Back from the Brink Page 10

  “Can’t decide?” Lars prompted.

  “I really want the burger and curly fries,” she said. “But I’ll take a chicken Caesar salad and a side of raw veggies.”

  Lars almost stumbled and pulled up short. “Even now?” Because in the clutch, they were used to eating whatever they could choke down, and if it was hot they had really scored.

  “Especially now,” she said. If she could keep it good even under pressure, then old habits were broken. “I’m running again,” she revealed. “Well, a slow jog with a lot of walking in between.”

  “How many miles?”

  “Five and a quarter.”

  He whistled through his teeth. “How long have you been back at it?”

  “Two months.”

  He nodded. “So, you are seeing someone,” he said.

  “Because I’m eating right and exercising?”

  “Yes, and because you were all but stuttering earlier, when Calder brought up the relationship funnies. And right now you’re about to blush.”

  “I don’t blush.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  She considered drawing her weapon but decided it would be overkill.

  “So what?” she said instead.

  His eyebrows shot skyward. “Yeah? Anyone I know?”

  “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “So it’s gotten that far?”

  She speared him with a glance. “Not even my girlfriends ask so many questions.”

  “You don’t have any,” he returned. “Casualty of the job—not a lot of time to build relationships. Which is why I’m happy to see it. Took a hell of a long time for you to mate up.”

  “Mate up?”

  “Well, you don’t hook up. That’s not you.”

  She stopped mincing words. “Small town. People would talk,” she said.

  “True that,” he agreed, and changed his tone, resigned to her fate. “So, salad and veggies.”

  “Yeah, makes me like me less too.”

  Nicole walked around the Yukon and climbed into the driver’s seat. In front of her, Lars started his engine and pulled out. She had a few calls to make. She wanted to see the composite the department’s sketch artist had drawn according to Tandy’s memory. By now, four hours since starting the process, he had to have something viable. Something they could get onto the evening news, show around town. And she needed to touch base with her desk sergeant. Blue Mesa was pretty quiet between ski season and the summer sun and fun, but she had two thousand miles of jurisdiction to keep tabs on.

  But first, she pressed speed dial for Jordan. He answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey, son. What’s up?”

  “Playing a little cribbage,” he returned, and Nicole hooted. She couldn’t help it; that was definitely laugh-out-loud material. Jordan loved Mrs. Neal. She was the grandmother he’d never had. And he was a trooper when it came to sampling the woman’s seasonal desserts and playing games most children Jordan’s age had never heard of. “Who’s winning?”

  “I am, of course.” And she could hear the good cheer in his voice. “But only because she’s letting me. That’s her strategy. She’s easy on me when she’s teaching the game, but then she turns into a shark.”

  “You wouldn’t like it any other way.” Jordan lived for challenge.

  “True,” he said. “You coming home tonight?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Because I heard about the two agents.”

  “I’ve been working it for fourteen hours now,” she told him. “I’ll need sleep.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like they disappeared into thin air.” Evaporated.

  “Like Mayakl.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s from Thailand, I think. Or a country close to it—you know all about my impressive geography skills. Anyway, he slips in and out of buildings. Climbs them, sometimes thirty or forty stories with no gear. He’s gotten past the security system at the Louvre and later posted a selfie with the Mona Lisa. And no one can catch him. They call him xakas beabang, meaning thin air.”

  “You watch too much YouTube,” she said.

  “Where else would you get up-to-the-moment fascinating facts?”

  “Why does he do stuff that could get him killed?”

  “Some guys are like that, Mom. They ‘dance on the serrated blade of fear.’ ”

  “You get that from his bio?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” he admitted.

  “How did we get into this conversation?”

  “Because the agents are gone and they left no trace behind.”

  No trace. Had the agents been captured, or had this been some grand design to flee prosecution?

  Green and his higher-ups wouldn’t like her picking through their trash, but as far as motive went, if Monte or Baker was behind the missing evidence, it was a direct connection to their case. Nicole needed bank statements, for a start, and that would be her next call. A warrant.

  “Okay, buddy,” Nicole said. “Tell Mrs. Neal I won’t make it for dinner but definitely in time for the ten o’clock news.”

  The department had one officer who specialized in white-collar crime. Cases like identity theft and embezzlement, Ponzi schemes and fraud. She was also a deputy and at that moment was on patrol outside Jax Town. Nicole had looked at the duty roster that morning when she was moving players off the board and onto the scene at Lake Maria. She had the numbers of every one of her officers stored on her phone and began scrolling through her contacts. She hoped she had only one Jane, because she couldn’t remember the deputy’s last name. She was young, blonde, and freckled. Had a degree in computer forensics and lived only a few doors away from Nicole with a boyfriend and a bloodhound.

  Jane Casper. Yes, that was the one. Like Wyoming and like the ghost. She answered on the first ring.

  “Sheriff Cobain?”

  “Hi, Jane. Can you clock a little overtime?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Nicole couldn’t pull Jane from patrol—she was the only deputy covering a hundred plus square miles.

