Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (58 page)

She closed her eyes to think. Her very first case as a special prosecutor had involved a local politician who’d murdered a judge to prevent him from issuing an opinion that she’d mistakenly believed would hurt her business interests and a state attorney general who’d helped her in exchange for a slice of the pie. The politician’s sister committed perjury multiple times to have her elderly patients declared incapacitated for her own financial gain. And that was in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, where the stakes were low, and the living was easy.

“What are you thinking?” Rosie asked.

“I’m thinking we need to pull a Woodward and Bernstein.”

“Pardon?” Rosie threw her a blank look.

“
All the President’s Men
? You know, Deep Throat? Watergate.”

“Follow the money?”

“Follow the money.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Wednesday morning

Joe’s head was in a vise. It was being crushed inward. His mouth was sour; his tongue, lined with fur. He cracked one eyelid open, and the weak winter sun seared his eyeball. He squeezed his eye shut.

A jumble of memories from the night before swam through his headache on waves. The voicemail from Aroostine. The beers. The girl. More beers. The
girl.

Her name was … Jen, maybe? Her hand on his thigh, warm through his jeans. The curve of her throat when she threw her head back to laugh. Walking out of the Hole in the Wall, hip bumping up against hip.

Where had they gone? What had they done?

He remembered the rush of cold air. Nausea rising in his throat like a wave. Stumbling into the cab of her truck. Then … nothing.

Could he really have blacked out? He’d never had a lost evening—not after drinking grain alcohol punch in the cornfield behind the high school; not in college; not when the band had played some crappy club that paid them in shots; not even after his bachelor party.

This was going to be one helluva hangover. His stomach cramped in agreement.

He sucked down the chilled air and breathed it out slowly.

Jen’s bedroom was really cold. And her bed was unusually hard.

He eased his eyes open again and blinked against the onslaught of brightness and pain.

Jen’s bed was no bed. He lay sprawled on a thin mat spread out on a bare wood floor. A scratchy wool blanket was tangled in a heap around his knees. He turned his head to the side and stared at the wood, forcing his dry eyes to focus on the grain.

He stretched out a hand and ran his fingers along a plank. Aged oak, four inches wide. His eyes traveled up to the walls. More old-growth oak. Hand-hewn logs. His woodworking brain fought through the fog and estimated them as having twenty-inch faces. The rafters on the ceiling were more of the same—with hand-hewn chestnut joists.

He was in an artfully restored log cabin. He’d place its original build date at sometime around 1800. Maybe a few years earlier. The coloring of the oak and the craftsmanship were slightly different from what he’d seen in old Pennsylvania barns and cabins. He pegged both as native to western Maryland. He’d bought similar boards from a dilapidated bank barn in Emmitsburg once.

Professional excitement overtook his queasiness. To a master carpenter, this place was like heaven.

He’d have to ask Jen about the cabin’s provenance. Assuming she was still here. The small room was still and there was no evidence of a woman. There was no evidence that anyone used the room as a bedroom. Aside from the mat, it was empty. No dresser, no table, no lamps. Nothing.

There was a small square window carved high into one wall. It was bare. No curtain, no blinds. The adjacent wall contained a door. It was closed. He couldn’t tell if it led outside or to another room.

He exhaled and pushed himself to standing. His legs shook beneath him, and sweat beaded his forehead from the effort of moving. He steadied himself and shuffled toward the door, trying to keep his head motionless.

He palmed the door. It was the same temperature as the rest of the room, so it couldn’t be an exterior door. He ran a hand through his hair to smooth it down and tucked his shirt back into his pants, steeling himself for the awkward morning-after conversation.

He pressed the curved, iron handle down and pushed outward. It was locked. From the other side.

His heart thumped.

He swallowed and tried to call out but his voice was nothing but a croak.

He wet his lips. “Jen?” His voice was hoarse and husky but audible.

He listened hard. No response.

“Jen?”

His heart pounded even faster, and he dropped a hand to his back left pocket where he kept his wallet.
Empty.

He forgot about the splitting pain in his head and swiveled around to look for his jacket, sweeping his eyes over each corner of the tiny room.
No jacket.

On the other side of the door, he could hear shuffling and rustling. Someone was out there—someone who was ignoring his cries.

His dry throat closed. He grabbed the door handle and pulled, shaking from the futile effort. Then, as his stomach roiled with nausea and bile, he hammered his fists against the door, over and over, shouting a wordless, primal cry until his voice gave out and his hands ached.

Then he slumped against the wall and stared blankly at the slice of paradise that had just become his cell.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Aroostine sat motionless at her desk and listened to the sound of her wristwatch ticking and her own breathing. She’d sent Rosie off with instructions to run down SystemSource’s corporate structure—an important and time-sensitive task—but her true motivation had been to achieve quiet and stillness.

