Denouement (9 page)

“Yeah, he was in my house, I assume to kill me, but obviously he didn’t.”

I took a seat. “Do you have him in custody?”

“Unfortunately, no. He must have taken off right before my guys got here. I was only out a couple of minutes.”

“Only out?” I asked.

“Yeah, he knocked me unconscious.”

I let out a breath. “Are you all right?”

“A little banged up, but I’ll make it.”

I again heard someone on his end of the line telling him to keep still.

“I have a couple EMTs sewing me back together as we speak. It isn’t too bad. I’ve been through worse.”

I heard a man’s voice telling Faust he needed to go to the hospital. Faust responded with a simple
no
.

“How did he know where you lived?” I asked.

“I’m guessing he got it out of Dupold. He came out to where I’ve been staying since a few weeks back.”

The
where I’ve been staying
comment struck me as a little off, but I didn’t press. “What the hell happened?” I asked.

“Well, the security system in the house is linked to my phone. So, I’m lying in bed, reading, and get an alert that someone has entered the home through the patio door downstairs. I go to the nightstand for my gun, but sure as shit if it’s the one time that it isn’t there. I had it broken down for cleaning in the gun room at the end of the hall. So I leave the bedroom to go and get it when I see light shining up the stairs. I stop at the corner of the stairs and wait. A man comes up with a gun. I disarm him, deliver a handful of strikes and send him airborne back down the stairs with a front kick to the chest. I figure that should be it. Well, he tries getting up, so I run down the stairs and plant a knee to the face. That still doesn’t do it. He tries dragging his sorry ass away, and I stomp down on the back of his head. Finally, the guy goes out cold. After he was out, I realized it was Azarov.”

“You had him knocked out? How the hell did he get away?” I asked.

“Well, that’s another story in itself. I go back upstairs and grab the first gun I see from my gun room. I head back down and drag him out to the kitchen, where I use a roll of duct tape to tape him to the chair. I call it in to my guys. Well, he wakes up and immediately begins to antagonize me, bragging about my agents he killed and things of that nature. Every bone in my body wanted to put an end to him right there. Anyway, we have a little back and forth, and I figure it’s in his best interest if I tape his mouth shut. I go over there with a piece of tape, and the son of a bitch bites me like a rabid dog. I get him off of me, go to the sink to inspect the wound, and he somehow gets out of his restraints. I go for my gun, but he ends up getting the drop on me. He tapped me with an uppercut and a knee to the face that put me out.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” I said.

“I’m sure he tried. I had a gun right there. Luckily for me, it was the gun that it was. I’m thinking when he saw my guys approaching up the driveway, he fled.”

“What gun? I don’t follow.”

“It’s an IG forty. Or that’s what they are trying to call it. They issued one to each agent in the area for testing with strict orders to not carry it in the field.”

“And it is…?”

“Biometric. It needs the owner’s fingerprint to fire.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of those.”

“This is a little different though. Most of the ones that are available to the public have a failure or malfunction rate that exceeds anything you’d ever want on your firearm. This thing has been pretty spot on so far. I guess some twenty-year-old MIT kid designed it. I’ve probably put a thousand rounds through this gun and haven’t had it not fire because of the reader, until now. Apparently it won’t accept a fingerprint that’s covered in blood and water. Anyway, if Azarov tried using my gun, it wasn’t going to fire. The weapon he had been carrying was upstairs lying in the hall from when I disarmed him.”

“Any clue as to where he went?”

“Sorry, nothing,” Faust said.

“Was he on foot?”

“No idea, Kane.”

“No one saw him leaving the property?” I asked.

“No. My agents found me on the kitchen floor. Azarov was gone. They fanned out and searched the area, but we got nothing. They talked with my nearest neighbors, but again, nothing.”

“Well, where do you live? I’ll call the local PD and have them be on the lookout for him.”

“We already took care of it,” Faust said.

“Okay.” I let out a breath and thought for a minute. “Damn, Faust, I didn’t even think to ask. How is your family? I mean, is everyone okay?”