  “We need a warrant.” Nicole explained the circumstances, which were circumstantial at best. They had very little to present before the judge, except that the agents lives were currently considered in peril. “I want you to get that ready when you get off shift tonight so that you’re at the courthouse as soon as it opens tomorrow. And then I want you to spend the day following the money. Every little bit of it, beginning with the obvious—big deposits or transferring of large sums.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Are you assigned to patrol tomorrow?” Because Nicole would have to call in an off-duty officer to fill the spot.

  “It’s my day off.”

  “So more overtime,” Nicole offered.

  “That trip to Hawaii is getting closer.”

  She ended the call and started the Yukon. Green’s briefing was scheduled to start in fifteen minutes. Nicole pulled onto the Lake Road and followed its curving ribbon through mountain and mesa. She spoke to her sergeant while she drove.

  “A few domestic calls,” he reported. “A fire out on Colfax Road. Fire department got to it before it leapt from the house to the fields.”

  “Injuries?” she asked.

  “None. Grease fire, making breakfast as far as we know. The family got out quickly.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Two vehicular accidents, both on the interstate outside Adams. One fatality. One airlifted to Glacier Community, but he’ll make it. Otherwise, quiet as a convent.”

  The next call she made was purely because instinct was a grueling taskmaster.

  “Hi, Janice. Can I speak to Dr. Rose?”

  Jordan had a husky–Saint Bernard mix, Cooper, who was constantly on the prowl, rousting skunks and porcupines whenever he could find them, and so was a regular at the vet clinic.

  “Hi, Nicole. All okay
with Cooper?”

  “If leaping tall fences and chewing on chair legs is okay.”

  The doctor laughed. “Yep, sounds perfectly normal. So what can I do for you, then?”

  “I heard a baby but saw a kitten.”

  That was met with a moment of silence.

  “Well, that’s disturbing,” the doctor said, but Nicole clearly heard the amusement in her voice.

  “You’re not worried,” Nicole said.

  “Not even a little.”

  “Because it’s common for kittens to sound like newborn babies?”

  “For the adult females, yes. They’re called queens, and their dramatics increase during the time of heat.”

  “When is that?”

  “Right about now,” Dr. Rose said. “You saw kittens today because the breeding season runs year-round, but it’s most intense during spring and fall. And while the cat calls are sharpest at night, I’ve heard them carrying on during the day too.”

  Nicole thanked the doctor and hung up. She was close to the command scene, and emergency vehicles were parked along the side of the road in both directions. In front of them were the news vans and a small milling of concerned citizens. Nicole managed to squeeze between an empty boat trailer and Lars’s cruiser. From where she sat, she could see officers and agents moving toward a central area. Forensics remained in the field.

  She climbed from the Yukon and made her way down the grassy slope to the center of activity. Officers parted and let her through. Agents shuffled aside reluctantly. That whole marked territory between agencies, it never grew old. She allowed a mental rolling of her eyes and stepped beside Lars.

  “Something come up?”

  “An itch I can’t scratch.” And she couldn’t pull men to sweep the woods behind the Embry place, not when they were so thin. But no harm in returning herself for another look around.

  Green started the briefing with a list of knowns and unknowns. There were no new details. He went through his expectations for closing the scene, then moved on to logistics.

  “We’re closing in on six o’clock. Sunset is at eight twenty-two tonight. Unless you are specifically approached by me, Sheriff Cobain, or Captain Oakley, everyone is off duty at eight thirty. Go home. Eat. Sleep. And we start up again in the morning. So let’s get to it.”

  Personnel from the three agencies spread out, and Green approached Nicole.

  “A word, Sheriff?” Green stopped in front of Nicole and anchored his hands on his hips. The wind off the water had chapped his pale skin.

  “What’s up?”

  “Where should I start?”

  “The party boat?” she suggested. She gave him no leeway. “We have a registered owner on it?”

  “There is none,” he said. “No private owner. Took so long figuring that out because the vessel was stolen from a showroom in Pantucket, Michigan.”

  “They have any leads on who?”

  Green shook his head. “Four guys, hooded and gloved. In and out in under two minutes. There’s video. Police in Pantucket said they looked like synchronized dancers, had it all figured out, in sweet harmony.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “Me too. Video’s on its way. Might already be in my email.”

  “So what else?” she asked.

  “We’ve recovered a department parka. It belongs to Monte, has his name stitched across the left shoulder.”

  That made her blood tick a little faster. “Where was it found?”

  He nodded over her head, due north. “It washed up on shore. Thing is, the coat is intact. Not a tear on it. Not a button missing. No gunshot residue at first pass, but a small spatter of blood under luminol. And I’m talking very small. Doesn’t mean it got there last night.” He shook his head, stumped. “Seems like he just unzipped it and dropped it into the lake, but that doesn’t make sense.” He caught her gaze. “I sent it with your forensic guys.”

  “Good.” So he was following her orders but wasn’t happy about it.

