The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (7 page)

“Got anything yet?” I asked Morgan as I walked over to his desk. Jami said she was going back to her workstation to catch up on interagency bulletins to look for any connections that we might be missing.

“I got into the United Center’s system and isolated the camera that you asked me to look at, but the kidnapper had his back to it. He was pulling a large black crate out of the doors, I’m guessing the senator’s body, and except for a quick glance to look around, we don’t have a good shot.”

Morgan stopped typing. “I’m going to look for another camera inside the arena that may have picked him up.”

“What about the building across the street? I asked you to look for something there, too.” He put his hands behind his head in frustration and leaned back in his chair.

“But you asked me to try to ID him from the arena’s cameras. Which one do you want?”

“Both. I want to know who these people are.” Morgan sat back up and repositioned his hands on the keyboard and began clicking away at it.

“Fine. I’ll work on the building across the street first.”

A few seconds later, Morgan turned around and looked at me for the first time since I had been standing there. “Anything else? Or are you going to stay here hovering over me the whole time?”

“Morgan, we have no other leads. I need you to find something.” He shook his head.

“Do you know what the FBI will do if they catch me snooping around in these feeds? Didn’t you just say they asked us not to interfere?” Jami walked back over as I responded.

“We’re not interfering,” I said and Morgan got back to work.

“What did we miss while we were gone?” I asked Jami.

“The media has basically the same information that we have. The story broke on
The Mitchell Wire
, that’s who everyone is referencing as the source.” I glanced back over at Morgan’s monitor; he had accessed the feed from the building across from the arena.

The camera was intended to monitor the office building’s parking lot, but by chance offered a panoramic view of the United Center’s staff parking area. We saw police lights flashing and FBI personnel walking the area. “Go back to ten minutes before eight and let’s start from there,” I said to Morgan and he rewound the feed and pressed play, jumping forward thirty seconds at a time until we saw activity on the screen.

The lot was empty, just as expected. Just before eight, we saw a man walking alongside the back of the building and stopped at a motorcycle. We couldn’t tell the make and model, but we saw him climb on and just sit there, like he was deciding if he would leave or not.

“Oh my God,” Jami said. Morgan and I turned around and looked at her. “When we split up and I was near the arena’s entrance, while I was talking with Debra Stewart, one of the off duty police officers working security that night told me that David Mitchell was trying to get in with his old Tribune press pass. They didn’t let him in, but said that he did get in three nights ago and was kicked out.” I looked at Morgan and then back at Jami.

“I recognize the name. Who is he?” I asked.

“The guy who used to work at the Tribune. He was fired and started a news Website. Blake, he broke the news about the kidnapping. I just read the bulletin on this and all news agencies are referencing his Website as the source.” I looked back at the video and watched the man still sitting on his bike.

“And you think that’s David Mitchell?”

“When I asked one of the officers where he went after they turned him away, he pointed to the parking lot.” A moment later, we watched as the man still sitting on his bike ducked behind an SUV as the kidnapper backed out of the exit, pulling a crate behind him, and walked over to a nearby van.

“Morgan, can you confirm?” On a separate monitor, he accessed the city’s DMV records. As he did, we watched the kidnapper pull the senator’s limp body out of the crate, dump it in the van, and drive off. The bike followed, headlights off.

“Got it. David Mitchell. Issued a Class M license by the state in March. It’s him.”

The Website traffic was spiking higher than David Mitchell had ever seen. He monitored the visitors in real-time using a Web analytics service and saw that there were over a hundred thousand people at that very moment reading his short post that broke the news about the senator’s kidnapping.

Mitchell heard a knock at the door and got up from the chair in his home office. He looked through the peephole and saw a man staring back at him. “FBI open this door right now!” the man yelled after knocking again. He looked around the room before opening the door and putting his hands in the air.

“Are you David Mitchell?” the man asked as he walked in. Two others followed him in.

“I’m Mitchell.”

“Mr. Mitchell, put your hands down and take a seat on the couch,” the man said. He did as he was told and the first man ordered the other two to search the apartment. “Do you know why we’re here?” he asked and David nodded. “You’re running a Website from here, a popular one it seems. I understand you broke the story about Senator Keller’s kidnapping. Just how did you get that information?” Mitchell thought before responding.

“They were anonymous tips. I have an email address that anyone can send tips to.”

“How many do you get a day?” the agent asked.

“A couple hundred, I guess.”

The other two agents reappeared. “Apartment’s clear,” one of the men said. The agent interrogating Mitchell continued.

