40

Spanish Trace, Florida—Tuesday

Everyone was on edge. They were all on a conference call late Tuesday night to weigh their options after Deke had forwarded Michael’s photo to them. Everyone was of two minds. On the one hand, they could call the FBI and report the kidnapping, and Carol could inform the Plainsburg police. But on the other hand, the warning was explicitly clear. As with all kidnappings, the threat to the victim was ever present should anyone contact the authorities.

However, Carol suggested that they do reach out to the allies they had gained in recent weeks. Jake agreed that she should call Officer Sheila Denning to report the crime and see if anything could be done without alerting Chief Wainwright and his minions. Carol would also reach out to FBI agent Felicia Paul.

Deke had also broached a moral quandary to the group: “Guys, this is a serious question. Do any of you think Michael is in danger of being hurt prior to Thursday?”

“That photo you got shows that he’s already been hurt,” Carol observed.

“I know. That could have occurred when he was abducted. I mean, do you think these guys, whoever they are—”

“The MWs,” Jake said. “That’s who they are. They’re the only ones who could be doing this.”

Deke said, “Fine, I can accept that. The MWs have Michael. The question is, do you think they will keep him relatively safe and unharmed until the drop-dead decision has to be made on the lawsuit going forward? Because if we do contact the authorities now, I think it will place Michael in even more danger.”

“In other words, you’re asking if we can we stall until Thursday?” Carol asked.

“Right. That’s my question. I don’t want to place Michael at any more risk than he already faces. Do we really have until Thursday morning, because if not I’ll make the call right now. What I’m missing here is how do these nutjobs believe that the announcement of a dismissal changes anything? It’s not like we go away forever. Someone else will file the same facts on another day. Dan Lawson isn’t going away, either.”

“To answer the first part of that question,” Jake ventured, “yes, I do believe we have until Thursday, but the next part of that question is more complicated. With a dismissal, regardless of the repercussions, someone buys more time. It makes no difference if the MWs are arrested and prosecuted. It makes no difference if the case is resurrected. Months will pass and whoever needs to make a run for it has bought more time. This looks more like an escape plan by the real bad planners than it does a practical solution for Antriol. My thought, Deke, is that whoever is behind this is just looking for a period of absolute confusion and chaos that is going to develop after the fat lady sings here.”

“I would agree, Jake,” Deke said. “That’s the only logic I see. Otherwise a dismissal, even with prejudice, has no long-term positive impact for Antriol. Carol, what’s on your mind about where we are?”

Carol answered. “The best part of this is that they want Michael alive and well as a hostage to their demands. We have all of Wednesday to make some progress.”

“I hate to do this, but I want a vote. Do we officially contact the authorities before Thursday?” Deke asked with a tremor in his voice. “Yes or no.”

Everyone ultimately said, “No.” Carol added, “Except for doing what we said about surreptitiously telling our allies in Kentucky about it. Keep it on the sly.”

* * *

Wednesday

Sarah, assisted by a handful of law clerks and interns, had been working for hours after very little sleep. They scoured the internet and worked the phone, scrambling to fill in many of the blanks in Gina’s compendium of Bank Antriol personnel. Jake had given her the material he had scraped up on the MWs, so that he could catch an early flight to Knoxville. There, he would once again rent a car and drive over the border to Plainsburg.

Sarah spent a lot of her time concentrating on Willis Lee. While at the beginning of the case it appeared as if Mr. Lee was an ally of Joel Hartbeck, the Antriol employee’s erratic responses to members of the Deketomis team seemed to indicate otherwise. The man’s disappearance after Michael’s visit on Monday evening was also a huge red flag. There had been some discussion among the team whether or not Willis had been abducted with Michael. Both Jake and Carol thought that was improbable and that it was more likely that Willis Lee was involved with the kidnappers. “Michael was lured to Willis’s house, and I’ll bet that’s where they grabbed him,” Carol had opined. It made sense.

