True Blue

CHAPTER 108

MACE WAS SITTING in the living room of the guesthouse with a bag of ice on her swollen cheek. She’d tried to call Roy numerous times and hadn’t received an answer. The phone call she’d just gotten, however, had stripped the mystery out of this. They had Roy. They wanted her too. If she didn’t come, he was dead. The deadline was twenty-four hours from now.

She just sat there, icy water dripping down her face. For one of the few times in her life she didn’t know what to do. Then, as if her hand were being guided by some invisible force, she picked up the phone and made the call. Beth arrived in twenty-seven minutes, the roof lights of Cruiser One still whirling as she leapt from the ride and sprinted to the guesthouse. A quick discussion with Mace filled her in.

“Where do they want you to meet them?” Beth asked.

“They will kill him if I don’t go alone.”

“And if you do they’ll kill both of you. Kingman may already be dead, Mace.”

“No, he’s not dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know, okay?”

The two stared at each other. Finally, Beth said, “You know, Kingman made some sense when he said you and I should be working together instead of against each other.”

“We used to make a pretty good team.”

“We’ve been reactive this whole time. Chasing phantoms down alleys.”

“Or getting shot at by them.”

“What do we know? I mean, what do we really know about all this?”

“Beth, we don’t have time to sit and noodle this.”

“If we don’t sit and figure this out, Kingman will be dead. We’ve got nearly twenty-three hours. If we use it properly that’s a lifetime.”

Mace drew a deep breath and calmed. “Okay, I’ll start. Diane Tolliver had dinner with Jamie Meldon and then was murdered. Soon thereafter Meldon was killed too.”

Beth said, “Meldon’s investigation was taken over by people I don’t know, and even the FBI was called off the case. I’ve made inquiries and it seems Meldon might have been the target of a group of domestic terrorists.”

“But that would mean that Tolliver was killed because of her connection to Meldon and not the other way around.”

Beth looked puzzled. “But according to what we’ve found out about the two refrigerators, Tolliver was killed on Friday night, before Meldon, and Dockery was supposed to take the fall.”

Mace picked it up. “I found out in Newark that Meldon and Tolliver had an affair years ago. If Tolliver had found out something and needed help, she might’ve gone to him, especially since he was a U.S. attorney.”

“But that suggests Meldon was killed because of his ties to Tolliver, not the other way around.”

“Roy and I were chased through the law firm. And I’m convinced there was spyware on Tolliver’s computer. That again supports the theory that she was the key, not Meldon.”

“And you ran into an impersonator tossing Andre Watkins’s apartment.” She glanced sharply at Mace. “The imposter, he strike you as being one of Roman Naylor’s cohorts?”

“No, way too slick and sophisticated for that. And Meldon had no connection to Watkins. Only Tolliver. And they manipulated the time of her death to throw us off. I don’t see Naylor’s ‘bubbas’ running around putting steak and veggie residue in the lady’s trash, planting sperm in her, and installing spyware on the woman’s computer.”

“And the movement of money at this DLT escrow agency?”

“Tolliver again. And Roy said billions passed through that agency in connection with Shilling & Murdoch clients. And he said the managing partner, Chester Ackerman, was sweating bullets.”

“Kingman mentioned he has clients in Dubai.”

“I gather a lot of their clients are based in that region.”

“So presumably some of these billions were coming from the Middle East?”

“Guess so.” Mace grew rigid. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Beth pulled out her phone.

“Who you calling? Your buddy the DNI?”

“Sam Donnelly? Not yet.”

She spoke into the phone. “Steve Lanier please, it’s Chief Perry.”

“Steve Lanier? Isn’t he-”

“FBI AD, yeah.”

“Hey, Steve, Beth. I really need to talk to you. Yeah, it’s very important.”

Two hours later they were seated across from Lanier at the FBI’s Washington Field Office and had just finished, in alternating bursts, telling the man their findings.

Lanier leaned back in his chair. “Beth, I’ve seen some serious crap in my time, but this just blows my mind.”

A man entered the room and handed him a file before leaving.

He opened it and scanned the contents. “We got nothing back on the Meldon investigation. Hell, I don’t even think there was one. That should’ve been a red flag. But we did manage, with a lot of finagling, to get autopsy reports back on Agents Hope and Reiger.”

“Jarvis Burns told me about that.”

“I’m sure. Their throats were surgically sliced. A real professional job.”

“Okay, what does that tell us?” asked Beth.

Lanier closed the file. “That tells us we’ve got a major problem.”

“We knew that already,” said Mace.

“Not what I meant.” He spent the next five minutes filling the sisters in on what he did mean.

“Then it seems pretty clear,” said Beth. “What we have to do.”

Mace nodded. “I’m with you.”

Lanier looked between them. “Did I miss something?”

“It’s a sisterly thing,” explained Beth as she leaned forward and started talking fast. When she stopped, Mace jumped in and took up the line of thought.

“We’ll need Sam Donnelly for this,” said Lanier.

“Absolutely,” said Beth.

Thirty minutes later, all three rose to implement the plan they’d just hatched.