Full Disclosure (3 page)

“Back to the crash. At dawn, the patrol officer and I walked the bean field and the roadside, compared notes, and then headed to the evidence warehouse where the wreck had dripped mostly dry.

“The first thing recovered from the car was a nice Glock, two full clips, no shots fired. It was taped under the passenger side seat.

“The glove box held an owner's manual, car registration, insurance card, half a roll of quarters, and maps of Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.

“The trunk was crumpled shut, forced open, and found to be empty but for a spare tire, jack, and an extra gallon of windshield wiper fluid, now busted open and splashed around the space.

“A hanging clothes bag in the back seat had one change of clothes, toiletries, and a pair of dress shoes. Nice stuff, but not new.

“Miscellaneous items recovered from the mud under the car once it was removed from the bean field were a fast-food sack from McDonald's, a windbreaker, and two old pocket day planners, brown and blue covers respectively, from ten and thirteen years before.

“A broken briefcase handle was pulled from the mangled passenger door frame. The clasp had sheared off the case. We still haven't recovered the damaged briefcase itself. It wasn't in the car wreck, and it wasn't in the bean field or thrown out on the roadside.

“Personal effects taken into evidence at the scene were eyeglasses, a nice watch, a plain wedding ring, and a current day planner from his shirt pocket. His wallet had forty-eight dollars in cash, two credit cards, a gas card, driver's license, and a receipt from a bookstore in Missouri for two newspapers. No photographs. No health insurance card. No checkbook.

“He had no phone on him. We went back through the wreck looking for a phone or any signs a phone had been there—a charger, a case—and came up with nothing. Security tapes of him in the twenty-four hours before the crash never show him on a phone.” Ann was still surprised she hadn't found a phone.

“We headed from the car wreck to the ME's office. The deceased is a Caucasian male, early to mid-seventies, one sixty, five nine, hazel eyes, in good health, taking no prescriptions. The cause of death is impact injuries.

“His fingerprints are not on file. His DNA gave no match. There has been no missing-person report filed anywhere in the U.S. that matches his description.

“His license is a nice forgery. His credit cards are clones for cards owned by a man in hospice in Oregon. The VIN numbers on the car don't match the registration. The car registration and plates belong to a junked same-make-and-model in Indiana. The
gun trace disappears into a police stolen-items report from a gun store robbery six years ago in Nevada.

“The day planner in his pocket reads like gibberish, as did the two day planners recovered from the mud under the car. One from ten years ago, another from thirteen years ago, a current planner in his shirt pocket. Where are the rest of them? I figure the ripped-open and now-missing briefcase had a stack of them.

“Working assumption—he emptied out a bank safe-deposit box, someone knew that, tailed him, planning to acquire the contents of the box. He made the tail, tried to outrun them, failed miserably and crashed. They stopped, confirmed he was dead, retrieved the briefcase and probably a phone, and got as far away from the scene as they could before the patrol officer arrived.” She paused and tipped the soda can toward him. “A nice story, since I like to tell them, and a pure guess, but it's a tidy theory.”

She couldn't tell if Paul liked her tidy theory or not, but it was a good one just the same. He was turning his pen end to end, his fingers sliding down and turning it a hundred and eighty degrees in a steady twenty-second beat, and he was still carefully listening. She liked a guy who could listen to a story, appreciate its telling, and not interrupt the flow of it. She would know she had him when that pen stopped its graceful path, and what was the point of a good story if she couldn't touch a moment of surprise in its telling? She settled her cold drink back on the coaster and turned the story to the reason she was sitting in his office on, for her, a rare vacation day.

“A day planner written in some kind of code had my attention even in the rain of a stormy night, and it was still holding my attention over the next few days as leads to chase worked themselves into the weeds. My driver remained a mystery, and I was stalled for a name. As the day planner in his pocket began to look like my best chance of identifying him, I started working on the code. Being stubborn along with suspicious, I kept eliminating what it was not, on the assumption I'd eventually find what it was.