Sarah already knew that he hailed from Brooklyn and was in the Marines from 2008 to 2011. He was forty-one years old. Willis had no social media presence, no LinkedIn account, and, oddly, two different Social Security numbers associated with what online history he had. She had only just discovered this discrepancy, and it was either a mistake or something engineered.

She thought about the man’s age and something didn’t seem right. When Willis joined the Marines, he would have been twenty-six or so. Wasn’t that a little old to be joining the Marines? It wasn’t inconceivable, but it was … unusual.

Sarah went to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service website. It held a database of military personnel. A user needed only a Social Security number to search the records. The Bergman-Deketomis firm already had a registered account on the site, so it was no problem. Otherwise she would have had to go to the Freedom of Information Act site and send a request—but that took days or weeks for a response. There were other online databases, but the DFAS site was the quickest and most efficient.

Sarah plugged in Willis’s name and the first SSN she had for him into the search, adding the years in service, and pressed enter.

No results.

She tried the second Social Security number. Again, no results.

Sarah had been diligent in checking Willis Lee’s criminal record in the state of Kentucky, but she hadn’t checked any other states. Since the guy was from Brooklyn, she went to the New York database and entered the details.

Her jaw dropped. How could they have not known this earlier?

Willis Lee had been convicted of sexual assault in 2008 and had served seven out of a ten-year sentence at Rikers Island.

He had spent years dressed up in prison stripes rather than marine green.

* * *

Plainsburg, Kentucky—Wednesday

“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” Carol said when Sarah relayed the news on the phone. “Does everyone else know?”

“I’m calling Deke and the team in Richmond next,” Sarah said. “I thought you should be the first to know, since you’re in the belly of the beast up there.”

“Thanks, Sarah, you’re the best. I was just about to call Officer Denning. I wonder if the police here in Plainsburg know about him? Good work; let me know if you find more gold.”

“You know,” Sarah said, “something just clicked for me. I overlooked it before. I need to follow up on something else. Gotta run.”

“Bye!”

Carol hung up and immediately dialed Sheila.

“Hey, Carol. How’s it going? Any luck on finding your colleague?”

“Well. Have I got a story for you. Can you talk?”

“I’m in the patrol car again. Story of my life.”

“Okay, here goes.” Carol then told her about the message Deke received.

“Oh, my God. No wonder the APB hasn’t brought us any results. I think I’d better tell the chief about this.”

“No, don’t, Sheila. We have until Thursday morning to pursue leads. Jake is on his way here, and together we’ll do everything we can to find him. Besides, we believe that the MWs have Michael.”

“Son of a bitch. Those animals,” Sheila said. “If that’s true, then you’re right. Telling the chief won’t do you any good.”

“Yep, his son is their top dog. Do you have information on where the MWs hang out? Where do you think they’d be keeping Michael?”

“They have several places. Out in the woods, up in the mountains, somewhere that’d be hard to find,” Sheila said. “They like those old hunting cabins that have been around for a hundred years or more.”

“That’s what I figured. What does Rusty Wainwright do for a living, anyway?”

“I’m sure he sells drugs! But as for what he tells the IRS, frankly, I have no idea. I know Rusty, but we do not talk to each other one bit. When he got out of prison and came back to Kentucky, he tried to hit on me a couple of times. I told him that if ever came within ten feet of me, I’d kick him in the balls.”

“Wait,” Carol said. “Rusty Wainwright was in prison?”

“He was. Up in New York. He was part of an armed robbery in one of those places near New York City. Westchester? New Rochelle? I can’t remember. A suburb that people commute into the city from.”

“How long was he in prison?”

“Five years, I think. I believe his sentence was eight, and he got out for good behavior or some nonsense. Oh, and get this. Rusty was suspected of killing an inmate while he was in the joint. A black man. It couldn’t be proven. No one ratted him out. Rusty, of course, was part of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, so his racism and bigotry was on full display there. He bragged about the murder after he got out. He’s not wired right.”

