Whirlwind (22 page)

49

Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

I
t was a neglected bungalow that sat back from the street.

A gravel drive cut through a stand of twisted cottonwoods, patches of grass and dirt. A vehicle enshrouded with a tarp sat between the dilapidated carport and wall of shrubbery that bordered the property.

Stones crunched under Mason’s pickup truck as he and Remy eased up to the house. Both of them needed to shower. They were grimy and sore after spending a fitful night sleeping in the truck at a roadside rest area where Mason had pulled deep into the woods.

Mercifully, Lamont gave him directions when he called the other night.

“There’s heat, water, electricity, a fridge, an oven and a washer and dryer. No cable. The satellite dish malfunctions, and oh, you’ll be sharing the place with two other people,” Lamont had said. “You’ll have to deal with them. I’ll be out tomorrow to get what you owe me.”

It pissed Mason off that they were not alone, but they had no other choice. They had to get off the grid. Once they unloaded the truck, Mason would back it into the carport and cover it with something.

Remy unbuckled the baby, grabbed her bag and got out. Mason carried some of their things, and before they got to the door, a man in his late twenties with unruly hair came out to greet them.

“I’m Brice.” He offered a gap-toothed smile, displaying teeth that were in need of brushing.

“I’m Misty,” Remy said. “This is my husband, John, and our baby.”

“I can help you bring your stuff in.” Brice smiled.

“No, thank you,” Mason said. “I’ll take care of it.”

The interior of the house was menacing. The walls were cracked and had holes in them. The hardwood floors were warped and worn. Cigarette smoke and the odors of a locker room and stale beer permeated the house. A huge plastic trash bag, overflowing with pizza boxes, suggested someone had attempted to clean the kitchen.

In the living room, a man in his early thirties sat on a sofa chair that bled stuffing. He had a beer bottle between his legs, a cigarette in his hand and was watching men kick and punch each other on TV.

He turned and sneered.

“Hello, Mason.”

Mason was motionless.

The man had tattoos along his hands, his arm and collared around his neck, and a scowl creased his face.

“Well, isn’t this a surprise, Arlen?”

“Lamont told me to expect you.”

“He never said a word to me about you, or your friend.”

“Be careful, Mason. Young Brice there’s my little brother.”

Brice nodded, happily smiling his gap-toothed smile.

“Don’t mind him smiling all the time. It’s all he does. He fell off a roof when he was six. He’s what you call a savant. He’s an expert at computers and shit like that, and he’s got an incredible memory.”

“I like your baby.” Brice smiled at Remy. “Can I hold him?”

“No.” Remy turned protectively with the baby.

Brice smiled and went to his room. When he opened the door across the hall from the living room, Remy saw that he had two laptops, a tablet and heaps of equipment with wires and cables on his desk. He likely played video games all day long while Arlen dealt drugs or stolen property, or some crap like that, she thought.

“Before you move in here,” Arlen said, “there’s the matter of paying me for agreeing to share. My fee is one large.”

“To hell with that,” Mason said. “I paid Lamont.”

“If I were you, I’d reconsider your situation, son, seein’ what we both know about you.”

Mason felt the heat of Remy’s
what the hell did you get us into
glare.

“All right,” Mason said. “We’ll take care of it after we settle in.”

Arlen stood. He was two inches taller and about twenty-five pounds heavier than Mason.

“We’ll take care of it now.”

Mason assessed the option of going into battle against Arlen. Under the circumstances the benefits were few. Still, Mason needed to be prepared.

“All right, Arlen, let me go to my truck and get it.”

“You do that.”

While Mason was gone, Arlen’s ice-cold eyes walked all over Remy as he dragged hard on his cigarette.

“I hardly recognized you at first. You changed your hair. I like it. And I see you got your figure back after having that baby.”

Remy said nothing.

