Jack Brattan had a friend in the Philadelphia Police Department, Jocko Mulloy. Actually, friend didn’t quite cover it. An “acquaintance who shared mutual interests” would be closer. Neither man could be said to have a relationship with anyone that would qualify as a friendship as the term is normally understood. Mulloy joined the Fifty-first Star after two horrific tours in Iraq which involved several near-misses with IED and later a chance meeting with Jack in a local pub. Jack had explained to him that the best way to exorcize his simmering PTSD demons would be to associate with others who, like him, were “going to do something about it.” What exactly “it” or the “something they were going to do” was never surfaced, but it resonated with Mulloy’s muddled mindset at the time. In addition, his continued tenure as a cop had become tenuous following several Internal Affairs investigations which looked into his alleged use of excessive force on three occasions, a suspicious shooting, and moonlighting as muscle at local concerts and other events. The moonlighting was not deemed to be counter to police regulations, but the particular events he’d worked caused some concern higher up. Jack’s security company provided the needed manpower for all of the events in question.
Out of misplaced concern, or a response to a kindred spirit, Mulloy called Jack and that’s how he found out about the BOLO. Also, that was how he managed to drop out of sight so quickly and well before the most local LEOs were even aware of it and could close in.
It had not been easy, but Jack had the instincts of a hyena and he knew that if the cops wanted him for murder, there was a better than even chance that Pangborn would be after him as well. He’d had a hand in the elimination of Felix Chambers and Jack reasoned that Pangborn might react similarly to him if he took it into his head that Jack might plea bargain his way off death row by giving up the name of the person who’d called in the hit. Would he? Maybe, maybe not.
He cashed out five Fifty-one Star credit cards at as many different banks for the maximum allowable withdrawal and then gave the cards to five homeless men he met on the street. He told them they were twenty-five-dollar debit cards and that they should get themselves something to eat and a place to stay. He was certain the recipients would try to maximize the card’s utility by cashing them and then passing them along to others. Whether sold or discarded, they would circulate for days as they passed from one homeless guy to another. He knew that if they had the numbers, the police would track the cards. So would Pangborn the instant he learned about the BOLO. The cards should keep the trail cold for days, weeks even. He retrieved some clothes and one additional credit card he kept in the name of his ex brother-in-law, one Pangborn did not know about. He’d need to have some means to survive after the cash was gone and before he could come up with a long-term plan. His final stop was to his office where he cleaned out his safe and picked up a fake ID left over from an operation that had been cancelled a year ago and which he hoped no one would remember.
Later that afternoon he stole license plates from an Escalade parked in a suburban shopping mall, being careful to replace the stolen ones with his own. They weren’t vanity tags so, unless the housewife who owned the Cadillac ran a red light or had an accident, it could be months before anyone would notice the switch. He headed south. He knew the BOLO originated from Virginia and was stunned when he discovered it came from Picketsville. How did those hick cops manage to find him? Of course they would still be pretty hot over losing their boss. In spite of that, heading south still seemed his best bet. The first place the cops would look would be Philadelphia and then either Idaho or Montana. They would stake out Pangborn’s operation in Chicago as well and maybe the Wichita area where he grew up. No way would he head home. There were people there who’d be more than happy to save Pangborn and the cops the trouble of taking him in.
The last place they’d look would be somewhere close to them. That was his reasoning at any rate. The trick was to find a place where strangers are the rule, not the exception. Tourist attractions would be best. Did he have time to reach Orlando or New Orleans? Probably not. Williamsburg was close and might work, but the crowds there were thin this time of year and especially on weekdays. A man alone would be noticeable and he didn’t have time to find a family. Virginia Beach and Norfolk were close by. Those places would be crawling with Navy, coming and going. His chief’s uniform still fit. With a little planning and some good ID, he could disappear into the Norfolk area and no one would ever find him. He headed south on I-95 and cut east, south of DC.
