Shakedown

Chapter Twenty-three

Ruby slept alongside my futon, waking me while it was still dark. I fumbled with the light, assuming she wanted to go out. I was wrong. She’d already gone. Inside. A lot. I cleaned up after her, wondering if I’d made a bad decision to take in a dog that wasn’t housebroken and that I’d have to leave alone most of the day.

I played back the local newscasts I had recorded and scanned the newspaper for additional information on the investigation into the drug house murders. It was all a rehash of the first reports. The Bureau had cut off the?ow of information, reducing its public comments to the standard blather about an ongoing investigation and appeals for anyone with knowledge of the crimes to call the TIPS hotline.

Sifting through the mail, I saw a?ier for a place called Pete amp; Mac’s, which described itself as a pet resort that offered day care for dogs. They had a facility on Eighty-seventh Street in Lenexa that opened at seven. By seven-fifteen, I’d signed Ruby up for a week of day care and obedience training, grooming included. She went with her pet attendant, tail wagging, without a backward glance at me, proving that she was charmingly indiscriminate with her affections.

One of the staff helped load my car with a kennel for Ruby to sleep in and enough food, treats, and toys to last a lifetime. I left, realizing that my dog now had a higher standard of living than I did.

I stopped at a restaurant that offered free Wi-Fi access. Using my laptop, I logged on to the website for the County Treasurer’s office and searched for records of property owned by Jill Rice, Thomas Rice, or both. It only took a few keystrokes to find the records on the house Colby Hudson was buying.

The house was titled to Jill Rice. Last year, the county appraised it at $850,000. The property taxes were $12,427. I couldn’t figure out how Colby could afford the taxes, let alone the purchase price, no matter how much Jill Rice discounted it for the pleasure of pissing off her ex-husband.

There was no mortgage on the house. The only lien was in Thomas Rice’s name. While the details of the lien were not explained, there was a link to the Register of Deeds office. I clicked on the link and a page appeared explaining that Mr. Rice’s lien was pursuant to a Property Settlement Agreement, the terms of which could be found at yet another link. I followed the electronic trail, landing at the website of the Clerk of the District Court, where I was able to find and read the agreement. I was pleased at how easy it was to find until I realized that the terms of my own divorce would join the public record in less than a week’s time.

Thomas Rice had a lien for half the net proceeds from the sale of the house. It was the same deal that Joy and I had made. The legalese was painfully familiar. The sale had to be conducted in a commercially reasonable manner, including advance notice to Thomas Rice, and the house had to be sold for fair market value.

Colby wasn’t just buying a house. He was buying a lawsuit if the price was too far below market. It was possible that he didn’t know the terms of the Rices’ agreement. I could tell him and deal with the fallout from explaining how I knew. Or, I could keep my mouth shut until I knew just how bad a deal he was making. That was the right call, perhaps the only one I had made so far.

Since the agreement required that Thomas Rice be given notice of the sale before it occurred, I decided to talk with him before I spoke with his ex-wife. He would have less reason to hold back information and he might be more willing to keep our conversation private.

I looked at my watch. It was eight-thirty. I could be in Leavenworth, Kansas, in less than an hour. I knew from past trips that visiting hours were from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon every day except Wednesday and Thursday. Inmates were given twenty-four visitor points per month. Each hour of visits cost one point. Each inmate had an approved visitor list. If you weren’t on it, it didn’t matter what day of the week it was or how many points the inmate had left for that month.

Today was Thursday. Even if I waited until tomorrow, I still wouldn’t be on Rice’s visitor list and I had no idea if he would be willing to use any of his points to talk with me. Normally, I wouldn’t care about any of that since the visitor rules didn’t apply to law-enforcement personnel. But the visitation rules did apply to me because, without my FBI credentials, I was one of the unwashed, unknown, and unwanted.

My cell phone rang as I was considering how long it would take me to get arrested, convicted, and sentenced to Leavenworth just so I could have a conversation with Thomas Rice. A television show had already tested that scheme, one brother getting himself sent inside to break out his innocent brother before they were both killed. I doubted that my version would do well enough in the ratings to last through sweeps week.

