Collateral Damage (28 page)

“No, I'm sorry. Bud never introduced any of them to us. He always took them into the back room.”

“Do you remember any of them speaking?”

“Only to say hello or that they were there to see Bud if he was in, something like that.”

“Were they all speaking English?”

“Yes.”

“Any accent?”

“Not a foreign accent. A couple of them sounded southern.”

“Did you ever pass the time of day with them?”

“No, but Judy did have a conversation with one recently. I wasn't paying much attention.”

“Do you know Nigella Morrissey?”

“I don't think I do.”

“Did you ever hear the name around the office?”

“Not that I remember.”

“If I told you that she worked for the Otto Foundation, would that help?”

“What kind of work? It's just the three of us in the office.”

“I don't know, Mrs. Lane, but we think she was employed by the Otto Foundation in some capacity.”

“Well, that's news to me.”

“I understand you make some of the disbursements. Nigella's name never came up?”

Maude shook her head. “I authorize some electronic funds to be sent to some of our suppliers, but only when Bud tells me to. He always gives me a list of the ones to send.”

“Have you worked for the foundation for a long time?” I asked.

“About ten years. After Karl died, I needed something to keep me busy. We never had any children and my family is scattered, so when I got the opportunity to work for the Otto Foundation, I jumped at it.”

We talked for a bit longer, but there was nothing else to learn. We finished the coffee and drove toward the airport. I was in a bleak mood, my mind churning with worry about J.D. We hadn't come up with anything that would help in finding her. We'd chewed up a day and had very little to show for it. Images of her kept flashing through my brain like a slide show, pictures of her smiling on a spring day on my boat, or in a favorite restaurant on the key, or over a glass of wine in my living room. And then would come another slide, a picture of her tied to a chair somewhere, her face a rictus of fear.

Jock broke into my melancholy reverie. “What do you think?”

“I don't know. We've got an obvious connection to Stanley now. The one who tried to kill me was in the Otto Foundation offices. We don't know whether he's Laotian or some other variety of Asian. But then we get the thug with the shotgun in Stanley's house speaking Vietnamese. That could tie him to John Nguyen and maybe to Tuan Nguyen in Ho Chi Minh City.”

“Or maybe they're all Laotian and one of them speaks Vietnamese.”

“That's a possibility.”

“Do you want me to get those hard drives you stole off to my tech people in Washington?”

“That'll take too long. Let's get them to Debbie, see if she can make any sense out of them. If not, we'll get them to your people first thing in the morning.”

“It'll be midnight by the time we get to Longboat,” Jock said.

“Debbie's a night owl and if she knows this might tie in somehow to J.D.'s disappearance, she'll work all night.”

We flew through the night to Sarasota. I asked the pilot if he could wait until he heard from me in the morning to decide whether to go to Jacksonville to pick up Macomber, or to ferry us around some more. He was agreeable. He'd spend the night at the Sarasota Hyatt Regency and talk to me in the morning.

I called Debbie and told her what I wanted. She said to stop by her condo in West Bradenton and she'd take a look at the hard drives.

By the time we got home, it was almost one in the morning. Jock and I were exhausted. It'd been a long day. Jock said goodnight and headed for the guest room. I found my cell phone right where I had left it. I looked at the display. I had a missed call. I didn't recognize the number on the caller ID. The call had come in at 3:15 that afternoon, just about the time Jock and I were lifting off from the Sarasota airport. Whoever had called left a voice mail. I dialed the message center and punched in the pin number. The voice in the mailbox made my heart sink

“Matt,” said J.D. “I'm scared, but I'm okay. Tell the chief—” The message stopped. Dead. The phone just cut off. I didn't think she'd hung up. Something or someone had interrupted her cry for help.

Jock was on the phone to Washington. I was pacing. Less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since I'd heard J.D.'s voice. Jock was trying to get a trace on the call that had come in to my phone. The techs at his agency were running it down. They had resources that were beyond anything I'd ever heard of. Jock hung up.

“I don't know if this is good news or bad news,” he said. “The call bounced off a cell tower in Fort Lauderdale. The phone number is for one of those you buy at convenience stores. It was bought this morning at a store in Sarasota. Yesterday morning now, I guess. It was rung up in the cash register at six twenty-five a.m. Paid cash.”

“Lauderdale's only a three hour drive from here and the call came in at 3:15. If somebody left here with her before eight this morning, where the hell has she been?”

“Maybe she wasn't able to call earlier. I don't like the idea that she was cut off like that. Maybe she got hold of the phone somehow and called and was found out by whoever kidnapped her.”

“Goddammit Jock. We've got to do something.”

“We are, podna. I've got the address of the convenience store where the phone was bought. Let's get a couple of cops and go over there. They probably have some kind of security camera.”

I called Chief Bill Lester. I knew he always slept with his cell phone next to his bed. My name would show up on his caller ID.

“This better be good, Royal. I was having a wonderful dream.”

“I heard from J.D.” I told him what we'd found out so far.

