“The killer could have walked through the woods and met Javy.”
“Already thought of that. The crime scene techs did a sweep of the immediate vicinity. They’re expanding the perimeter. So far, they haven’t found anything.”
“I think I’ll take a stroll,” I said and started down the path.
“Leave some bread crumbs so you don’t get lost,” Grisnik said. “I’m going to talk to the driver of the garbage truck.”
I followed the path back to where I could see the Dumpster, the garbage truck, and the storage shed. I crouched close to the ground, not finding any sign that someone had stepped off the trail, though I was no more adept at following a trail in the woods than was Grisnik. The sound of an angry and familiar voice brought me to my feet.
“Jack! Where the hell are you?” Troy Clark materialized at the front of the garbage truck, hands on hips, scanning the woods, locking on to my position. “Get your ass over here!”
I’ve always prided myself on being a team player, following orders as well as giving them, respecting the rules and chains of command. Structure and discipline are both necessary features of the FBI and I had incorporated them in to my life. None of which meant that I was going to get my ass anywhere for Troy Clark. I pretended he was my future former wife and, therefore, pretended I didn’t hear him as I retraced my route. He matched me stride for stride and was waiting when I emerged from the woods.
“What are you doing here?” Troy demanded.
“I’m taking a walk in the woods. What are you doing here?”
Troy screwed his face into a threat. I’d seen him use that face with suspects, sometimes with a gun pressed into their neck for emphasis. That he would try the look with me left me more amused than moved.
“Grisnik says you’re with him. What were you doing? Hiding from me?”
“I’ve got no reason to hide from you.”
“You’re on leave. Medical leave. This isn’t your case. Stay out of it.”
“It’s not your case, either. It’s Grisnik’s. He invited me to come along. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“We were—you were, for Christ’s sake—investigating Javy Ordonez. Colby Hudson was babysitting him. That makes it our case.”
“I’m not your audience. Grisnik will fight you over this one. Then someone at Justice will have to get involved and the killer will be a long way down the road before you and Grisnik stop pissing at each other. Why not make nice and work the case together?”
Grisnik, accompanied by a crime scene tech, joined us before Troy could answer. The tech was sweating and smiling, holding a plastic evidence bag, a .45 caliber pistol hanging in the bottom.
“Tell him,” Grisnik said to the tech.
The tech held the bag up like he’d just won first prize at the state fair. “We found it under another Dumpster about a quarter of a mile from here.”
Chapter Thirty
“Grisnik,” Troy said, “this case falls under the FBI’s jurisdiction.”
“I don’t think so,” Grisnik said, taking the plastic bag from the tech. “I let you get away with that on the drug house murders. But Javy Ordonez was a suspect in the shooting of Tony Phillips. Phillips’s mother, Oleta, is missing. I’m handling both of those cases. The murder of Ordonez may be connected.”
“We had Ordonez under surveillance. One of our undercover people was on him. That makes it our case.”
“Your investigation, what was it for? Drugs?”
“Yeah, drugs. What’s your point?” Troy asked.
“Cause Javy’s drug-dealing days are done. He’s nothing but a corpse now. Can’t help you one damn bit with your case. It’s my job to catch his killer. I find out anything that you boys may want to know, I’ll be sure and tell you.”
More cars arrived. Doors opened and were slammed closed. Troy smiled and waited. Ammara Iverson came around the corner of the storage shed accompanied by Josh Ziegler, the U.S. Attorney, trailed by two of his junior lawyers.
Ziegler was born to the role, tall, with a square chin that matched his squared shoulders, dark blond hair, and ice blue eyes. He was appointed by the previous administration and was so good at his job that the current president kept him on even though they belonged to different political parties. Unlike a lot of U.S. Attorneys, he tried cases, leaving the job of managing the bureaucracy to his deputies. He guarded his turf like a Doberman in a junkyard.
“Troy,” he said, without acknowledging Grisnik, “what’s the story?”
“You’re familiar with our ongoing investigation into drug trafficking in the greater metropolitan area.”
“Of course I am. You’re keeping me busy trying cases.”
