Under the Color of Law (22 page)

"Okay.

Forty-eight hours."

"I'm apprehensive too, Lieutenant," Kerney said, reading Molina's expression.

Breath whooshed out of Molina.

"Yeah."

Charlie Perry raged while Applewhite sat at the hotel-room desk punching up the vehicle tracking records for Kerney and the other key investigative personnel in his department on her laptop.

The lead detectives assigned to the homicides were off duty and at home, and Kerney, after making a stop at the state police headquarters, was parked at the county jail, where he'd been for a very long time.

"I thought Kerney had canceled all his appointments for the day,"

Applewhite said.

"Why did he go to state police headquarters and then the county jail?"

"Are you even fucking listening to me?" Perry snapped.

"Yes, the Red River marshal is treating Stewart's death as a homicide,"

Applewhite said blithely. She wished she could garrote the son of a bitch.

"I heard you."

Perry put both hands on the table and stuck his face in Apple white's.

"Who sanctioned the hit?"

"That's a pretty cheeky question to be asking me, Charlie," Applewhite said, closing the laptop cover.

"Neither of us knows the who, what, or the why of the matter."

"Look, if I have to cover your ass, I want to know now."

"All you have to do right now is throw your weight around a little, Charlie.

Scoop up Stewart's body and make sure only a trusted forensic pathologist does the autopsy."

"What trustworthy doctor do you have in mind?"

Applewhite wrote out a name and number and waved the slip of paper under Charlie's nose.

"Call this number in Albuquerque. The man who answers the phone will be a doctor who holds a Q clearance. Get the body to him."

Perry snatched the paper.

"What about Kerney? He's got to know by now that we've been feeding him pure bullshit."

"But can he prove anything?" Applewhite said.

"I doubt it. If it becomes necessary, Chief Kerney will be dealt with."

"How?"

Applewhite knew it wouldn't be her call to make, but she loved thinking about the possibilities if a sanction removal was authorized. The anticipation of it made her smile.

"Firmly but gently, Charlie," she said, getting to her feet. She steered Perry out the door, returned to the desk, and dialed a Washington number.

With the phone cradled against his ear, Hamilton Lowell Terrell made notes while listening to Applewhite's report. She finished speaking and he lapsed into a long silence.

"Your instructions, sir?" Applewhite finally asked, unable to repress her apprehension. If she was due for a butt-chewing, she wanted it over and done with.

Terrell let the silence grind deeper into Applewhite, then said, "This isn't the containment we had in mind."

"I'm aware of that, sir."

"I've heard nothing about your plans to help our third friend reach his destination."

"I've got the itinerary finalized, Ambassador."

"Make sure his trip is uneventful," Terrell said, consulting his notes.

"Are you quite sure that the local police chief has nothing more than suppositions to go on?"

"At this point, yes. But that could change."

"Do you have reason to believe it will change?"

"He's much more resourceful than I was led to believe."

"Did the materials he reviewed give him an advantage?"

"Not really, but they did provide a connection we were hoping to avoid."

"If we manage the situation correctly from here on out, that shouldn't be a problem. Since truth, in this instance, is heavily mingled with falsehood, I doubt he'll be able to probe too deeply."

"Take no action?" Applewhite inquired.

"Let me see what I can learn about him that might be useful for future planning, if the situation warrants."

"And Agent Perry?"

"I know you wish to be rid of him, and you have my sympathy. But ask yourself this question: Where would you like the burden of guilt to fall if all does not go well?"

"I understand, sir."

"Henceforth, there are to be no more contingencies," Terrell said.

"Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly, sir."

Terrell disconnected and dialed a DOD number.

The phone rang once and a voice said, "Yes, Ambassador."

"Santa Fe, New Mexico, Police Chief Kevin Kerney. Best-case scenario for sanctioned removal. All particulars to me, eyes only, by twenty-three hundred hours."