“I guess that explains the spider web tattoos on his arms. What years was he incarcerated?”

“I want to say 2010 to 2015, something like that.”

“And where did you say he was imprisoned?”

“Oh. Rikers.”

Carol inhaled audibly. “Sheila. You know Willis Lee? Well, guess what.” She told the officer what Sarah had just uncovered.

“Carol, is that your connection?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, Willis isn’t known to associate with the MWs. I mean, he’s never been seen parading with them or hanging out in bars with them. At least, not that I know of.”

“It makes you wonder, though,” Carol said. “They definitely have the same political leanings from what you told me. And they could easily have met in prison.”

“Yep. Not a stretch at all.”

* * *

Spanish Trace, Florida—Wednesday

The day crept into afternoon. Sarah continued her research into the bank’s personnel. Two of the key figures, Blake Dullea and Karl Maher, had extensive online histories. There had been questions about Maher’s Egyptian ties. While he had been born in America, his online presence on social media indicated that he frequently went to Egypt to visit family. Sarah enlisted Doug, one of the younger law clerks who knew his way around social media better than anyone at the firm, to explore Maher’s Facebook and Instagram connections to see what they might reveal. After a couple of hours, Doug presented his findings to Sarah.

“So, Karl Maher has several uncles and cousins in Egypt,” he told her. “Like Karl, they have fairly impressive positions at financial institutions and in national politics. He comes from a very connected family. Interestingly, though, I found one photo on his cousin Ahmet’s site. The privacy preferences, I think, must have accidentally been set to public. It’s a picture of two cousins and an uncle at a meeting of what appears to be the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“No surprise there,” Sarah said. She knew that the organization for decades espoused teachings and ideas that helped establish groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, and other radical Sunni groups. “Do you think those relatives are involved in terrorist activities?”

“Hard to say,” Doug responded. “Not sure what all you know about the group. After the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring protests of 2011, the organization won a bunch of seats in Egypt’s parliament and promoted Mohamed Morsi as their presidential candidate, and the guy actually won.”

“Yeah, but that didn’t last long.”

“No, he was ousted by the military in July 2013, and the new Egyptian government banned the Brotherhood, jailed or exiled its members, and the group went deep underground. According to what I’ve read, most all of them have virtually disappeared or seem to be hiding in plain sight. The government doesn’t seem to be much interested in hunting them down and the US hasn’t designated the group as a terrorist organization. Seemingly for political reasons. They reserve that type of pressure for those other hyper-violent offshoots. Does this mean Maher has sympathies for extremism or Sunni terrorists, or is he just very well connected in the Middle East?”

“Those are good questions, and I will report those findings to the team. Thank you, Doug.”

When Doug left her office, Sarah continued going down the path she had remembered to take while talking to Carol on the phone. She had plenty of information on Blake Dullea’s professional life, but she didn’t know much about his younger years. Through LinkedIn she had learned that he had gone to the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School, one that boasted high academic standards, especially in mathematics. The same online information indicated that he was in the class of 1999.

Sarah then used Google to see if there were any copies of the school’s yearbooks online, and sure enough, she found the 1999 edition. She spent time looking through it and found Dullea’s senior photo and other mentions. He had been a member of several academic clubs and was on the varsity basketball team.

And then she found the lucky penny while looking at the basketball team’s group photo. There, standing near Blake Dullea and wearing the same school jersey and shorts, was Willis Lee. He stuck out like a tadpole out of water because of his small build. There was no mistake that it was him. Weak chin, awkwardly large head, and rat-like eyes. It was him.

“When you turn over rocks, there’s no telling what you’ll find,” she said to herself.

Sarah then went back to the senior photos, but Willis wasn’t there. She then checked the pictures of juniors, and she found him. Willis Lee was a year younger than Blake Dullea … but they had known each other since high school!