Mortal Dilemma (35 page)

Wally had no compunctions about roughing up the deadbeats who owed Frank money. As the years went by, he also killed a few people on orders from Frank, never once considering that he had somehow crossed a line from killing a really bad cop and the man who'd cut up a nice girl just for the hell of it, to killing men with an addiction they couldn't control.

He finally tired of the routine and didn't like living in New Jersey. He moved to Tallahassee and took out a private investigator's license and settled in to live a life on the right side of the law. It didn't work, and soon he contacted Frank Thomason and went to work for him again, this time following up on the deadbeats who lived in the Southeast. Before he knew it, Frank had taken on some partners and Wally found himself working for a bunch of Arabs whom he suspected were somehow allied with the worst elements of the Islamist movement.

Not a problem, he thought. They were paying him extremely well and he was building a large nest egg. He took on more and more responsibility and became a trusted employee of the Arabs. Until now. Was it the Arabs who were holding him? If so, why give him the morphine? To keep him alive until they could saw off his head? Maybe. But then again, maybe he was in the hands of the American government. If so, it would only last for a few days and then he'd be dead. He'd handle it.

T
HURSDAY
, N
OVEMBER
6

J.D.
AND
I were having lunch at the Dry Dock Restaurant, sitting in the upstairs dining room with a view across the bay. The clouds left over from last night's storm had moved on and we were enjoying the play of the sun's rays across the green water. A small charter fishing boat had pulled into the dock at the edge of the restaurant's outside deck and the pelicans had gathered, sitting on the water waiting patiently for the scraps that would come their way as the captain cleaned the day's catch.

“That was an interesting interrogation,” J.D. said. “I'm afraid your buddy D. Wesley is in for a long stay in the federal prison system.”

“I think so. Somehow, I can't work up a whole lot of sympathy for him.”

“I wonder what happened to turn him into a jerk. He had everything handed to him, money, a law firm, a position in the community. How could he squander that? Do you think his father expected too much from him?”

“No. I think Lloyd Deming was right. Gilbert is a psychopath. In a sense, it's not his fault. If the shrinks are right, a psychopath is born that way. I've read that a sociopath is made, that is, his behavior is learned, or at least is the result of environmental conditions, such as unfeeling parents or something that the child can't control. But
a psychopath is born with some sort of brain anomaly that screws him up from birth. Neither his parents nor anybody else could have foreseen the problem or rectified it. But it'd take a psychologist or psychiatrist to sort all that out. I'm just speculating based on nothing more substantial than a little Internet research.”

“If you're right, it's a shame. Maybe Gilbert had no control over his actions.”

“It is a shame, but I don't think he was totally without control. The bigger shame is what psychopaths do to the people they cross paths with. They lie with impunity and without remorse. They're not even embarrassed by the lie when they're caught. On some level, D. Wesley must have known that nobody believed he was handling major legal matters, but he kept up the subterfuge. He probably couldn't help himself.”

“Do you think he knew that his actions, or at least some of them, were part of an attempt to kill me?”

“I don't know. He stuck to his story that he didn't know, but psychopaths are the best liars in the world. I don't think it would have made any difference to him if he had known. Your death would have had no meaning to him. It would be just something that happened and if he were the cause of it, well, so what? He wouldn't care. He didn't know how to care. He wasn't wired for either sympathy or empathy.”

“I wonder what we'll find out about Wally Delmer,” J.D. said.

“I'd like to have seen that interrogation.”

“I'd be more interested in seeing Frank Thomason's,” J.D. said.

“If they find him.”

“I've got a feeling the FBI knows exactly who he is. I guess we'll hear something from Parrish sooner or later.”

Her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID, grinned, and said, “Speak of the devil.”

She answered. “Hi, David. We were just talking about you.” She listened for a few moments and then said, “Okay, thanks. If you hear anything, please let me know.” She touched the off button.

“What's up?”

“Wally Delmer is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes. When the FBI went to arrest him this morning, he was nowhere to be found. His bed had been slept in, but he wasn't at home. One of the neighbors said she saw a hearse pull up in front of his house at about three this morning and watched as they brought a body out. At least it looked like a body. It was on a gurney and covered with a sheet.”

“And the FBI can't find a funeral home in the area that picked up the body,” I said.

“That's what Parrish told me.”

“I think some of his buddies decided he was becoming a liability. The body was probably real and it was Delmer.”

“That's going to hurt this investigation.”

“Yours is pretty much done, isn't it? Apparently it was Bates who killed Peter Fortson, and probably the one who paid the kid in the panhandle to kill Rachel.”

“Yeah, but who ordered the deaths? And why?” J.D. asked.

“We may never know, but I think you can close your cold case.”

“We'll see. Maybe they'll run down Thomason. I'll call Kendall and see if he's heard that Wally's missing.”

I dialed Kendall's personal cell phone.

“How are things, Matt?”

“Good question. J.D. and I watched the FBI interrogation of D. Wesley Gilbert. It looks like they got most of what they need. But it turns out that Wally Delmer is missing and the FBI can't find him.”

“I heard that. But I think I know where he is.”

“Where?”

“In an interrogation room in the basement of an agency safe house in Northern Virginia.”

“You've got him?”

“We do.”

“Has he given up anything yet?”

“They're still working on him, so I don't know. We'll find out pretty soon, I think.”

“That's good news. David Parrish called and wanted me to ask you if your people have any information on the whereabouts of Frank Thomason?”

“I do, as a matter of fact. He's in the back of an agency van on the way to the same safe house where Mr. Delmer is in residence.”

“You and your people never fail to amaze me. But why is your agency involved in what looks like a run-of-the-mill murder that seems to have resulted from a falling out among a bunch of crooks?”