“You get a couple hundred tips a day and you publish a story online about a report you received that says the senator was kidnapped and driven off in a black van…” Mitchell was watching the other two agents who were looking at everything he owned. His eyes went back to the man talking to him.

“That’s right. Then I got another tip telling me the estimated age of the kidnapper.”

“You receive random tips all throughout the day… why act on these?”

“They seemed credible. The timelines worked.”

“Then you won’t mind showing me these emails, will you? I’d like to see them for myself.” The agent slowly revealed a smile, one that seemed to say
I know you’re lying and I’m going to prove it
.

David Mitchell sat for a few seconds, thinking it over. The other two men stood behind the agent, arms crossed. Mitchell had decided that the men were performing a light search of his apartment while the first man grilled him with questions.

“Do you have a warrant?”

“Mr. Mitchell, let me explain something. When you let us into your apartment, you consented to a search and no warrant is needed.”

“That’s not how it works. You need a warrant, signed by a judge, if you’re going to come into my home and search through my things. What are you looking for?” The agent bent down and got in Mitchell’s face.

“Mr. Mitchell, unless you can show me these emails, I’m going to have to assume that you’re lying to me. And if you’re lying to me, then I’m going to arrest you for being involved in this kidnapping. Understand?”

Mitchell nodded and stood.

“Follow me.” He walked into his home office and typed the password. The laptop screen and two large external monitors woke up. They displayed his Website, the login page where he posted his stories, and the analytics Website that showed that there were now over two hundred thousand visitors on his Website. Mitchell pointed to his second monitor and it had an inbox with new messages coming in every few seconds.

“The emails came in at 8:25 and 9:14.” Mitchell found the first email with the tip about the van. “I’ll find the other one, now.” He scrolled through countless emails and found the email that came in almost fifty minutes later and opened the message, which gave the tip with the description of the kidnapper. The timestamps matched. The agent nodded.

“Pack it all up,” he said, and the two men grabbed the laptop and anything else electronic in the apartment. Mitchell realized what the other two men had been doing – they were inventorying his belongings, should they be given the go-ahead by the agent in charge.

“Cell phone?” the man asked. Mitchell pulled an older model phone from his pocket and handed it over. The agent took a look at it and handed it to one of the other men. After the agents left, David Mitchell locked the door behind them. He went into his closet and found the laptop and cell phone that he had hidden inside a stack of bedsheets and was back in business.

Jami was right. David Mitchell was likely the man that we were seeing on the videotape. She said that we needed to pay him a visit and I agreed. We kept watching the footage on Morgan’s monitor and just as the bike sped off, I saw Jami run into the frame from the west side of the building. We watched as I walked out, gun drawn, and met her in the parking lot, and we climbed into my SUV and chased after the bike.

I hired Agent Davis not just because she had an impressive resume, but because she had been referred by a friend. Referrals seem to work out better than hiring someone off the street. It’s hard to judge character from a resume. Whether by skill or by luck, Jami had a way of connecting the dots that came easily to her.

“Morgan, can you get Mitchell’s address from that DMV file and send it to my screen?” Jami asked.

“Sure.” Morgan let out a loud sigh.

“I need to step away for a few minutes,” I told them and left Morgan’s workstation and headed down the dark hallway to my office and pulled out my phone as I walked. I closed the door behind me and called my dad at his house. It rang twice before he picked up.

“Blake?” he said immediately upon answering.

“Hey Dad, it’s me.” I tried to figure out how I was going to get through this conversation. His best friend had been kidnapped and I had no idea where he was or what the kidnapper would do to him. I couldn’t imagine what my dad was thinking in that moment.

“I tried calling a few times. I’m watching the news. Is it true what they’re saying? About Jim?” I leaned against the inside of my office door and felt my knees buckle a little. I closed my eyes and slowly shook my head before answering.

“It’s true. It happened on my watch. I’m sorry.”

“How could this have happened?” he asked and his voice cracked as he spoke.

“We’re trying to put the pieces together still, but it was planned. He was taken minutes before he was supposed to give his speech and stuffed inside a van that left the arena. We chased the kidnapper but lost him.”

Neither of us said anything for a good thirty seconds. I could tell he was shaken up.

“I’m going to get him back,” I finally said to break the silence.

“You’re what?” I heard my dad say with a disapproving tone of voice.

“I’m going to get him back. I was supposed to be protecting him tonight. I messed up. I’m going to make this right.”

“Blake, the news is saying that the FBI is working this. Is it a joint operation?”