“Javy Ordonez was one of our prime targets. We’ve devoted considerable assets to making a case against him, including putting one of our undercover agents next to him. That’s his Escalade, where he was shot to death, and that’s the Dumpster where the killer dumped his body.”
“Who found the body?”
“Driver of that garbage truck,” Troy said, waving his hand at the truck, “when he unloaded the Dumpster.”
Ziegler listened with his hands on his hips, his eyes boring in on Troy as if he were the only person within a hundred miles, the two of them having a private chat.
“Who was first on the scene?” he asked.
I’d seen this dance routine many times. In fact, I’d choreographed a few of them myself with Troy as my understudy. Troy knew that Grisnik would fight to hold on to this case. He’d already briefed Ziegler and the two of them were preparing to shuf?e off to Buffalo with the case before Grisnik could gain any traction. Troy had been a good pupil. I should have been proud.
“KCKPD,” Troy said. “Did a good job like they always do. They’ve filled us in on the preliminaries. We’re ready to run with it. Detective Grisnik here runs Robbery and Homicide. I believe he has a question about jurisdiction.”
Ziegler turned his “ladies and gentlemen of the jury” smile on Grisnik and stuck his hand out. Grisnik hesitated but gave in, clasping hands for an instant before letting go.
“I don’t blame you for wanting the case, Detective. It’s why we get out of bed in the morning. Thanks for the good work your people did. We depend on them to get things under control in cases like this. It’s the kind of cooperation the director likes to hear about.”
“You be sure and tell him next time you see him,” Grisnik said. “But this is about murder, not drugs. Javy was a dealer, but he’s the victim, not the perp, and he’s not the one that’s going to be arrested and convicted. His killer is going to win that prize. No federal laws are in play. This is my case.”
I half expected Grisnik to also tell Ziegler it was his town and his people, but he left that out. They stood a foot apart, waiting for the other to blink. Grisnik held his ground, subtly tightening his grip on the plastic bag containing the gun.
“Detective,” Ziegler said, with the patience of a priest forgiving the wayward, “We know that Ordonez was engaged in interstate drug trafficking. Obviously, something went wrong in a deal or somebody got jealous or angry over territory or money. Whatever it was, there’s no doubt that this case is about drugs, drugs that crossed state lines, and that makes it a federal case. Murder isn’t the end of our case, it’s just the latest development in our ongoing investigation. I talked to your D.A. on my way over here. He agrees with me. You can give him a call if you like.”
Ziegler retrieved his cell phone from his jacket pocket, holding it in the palm of his outstretched hand. “Go ahead, Detective. It’s number five on my speed dial if you can’t remember the number.”
Grisnik’s eyes burned, his shoulders ?aring back as he unconsciously stuck out his chest. I knew the pose. It was the re?ex when your own people slipped the knife between your shoulder blades. It’s hard to tell which is worse—the shock, the pain, or the humiliation. To his credit, Grisnik didn’t buckle, didn’t let his shoulders sag in surrender, or otherwise acknowledge the bitterness of defeat.
“You’ll want this,” he said to Ziegler, handing him the plastic bag. “I’ll have my people deliver a set of reports and all the forensics. You need anything else, give me a call.”
Grisnik looked at me, giving me a brother’s nod, telling me he’d just taken a walk in my shoes, then turned away and left. I didn’t blame him for not asking me if I wanted a ride.
Chapter Thirty-one
The Argentine terminal was perched on a tower high above, and dead smack in, the center of the rail yard, with an expansive view of the surrounding roads, highways, businesses, hills, and homes that spread out from the yard like rings on a tree. Trains crawled along the miles of tracks like robotic serpents, each taking its turn, adhering to a careful, plodding routine that delighted Latrell Kelly. He tracked the movement of each train in the records that came across his desk, filing the manifests, inspection reports, route changes, and anything else his boss, the terminal manager, told him to put away in its proper place. It was, for him, the perfect job—creating and keeping order.
Latrell had a small desk in one corner, the surface made smaller by the stacks of paper piled on it, each sheet waiting to be put in its designated folder. The monotony of the job was soothing. The precision with which he maintained the perpetual paper ?ow comforted him.