If she was going to find some critical piece of information that she’d previously overlooked, she’d have to change her perspective. That was Tracking 101: you only see what you’re looking for.

It had been one of her grandfather’s first lessons. If you’re focused on finding the squirrel, you won’t register the bird. Or the edible berries hanging on the bush right in front of you. Or the slight depression in the earth where the last tracker had sat.

He taught her not only how to see, but how to use all her senses. First, he showed her how to examine a scene from all vantage points—crouching on the trail; flat on her belly, propped up on her elbows; hanging from a tree. Then, he wrapped a bandanna around her eyes as a blindfold and told her to listen to the same scene. She learned to hear the difference between a caw of hunger and a squawk of pain; frozen ice thawing and water forcing its way through a chink in a dam. Next, she learned to smell the faint milky odor of a mammal nursing her newborns and the coppery scent of fresh blood to find a den or an injured animal. Her fingertips could tell if wood was dry enough to start a fire. She could taste whether wild berries were at their peak.

Most important, he taught her to be still and wait for an answer to reveal itself—a valuable skill in the wild, but not one she’d ever tried to transfer to her practice of law.

At this point, what did she have to lose?

She’d lived with the case file for weeks. She knew where the defendants ate breakfast; that Craig Womback preferred the aisle seat on airplanes; and that Martin Sheely always brought his kids gifts from the local street market or bazaar when he traveled. She knew who they reported to within SystemSource; that Womback had once had an affair with a secretary; and that Sheely always filed his travel expense reports the day after a trip. And she’d built a solid case against them for their attempts to bribe Senor Cruz. She’d mined the facts for every element she was required to prove, but that was all she’d looked for.

If Rosie’s hunch was right, she’d obviously missed something that mattered a great deal to someone else. Time to stop searching for it, and let it come to her.

She fiddled with the earbuds in her ears, and hit play on her audio player. Then she leaned back in her chair and listened to the recorded telephone conversations for what had to be the six hundredth time. This time, however, she would listen with no agenda, no purpose. Just listen.

Her pencil traced the words on the transcript as they filled her ears:

Mr. Womback: It’s me. Can you talk?

Mr. Sheely: I have a few minutes. My flight’s boarding now. How’d it go?

Mr. Womback: Time will tell. I met Cruz for drinks at some craphole authentic joint.

[Laughter]

Mr. Sheely: Did you talk dollars?

Mr. Womback: No. He’s still skittish. You remember that dude in Poland, who freaked out when we brought up the specifics too soon?

Mr. Sheely: How could I forget? That was close. So, you’re still dancing?

Mr. Womback: Still dancing, but I think he’s game. He has the ultimate authority to choose the system; no sign-off required, so why wouldn’t he pick ours and line his pockets at the same time?

Mr. Sheely: Let’s hope so. We have to get this contract. I got yet another reminder from those pricks back at HQ.

Mr. Womback: [Snorts.] Let me guess—‘Our investor has made it clear that his interest is in our international footprint. Government contracts are the most lucrative, stable way to expand that footprint’?

Mr. Sheely: They called you, too?

Mr. Womback: Frigging bean counters. They think it’s so easy, let them pound the pavement trying to hit a sales quota month after month.

Mr. Sheely: You got that right. Screw them.

Mr. Womback: And screw that Ukrainian ball buster, too.

Mr. Sheely: They’re gonna close the doors. I gotta go.

Mr. Womback: Safe travels.

Mr. Sheely: Yeah. Adios.

[The phone call ends.]

She stared down at the paper and digested what she’d heard. The meat of the call was that the two sales reps had kindly hit every element she needed to prove a violation of the FCPA and had even named the Mexican official who was the target of the bribe.

But what else had they said? What was hidden in the call that someone wanted to keep buried?

Not the attempted bribe in Poland. SystemSource had admitted that as part of its settlement, and the Department of Justice had agreed not to pursue charges against the individual defendants for that conduct.

So, what?

The company was pressuring them to produce because an investor wanted to expand globally? As far as she knew, unless movies had lied to her, corporate greed was hardly unusual.

She nibbled her eraser and played back the recording in her mind. ‘The Ukrainian ball buster’ resonated. She circled the phrase on the transcript. Could it be a reference to another bribery attempt, one Justice hadn’t managed to uncover?

No, the context made it seem like the Ukrainian was an insider, not a government official. Someone in the company’s finance department? The investor?

Her cell phone vibrated on top of a pile of papers on her desk. She ignored the buzzing. She imagined anyone who was texting her in midday on a Wednesday was either her mother forwarding a picture of her floppy-haired guinea pig or her mobile carrier letting her know her bill was ready for payment. In either case, the text was less important than the task at hand.