wall featured a collection of antique firearms mixed in with newer guns. Bright yellow squares of Post-it notes lay beneath several of the mounted guns. Vochek could see notes penciled on the squares of color. The handwriting was as precise as the characters of a typewriter. Stacks of books towered from the floor, volumes on history and weaponry and guns.

“I’m working on a book on firearms,” Bob Taggart said. “I’m on the ninth draft of my outline. I’m being very methodical in how I approach my work.”

“I admire that,” she said. She leaned closer, looked at the guns. A French pistol from 1878. A German revolver from 1915. A police special from Prohibition-era Chicago.

“If they could talk,” he said. “Other than spitting bullets.”

“We’d be out of our jobs.”

He laughed, a rich, warm sound. Taggart was a short man, heavyset, with a silver burr of hair cut into a retro flattop. He had a warm and ingratiating smile. He had his hands behind his back and he rocked on the balls of his feet, beaming at his guns. Vochek gave his fingers a quick inspection as he pointed out the beauty of an antique firearm from Prussia: no wedding ring. She wondered if maybe Mom would like Taggart, wondered if he ever made his way to Houston.

“You truly have quite a collection,” Vochek said.

“I’m mindful about my purchases. I research them. I’m careful and methodical.”

She wondered if he was preemptively defending his work on the Emily Forsberg case before she asked a single question. He offered her iced tea, she accepted, and he got them their drinks. He settled into a recliner; she sat on the couch across from him.

“I’m not sure how I can help you,” he said. “The lead investigators were in Maui. I only did questioning here of people in Dallas in support of the Hawaiian investigation. Everything on the murder was in the file. The case remains open.”

“But cold.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re the closest, so I’m talking to you first, but I’m sure we’ll be talking with the investigators in Maui as well. I read the file. You were, indeed, very methodical and careful.”

Taggart shrugged. “Not that I made much of a difference for Emily Forsberg.”

She heard bitterness under his words. “I’d just like your impressions on the case. You can get so much more from talking to an investigating officer than simply reading the file.”

“You get all my prejudices and theories.” He smiled.

“I’ll take those,” she said.

“And this is because you want to find Ben Forsberg.”

“Yes. We found a link between Forsberg and a known hired killer. I want to find out how strong the link is and how long ago it was forged.”

“You mean, did he use a hired killer to get rid of his wife?”

“Yes.”

Taggart frowned. “I suppose anything is possible.”

“What did you think of Ben?”

“As a suspect or a person?”

“Both.”

“I did not talk with him until he returned to Dallas. So, you understand, I did not see him in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death, which is when you can learn the most about a suspect’s emotional reaction to the crime. He’d had a few days to compose himself, to deal with the shock of her death. He was… There’s a phrase I used in my career. Devastated but dignified.”

“He does have a reserve about him,” she said.

“The more calculating murderers often do. But from what we found, he and Emily were very much in love, very happy. They’d met through their work, dated for two years, gotten engaged. Nothing to indicate trouble. No signs of abuse, or infidelity, no money worries. He carried no life insurance policy on her. They’d only been married a week.” He shrugged. “Plus- killing her on their honeymoon? If he didn’t want to marry her, he could have backed out a few days before. Usually people with doubts immediately after a wedding resign themselves to the marriage or start thinking annulment. But…”

“But.”

“They didn’t stay in a hotel. They rented a house in Lahaina. That was a bit unusual, and if he wanted her dead, then it was certainly easier to kill her in a house than in a crowded hotel. But she handled the arrangements; apparently renting the house was her idea-her mother confirmed that with me. Ben and Emily were together most of the time, obviously, it being a honeymoon. Their last morning there, he went to play golf with another honeymooning husband they’d met down on the beach-which gave him a good alibi-but he only played nine holes, not the eighteen he originally told Emily he would. If he planned the shooting and he didn’t want to be there when she was shot, he should have played the whole course.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, he could have taken a gun, gone up the hill, shot her dead. But he has no experience with firearms, and there was zero forensic evidence that he’d handled or fired a gun, or managed to acquire one while on Maui.”

“The police thought it was random.”

