“No shit?”
“Nope. And he never checked out. He paid cash for three weeks, and it’s been two and a half. The hotel probably hasn’t touched his stuff.”
“Tell Jenny I love her.”
“Will do. How’d you guys do with Brogan?”
“I think we scared him. He looked nervous from the beginning, and I think we made it a lot worse. But I’ll tell you, I wish you and David were here. Interrogation was never my strong suit.”
“Maybe later. Right now, I have to go read Jen’s report, and David has to interrogate Ricky Wilford.”
“Ricky?”
“Yeah. Darryl’s younger brother. He works at the store the Colt was stolen from.”
“No shit. Well, good, tell Dave I said to jump all over his ass.”
She grinned at her partner, who was still standing in the doorway, a shocked look on his face.
“I’ll pass along the message, Ken. Go find your fax.”
“I’m on my way.”
Alex hung up and turned toward David.
“The hotel?”
“Yeah, the Doubletree. Who knows, maybe there’ll be fingerprints from the guys who hired them, eh?”
“With the luck you and Mark had today, I wouldn’t doubt it.”
*******************************************************
Ricky Wilford was just twenty three years old. He’d been working at Riley’s Sporting Goods in Baltimore for four years. From a salesman, he’d advanced to assistant manager. Riley’s was planning on opening a second store, close to Annapolis. Wilford was being groomed to be that manager.
Now, however, it appeared he may never get that promotion. In fact, he’d probably lose his job.
It took two hours, but after constant questioning, Wilford broke down crying. He admitted giving his brother his set of keys to the store, and had explained how the alarm system worked. The plan, he said, was that Darryl and his friends would enter the store, steal the weapons and clean out what money they could find. After resetting the alarm and locking the door, they would then back the truck into the front door, so as not to leave the idea that they had used any keys.
Ricky’s part, besides loaning the keys, was to disable the security cameras.
The members of the task force who were still at the office had gathered in the control center once again. Ben and David were relating the results of their interrogation to the rest of the team.
“We asked him who all was involved, and he said it was his brother, and his brothers friends.” Ben leaned back drinking a cup of coffee. “I asked him if it was George Mather, and he said no, George was out of town.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, right about then he was probably in eastern Europe, getting his buddies shot up.”
“Well, Tom and I are planning to go to the hotel Wilford stayed at, right after we check in with NYPD. Maybe someone will remember him, and whether or not he met with anyone else.” Rudy and his partner Tom Jorgen would be leaving for New York City that evening. Tom had gone home to pick up his bag. He’d meet Rudy at the airport.
“You might also check with the NGA office up there, Rudy. They call this one in Washington the national office, but it’s mainly a lobbying center. The one in New York is supposed to be member support.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll be happy to show an FBI agent around, Alex.”
“You never know. Besides, if you tell them you’re investigating the murder of one of their members, they might even be nice.”
“Good point. I guess in a way we are doing that, aren’t we?”
The agents shared a grin at that.
Cliff was tapping his fingers on the table. “David, Ben, couldn’t your suspect give you any names at all?”
“Nope,” Ben replied. “He said he never liked the guys, and only met ‘em once or twice.”
“Damn. That means we really didn’t get new information from him, did we?”
“We did get one thin’. We got an address. As soon as Mark’s done, he and I are gonna go see what Mr. Wilford’s apartment can tell us.”
“Good going. Call the Nightwatch here if you need back up or the lab boys.”
“Will do.”
Cliff looked over the notes he’d made during the day. “By the way, Alex, I understand you got a call from ballistics?”
“Yeah, Mike Clarin confirmed a seventy-five percent probability that the rifle used to kill Steven Fletcher was a Romanian Dremov 39 millimeter.”
“Why’d it take him so long?”
“Dremovs are illegal in the states, and they don’t see many used because they’re so expensive. He had to dig to find the pattern in the database, but once he compared them, he said they were a good match. Without the gun, he can’t go higher than seventy-five percent in his report. He personally thinks it’s more like ninety, but he won’t say that officially.”
Cliff nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’d say we got a lot accomplished today, folks. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing the Justice Department that Mather and Wilford killed our east coast victims.”
Alex nodded. “Now we just need to find who hired them to do it.”
“You still think it was something from the Klan, or some Nazi’s, Alex?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. These two seem to have some kind of ties to hate groups, but nothing that’s concrete. There’s only the tattoo on Mather’s arm. Now, we can tie Kyle Brogan to Derek White and Mallory Gerlach through their family, and we can connect Brogan to Mather and Wilford by the car. But the car was reported stolen, and Brogan was never seen or identified at any of the other scenes. Ken faxed me a copy of his notes from the Brogan interview, and he, of course, denied being in any of those places.”
“Nothing else in the report from Jenny?”
“Sorry, Cliff. Lots of interesting facts. Nothing that connects. We’ve got people heading to all the known locations that Wilford stayed, including Atlanta and Florida, with Rudy and Tom covering New York. We’ve talked to his past employers, and his former associates. Nothing.”
“His family?”
“His father died ten years ago, his mother retired and lives in Florida. His older sister married George Mather, and died two years ago. He’s got a younger brother, Ricky, who’s now facing charges, thanks to our efforts. There’s a younger sister, Cynthia, who’s in college in California. She, however, is estranged from the family.”
“So we can’t connect his family with hate groups like we can Brogan’s.” Cliff sounded disappointed.
“No. I’d love to tell you that Derek White and Mallory Gerlach were our culprits, and that Brogan was the middle man. But as of right this minute, there’s no proof whatsoever.”
“Hell,” David’s voice was full of frustration, “we can’t find a connection between Brogan and the killers, how are we gonna connect Mather and Wilford to Derek White?”
Alex’s mind flashed to the picture she’d seen earlier in the day. There was something she remembered, but then she lost it. “Can you repeat what you just said, David?”
He looked at her. “What, about not being able to connect Brogan and the killers?”
“No, about Mather and Wilford, and Derek White.”
“We can’t connect them?”
She nodded. “We can’t connect them.” There was still something about the picture …
Alex moved to the computer she’d been working on earlier, and brought up the enhanced area of the photograph. She just stared at it.
Ben looked at it over her shoulder. “Looks like two guys shakin’ hands, Alex.”
“Exactly. But who are they?”
“Can’t tell.”
Cliff sighed. “All right. Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Instead of chasing Wilford and Mather, maybe we should find out what White and Gerlach have been doing. If we go through the surveillance files on their groups, maybe we can—”
“That’s it!” Alex was on her feet, and running towards her office. They could hear a crash of some kind from the hallway, and Alex yelling, “Sorry, Jodi!”