“You know, I kept my eye on you whenever you came to Hightower to visit Mason. And later when I was lying in my cot at night I could never understand what a fine woman like you saw in that loser. It hurt me because I thought about how right you’d be for me. Now fate has brought us together. You gotta love that.”

Remy said nothing. Caleb began fussing and she rocked him.

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t smoke in front of the baby.”

Arlen took a long pull from his beer, keeping his eyes on Remy until Mason returned and gave him one thousand dollars in cash.

“Lamont said you’d be out of here in a week,” Arlen said.

“I’ll do all I can to make it sooner than that.”

Arlen downed the last of his beer, dragged on his cigarette and dropped the butt into the empty bottle.

“We’ll give you the big bedroom. It’s got its own bathroom,” he said before removing his shirt, revealing a stunningly powerful build laced with prison artwork. “I’m going to take a shower. Just keep your baby quiet, respect our privacy and we’ll all get along fine, like we did inside.”

Arlen closed his door. Upon hearing it, Brice got up and closed his. When they were alone, Remy stepped outside with Mason as he unloaded the truck of their groceries and bags.

“I don’t like them,” she said. “Why did you bring us here, Mason?”

“We don’t have a lot of options right now. We have to do all we can to stay off the grid, even if it means getting help from people I don’t particularly like, or trust.”

“We can’t stay here long.”

“That’s the plan, believe me.”

After they’d settled into their room and Remy fixed a place for the baby, she bathed and fed him. Afterward she and Mason showered. Then she made them a spaghetti dinner and gave the baby a bottle. When she was finished she washed the linen, pillowcases, and all the towels she’d stolen from the motel. They went outside to the backyard and, keeping their voices low, discussed calling the agency and arranging delivery.

“It’s time. We have to do this, Remy. We have to call and give him up.”

“I know, but it’s hard for me.” She gazed at the baby in her arms.

“And it’ll get harder the longer we wait.”

“Okay, okay.” Tears rolled down her face and she turned to the house.

At that moment she heard an explosion of laughter coming from the living room where Arlen and Brice were playing a violent video game.

I pray to God that we’re safe here
.

50

Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

T
he street was deserted as an eerie quiet fell over the neighborhood.

FBI Special Agent Phil Grogan scanned the front door of a ramshackle one-story house through high-powered binoculars.

The Dallas PD had established an outer perimeter, closing off the street, clearing the way for the Dallas FBI’s SWAT team. The SWAT team was part of the Dallas Critical Incident Response Team—an FBI squad that also included crisis negotiators, bomb techs and evidence response agents.

Grogan saw movement as SWAT members clad in military armor quietly took cover points behind shrubs, parked vehicles and against corners of the house. Within moments, FBI sharpshooters settled into concealed, close-range locations and took aim at the doors and windows of the house.

From a secure vantage point behind the hood of a command post truck, among a clutch of other police vehicles down the street, Grogan and his partner, Nicole Quinn, watched the final stages of the setup.

This was the bureau’s strongest investigative lead to date.

A lot of people had moved fast on it.

According to records based on a fingerprint collected at Unit 21 of the Tumbleweed Dreams Motel, the prime subject was a convicted offender paroled from the Texas prison system. After serving time in the Ellis Unit he was transferred to the Hightower Unit and finally the Clemens Unit before his release.

But Grogan and Quinn had been frustrated by the fact that their subject’s parole records were not up to date due to two factors: his parole officer had recently passed away from a heart attack, and a fire in the regional office had destroyed some records. An emergency retrieval operation for all of the destroyed records was ongoing.

At the same time, Grogan and Quinn had run down the only other clear fingerprints obtained from the motel unit—those belonging to Arb and Ella Winston of San Antonio. The FBI in Arizona, working with the Tucson PD, confirmed that the Winstons, who’d recently retired to Tucson, had not left the city for the past four weeks. They volunteered credit card records showing they’d been in the Dallas motel three months earlier while in the city to visit friends.

The investigators had cleared the older couple as potential suspects.

