The Brea File (37 page)

“Macimer could have made an arrangement with the motel manager so he didn’t have to register.”

“According to his own daily report, he registered here and waited in the room for two hours for this informant who never showed up.”

Garvey stood and opened the back door of the stifling little storage room and stared out across a field of strawberries in neat, orderly, endless rows. Twenty-five or thirty workers in the field were bent over the plants in a posture almost as old as man, laboriously hand-picking the berries.

“That’s why he gave us those orders to report only to him,” Collins said, his tone flat, speaking to Garvey’s stubborn back.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Personal feelings have nothing to do with this—”

“You’ve got to decide who to trust,” Garvey said. “Why would Macimer have started us digging into these assignments if he knew he was only going to expose himself?”

“He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t postpone it any longer.” Because this wasn’t convincing, Collins added, “He didn’t think we’d get this far, or maybe he didn’t think the new management would have kept these old registers. The place changed hands a year ago.”

“Keep going,” Garvey said. “You haven’t started to make sense yet.”

Collins joined him in the doorway, still carrying the dusty register. Like Garvey he found his gaze drawn across the open field to the stooped figures of the pickers. They seemed not to have changed position since he first saw them. “There, but for the grace of God, and Abraham Lincoln,” Collins murmured. “Okay, Garv, what’s your theory? What’s bugging you?”

“Maybe the register has been tampered with.”

“To frame Macimer?” Collins scoffed. “That’s reaching.”

“Maybe. But the former manager of this place stayed on after it was sold until March this year. Then he suddenly quit and moved away, leaving no forwarding address. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“What’s strange? Motel managers aren’t the most steady lot.”

“I don’t like the coincidence,” Garvey persisted. “There’s someone we could question about the register and even about Macimer. And he’s nowhere to be found. I think we should find out where he is, and talk to him. And we ought to have the lab look at this register. At least analyze the pages for the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of August 1981. The paper and the ink.”

Collins was silent a moment, considering the bent backs of the field workers. The sun was an egg frying in a polished skillet. “I’ll give you this much,” he said. “Those pages are removable, so it could’ve been done. I’ll go along with you that far. But we also do one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Garvey asked, knowing the answer.

“We send a report to Headquarters on what we’ve found. Marked urgent.”

There were two calls clocked on Macimer’s answer-phone. The first caller had hung up without responding to his tape-recorded greeting. The second was Erika Halbig. “Paul? This is Erika. I know what you think, and I’m sorry. There are some things you don’t know…” She sounded distraught, her voice rising to a high, keen edge. “Paul, please call me! It’s important! I’m still at the Pook’s Hill apartment, but you don’t have to worry about anyone else listening. Not now.”

Not now.

He resisted a feeling of compassion. Vivid memory of Erika sinking to her knees before him, the very image of passionate imploring—properly positioned for the nearest camera lens.

But his skepticism failed to silence curiosity. He replayed Erika’s message. This time, attending only to her voice, not the words, he heard an almost inaudible quivering, like the tremor of a wire stretched too tight. Was it merely fine-tuned acting, like the previous night’s performance, or was she genuinely distressed?

Like a wire about to break, he thought.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number of the Pook’s Hill apartment. He let it ring for a long time before hanging up.

At three minutes past seven o’clock that evening, while Macimer was slipping a plastic envelope containing frozen chipped beef into the top of a double boiler, Jan’s call came. Just after five o’clock Phoenix time; Linda’s plane had arrived on schedule. He heard Jan’s voice with mingled pleasure and relief. Then she asked sharply, “What happened, Paul? Where’s Linda?”

An invisible hand caught him by the throat. “What do you mean? I put her on the one o’clock United flight. Has it been delayed?”

“No, I was there to meet her. She wasn’t on board.” Macimer heard the quick catch of Jan’s breath. “Did you see her get on the plane?”

“I watched it take off,” Macimer said, hearing the lie of omission in the words.
I
was downstairs looking at some photos of Erika Halbig and myself when I should have been watching Linda until she was safely on the plane
.

“Then something happened afterward. Oh my God, Paul, where is she?”