“I cracked the code four days ago. He was offsetting his alphabet based on what day of the week the first day of the month came on, reversing his numbers right to left, and swapping first and last digits. It was the same code in all three day planners. He's been a creature of habit through the years.

“The day planners are boring reading on the whole.

“He recorded the price of gas, baseball game scores, the DOW index closing price, and occasionally lunch expenses. Nothing looks like a phone number. There are some appointments—place, time, and initials—including several appointments coming up over the next few months. By the time I transcribed and read the three planners there was a nice tug going on about a few of the notations. Toss out everything trivial and they stand out as unusual.

“Since the only thing I like to do better than tell a story is to remember odd and trivial facts, you'll have to trust me for now that the following quotes are accurate.

“MAY 22, 1999

Call from TM

Called Miss LS

JULY 7, 1999

Saw news YM died

JULY 20, 1999

TM $250,000 deposit cleared

Paid Miss LS $220,000

“And another:

AUGUST 14, 2002

Call from GN

Called Miss LS

OCTOBER 7, 2002

Saw news VR died

OCTOBER 25, 2002

GN $300,000 deposit cleared

Paid Miss LS $270,000

“July 7, 1999, and Saw news YM died, turns out to be a rather unique combination. My search turned up the name Yolanda Meeks. And I landed in the middle of your murder investigation.”

His pen stopped moving.

“VR and October 7, 2002, gave me Victor Ryckoff. And there I was again. In your murder investigation.”

She waited a beat. She had him.

“So—I know it is thin, but is it enough I can dump this guy and this wreck off my desk and onto yours?”

“I'll take it all.”

She grinned. “I knew I'd like you.”

He had gone from politely listening to seriously focused, and she could almost see the speed of his thoughts as he ran the prior cases in his mind looking for initials. He'd probably interviewed one of the people who had hired the lady shooter to make a hit. She would not want to be in Falcon's crosshairs when he came hunting with this new information.

“I've got the wrecked car, its contents, his personal effects, the body, a bunch of photos, security disks, and a stack of interviews. You'll need to send someone to pick them up.”

“Done. I need to see the day planners as soon as possible.”

She opened her flight bag and held up a manila envelope sealed in an evidence bag. “Three day planners and my code-breaking how-to guide, driver's license, car registration and insurance, credit cards and gas card, a still image from the bank security camera of the man before he died, and as an added bonus I tossed in fingerprints and photos of the two who might have acquired the briefcase. I just need a signature for the evidence chain of custody.”

He held up the pen. “Got the paperwork?”

She handed it to him.

He signed with a bold, legible signature, printed his name, and added a federal case number beneath it.

She handed him the evidence bag.

“We didn't have her initials,” he said. “And the guy in your morgue might be Charles Ash.”

“See? You're already making more progress than I did. You can have fun with it, and I can go enjoy a ball game.”

“You don't want to stay on the case?”

“Why would I? Assuming my idea of a tail is accurate and someone intentionally took the briefcase and the rest of the day planners, they know by now three day planners are missing. They are going to want them back. I'd just as soon they try to take them from you than from me.”

“The wreck was four weeks ago. They likely would have tried by now.”

“I'm reasonably sure they have, and failed in the attempts. They tried for the wreck and found it guarded by a very unfriendly police dog, who was keeping a restored Corvette in the same warehouse safe. They tried for the evidence room, but it's a former bank vault. Jesse James tried to rob the bank back in 1871, blew a hole in the building, and still couldn't get it open. They may have tried to hack the department computer system, if you can call a couple connected PCs a network. I'm hoping they made it to the case files, because if they got a copy of the property inventory, it lists three day planners with the notation
destroyed by water, unreadable
.”

“Nicely played.”