***
As if the Health Department pushing their way in wasn’t bad enough, his man in the hunt reported that nobody could locate Jack Brattan. He had dropped off the grid, they’d said. A trace on the credit cards he’d been issued had ended in Philadelphia. They were still in use, but by street people. The accounts had been shut down, of course. They had bounced the bums around a little and none of them knew except that the cards had been circulating in the homeless community for a while and no one remembered where they came from in the first place. He said they’d also tossed Brattan’s apartment and had come up empty. Brattan had cleared out. No one knew where he’d disappeared to. The last thing his secretary heard was that he’d been searching for the guys that got busted in Maine. Pangborn asked if anyone had contacted the Philadelphia cop. He couldn’t remember his name. After some consultation, someone remembered Mulloy. They checked out Jocko. When they found him, He’d been drunk and uncooperative and grinning at them like a crazy man. It took three men to put him out of commission and then only after he had caused some serious damage to two of their kneecaps with a baseball bat. He said he didn’t know anything. He said he’d been dismissed by the Philly PD and had been drinking for days. By the look of him, he had. They’d get back to him, they said, when he sobered up. If he ever did.
Pangborn forgot his own directive and began bellowing on the phone, overriding his institutionalized paranoia that his phones might be tapped. Perhaps he was careless. Perhaps he believed the encryption would be unbreakable even if the lines were tapped. Either way, he made a mistake. It would not be enough to put him away, but would add to the growing pile of evidence that might.
“Keep looking,” he screamed. “I want that idiot found before the police get him. Who knows him? Anyone? Dig through his file. There has to be something in there that will lead you to him. Where would he go? Where do people go when they have no good options?”
“He may have built himself a bolt-hole, boss. He was that kind of a guy.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. People like Brattan do not plan or believe they will be caught. It is their fatal flaw. Dig in the file and call me back when you have something.”
***
Frank understood Garland’s annoyance at his issuing the BOLO without checking with him. He didn’t care. The Agency, he’d said, had the capability to do many things far beyond that of the Sheriff’s Department in Picketsville, Virginia. Frank agreed but reminded him that he was limited in that the Agency couldn’t operate in the open. Furthermore, and more importantly, it didn’t have the same psychological need Frank’s people had to be engaged. Frank tried to explain to Charlie that his deputies needed to be doing something—anything. After all, they had traced the rental car to Brattan and it should be obvious to Charlie that the next logical thing for them to do would be to circulate a BOLO and go after the suspect their investigation produced. Not to do so would raise more questions than he cared to answer.
“Mr. Garland, we have an investment in this that we believe is as great as or greater than yours. With respect, sir, for us not to proceed with what we had would make no sense to them. Their response, if you were to ask them to stand down would be, to think you’re saying, ‘Sorry, hick cops, but this is a job for the big boys.’ My people wouldn’t buy it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Frank. You know that. It’s just that by putting the BOLO out so soon alerted Brattan and his handlers. Now they know that we know something and it’s just that we didn’t want them to know it yet. Sorry, that’s a little convoluted. Look, it’s just that now they are as likely to pick up Brattan as we are. If they do, he will either have an airtight alibi and a phalanx of expensive lawyers, or he will disappear forever. Remember the bomb-planter? We need him to make a case. Worse, we have to scour the countryside. They don’t. They know where to look. We needed a head start.”
“Okay, that makes sense, but just let me ask you this, WWID?”
“WWID? You mean WWJD, don’t you? Not being a religious man, I have no idea what Jesus would do, Frank.”
“No. WWID…what would Ike do, or more properly, have done?”
“Oh. Ike. Got it. He wouldn’t wait for me. In fact…never mind. Good luck.”
“We will keep in touch and, Charlie, we aren’t a bunch of hillbillies, you know. Us all jes talk like ’em.”
“Okay, okay, I know. Never said you were. Listen, I’ll send you what we have on Brattan. Maybe you can see what we’re missing, like you did on the dash cam.”