Full Disclosure (2 page)

The Chicago FBI office had blast barriers at curbside, and layers of check-in and security to reach the elevators. Having waded through the process a few times in the past, Ann ran an experienced eye around the lobby and chose one of the more seasoned
officers working the check-in desk. She offered her badge. “Officer Ann Silver. I'm here to see Agent Paul Falcon.”

“Do you have an appointment, ma'am?”

“No.”

He didn't recognize the police department on her badge but was polite enough not to say so. “I'll need to check your credentials, ma'am. Do you have a business card with department phone numbers?”

She offered one from her pocket. “Ask for the acting sheriff.”

He picked up the phone and made the call.

Her office transferred the call. The phone in her pocket rang.

She pulled her phone out and answered. “Hi, again.” She closed the phone with a small smile. “Sorry, couldn't resist.”

He leaned against the counter to share the smile. “Small department?”

“You just talked to the entire staff.”

“This does present a quandary.”

“How about we try this. I came to Chicago to see the Cubs-Cardinals game tonight—I scored third-row seats behind first base. Make a call and ask Agent Falcon to come down to the lobby. Let me show him two photos. If it turns out it's not worth his time, you can keep the tickets to the game.”

“You're that sure?”

“I am.”

“Which case should I reference?”

“I have no idea what he calls it. Tell him it's regarding the lady shooter he's been hunting for several years.”

The desk officer made the call. “He'll come down,” he told her, “but it may be a few minutes. You'll find the bench is more comfortable than the chairs.”

“Thanks.” She settled in to wait, out of habit pulling out a paperback she was reading. She didn't mind the wait. Today was as close to a vacation day as she'd had this year, and if she could pass one more case off her desk, all the better. She planned to head home after the game without much of a voice left and half
sick on hot dogs and popcorn, and if she timed it right she'd be at the ballpark early enough to watch batting practice and get an autograph or two.

“Officer Silver.” The check-in officer nodded toward the man getting off the south elevator. “There he is.”

She got up from the bench and waited while Agent Falcon came through the security barriers. He was a tall man with authority in his stride, wearing a business suit that didn't come off the rack. She had done enough digging to know his reputation and what was on his desk. Despite his rank and seniority, he stayed working cases rather than lead a bureau office. He was as far from the politics of the bureau as a murder cop could get, and that made him the guy who could do something with what she had. He was presently working on too much caffeine and not much sleep, she thought, noting the coffee mug in his hand and the grim tightness around his eyes. She would wonder at why, but she'd spent too many days working without sleep herself to find it unusual.

“Agent Falcon, this is Officer Ann Silver.”

She stepped away from others in the lobby, opened her flight bag, and removed two photos. She didn't bother to explain; she simply offered them. He took the photos. His watch looked expensive, and the ring was FBI academy. She had assumed he was married, but his left hand was bare.

She saw the flare of heat in his eyes as he recognized the murders. Since the photos were copies of ones in his own files, she had assumed they would hit a chord. His gaze shot to hers. She took the punch of annoyance in his gaze because she deserved it, because she had set him up for it. She had chosen those two murders out of the thirty the lady had done for a reason, but the photos themselves were merely cover for her visit. The news she had come to share wasn't something she planned to write down anywhere. “I've got the guy who arranged her services in my morgue,” she said quietly, simply, and let the words hang in the silence between them. She knew their implications.

He did too. He studied her face, weighing the way she had said it, scanned the badge displayed on her belt, and nodded toward the elevators. “Come up with me.”

The check-in officer smiled as he handed her a visitor pass. She clipped it onto her jacket, followed Agent Falcon to the security scanners, and emptied her pockets into the basket.

“You'll need to check your weapon, ma'am, and pick it up when your business is done,” the security officer said.

“No. You can issue me a weapon clearance. Please do so.”

“I can't issue a clearance without—”

“I'll vouch for her.” The bureau's Midwest counterterrorism chief coming around behind them interrupted. “Give her the weapon clearance. How you doing, Ann?”

“Catching the game tonight.”

He was now at the elevator, but he held the door before stepping in. “Yeah? Want company?”

“Lisa beat you out.”

“My loss. Call me before you head home. I got your wiretaps approved.”

“You couldn't keep that news to yourself until after the game?”

He grinned. “Take good care of her, Falcon. I still owe her for two speeding tickets.”

She clipped on the weapon clearance and re-stuffed her belongings into her pockets. She waited until they were alone in the elevator. “His mom is my next-door neighbor,” she said, not needing to explain but figuring it didn't hurt to cut politics out of the equation.

Agent Falcon half smiled. “I didn't ask.”

“Didn't have to.”

She followed him onto the sixth floor and down a long hallway. Paul worked in a decent-sized office, but both chairs across from his desk looked uncomfortable. She chose the one near the wall and dumped her flight bag on the other one. She set her recorder on his desk and clicked it on.

“Four weeks ago there was a wreck on Interstate 72. The driver died. Something was off about the scene, and the patrol officer called me in. Think heavy rain, absent quarter moon, and truckers hauling grain in a steady parade as the barges on the river got jammed up by a damaged lock gate. Not an ideal situation for working a car crash. The car rolled, flipped, smashed, and ended upside down in a bean field. It took out a small metal storage bin, six fence posts, and twenty feet of electric fencing and barbwire. The Angus bull in the field with the downed barbwire was not happy with the flashing cop lights and constant truck traffic, and since he was worth six figures, the bull for a time got as much attention as the wreck, once it was confirmed the driver was dead and that it would take the fire department to cut him out.”

