Denouement (4 page)

I clenched my jaw at the comment. I couldn’t imagine how I missed.

“Where did you take him?” Bostok asked.

“Nowhere. He used my phone to make a call, and someone picked him up. I got a bag of cash on my doorstep a few days later. That was it. I never had any contact with him after.”

Iler’s story filled in a few holes, but not many.

“But you had contact with someone else in their organization, didn’t you? Tell me about Yury Sokoloff,” I said.

“I don’t know anyone by that name, but yes, I was contacted again.”

“Enlighten us,” Bostok said.

“Some guy called me and said that an app was being installed on my phone. He gave me instructions to call you as soon as I hung up. I asked why, and he said that it didn’t matter and to just do it. He said that he would be able to tell if I did.”

“So you just went along with it?” I asked. My anger built. “No questions asked? Just a ‘yes, sir’ to the mystery man on the other end of the phone?” I couldn’t contain my anger. I stood and leaned over the table at him, but Bostok grabbed me by the back of my suit jacket. My face was inches from Iler. “You put a tracking device on my phone, you piece of shit. Because of you, a hit squad followed me around, trying to kill me and my family!”

Bostok yanked me back into my chair. “Enough!” he yelled.

I scooted the chair back. My teeth grinding against each other, I looked away.

“They threatened me,” Iler said.

“Threatened you with what?” Bostok asked.

“Exposing that I helped get Andrei Azarov out of there. The guy said if I didn’t do it, he would make an anonymous call to the station. He said if that didn’t work, they would just kill me.”

“Nice new group of friends you made there.” Hank looked over at Bostok. “Cap, does the cell-phone tracking kind of sound like conspiracy to commit murder to you?”

Bostok rubbed at his mustache. “Yeah, it kind of does. We’ll see what the district attorney thinks.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Look guys. I didn’t know what I was getting into. Yeah, it was stupid to take the money, but I damn well wasn’t trying to get Kane killed.”

I had sat quiet long enough and didn’t want to hear another word out of Iler’s mouth, so I stood and motioned for Iler to do the same. “Get up, shithead,” I said. I pulled the handcuffs from my belt and spun Iler around by his shoulder. “Put your hands behind your back.”

Iler hesitated.

I brought my face close to his ear and quietly said, “Please try to resist.”

His hands shot behind him in an instant.

I linked him up. “You’re under arrest for aiding and abetting.” Then I read him his rights and sat him back down before walking to the door and reaching for the knob.

“I’ll go on record with everything I told you. I’ll give you anything you need. I’ll testify against the guy on the phone. Anything. Let me just talk to someone about some kind of deal,” Iler said.

I looked back over my shoulder.

Bostok patted Iler on the back. “I think we got everything we needed, actually. But thanks for sharing that with us.”

Bostok and Hank headed toward me.

“I want an attorney. Quentin Lawrence,” Iler said.

The three of us walked out and went next door. We took seats in the observation room.

“Quentin Lawrence, huh?” Hank asked.

Bostok shrugged. “Think about it. Lawrence represents every drug dealer and mid-level criminal in the city. The guy makes deals with the district attorney’s office for a living. That’s why he wants Lawrence. If anyone is going to get him some kind of a plea deal, that’s the guy.”

“What are we going to do with him?” I asked.

“I’ll make the call to the district attorney’s office and Quentin Lawrence,” Bostok said. “I’ll get something put together where we can get him stashed away.”

“How are you going to pull that off?” I asked.

“I’ll figure out something.”

“All right,” I said. “I’m going to head to my office and make a call.”

“Something important?” Bostok asked.

“I just want to check in with Callie.”

I sat at my desk, scooped up the phone, and dialed Callie.

“Hey, babe,” she said.

“Hey. How’s everything there?” I asked.

“We’re fine. Just kind of sitting around.”

“Okay. We got some news. It looks like, if all goes well, we should be able to get you guys out of there tomorrow night.”

“Really?” Callie asked.

“The feds have something in the works. I’m not a part of whatever they are doing, but they will be keeping me in the loop.”

“Good.” Callie lowered her voice to a whisper. “Melissa is pregnant.”

“What?” My head jerked back. “She didn’t say anything to me about that.”