“Now take it easy. She could have got off in Dallas—there was a layover.” He knew he was grasping at straws. “Are you sure you met the right plane? Flight 27?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

He stalled, fighting his own panic. Linda would have had no reason to get off the plane in Dallas unless she was running away, and he didn’t believe that. At Dulles he had been momentarily uneasy about the timing of the message that took him away from the departure gate, but the shock and anger aroused by the photographs had sidetracked him. And he had been too ready to accept the flight attendant’s reassurances that Linda was on board, that only one male passenger was missing from the passenger list.

Someone else had flown in her place.

But how had she been lured away? By another message? The attendant would have been aware of any disturbance. And Macimer’s FBI credentials would have been enough to alert the attendant if he had noticed anything unusual near the gate.

“Paul, are you there? Answer me!”

“I’m here, honey.”

“Why would anyone want to hurt Linda? Does it have anything to do with Carole? Is this what you were afraid of?”

“We don’t know for sure that anything has happened—”

“Don’t patronize me, Paul! You’re not telling me the truth! You know more than you’re saying.”

“I’ll see what I can find out from the airline,” he said, trying to sound calm. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Go back to your parents’ place and stay there, so I know where to reach you. And… try not to worry.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” The familiar line was caustic rather than humorous, but his reassuring tone had had some effect.

“Not as easy as you think.”

* * * *

Airport and airline security is dominated by former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At almost every major U.S. airline, the security director and his top administrators and investigators are former FBI men. They form a loose “Old Boy Network” which Macimer had sometimes found valuable during investigations.

A United investigator stationed in Phoenix confirmed the fact that the passenger listed as Linda Macimer had been on the plane all the way through to Phoenix. Macimer asked about the flight attendants who had worked the coach section. Two of them, he learned, had caught another plane to Los Angeles, due in at L.A. International within a few minutes.

Another former agent named Frank Murphy was now with United security in Los Angeles. Macimer had once worked with Murphy in the Atlanta office. “You still chasin’ stewardesses, Paul?” Murphy asked amiably, when Macimer had told him what he wanted.

“At least I’m not making a career out of it.”

Murphy laughed. “That flight from Phoenix just touched down, so the girls should be along in a few minutes. Let me get back to you, okay?”

“Thanks, Murphy. This is important.”

“Figured it might be.”

Five minutes later Murphy was back on the phone. “I’ve got the flight attendant you’re looking for, Paul, standing right here. Name of Melissa Powell. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

The young woman sounded tired but cooperative. Macimer explained briefly what he was concerned about. “As far as I know, Linda got on the plane in Washington and she didn’t get off in Dallas. But she wasn’t on the plane when it landed in Phoenix. My wife was there to meet her.”

“We had a full house,” Melissa Powell said dubiously. “I don’t remember any no-shows. It was one of our economy coach runs, and they’re usually full up.” She broke off a moment. “Wait a minute… yes, there was one man who didn’t fly. But that was the only empty seat until we got to Dallas.”

“Try to remember, Miss Powell. I know it’s asking a lot with so many passengers to take care of, but… Linda is seventeen, slim, about one hundred and ten pounds, five feet six, wore gray slacks and a blue knit pullover with a cowl neckline.”

“Doesn’t ring any bells, Mr. Macimer. Hey, just a sec—Linda! I remember now. Got on at the last minute at Dulles. I remember thinking that Linda was right for her, you know, but her last name wasn’t, and she wasn’t wearing a gold band.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“She was Mexican, I think. Long black hair and those deep brown eyes. Does that sound like your daughter, Mr. Macimer?”

“No. Linda has ash-blond hair, shoulder length, and blue eyes.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I could be wrong, but… I don’t recall anyone like that. And I do remember the Mexican girl was called Linda. I don’t suppose that helps.”

“Maybe it does,” said Macimer. Was it too farfetched to presume that the slim young girl who had taken part in the robbery at his house and the beating of Joe Gerella had been enlisted in one more of Brea’s maneuvers?

“There is one other thing,” Melissa Powell said. “She wasn’t alone. There was a young man with her, in the next seat. I think he was Mexican too.”