“Yes. Windows were shot out in two empty rental houses a half mile away, some empty car windows shot out near the airport. Bullets all matched. The shot into the Forsberg house was the final one. Ben had just left the golf course when the first shots were heard and reported-not enough time to get to the first scene. The timing weighed the inquest in his favor.”

“So several random shots and Emily Forsberg was just unlucky.”

Taggart shrugged. “An idiot kid drinking beer, probably, taking potshots. But damn, the bullet nailed her, square in the forehead.”

“A precise kill.” The kind of shot that a Nicky Lynch could make.

“Or an incredibly unlucky shot.”

“And no trace found of gun or gunman.”

“None.”

“What about Ben’s business? If he was involved in shady dealings, and she found out about it…”

Taggart shrugged. “Too much government contracting is shady-just my opinion-but we found no history of questionable business.”

“She worked for Hector Global.”

“Yes, she was a very senior accountant. Being groomed to be Sam Hector’s chief financial officer.” Taggart tented his fingers over his whiskey-barrel stomach. “Sam Hector delivered a eulogy at her service.” He stopped, opened his mouth again as if to speak, closed his jaw as though reconsidering. He tapped fingers on his chair’s arm.

Vochek raised her eyebrows.

He spoke slowly. “Maybe Ben wasn’t the shady dealer; maybe Sam Hector was.”

“You suspected him?”

“Careful and methodical, remember.” He risked a smile. “He was in Los Angeles and two contractors backed him up. But you know, he has his own plane. A Learjet Delta-5.” He paused again, gave her an enigmatic look. “It has the range to fly to Hawaii.”

“You think Hector could have flown to Maui, killed Emily, and come back? But there would be records of the flight.”

“This is a man who moves hired soldiers and equipment all over the world, sometimes in secret. If he wanted to get to Maui without attracting attention, I believe he could.” Taggart shrugged. “But he had no motive we could discern and he had an alibi.”

“Back to a dead end.”

“Tell me about this hired killer you mentioned.”

She took a photo from her purse and slid it to him. Taggart dug bifocals from his pocket, studied Nicky Lynch’s face.

“He looks like a barkeep.”

“He was a trained sniper.”

Taggart raised an eyebrow. He handed her back the photo of Nicky Lynch. “A sniper. I guess that explains it, then.”

“You don’t think Ben Forsberg hiring a killer is the tidy solution.”

“I…” He stopped and glanced at his watch. “It’s five o’clock somewhere. I would like a small glass of bourbon. Would you care for a drop?”

The sudden shift in his tone surprised her. His ruddy skin paled. She didn’t want one, but she sensed accepting his offer might loosen his tongue as much as the bourbon. “Yes, please, just a finger’s worth.”

He stood and fetched them each a measure of bourbon, handed her one of the crystal glasses, and sat back down in the recliner. “We’re miles off the record. You tell anyone I said this, and I’ll deny it.”

She allowed herself a tiny sip of bourbon. “Sure.”

He took a long, savoring sip of his drink. “Have you met Sam Hector yet?”

She shook her head.

He stood up and splashed more bourbon in his glass. “This is the part I won’t repeat. When I started digging at Sam Hector, I got leaned on hard. Avalanche hard. By my supervisor and by a suit from Washington. I was told Sam Hector was not a suspect, could not be a suspect, and did not merit further scrutiny. I asked why, because I do not like getting leaned on and I thought, he’s got big government connections, he’s just throwing his dic-pardon, his weight around. I mean, could you do something that looked more guilty?” He touched the fresh bourbon to his lips. “I got into police work for two reasons. My dad was a cop and I admired him more than anyone I ever knew. Second was, I have a basic problem with unfairness. I know that sounds naive but it’s the way God made me.”

She offered him an awkward smile. “I’m the same way.” She thought of the dead Afghan kids, cut down in their pajamas. She understood Taggart and thought he understood her. He would have made a far better partner in work than Kidwell. “But we live in an inherently unfair world.”

He shrugged. “I felt Sam Hector wasn’t making my corner of the world more fair. So I dug a bit and found that the suit from Washington who warned me off was a senior CIA official.”

She set down her glass. “Why would the CIA care about Sam Hector?”

