Full Disclosure (7 page)

“What do you think of Ann Silver? Am I going to regret going that direction? And how am I going to consider her when she's not even within a hundred miles of here? I don't know where she lives, but it's somewhere so far south she flies rather than drives to Chicago.” Paul thought about that and laughed at himself. He lived in the midst of a major city, and his attention was caught by someone who didn't even live here. It wouldn't be so funny if it weren't his personal knot to finesse. “My parents
are growing older each day, and I want them to meet and love my wife. I want to get married.”

He was tired of waiting and hoping the lady would show up one day. He'd been deliberately looking for the last few years, systematically looking at the single friends of his friends. If he hadn't ruled out considering a cop, Dave probably would have mentioned Ann years ago. Paul refilled his coffee. He and Ann proved it was possible for two people to slip past each other, even with close mutual friends in common. She lived out of town, and Paul might have been escorting someone else when he stopped in at Dave and Kate's occasional gatherings—however close they had come to meeting over the years, they hadn't been introduced.

Paul took the sandwich with him into the den where he had left his Bible the night before. He settled in to read and to listen. If there was a good marriage to be found, God would be involved in making it happen.

He wanted a wife who understood this bond and affection he felt toward God. While still in foster care, long before he'd met George and Karen Falcon, he'd met Jesus. This relationship with God was the one thing he had chosen for himself. The more time he spent with Him, the more he wished to spend, for it was the place he felt most at home. He wanted to share his family, job, and faith with his wife. He needed to find a lady who loved God with the same passion he did. He rubbed his eyes briefly. The list of what he hoped for just kept getting longer.

Paul detoured on his way into work to see Kate Sinclair. He walked into Chicago PD headquarters just before eight a.m., cleared through security, and headed to her office on the fifth floor. Her phone message could have been answered with a return call, but he preferred to do it in person.

Kate's office walls were covered with commendations and awards, large blown-up photos of the Chicago skyline, and
finger-painting artwork by her daughter Holly. The desk and shelves were gleaming mahogany, buried under stacks waiting for Kate's attention.

She wasn't in her office, but Ann Silver was sitting on Kate's couch. Paul felt a rush of pleasure at the sight of her, a similar unexpected delight that Dave must have felt when he realized she was in town. He paused at the door rather than step into the office, content to watch her for a moment before she realized he was present. She was reading.

She was sitting on the couch, legs stretched out, tennis shoes crossed at her ankles. The floor around her was piled with open binders and printouts. She was working with no sleep and too much caffeine, he thought, judging by the lined-up empty soda cans, and he felt a tug of sympathy for the devotion this job of solving murders inspired. It was tough on a personal life—even the idea of having a personal life—with the hours the job demanded. At least she had thought of food and was eating, as she had a fork in the same hand as her pen. She was writing herself a note in the margins of what she was reading.

He thought of all the things he could say, queries on the ball game, a comment about the case she had brought him, a compliment that would veer this to a personal conversation. He pushed them all aside and simply smiled. “Good morning, Ann.”

She looked up. Surprise shifted to a quick, warm welcome. “Morning, Paul.” She glanced at the clock to check the time. “Kate will be back soon.”

“She called you,” he guessed.

Ann shook her head. “Quinn told me a cop was dead, but not until after the ball game was over. I gave him some grief about that delay, and to Kate too for not calling me. I volunteered.” She gestured toward the photos on the board of the Falcon restaurant after the shooting. “Sorry I didn't know before what had been in your day. How's your sister doing?”

“Coping.”

Ann tugged over her flight bag and pulled out a book. She
considered it, then held it out. “For Jackie. She'll have time on her hands while the restaurant is reconstructed. She'll like it.”

“Thanks.”

Kate came in drinking coffee.

Ann tilted her head and looked pointedly at Kate and then the coffee. “That better be decaf.”

Kate smiled, amused. “Nag, nag, nag.” She pushed aside paper and took a seat on the couch next to Ann. She tugged open the lid of the second carryout carton Ann had brought in, then hurriedly shifted to reach for napkins because the carton was still hot. “Pepper steak for breakfast?”