“Good ol' Jock and his resources. I'll get a couple of Sarasota cops headed to the store. I'll meet you there.”

The convenience store hunkered on the Tamiami Trail in a forlorn block of buildings near the Ringling School of Art and Design. It was not part of a chain, but an independent store that catered to the people who made their living in the shadows of the night; streetwalkers, drug dealers, pimps, and winos. The cashier stood behind a bulletproof glass. Patrons shoved their worn bills into a tray and the attendant sent back the change. The front door could only be opened when the clerk behind the glass pushed a button releasing an electronic lock. No one could get in without the blessing of the cashier, and no one got out without paying for the beer or cigarettes or chips or whatever small item they needed to see them through another night.

Jock and I pulled into the parking lot just behind Bill Lester. A marked Sarasota Police Department patrol car with two uniformed officers was waiting for us. Everybody climbed out. The cops recognized Lester and he introduced us as his associates. We were buzzed into the store.

The attendant behind the thick glass was tall and thin and wore a scraggly beard that barely covered his chin. His hair was colored some godawful shade of green. A small spike pierced his bottom lip and another went through his right eyebrow. He was probably still in his teens.

“I'm Chief Lester,” Bill said. “We need to see your security tapes from the last twenty-four hours.”

“No can do,” said the skinny kid.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Lester asked.

“The owner is the only one who can let you have those.”

“Call the owner,” said Lester.

“No can do.”

“Why not?”

“He's gone home.”

“Call him at home.”

“No can do.”

“Look, dickhead,” said the chief, “you say that one more time and I'm going to engage in a little police brutality. Why can't you call him at home?”

“He went to his home in Pakistan for a couple of weeks. Left me in charge.”

“Then you can give us the security tapes.”

“Not without the boss's okay.”

“What's your name?” asked Lester.

“Duke.”

“You like to travel, Duke?”

“Can't say yeah or no. Ain't never been anywhere.”

“You ever hear of Guantanamo?”

“That place in Cuba where they lock up terrorists?”

“That's the one,” said Lester. “You're pretty close to earning yourself a free trip down there.”

“Whoa. What're you talking about?”

“We're involved in a national security operation. You're involved. If you don't give me that tape right now, you'll be on your way to Cuba within the hour.”

“Who says?”

“I do,” said Jock. He pulled a leather ID case from his pocket, held it against the glass partition. “Can you read that?”

The kid looked closely, squinted some. “It says you work for the president of the United States and have police power in every jurisdiction. Some other stuff, too.”

“What that means,” says Jock, “is that I can have your ass on a plane to Cuba before the sun comes up. Get the fucking tape.”

“Yes, sir.” He disappeared through a door behind him.

One of the uniformed cops looked at Lester and said, “Where'd he get that?”

“From the president,” said Lester. “Mr. Algren is a federal agent. With more power than any of us ever thought of having.”

“Shit fire,” said the cop.

The kid returned with a compact disc, unlocked the door to his cubicle, and handed it to Lester. “This is the one that started at midnight last night. We put forty-eight hours on each disc, and the boss keeps them for a month or so.”

Lester took the disc. “We'll bring this back in a few minutes.”

We went to the patrol car, inserted the disc into the computer bolted to the dash and fast forwarded through the time-stamped images until we came to the one showing 6:00 a.m. the day before. The camera was above the cubicle where the clerks worked so we had a pretty good shot of the entrance and the area right in front of the cubicle. We slowed it and watched a man come through the front door. He wore a baseball hat pulled low over his face. He kept his head down. He was aware of the security camera. He went to the counter and said something to the attendant, a different kid with wild hair. The images were in black-and-white, so I couldn't tell the hair color this one was affecting.

The customer passed some cash through the slot in the window and the clerk sent a phone back. The man tested it and apparently satisfied that it was in working order, turned to leave. “Stop it,” I said. Lester complied. “Now back up slowly.” The images peeled backward. “Freeze it,” I said.

We were looking at a man in profile. The ball cap obscured most of his face from the front, but the angle of the camera as he turned away caught a full right-side likeness.

I said, “I know that man. He was the copilot on Desmond's plane last week. Took me to Jacksonville and Charlotte.”

Jock said, “Not the same one we had this morning. That guy was black.”

“Do you know his name?” asked Lester.

“I don't recall. The pilot introduced me, but I don't remember his name. Fred Cassidy would know and he's at the Hyatt Regency.”

“Who's Cassidy?”

“The pilot,” I said.

“We need a print of that picture,” said Lester. He looked at the uniformed cops. “Can one of you send this to the station and ask them to print it? I'll stop by on my way to the Hyatt and pick it up.”

Jock and I arrived at the Hyatt Regency at three a.m. and parked in the circular driveway that flanked the entrance. We had come directly to the hotel and were waiting for Bill Lester to arrive with the photograph.

The place was quiet, nobody around. The lobby was empty except
for a night clerk behind the registration desk. “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked.

“We need to see a guest,” I said. “Fred Cassidy. The police will be here in a few minutes to talk to him.”