Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery (19 page)

“I understand you went to New Orleans.”

“I did. Ate at the Court of Two Sisters. Great food.”

“And you talked to Brad Corbin.”

“Yes. Real nice man.”

“And Connie Pelletier was murdered right after you visited her.”

“My, Agent Michel, you do get around. If you know so much, why are you here?”

“In part, because Detective Corbin said he wouldn’t talk to us about this case without your permission.”

“Brad’s an honorable man. So, how do we solve this impasse?”

“What do you know about Nate Bannister?”

The question caught J.D. off guard, and she hesitated for a moment. “He’s dead.”

“You didn’t see that one coming, did you?”

“Your question or the murder?”

“My question.”

“No, I didn’t,” J.D. said. “Is the Bannister case related to the Favereauxes in some way?”

“It might be.”

“Do you know who is charged with Bannister’s murder?”

“Abigail Lester, your chief’s wife.”

“We’re getting onto shaky ground, here,” J.D. said. “Bill Lester’s not only my boss, he’s my friend. And the lawyer representing Abby Lester is also a friend of mine.”

“Matt Royal.”

“You’ve done your homework.”

“Yes, and I gather Mr. Royal is more than just a friend.”

J.D. grinned and said nothing.

“You find this Bannister thing intriguing, don’t you?” Michel asked.

“Let me ask you a serious question. What if your director ordered you to tell Matt Royal and me everything you know about both of these cases, would you be completely honest with us?”

“My director isn’t going to order me to do any such thing, but hypothetically speaking, if he did, I’d tell you everything. But I’d want your word that you’d open your file to me.”

“You know Matt wouldn’t be in a position to do the same.”

“I’m well aware of the attorney-client privilege, Detective Duncan, and I wouldn’t do anything to breach that.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Hilton.”

“Why don’t Matt and I meet you at the outside bar there this evening? Say five o’clock?”

“We’ll be there, but I’m not confident we’re going to get anywhere with all this. I’ll talk to my boss. See what he thinks.”

“The director?”

“No. There are a lot of pay grades between my boss and the director.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I was pulling into my driveway when J.D. called. “How would you like to have a drink with Homeland Security this evening?”

“Wow,” I said. “I’d be pretty impressed, I think. What’s going on?”

“Agent Devlin Michel showed up in my office a little while ago. He says he can’t tell me anything about the Favereauxes, but he wants everything I know.”

“I don’t imagine he got very far with that.”

“No, but he said if he got permission from his boss, he’d spill the beans.”

“Is that going to happen?”

“He says it won’t.”

“Then, why are we meeting with him?”

“I was thinking that maybe we knew somebody who could shake up Michel’s director and get us the information.”

“Jock?” I asked.

“Jock.”

“I thought you didn’t like to go outside channels like that?”

“I don’t, but necessity breeds necessity.”

“I don’t think that’s the adage.”

“Close enough,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I’ll give him a call.”

“We’re meeting at the Hilton at five.”

“That gives me about an hour.”

“I’ve got faith in Jock,” she said.

“What about me?”

“I’ve got a lot of faith in Jock.” The line went dead.

* * *

Jock Algren had been my best friend since junior high school. He was an agent for an intelligence agency that was so secretive it didn’t even have a name. Jock did the deepest of undercover work, killed the worst of our enemies, and faced death regularly on those shadowy battlefields where so much of the world’s dirty business is transacted, the places where terrorists thrive and men like Jock hunt them down and exterminate them like the roaches they are.

Jock was well known in certain government circles, because he was one of the few intelligence operatives who talked directly to the President of the United States, and because he had become legendary for his exploits around the world.

Jock was a regular visitor to the island. He had his own room in my cottage where he stashed clothes and toiletries and several weapons. J.D. and I considered him family, and we were the only family he had. He hadn’t visited in almost a month, and that meant he was busy in some godforsaken part of the world. We communicated regularly by email or phone, but I missed having him around. I called him. “Hey, podna,” was the way he answered.

“Jocko, I need a little help.” I explained what I wanted, and he said it’d be done by the time I got to the Hilton. He also told me he was finishing up a project and would be coming to the island soon.

