Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (40 page)

“Rodney and I had become close friends and when he moved back to New Jersey, I asked him to mail a letter for me. I figured no one would be
able to trace a New Jersey postmark back to Cortez. I wrote Ernst and told him I was fine and would stay in touch. I mentioned some things in the letter that only he and I would have known about so that he would know that I was really writing the letter. I gave him Rodney’s address and told him he could communicate with me through him. I told Rodney that it was very important that my name and whereabouts be kept secret, and he honored that. Ernst honored my request as well, and never tried to find me or to question Rodney about me. We corresponded once or twice a year, first by letter and much later by e-mail. I’d send an e-mail to Rodney, he’d copy and paste it and send it on to Ernst.”

“Whoever killed Vernon took his computer,” I said. “The killers were Porter King’s people, so that’s probably how King made the connection to you. The e-mail exchanges.”

“You’re probably right, Mr. Royal,” said Reicheldorf. “The only connection between Ernst and me was through Rodney.”

“And,” said J.D., “the Toms River detective told me that the only people Vernon emailed were his children, you, and your cousin. That had to be the connection. But why would they kill Ken Goodlow?”

“That was my fault,” said Reicheldorf. “Ken knew about my correspondence with Ernst and Rodney’s connection to it. I had no idea why Ernst and Rodney had been killed, but the only connection between them had to do with me. The only reason I’d be important to anybody would be my time in the Abwehr. When I began looking into it, I found an article on the Internet about U-166 being discovered a couple of years ago. The U.S. government took a look at it with a submersible and then left it alone as a gravesite.

“I was presumed dead, lost at sea. The German government would have made that decision when U-166 didn’t return from its patrol. But, if the killers thought Ernst was me, they might have come after him for some reason. Maybe they became convinced that Ernst was exactly who he said he was, but told them about our correspondence through Rodney. They then went to Rodney and found my name and made the connection that I was the one corresponding with Ernst and therefore must be the Abwehr agent.”

“Did you figure out why they might be looking for you?”

“Not at first. I read some of the German newspapers online and saw an article about Ernst’s death. I tried to call Rodney, but didn’t get an answer. I left a voice mail, but he didn’t call back. After a couple of days, I went to the online version of the
Toms River Times
and found an article about Rodney’s death. I figured that somebody was looking for me and would know where I was.

“A couple of days later, two days before Ken’s murder, a man came to my door and introduced himself as Porter King. He asked if I knew Rodney and Ernst. I told him I knew Rodney, but didn’t know Ernst. I didn’t have any idea what they might have told King when they were being tortured, but I knew neither one of them would have given me up if they could have helped it.

“King showed me a document that I recognized instantly. It was the first page of the documents that I was delivering to San Antonio when U-166 was sunk. I told him I had no idea what it was. He asked me if I knew anybody named Reicheldorf. I told him I didn’t. I don’t think he believed me.”

“What did you do after King showed up?” I asked.

“I called Ken and told him what had happened. We decided that King was looking for the key to the code. The key was a book and without knowing which book, the code is virtually unbreakable. King, or somebody, must have discovered the documents in the U-166’s safe. I had no idea what was in those documents, but it must have been important for somebody to torture and kill two old men.”

“Do you know why Mr. Goodlow was killed?” J.D. asked.

“I think it must have been because Ken was planning to talk to a lawyer. He thought that I should meet with one and see what we could do about the documents and my immigration status.”

“How would the killer have known that?” J.D. asked.

“I don’t know. Ken thought somebody was electronically eavesdropping on us. I didn’t put much credence in that, but maybe somebody was. After he died, I remembered that he had gotten the name of a lawyer from Nick Field over at the Seafood Shack. Maybe somebody overheard the conversation and didn’t want Ken talking.”

“I understand,” said Jock, “that a couple of your friends died during
the last year or so. Ones you had coffee with every morning. Were they involved in this?”

“You’re talking about Mack Hollister and Bob Sanders. The answer is no. They had been my friends since the war, and I watched them wither and die.”

