Veil of Civility

Chapter Thirty-Two

Seth Castellano slowed the dark blue Crown Victoria as the female voice on his GPS unit told him he needed to turn right and that he had nearly reached his destination. "Damn," he said aloud, as he saw the mass of police cruisers in the parking lot. He'd told the local dispatcher to make sure the deputies didn't approach the property until he got there and he had reiterated that statement to the Franklin County Sheriff minutes later when the man had returned his call. How could they screw up an order so simple? Clearly Seth's decision to call them in to make sure Declan McIver didn't leave the area before he could arrive had been the wrong one.

Pulling the car to a stop, he shifted it into park and stepped out. He folded his badge over the breast pocket of his suit coat as he walked around the vehicle towards the front of the building. Men in brown police uniforms looked up at him as he approached, but clearly saw the badge and chose not to address him. Maybe he was lucky and they'd managed to apprehend McIver. While that would be problematic in another way, at least he wouldn't be running around loose where he could cause other problems.

As he neared the front door of the building he saw a hastily written sign saying closed until further notice and wasn't surprised. He'd sent a team of agents to this building the previous morning to obtain as much of the company's paperwork as possible and to interview the employees about the company's involvement in the car bombing outside of the Barton Center. The interviews had turned up exactly what he wanted them to: nothing. None of the employees had known about the four men placed inside Sweat Security, which meant that the company's owner had done as he was told. Likewise, the paperwork would show no record of them either. The glass door swung open and a broad man with salt and pepper colored hair stepped out.

"Are you Castellano?" he asked. Castellano nodded. It was clear from the white shirt of the man's uniform that he was the Sheriff and his introduction a moment later confirmed it. "I'm Steve Scruggs, Franklin County Sheriff."

"ASAC Seth Castellano, Sheriff. What the hell is going on here? I thought I told you not to approach the property."

The man seemed to bristle for a moment at the obvious rebuke. Taking a deep breath, he answered. "Two of my deputies heard gunshots from within the building and decided to enter the premises."

Castellano grimaced. As much as he'd like to, he couldn't really argue with that kind of judgment call and it was clear from the Sheriff's expression that he knew it. "And what did they find?"

"They witnessed a man coming down the stairs from the second floor as they attempted to get the door open. The guy ran through a hallway towards the garage, but he was gone by the time my deputies got over the fence and around the building."

Castellano closed his eyes and sighed. Fighting hard to control his anger he asked, "Does this man have a description?"

"Blonde hair, about six foot, and thin. He was wearing a black raincoat and blue jeans."

"Sounds like my guy. Any idea what the gunshot was about?"

The Sheriff pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "Upstairs," he said, as he turned around and held the door open. As they entered Castellano saw the typical handiwork of a crew with a search warrant. Desk drawers and filing cabinets were wide open and papers that had apparently been outside of the scope of the warrant littered the floor. The sheriff led the way through the rectangular office to the left side of the room, where a door led to a set of steps. Following the sheriff up, Castellano turned the corner to a second set of stairs and saw two large holes and a pile of crumbled drywall on the landing above them.

"What happened here?" he asked, as they topped the steps and he looked closely at the holes and the drywall. "Looks like gunshots."

"That's what I thought and this seems to confirm that," the sheriff said, as he stepped further into the room.

Castellano followed the man and saw blood spatter on the wall near one of the two windows that overlooked the parking lot. As he stepped around one of the desks he knew what he was about to see wasn't going to be pleasant. He grimaced as the body of a large man came into view. Around the man's head a massive pool of blood mixed with the gray commercial carpeting and created a dark halo. In the man's meaty hand was a .38 caliber revolver.

"Who is he?"

"Tim Sweat. He owns the company. We haven't touched anything so what you see is exactly how things were when my men arrived. It looks self-inflicted to me and there's a suicide note on the desk."

"Or it was made to look that way," Castellano posited.

"Exactly," the sheriff confirmed. "I spent a decade investigating homicides in Richmond before moving here so I've seen my share of bodies. I'm sure your people can tell for sure by the presence of gunshot residue on the hands."

Castellano nodded and looked from the position of the body to the holes in the wall near the stairs. "Those holes look consistent with gunshots so I'm going to go out on a limb and say he was shooting at someone who came up the stairs."

"My thoughts exactly, and we found evidence of a break in by the garage. Someone used a manual tire jack from one of the vehicles to pry open a garage door."

Castellano fought a smirk as he looked from the body to the gunshot holes. If he didn't know better he would swear that Declan McIver was trying to help them frame him, because he sure wasn't helping himself. Not only was he on the run, as far as the public knew, but now they had another body tied to him and no witnesses to offer an alternative version of events.

"What's the suicide note say?"

"It's right here on the desk. It's an apology to his wife and children and talks about some men threatening them, fits the murder idea more than the suicide one if you ask me. I've known Tim Sweat for nearly twenty years and he's not a man to be threatened by anyone."

Castellano nodded and turned around to look at the legal-sized piece of paper sitting on the desk, blood droplets soaking through it onto the wood beneath.

"It says something about some files with the identities of the men doing the threatening," Sheriff Scruggs continued, "but I don't see any folders nearby. My deputies said the guy running away was carrying something, but they couldn't tell for sure what it was. Sounds like a motive to me."

Castellano felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Just when everything seemed to be going his way there had to be some bad news. Had Sweat somehow managed to get information on the four men, or did the files just contain pictures? He dismissed the bad feeling. Surely the four had been smart enough not to give their real names and it wasn't like he had to worry about them talking to anyone. Declan McIver had again solved that problem for him when he killed them.

"Then we need to find him before he has a chance to destroy those files. Any idea where he could have gone?"

"Well, we're guessing the blue Mercedes out front belongs to him because Tim Sweat's BMW is in the garage. So that means he had to have left here on foot. He must've jumped the fence before my men got around the building. I made a call to a guy with some dogs. He's on his way. We'll get a scent off of something in the car and start tracking him."

"What's around here that he could get to?"

"The only real development is several miles to the east and my men had the building blocked off from the front so he had to have gone out the back. There's nothing back there but several dozen acres of forest and beyond that some country roads. I sent my deputies to the nearest houses and put out an APB to all of my patrols. They'll be searching along the roads and visiting the homes of the few residents that live out that way."

"Good. When will the dogs be here?"

"Should be here any minute, the guy just lives over the way," the sheriff said, making a motion towards the south with his hand. "The way I figure it, this guy has been on foot for less than thirty minutes. If you take into account the fact that the average human male runs five to eight miles per hour, and with the kind of terrain around here there's no way he could keep up a full run that entire time, I'm thinking he can't be more than a mile away, if that."

"This guy is full of surprises so far, so I want you to expand that APB to the neighboring counties, triple the patrols along the roads and set up checkpoints at every major road into and out of the area. Do you have enough manpower for that?"

The sheriff nodded.

"Good. Get it done. I'm calling in the area field agents to assist us and I'll see what kind of help the other agencies in the area can offer."

"It's going to be kind of difficult to hold every thin, blonde-haired male we come across until you get there for a positive ID. Do you have a picture of this guy?"

Castellano reached into his suit coat and removed a picture he'd taken from one of the curio cabinets in the McIver's home. "His name is Declan McIver and he speaks with an Irish accent. That ought to narrow it quite a bit."

"I'll get this photo out to everyone," the sheriff said. "He won't get far."