Airtight (19 page)

“I did something you’re not going to like.” She said it in a challenging way, as if she was comfortable with what she did, and not worried about my reaction.

“I already don’t like that sentence.”

“I hired Lou Rodriguez to find Gallagher.”

“Shit, Julie … what do you mean ‘find’?”

“He’s not going to do anything, just keep track of where he is.”

“Keep track of where he is? He’s been following me. He’s probably at the bar in the next room right now.”

“Then Lou’s on the stool next to him,” she said, obviously annoyed by my attitude.

“Great. So the bad guys are following me, Gallagher’s following them, and Rodriguez is following Gallagher. I’m leading a procession. I’m like the goddamn Grand Marshal of the Rose Bowl Parade.”

“Maybe he’ll lead Rodriguez to Bryan. Probably not. But he’s not going to walk away from this, Luke. No matter how it turns out. I wouldn’t be doing my job if he did. Nor would you. He’s a kidnapper, at a minimum.”

She didn’t say what the maximum was, but she didn’t have to. She was right, of course, but on some level it didn’t sit well with me, and she could see it.

“What’s your problem with this, Luke? That he’ll make Rodriguez, and take it out on Bryan?”

“No, he couldn’t care less who’s following him, or why.”

“Then what?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but my mouth seemed to make the decision for my brain, and started talking without permission. “I killed his brother, Julie. I guess on some deep level I understand what he’s feeling. I don’t know what I’d do in his shoes, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”

She spoke in a much softer voice, trying to keep herself from crying. “You might find yourself in his shoes.”

I nodded. “And then I’d feel completely different. Then I’d find him and kill him. And on some level he’d understand that completely, and he’d be fine with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he’s decided that his life is over, one way or the other.”

“If he hurts Bryan,” she said, “it will be.”

Got your e-mail too late … you’ve already had your dinner. Not much for me to say to Julie, anyway. Just tell her not to feel guilty about this; she had nothing to do with it.

Remember the time you were going to have a fight with Randy Singer after school? Nobody could believe I wasn’t going to watch, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to see you lose, and I thought you might.

I never remembered you losing at anything, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I still do.

This was not going the way Chris Gallagher expected.

It was actually going far better, which was causing him to reassess. Nothing wrong with that, not in his mind. A battle plan only lasts until you first meet the enemy. Then you make the necessary adjustments in the field.

Luke Somers was better than he thought, far better. He had dug deeply into the investigation, and was on his way to creating reasonable doubt as to Steven’s guilt. Which might have been enough, had Steven been allowed to go before a jury.

Somers had recognized the inherent difficulty in proving Steven innocent without finding the real guilty party. Because whoever killed Brennan had also set Steven up to take the fall; they had planted the bloody clothes, and called in the anonymous tip.

The violence interested him in that it was counterintuitive. It was targeted at those intent on mining the land, yet if Somers was right, Brennan was likely to be opposed to the miners’ position. Why would the same killers be going after players on both sides?

He discounted the possibility that there were two separate sets of killers; the world didn’t work that way. And the fact that Brennan was killed in a knife attack, rather than the type of explosions that did the subsequent damage, did not surprise him. On the Brennan hit, they wanted someone to blame, and Steven was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had Brennan’s garage been blown up, Steven could not have been set up as easily.

The fate of Bryan Somers, in Chris’s mind, still very much hung in the balance. Someone was going to die for Steven. If it had to be Bryan, that was fine with Chris. Justice would be served, since no matter who killed Brennan, it didn’t change the fact that Luke Somers had gunned down Steven.

But if the real killer was found in time, then he would have been the one to set Steven up. And then Chris would see to it that he would die, and Bryan would be spared.

One way or another, Steven would get his justice.

So the goal was still to find out who killed Daniel Brennan, and to do so fast. Somers would do what he would do, but Chris could operate in a way that Somers could not. And he was about to do exactly that.

Chris believed that the one person most likely to have all the answers was Richard Carlton. The money was always the key, and Carlton was the one who had walked away with a fortune.

So Richard Carlton was the person who was about to receive a visit from Chris Gallagher.

Why was Michael Oliver chosen to die?

That was the question I was interested in, partly because I had run out of other things to be interested in. But on any level it was strange, which made it something I needed to understand.

I had Julie run a search on Oliver on something called LexisNexis. She had once assured me that if anyone was mentioned anywhere at any time for any reason, it would show up there. Ten minutes later she called to tell me that Oliver had never been mentioned in connection with the situation in Brayton anywhere in the media, at any time.

But he was very specifically targeted. He was at a dinner with five other employees of Hanson Oil and Gas, all of whom would be involved in the actual drilling operation. It would have seemed that from that group Oliver would have been the least likely candidate to be attacked.

He had merely performed his analytical function, and had done so in anonymity, at least as far as the people of Brayton were concerned. Between the Hanson and Carlton companies, there was a target-rich environment of people who were about to do damage to Brayton, yet Oliver was plucked from obscurity to die.

Frank Lassenger spent thirty years in the Army Corps of Engineers, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel six years ago. He had done it all, building and repairing dams, creating structural solutions for buildings that were in earthquake-threatened areas, advising mining companies on safety and structure, and even providing expert guidance for underground rescues. After leaving the service, he had done some private consulting, but nothing that kept him away from his kids and grandchildren for any length of time.

I know all this because we both like bagels.

There’s a bagel store I stop off at almost every morning on the way to work, and Frank is usually there. We got to talking about each other’s jobs; he was more interested in mine, and I was more interested in his.

