“Listen, Dayton.” The sergeant’s voice grew louder. “You need to get on the same page with the rest of us. We all feel bad about Craig. He was a good kid. But we need to focus and do our jobs.”
“If I’m not conducting this case up to your standards,” Dale said, his voice getting louder, “then take me off, but if not, then—” It clicked, midsentence. He turned away from the sergeant and ran across the lot.
He picked up his pace. “Hold on guys. Back away from the car.”
The officers looked confused, but they backed away. Dale knelt underneath the car and spotted the casing and detonator. “This is great news. If we have a demolitions expert, this is going to lead us somewhere.”
Dale didn’t bother to wait around for the bomb squad. They knew their job.
He grabbed Jimmy and got in the car. He had not mouthed off. He had found a bomb and had probably learned as much from the crime scene as they ever would. For a moment he thought he was doing pretty well.
But he was going to have to tell Craig’s family before they heard it on the news. He could do little for them, but at least he could tell them in person. He loved being a cop, but delivering the death notification to a family always made him feel like a failure.
Chapter 25
Outside the house, Mike had mounted hidden security cameras at each corner. He positioned motion sensors on the surrounding grounds as well as tiny, potent booby traps. Then he hooked up a remote-control joystick before handing the controls over to Calvin, who maneuvered the joystick back and forth. From his seat he could control every mounted camera and motion sensor around the “fortress.”
Mike then installed three phones with an unbreakable code that scrambled all communications coming in or going out. He’d also brought two military satellite phones with the same scrambling functions. The phone batteries would provide power for a full year. They were more for backup and when he was on the move. When Calvin was in the computer room, he was to use the landline phones—three instead of one, for double backup.
Also, for backup, Mike had brought military wireless servers that would receive Calvin’s signal, boost it and then provide him with continuous internet access and untraceable e-mail.
He performed all of the outside duties while wearing a telephone lineman’s suit, to make it look like phone company work.
In four hours, the building and attic inside and outside had the finest defense and security system Mike had ever installed. Calvin felt fully relaxed for the first time in two days.
“That’s it,” Mike said with a smile. “You’re protected almost as well as Fort Knox now.”
“Thanks, Mike. A strong defense beats a good offense every time.”
Just ask the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
They had a beer in the garage and broke for lunch. Rachel had left the men alone to sort out their details.
“So, Calvin, have you found out anything more about your situation?”
He took a drink. “Yeah, I’ve been doing some digging.” He brought Mike over to a terminal. “I’ve started updating and collecting everything I could find on Grant in my database, including all the articles I’ve collected and stored in my file. Check this out. Grant is twenty-eight years older than Linda.”
“Yeah, I remember the wedding. That’s all the city could talk about.” It was Mike’s turn to drink.
Calvin pointed to a picture of the bride and groom. “Anything unusual?”
“What about it?”
“The background.”
“Is that Grant’s son?”
“Yeah. Shawn Grant.”
“He doesn’t look too happy.”
“He looks pretty pissed off to me.”
“Angry at dad robbing the cradle?”
“It’s only a picture, but a good place to start.”
“What else you got?”
“I googled the words ‘Las Vegas casino owners’ and three names appeared frequently: Doug Grant, Shawn Grant and Ace Sanders.”
Mike shrugged. “Sounds about right.”
“So I tried to find out as much as I could about the men.”
“What did you find?”
“Shawn Grant is the youngest man in Las Vegas to be a part owner of a casino and it’s said that he’s ready to take over for his father. Sanders—”
“Sanders is a lowlife.”
Calvin smiled. “You and I know that, but from the public’s perspective, Sanders is popular and respected. He’s contributed a lot to the city and has supported other businesses. But we also know the rumors about the hatred between Doug Grant and Sanders. Sanders made consistent attempts to buy the Greek. He has a mean, quick temper. He’s a ruthless leader and womanizer—rumor is he’s banging Linda Grant. I have first-hand knowledge that he employed Pitt for dirty work he didn’t want to be involved in. The work was perfect for Pitt. Dirty knows how to handle dirty.”
“What did you find out about Doug Grant?”
“Not much yet. But despite what Pitt told me yesterday, I had never heard Grant’s name mentioned for any job during the years I’ve been collecting. Sanders had been Pitt’s biggest and most important client. And anyone who conducted business with Pitt is either crooked or greedy.”
“So Sanders has Grant’s wife and casino if he kills him?”
“I’m not so sure about the casino. Shawn Grant will be running things now and I doubt he’s in any hurry to sell to Sanders.”
“Do you think Sanders would actually go that far? Kill a man?”
Calvin shook his head. “I’m not sure yet. I checked to see if the three men had conducted business together but came up empty.”
The two men sat in silence for a while. Calvin got up. “Want another beer?”
“No, not until the job is done. Sit down, I’ve been thinking about your backup emergency plan. When I was outside, I had an idea.”
Calvin sat back down as Mike continued.
“I scoped the attic and think my idea is plausible. I’ll cut a hole in your roof and set a two-foot-wide board outside that leads across to the roof of the neighboring building. I’ll build a secret trap door that covers the hole. The board will be short enough to store in the attic, ready to be used when needed.”
Mike and Calvin took a swig of the canned brew.
“It’s perfect. Cops never look up when they’re surveying a house. We’ll set up a smoke screen for them. They’ll be so busy with the explosions that they won’t see you escaping. I’ll plant tiny detonation devices underneath the floorboards. If there ever comes a time when you need to evacuate in a hurry and you don’t want the cops nosing around in your equipment, the failsafe will protect your investment.”
He paused for a moment and then continued. “When the time is right—and you’ll know when that is—all you have to do is activate the program on your system and the timing device will give you an adequate countdown to escape before the massive explosion. Of course, because of the multiple-server backup system that I installed three years ago, all of your data will still be saved, but on a remote terminal where the cops won’t have access to it.”
Calvin liked it.
“There’s more. That’s the beauty of this system.” Mike said. “Not only is your system protected by a password, an intruder must also get past a retina scanner and fingerprint test. A lot more than you really need, but it’s all part of the package.”
Mike put Calvin and Rachel through the procedure of having their eyes and fingers scanned.
It was early evening by the time they were finished and everything was set up. Mike packed his tools into the van and slid the side door shut. He shook Calvin’s hand, accepted the rest of Calvin’s payment and jumped into the vehicle.
Before pulling out, he rolled down his widow. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Here.” Mike threw a package to Calvin. “Your new IDs.”