But when Grogan and Quinn showed photos of the ex-convict to motel manager Shelby Nix, he said the man was definitely familiar and definitely resembled the suspect in the sketches.

Based on these factors, and intel supplied by other law enforcement agencies, the FBI had obtained a warrant less than an hour ago on the subject’s most recent address, setting in motion the procedure for arrest of a dangerous suspect.

Now, after FBI SWAT commander Steve Elling pulled his binoculars from his face, he made a number of whispered radio checks.

Everyone was ready. He nodded to agent Andre Kuper, the SWAT negotiator.

“Make the call, Andre.”

Kuper called the landline number for the address and after four rings, a woman answered. Only after Kuper pressed her did she identify herself as Monica Jefferies.

“This is Special Agent Andre Kuper of the FBI. We have a warrant for the arrest of Samuel James Laster.”

“My brother? What? No, no, this is all wrong.”

Muffled anguish passed between them.

“Why are you doing this? Is this some kind of joke?”

“Ma’am, that will be explained to Mr. Laster. Right now, we request that Mr. Laster immediately come to the front door with his hands raised, palms forward, and proceed to the front lawn.”

The request was met by a long silence, then sniffles.

“My brother’s dead, asshole,” Jefferies said.

Sometimes family members say that, or lie in other ways to protect wanted relatives,
Kuper thought. He repeated his request.

“Ma’am, please confirm that you will respond.”

“This is crazy! Please, just go away!”

“How many people are in the house, ma’am?”

“Leave me alone!” she sobbed.

“Ma’am, I want you to take a deep breath,” Kuper said. “For your safety, could you please exit now through the front door with your hands outstretched, palms facing forward, and we can talk.”

Monica Jefferies took a long moment to find a measure of composure, then she cooperated. The FBI took her to the command post while the SWAT team did a tactical room-by-room search of her home.

Distraught and trembling in the command-post truck, she angrily told investigators that her brother had died from lung cancer three weeks ago, six months after he’d been paroled.

“He was just getting his life on the right track.”

Based on her new, unverified information, Grogan and Quinn, aided by the Dallas PD, made several urgent enquiries to various government offices and agencies. As they awaited responses, Monica Jefferies explained how her brother had lived in the Tumbleweed motel for about a week after he got a short-term job at a warehouse in the area.

Radios crackled with an update from the FBI SWAT team leader in the home.

“The residence, garage and yard are clear. No one else here.”

Not long after that, Quinn showed Grogan a text, confirming that Samuel James Laster was deceased. His death was not listed due to a computer malfunction, but it happened well before the storms hit Dallas and Caleb Cooper vanished.

Before apologizing to Monica Jefferies and releasing her, the two agents exchanged glances. They were back to square one.

51

Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

T
hat morning as Kate walked from the Marriott City Center to the bureau in Bryan Tower, her phone vibrated with a text from Tommy Koop.

Something’s up on scanners with FBI SWAT on suspects. Where R U?

Her heart skipped.

Be there in 5. More details pls!

Danson near there now. Says it could be arrest. Stand by for address.

Kate’s thoughts raced.

Last night Dorothea had told her to report to the bureau about midmorning for her assignment. The President’s visit was today, and the bureau was going big on it. Faced with a breaking story and her urge to jump on it, Kate texted Chuck and Dorothea.

Possible arrest in baby case. Will head to scene now, OK?

The address from Tommy popped up on her screen with a map highlighting directions. As Kate jogged to the elevator to get to the parking garage and her car, a voice in the back of her mind sounded a reminder.

Jenna Cooper.

Kate had promised her that she would alert her to any breaks in the case. She broke that promise to her once, and she sure as hell was not going to make that mistake again. Not after everything Jenna’s suffered.

She deserves to know. I gave her my word.

Kate immediately texted Jenna and her sister.

May have development happening now. More when I know it.

Before she got on the elevator she was stopped in her tracks by a text from Dorothea.

