Full Disclosure (17 page)

“Did you feel lonely as an only child?”

“I've never been alone, not in the sense of having no one to relate to. I had my parents, my grandparents, my neighbors, friends my age. And then I had books. Even as a young girl, I loved books. In my imagination I was there on those adventures. And even as a young girl, my stories were starting to appear, with characters as rich as real friends to me. And then somewhere about the age of ten, I fell in love with God, and got to start talking with someone who loved me. It's hard to be lonely when you are never alone.”

“We share that, Ann. I met God when I was six. I think that's one of the reasons why I coped okay with being at the group home. I had already chosen God, and He was there. I didn't feel totally alone. Even today, it's the relationship that sits at the center of all others.”

“You and I have had it easier because of that. Could I ask one last question about the Falcons?”

“Sure.”

“What's your mom like?”

“She loves to laugh. She's kind. She's disorganized in a messy kind of way, and all the family kind of keeps her together and helps her find what she's misplaced. You want her waffles when you visit and her big chunk chocolate cookies. She loves people and kids, and she's an optimist about everything. She created a weekly cartoon strip for years.”

“Really?”

“It was syndicated nationwide and better than
Peanuts
, in my humble opinion.”

“Tell me you've got copies of her strips I can see.”

“I do, and I'll share.”

Black started barking and took off. Ann looked toward the patio door and then back at Paul. “You mind if I go deal with this? It's probably my prowling raccoon.”

“Go.”

She opened the lockbox and retrieved her side arm. “Just in case it's not the raccoon. Black, don't chase.” She glanced at Paul. “He'll chase, so this will take a few minutes.”

She disappeared from the room.

Paul got up and stretched, and since she would be a few minutes he transferred the video to the den, and then went to find another soda. He caught the end of a ball game while keeping an eye on the screen for Ann's return. Forty minutes passed, and he was beginning to get uneasy. He heard a door kick open, and Ann appeared, carrying Black. She put him down on the couch and grabbed for his legs to keep him from getting up. “Just stay put, you big doofus. Stay.”

“What happened?”

“My raccoon was three raccoons, and Black promptly chased himself in circles and crashed into a tree. He's wobbling.” She sank down on the floor beside the couch, breathing hard and keeping a firm hand on the dog to keep him from moving. Black licked her face. She wiped at it, too tired for more than token protest. “Yeah, I know. Next time we let them get into the trash, buddy. It's easier on both of us.”

“Three of them.”

Ann laughed. “It was a wonderful sight, up until the collision. I'm going to have to bring in my hanging flowers and redo again where I keep my trash. One of the joys of living in the country. They'll be back now that they've found it.”

“Will Black be okay?”

“Give him an hour and he'll be fine. I think he's nearsighted. It's not the first accident he's had.” She ruffled the dog's ears and reached over him to get her book. “Give me a few minutes to catch my breath.” She stretched out, using the couch as a backrest and found her page in the book.

“Sure.” Paul watched her and had to smile.

He ended his night with the late evening news. Black had gone to sleep on the couch, one of his paws draped over Ann's shoulder. She was still reading. He wondered if she was going to finish the book tonight. “Ann, I'm going to turn in for the night.”

She looked up from the book. “I'm a night owl. I should have warned you.”

“Dave already did. Thanks for the evening.”

“You're welcome.”

“Admit it, I'm decent company.”

Amusement lit her face. “I'm getting used to you. Good night, Paul.”

“Good night, Ann.”

He closed the link. He'd asked her to be curious. Of everything he had expected, it hadn't been a question about his adoption. She hadn't landed on that question by chance. She'd been thinking about him, and who he was. She had asked a deep question that would tell her a lot about him. He turned in, thoughtful, mulling over that fact, and pleased with the evening.

P
aul was growing used to the eye strain from reading endless reports. He pulled out a cold root beer and thought about heading to the shooting range for a couple of hours. He wondered how Ann was spending her day. Probably not at her desk, unless it was by choice.

Rita tapped on his door and offered a blue-and-white-striped mailer. “This just came by courier for you. Security opened it since media can't pass through the scanner.”

He was the boss—it wouldn't do for him to groan. “Thanks.” He accepted the package, wondering who would be sending mail by hand-delivered courier. He waved at the piles in front of him. “You could take a stack of this if you like.”

She laughed. “Who do you think put most of it on your desk? Sam just got back. You want to talk about the Yates shooting?”

“Ten minutes and I'll find you both. I still think it's the brother. I listened to the audio of the interview on the drive in, and something is definitely off with his answers.”

Paul tipped the package she had brought and slid out two small audiotapes and a number-ten envelope. He opened the letter and pulled out a light green sheet of paper.

“Rita!”

She came back.

“Get Sam. And we'll need evidence bags.”

He picked up the desk phone and punched the direct line to building security. “This is Paul Falcon. The package just delivered by DMD Couriers to my attention. I need the person who brought it in identified, the video of him—anything you can give me.”