“No.”

“Son, you let the FBI handle this. You’re going to get yourself thrown in jail if you interfere with this or worse, you’ll get yourself killed. You don’t know what this guy is capable of or what his motive is.”

I thought about the two agents he had already killed. My dad didn’t know about that and I wasn’t about to tell him, either. I thought that would make him even more concerned about the fate of his best friend.

“That won’t happen.”

“Blake, you stand down. Do you hear me?”

I walked over to the window of my office and looked over the Chicago skyline. Long strings of orange from the streetlights lined the countless roads of the metropolis. I could see flickers of red as drivers tapped their brakes along the roads. I wondered where in this huge city the senator could have been taken and how in the world I was going to be able to find him with such little resources available. For a moment, I had lost myself in thought but was brought back to the present by the voice of my dad calling my name.

“Blake? You there?”

“I can’t do that. I’m going to find a way to get him back. I have to go now. I love you.” I slipped the cell phone in my back pocket as Jami opened my office door.

“Blake – Reed needs you right now.”

Chris met me as I walked down the hallway and asked me to join him in his office. Jami took a seat where I guessed they had been talking before deciding that they needed to come and get me. Jami and I sat in the two chairs across from Reed’s desk as he closed his office door so we could hear ourselves think.

“I need to get you up to speed on a few things, Blake,” he said and dropped a manila envelope on his desk.

He sat down and pointed to a TV he had mounted on the wall adjacent to us before speaking.

“The media is reporting that the Jihadi Coalition is claiming responsibility for the kidnapping.” I turned to my right and looked at Jami who returned the same kind of skeptical look that I assumed I was giving her.

“We knew about this an hour ago and I had someone look into the claim. It seemed to come out of nowhere,” Reed said before I chimed in.

“That doesn’t make sense. There hasn’t been an attack of any kind by the JC on American soil. Not yet, at least. If they were going to do something, they’d be more likely to set off a car bomb or shoot up the parking lot, not pull off an elaborate kidnapping.”

“Blake, the crosscheck I had run searched for any connections between Senator Keller and anyone believed to be affiliated with the JC,” Reed said as he laced his fingers together and placed his hands on the desk. He paused for a moment before continuing. “Aasaal Nazir is the only person that we found with a link to the senator. We got the report just a few minutes ago, right before Jami went and got you.”

“Okay, so who is Nazir and what is his connection to Keller?” I asked as I crossed my legs, making myself comfortable. Reed glanced at Jami then back at me.

“Nazir is the imam at the mosque on Washington and Clark. We believe –” I interrupted Reed and sat up in my chair.

“Here? The guy is downtown? I know that place. The Islamic Civic Center. They’re harmless.” Reed looked down, as if he knew that I would say that. He slid the manila envelope over to me. I picked it up and started thumbing through the report.

“Last year, when Keller announced his candidacy for president at one of the hotels over by Navy Pier, Nazir was there in the crowd and arrested for disorderly conduct. The charges were later dropped because he posed no danger to the senator but CPD used it as the excuse to get him out before things could escalate.”

“What was his problem with Keller?” Reed shook his head slowly.

“No idea. That’s all we have.”

I thought about my conversations with the senator over the past year. I wasn’t able to make it out to see him announce his candidacy, but my dad had. Neither of them had mentioned an arrest taking place that night. But things were a little bit different in Chicago. In a city where over 2,500 people are shot to death each year, a single arrest of someone being disorderly in a crowd wouldn’t stand out. We had grown numb to the violence in this city. Still, I had a hard time picturing an imam worship leader getting arrested.

“How exactly is Nazir connected to the Jihadi Coalition?”

“I told you, Blake – we don’t know. I’ve never heard of the guy before now. He’s in one of Homeland’s databases for some reason. We can look into it.” I glanced back at the TV and shook my head.

“I need someone on this right now,” I demanded. I knew that crimes were usually solved within the first forty-eight hours, after that the trail tends to grow cold. I worried that if we didn’t jump on every lead we had, including the imam, what his issues with Senator Keller was, the JC connection and Nazir’s involvement, our chances of getting Jim Keller back would be gone.

“We’re going to need to act fast,” I said. “The Bureau always seems to be one step ahead of us.” Jami turned to me.

“I’ll see what I can find on Nazir and I’ll look into the connection to the JC.” I stood to leave. As I was about to reach for the door, it opened on its own and Morgan Lennox walked in.

“The FBI just left David Mitchell’s apartment.”