Kate, please report to the bureau now.

Kate’s heart sank.

What’s going on? Why are we ignoring breaking news?
She started a text to Dorothea but stopped when she’d received one from Tommy.

Stand down. It’s over.

Then one came from Mark Danson.

On site. Cop told me they had wrong intel. Disregard the call. I’m going to Arlington.

Kate let out a breath.

A dead end. All part of the news business,
she thought, and alerted Jenna Cooper and her sister that the call was a false alarm.

Then she stepped into the elevator.

On the ride up she reviewed what she had to do. She needed to reach agent Grogan or Quinn on the status of the investigation, the evidence, other leads, number of tips called in, anything, she thought as she arrived at the bureau. The newsroom was nearly empty. All the TVs were locked onto live coverage in advance of the President’s visit. She waved to Tommy and went to her workstation. Less than a minute after she’d logged in, a familiar-looking man stood at her desk.

“Hello, Kate, Burt Wilson from the Houston bureau,” he said. “Soon as you’re clear, please come see me in Chuck’s office.”

“Okay, sure.”

In his wake Kate shot a questioning look to Tommy, who came over to her desk with a coffee.

“Wilson’s running the bureau today. Everyone else is on the President’s visit,” he said before leaving to take a call.

After checking her messages and scanning the wires, Kate collected her notebook and pen to meet with Wilson. That’s when Jenna Cooper called.

“Did you find out anything more on the false alarm?” Jenna asked.

“I think they had weak information. I’ll be looking into it.”

A few seconds of silence passed between them.

“Thank you for thinking of us and calling,” Jenna said. “I want to share something. Something confidential for now, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The governor’s office invited us to join the group of storm survivors who’ll be meeting the President at today’s memorial service for the victims at Cowboys Stadium.”

“That’s quite an honor.”

“And they told us that the President might mention Caleb in his speech at the memorial service.”

“Jenna, that kind of attention’s going to help.”

“We’re praying it does.”

“Will you talk to me afterward for a story?”

“Yes, I’ll text with where we can meet in the stadium.”

“Thank you.”

Upon ending the call, Kate went to see Wilson, who updated her. He told her that the President’s visit was the top story in the country, that Newslead was putting extra staff, reporters and photographers at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington to cover the memorial, and at the devastated sites and other areas that the President was going to visit.

“Where do you need me?”

“We need you here.”

“Here? I don’t understand. I thought I was going to the stadium.”

“No, we need you to help the editors assemble the raw copy as it flows in from our people before we go through it and send it to New York.”

“So I’m not directly reporting?”

“No, Dorothea arranged accreditation and assignments for others earlier and told me she’d assigned you to desk duty here.”

“Desk duty? Where is she? And where’s Chuck?”

“They’ll be with groups the Governor and President will thank today, first responders, rescuers, volunteers and believe it or not, news media, for their work when the storm hit. The Governor always said the press was crucial at conveying critical information.”

Kate thought for a moment before revealing Jenna Cooper’s call.

“Listen, Burt. I should be at the stadium to talk to Jenna after she and her husband meet the President. He might mention their baby in his speech. That could be my follow on the story.”

“That’s great, Kate. But you’re not accredited. You can’t get into the media area of the stadium,” Wilson said. “I’m sorry but you’ll have to pass this to Mandy or Roy for them to follow for us at the stadium.”

She stared at Wilson for a moment then nodded.

So she was supposed to hand over what was essentially her work to the people competing with her for a job? Kate struggled to get her mind around the matter.

Still reeling after she’d returned to her desk, Kate was more than deflated at her exclusion from covering the President. She was concerned about the obvious implication of it. It could only mean that she wasn’t being considered for a full-time reporting position.

As they waited for Air Force One to land, Kate scrolled through her phone for messages and paged through her notes for story leads while wrestling with her anger and her conscience.