“At first, I thought, well, maybe the CIA’s a big client of Hector’s, he seems to do work for every government agency. But the CIA protecting him is an inverse in the power relationship. If he’s in trouble because of a crime he committed, and they’ve hired him, they’re going to cut him loose.”

“But instead they back him.”

“So they warned me off, and I let myself be warned off. But I always wondered, why did the CIA not want me to dig at Hector? Why would the CIA be shielding him?”

She drove from Cedar Hill back into the heart of Dallas, headed north on Central Expressway, cut across Plano to the private air park, and let herself into the safe house. The pilot who’d flown her up from Austin had thoughtfully stocked the refrigerator with basics, and she made herself a salad and a sandwich. She hadn’t realized until the bourbon inched into her stomach that she was starving.

The phone rang. “Vochek,” she said.

“Delia Moon is dead,” Pritchard said.

The words hit like a hammer to her chest. “What? How?”

“A man matching Ben Forsberg’s description was seen driving at high speed from her neighborhood. A man in a Mercedes who was either chasing him or fleeing with him shot at a police officer who responded to a report of shots fired. A woman was checking out a house being built down the street and heard the shots and called the police.”

“Ben… killed Delia?”

“We don’t know yet. What the hell is going on, Vochek?”

She didn’t like the chiding tone in Pritchard’s voice. “This software that Adam Reynolds was developing, about searching financial databases-what has the team found on it?”

“Why do you ask?”

It was not the response she expected. “Because Delia was dodgy about a project he was working on, said it was a prototype. She didn’t want to describe it to me. She was worried we wouldn’t return his property.”

Silence for a moment. “He was working on a way to identify and track people using false identities via combining information from lots of different databases. At least that’s what an encoded prototype on the system appears to be. But he didn’t save any queries or results from the program-I’m not sure this program would even work. And we can’t test it, we don’t have access to all those different databases.”

Vochek said, “False identity. One you invent, or one you steal.” The competing charges on Ben’s credit card made more sense to her now- especially if someone had stolen Ben’s identity. “I want to know why you told me to stay away from Sam Hector.”

“He’s just a contractor. We’re under the gun to produce results here, Joanna. He has nothing to do with-”

“He knows Ben Forsberg. He might be of help in finding him.”

“He’s not going to give shelter or help to a fugitive. It would be career suicide.”

Vochek couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. “You’re the second government agency to be shielding Hector during a criminal investigation. Why?”

“I am hardly shielding him; I am keeping you focused on what matters, Joanna.”

“I want you to find out for me if Sam Hector is ex-CIA.”

“You want.”

“Please.”

“Well, he’s not. There’s an extensive government file on him. He’s ex-army. Not CIA.”

“Never mind what his file says.” She tempered her tone.

“Joanna. Leave it alone. Just find Randall Choate. That’s all that matters. Don’t get distracted.”

“If Hector is ex-CIA, don’t you think we should know that little fact?”

“Sleeping dogs,” Pritchard said. “But I can tell you won’t give this up, so fine. I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thank you, Margaret.” Vochek hung up. She had a sinking feeling that she’d opened a box best left sealed. Sam Hector was a powerful and respected man, but too many of the threads seemed to loop back toward him.

Vochek clicked on the television, found a twenty-four-hour Texas news channel, waited for an account of Delia’s murder to run.

Dead. Adam Reynolds, who had called Kidwell for help. Kidwell and the guards. Now Delia. The same awful sense of helplessness that she’d felt seeing the dead Afghan boys, cut down by a covert group, clenched her chest. No more, no more, no more.

She dug through the phone book and called Hector Global, argued her way up the chain to Sam Hector’s assistant.

“I’m very sorry, Agent Vochek,” the assistant said, “he’s not in today, and I doubt he’ll be in this weekend. We’ve had a real tragedy here…”

“I know. Tell him I was at the hotel when his men were killed. Ask Mr. Hector to call me at this number. I need to talk to him about Ben Forsberg.” She thanked the assistant for his help.

She went back to her unfinished dinner, ate the rest of the food without tasting it.

Leave it alone. Just find Randall Choate.

She was suddenly afraid of what else she might find.