“You don’t think their deaths were suspicious?”

“No. Mack died of pancreatic cancer. Took him five agonizing months to die. Bob had a bad heart and it caught up with him. He dropped dead walking to the post office.”

“What made you run?” I asked.

“If they killed Ken, I assumed I’d probably be next. They’d torture me until I gave up the key and then kill me. I got in my car and went to the airport, parked it in long-term and took a taxi to downtown Sarasota, another one to the Manatee Memorial Hospital in Bradenton, and one more to a hotel at 1-75 and Highway 64. I’ve been hiding out there ever since.”

“Do you remember the name of the book that was the key?” Jock asked.

Reicheldorf nodded. “The instructions were in German, but the code was based on English. The book was part of the King James Version of the Bible. Fitting, as it turned out. The key was the Book of Job.”

“Why were you in front of my house that night?” Katie asked. She’d sat quietly during Jamison/Reicheldorf’s story. I had watched the hard edge of skepticism drain slowly from her body language. Her face, at first tight with a look of disbelief, had relaxed into some kind of partial acceptance. Was she beginning to believe that Reicheldorf was really her grandfather?

Reicheldorf smiled. “I stopped by there on a regular basis,” he said. “I could never stay long without attracting attention, but occasionally I’d see you walking the dog or driving out of your driveway. Just glimpses, really, but I sometimes caught flashes of your mother in the way you carried yourself or bent over to pet your dog or smiled at a neighbor.”

“Were you stalking me?” Katie asked.

Reicheldorf laughed. “Probably,” he said. “But I meant no harm. I was in the audience the day you graduated from Winter Park High School and again when you walked across the stage to get your diploma at Florida International University. I watched a number of your volleyball games when you were competing in high school. I couldn’t be part of your life, but I could stand on the edges and admire the young woman you’d become. Your mom and grandmother would have been so proud.”

“Were you ever going to tell me who you were?” Katie asked.

“I don’t know. I assumed you knew you were adopted, but I didn’t know how you would feel about meeting me, or hearing the story of your biological mother.”

“My parents never told me I was adopted,” Katie said. “Not until my dad blew up and threw it in my face. If you really are my grandfather, how did you find me?”

“I never lost you. The lawyer in Bradenton who handled the adoption
was a friend of mine and he told me from the beginning that you had been adopted by the Basses. He made me promise not to interfere in any way, and I kept that promise. Well, mostly.” He chuckled. “Aside from stalking you.”

“Why were you so interested in me?” asked Katie.

“Except for my cousin Ernst, you were the only family I had left. Ernst was gay, so he would never have children. You were it. And I’d loved my daughter so much and missed her so much. You were a link, a tenuous one to be sure, but still a link to that bright little girl I raised from birth and buried before her twenty-fifth birthday.”

“This is hard for me to get my head around,” Katie said.

“I’m sure it is,” said Reicheldorf. “When we get things cleared up around here, we can run DNA tests. If you’re not my granddaughter, you’ll never hear from me again. And if you are, you’ll set the parameters of our relationship.”

J.D.’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID, excused herself, and walked out to the patio. I looked at my watch. Almost eleven. The morning was slipping by. When J.D. returned, she said, “That was Harry Robson, the Sarasota detective. He told me that Captain Doug McAllister was shot to death this morning at his home and the body of Wayne Evans was found in his home. They were shot by the same pistol. Robson found some documents in Evans’s house that were similar to the one we found on Ken Goodlow’s murderer. He wants me to take a look at them.”

“What about Evans’s family?” I asked.

“They weren’t home. They were visiting family over on the east coast. Vero Beach, I think Robson said.”

“I’d like to get my hands on those documents,” Jock said. “My people can run them through a computer program and have them translated very quickly.”

“Harry scanned them,” said J.D. “He’s e-mailing them to me this morning.”

“I can’t imagine that they’re of any importance today,” said Reicheldorf. “I wonder how something so useless could bring about so many deaths.”

“King seemed to think they might contain references to money or bank
accounts. Something he could use to find money. Or maybe names that he could use to blackmail the families of Americans who were Nazi sympathizers.”

