The Grid (21 page)

- CHAPTER FORTY-NINE -

I woke at seven the next morning to sunlight streaming into the hospital room.

My body had turned a corner. The ache in my head was nearly gone. The bruised ribs were only a minor throb, and the flesh wound in my bicep itched now instead of hurting.

I felt the need to be moving, to check on Whitney Holbrook and get the details on the attack at San Saba. But even more than that, I was eager to leave the hospital. I wanted to find Piper. Continue the investigation into who killed my deputy.

My clothes were in the closet, stiff and smelling of mold from being in the lake.

I was wondering how to quickly and easily get a new set when a nurse entered the room and corralled me back in bed. Once there, she checked my heart and blood pressure and administered several tests to determine how the recovery from my concussion was progressing.

I did everything to her satisfaction, so I asked her when I could check out. She told me the doctor would be along shortly.

She left, and an orderly brought in a breakfast tray. I devoured the meal almost before he left the room. As I drank the last of the surprisingly good coffee, the door opened yet again and the Texas Ranger from the night before, Moreno, entered.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Like I’m ready to get out of here.”

“The feds want to debrief you about the attack.” She moved to the window. “I thought I’d slide in before your dance card got full.”

“You’re part of the team investigating the murder of my deputy, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“What do you have for me?” I pushed the tray away.

“A math problem,” she said. “Certain things aren’t adding up right.”

I got out of bed, walked to the window. Bed Bath & Beyond wasn’t open yet.

“The two rounds that hit your bulletproof vest,” she said. “They were fired by the same gun that killed your deputy.”

My head got dizzy. I shuffled back to the bed, sat down.

“The guy that shot you,” she said. “He was a three-time loser from Tyler, currently on parole.”

I rubbed my forehead, the headache returning all of a sudden.

“Alfie Washington, that was his name,” she said. “You ever run across him before?”

“No.”

“Alfie killed his mother when he was sixteen. He was about as Muslim as Jerry Falwell.”

“Where the hell did he get the gun?” I said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Moreno turned away from the window. “Nobody’s going to spend much time figuring that out.”

I looked at her but didn’t speak. Too much was going on in my head to form a coherent sentence.

“They’ve closed the books on your deputy’s murder,” she said. “Alfie Washington’s gonna go down as the shooter.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I agree, but it’s a nice, neat package that everybody can get their head around.” She sighed. “The story is, he was meeting people online and hooked up with your deputy, who didn’t realize Alfie was a dude.”

“The guy that shot me was not SarahSmiles.” Even as I spoke the words I wondered if Alfie and SarahSmiles could somehow be tied together.

Nothing about that made sense, however.

Sarah was a loner. And where was Alfie when Cleo Fain was attacked on the side of the road?

“The day your deputy was killed, Alfie Washington’s cell phone pinged a couple of towers near the murder scene.”

“I saw someone leaving the hotel.
She
was not a black man.”

“Oh yes.” Moreno smiled. “The woman with the Dallas Cowboys hat who may or may not have been using SarahSmiles as an alias to meet men.”

“There has to be a record of her IP addresses when she logged on to the site,” I said. “Do they match Alfie’s phone?”

A few moments passed before Moreno shook her head.

“So who is SarahSmiles?” I asked.

“Nobody knows.” She paused. “And the Texas Rangers have stopped trying to figure that out.”

I swore.

“Alfie Washington represents a twofer,” she said. “He killed your deputy and was part of one of the most audacious terrorist attacks since 9/11.”

Noise from the hallway. Feet shuffling, voices talking.

Moreno strode to the door. She opened it a notch and said to the people outside, “Agent Cantrell is feeling a little dizzy. Let’s give him another few minutes, okay?”

I heard grumbling, but no one came in.

Moreno shut the door. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“I need you to get me some clean clothes. Mine were ruined in the lake.”

She ignored my request. “Tell me everything you remember about the woman you saw leaving the motel.”

“What’s it matter? The Rangers have stopped looking.”

“Officially, yeah.” She smiled. “Some of us don’t like to give up, though.”

The expression on her face was friendly but determined. Despite her age—midforties—she was an old-school cop. A dog with a bone. Not going to let go until they pried it from her jaws.

I told her everything, starting with the text at the diner telling me where my deputy’s pickup had been spotted.

At the rear entrance of the motel, a woman in a shapeless blue raincoat and oversized sunglasses and a Dallas Cowboys ball cap. Attractive, somewhere in her thirties. Maybe five foot six or seven.