She watched Agent Falcon as she talked and gave a half smile as she reached for the pause on the recorder. “Get a drink, pace, make faces at your window, whatever, because I tell long stories, enjoy the telling, and don't plan to repeat myself to whomever else you want to hand this case to later. So I'll tell it my way, record it, and you'll have what I've got. I'm not inclined to fly north again just because I missed a detail you might one day need.”

She was enjoying herself, Paul thought, and she was going somewhere interesting with her narrative. She'd delivered her statement in the lobby with exquisite timing. She had the tempo of a good storyteller. She liked telling stories. And he had a feeling she would back up that initial statement with just as exquisite timing. “What can I get you to drink?”

Ann decided she liked Paul's smile and offered a full one of her own. “Caffeine-free Diet Coke if you've got it, hot chocolate if you want me to shut up for a while, lemonade if you're being ornery.”

He opened the small refrigerator under his desk and handed her a Diet Coke, no caffeine, pulled a root beer out for himself, and settled back in his office chair.

“Brownie points for it being extra cold.” She popped the tab and started the recorder again. “As the patrol officer was a suspicious sort, and I run that way on even my good days, we took enough time to flip a tarp over the car before we dealt with the six-figure and very angry bull. The tarp couldn't do anything for the flood dumping out of the sky, but it kept the volume of water accumulating in the wreck to a minimum.

“The Caldwell County Fire Department arrived to cut open the car frame, the ME removed the body, and everything that wasn't dirt, beans, or grass was hauled onto a flatbed, covered with the tarp again, and taken into evidence for review at a secure and thankfully dry warehouse.

“There is enough video and stills of the scene to count as being there, including a large number of fascinating lightning strikes that washed out otherwise perfectly focused shots. Lightning split three trees that night, and one tree closed a lane of the Interstate shortly after three a.m. I figure we earned the overtime. I doubt the front row of a rock concert would have been any louder than that storm.” She paused to take a long drink before continuing.

“The patrol officer didn't like the car crash. It didn't make sense to him. I had the same sense of unease. Why was the guy speeding during bad weather? Unless he had suicidal intentions, his actions made no sense. He wasn't a twenty-something who thought he'd have fun hydroplaning on a wet highway. He didn't have a heart attack and swerve around with chest pain. He simply decided to go a hundred plus on an Interstate, weaving around truckers and running faster than his lights could see in the rain. He was going to crash, and he had to know that. So why was he speeding?”

She let the question hang in the air while she stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, trying to accommodate her body to the chair that was not very comfortable.

“Truckers on that stretch of Interstate are a friendly bunch in the middle of the night. We've got a string of eyewitnesses
to the wreck and its aftermath, most interviews done verbally over the open air of the radio, but real-time enough and varied in detail enough they piece together a mosaic.

“According to two truckers, the sedan pulled onto the Interstate at mile marker thirty-five. The sedan was rolling with traffic until mile marker fifty-two, when he began to speed. By mile marker sixty-five we've got truckers complaining to each other about the idiot speeding around them. A patrol officer hears the chatter, turns around to come back on the Interstate.

“The driver lost control and crashed at mile marker eighty-two. Overlapping radio calls reported the crash to the emergency dispatcher at 10:19 p.m.

“Statements from four truckers confirm a second car stopped to render assistance. A white sedan with Missouri plates, two guys in jackets and ball caps. All said it looked like the two guys were attempting to assist the driver. We've confirmed the second vehicle was two miles back when the crash occurred.

“The second vehicle was not at the scene when the patrol officer arrived.

“I now have security-camera footage from every truck stop, warehouse, and business that faces the Interstate from mile marker twenty to mile marker one hundred for the night in question. The second car was also speeding, but not excessively. The two cars were never closer than a mile to each other. It wasn't a bump and crash or a high-speed chase. After stopping to render assistance and then departing, the white sedan left the Interstate between mile marker eighty-five and mile marker ninety. The only options along that stretch of highway are back-country roads, which suggests the men were locals who knew the area. Four weeks of poking around should have given me another look at the car if it was local, but it hasn't been spotted again. So it's a mystery.”

She wasn't one to like a mystery, even though she spent her workdays solving them, and she frowned a bit as she thought back on the search for the second vehicle. She'd managed to
peel back most of the layers of this case, but a few unknowns remained. She glanced up, found Paul watching her. She appreciated a guy who could listen without interrupting. “Because I've got a curious streak to go with my suspicious bent, I backtracked the driver for the day before the crash.

“The dead man entered First National Bank in Dorado Springs, Missouri, at 11:17 a.m. on the day he would die and closed a safe-deposit box. The teller who assisted him with the box stated it was eight by seventeen by two, heavy when he carried it to the privacy booth and empty when he returned it to the safe-deposit box vault. He had rented the same box for thirty-eight years. The security tape has a decent photo and shows him carrying a black briefcase in and out of the bank.

“He ate a late lunch in Jefferson City and carried the briefcase inside with him where he set it on the bench beside him but did not open it. He had roast beef, ate alone, and the waitress remembers a quiet guy who paid cash and left a generous tip. He filled up with gas at the Shell station in Farber. Security cameras show him alone. He pulled onto Interstate 72 at mile marker thirty-five and was dead at mile marker eighty-two.” Ann paused, struck again by the sadness of the last day of his life. She could find answers, but not change the tragedy.