Even the Wind: A Jonas Brant Thriller (24 page)

 
``So you’ll understand my interest here.’’

 
Sutton’s smile widened as he made a steeple of his fingers. ``Jonas, stay out of this, okay. I’m saying it as your brother-in-law.’’

 
Brant shook his head and glowered. Sutton’s smugness was digging at him and he didn’t like it.

 
``You’re in the wrong here, David. Fucking the secretary. What a pathetic cliche.’’

 
``Is that what she told you?’’

 
``She told me enough. I don’t need the details to know what’s going on.’’

 
``Ah, the detective, eh? Besides, it’s hardly as if Marcellus is the victim here.’’

 
``What’s that supposed to mean?’’

 
Sutton untangled his fingers. ``All I’m saying is the breakup of a marriage is a messy business. Marcellus is done with the threats. Now she’s going to find out what it really means to go up against the full force of the law. I’m going to make her pay.’’

 
Brant pointed a finger. ``You’re a bigger asshole than I thought, and I thought you were a pretty big asshole to begin with.’’

 
Sutton shrugged with indifference. ``Jonas, the protective brother thing is endearing but go back to playing cops and robbers or whatever it is you do. This doesn’t involve you. I don’t want to make you collateral damage.’’

 
Brant’s gaze bore a hole through Sutton. ``You’re pissing me off, David. You don’t want to do that.’’

 
Sutton smiled. ``Go away, Jonas. Keep the spare bedroom made up for your sister, because when I’m done with her, she’s going to need a place to live.’’

 
``You may know the law, but you don’t want to provoke me, David.’’
 

 
Sutton sat back. ``That sounds like a threat. I don’t like that, Jonas. I mean here I am trying to be a nice guy to you and you come into my place of work and start making…what?…what is it exactly that you’re trying to say? It almost sounds as if you’re going to use your position as a public servant in this city’s fine police department for your own personal gain. Is that what I’m hearing, lieutenant? Is that what you’re trying to say?’’

 
Brant held his tongue.
 

 
``You know, there’s one thing about lawyers. We have a pretty good idea how the police work. I mean, just look at what went down in Baltimore or that shooting out in Washington. You’d like to think the cops are altruistic, right. But you and I know the truth, Jonas. Lots of cops are racist. Lots of cops bend the rules. Lots of cops’ll do anything to prove themselves right. You could even say the time has come when we have to protect ourselves from the very people we’ve entrusted to be our protectors. It’s a difficult time. I don’t envy you, Jonas. You walk a delicate line every day.’’

 
Brant stood to leave. He was fuming. He refused Sutton’s handshake.

 
``Let’s not make this personal, Jonas. I hate that there’s tension between us.’’

 
Brant continued to glower as he prepared his exit. ``We’re not done.’’

 
``No, that’s exactly what we are, Jonas. We’re done.’’
   

He seethed, even on his return to the squad room. Sutton had rattled him. Brant had been stupid confronting him like that. He could have been smarter and taken a different, more nuanced approach. Better yet, he could have stayed out of it altogether. Why did he always feel the need to fix things?

 
Brant kicked the back of a chair, releasing some of the tension with the force of his foot against the back of the armrest. The chair spun and careened across the aisle before crashing into a desk on the far side of the room. One or two of the officers in the squad room lifted their heads in the direction of the commotion.

 
``Bad mood?’’ Clatterback asked.

 
``Don’t say anything. Just don’t.’’

He’d found Clatterback and Malloy huddling in a corner, comparing notes while gossiping about the latest office politics. Rumor had it Julian March was in line for Jolly’s job should the big man step out of line or be pushed.

 
``Let’s get a conference room,’’ he said.
 

 
They found a vacant room a floor below.

 
``Your sister called,’’ Malloy said when he’d closed the door. ``She sounded pretty upset. She tried you on the cell but you weren’t answering. Where were you this morning anyway?’’

 
``I had an appointment downtown.’’
 