Her weight was hard to determine because of the jacket, but I had the impression of someone who was fit, weight proportionate to her height. Her legs appeared toned underneath the jeans she’d been wearing. No eye color because of the glasses. Her hair was brown or black, again hard to tell because it had been wet. She’d gotten into a Buick LaCrosse with dealer tags.

Moreno stopped me at that point. “Do you know anybody named Debbie Wilson?” She rattled off an address in downtown Dallas, an expensive high-rise apartment.

I thought for a moment and then shook my head.

“A person with that particular name and address purchased that Buick LaCrosse the week before.”

“What about the Monte Carlo?”

Moreno didn’t say anything, a puzzled expression on her face.

I told her about the tip from the feds, the drunk who’d gotten his Chevrolet stolen from a VFW hall on the interstate. I told her that I’d interviewed a very unreliable witness, an alcoholic in his seventies who’d seen a woman wearing a rain poncho and a Cowboys cap in the car. How he’d said the woman gave the impression of being rich.

“A rich girl, huh?” Moreno got a far-off look on her face.

“My takeaway, too,” I said. “The way she carried herself, her tone of voice. The TravelTimes Inn wasn’t her usual lodging choice. She was used to the finer things in life.”

Moreno paced the room.

“I sent an e-mail about all this to my contact at the Texas Rangers.”

“Typical.” She shook her head. “That never made it to anybody in the field. Where was the VFW hall?”

I told her.

“That’s next door to where we found the LaCrosse.” She yanked her cell from her belt, tapped out a message.

The door opened, and a man in his fifties stepped into my room without knocking. He wore a dark suit and carried a briefcase in one hand, a cell pressed to his ear with the other. He nodded hello but continued his phone conversation.

“He’s with Homeland Security.” Moreno lowered her voice to a whisper and continued to fiddle with her cell. “We can talk later, but I’ve got one more question now.”

The door opened again. No one came in, but I could hear voices in the hall. The feds weren’t going to be stalled any longer.

Moreno held the phone for me to look at. “I managed to take a picture of Debbie Wilson’s ‘friend’ who was staying at her apartment.”

The image on the screen was that of a woman in her thirties walking down a hallway. She was attractive with shoulder-length hair the color of chestnuts. Her body was fit, evidenced by the tight workout clothes she was wearing.

Moreno said, “Is this the woman you saw leaving the motel?”

My vision tunneled and my throat got tight. If that wasn’t the same person, it was her sister. The long, thin nose, the jutting jaw.

I nodded.

“You sure?”

“Sure enough. Who is she?”

“No idea. The apartment’s been vacated.”

“Agent Cantrell?” The man in the dark suit stood at the foot of the bed. “Are you ready to begin your debriefing?”

I didn’t reply. Too much going on in my concussed skull to answer that question right then.

The man looked at Moreno. “We’ll need the room cleared for the interview.”

Moreno stared at him for a moment and then left.

- CHAPTER FIFTY -

Three people in my room, sitting in folding chairs at the foot of my bed.

The man in his fifties, Harris, an investigator with Homeland.

A much younger guy in an ill-fitting gray suit. Operating a video recorder mounted on a tripod, the lens aimed at me.

And a fortysomething woman dressed like Whitney Holbrook had been on the first day we’d met—dark skirt and matching jacket, white blouse, minimal makeup. She identified herself as an FBI agent, no name given. She was carrying a thick briefcase.

Harris asked how I was feeling and then the basics—name, address, job description, et cetera. When he finished with the preliminaries, I said, “Tell me about Whitney Holbrook. How is she?”

Harris and the FBI agent exchanged glances.

“Agent Holbrook was wearing a bulletproof vest but took four rounds to the chest,” Harris said. “She fell off the deck when the guy in the chair exploded. Hit her noggin pretty hard.”

The second blow to the head in only a few minutes.

“I want to see her.”

“Maybe later. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover right now.” He pulled a yellow pad from his briefcase. “Walk us through the day of the attack.”

I told them everything that I remembered in as much detail as possible. Picking up Whitney at the motel. Going to breakfast at the diner. Eric Faulkner arriving.

At the mention of Faulkner’s name, the FBI agent and Harris retreated to a corner of the room and had a whispered conversation. About a minute later, they returned and sat back down.

Harris said, “Mr. Faulkner’s state of mind. Give me your impressions.”

“He appeared agitated.”

