| |
RAUCOUS LAUGHTER AND splashing told Fish they were getting close to the camping area. When they rounded the next bend, six rafts hugged the sandy shore. Red, blue, and yellow, each craft emblazoned with the name of a tour company.
Not far from the river, small dome tents popped up like brightly colored mushrooms. A woman snapped a red-and-white tablecloth in the breeze, letting it float over a long folding table.
Banter between two men as they unloaded supplies suggested they were the tour guides and had run this river many times before.
“Time to shift into party mode.” Dapper Dan steered the Blackthorne raft toward an empty spot in the aquatic parking lot, the raft’s drab gray looking sad amidst all the bright colors. “Hot day on the river, we’ve had plenty of beer, remember. Act accordingly. Olivia, your guy’s the man wearing the blue shorts by the yellow raft.”
“Got him.” Olivia peeled off her t-shirt, revealing a bright pink bikini top. The coppery tan suggested she’d spent her recent R&R at the beach. She squirmed out of her knee-length cargo shorts, displaying a pair of frayed cutoff jeans. Short cutoff jeans. Very short cutoff jeans.
“Ready for the fun, Hotshot?” she said.
“Let’s do it.” He planted a kiss on her cheek.
Olivia jumped out of the raft and splashed her way ashore, shouting over her shoulder. “I told you this was a stupid idea, you jerk. Come along, it’ll be fun. For who? You and your dumbass buddies. Just another excuse to guzzle beer and tell juvenile jokes.”
Hotshot waited half a beat, then scrambled after her, shouting, “Sugarpie. Wait.”
Olivia didn’t turn, but beelined straight for the man in the blue shorts. According to their intel, his name was Dick Oakes, but on the river, he was known as Ace.
Olivia jogged closer. Fish enjoyed the rear view, but he bet Ace was getting his fill of Olivia’s bouncing front.
“You have space for one more on your tour? I’ll pay. Cash,” Olivia said.
Hotshot halted behind her and spun her around. “I told you it was a misunderstanding, Sugarpie.”
Olivia swept her arms toward the campsite. “Look at these people. They’re cooking. Real food. Steaks. Chicken. Burgers. Not that dehydrated crap you said was what everyone ate on the river.” She slapped his face.
Fish winced.
While Hotshot and Olivia played out their spat, Dapper Dan left the team to carry out his assignment—recon. The river had branched off two hundred yards back, and he went to hunt for signs Rambler was, or had been there.
Fish and Scrooge made their way around the campsite where T-Bone crouched behind a rock outcropping. His t-shirt was plastered to his chest, tendrils of hair dripped water down his face. He’d ignored shaving, his jaw covered with an unkempt beard, which he scratched repeatedly.
“My tent.” T-Bone pointed to a dark green dome, and took off in that direction.
The two men waited until he’d ducked inside, then followed. T-Bone zipped up the entrance, and the three sat, cross-legged, speaking in whispers in the shadowy confines of the tent.
“Ace is definitely our guy,” T-Bone said. “I tried to get closer, but he was less interested in a daredevil than a man he could control with the promise of drugs and money. Rambler did a good job of setting the hook.”
“Too good,” Scrooge said.
Fish relayed their lack of findings where they’d had last contact with Rambler. Or, his tracker. “Did you get any indication that Ace figured out he was a plant?”
T-Bone rummaged through his dry bag and brought out a towel and a clean shirt. “Negative. Ace said he’d decided to join a group of hikers. Nobody questioned it.” He snorted. “Rambler did a great job of being obnoxious. Nobody seems to care that he’s missing.”
“Too good.” Fish dug in his pocket for his radio and slipped on the headset. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Fozzie, can you read me?”
“Five by five. What do you have?”
“Nothing more. Can you have Intel see how many people have been reported missing, or didn’t finish a tour? A tour business can’t operate very long if their clients keep disappearing.”
“Roger.”
“What now?” T-Bone asked.
“You maintain your cover,” Fish said, taking off the headset. “Olivia’s in distraction mode, and we’ll be doing our thing, gathering information.”