* * *

The outside bar at the Hilton overlooks the Gulf of Mexico and is adjacent to a patio where meals are served by the restaurant. It’s my favorite spot for watching the sunset, which on clear days transforms the sea into a palette of colors. My buddy Billy Brugger was tending the bar where he had been for more than thirty years. He was nearing retirement, and I would miss my regular sunset watches with him.

We were early and took seats at the bar and chatted with Billy. When Michel and his blond colleague arrived, J.D. introduced me and we moved to a table, taking our drinks with us. “You’ve got some powerful mojo, Detective Duncan,” he said. “I don’t know who you talked to, but he or she must be pretty powerful. My director called me personally, and he doesn’t talk to people at my level. He told me to give you anything and everything I had and he let me know that if I held anything back, or didn’t cooperate fully, my head would be on the chopping block. He said his orders came from the very top of the government food chain.”

J.D. smiled, “Please call me J.D. I think we’re going to be good friends.”

Michel laughed. “I hope so,” he said. “I’ve only been with the agency for a year. I’m mostly an errand boy at this point.”

“What were you doing before?” I asked.

“I was in the navy, and before that, college.”

“What’d you do in the navy?”

“I was a SEAL.”

“I’m impressed,” I said.

“I checked you out, too, Mr. Royal. You were Army Special Forces. I always liked those green berets you guys got to wear. They’re cute as hell.”

I laughed. “Spoken like a true swabbie. So, what can you tell us?”

“The director said that his orders included you, Mr. Royal, but that I had to extract a promise from you that none of this would go further.”

“We’ll be discreet,” I said. “And call me Matt.”

“Katrina is fully briefed on these cases,” Michel said, “and she’s been with the agency longer than I have. She can fill in any blanks.”

Katrina nodded. “Some of this is black ops.”

J.D. and I nodded.

Devlin Michel took a deep breath. “You’re actively looking for Jim Favereaux, right?”

“Yes,” J.D. said. “Do you have any ideas about his whereabouts?”

“We have him.”

“Homeland Security?”

“Yes. He’s one of ours.”

“That’s going to take some explaining,” J.D. said.

“He’s one of our deepest cover agents. He’s been with one or another intelligence agency since he got out of college, starting with the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“I thought he was an entrepreneur,” J.D. said. “That’s what’s in our files anyway.”

“Part of his legend. He’s been living rich for quite a while now.”

“Tell us about him.”

“I guess you saw that he pulled a lieutenant out of the line of fire and saved his life in Vietnam.”

“Yes,” said J.D. “He got a medal for it. Was that true?”

“It was true. Did you get the lieutenant’s name?”

“That wasn’t in the file, or if it was, it didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Does the name Zebulon Etheridge ring any bells?”

We both shook our heads.

“He was the Army Chief of Staff at the time Favereaux saved that lieutenant’s butt. The lieutenant was Zebulon Etheridge, Jr. He wasn’t quite a year out of West Point, and his dad was very happy that Jim Favereaux saved his son’s life.”

“So that’s how Favereaux ended up working for the government.”

“In a roundabout way. Jim had grown up in New Orleans, in one of those horrible neighborhoods that kids don’t usually escape from unless they hook up with criminals. Jim got out of the army and went to LSU on the GI Bill. Got a degree in business administration.”

“That was in the file.”

“He picked up the legend about the time he graduated. In other words, that’s when we started manufacturing his life.”

“Homeland Security wasn’t even in existence then,” I said.

“No. By the time Jim graduated, General Etheridge had retired from the army and become the civilian head of the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“Could the government function without acronyms?” J.D. asked.

“Probably not. There was a lot of stuff going on in New Orleans that had some bearing on defense issues. Some very bad people were using the port of New Orleans to ship arms and ammunition to Central and South America. Jim managed to infiltrate one of the biggest of the gangs. He had contacts in his old neighborhood and he called on his friends and let them know he was looking for a job. Turns out a lot of the bad guys were excited to have a college grad and bona fide war hero in their crew.

