Under the Color of Law (29 page)

"How well did you know them?" Kerney asked.

"Not well. They were in the middle of the class academically and both were hard-core jocks. Ingram seemed nice enough, Cornell was the competitive type who hated to lose."

"What were their service branches?"

"Both were in military intelligence before resigning and joining the

"That doesn't ring any bells for you?"

"Not in and of itself," Sara said.

"On the federal level its not difficult to transition between law enforcement and intelligence work. Stay with me, Kerney.

As I mentioned, APT Performa is an army subcontractor. It could be that Thayer was talking about a procurement fulfillment order for INS COM "Placed by the commanding general?"

"It's common practice to reference the highest authority for a procurement.

Especially one that has priority."

"That's a stretch, Sara, and you know it."

"It's within the bounds of possibility."

"I think you're seeing things the way you want to see them."

Sara gave him a withering glance.

"Let me finish, before you accuse me of shortsightedness. If Ingram and Applewhite are military intelligence, they could have a legitimate assignment that's connected to APT Performa's contract with INS COM "Like meddling in a civilian criminal investigation and posing as FBI?"

"You've heard of undercover work, haven't you?" Sara snapped. She tossed the notepad on the cushion.

"But since you brought it up, let's deal with it. You were told right at the top of the investigation that national security was involved and your role was to offer support. That's not meddling, to my way of thinking."

"The feds didn't play it that straight with me." Sara sighed in frustration.

"Because, if it's a national security matter, you don't have a need to know."

"What about Terrell's murder, Mitchell's murder, Stewart's murder? The disappearance of Terjo and Browning? I have a need to know about all of that."

"Do you have even one remotely credible homicide suspect?"

"No, but that doesn't address the fact that Charlie Perry and Applewhite took Terjo into custody and lied to me about it."

Sara shook her head.

"That's a guess you've made. Which means you're down to one missing person, Browning."

"That's right, I'm guessing. But I'm not guessing that Perry faked the lab results that turned Scott Gatlin into a murderer."

"Gatlin may well have been the murderer in spite of the faked physical evidence," Sara said.

"Granted, Randall Stewart had sex with Phyllis Terrell the night she was killed, and that does cast suspicion in his direction. But it proves neither Stewart's guilt nor Gatlin's innocence."

"Stop giving me the party line, Sara," Kerney said.

"I can get that from Charlie Perry or Agent Applewhite."

"You're acting like a blockhead, Kerney. If you came here expecting a knee-jerk endorsement of your theories, you might as well go back to that dump you're renting. Do you want to talk this out or not?"

Kerney composed himself.

"What else have you learned?"

"Here's where it does get interesting. Clarence Thayer is a retired army finance corps colonel. That could easily explain why he addressed Ingram by his rank. He was on the promotion list for his first star when he left the service. Lifers don't normally do that, so I called a friend who took a Harvard MBA and served under Thayer. He said Thayer was recruited to head up APT Performa, offered four times his salary, and jumped at the opportunity."

"That just makes my case about APT Performa stronger," Kerney said.

"Lifers are part of a good-old-boy club, Kerney. There are thousands of retired field-grade and general officers working in defense related industries. They recruit one another for plum civilian jobs. It's a common practice."

Sara peeked at her notes.

"What did grab my attention were some of the people who put in an appearance at Phyllis Terrell's funeral. The special assistant to the undersecretary for international affairs is a former lieutenant colonel.

He's a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, fluent in Spanish, and served in DOD as a strategic intelligence analyst."

Sara flipped a notepad page.

"The treasurer of Trade Source is an ex-navy captain who served as deputy director of DOD financial services. At that level he was privy to information about all clandestine operations throughout all service branches."

Her finger ran down the page.

"Treasury sent the financial crimes enforcement director who was once an air attache at the U. S. embassy in Panama. Those postings normally carry intelligence-gathering responsibilities. And the Justice Department sent an ex-Marine JAG attorney who was on staff at the National Security Agency and who holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the Joint Military Intelligence College."

"Are you still thinking it's just a good-old-boy club and I'm having paranoid delusions?"

Sara put the notebook aside and curled her feet up on the couch.

"Not at all.

These are policy-level intelligence specialists who advise important decision-makers. I think you've cornered an angry mountain lion that's about to bite your head off."

"How do we crack it?"

"Are you really that naive? Missions like this have been blessed by the White House, cabinet secretaries, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and every cooperating spy-craft shop, including the military."

"I can't walk away from this, Sara. People have been murdered, possibly by agents of the government. That can't be tolerated in a free society."

Sara's eyes stayed on Kerney's face.

"It violates what I believe in also, dammit. But you can't solve every homicide. Nobody can, nobody does. That only happens in the movies, or in bad pulp fiction. This time the stakes are off the chart."

"So, I'm out of my league. Is that what you're saying?"

"Put your ego away, Kerney. I want a life for us and our baby. Maybe I'm being selfish, but that's what's important to me right now."

"That matters to me just as much," Kerney said.

"Then act like it. I called Andy after I checked in. He thinks you've taken it as far as you can go. You're over the line."

"Maybe so, but it seems to be working. I've made some people very nervous."

"Congratulations," Sara said.

"I can use that as part of my eulogy for you, and I'll tell your child what a hero you were. Can't you ever just back off?"

"All I'm doing is listening and watching, Sara. There's not much risk to that."

"People get killed all the time because of what they know," Sara said.

"I'll be careful not to let that happen."

Sara swung off the couch, turned on her heel, went to the window, and stood with her back to Kerney. She thought about his hard-nosed bullheadedness, and the image of Jim Meehan's face floated through her mind. Meehan would have raped and killed her in the ruins of an old Mexican hacienda, if Kerney hadn't crossed the line, beaten a drug dealer's henchman almost senseless, and shown up in time to stop the action.