  “In fact, I want your department to take possession of all evidence. It’s really your show now, isn’t it?”

  “It’s looking that way,” she agreed. “Unless there was no crime committed here on the lake.” The ice man and the GSW at the house would remain her business, but if the missing agents were alive and well and on the run with a cache of stolen money or drugs and fleeing charges, then the sheriff’s department was involved by invitation only. “If your problem is strictly internal.”

  He gazed over her head, turned on his heels to broaden his horizon, then lowered his voice. “I had my computer geeks break through Monte’s password protections and bring up his files. There’s one in there titled exactly that: ‘It’s Internal.’ I want you to take a look at it. He’s got some kind of code writing going on. It’s consistent throughout but still a difficult read.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll know. Your name’s in it.”

  12

  Green had sent her a copy of Monte’s digital files. Nicole sat in the Yukon and skimmed through the pages on her phone. Yes, her name appeared, and beneath it a listing of numbers, each one six digits in length. Possibly crime codes, but that she would have to confirm with Green. Agencies had different codes with no overlap, and she had no more than a passing exposure to the interior machinations of the Border Patrol. She understood little else in the file, but the numbers were a good starting point. One, she hoped, would unlock the rest of the cryptic writing, which for the most part was a series of bulleted notes or single words followed by an asterisk.

  “This could as easily document his own criminal plans as implicate other agents,” she said.

  Lars was scrolling through his own copy of Monte’s files.

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “Why do you think your name is in here?”

  She shrugged. “And that list of what looks like penal codes.”

  “Your name isn’t hidden. And it’s the first thing, top of page one,” Lars said. “Makes me think he was getting ready to send it to you.”

  “You think?”

  “He trusted you—asked for you by name.”

  Nicole put the Yukon in gear and joined the light traffic on the Lake Road.

  “Franks said something to that regard as well,” Lars revealed. “He told me he’d heard we could be trusted.”

  And that the sooner Nicole took over the lead in the investigation, the better. She thought over all Lars had told her from his interview with Luke Franks. “He said look deeper into Green. We’re doing that.”

  “And he said Green was serving Monte up as our prime suspect,” Lars said.

  “Let’s not forget that.”

  “Where are we going?” Lars asked.

  Their dinners, even in their plastic bags and back seat location, made Nicole’s hunger flare. Lars had unapologetically ordered a cheeseburger and fries.

  “I want to stop by the Embry place,” she told him. “You eat while I drive, then we’ll switch off on the way back.”

  “Are we going to search the woods?”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  She glanced east, past Lars and out his window. It was the golden hour, when the sun lost its heat, turned a deceiving, buttery yellow. It was during this hour that it blinded when looked at directly, that its incredible glare made it impossible to see what stood hidden within it. It was on its descent west and cast the ice floes on Lake Maria in a softer hue. Even the water, a vibrant blue from the glacier melt, held its rays and glistened.

  She turned her attention back to the road. An MHP cruiser, bar lights rolling, blocked her way. Nicole stopped while an officer hustled back to his car and moved it enough that she could pass by. The scene would remain inaccessible well into the next day, but that wouldn’t stop some of the curious, who would take to the water from private docks. They had stopped all public lake activity within a mile of the sunken skiff while law enforcement motored in ever-tighter
circles, scanning the shore, the currents, the open alleyways between ice floes, searching for agents and evidence, hoping for rescue. At some point Green would have to make the call official, turning from a rescue to recovery. Nicole wanted to give him that time, to let it settle inside him. At the twenty-four-hour mark, she would officially assume the lead in the investigation and Green would be shuttled to the background, with limited access to evidence and few avenues available to him. Interagency efforts were always tenuous territory to navigate.

  “So we’re going to have another talk with Mr. Embry?”

  She listened to the rustling of the bag as Lars searched for his food and braced herself for the steamy aroma of freshly fried potatoes. She was an addict. Jordan was right about that. Nicole didn’t mind a salad here and there. She could walk past a veggie platter faster than zero to sixty, but fries and a quarter pounder, those were an anchor, her albatross, they sunk her.

  She must have made a noise, or perhaps she’d made a grab for Lars’s bag, because he leaned into his door, clutching his dinner, and asked, “You okay?”

  She spared him a glance. Burger in hand, gooey cheese melted over the side of the bun and dripping ketchup, Lars stared at her with worry.

  “Why does being good feel so bad?” She sang the words in an awful, warbling country twang.

  Lars laughed, then took a third of the burger in his first bite. He chewed, swallowed, then offered, “Want the fries?”

  “I want one,” she said. He handed her two.

  “A generous man.”

  He shrugged. “There’s a thin line between friend and codependent.”

  She ate them both. “A friend would leave it at that.”

  “What if you ask for more?”

  “The answer’s no.”

  But when he pulled the entire sleeve from the bag and further released the hot, salty scent of fried potatoes, Nicole caved.

  “Okay,” she said, “one more.”

  “Don’t you mean two?”