“She just told your dad, Sandy, and me a minute ago. Act surprised when she tells you.”

“Nah, I’m going to bust you and tell her you already told me.” I smiled.

“Carl, don’t.”

“I’m just kidding. So you guys are all good there?”

“We’re fine. Baby Kane has been kicking like you wouldn’t believe. I’m touching her little toes right now.”

“I think you meant to say
his
toes.”

“Yeah, yeah. Call me later tonight. I’m going to pass the phone off to your dad. He said he wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay, Cal. Love you.”

“Love you more. Bye, babe. Here’s your dad.”

Callie put my father on the phone. We talked for a couple minutes, and then he passed the phone off to Sandy. After Sandy came my sister. I put on my best surprised voice when she told me she was expecting. I finished up with a quick talk to my nephew, Tommy. He spent a few minutes telling me about his latest toy truck and all the features. After saying good-bye, I hung up and rocked back in my chair.

I rubbed the stubble on my face. Though speaking with my family and Callie had eased my anger a bit, it was still there. While Iler’s involvement disgusted me, knowing that Ray was alive and roaming around the city disturbed me more. Just waiting on whatever Faust had developing wasn’t sitting right with me in the least.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. As I slid it out to see who it was, someone banged on the glass behind my head. I looked over my shoulder to see Bostok.

“We got one,” he said.

I stood and went next door to Bostok’s office. Hank was right on my heels, coming from his desk in the bullpen. Bostok had the phone to his ear at his desk. I assumed he was speaking with our dispatch and getting more information. The captain said a few words and hung up.

“What do we have?” I asked.

“That was the front. A 9-1-1 call just came in. Wife found her husband beaten and shot in their home. Did you guys get the address from dispatch?”

“Yeah, I have it,” Hank said.

“Let me know what you get.”

Hank and I left Bostok’s office for the parking structure. We piled into a car and headed out. The GPS on Hank’s phone said the address was under three miles from the station. With traffic, surface streets, and stop lights, getting there took us the better part of fifteen minutes. We pulled into the old neighborhood just before eleven. Two of our patrol cars were parked along the grass shoulder of the road. Hank and I pulled behind them and got out.

I took in the scene, counting only five houses on the block, three on our side and two on the other. The houses themselves were spaced far enough away from each other that a greedy developer could have jammed another between each. The street was mostly shaded from the sun by large, old oak trees. All the homes looked to be from the early part of the last century, yet they all appeared to have been kept up with nice landscaping. I didn’t spot a single palm tree anywhere. In my handful of years of working in Tampa, I hadn’t ever stepped foot in that particular part of town. It reminded me of the older Wisconsin neighborhood I’d grown up in.

“Have you ever been over here for anything, Hank?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Nice area, though.”

I nodded and pointed toward the house. Officer Lowen was standing at the front door. Hank and I walked up the driveway and across the brick sidewalk and stepped up onto the front porch.

“Lowen,” I said. “What are we looking at here?”

“It looks like we have a home invasion. The guy was roughed up prior to being shot twice. We have a safe in the back bedroom that is standing open. The wife, a Becky Brumfeld, said that there was a few thousand dollars missing from inside.”

“Okay. Where is the wife now?” I asked.

“Over at the neighbors’. Officer Tate is there with her, getting a statement.”

“Did you call the coroner?” Hank asked.

“Yeah. He’s on his way.”

I heard a car pulling into the driveway at my back and looked over my shoulder. The driver was Rick, from our forensics department. He stepped out of his car and went to the trunk. He walked toward us a moment later, carrying his kit.

“Morning, guys,” Rick said. He climbed the stairs of the front porch.

“Hey, Rick,” I said.

Hank gave him a nod.

“What have we got?” Rick asked.

“We haven’t been inside yet,” I said.

“Well, let’s go and take a look.”

Rick squeezed past Hank, Lowen, and me into the house. We filed in behind him.

“The body is in the bedroom at the end of the hall,” Lowen said.

We made our way back there. Rick stepped inside the room while the rest of us waited at the open bedroom door. The man lay at the foot of the bed, facing us and tied to a chair with a pair of jumper cables. Blood soaked the brown carpet around his body and the bathrobe he wore. The man was slim with long brown hair. He had a thin face, tattoos, and a bullet hole right between his eyes. Another bullet wound created a hole in his chest. He’d obviously been beaten as noticeable contusions covered his face. His nose looked as if it had been broken.