Today Latrell’s work neither soothed nor comforted him. He was tired from being up late the night before after giving Marcellus’s dog to the FBI agent and he had been uneasy all day, fidgeting as if tiny, invisible insects were burrowing into his skin. The itching distracted him, making it difficult to concentrate. He was falling behind and the further behind he fell, the more he itched.
Then, after lunch, things got worse when everyone in the office gathered at the windows along the north wall. Curious, he joined them, watching as police cars and an ambulance, their emergency lights ?ashing, converged at the storage sheds on the northern edge of the yard, their sirens drowned out by the trains’ ceaseless grinding and whistling.
The phone rang. A secretary answered, listened, and handed the phone to Latrell’s boss, who muttered “shit,” gave the phone back, and bolted for the stairs, bad knees and fifty extra pounds slowing him down.
Latrell pressed against the glass, wishing he had a better view. He saw the parade of cars stop in front of the storage sheds, saw people miniaturized by the distance pour out and disappear as they went around the sheds to the edge of the woods.
The entrance to the cave was a short distance from the storage sheds, an easy walk if you knew which trail to follow. The possibility that the cave was their destination in?amed the insects marching across his skin. Though he had camou?aged the entrance with a thick layer of deadfall, someone who knew what to look for might find it. Latrell didn’t realize that he was holding his breath until he felt a hand on his shoulder, the secretary asking him if he was okay. He nodded and returned to his desk, afraid of attracting more attention.
A while later, the manager returned with four others, two of whom he recognized as the FBI agents who had knocked on his door after he’d put things right with Marcellus. The other agent, the one who had come looking for Marcellus’s dog last night, wasn’t part of the group. Latrell kept his head down, stealing a glance at them. No one looked his way.
He should have relaxed when his boss didn’t summon him, saying that the agents wanted to ask him some questions, but he didn’t. Instead, the itching got worse until his skin felt electrified. Latrell was clinging to the edges of his world, gathering them tightly around him, but he was losing his grip. Things should have been better after he’d killed Marcellus and the others, but they weren’t.
Latrell ducked into the bathroom, closed the door to a stall, and sat, taking things apart, putting them back together in his mind, searching for what had gone wrong. Each time, he came back to the FBI agent, Jack Davis, he said his name was. Worried about Marcellus’s dog. Standing outside his house waiting to trick him with that bullshit story about losing his son.
Latrell pinched his eyes closed, picturing himself in the cave, hidden deep under the surface, touching the special things he kept there, and screaming until his throat was raw. The image put him at ease. Get through the day, he told himself. Then he’d go to the cave and sort things out. Figure out what he had to do and do it. Put things right again.
The heat in Latrell’s skin slowly cooled to a tingle, then faded. Settled, he returned to his desk, his face a placid mask. The FBI agents were huddled with his boss in the conference room, its interior glass wall giving him a clear view of what they were doing.
The secretary rapped lightly on the door, a bundle of rolled maps and enlarged aerial photographs under her arm. The manager let her in, directing her to spread the maps and photographs out on the table. The agents crowded around as she unrolled them, Latrell’s boss pointing and nodding in response to the agents’ questions. Twenty minutes later, they rolled up the maps and photographs. Each of the agents shook his boss’s hand and they left, taking the documents with them.
Later, Latrell asked his boss what was going on. Found a dead body in one of the Dumpsters back by the storage sheds, his boss told him. It’s a rail yard, not a goddamn cemetery, his boss added, annoyed at anything that kept him from making sure the trains ran on time. Latrell should have been relieved, but he wasn’t. He began to itch again.
Chapter Thirty-two
Ammara Iverson gave me a lift back to my car.
“That was slick,” I said, as she drove away from the rail yard.
“You mean the Mutt and Jeff routine Troy and Ziegler did back there?”
“They were smooth, I’ll give them that. You think Ziegler had really talked to the D.A.?”
“Ziegler never bluffs. Troy reached out to Ziegler as soon as we found out about Javy Ordonez. I was on the call with him.”
“You think there’s a connection?”