"Under DOD regulations pertaining to the National Security Act, I am required to inform you that contemplated sanctioned removals require concurrence from the national security advisor, CIA, and the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency."

"Particulars to me by twenty-three hundred," Terrell repeated.

"Aye-aye, sir."

Kerney left the county jail and did some shopping. He stopped at a discount chain store, bought cellular phones, and paid the activation fees. At a video store he bought a stack of used movies. He topped off his shopping spree at an electronics super store, where he purchased a small TV with a built-in VCR, a tape recorder, two privacy earphones, and a radio wave frequency detector.

He drove home, dressed to go running, and slipped a night vision scope in the pocket of his lightweight pullover parka. Outside he did a few stretching exercises and took off down the driveway past his landlord's house. Once he turned the corner of the block, he pulled up, and walked down the utility easement that ran behind his cottage. He climbed a lot wall and used an electric meter box as a stepping-stone to get to the roof of an old garage. He flattened out in a prone position and scanned with the scope looking for any evidence of a surveillance video camera.

He spotted it at the base of a TV satellite dish mounted on the porch roof of a neighboring house, angled to get a clear view of the front of his cottage. He looked around for more and found none.

He wondered if the uplink to the watchers and listeners was local or remote. He scrambled down, completed a circle around the block, and stopped in front of the house with the TV dish. No lights were on inside. He gauged the distance between the top of the porch railing and the roof line. If he stood tiptoe on the railing he could probably disable the camera. But why tell the watchers that he knew he was being watched?

At the cottage Kerney punched the playback on his answering machine, and carted in the Mitchell evidence he'd sneaked onto the back patio before parking in the driveway. He caught snatches of messages left by Sara, each one sounding a little more terse, as he brought in his new TV VCR and the other purchases. He dumped it all in the bedroom, stuck a movie in the living-room VCR, turned up the volume, and closed the bedroom door.

John Wayne kicked butt chasing Indians while Kerney hunted bugs in his bedroom and bath. On his first visual sweep he found three, one in a lamp, one in a wall outlet, and one in the bedroom telephone. He swept again, taking apart everything he could think of, searching every surface-bed frame, mattress, dresser, pictures, walls, ceiling. He found a third inside a doorknob, a fourth behind the toilet tank, and a fifth on the underside of a floor heating duct.

Except for the bathroom device he left everything else in place.

Using a handheld scanner Kerney made a grid-by-grid pass of the walls, floors, and ceiling in the bathroom, bedroom, and closet, and didn't find any more bugs. With what he'd bought, he could work in the bedroom without raising the suspicions of his listeners.

He carried everything he needed into the bedroom and closed the door.

Just before he plugged in the earphones and started listening to the audiotapes, the living room TV blared the notes of a bugler sounding a cavalry charge.

Unlike real cities with real morgues and coroners, the Santa Fe local-yokels stashed their stiffs at the regional hospital. That made scooping up the body, as Applewhite had so inelegantly put it, a relatively easy chore for Charlie Perry. He followed the rent-an ambulance to an HMO facility in Albuquerque near the air force base, within shouting distance of the VA hospital. Two white-coats and an armed uniformed security guard waited at the back door.

The white-coats transferred the corpse to the gurney and the guard led the way into the building. Perry tagged behind. The inside didn't look anything like an HMO clinic. There were laboratories, research suites, and communications rooms, offices identified by numbers only, contamination vaults and refrigerated storage lockers posted with radioactive warning signs, a video surveillance room, and finally a real morgue.

The white-coats dumped the body on a stainless-steel autopsy table and left. The guard remained in the room. Perry smiled at the guard. He got a tight nod back.

CIA, thought Charlie. Maybe something to do with the vast nuclear weapons stockpile stored in the mountains on the air force base. He thought human radiation exposure, epidemiology testing for rare forms of cancer, forensic pathology studies to determine unusual causes of death, psych testing to assess mental functioning.

