Shakedown

Chapter Sixty-five

I felt like a kid who’d been called to the principal’s office as I walked down the hall toward the war room. Heads popped up as I passed cubicles, some people nodding silent greetings that said “tough luck, old buddy, but better you than me.” Others chose the safe alternative and averted their gaze so that they wouldn’t turn into a pillar of salt.

I took the long way around in order to go past my office. The door was closed. The magnetic strip with my name on it had been peeled off the nameplate. At least no one else had claimed it yet.

I hoped to run into Ammara, but she wasn’t in her cubicle and she wasn’t roaming the hallways. I guessed that Troy had told her to call me, knowing I’d pick up. Whatever was going on, she wouldn’t have liked doing that. It wasn’t a good sign that she was avoiding me.

I stopped outside the war room, deciding whether to knock, but didn’t because asking permission to come in would have been an act of surrender. I opened the door wide, took two steps inside, stopped, and surveyed the room, hoping I had the rested, confident look of a man who’d just returned from vacation instead of someone who was living inside a Cuisinart running on slice and dice.

Ben Yates and Troy Clark were sitting on the far side of the room. Yates was reviewing a report, his white cuffs expertly shot past the sleeves of his dark gray suit coat, his hair trimmed and well-parted, his face relaxed but intent.

Troy had the haggard look of someone running a tough case on too little sleep and too much coffee. His eyes were puffy and his chinos and polo shirt were wrinkled. He was shuf?ing through photographs we both knew he’d already looked at a hundred times.

Neither acknowledged my presence. I knew the rules of this game. I’d been summoned, not as a colleague but as someone to be intimidated and interrogated. It was an approach reserved for suspects and subordinates. They were reinforcing the message by ignoring me, intending that I stand there like a supplicant until they could work me into their schedule.

I didn’t feel like playing, so I ignored them and walked slowly down the length of the room, taking note of what was written on the whiteboards. The list of witnesses Ammara had started in the hours after the drug house murders had grown, Wendy and the Andrija siblings the latest additions.

I found a list of the evidence removed from Latrell Kelly’s house, noting again the large quantity of?ashlights and batteries, recognizing them as essential supplies for the secret hiding place Latrell must have had and where he believed that I had followed him.

I grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and jotted down the two things I’d just taken note of, the Andrijas and Latrell’s hiding place, adding question marks to both. My gut told me they were the keys to the case. I tore the page off the pad, folded it, and stuck it in my pocket. Round one went to me when Yates blinked first.

“Take a seat, Jack,” he said.

The worktables were laid out in the same open rectangle they had been in when Yates gave me the boot. I pushed my way inside the tables and dragged a chair to the side opposite where they were sitting, pulled up to the edge of the table, and folded my hands on the surface, hoping they’d stay in one place. Then I kept my mouth shut and waited because I knew that the first liar didn’t stand a chance.

Yates leaned toward me, his hands gripping the table. His eyes were robin’s-egg blue, the corners creased enough to be crinkly, not wrinkly. The hard set to his mouth made it clear that he hadn’t gotten to where he was on good looks and charm alone. He was the kind who smiled when he stuck the knife in you.

“How are you, Jack?” he asked.

“I’m fine. You’re fine. Troy’s fine. We’re all fucking fine. So can the bullshit.”

Troy smiled and rolled his eyes as if I’d made his point for him.

“I know this must be a tough time for you,” Yates continued.

“Save it, Ben. You don’t give a crap for what kind of day I’m having, so you can skip steps one through seven in the manual on building rapport while establishing power and get to the point.”

Yates leaned back, folded his arms over his middle and frowned like a disappointed father. Troy used the pause to jump in.

“Jack, you went to Wendy’s apartment what, yesterday? Or was it Thursday?”

“Thursday.”

“Where did she keep her computer?” Troy asked.

That she had a computer was a given. I didn’t know where he was going, but I could feel the setup coming.

“On a desk in the living room.”

Troy nodded. “That’s where I would have kept it. No reason to clutter up the bedroom and the kitchen is too small.”

He obviously wanted me to know that he’d been in Wendy’s apartment. If he hadn’t been by now, he wouldn’t be doing his job. I kept silent, not because I had anything to hide, but because I wanted to make Troy tell me what this was all about.

“You see, Jack, we got a search warrant this morning for her apartment. Once we told the judge that the daughter of one of our agents was missing, he couldn’t sign the warrant fast enough.”

Troy didn’t add that she was also a person of interest in an ongoing investigation involving murder and drug dealers, though I assumed he’d also explained that to the judge. I pressed back against my chair, forcing myself to stay calm, but I couldn’t convince the tremors. They scattered across my body. I put my hands down, letting them vibrate against my thighs, afraid they’d found something that incriminated Wendy. I forced the words from my mouth.

“What did you find?”

“That’s the thing,” Troy said. “It’s what we didn’t find that we’re interested in. These days, the first things we carry out of any place we search are the computers. You know that. Only Wendy doesn’t have one. Which gets us thinking.”

“About what?”

“About what happened to her computer. Young woman like her, works at the Board of Trade, dates one of our agents; she has got to have a computer. So we thought we’d ask you.”

“How would I know?”

Troy shrugged as if it was obvious. “You just told us. The computer was there when you were in her apartment two days ago. Now it’s gone. You were the last one to have seen it. Makes sense we would ask you what happened to it.”

“Me? You think I took Wendy’s computer? Why would I do that?” I knew the answer but wanted to make him say it.

“Look, Jack. Ben and I both have kids. We’d probably do the same thing. Try to help one of them out if they got into a jam, especially if we thought they got caught up in something not of their making.”

“That’s what you think? That Wendy is involved?”

It was Yates’s turn. He was all ice. “Wouldn’t you, if you found out that she was making less than thirty grand a year and had half a million dollars in her savings account?”