“That seems like a long shot,” Reicheldorf said.

“King was probably insane,” I said. “McAllister said he was obsessed with the documents. In the end, they got him killed. Sometimes justice takes some strange twists.”

It was late in the afternoon, two days after the meeting with Reicheldorf, when Jock and a FBI agent named Lisa Coyle pulled to a stop in the parking lot of a branch office of a medium-size community bank. They were chasing ten million dollars.

The Sarasota police department had found documents in Wayne Evans’s files that indicated that the wire transfer to Jim Fredrickson the day after his death had originated with the specific branch of this particular bank. The wire had been sent by a loan officer, the only loan officer assigned to this branch.

The branch office was on the first floor of a two-story red brick building located in an upscale section of Orlando. The bank would be closing in minutes. Jock and Lisa walked through the front door and went to a teller. Lisa showed her credentials and asked to speak to the branch manager. The teller went to a phone, returned, and said the boss would be right out. In a couple of minutes a blonde woman in her mid-thirties came into the lobby. “I’m Laura Hargrove, the branch manager,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Special Agent Lisa Coyle and this is Jock Algren. We need to talk to you privately.”

Hargrove led them into a small office off the lobby and took a seat behind her desk. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” said Lisa. “This shouldn’t take long. You have a loan officer here named Travis Watson.”

“Not anymore,” Hargrove said.

“May I ask why he left?” asked Lisa.

“It was a mutual agreement.”

“Ms. Hargrove,” said Lisa, “I can get a bunch of bank examiners in here before dinner this evening and I’ll have a warrant for all your personnel records by breakfast tomorrow. I think it would be in your best interest and that of your bank to answer my questions. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” said Hargrove, “I get it. Your tone sounds just like my mother did when she was in a bad mood. I asked Watson to resign. If he hadn’t, I would have fired him.”

“Why?”

“He opened a business account for a customer with a little over ten million dollars in it. That was good for the bank, of course, but it wasn’t too long before ten million was wired out of the account, leaving a couple hundred dollars. There were never any other deposits made, and after about six months, I asked Watson what was going on. He gave me some malarkey about the business falling on hard times, but I couldn’t find any references to the business anywhere. It started to look to me like a scam of some sort, and I couldn’t get any straight answers out of Watson. I talked to the president of the bank and we agreed to let Watson go.”

“You didn’t alert the authorities?” Lisa asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The president said that what was done was done, and he didn’t see any reason to open a can of worms.”

“Do you know where Watson is now?”

“No.”

“Is the account still active?”

Hargrove pulled out a keyboard, typed a bit, and peered at the monitor. “Yes,” she said.

“We’ll need to see all the information you have on that account,” Lisa said.

“I’m not sure I can give that to you without a warrant.”

“You might want to call your president. Mention to him that the FBI is in your office and that the agent is a bit pissed that nobody in this bank saw fit to let anybody in law enforcement know about the bogus account. Tell him that the government frowns on money laundering.”

Laura Hargrove turned ashen, all the color leaving her face. She stood.
“Give me a moment,” she said and walked out of the room. She returned in about ten minutes with a stack of paper. “This is the entire account history, including the initial application. It’s not much.”

“I’m glad the president saw the light,” Lisa said.

“He didn’t,” said Hargrove. “He said to tell you to go piss up a rope. I quit, downloaded the documents, and I’ll start looking for work tomorrow. I won’t be a party to anything illegal. I try to run a squeaky-clean operation.”

“Thank you, Laura,” said Lisa. She laid one of her business cards on the desk. “Let me know if I can be of any help in your job hunting.”

“Thanks. I may go back to teaching school in Atlanta. Not as many headaches.”

Back in the car, Jock said, “We’ve got to find Watson. Do you want to have my people look into his whereabouts?”

“You can probably get it quicker than I can.”

Jock made a phone call, was put on hold for a couple of minutes, and hung up. He turned to Lisa and said, “He lives south of town in the Conway area.”