Charlie decided it was smart to put the facility right next door to the base and close to the VA hospital so all the civilian and military worker bees could be easily examined, probed, and tested, to study the effects of exposure to plutonium, uranium, anthrax bacilli, Ebola, or whatever else the government was playing around with.

A man in a lab coat walked in. He flipped off the sheet covering the cadaver and did a visual head-to-toe inspection. Maybe on the early side of forty, he wore a Naval Academy class ring.

"Cause of death appears to be blunt trauma to the head, with some very interesting lacerations," the man said.

"Someone drew blood, did a mouth swab, and took a skin sample. What's that all about?"

Perry froze. That son of a bitch Kerney had all he needed to wash the Terrell homicide cover-up down the tubes. He didn't know whether to lie or tell the truth. He knew Applewhite wasn't FBI. But was she CIA?

Military intelligence?

State Department counterintelligence? He had every reason to believe she'd killed four, possibly five people. It was time to start covering his ass.

"Who took the samples?" the doctor asked.

"I had those done," Perry lied.

The doctor nodded.

"Want me to open him up?"

"If you think it's necessary."

"What do you need?"

"The local police are calling it a homicide," Perry replied.

"I doubt they're wrong. What do you want done?"

"It needs to become an accidental death," Perry said.

"Who gets the autopsy report?"

"The Red River town marshal."

Sal Molina's undercover vehicle was a minivan equipped with a radio, a pinpoint shielded privacy light, cell phone, 35mm camera, night-vision binoculars, video camera, and an array of weapons held in a rack above his head. While it looked like an anonymous soccer mom car, a souped-up eight-cylinder engine powered the vehicle and a new suspension gave it a surefooted feel on the road. The van could top out at 140 mph and manage a high-speed emergency U turn without nipping over.

It had been used by a local real estate agent to transport crack cocaine to wealthy clients who divided their time between Santa Fe in the summer and trendy, upscale Colorado skiing destinations in the winter.

Sal had tailed Charlie Perry and the ambulance to Albuquerque. Watching Perry play body snatcher demolished the last of his doubts about Chief Kerney's plan.

He took snapshots, scribbled surveillance field notes, and followed Perry back to Santa Fe, expecting to spend the remainder of the night parked outside of Charlie's hotel. Instead, he waited and watched as Perry parked at the back of the federal courthouse two blocks from the plaza and went inside.

The FBI offices were next door in the post office building. What was Perry doing at the courthouse? Unless he had a late-night meeting with a judge or a federal prosecutor from the U. S. attorney's office in from Albuquerque, it made no sense. Other than Charlie's unit there were no cars in the spaces reserved for judges and staff. But behind the post office there were five nice, shiny new Ford sedans that screamed FBI.

Only one full-time resident agent, Frank Powers, worked out of Santa Fe.

Why the late-night caucus?

Sal reached for the Santa Fe telephone book, found a number, and dialed up a retired sheriff's captain who worked as a federal court security officer. Six years ago Molina had busted the man's youngest son for drug dealing, turned him into a snitch, and let him walk. After the kid cleaned up his act, Molina had cut him loose.

A sleepy voice answered on the second ring.

"Jake."

"Yeah."

"It's Sal Molina. Who's holding a late-night convention at the courthouse?"

"Man, I don't know what you're talking about. The courthouse is locked up at night."

"Wrong answer, Jake. I just watched an FBI agent go in the back door."

Sal heard Jake catch his breath.

"I don't know nothing about that," Jake said.

"I hear Joey's doing okay. Married. Kid on the way. Got a good job as an auto mechanic with the highway department."

"Jesus, don't do this to me, Sal." The words came out pinched.

"That's not a trade someone learns in the slammer," Sal said evenly.

"Okay, okay, I owe you. There's an off-limits suite of rooms in the basement.

People come and go. I don't know what they do down there."

"I need more than that, Jake."

"This has to stay off the record," Jake said.

"I'm not supposed to talk about it."