She shouldn’t be thinking of herself again. She should be thinking of the people who died in the storms and their families. So what if she wasn’t going to get a job with Newslead? People were dealing with far worse.

As Kate lamented not being at the stadium to talk to Jenna, she reflected on images from the story that she’d never forget: meeting Jenna searching for Caleb at the leveled flea market, finding Caleb’s romper in the shelter, the SWAT team at the motel and Jenna holding Caleb’s rattle amid the ruins of her home.

As Kate searched the newswires she came upon the FBI sketches of the man and woman believed to have taken Caleb.

Why did they take him? Where is he? Will the FBI find him?

Kate needed to see this story through. She couldn’t give it up.

“Here we go,” one of the editors said.

The big-screen TVs suspended from the ceilings throughout the newsroom were tuned to different networks. Each one showed Air Force One landing at DFW International, then the President stepping off the plane and being greeted by dignitaries. Then there was the motorcade to Arlington and the packed stadium.

Everything moved smoothly.

The President met more officials, then came speeches, prayers, songs, eulogies and a montage on the stadium’s giant video screen of moving, inspiring still photos and videos from the storm, the devastation, the rescues, the tragedies and the triumphs in tribute to everyone affected.

Watching the events from the near-empty newsroom, Kate had never felt more alone. She ached to be home with her daughter. She touched Grace’s picture on her phone. Kate then thought of her little sister, Vanessa, and that horrible moment in the river all those years ago.

Why couldn’t I hold on?

The President went to the podium. His speech was powerful, honoring the dead, the injured, those still missing and their families. He praised people for coming together when their world was being torn apart. There were no easy answers as to why people were killed and why the survivors were left with so much hurt to bear.

“But the way forward is to stand united in our response to one of the most painful moments of our lives. The way to heal is to draw inspiration from the selfless acts of courage by those who fought hard against the storm under severe and anguishing conditions.

“Ordinary everyday people like Victor Sanchez, the father who shielded Rosario, his blind daughter, in a culvert, or Billy Dean Brooks, the son who threw himself over Agnes, his mother, while their apartment was exploding around them.

“And the heart-wrenching case of a young mother named Jenna Cooper, who did all she could to keep her baby boy, Caleb, safe only to have him taken from her by someone posing as a Good Samaritan.”

Cameras cut to Jenna dabbing her eyes while holding Cassie and being comforted by Blake.

“Let them all be our beacons of hope. And let’s pray that investigators will soon reunite little Caleb Cooper with his mom Jenna, dad Blake and big sister, Cassie.”

Then the giant screen filled with photos of Jenna with Caleb, Cassie and Blake, all laughing during happier times. Pictures Jenna’s church had provided from a family picnic day in a Dallas park.

The President continued commending the heroic spirit and the human will to endure as he concluded his speech.

It was followed by a gospel choir singing a moving hymn, and another montage of the devastation. Even before the ceremony concluded with the President meeting and comforting survivors, raw news copy started flowing into the bureau.

“All right, let’s get to work,” Wilson said.

Kate got busy handling copy from reports on the speech, the reaction and stories from people in the audience. When she got a text from Jenna on where to meet her, Kate responded, telling her that her Newslead colleague, Mandy Lee, would seek her out, then passed the location to Mandy. Kate struggled to drive out of her mind that she’d not only just given away a major story that she’d developed, but probably her last hope at a job, as well.

She resumed helping clean and assemble file after file of raw copy that continued to flow as the President visited the injured storm victims at a hospital, then communities devastated by the storm where he embraced those who were overcome.

Kate was putting the finishing touches on a file when Tommy hurried to her desk.

“I know you’re swamped, but I got a call for you.”

Kate didn’t remove her eyes from her monitor. “Thanks, Tommy. Can you take a message?”

“I think you should take it.”

“Really, I’m kinda busy.”

“The caller says she knows where Caleb Cooper is.”

Kate stopped typing and looked at him.