“We both missed dinner and the chef was being kind.” Ann tore the plastic wrapper off another fork and offered it. “Eat.”

Kate took the fork and carefully took a few bites. “This is good. The fried rice needs more soy sauce.”

Ann tugged a packet from under a stack of papers and passed it over.

“Thanks. What can I do for you, Paul?”

He grinned. “Invite me to dinner.”

Ann glanced in sacks and tipped one his way. He took the offered egg roll and two napkins with a thanks and returned to Kate's question. “You called me, Kate.” The egg roll was wonderful, stuffed with pork and pieces of shrimp.

Kate tried to remember why she'd called.

“Kelser,” Ann prompted.

“Oh, yeah. We stumbled into a guy who mentioned he knew about a murder in New Jersey. The note is there on the desk—half sheet, blue paper. He just moved to Chicago and was trying to be helpful. Maybe it's something or maybe it's not.”

Paul retrieved the note. “I'll check it out. How's it going?”

Kate shook her head and looked at Ann. “Tell me you have something.”

“I have something.”

Kate leaned her head against Ann's shoulder. “Don't try to make me laugh, Annabelle. I've been up for thirty hours.”

Ann winced at the name, and moved Kate's coffee out of her reach. “One idea. You're looking for someone Officer Ulaw arrested, testified against, put in jail, within the last five years, sentenced to at least ten years, who has a cell mate with East Coast crime-family connections.”

Kate sat up. “Yeah?”

“If it is not that, I've got nothing.”

“How did you get there?”

Ann offered her legal pad of paper. “Officer Ulaw hasn't arrested anyone at the top of the food chain,” she said, pointing to the list of names she'd sketched in. “He's been making cases against the mid-level guys and the distributors. It is someone who works in Chicago, lives here, is from here, who wanted Officer Ulaw dead.

“He hired an East Coast shooter. Why? We've got enough shooters for hire around Chicago it's not necessary to go elsewhere. And why did he bother to even hire someone? Why didn't he kill Officer Ulaw himself? It's cheaper to do it himself. More satisfying. He's crossed the line to be willing to kill a cop. So why hire someone? Only answer I can come up with, it's because he had to, and he didn't have access to hire someone from Chicago.”

“Interesting,” Kate said, studying the logic chain.

“Yeah, well I'm brain dead, because that's all I've got. The rest of the ideas are trash.” Ann held out the cup. “This coffee is awful.”

“You don't like coffee.”

“Reminds me why. Tell someone to look for a name, and then stretch out on the couch for a few hours. I'm going to make a trip south. I'll be back tomorrow if this goes nowhere.”

“You shouldn't fly when you're this tired.”

“I've got a sweetheart who asked if he could give me a lift home. Virgil Hale.”

“That old codger still alive?”

“He's sixty, and you like him.”

“Hard not to like someone who blows stuff up for a living. I'll let you know if this goes anywhere.”

Ann dropped a kiss on Kate's head in place of a hug and picked up her flight bag. “Call Holly when you get up. She'll perk you up better than the coffee.”

“Always does. Paul, walk Ann out of the building so no one intercepts her, or she'll still be here four hours from now.”

He wiped his hands on the napkins and stepped to the door. “Sure.”

Paul walked with Ann toward the elevator. She stopped several times to exchange brief greetings with people, to ask about families, to remember birthdays, to share a laugh.

“You used to work here.”

“My office was next to Kate's.”

The elevator doors opened and it was empty. When they had stepped on, Ann leaned against the back wall of the elevator and sighed. She closed her eyes. “Excuse me while I catnap.” She reluctantly opened her eyes when the elevator stopped at the lobby and the doors opened. She pushed herself away from the wall.

“Let me give you a lift to the airport.”

“No need. Virgil is over at the ATF office, hanging around until I'm ready to go.”

“You've been busy.”

“Normally am.”

“I got told you're the MHI.”