* * * *

One of the agents on night duty at the FBI Resident Agent’s office at Dulles International answered Macimer’s call. Five minutes later he was back on the phone, having obtained a copy of the passenger list for the United Dallas-Phoenix flight 27 that afternoon. Linda Macimer had been assigned seat Y66 on the aisle. The passenger in the seat immediately adjoining hers was listed as Francisco Perez.

Francisco Xavier Perez was one of the three names on the list Agents Rodriguez and Singleton had come up with, the names of three young Cuban refugees who fitted the profile which had evolved from a semen stain found on a sheet in Macimer’s bedroom.

Jerry Russell, the ASAC, was still in the Washington Field Office. Macimer told him what he wanted: FBI Headquarters to be notified that the two suspects had flown to Phoenix. The Phoenix office to be asked to begin an immediate search. The U.S. Border Patrol to be alerted in the event that the two Cubans tried to escape into Mexico. And Agents Rodriguez and Singleton to catch the first available plane to Phoenix to participate in the apprehension of the fugitives.

“I’ll get right on it,” Russell said. “But we have something else going, too—I’ve been trying to reach you but your line was busy.” He hesitated a moment and Macimer realized that he sounded worried. “Molter has disappeared from his apartment. We had the surveillance set up for tonight, but he’s gone. Taliaferro is trying to find out when he left. We think he’s running.”

Russell was a fine number two man, Macimer thought, one of the best ASACs around, but he didn’t like having all the responsibility on his own shoulders.

“That means the surveillance is blown,” Macimer said. “How?”

“We don’t know. But there’s been talk about a leak out of the New York office. When we called them to follow Molter last week, that could have opened it up. Before that Molter wasn’t suspicious, just careful.”

Macimer made the decision. “Tell Taliaferro to move in and search the apartment with a warrant. Alert both of the airport RA’s—Molter may try to get to his friends in New York. And get right on to the desk super in Internal Security who’s been handling this case, Jerry—Headquarters will want to coordinate this one all the way. Recommend that Alexandria move in fast on the print shop and shut it down.”

“You want me to call Headquarters?” Russell sounded surprised.

“Yours isn’t the only case that’s breaking,” Macimer said. “I need to keep my phone open.”

He didn’t elaborate but it wasn’t necessary. Jerry Russell got the message. There was a moment’s silence before Russell said, apologetically, “I’m sorry we blew it with Molter.”

“We can’t win ‘em all. Anyway, it’s a long way from a total loss. We’re closing down an information leak in ERDA. We’re shutting down a drop in Alexandria and we may catch a few fish in that net if we close it up fast enough. And we’re getting another possible line on the leak out of New York. We’ve been after that one for a long time.” Macimer paused. “You stay on the Molter case, Jerry. Get hold of Harrison Stearns and pull him in. I want him on the desk in the Special squad room. Brief him on what’s happening in Phoenix.”

“You want him all night?”

“If necessary.”

* * * *

The house was on Tracy Place in the prestigious Kalorama section of the District, close to Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, minutes from downtown Washington. The area was hilly, the old streets too narrow, the houses gracefully weathered. The house Russell Halbig sought was of gray stone, almost hidden behind a high wrought-iron fence and even higher hedges. The decorative iron gates were open, and the shallow circular drive was crowded with cars.

Halbig rang the bell and heard distant chimes. The door was opened onto a marble-floored foyer by a muscular young man with watchful eyes. The eyes became respectful when they recognized Halbig. “Good evening, sir. Is the Director expecting you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll find them in the library.”

The library had a high ceiling held up by walls of bookcases, a large fieldstone fireplace, leather furniture, french doors facing a private garden. It was a solid, warm, comfortable room in which John Landers seemed at home. There was a game table in one corner with four chairs upholstered in red leather drawn around it. The air was blue with cigar smoke.

Landers rose from one of the chairs. The other three chairs remained filled. Halbig nodded at Jim Caughey and Frank Magnuson—SAC of the New York Field Office—and stiffened visibly even before the silver-haired fourth man turned.