I grabbed a cup of coffee from a diner and took up a table in the back, close to the window. It would’ve been difficult to follow me on foot, considering I’d taken a number of detours. Even so, I checked the window every few moments, making sure I didn’t have a set of eyes on me. A cinder-block sky hung above the buildings, contemplating rain. The coffee was hot and strong.
From the cell phone the feds had given me, I dialed Dell’s number. He didn’t even say hello.
“I saw Gerry Sinton not twenty minutes ago, talking to your client in the courthouse foyer. You were there, too. I thought we had an understanding. I thought we were clear: Get me a plea, the algorithm, and Child’s testimony against the firm and we let the charges against your wife slide.”
“I told you, I’ll get what you need without putting David’s head on a block. Did you get the phone?”
“I got it. Where did you get it?”
“Took it off of Gill. There’s a message on it ordering him to kill my wife.”
“Jesus, is she okay? Where is she?”
“She’s safe. For now. The phone can put you closer to Sinton—I imagine that text came from him. That’s an attempted murder charge, right there.”
“I’ll get my tech on it right now. That’s interesting. The firm wants you off the case by any means possible. We’re close. But make no mistake—I’m not interested in nailing Sinton for attempted murder; the feds can have him on that. My job is to hurt the firm’s clients—the drug lords, the arms dealers, the terrorists. To do that I need to trace the money.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes, but I want Christine and David in return.”
He sighed.
“You ever truly lose somebody?” he said.
I thought of my parents. They died pretty young, before their time, certainly.
“It’s like a hole, Eddie. You can’t replace what’s gone—but you can try to fill it with other things. New things. You can try to make it right. The firm took Sophie from me, and I need to make it right. Believe me, I’ve thought about doing things off the books. Rolling up to Gerry Sinton and Ben Harland and putting them down in the street with an AR-15. But I can’t do that. This has to be done right. But think about the other victim here. Clara Reece is found lying in David’s apartment with two mags of ammo in the back of her head. If I let him off a murder charge to get what I want, I’m just digging another hole. You got my text earlier—the DA has additional evidence for the prelim. Read it and tell me David Child is innocent.”
I saw through Dell’s game. It was a familiar one. It’s a game the justice system plays every single day in America—because sometimes it simply doesn’t matter if you’re really innocent of the crime; the only smart move is to plead guilty and make a deal for a lesser sentence.
“You want me to read the new evidence and tell David that irrespective of his innocence, he will definitely be convicted and his only choice is to plead guilty and make a deal to cut his sentence.”
“Bingo,” said Dell.
Happens all the time. I’ve done it myself. Innocent people often don’t want to take the chance of losing and doing fifteen or twenty years when they could make a deal and be out in two. It’s mathematics—not justice, but that’s the reality.
“I’ll look it over, but I’m not sure I can convince David. I’ll need the GSR expert to testify at the prelim. That will help.”
“How come? Aren’t expert reports just handed in at this stage? I mean, I don’t see how that helps.”
He was right. At a prelim, experts weren’t required to give evidence under oath unless there was a damn good reason. Their reports were simply put in front of the judge, without being tested under cross-examination.
“It’s for Child. It’s a convincer. One of the strongest pieces of evidence is the GSR on his skin and clothes. If the report is handed in, it has no real effect on Child. On the other hand, if the expert testifies, and I don’t have shit to counter his testimony, it sinks Child even further and puts the pressure on him.”
“I see your point. I’ll call the DA. This kid needs to realize making a deal is his only shot. You do, too. You should eat something. It’s going to be a long day. I hear the blueberry pancakes in there are pretty good.”
Before I could reply, the call disconnected. No cars parked in the street, nobody resembling Dell on the sidewalk. Damn, he was good. I resigned myself to the idea that CIA operatives are seen only if they want to be. The waitress asked me if I wanted anything else. I ordered the blueberry pancakes.
I was relying on Dell to persuade the DA to call their GSR expert. I didn’t have a chance of winning the prelim if I couldn’t even get a shot at cross-examining the guy. But right then I couldn’t think of a single point to put to the witness. It would come. If David was innocent, sooner or later, the ammo I needed to prove that would come to me.
While I waited for my order, I opened my copy of Dell’s file and began leafing through the documents. The first batch consisted of share transfer agreements, all of them witnessed by associates at Harland and Sinton. I counted forty-plus agreements, including the one that had been witnessed by Christine.
Behind those papers was a typed list of companies. I counted thirty per page and eighteen pages. None of the companies were familiar. The list was in alphabetical order, and I flicked back to check on the name of the company in Christine’s agreement. This was the information they’d gotten from Farooq. Dell’s team in Langley must’ve been monitoring these company accounts. That’s how they figured out the new laundry system.
The only other documents were photographs of Harland and Sinton’s security team. I lingered on the photograph of Gill that I’d seen before.
Four more photographs behind that one. The firm’s security team. Group shots of five men. Two of them wore black suits, white shirts, dark ties and had sensible corporate haircuts. The other two wore civilian clothes: button-down shirts tucked into jeans.
There were no pictures of the man in the black overcoat with the screaming man tattooed on his neck.
After a few minutes of being transferred around, I finally managed to have my call placed to a nurse at the downtown ER. Popo was out of surgery—but still in critical condition. When the pancakes arrived I had no appetite, but I still took a bite. Lester Dell was right about one thing—the pancakes were excellent.
I sat for a while, thinking things over. In the corner of the diner were two PCs flashing the words INSERT COIN. I lifted my coffee and moved to one of the computer terminals. There was a slot beside my knees, and I fed it a couple of dollars’ worth of change. The screen changed and brought up the Google home page. I typed in “Bernard Langhiemer,” and hit search.
At first the search came back with a ton of results for some other guy with a slightly different name. I hit the option to search for the exact spelling of the name and got back six thousand results—all in German. To narrow down the results, I typed “David Child” together with “Bernard Langhiemer” and pressed return.
One article from a tech blog came up first, showing positive results for both names. The piece was on dot-com companies, specifically why certain social media platforms took off and why some simply failed. I didn’t follow this stuff myself—I wasn’t on any social media—but I knew how it worked. A small section of the article looked at a social media platform called Wave and compared it to Reeler. According to the article, Wave was the brainchild of Bernard Langhiemer. It launched two weeks after Reeler, and a year later it shut down. The author figured that Reeler was more user-friendly, less sophisticated than Wave, and it had gotten there first. All of which contributed to the failure of Langhiemer’s project. I scrolled through another half dozen pages, but they were all in German and related to ancient family trees.
There was nothing online about any fallout between Langhiemer and David, and nothing I found indicated Langhiemer could be a threat to anyone. I thought David had probably made a bad call if he thought Langhiemer had set him up. The guy seemed vanilla enough.
I took a minute to log into my e-mail. Nothing urgent. I logged out, gathered my files, paid the check, and headed for the door.
I heard the chiming from my personal cell and hoped it would be Christine. The caller ID told me the number was unavailable.
“Hi,” I said.
“Do you mind telling me what you’re doing,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Male, early thirties, maybe a trace of the Midwest in the accent.
“Who is this?” I said.
“Bernard Langhiemer.”