She half smiled. “I probably should have mentioned that.”

“I don't mind the surprise of it—it makes you more interesting.”

She gave him a look that was considering, and made it a full smile. “Do me a favor and tell Dave to come kidnap Kate in a few hours.” The cop waiting at the curb lifted a hand in greeting, and Ann headed his direction. “See you around, Paul.”

“You can count on it.”

When he reached the FBI headquarters, Paul bypassed his own office to avoid getting pulled into whatever had landed on his desk overnight and headed upstairs. His boss had the best coffee in the building, and used it as a subtle incentive for his direct reports to find an excuse to stop by in the morning and give him brief updates. Paul liked to oblige. His boss ran the Chicago office and the Midwest region. The boss of his boss was the director of the FBI. It made for a short reporting chain.

Paul walked into Suite 906, not surprised at the calm. Efficient and quiet defined how his boss liked to do business. “Good morning, Margaret. I need five minutes of Arthur's time.”

She checked the board. “He's finishing a call, then he's yours.”

“Thanks.” Paul poured himself coffee and picked up the morning paper. He had scanned the sports headlines when Margaret indicated the call was finished.

Paul walked into his boss's office. “Morning, Arthur.” His boss was a practical, common-sense cop with deep family ties. Paul liked the man both personally and as a boss. If he had a mentor in the bureau, it was Arthur.

“You're smiling. I'm going to like this.”

“We have a good lead on the lady shooter.” Paul settled into a chair and updated his boss on the wreck and the day planners. “Ann Silver showed up in my office yesterday to hand me the case, so it arrived as a gift.”

“Ann was in town? Sorry I missed her.”

“You know her?”

“She handled the Delford matter for me. Nice lady.”

“So I'm finding out.”

“So what's your plan on this? Anything you need me to clear away for you?”

“We find his name and where he lived, this gets interesting. He didn't know he would be dead, and he will have left some
interesting materials behind. I can use some help keeping this orderly between us and Treasury. They want him too.”

His boss smiled. “I'll be glad to handle it. Keep me posted. And good hunting.”

“Thank you, sir.”

T
he one thing Paul particularly liked about chasing paid shooters was the money trail. Financial footprints were the FBI's bread-and-butter expertise, something tangible to follow. Just having amounts paid for two of the thirty murders was a useful new fact.

Around the room his team was busy. They didn't need him. The car wreck had arrived, the ME had the body, there were computers running facial comparisons through databases, and they were data mining to answer interesting questions. It was Monday, they'd had the case since Thursday, and before the day was out, maybe two, they would have a name for the middleman and a location where he lived. So Paul sat and thought about the lady shooter and kept his attention on the end goal.

Paul knew the woman through her work. She had murdered thirty people, a single gunshot from a distance, all head shots. She left a calling card of sorts at the perch where she took her shot. She wanted to claim the kill, a résumé of sorts for more work, and a warning to others she was out there.

A partial distant image from a security camera from murder nineteen gave them a woman about five-foot-six, slender, shoulder-length hair. Until that murder, they had been working
under the assumption their shooter was a man, though not discounting the fact it could be a woman.

The calling card was a small crystal cube, smooth on all sides, white as a sugar cube. They were a novelty item from the late 1800s made as a promotional item for a gaming company. They had shipped as a box with fifty cubes. Nothing there they could trace.

His lady shooter now had a partial name, Miss L.S. If it wasn't an assumed name and courtesy title, his lady shooter was single, and while Paul had figured that, it was useful to have it confirmed. The first letter
L
wasn't the most popular for a woman's name: Laura, Linda, Lisa, Lois, Louise. They were creating a master list of possibilities from census data. The search of the case file had come up dry so far, but the initials would be useful when they located the middleman's home and could search his records.

The day planners gave him a price for murders twenty-five and twenty-nine. His lady shooter had made a lot more money over her career than Paul had thought a month ago. The idea she had retired after the thirtieth murder was becoming a more interesting idea to consider. They had speculated she was either dead or in jail as reasons she had stopped, for she would have been in her forties at the time of the last shooting they could be certain was hers. They watched for shootings where there was no calling card left, but over the years had found no case which stayed open. It looked like she had stopped after thirty kills.