T-Bone left the tent. Fish and Scrooge waited until everyone was occupied with their dinner preps and happy hour drinks, then left, one at a time, heading away from the campsite. They met where they’d first found T-Bone.
“Did you notice any actual beer in our supplies?” Fish asked.
Scrooge waggled his brows. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Props, man, props. First time on this river, want to know more about the other groups. Figured we would be enjoying a brew after a hot day on the water, wandering through the camps, making idle conversation, per our briefing. Olivia’s already set us up as beer guzzlers. The devil is in the details.”
Scrooge pulled a face. “So we use the we drank our last beer approach.”
Hotshot met them before they headed their separate ways and handed each a beer can. “Way to go,” Fish said.
“Thank Livvy.”
Fish noted the can was open and sniffed. He winged his brows at Hotshot.
“Water. But you’ll fit in,” Hotshot said. “Manny’s setting up camp. You two carry on with the plan.”
Armed with their newly acquired props, Fish and Scrooge set out.
Fish approached a group, singled out the guide. “Hey, there. I’m Harry. Think you can answer a couple of questions? I thought about booking a tour, but heard rumors they weren’t safe. After three days with guys I thought were my friends, I’m wondering if I’d have been better off with an organized company.”
The guide’s eyes cut toward T-Bone’s group. “Our tour company has an excellent safety record.”
Fish didn’t miss the unspoken unlike that one over there.
***
AFTER SENDING A THUMBS up to show she’d received the message, Lexi stared at the text. The trouble with trying to be cryptic when there was no prearranged code was that if she could decipher it, on the off chance someone had hacked into her phone, they could decipher it, too. Or maybe Kalen was afraid someone might intercept the text on his end.
Still, it didn’t take long to figure out that Nat His Trans 1430 gave a place and a time. She had an hour.
Someplace public, she surmised. Burnside wasn’t that big. She took a calming breath. Her brain seemed to have gone on vacation ever since this fiasco with the Falcon, compounded by what happened to Cataline, plus worrying about Sofia. Then there were her feelings for Marv.
When Kalen’s reply had come so quickly after she’d asked about the man with the snake tattoo, another adrenaline surge had coursed through her, partly apprehension, part excitement that this might be a lead. Kalen Nauck knew him, and probably not in a good way.
She hustled to the spot she’d told the Uber driver to meet her, still staring at the message, then gave herself a mental head slap for not seeing it immediately. Her ride appeared, and she climbed into the backseat. “Natural History Museum, please.”
Once there, she trotted up the steps, paid her admission, and spent a few minutes with the security officers at the metal detectors. After displaying her police ID and getting the requisite approval to enter with her weapon—and how sad that a place like a museum had to screen visitors—she made her way to the temporary exhibit of the Alaskan gold rush. As expected, it was crowded, and she’d be inconspicuous while she waited for her meeting in the hall of transportation.
Lexi used the time to study the names Cataline had given as references on her rental application. She should have suggested meeting Kalen at the library, where she could use their computers rather than trying to glean information from her burner phone. Internet access was moving at the same pace as the eager prospectors climbing the Chilkoot Pass.
Lexi abandoned the effort, and called the cleaning company Hector Kahale had recommended. After setting up an appointment for eleven tomorrow, she wandered the gold rush exhibit, then made her way to the transportation hall.
She was early, but Kalen was already in the exhibit room, standing by a stagecoach. There were a dozen people throughout the hall, and none set off her radar. She assumed Kalen had done the same, so she strolled over.
He spoke softly, not taking his eyes off the exhibit signage. “You don’t want to mess with this guy.”
He moved on to the next exhibit, a Conestoga wagon.
She waited, then joined him again. “You have a name? Is he tied to the Falcon?”
“He goes by Snake, but his name is Peter Luzzatto.”
If he was such a bad guy, why hadn’t she run across him while on duty? She couldn’t remember the name or description being brought up at roll call briefings, either.