He carefully set the sheet of paper down and kept it from folding closed with the edge of his coaster and the stapler. He took photos of the letter with his phone camera. He encrypted the images with a ten-digit code.

Rita came back with gloves and evidence bags. “What is it?”

Paul stepped away from his desk and waved her in so she could read it for herself. “Bag the courier package, the two tapes, the envelope, the letter. Everything gets hand-walked through for fingerprints, and none of it leaves our sight. Top guy only sees that letter; this stays highly classified. We can't afford even a whisper of a leak on this.”

Paul read the letter through for a second time, using his photo of it.

Sam stepped into the office. Paul turned his phone and let Sam read the letter on the screen.

Sam nearly dropped part of his sandwich. “This isn't a forgery.”

“There are two tapes in the package.”

Agent Falcon—

I understand you are looking for me. I offer two tapes in good faith to prove my identity.

My offer—I want a deal in place in case you ever catch me. I will send you four more tapes if you agree to take the federal death penalty off the table for the thirty murders you now believe I have committed.

Send two signed copies of the deal agreement to the address below. I will send the four tapes and a signed agreement back to you.

L.S.

She wanted the reply mailed to an address in St. Charles, Missouri.

Rita gathered up the evidence bags. “I'm heading downstairs to rush all this through prints.”

“I'm going with you,” Sam said, adding his sandwich to the stacks on Paul's desk. “Soon as they're done checking the tapes, I'll have audio duplicate a set.”

Paul picked up his phone. “Meet me upstairs. I'm activating the small war room and tight security. We tripped into her. She heard about an interview. Who did we talk to, and who did they then talk to?”

“Maybe we have her prints.”

“Wouldn't that be a rush? Go. Bribe with whatever you have to so that's the next thing worked.”

Paul called his boss, then headed upstairs. The building security chief came off the elevator as Paul started to open the stairway door. He stopped to see what the man had.

“DMD Couriers, five packages dropped off. This is the photo of the delivery guy. He's a regular to this building. His route ends in twenty minutes, and DMD Couriers will hold him at their office until you've spoken with him. Trouble?”

“Yes. If any more deliveries come for my attention, hold the delivery guy and call me.”

“Will do.”

Paul took the stairs up. He entered the small room just off the secure conference room they normally used and personally reset the access codes. His boss arrived. Paul punched in the encryption code and offered his cellphone and the photo of the letter.

Arthur read it. “The director is going to love this. What's the plan?”

“We need to put a reply in the mail within seventy-two hours, with a thought-out plan for tracking the package and catching her when she picks it up. We wait longer than that, we risk her disappearing. During those seventy-two hours we need to figure out how we tripped into her, follow where these two tapes can
take us, trace the package she sent, and hope we get fingerprints somewhere along the line so we know who we're chasing.

“We catch her, this gets simple. We open the door for a deal, she's got twenty-eight more tapes. She can whittle the terms of the deal in her favor a few tapes at a time. We open that door, there's no way to predict how far it is going to go. So it ends up being a conversation for the director's level. It's a tactical problem, to game what she might do and how to proceed, to figure out what the attorney general can live with. That would be your kind of problem, sir.”

“Tomorrow morning, ten a.m., my office. I'll have the decision-makers in the room. We keep it to ten whoever sees this letter, or we're going to lose control of this.”

“You, me, Sam, Rita, the director, the U.S. attorney general, that gets us to six. Chief of the lab trying for prints, a good audio guy, makes eight.”

“We'll use Thomas Gates from legal to write the deal agreement. That gets us to nine.”

“I'd like to discuss it with the MHI. If we need someone with clout to open a door for us, she can get us a conversation with Vice President Gannett. He's got an interest in this case.”

Arthur nodded. “Granted. That's ten. What else do you need?”

“The questions are easy; speed is the problem.”

“I'll be near a phone if you need me or if there is news.”

“Thank you, sir.”

His boss headed out.

Paul's phone rang. “Yes, Sam.”

“Six sets of prints on the package, three of them are going to be our people, one the courier, figure another at the DMD offices, so there's a chance. The prints are being run now. The audiotapes show no prints. Rita's staying with the letter and envelope. I'm going to walk the tapes to the audio lab and stand over him while copies are made, then put the original tapes in your office safe. You need the delivery package upstairs?”

“I can work off photos. Send them to Franklin.”

“Sending them now.”

Paul moved into the large conference room. Six teams were in the field doing interviews, so it was down to a skeleton crew, and the room looked almost empty. He'd have to decide which ones in the field should be on a plane tonight to get them back here.

“People, I need your attention.” Agents turned toward him. “For the next several days there are going to be code-level assignments going out. This is the kind of case that will be on your résumé thirty years from now. It's going to be urgent and come in waves. And you're going to have to work with less than normal information about what's going on. Give me your best, and as fast as you can.”