“Yeah, um, they weren’t home. Did you get anything off of those phone records my guys dropped off?” Faust seemed quick to change the topic.

“Not really. I haven’t gotten all the way through them, but so far, nothing. I thought I had something of interest for a second, but it fizzled out pretty quick.”

“What did you have?” Faust asked.

“I got a number for a time and weather place out of Miami. One of the guys seemed like he called it fairly regularly.”

“Let me guess, you found the time-and-weather number on multiple records?”

“Yeah, well at least one other. Did you guys already look into it?”

“It was brought to my attention. We checked it out. The website that goes along with the number, as well as the number itself, belongs to a woman. Um, damn, I can’t remember her name off of the top of my head. I’m pretty sure it’s written down on one of the associate’s records on the cover sheet. Anyway, we checked her out. She has a clean sheet with nothing to suggest she’s involved. As far as why they are calling there, I have no idea. At first we thought it was some kind of switchboard, if you will, for these guys to communicate or something. We had a couple of our tech guys look into it, but as far as we can tell, it’s exactly what it claims to be.”

“Okay, well, like I said. It was all that I found of interest.”

I heard more talking on Faust’s end of the phone. A man seemed to be insisting that Faust go to the hospital.

“Hey, that’s all I really have for you, Kane. I’m going to need to run. These EMTs need to finish getting me stitched up.”

“Okay. You don’t need me out there for anything?” I asked.

“No. There’s nothing to do out here. We’ll catch up in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said.

Faust clicked off.

I walked to the light switch beside my office door and flipped on the lights. My chances of falling asleep were definitely somewhere between slim and none. I dug back into the phone records. They were the only thing I had that could turn into a lead.

Awaking to a knock on my office door, I pulled my head from the pile of papers on my desk and tried to compose myself. “Yeah, it’s open,” I said.

The door swung open, and Hank walked in. I glanced at my desk clock: 8:16 a.m.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m ready to finish up with those phone records.” Hank slid out a guest chair at my desk.

“Sure.” I tried to restack the pieces of paper I had spread out.

“Let me get the ones without drool on them,” Hank said. “I’ve been here for twenty minutes. I saw you facedown, snoring on that pile of papers.”

“Whatever.” I grabbed Hank a stack of phone records from one of the guys that I hadn’t looked into and slid them over.

“Did you find anything?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Faust had a run in with Ray last night, though.”

“What? Really? Is he okay?” Hank’s questions flew quickly.

“I talked to him. He seemed fine. Basically, he said that Ray broke into his house. I guess Faust got the better of him and tied him up, but Ray broke his restraints and then proceeded to get the better of Faust.”

“Faust got the better of Ray?” Hank asked. His voice sounded unsure.

“From what he said, he took it to Ray pretty good.”

“I guess I never pegged Faust as a fighter.” Hank’s face showed he was thinking. “What do you actually know about the guy?”

I shrugged. “He’s my contact at the FBI. I know he has a family.” I thought for a moment about our conversation in the middle of the night. “Then again, when I asked him if his family was all right, last night when we spoke, he seemed a little weird on the topic.”

“What is his actual position at the FBI?” Hank asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I doubt he’d tell me if I asked,” I said.

“Background?” Hank asked.

I shrugged again. “Couldn’t tell you.”

Hank let out a breath. “Whatever. As long as he’s on our side. I’m going to take these back over to my desk and get going. I’ll check back in with you when I’m done.”

“Sounds good.”

Hank slid his chair away from my desk, stood, and headed for the door.

“Hey, Hank, Bostok is the new major. He popped in and told me last night. He gets the office on the first of the month. The meeting we interrupted was them offering up the position to him.”

Hank smiled. “That’s great. Now make sure you get the captain’s seat so you can move next door and get all this crap out of my office.”

I smirked.

Hank walked out.

I figured it would probably be best if I cleaned up, brushed my teeth, and changed before I actually started working. I grabbed a change of clothes and my overnight bag from my office closet and headed downstairs to the gym and showers. I was showered, changed, and back in my office within fifteen minutes.