"You're a stubborn man, Kerney," she said.

"I know that."

Sara turned, squared her shoulders, and put on a determined look.

"Okay, there's work to be done. From what I've read, there are two big gaps in your investigation: no follow-up with Randall Stewart's widow, and no contact with Proctor Straley or his daughter."

"That's right," Kerney said, unwilling to say anything that sounded like an excuse.

"What else has been left hanging?"

"There's a remote surveillance video camera on a utility pole across from the Terrell residence. The FBI had denied any knowledge of it. I have an idea where the tapes might be, but I'm not certain. If I can pinpoint the location of the tapes, I might be able to ID the killer."

"Okay, that's three things that need doing," Sara said on her way into the bedroom. She came out with a blanket and a pillow and tossed them on the couch.

"In the morning we talk to Mrs. Stewart, pay a visit to Proctor Straley, and locate the videotapes."

"We?" Kerney said.

"That's what I said. Someone has to keep an eye on you. You get the bed, Kerney.

I'll sleep on the couch."

"That's not the best way for us to spend a night together in a four-hundred-dollar hotel suite."

Sara pointed at the open bedroom door.

"Go. I've got a little more digging I want to do and I need to use the laptop."

Kerney got to his feet. Sara stepped up and gave him a quick kiss.

"I'll be sick in the morning. It's not a pretty sight."

"You're not well?"

"Morning sickness, Kerney, that's all."

"You didn't tell me."

"I figured you'd find out about it firsthand this weekend. Go to bed, you look exhausted."

Sara ushered Kerney into the bedroom, gave him another kiss, closed the door, and started surfing the Internet looking for Proctor Straley.

When Applewhite arrived at the Santa Fe Airport without Charlie Perry, Sal Molina stayed put while Bobby Sloan tailed her. Later in the night Ingram showed and Molina followed him to the federal courthouse. He parked next to the pink-colored stone Scottish Rite Temple, where he had a clear view of the back entrance, and waited.

The temple confused tourists who thought it had to be either a church or a museum. Although it was a Santa Fe landmark, Molina knew very little about it. A guild or some sort of Freemason society owned it, and supposedly an old dead guy was buried beneath the front steps.

Time dragged for Molina. To keep awake he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, hummed songs to himself, and kept the window open to let cold air circulate through the minivan. Ingram finally emerged.

But instead of going to his vehicle he walked toward the plaza.

Molina put his hand on the door latch and hesitated. There wasn't a person other than Ingram on the sidewalk and traffic was nonexistent.

Ingram turned the corner. Molina hurried on foot to the end of the block and slowed his pace when he saw Ingram making his way down the sidewalk.

He stayed well back. Ingram led him into the historic La Fonda Hotel, which touted itself as the inn at the end of the Old Santa Fe Trail.

Ingram peeled off into the bar adjacent to the reception area. Molina kept moving, counting one bartender, a waitress, and three customers as he passed by.

He walked down a corridor, through the entrance to the parking garage, and took up a position outside the hotel that gave him a view of the two main entrances.

The wind was biting cold and the temperature way below freezing. That suited Molina; he wasn't sleepy anymore.

Tim Ingram sat at the end of the bar, slugged down a single malt, and ordered up another. The television was off, the bar almost empty, and the silence deafening. It was too damn quiet and genteel. He needed a raucous dive that would force him to stop thinking -He rubbed his head and twisted his trunk in an attempt to loosen up the muscles in his back. He'd failed to call in a report on Sara Brannon, hadn't put her hotel room under electronic surveillance, and hadn't told anyone that his cover had been partially penetrated.

That still needed to be done. But not until he could think of an untraceable, safe way to warn off Lieutenant Colonel Brannon. She deserved that much consideration.

He decided on a plan, asked the bartender for a phone book, and paged through it until he found what he wanted.

Ingram left the La Fonda Hotel. Molina paralleled him from one street over to the courthouse. He got to the minivan just in time to see Ingram's vehicle with the broken license-plate lights cruising away from downtown toward St. Francis Drive. He hauled ass through a red light to keep Ingram in range.

Traffic lights showed green down the quiet thoroughfare that led to the Interstate, and Molina grouchily wondered if Ingram was heading back to Albuquerque. He didn't relish the prospect of making the drive.

Ingram turned off on St. Michael's Drive and stopped at a twenty-four-hour-a-day franchise copy service and print shop.

Molina took some blank property receipt forms off his clipboard, went inside, ran them through a self-serve copier, and watched Ingram fill out a form and hand it to the clerk. The clerk fed it into a fax machine and rang up the charges. Ingram paid the clerk, shredded the paper, and walked out.

Molina waited until Ingram left the parking lot. The vehicle tracking monitor and Global Positioning System would give him a fix on his travel direction.

He went to the clerk and flashed his shield.

"Did you see who that fax was sent to?" he asked.

"We're not supposed to look," the kid said, wide eyed.

"Did you look?"

The kid, no more than eighteen, shook his head.

"No."

"Can you call the fax number up on the machine?"

"I guess so."

"Well, do it," Molina said.

The kid came back with the number. Molina dropped a five dollar bill on the counter, went to the minivan, and got a fix on In gram's direction from the state police agent manning the tracking devices. He was heading back downtown.

Molina cross-checked the phone number in the city directory. It didn't show, but the next number down listed a downtown hotel.

Molina hung a turn onto the street, called the hotel night clerk, and identified himself.

"You just received a fax. Who was it for?"

"Colonel Sara Brannon. It's being delivered now."

Lights ran red up and down St. Francis Drive. Molina busted through them and picked up Ingram passing by the last downtown turnoff. He slowed and watched Ingram pull into the parking lot of Applewhite's hotel on the north side of town.