“He rose quickly in the organization, and pretty soon, he’d accumulated a small fortune. When the DIA took down the bad guys, they made sure to leave Jim alone. There was some subterfuge that allowed him to escape. The DIA let him keep the money and stay in place in New Orleans. He built up quite a reputation among the darker elements over there, and he was willing to use his funds as seed money for some of the criminal enterprises. The DIA took down some very dangerous people because of Jim Favereaux.”

“I’m surprised that DIA would let him keep the money,” J.D. said.

“It was all aboveboard. Jim reported all the funds, and his accounts were audited closely by DIA. He needed to have the appearance of a man getting rich on criminal enterprises, and he needed money to invest in new ones.”

“Nobody ever got on to him?” I asked.

“No. Well, not until a couple of weeks ago, anyway. But DIA was very cautious and loaned him out to the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency, so he worked deals that wouldn’t have excited the DIA, or in any way connect Jim to the DIA. The agencies kept moving him around the country. He became a criminal entrepreneur and was crucial in shutting down a lot of operations. Finally, he moved to Homeland Security because a lot of his contacts in the underworld were involved in things that touched on our responsibilities, such as drugs, guns, money laundering, and moving terrorists about the world.”

“You’d be surprised at how many things we keep our eyes on because of the threats to our security from terrorism,” Katrina said.

“You think somebody recently figured out who he really was?” I asked.

“We’re not sure,” Devlin said. “Jim had set up here to burrow into a large drug-importing business. We think the drug sales were being used to support a terrorist group working out of South America. Getting Jim involved was a slow process, but he had made a lot of progress. We were getting close.”

“What happened?” J.D. asked.

“He sent a coded message about three weeks ago saying he thought he was being followed. We sent in another agent to follow the follower, but we were never able to find anybody that seemed too interested in Jim. Then early Monday morning, Jim called our duty officer and told him that Linda had been killed and he needed to come in. He’d be leaving Tampa International with a false ID and would fly to Atlanta. It was a prearranged escape route. One of our people met him in Atlanta and took him to a safe house in the North Georgia mountains.”

“I’m surprised he’d run off and just leave his wife dead on the floor of his mansion,” J.D. said, the sound of contempt creeping into her voice.

“She wasn’t his wife,” said Michel.

“What was she?” J.D. asked. “Just part of the cover? A trophy wife to enhance the image? Kind of a throwaway doll that if necessary would be sacrificed on the altar of national security?”

Michel’s face suddenly looked hard, as if anger was creeping up on him and he was fighting it off. He stared at J.D. for a moment, and then, his voice tight, said, “Linda wasn’t Jim’s wife. She was his daughter.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Oh my God, Devlin,” J.D. said. “I’m so sorry. Sometimes my mouth overloads my brain.”

“It’s okay, J.D.,” Michel said. “You couldn’t have known, but Jim is devastated. He really loved Linda. And I mean he loved her in a fatherly way.”

“Linda was his daughter?” I asked. “She was also the daughter of a woman in New Orleans named Connie Pelletier.”

Now, Michel looked surprised. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Didn’t you know we went to see Connie?” I asked.

“I did. But how did you make that connection?”

“After Connie was killed,” J.D. said, “I asked Brad Corbin to send me the results of her DNA. We compared it with Linda’s and got a hit. Connie was definitely Linda’s mom. You didn’t know that?”

“We’ve known it for years. Linda was one of our agents, too. I thought we’d covered her tracks so that her old identity was pretty much buried.”

“Darlene Pelletier?” J.D. said.

“Yes. How did you get onto her?”

“We got the fingerprint hit. When we ran Linda’s prints the first time, up popped a New Orleans arrest twenty years ago of a young woman named Darlene Pelletier. Then the DNA connected Darlene and Connie.”

“You ran them twice?”

“Yes,” J.D. said. “You caught it the second time and blocked the identification. Instead, you called me.”

“Geez. I thought we’d cleaned up all of Darlene’s history. Her prints are supposed to be flagged and if somebody comes looking for them, they won’t show up in any database. I know the Sarasota PD and FDLE ran her prints, but we caught that, just like we caught your request. I didn’t know you’d had another request. Somebody’s going to catch hell about those prints.”