“Agitated how?”

“Agitated that someone had almost killed one of his geese that lays the golden eggs.”

“You’re referring to the attack on the Black Valley substation?” the FBI agent asked.

“Does he have any other geese?” I said.

They both stared at me, their expressions blank, uncomprehending.

“Yes,” I said. “I was talking about the attack on Black Valley.”

Harris scribbled some notes.

The FBI agent said, “Did Faulkner give any hints that he might know who was responsible?”

I pondered the question, remembering our conversation. After a moment, I said, “No. Not in the least.”

Harris said, “Keep going. You finished breakfast and . . .”

I continued. Whitney driving to San Saba. The two dead guards. The explosion of the towers. Whitney running the Suburban into the ditch, hitting her head. How I drove the rest of the way.

Harris said, “How did you know to go to the lake house?”

“A hunch.”

No one spoke for a moment. Harris and the FBI agent glanced at each other. The guy running the video recorder fiddled with the settings.

“You feel like talking about what happened next?” Harris asked. “We can take a break if you want.”

“Let’s get it over with.”

He nodded, and I told them about entering the house, seeing Price Anderson tied to a chair, encountering the two suspects—the small man in the skullcap and the guy with the crazy eyes. Whitney busting in right as my finger was tightening on the trigger.

“Do you know an individual named Elias King?” Harris asked.

I shook my head.

“How about a man named Frank King?”

“The guy from East Texas?” I asked. “The King of the Red River?”

“Yeah.” Harris nodded. “That’s the one.”

Everybody knew who Frank King was, one of the richest men in the state when he died. He’d amassed a fortune in real estate, timber, banking, and oil. Supposedly, he’d gotten his start after World War II running cigarettes and moonshine back and forth across the Arkansas state line.

“I know who he was,” I said. “Most people in Texas do. But I never had any dealings with the man.”

The FBI agent pulled a manila folder from her briefcase. The folder was the size of the Houston phone book, if there still was such a thing.

“This is what the bureau has on Frank King,” she said. “A summary, actually. The files themselves take up two cabinets.”

“So he was dirty,” I said.

“Filthy.” She nodded. “A murderer and a thug. Whitewashed everything with money, became so-called legit when he strong-armed his way into controlling a bank.”

“The revolver that Alfie Washington shot you with,” Harris said. “It was used in several killings in northeast Texas in the 1970s and ’80s.”

I remembered the e-mail from the Texas Rangers several days before, the message about the unsolved murder from 1991. Bowie County. A man who owned a bar and was believed to be involved in gambling and prostitution.

The FBI agent continued. “Frank King was a suspect in all of them.”

“No witnesses of course,” Harris said. “Because even as an old man, he ran that part of the world with an iron fist.”

“So how did that same gun end up killing my deputy?”

“Elias King was Frank’s grandson,” Harris said.

“I’m not following.”

“Elias was the second terrorist in the attack on San Saba,” Harris said. “The guy Whitney Holbrook shot on the deck of the lake house.”

Crazy Eyes. With the thick black hair and the pointed nose.

I could actually feel my jaw drop open.

“Elias King was a felon,” he said. “Manslaughter. Killed a guy in a bar fight. Used a broken beer bottle on his throat.”

“That makes no sense.” I shook my head. “The grandson of a mobster goes terrorist? How . . . why?”

“Good question,” Harris said. “We’re still trying to connect the dots on that particular angle.”

No one spoke for a few moments.

“All the money in the world, trust funds out the ass.” The FBI agent looked out the window. “And he ends up a hood who likes to make shit go boom-boom.”

“Maybe it’s genetic,” Harris said. “Who knows?”

More silence. Harris and the FBI agent flipped through their respective yellow pads.

“There’s an outlier in the bell curve, though,” I said.

They looked at me.

“So Frank King kills a bunch of people with that Python. Then his grandson inherits the weapon and gives it to Alfie Washington, who puts a couple rounds into my bulletproof vest.”

Harris nodded.

“My deputy’s killer had the same gun,” I said. “And a woman using the alias Debbie Wilson and/or SarahSmiles left the scene, got into a Buick LaCrosse.”

The FBI agent sighed loudly.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for almost twenty-five years,” I said. “I know the difference between a white woman in her thirties and a black cross-dresser barely out of high school.”

The FBI agent began to pack up her stuff.

“There was no woman, Cantrell.” Harris shook his head. “That case is closed. You need to move on.”