“Nice call on the cash,” Ammara Iverson said.

“You found Oleta Phillips’s fingerprints?”

“On a couple of the bills so far, a thumb and index finger. It will take a while to check all of the money. Three thousand dollars in twenties is a lot of twenties.”

“A hundred and fifty, to be exact,” I said. “Who had her prints?”

“KCKPD. She’d been picked up a few times for soliciting prostitution plus she had a couple of misdemeanor possession busts.”

“What about the videotapes? Will Troy let Grisnik have a look?”

“He said we should do our own analysis first. Ben Yates is going to ask the KCK chief for a set of photographs for comparison.”

“Grisnik won’t like that. I get the impression he’s trying to keep this quiet.”

“Troy doesn’t care what Grisnik likes. He’s not taking a chance on anybody. If it will make Grisnik feel any better, tell him that I reviewed the tapes. I didn’t see anybody who looked like a cop.”

“I’m sure that will be a great comfort to him, since everyone knows that all cops look alike, especially when they’re out of uniform.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Cops carry themselves differently. Same as we do. Doesn’t matter what we’re wearing. That’s what makes undercover so hard. You have to learn to be someone else.”

She was right. I wanted to ask Ammara about the results of the neighborhood canvass, find out if anyone had reported seeing someone leaving the scene, but I didn’t want it to be about me.

“Did any of the neighbors see Oleta that night?”

“If they did, they aren’t saying. We went back to her brother. He said the last time he saw her was when Marcellus gave her the money. We haven’t found anyone who admits seeing her after that. That was about twelve hours before the murders.”

“Did the neighbors see anyone else, maybe someone hanging around after the murders like an arsonist that likes to watch the fire?”

“I’ve got to tell you, Jack. You’re the only one anybody saw. LaDonna Simpson, Latrell Kelly, a few others. They all saw what happened to you in the backyard, but that’s all they saw.”

“I’m glad I put on such a good show for them. Did you take another look at Latrell Kelly?”

“Yeah, and there’s nothing to see. None of the neighbors have anything bad to say about him. He even brings his charcoal cooker whenever they have a block party.”

“Say that again.”

“I said they have block parties during the summer. He cooks the hot dogs. You think that makes him a suspect?”

If I told her yes and explained why, she’d agree that I was too close to this case to be of any use. “Remember what they taught you at Quantico,” I said. “Keep an open mind until the statute of limitations expires.”

“I’ll do that. In the meantime, things have gotten real tight around here since you left. Troy is having all of us take polygraphs to make certain no one leaked anything about the surveillance camera inside the house. They’re bringing in someone from D.C. to run the tests. You’ll probably have to take one, too.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. Troy set them up on the hour. He’s going first at eight o’clock. I’m on for nine, Colby is at ten; Jim and Lani are at eleven and twelve. I’m surprised he hasn’t called you yet.”

“Maybe he wants to rule everyone else in or out before he gives me a turn.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Who knows? Maybe he thinks it couldn’t have been me since it was my show or maybe he thinks it had to be me because that would explain why I was shaking so badly. Either way, it would make sense for him to leave me for last.”

“I hate taking a polygraph,” she said.

“We have to take one every year just to make certain we’re still good guys. I thought you’d be used to it by now.”

“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “Those guys always make me feel like I’m guilty of something even if I don’t know what it is.”

“That’s what they get paid to do. Did you tell Marty Grisnik that you found Oleta’s fingerprints on the money?”

“That’s Troy’s call. I just report the news. How about you? Grisnik tell you anything else I should know?”

“I haven’t talked to him.”

“It would be convenient if you did,” she said.

“Yes, it would.”

Ammara didn’t know it, but she had just shown me how to break into the federal penitentiary. I didn’t know if I could be convicted for trying. Like all criminals, I knew that it wouldn’t matter unless I got caught.