Sam took the seat beside him.

“Do you think Flint Meeks could have afforded to pay two hundred fifty thousand to kill his wife?” Paul asked, voicing the question he had been mulling around.

Sam considered it. “No. Maybe a hundred fifty thousand, but not that additional hundred.”

“So he's off the likely list. Who on our suspect list could afford this hit?”

“Not many. Three, maybe four.”

“That's what I was thinking. The price bothers me. Why this much? If you have a casual hatred, ‘I wish this lady was dead,' you might pay five figures to have her killed. But two hundred fifty thousand? That was a significant amount thirteen years ago. Instead of a hit, we have a high-priced assassination. There's got to be something about the murdered wife we don't know.”

Paul looked to the board for murder twenty-nine. “The same problem exists for the Victor Ryckoff murder. The price for the hit doesn't make sense, given what we know about the victim. We're missing something. I've reread the two bios, but I'm not picking up what it might be.”

“I'll tug Peter in, and we'll build out the timeline of their lives. If we can't account for a few years, maybe that will give us a place to focus on.”

“Good. Something is there, Sam.”

“Boss, we've got something,” Rita called, excited. She rolled her chair between tables to switch databases she was searching while Paul walked over with Sam to join her.

“Two good ideas are intersecting,” Rita said. “This guy's been dead going on five weeks now. No one has reported him missing, but lots of people are beginning to feel the fact he is dead. He hasn't paid any bills. His electric bill, gas bill, water bill, phone bill, cable bill. He's going to go late and then delinquent on everything at the same time. He lives
somewhere
.

“Facial recognition started generating matches overnight. I've got sixteen drivers' licenses with different names, different addresses, across different states, but all are his picture. Buried under all these aliases is his real name and address. Only one of the addresses stopped paying bills five weeks ago. Our middleman has a tentative name, Gordon Whitcliff, and he lives in Reston, West Virginia.”

“Nice job, Rita.” Paul turned to scan the room. “Listen up, people. Rita has a name and address.” A collective cheer went up at the news. Paul smiled. “Let's see if it holds. Arnett, Daniel,
Sullivan, any activity on Whitcliff's credit cards, phones, or bank accounts since the day of the crash?

“Christopher, we need a local cop to make a check of the property. Send him the picture of our guy and have him show it to the neighbors. Is the photo the man they know as their neighbor?

“Kelly, give me a fast bio. Married? Ever? Have kids?”

Paul paced the front of the conference room as the first answers filtered in from around the room.

“Two phone numbers in his name. No calls out on either one since the day of the crash.”

“Boss, his finances are dead quiet. A few checks cleared, but all were written before the date of the crash.”

“He's drawing Social Security. No wife or dependents are listed. Never filed a joint tax return. Nobody but him holds a driver's license with that address. He's seventy-four years old. I can't find a marriage license or divorce decree for that name, but it's not conclusive since records that far back would be on paper.”

“I can't find any credit cards issued in his name. There's a gas card with no activity on it in the last month.”

“Paul, I'm on the phone with the police officer at the address. Neighbors on both sides confirm the photo is Gordon Whitcliff. According to one neighbor, Gordon has lived in that house for at least thirty-five years. They thought he was away on business. He had asked a neighbor to collect his newspaper and mail, hadn't indicated how long he would be gone.”

“Okay, people. I'm satisfied,” Paul said. “We've got our middleman.

“Christopher, see about getting the property secured until we arrive. We'll be there before dark.

“William, find Whitcliff's dentist and get us X-rays for the ME to use in comparison. We'll bring back a toothbrush and hairbrush for a DNA match as well.

“I need volunteers for a road trip to West Virginia.” So many
hands lifted he had to smile. “If you want to go, I'll make room for you—just don't expect to get much sleep once we're there. Close down what you're working on, then go home, pack, and be back here by three. I want us to be in the air by four.