As if reading her thoughts, Kalen said, “He was serving a five-year sentence. Recently released, and has apparently been toeing the line. Works as a janitor and cleans the Merlin building. I’ll bet if I looked, the janitorial company is one of Merlin’s.”
The connection worked for her. “What was he in for?”
“Drugs.”
Of course. She explained what Julie Shortt had said.
“Doesn’t surprise me.” He bypassed the steam engine exhibit, where three people were discussing the history of the railroads in Oregon, and continued to a Model-T. “He was sent up for drugs, but he was also a man who liked to take advantage of—and threaten—women.”
“Pimp?”
“Not to my knowledge. Personal pleasures.”
Lexi pretended to read the specifications of the Model-T and lowered her voice further. “Do you think he could have orchestrated Cataline’s death?”
“I checked his records. He was picked up the same night as your gang arrests, and he’s been in and out enough to know his way around the system. If someone said he’d smuggled drugs to your woman, I wouldn’t say it was impossible.”
Lexi thought of Emi and asked what kind of odds Kalen would give that Snake actually did the deed.
“Eighty percent,” he said.
Smiling inwardly, she didn’t ask him for decimal places. “Can you prove it?”
“With your information connecting him to your victim, I have enough to start looking.”
“Aren’t you afraid someone will find out and come after you?”
“I have every reason to be searching,” he said. “The worst case scenario? I’ll be told to let the detectives do their jobs.”
“The Falcon connection doesn’t scare you?” she asked. Because it sure as hell scared her.
“I’m counting on finding something beyond Snake cleaning Merlin’s building. I trust one of the detectives,” Kalen said.
“Who?” she asked, wanting to compare notes about her suspected compromised officers.
“O’Reilly.”
She bobbed her head. “I was going to give him a call, back before things went sideways. Good to know we agree he’s trustworthy.”
“I need to report in.” Kalen walked toward the exit. “I’ll be in touch.”
As he left, Lexi wondered if she’d been premature in firing Blackthorne. Would it have made more sense to simply change the scope of her contract? Now that she had an actual lead, Emi and her team could work their magic and maybe discover enough information to tie Snake to the Falcon.
Should she run it by Marv? Call Dalton? Was tracking down crooks a service Blackthorne provided? They protected people and rescued hostages. They didn’t do police work. That was her job.
Or was it? Cop work and eight-year-old orphans—she shuddered at the term—didn’t mesh. Not as a single guardian.
She needed to talk to the chief, discuss extended leave.
Or should she quit outright? Being a civilian meant she had liberties she wouldn’t have as a cop, but she wouldn’t be able to play the law enforcement card. Which also had its own pros and cons.
Why did a job change have to be cop-related? Leave the whole mess behind. She filed it away as something to think about.
Nobody from DHS, or anywhere else, had questioned Sofia’s staying with her, which was the sole positive in her day. Lexi wasn’t going to initiate a discussion.
She had to tell Sofia what had happened to her mother, and still couldn’t come up with an easy way to do it. While she waited until it was time to pick Sofia up from school, she’d look into Cataline’s references.
She went outside and sat in the museum courtyard to make her first call.
A machine picked up, but the message was from someone with a totally different name. Lexi didn’t leave a response. The second number was out of service. The third call went through, and a man answered, his speech slurred. Whether from being awakened or from booze, she couldn’t tell. Or care.
Lexi asked for the woman she was trying to reach.
“You find her, let me know,” he said. “Bitch ran off a year ago, took everything.” He hung up.
So much for anyone who might know Cataline.
She put her phone away. Seconds later it buzzed. A text from Kalen.
FYI. With a picture of Snake. A second image followed. The first was a mug shot, but the second looked more like a fuzzy surveillance photo, taken from a distance, the background blurred. Date stamped two weeks earlier. His arm was draped around a woman’s shoulders, a toothpick dangled from his lips, which were curled into a sneer. He gazed toward the camera, as if to say I know you’re there, but you’ll never bring me in again.
The woman’s face was turned away. Was it Cataline?