McCaleb shook his head and said, “It’s possible, I guess, but nothing makes sense. I mean, what did Gloria Torres have that would make her a pro hitter’s target? She worked in the print shop at the newspaper.”
“It could have been something she saw. Remember what you said Friday about there being some connection between the two, Torres and Cordell? Well, maybe it’s still the same, only the connection is something they saw or something they knew.”
McCaleb nodded.
“What about the icons, the things taken from Cordell and Torres?” he asked, more to himself than to Winston.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s a hitter who likes to take souvenirs. Maybe he had to prove to his employer that he had hit the right people. Is there anything in the reports about anything being taken from Kenyon?”
“Not that I have seen yet.”
His mind was a jumble of possibilities. Winston’s question made him realize that in his excitement he had called her too soon. He still had a stack of unread Kenyon files. The connection he was looking for might be there.
“Terry?”
“Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking. Look, let me call you back. I’ve got some more stuff to go through and I might be able-”
“What stuff do you have?”
“I think I’ve got everything, or almost everything, that Spencer wasn’t telling you.”
“I would say that that is going to buy you back into the captain’s good graces.”
“Well, don’t say anything to him yet. Let me figure out a little more about this and I’ll call you.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah.”
“Then say it. I don’t want you pulling any bureau bullshit on me.”
“Hey, I’m retired, remember? I promise.”
An hour and a half later McCaleb finished going through the bureau documents. The adrenaline that had jazzed him before had dissipated. He had learned a lot of new information as he read the reports but nothing that hinted at a connection between Kenyon and Cordell and Torres.
The rest of the bureau documents contained a lengthy printout of the names, addresses and investment histories of the two thousand victims of the savings and loan collapse. And neither Cordell nor Torres had been investors.
The bureau had had to consider every victim of the S amp;L collapse a suspect in the Kenyon shooting. Each name on the investors list was backgrounded and screened for criminal connections and other flags that might elevate it to viable suspect status. A dozen or so investors were raised to that level but then eventually cleared through full field investigations.
The investigation had then shifted its focus toward theory two, that Kenyon’s phantom was real and had ordered the hit on the man who had stolen millions for him.
This theory gathered momentum after it was learned that Kenyon had been about to reveal whom he had turned over the stolen S amp;L funds to. According to a statement from Kenyon’s attorney, Stanley LaGrossa, Kenyon had decided to cooperate with authorities in hopes of getting the U.S. Attorney’s office to petition the judge who sentenced him to reduce his penalty. LaGrossa said that on the morning Kenyon was murdered, they had planned to meet to discuss how LaGrossa would go about negotiating his cooperation.
McCaleb flipped back through the reports and reread the short transcript of the phone call Kenyon made to LaGrossa just minutes before the murder. The brief exchange between the lawyer and his client appeared to back up LaGrossa’s claim that Kenyon was ready to cooperate.
The bureau theory, outlined in a supplemental report to LaGrossa’s statement, was that Kenyon’s silent partner either was taking no chances and eliminated Kenyon or he eliminated Kenyon after specifically learning that his partner was planning to cooperate with government investigators. The supplemental report noted that federal agents and prosecutors had not yet been approached by the Kenyon camp with the overture of cooperation. That meant that if there was a leak to the silent partner, it came from Kenyon’s people, possibly even LaGrossa himself.
McCaleb got up and poured a glass of orange juice, emptying one of the half-gallon cartons he had bought on Saturday morning. As he drank, he thought about what all of the Kenyon information meant to the investigation. It clouded things for sure. Despite the early jolt of adrenaline, he now realized he was basically back to ground zero, no closer to knowing who killed Gloria Torres and why than he was when he opened the package mailed from Carruthers.
As he rinsed out the glass, he noticed two men coming down the main gangway to the docks. They were dressed in almost matching blue suits. Anybody in a suit stood out on the docks-usually, it was a bank loan officer come to chain down a boat for repossession. But McCaleb knew better this time. He recognized the demeanor. They were coming for him. Vernon Carruthers must have been found out.
Quickly, McCaleb went to the table and gathered up the bureau documents. He then split off the sheaf of pages that listed the names, addresses and other information about the savings and loan collapse. He put that thick packet in one of the overhead cabinets in the kitchen. The rest of the documents he shoved into his leather bag, which he then put into the cabinet under the chart table.
He slid the salon door open and stepped out into the cockpit to greet the two agents. He closed and locked the door behind him.
“Mr. McCaleb?” the younger one said. He had a mustache, daring by bureau standards.
“Let me guess, Nevins and Uhlig.”
They didn’t look happy about being identified. “Can we come aboard?”
“Sure.”
The younger one was introduced as Nevins. Uhlig, the senior agent, did most of the talking.
“If you know who we are, then you know why we are here. We don’t want this to get any messier than it has to be. Especially taking into account your service to the bureau. So if you give us the stolen files, it can all end right here.”
“Whoa,” McCaleb said, holding his hands up. “Stolen files?”
“Mr. McCaleb,” Uhlig said. “It has come to our attention that you are in the possession of confidential FBI files. You are no longer an agent. You should not be in possession of these files. As I just said, if you want to make this a problem for you, we can make it a problem for you. But all we really want is the files back.”
McCaleb stepped over and sat on the gunwale. He was trying to think about how they knew and it came back to Carruthers. It was the only way. Vernon must have gotten jammed up in Washington and had to give McCaleb up. But it was unlike his old friend to do that, no matter what pressure they put on him.
He decided to trust his instincts and call the bluff. Nevins and Uhlig knew Carruthers had run the ballistics laser comparison at McCaleb’s request. That was no secret. They must have then assumed that Carruthers would have forwarded him copies oaf the computer files.
“Forget it, guys,” he finally said. “I don’t have any files, stolen or otherwise. You got bad info.”
“Then how’d you know who we were?” Nevins asked.
“Easy. I found out today when you guys went to the sheriff’s office and told them to keep me out of the case.”
McCaleb folded his arms and looked past the two agents to Buddy Lockridge’s boat. Buddy was sitting in the cockpit, sipping from a can of beer and watching the scene with the two suits on The Following Sea.
“Well, we’re going to have to take a look around, then, to make sure,” Uhlig said.
“Not without a warrant and I doubt you’ve got a warrant.”
“We didn’t need one after you gave us permission to enter and search.”
Nevins stepped over to the salon door and tried to slide it open. He found it was locked. McCaleb smiled.
“Only way you’re getting in there is to break it, Nevins. And that won’t look much like permission granted, you ask me. Besides, you don’t want to do that with an uninvolved witness watching.”