“Sullivan, I expect he's got at least one safe-deposit box under his real name. See if you can find it.

“Kelly, rip apart his phone records and identify anyone he has ever called. Any names with initials L.S., T.M., G.N., call me and start diving deep on who they are.

“Peter, his financials. Tax returns. Bank accounts. Any sizeable deposits and payouts, I want to know where they originated from and went to.

“Arnett, I need to know what other properties, if any, he owns.

“Sam, open a feed with Treasury and keep them copied on the phone and financial records. The recent flow of calls and cash may intersect with their currency thief. I'll leave you to run things here.

“Any questions?” Paul scanned his team. “Okay. It's solid progress. You are one step away from making your boss a very happy man. Now I just need a name for Miss L.S.”

Paul put in a quick call to Arthur, then headed down two flights of stairs and stopped at his office to sign the paperwork and get the travel department busy making arrangements. A box on his guest chair was from Dave. Ann's books. Paul took the box with him and went home to pack.

“That's the house, sir. The brick ranch with the flagpole and petunias along the sidewalk.”

Paul had been expecting something different. His middleman had lived all this time tucked in the center of a subdivision. The dusk of late evening showed there were still people out walking dogs, and kids riding bikes. The officer in the patrol car stationed at the street came to meet them.

“Thanks for staying, Officer Marson. No one has been inside?”

“No, sir. Not since we received your call and secured the premises. The neighbor on the west, Mr. Olson, had a key to the property, as he took the mail inside each afternoon. I took the liberty.” He held out the key.

Paul walked to the house and unlocked the front door.

It was a neat, tidy house—that was Paul's first impression as he stepped inside. The drapery on the windows were heavy fabric, formal, the floors hardwood. Furniture in the rooms he could see from the door was sparse, and there was no clutter on any surface. The interior was hot and smelled a bit musty. The air-conditioning must have been left off or set high.

“Jason, I want photos of everything before we start. Walk through the place with video and also get me stills of his desk, anyplace he likely handled his mail.

“Rick, bring in those boxes and make a call to get more delivered.

“Christopher, take the attic and garage. Franklin and Rita, the home office. Larry and Kim, the bedrooms. Sidney, the kitchen and commons areas. I want a careful and thorough search of this home. He had reasons to hide items of value where they would be difficult to find. So until we locate a document trove and a very large hidden cache of money, I will assume we haven't looked hard enough.

“Anything that is paper, look through it, then put it in a box and set it in the dining room. We'll take it all back with us. Keep a close eye out for anything that suggests he has another property—photos, insurance paperwork on a different address, contact numbers for repair people in another town—anything suggesting this isn't his only residence and that we need to be searching somewhere else as well.”

His team spread out. Paul walked through to see the layout, then went outside to see the backyard, finally coming around through the garage. The man had lived here a very long time,
and he hadn't planned on not coming back. He would have taken precautions when he traveled, but he wouldn't have removed things from the house. It wasn't as big a property as he had feared, and his middleman had lived a contained life, by the look of what was here. They could find what was here. It might just take a day or two.

To give his team time to work, he walked out to speak with the officer and discuss security for the next few days. Twenty minutes later, Paul returned to the house, and went back to the room serving as the home office.

Franklin was sitting at the rolltop desk looking through drawers. He glanced over and held up papers. “He's a record keeper, and neat. I just pulled the last four months of phone bills from a folder marked Phone Bill. We've got two address books filled with names and numbers. Rita is checking them. And we've found taping equipment on the phones. There will be recordings of his phone calls—his own version of insurance—somewhere around. Probably a safe since I'm not finding anything so far in the office but blank tapes. The paperwork in these files is current to this calendar year, nothing before that. There are more records somewhere. He has no computer that I can find, and there are no cables suggesting a laptop is used here, no printer, no backup power strip, nothing suggesting Internet service. He may have stayed old school and simply not used one.”

“I already like this guy. Rita?”