“I wasn't sure, but I was working a hunch even back then. The pictures from the warehouse break-in didn't give me much to work with—two middle-aged white guys, jackets, hats, gloves—but they didn't stay ghosts. They tried a tail on and off for the first couple weeks, but it's hard to tail me in my own backyard. I reversed it back on them a couple times and showed them some very boring countryside and dead ends. Restaurant staff
said Southern accent for both of them, which gets interpreted in my stretch of the world as Georgia rather than Texas. I haven't seen them in the last couple weeks. I figured they would send someone representing a loved one of the victim and try to claim the driver's possessions, but there have been no inquiries. I'm still surprised they haven't gone that route.

“They may have concluded the risk is passed, so why stir up trouble by pursuing it further. As far as anyone watching could tell, I worked the case for three days, touched it again briefly in weeks one and two, and haven't done anything on it the last couple weeks. The ME is done and the body will be cremated in three months by the county if a loved one isn't located. The car wreck will go to scrap once the paperwork goes through the bureaucracy. The personal belongings will linger in storage for a year or so depending on when space is needed to be reclaimed. The case is over.”

“Who knows about the day planner code and what you figured out?”

“Me. You.”

“You've told no one the day planners were in code, told no one you had a puzzle to solve?”

She liked the fact he was a skeptic, and smiled at him. “I recovered the day planners at the scene, including the one from his shirt pocket, and it's my handwriting putting them into evidence. No one else ever opened them. And I'm good at keeping my mouth shut when it suits me.

“I burn my trash—it's the country. My scratched-out attempts to crack the code no longer exist. I'm about six months behind in finishing my reports. I have them transcribed from audiotape so the law clerk has enough work and can keep her job. The tapes for this case and several others are still in the evidence vault in a box I misfiled a decade ago, where I keep all kinds of personal things, including a few nicely autographed baseball cards. When I say it's possible for you to collect and have everything that exists on this case, I'm being literal.”

She rose. “You want to get busy with those documents, and I want to get to the game, so I'm going to head out. Why don't we leave it that you'll call me tomorrow when you have arrangements made to pick up the wreck and the rest of it.” She clicked off the recorder, ejected the digital card and the tape duplicate, and handed them to him.

He stood up. “Better yet, let me head down with you. We'll stop on three and get an evidence guy scheduled to pick up the wreck and then talk to the ME about transferring the body. I can at least escort you to the lobby before I dive into this.” He locked the evidence bag and the tapes in his office safe. “Can you have the rest of it, the security tapes and interviews, packed up and under seal to be picked up tomorrow?”

“I can.” She picked up her bag and followed him. Falcon led the way to the elevators and pushed the down button just as the stairway door opened and an agent walked through, scanning a report in his hand.

“Dave,” Ann said.

Kate's husband, Dave Sinclair, glanced over and his face lit up with a smile.

“Ann's in the house.” Dave slung his arm across her shoulders and hugged her. “I gotta feed you, woman, and bug you with toddler pictures.”

“Got them on you?”

He reached for his wallet and dumped out a handful of photos.

“Holly's got her mom's smile.” Ann turned one of the photos toward him. “I told you she was going to love the wrapping paper.”

“She's eaten the ear off your fuzzy kitten.”

“I figured she would.”

“Coming to dinner?”

“Lisa and I are hitting the game.”

“Perfect day for it. Come for breakfast then. Kate would love to see you. She's setting you up with her new hire, some guy from Scotland Yard.”

“Not this trip, but I'll enjoy dodging her attempt.”

“Something interesting bring you our way?”

“Just dumping what I can stretch to be federal.” The elevator opened. Ann held the door but didn't step on. “You still need me to ferry the plane to Wichita Saturday?”

“I'd love it if you could,” Dave replied. “They gave me a six p.m. slot, and promised a seventy-two-hour turn. They are dropping out the rudder assembly to replace a recalled actuator.”

“I've got to be in Salina Monday anyway. Henry Stanton got a new trial.”

“How did he manage that?”

“A very fine lawyer. I'll handle the FAA for you, then maybe do a checkout ride south on the loop home.”