 
``You missed Jolly’s speech,’’ Clatterback said as he leaned back in an Aeron chair.
 

 
``How was it?’’

 
``About as inspirational as you’d expect.’’

 
``That bad, huh?’’

 
``You have no idea.’’

 
Brant drew the blinds, casting the room into semi darkness.
 

 
``Let’s go over what we’ve got. Let’s stick to the knowns first. We can speculate after that.’’

 
``James Cicca,’’ Malloy said.

 
``Care to elaborate?’’

 
``You asked for a name. Cicca interviewed Luceno. Well, he was one of the two officers. The other guy was named Davis. But James Cicca’s your man. I know him. He’s discreet. He’ll talk, but I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of it. By the way, that’s it for Luceno, okay? I’ve done all I’m going to do. I’d actually like to have a career.’’

 
``Fair enough. James Cicca. I’ll take it from here. Thanks. I know that put you in a difficult situation and I appreciate it. What about you, Junior? What have you been up to?’’

 
Clatterback smiled. ``I thought you’d never ask. I’ve been going through hospital records. Carswell gave her kid up for adoption. It was all hush hush. That’s probably why no one really knew anything about the kid.’’

 
``But you found something?’’

 
``Yes, I did. I found the father’s name. He’s called Franz Eichel. German guy, I guess.’’

 
Clatterback placed a folder on the table. Brant began thumbing through a collection of photographs. Each showed the same man. Franz Eichel was tall and athletic. Some would call him swarthy. He had broad shoulders and the face of an outdoorsman. In one photograph, he sported a beard. Another showed him standing at the edge of a beach, stripped to the waist and displaying an enviable six pack.

 
``How did you find him?’’

 
``Adoption agency,’’ Clatterback said. ``The hospital gave me the name. All I had to do was tell them the mother had been murdered. They were pretty quick to come up with the father’s name. I got the sense they were happy to get rid of me.’’

 
``Where’d the baby end up?’’ Malloy asked.

 
Clatterback shrugged. ``Family out in California. I didn’t dig too far but I can go back and find them if we think that’s relevant.’’

 
``It might be,’’ Brant said. ``Let’s hold that thought for a second. What about the phone records, the CDs in her apartment and the gun?’’

 
``We can trace the phone records pretty easily now that we know what we’re looking for. I can do a specific search for Eichel. We can also trace her movements in a bit more detail, see when she met up with him and where they spent time together. The CDs are a bust. They were erased.’’

 
``You can’t recover the data?’’

 
``We can try but it’ll take time.’’

 
``Do it. What about the gun?’’

 
``Reported stolen a year ago,’’ Malloy said. ``I did a search through the FRB database. You’re gonna love this. The gun you found in Carswell’s apartment was purchased and registered by a Pyotr Dimitri.’’

 
``Dimitri? As in Volodin’s Dimitri?’’

 
Malloy nodded. ``One and the same. I checked with the IRS. Pyotr Dimitri’s last tax return lists Sergei Volodin as his employer. Quite a coincidence.’’

 
``Not likely,’’ Brant said. He stood and began pacing the room. The conference room’s windows looked onto Tremont Street. Beyond that was a parking lot and several modern office buildings.
 

 
``How’d it end up in Carswell’s room?’’ Clatterback asked.

 
``Good question. I need to think about that.’’

 
``Your hunch on Volodin seems to be correct,’’ Malloy said after a moment. ``The evidence points more and more in his direction.’’

 
``It does, doesn’t it?’’ Brant said.
 

 
``Who’s Sergei Volodin?’’ Clatterback asked. ``I’m missing something.’’

 
``Sorry, we should have told you, Junior. Sergei Volodin was the owner of the building where Genepro is…was…located. He’s also what you would call a modern day gangster. Has his fingers into pretty much everything. Much of it quite sophisticated. Some of it pretty basic.’’

 
``Why have I never heard of him?’’ Clatterback asked.