“This is the homeowner?” Hank asked.

“Don Brumfeld,” Lowen said.

Rick knelt next to the body. He set his kit beside him, opened it, and gloved his hands. He looked over the man, touching his cheeks and neck. He looked up at Lowen. “Who found him?”

“His wife.”

“About how long ago?”

“Maybe a half hour,” Lowen said.

“Whatever happened here went down fairly recently. A few hours, tops. Rigor usually starts in the small muscles of the face and neck. We have nothing present yet.”

“His wife said she was only gone for two hours. She left with their daughter to drop her off at school and then went grocery shopping. Came back and found this,” Lowen said.

“Interesting that she leaves and this happens while she’s out of the house,” Hank said. “The level of beating suggests a man, though.”

I jerked my chin at the chair. “Looks like a kitchen chair.”

“Yeah, we have some blood in the kitchen as well,” Lowen said.

I stared at the body in thought.

“What’s up?” Hank asked.

“I’m just trying to work out the logistics of the guy winding up in his bedroom, tied to a kitchen chair. I mean, if there is blood in the kitchen, finding him tied to a chair in there makes sense. Why would you grab a chair from the kitchen to tie him to in here when you could have just used that.” I pointed to an antique wooden chair in the corner of the room.

“I’ll see what everything tells me, Kane.” Rick said. “I need to get all of this photographed, and then I’ll start going over what’s left behind.”

“Okay, Rick.” I looked at Lowen. “Which neighbors’ house is the wife at?”

“Directly out of the front door, across the street.”

“Okay. Lowen, you want to knock on a couple doors and see if anyone saw anything?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he said.

“Come on, Hank. Let’s go have a talk with the wife and see if we can get anything useful.”

Hank and I walked from the front of the house, across the street, to the neighbors’ front door. I thumbed in the doorbell.

A man appearing in his seventies answered. He held the door open. “Detectives, I presume?” he asked.

“Lieutenant Kane and Sergeant Rawlings,” I said.

“Come on in. Your officer is in the kitchen with Becky.” He waved us inside.

We followed the old man through the living room to the kitchen at the back of the house. A brunette was holding her face in her hands at the kitchen table—Officer Tate stood beside her.

“Tate,” I said.

The woman looked up and stared at Hank and me. Her brown hair hung down over her face, her eyes swollen and red from crying. Her bottom lip was quivering.

Tate walked to us and handed me a clipboard. He motioned for us to walk back out front. We did. He closed the home’s front door at his back.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“We just finished up,” he said.

“And? How did she seem?” I asked.

“Emotions seem legit. That’s not what the problem is, though. She said her husband was an undercover FBI agent.”

“What?” Hank asked.

Tate nodded.

“Son of a bitch. Let me call Faust and see if he’s one of his.” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Shit.”

“What?” Hank asked.

“I don’t have his number in this phone. I’m going to have to call information, have them put me through to the field office, and then have them transfer me to his phone. Hank, go sit down with the wife and run through everything again with her. I’ll be inside in a minute.”

“Got it,” he said

Ray took the stairs so as to not be seen by anyone riding the elevator. The Horizon Point building was a giant mirrored high-rise sitting right in the middle of downtown Tampa. Dupold’s condo was on the twenty-first floor, unit 2199. Ray rounded the corner on the twentieth floor—only one more flight to go. He stopped at the door and caught his breath. Ray popped the door and entered the hallway. He looked left to right and found the hallway empty. Unit 2177 sat directly across from him. He walked down the hall to Dupold’s door.

Ray stood to one side, out of sight from the door’s peephole, and lightly rapped on the door with his knuckles. He waited. Thirty seconds later, the lock of the door clicked open, and hinges creaked. Ray spun around the doorway and shoved the person who’d answered into the condo. Dupold stumbled backward and fell. Ray slammed the door with his heel and advanced. Dupold tried pulling himself to his feet, but Ray lunged at him, taking Dupold back to the ground. Ray mounted the agent and drove quick elbows down into his face. With each strike, Dupold’s head bounced off of the wood floor. By the fourth blow, Dupold was unconscious.