I instructed officers to contact Frank and tell him that I needed to speak to him about a matter of great urgency. I knew Frank would respond, and he was waiting for me at the precinct when I got there. Frank is the type that if you need him, he is there. I really like that type.

“You know anything about fracking?” I asked.

“Some. I’ve never done it myself, but I’m familiar with it.”

“Ever heard of a guy named Michael Oliver?”

“The guy that got killed? Sure.”

“Did you know him before that?” I asked.

“By reputation.”

I was glad to hear that Frank was familiar with him. “What kind of reputation did he have?”

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “These companies are spending hundreds of millions, billions, of dollars to take energy from under the ground, sometimes under the ocean. They know it’s there, but until they go after it, they don’t really know how much or, more importantly, how easy it will be to get to.”

“So it’s a crap shoot?”

“Ever hear the term ‘dry well’? Anyway, people have to make the judgment about what’s there and what isn’t, and there are maybe fifteen people in the industry who are considered the best at doing that. Michael Oliver was one of those people.”

“Could he be wrong?’

“Sure, anything’s possible. But if Michael Oliver said ‘drill here,’ I’d invest my money in it, no questions asked.” He laughed, “Well, of course I’d have questions, but you know what I mean. And I don’t really have any money.”

I showed him copies of the information that Gallagher had gotten from Kagan and Rhodes’s room, except for the information about Carlton and the Hanson executives. He seemed most interested in the schematic layouts of the land, as I knew he would.

“Oliver prepared these?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Not sure. Why?”

“They’re well done, very thorough, so it was probably him.”

“Does it show where the natural gas is?”

“It shows where Oliver thought it was, and based on what I see, I would say he was right.”

“So there’s nothing unusual about it?” I asked. “I was struggling to come up with a reason that Oliver was a specific target, but that reason probably did not exist.”

“Well, there’s one thing that surprises me, but there’s probably a good explanation for it.”

“What’s that?”

He pointed to the map. “You see these arrows? That’s where Oliver was telling them to drill.”

“So?”

“So I don’t know why they’d drill in that many places, and it’s too spread out. You drill in the best spots, and then expand if you have to. He was telling them to start out wider. He must have had his reasons, but I don’t know what they were.”

“Would Oliver be important to the process from now on?” I asked. “Would they have needed him to do the drilling?”

Frank shook his head. “I doubt it. I’m sure he’d told them all he knew, and they had his notes and reports. Now it’s just a question of going down there and sucking the stuff out. Guys in his role become expendable once they’ve finished their analysis.”

I nodded. “Expendable people seem to have a short life expectancy.”

Bryan … I’m not going to lose this time, either.

There’s been a lot of violence surrounding this Brayton situation. You may be seeing it on television. Gallagher is going to understand that it’s all tied in to Brennan’s death. I will make him understand, and at the very least he’ll give you more time.

Do not give up hope. We’ve been through a lot, Brother, and we’ll make it through a lot more.

It took Bryan almost six hours to break into the box.

That was not a lot, when you consider that it took almost five days to even notice that it was there. It was a fairly large metal box, technically a strongbox, and it was in the kitchen pantry, partially hidden by shelves and dishes.

The reason it took so long to break open was not just that it was locked with a fairly good-sized padlock. It was also just at the end of the range that Bryan’s chain allowed him to reach, so prying it open became that much more awkward. But with the help of a heavy screwdriver that was in a kitchen drawer, he was finally able to get it done.

The result was something of a disappointment. He hadn’t known what to expect, and his expectations had been low. Certainly there was not going to be a key to unlock the chains, thereby allowing him to get the hell out of there.

Only a slightly greater hope would be a handgun, locked away for safety. He might have been able to shoot the chains off, though with his lack of familiarity with guns he knew he might kill himself in the process. Maybe he could have used it to shoot Gallagher if he returned; then they could at least die together.

The third hope, and the most realistic one, was that there was some clue to his location, something that he could use to help Luke find him.

But he was zero for three. All that was in the box were rations, labeled US Army MREs. Bryan had no idea what that meant, but he assumed they were long-lasting rations for soldiers out in the field. Never having been in the army himself, he had no idea if they were any good, but doubted it.

In any event, he had no need to experiment with them; food supply was not his problem, air supply was.

And Bryan had already planned his last meal.

He would dine on the two pills that Gallagher left him.

It was turning into a public relations fiasco for Hanson Oil and Gas.

Of course, Hanson’s bottom line did not rely on public relations, so it could fairly easily absorb the damage. But no one wants their company to look bad, especially in a part of the country so close to Wall Street.

Hanson’s CEO, Randall Murchison, was kept updated on the calls and e-mails coming from the public. They were overwhelmingly negative, as was to be expected. Also in line with expectations was the fact that very few shareholders were among the complainers. Those who stood to benefit financially from the Brayton natural gas find were inclined to be tolerant of it.

Ironically, the death of Michael Oliver, while a damaging blow to the company, provided a public relations bright spot for Hanson. Through Oliver, they had become the victims of vigilante justice. People didn’t countenance water and air pollution, but that was a somewhat less immediate and dramatic danger than bombs blowing up in parking lots.

There was a shareholders meeting coming up, and Murchison wanted it to go as smoothly as previous ones. He didn’t want angry townspeople to storm the meeting, yelling their claims that Hanson was going to be poisoning their children. Murchison was known to be a bit of a loose cannon, prone to straight talk that sometimes got him in trouble. But he didn’t want to be fighting with a bunch of panicked and angry parents on national television.

So he placed a call to Richard Carlton. The deal hadn’t officially closed yet, and the money therefore hadn’t been paid, so this was when Murchison would have the most leverage.