After a quick morning talk with Callie, I was back reading phone numbers and the notes beside them. I finished with the guy I’d started on the night earlier and grabbed the only file that remained. The cover sheet listed a circled name next to the words “Time, date, weather”. The woman’s name was Iris Sanchez.

I looked into the numbers called by the man, named Nikolay Bondarev. Halfway down the sheet, I found the number for that time-and-weather service in Miami. Two more inches down the page, I found it again. It was simply too much to ignore. Whether Faust and his team had found anything or not, I could no longer ignore the fact that all these associates of Ray were calling the same number. I leaned back in my chair, thinking of what to do.

Hank walked into my office and laid his stack of records on my desk. “Zip,” he said.

I nodded and tossed them in the “completed” box.

I clasped my hands behind my head. “So if a number of these Azarov associates were all calling the same number for something that seemed like nothing on the surface, you would have to assume that there is something there, correct?”

“What do you mean?” Hank asked.

“I have three guys all calling a time-and-weather number located in Miami.”

“Yeah, I had one of those too. You had three, you said?”

I nodded.

“So what is it, really?”

“Faust said they looked into it. I guess the website and phone number come back to a woman. She has a clean sheet. No connections to the Azarovs that they could find.”

“Sounds like she’s connected somehow. Where does she live?”

“Miami somewhere. Hold on.” I typed her name into my computer to pull her sheet. “Apparently, she has an apartment in Miami Beach.” I searched the address and brought up a map. “It’s oceanfront. I’m not super familiar with Miami.” I searched images of the building. “The building looks nice, though.”

“Does the address from the website and phone number match the apartment?” Hank asked.

“No clue.”

“Terry could probably get the information from the website registration and find out. What’s the website name?”

“Miami T and W dot com,” I said.

“Call down to tech and see if he’s in.”

I reached out for my desk phone and dialed Terry Murphy’s desk in the tech department downstairs. On the seventh or eighth ring, someone answered.

“Terry,” he said.

“Hey, it’s Kane. I’m wondering if you can get me a physical address for the registration on a website.”

“I can try. What’s the domain name?”

“Miami T and W dot com.”

“T as in the letter?”

“Correct.”

“Give me one second.”

I heard Terry typing.

“It looks like the WHOIS report is showing the domain as private.”

“I have no clue what that means,” I said.

“It just means that the owner spent an extra couple of bucks to not have the information listed as public.”

“So we won’t be able to get it, or…?”

“A phone call from a cop to the company that the domain was purchased from might be all it takes to get the name and address. Do you want me to make the call?”

“Sure, what the hell. The feds already looked into it, and we have the woman’s name that it belongs to, but you never know. If it’s a different address, it may lead us somewhere.”

“Okay. I’ll give them a ring, and I’ll let you know what I get.”

“Thanks, Terry.”

“Yeah, no sweat.”

I hung up and looked at Hank. “He says he’s going to make a call to the place the domain name was purchased from.”

Hank nodded. “So this woman is clean? It’s too much of a coincidence. Who do we know in Miami that could maybe do a little sniffing around?”

I thought for a second. I didn’t know anyone from Miami personally, other than Callie.

“What about the detective that sent you all the information on the Azarovs when they had Callie?” Hank asked.

I smiled. Hank had nailed it. He was exactly the man to call. “Lieutenant Harrington,” I said.

“Think about it. Look how much time he put into creating that file on Viktor. He’d probably jump at the chance to do a little poking around if it had anything to do with the Azarovs.”

“It’s worth a phone call, at the very least,” I said.

Hank slapped the edge of my desk and stood. “You make the call. I’m going to go grab a coffee. Karen has been brewing this godawful organic stuff at home.”

“But I thought both you and Karen agreed that organic anything was so much better?” I asked.

“I got over the whole kick when I had to do the grocery shopping and saw the bill. I’ll stick with my processed junk food from here on out.” He rubbed his stomach. “I think I’ll grab a couple of Twinkies to soak up the coffee.”

Hank turned toward the door and left my office.