 
``He’s very smart. He’s very good at getting his foot soldiers to do the dirty work while he stays in the background. I’ve come up against him a few times but we’ve never been able to get enough to stick. Maybe this time is different.’’

 
``What do we really have? Most of it’s circumstantial. There’s nothing that puts Volodin anywhere near Carswell’s murder, is there?’’ Malloy furrowed her brow.

 
``Let’s go over what we have,’’ Brant said, pointing to the whiteboard they’d earlier set up and the timeline of the investigation sprawled along the bottom in ink. ``Allison Carswell meets this Franz Eichel. They start seeing each other, spend time. She gets pregnant and has the baby. What kind of timeframe are we talking about? Junior? How long does it take to hook up and settle down?’’

 
Clatterback shrugged as he fiddled with the controls of his Aeron. Brant had taken the cap off a black marker and had written Franz Eichel’s name into a bubble near the center of the whiteboard. Lines were drawn between Eichel and Carswell, connecting them. ``How am I supposed to know? It’s not like I’m married or anything. You’re the expert around here on that subject.’’

 
Brant’s face reddened. Clatterback had hit a sore point.

 
``What about you, Katy? What kind of timeline should we be considering here?’’

 
``In today’s hookup culture? It’d be nice if we had a bit more on Eichel. We could trace their paths, see when they first met. Does he have Facebook? Maybe he’s on Linkedin or Twitter or Tumblr?’’

 
``Tumblr?’’ Brant asked. He was new to social media. Much of it left him perplexed. He couldn’t see the point but was reluctant to admit as much in front of the two younger officers.

 
``It’s kind of a blog-making service. You post photos, stories, snippets, songs you like. That kind of thing.’’

 
``What about it, Junior? Does Eichel have any kind of social media presence?’’

 
``I thought you’d never ask.’’

 
Clatterback produced a laptop computer, which he placed on the conference room table. It was an older black Lenovo Thinkpad with a red nub in the middle of the keyboard that served as the pointer. After opening a browser window, he tapped in a web address and pulled up a Twitter feed.

 
``He was pretty active on Twitter until two weeks ago. He’s been quiet since then. Nothing on Facebook, Linkedin or Tumblr. Tumblr’s so yesterday by the way.’’

 
Malloy rolled her eyes at the rebuke and the challenge to her Internet savvy.

 
``What do we know about him?’’ Brant asked, ignoring Clatterback’s jibe.

 
Clatterback scrolled through several screens, navigating Eichel’s Twitter feed through the previous months. Eichel’s posts were mostly photographs. Like the earlier pictures Clatterback had found, they showed an athletic man engaged in all manner of sport.
 

 
``Looks like he’s some kind of outdoors guy. The description at the top of his Twitter page doesn’t give us much to go on, but he says he’s passionate about being out on the water and enjoys pushing himself to the limits. Whatever that means.’’

 
``Let me see that.’’

 
Brant took control of the laptop.
 

 
Eichel’s feed made no mention of Allison Carswell, or the fact that he was in a relationship of any kind. Most of the photos and posts were vague. Several were inspirational quotes lifted from other places. Some showed photographs Eichel had taken around Boston. Others displayed landscapes of stunning beauty. One was of a setting sun over a placid lake bordered by a rocky outcrop.

 
``Well, if we assume he took those photos, we know he was in Boston. Look here. This one was taken at Fenway Park. You can see the scoreboard in the background.’’

 
Clatterback clicked onto the feed’s photograph, bringing up a separate screen he was able to enlarge with the click of the mouse.

 
``Can you see who was playing?’’ Brant asked as he eyed the
 
picture. Eichel was in the foreground wearing a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. He held a red plastic tumbler in one hand. In his other he made a V for victory with his fingers. His smile was broad and enthusiastic.

 
``He’s a Red Sox fan by the look of it,’’ Malloy said. ``Looks like they were playing the Orioles. And it looks like they were winning. Eichel seems pretty happy about it.’’