“There's more to tell on this, Matt, but the bottom line is they had a hand, perhaps unwittingly, in trying to take Jock out along with you and J.D.”

“How?”

“I'll give you the details later, but they were the money men, the bagmen for some very bad jihadists, including Abu Bakr, the bomber, and his brother Youssef.”

“I'll be damned,” I said. “I haven't seen or heard anything from Youssef since last weekend. Do you think they've left the country?”

“I wouldn't bet on that. You're still in danger. Stay alert. I'll let you know what we find out from Thomason and Delmer.”

“I take it you don't want me to report any of this to Parrish.”

“No. Let's keep it quiet for now. If we get the information we need, I don't think Parrish will want to put them in front of a jury. They're connected to some very bad people and national security is always at
risk from these guys. We'll go after them and take care of them as soon as we get the information we need. Sad to say, neither Thomason nor Delmer is likely to survive the exercise.”

“That's pretty harsh.”

“The word needs to go out again and again. You fuck with one of my agents or his family, and your death is the unavoidable consequence.”

T
HURSDAY
, N
OVEMBER
6

F
RANK
T
HOMASON CAME
awake slowly. Through the fog of his returning consciousness, he began to understand that he was bound in some way to a chair, his arms strapped to the chair arms, his ankles restrained against the chair legs. He was naked and what appeared to be electrodes were attached to his lower arms just above the wrist, to his ankles, and, most concerning, to his penis. He recognized them because they looked like the little pads they stick on your chest when they're doing an electrocardiogram at the doctor's office. Wires ran from the electrodes to a car battery sitting on the concrete floor about five feet in front of his chair. A small table and a straight-back chair were placed next to the battery and what looked like a rheostat sat on the table. There was nothing else in the room, which was about fifteen feet square, with walls of concrete block and a ceiling that consisted of beams with some kind of soundproofing tiles stretching between them. There were no windows and only one door.

Where the hell was he? Had he somehow pissed off his masters?

He was puzzling this all out when the door opened and a short man built like a refrigerator and wearing a ski mask walked in. “Good day, Mr. Thomason.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Sloane.”

“Where am I?”

“In a very safe place.”

“Who do you work for?”

“In the end, I work for you and all the other taxpayers. I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.” Sloane let out a guttural laugh, a threatening sound that was so feral that Thomason felt his sphincters tighten.

“You're not from the government. What do you want from me? Why am I tied up in this contraption?”

“Do you recognize the gadgets attached to your body?” Sloane had moved to the table.

“They look like electrodes.”

Sloane moved the dial on the rheostat and a current of electricity, a very mild shock, coursed through Thomason's body.

“What the fuck,” Thomason said.

“That was just a little tingle, not enough to hurt, less electricity than the stuff the physical therapist sends to hurt muscles to help in the healing. But there's a lot more where that came from. Want to get a little taste?”

“No,” Thompson said quickly.

“Good. Did you notice the little electrode attached to your dick?”

“Yes.” Thompson looked down in dismay.

“I haven't turned that one on. If you give me any kind of bull-shit answer to any of my questions, I'm going to fry your gonads. Understand?”

Thomason gulped. “Yes.”

The door opened again. Thomason looked up and saw two burly men wearing ski masks, each holding an arm of a naked man who appeared groggy and unstable on his feet. His face was bruised, one eye closed. A trickle of blood ran from the man's hairline tracing a red line down his face. “Sorry, Sloane,” one of the men said. “I didn't
realize the room was in use.” The door slammed shut, but not before Frank Thomason recognized Wally Delmer.

“What happened to that guy?”

“Bullshit answers, probably. They're looking for one of the rooms wired for electrical interrogation that's not in use. I thought we'd just skip all the rough stuff. My arms are kind of tired and I don't have a lot of time to waste with you. I tee off at my country club in about two hours, and I need some lunch before then. I've got to go to the bathroom. I'll be back in a minute.”

Sloane was gone for fifteen minutes. Thomason sat and thought about how much information he could hold back. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life in some supermax prison, but neither did he want his head sawed off by a kid hopped up on religious fanaticism. Then the screams started. He could hear them clearly, probably from the next room. Wally? Most likely. The screams went on for five solid minutes, and then total silence. Was Wally dead or just passed out? Thomason didn't want to know.

Sloane came back into the room, carrying a plastic bottle of water. He offered it to Thomason, who nodded. Sloane held it to his lips and let him swallow as much as he wanted. When he was done, Sloane said, “Are you ready to talk?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

T
HURSDAY
, N
OVEMBER
6

D
AVE
K
ENDALL CALLED
me a little after three that afternoon. “Thomason was very forthcoming.”

“I guess you used a little persuasion.”

“The appearance of persuasion, you might say. We hooked him up to a car battery and our interrogator might have suggested that a false answer would be a shocking event.”

“Can you get enough juice out of a battery like that?”

“No. The most we could get would cause maybe a tingle in Mr. Thomason, but he didn't know that. We also had one of our staff make-up artists make our buddy Wally Delmer up to look like he'd been beaten and was about to be hooked up to a battery himself. A few screams recorded by a local community theater actor got Thomason's attention pretty quickly.”

“You are truly a devious bastard, my friend.”

“I am. And it worked. We got a lot of information out of him. It dovetails pretty much with stuff we already know.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Ishmael's Children is part of al-Qaeda. They're a particularly nasty little group and Abu Bakr, the bomb maker, was sort of an independent contractor on loan to it. Ishmael's Children was on our radar, but we'd never connected Abu Bakr to them. Thomason told us he
was sending money to Youssef and had used Wally Delmer to provide a man to assist Youssef. That was probably Bates.”