He looked to Franklin. “Sam just sent you a picture of a package from DMD Couriers. I need you lights and siren to their office. When did the package arrive at DMD Couriers, who brought it in, who accepted the package, and what do they remember about who brought it in? I need security-camera footage for as far back in time as they have it. The courier who delivered it here will be at their office in twenty minutes. I need everything he knows about the package, and ask everyone if they will give us elimination prints. Kelly, go with him, and work on how the delivery was paid for. Was anything signed? Is there an account number that can be traced? I need the handwriting.

“Peter, there are six sets of prints on the package. They are being run now. Monitor the progress. I need names and faces for those prints. Then focus on the return address on the package. Is it real? The middle of a lake? Tell me everything that can be known about the address where this package originated.

“Christopher, I have an address in St. Charles, Missouri. I need everything about the address that can be known short of doing a drive-by to take pictures of it. Then I need a list of the lady shooter interviews on a board, listed by date and time.” Paul handed over a Post-it note with the address where she wanted the reply sent.

“If you hit a problem, find or call me. Tag me with results as soon as you have them. I'll tell you all later why you are now having fun.”

Sam was now in the doorway of the war room. Paul joined him and closed the door behind them.

“This
is
fun, boss,” Sam said. “My heart's got some adrenaline going.”

“Tell me about it.” Paul grabbed a marker and started making a list for himself on the board. Package, tapes, prints, letter reply, lawyers she chose, address to send agreements, how to track the reply to her. “Have any problem with me bringing in Ann?”

“None. She thinks in puzzles, and we've got one. Want to hear the tapes now?”

“Yes, but it will be faster if we wait for Rita. The package is under way. What else are you thinking?”

“The currency thief kept the tapes the middleman gave him. So we have the middleman's voice to use as a comparison. We can establish these tapes are legit if we get a match on the middleman's voice.”

“Can you get Treasury to offer a couple of the audio files without telling them why we want them?”

“I can be persuasive.”

“Get the tapes,” Paul agreed. “I'm still working on the fact we got her attention. An interview? The middleman investigation? She knew the middleman for years, so maybe she knew him well enough to know where he lived. A trip wire related to his home makes sense. A neighbor. The FBI shows up at the middleman's home, the lady shooter hears about it. ‘If you ever see cops at my uncle's home, call me and I'll give you five thousand dollars.' Maybe we were the ones who tripped into her.”

“Do we suspend the interviews while we focus on this?”

“At a minimum we turn around and re-interview everyone we just talked to.” Paul was grateful he had Ann's cash to work with. He wouldn't have to waste time making a case for funding. This had to happen fast, and it could get expensive. “Anyone
within a four-hour flight, see if you can get them back tonight. We'll regroup for a day and send them out again. I don't want to run shorthanded here until we get our arms around this.”

Sam reached for the phone.

Paul thought about the list on the board and added another one. Why did she make contact now? Something changed. Something had to have changed for the lady shooter to be looking for a deal.

Paul headed back into the main conference room to hear the updates.

“Boss, the return address is nonsense. There's no such street,” Peter said. “And the six sets of prints on the package—I've got names and photos, and they are all employees, either here or the couriers'.”

“I've got something on the address in St. Charles, Missouri,” Christopher offered. “It's a house in a nice subdivision on the west side of town. I've got photos from a real-estate sale last year—it's a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch. The homeowner is a Mr. Lewis Graves. His DMV photo just generated a match with a high school science teacher.”

Paul was surprised. He would be astonished if the lady shooter had that homeowner helping her. Why that address? A plus, though, that surveillance would be easier in a subdivision than with a busy downtown street. They would be able to see who came and went. He had to assume someone would be sent to get the package, who would then take it to the lady shooter. “Do what you can to tell me more about Lewis Graves without alerting him that you're looking. Stay with public records.”

“Will do.”

“Boss, I've got Franklin on the phone,” Jason said. “According to DMD Couriers, they picked up the package at the Hyatt Hotel on Thomas Avenue, in the guest business office. It's entirely automated. You set the package on the receiving tray, it takes the weight and your destination address, and gives you the price. You pay and it spits out the address label to put on
your package. You drop it in the outgoing mailbox. The machine tells the office there is a package waiting for pickup and a courier stops by to get it. Franklin is on the way to the Hyatt to get security footage on the one who dropped off the package.”

“Good. Tell him we also want the area checked for prints.”

“Boss.” Rita was in the doorway of the war room.

He moved to join her. “What do we have, Rita?”

She closed the door behind them, pointing at Sam to put down the phone. A smile danced on her face. “We've got her fingerprints.” She opened a folder and took out a piece of paper. “Linda Smythe. Miss L.S. is Linda Smythe of Boston, Massachusetts. She is fifty-three years old now. Her prints were the only ones on the letter and the envelope. We have an old photo.” She placed it on the table. “In 1981 she was charged with assault, pled it down to misdemeanor battery, and did thirty days in county jail. There is nothing in the last twenty-five years to give a current address. The address listed in the old report is now a parking lot.”